Month: June 2013

Choosing a Water Heater

June 27, 2013 / / 0 Comments

For a while now I’ve been planning to get a Triangle Tube Smart Series indirect water heater. Indirect water heaters use the boiler to heat the water rather than have built-in heating elements. Lester, our radiant heating guy, agreed that it was a good design but cautioned that there can be issues with getting them approved by inspectors because they don’t have a double walled heat exchanger. I looked into the code and determined that we shouldn’t have an issue with that, but for a number of other reasons I wound up looking at other water heaters anyway.

The first is simplification. Our project is really complicated, with a set of interlocking pieces with dependencies and requirements across the gamut. Our existing water heater is in the way of our new boiler panel installation, so if we use an indirect water heater, we need to first move our existing water heater (disconnect everything, move it, and run water and gas plumbing to the new location along with exhaust flue to the chimney). Then we’d get the new boiler installed along with the indirect water heater, and re-plumb the water lines to the new location. We wouldn’t be able to remove the chimney until the new system was fully up and running. Conversely, if we just buy a standalone water heater, we can install it soup-to-nuts and be done with it. The boiler install loses any other dependencies, the chimney isn’t waiting on anything else, and we don’t have a single point of failure (the boiler) down the road.

There’s a few other factors to consider. For one thing, when the home is tightly insulated our heating load will be quite low. Having an indirect water heater actually means we’d need to buy a bigger boiler. The boilers modulate, meaning they can run at different levels depending on load (25%-100%), but if the boiler needs to be bigger just to run the water heater, that 25% is still a much bigger value. Our plumber, Mariusz, recommended the AO Smith Vertex 100, and it’s easy to see why. It’s 96% efficient, it’s reliable, we’ll never run out of hot water, and it’s direct vent, so it uses outside air for combustion, which is important when we’re doing so much air sealing.

I’ve already decided against tankless. They draw too much gas (up to 199,000 btu) and they don’t work well in the Midwest where our cold water can be 50° F or less. I’ve decided against tankless hybrids since they seem unreliable. I’ve ruled out most of the other condensing storage models because they either cost more, produce less, are less reliable or some combination thereof. There are cheaper models that direct vent but in addition to not having as much capacity (first hour delivery not tank size), they’re more than 40% less efficient, easily costing more over their lifetime.

Vertex 100

Vertex 100

In the end, I did a cost comparison. The Smart Indirect is the cheapest until you factor in the cost of a bigger boiler. A lower efficiency direct vent water heater is cheap until you factor in the operating cost. The Vertex 100 is expensive, but its high efficiency will pay for itself. I also looked at a more expensive direct vent heater that had a stainless steel tank so it would last longer, but the payback wasn’t there. I’ve reached out to Mariusz to get the ball rolling. In the mean time our whole-house water filter showed up and I need to frame out the mechanical room wall.

New Gas Plumbing

June 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments

We’re taking a step back from framing the first floor and shifting to mechanicals. Specifically, getting the new boiler installed in the basement. I met with Lester, our radiant heating guy, on Wednesday and we walked through the plan. I got the requirements figured out for the boiler install and we’ll be working on getting those items ready over the next month and a half.

The first step in the process is the gas line. We need to provide gas service to the new boiler, and given the state of the existing plumbing, it was time to start over. We modified the gas plumbing about a year ago to eliminate the runs along the beam in preparation for the steel beam. With that done, there were still two runs from the meter at the front of the basement to the back. One went to the existing steam boiler and then to the water heater and stove on the second floor while the other went to the gas dryer. It went through byzantine twists, multiple unions, and a frustrating lack of valves. It was time to replace it all.

Putting in all new plumbing meant I needed a plan. I came up with a simple main trunk and branch design that would service all future gas appliances. To determine the sizes needed I added up the distance from the meter to the furthest branch and the total input btu of all appliances. Then I used gas pipe sizing charts to arrive at 1¼” for the main line, reducing to 1″, ¾”, and ½” at various junctions. With the plan in place I worked through the basement, measuring distances and coming up with every pipe length and fitting I’d need.

If I was to do this again I’d recommend going to a plumbing supply store. They sell the more obscure fittings, like reducing tees in all sizes, inline reducing tees, 1¼” street 90s, and on-site pipe cutting. Because I went to a big-box store instead, I had to re-plan in the store, winding up with a lot more fittings, and every junction is  potential leak. In any case, I got home and immediately realized I’d forgotten to buy the straps to attach the pipe to the ceiling. D’oh! I went back, bought the straps, and then laid out everything on the floor and discovered I had gotten a reducing tee by mistake (it was in the wrong bin).

Yesterday morning I ran back to the store and bought the correct tee. I got started removing all of the existing pipe, except for the run up to the stove on the second floor. Then I connected the existing water heater to the branch that went up to the stove, making a single segment that could be removed at a later date.

New gas line

New gas line

Dean and Sarah’s dad, Mike, arrived and we set to work putting in the new plumbing. The new trunk runs along the beam, just as the original line did. We got about halfway down (at our second tee) and realized that my measurements hadn’t properly accounted for the size of the couples and tees. We needed a shorter piece of pipe to line up properly and our pipe threader only went up to 1″ pipe. Mike ran back to the hardware store to get it and Dean and I worked on putting the remaining branches together.

Tie-in to existing stove and water heater

Tie-in to existing stove and water heater

Mike got back with the missing pieces and we got the remaining branches in. At the end of the trunk we ran a line to the dryer using existing pipes and fittings. Someday that branch will be removed and in its place we’ll put in a line to the back deck for a natural gas grill.

Removed pipe and fittings

Removed pipe and fittings

After requisite leak and pressure testing, we only needed to tighten a couple of unions. Everything was looking good. We re-lit the pilot on the water heater and headed upstairs for some burgers cooked on the gas stove. A big thanks to Dean and Mike for their help!

Better Living Through Self-Delusion

June 11, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Ever since we put up the beam in the first floor I’ve been grappling with the unfortunate reality that I’m not as good at building houses as someone who does it for a living. This is an obvious statement, but it runs up against my perfectionism. We’re starting to do constructive work on the house rather than destructive work. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, but now that it’s here I’m forced to confront the fact that my carpentry skills are not up to my own standards. I’m also forced to either accept less-than perfect results or redo things I barely have time to do in the first place.

One of our primary goals in building our house ourselves was to make sure it was built right. To achieve this I’ve done a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of planning, and we’re spending a lot of money for the right materials. All of that still butts up against the lack of experience I have at physically doing it. I have a level, a square, a measuring tape and good eyes, but things still don’t wind up fitting the way I expect them to.

One of the things I take pride in is a level of honesty with myself and the introspection to see when I’m not doing a good job. Ira Glass talked about the difference between taste and skill, and while he was speaking about the creative pursuits, I don’t think there’s a difference. I know what good quality construction looks like. I can see what’s wrong with every building I walk into, and appreciate it when things are well made.

We watched a lot of Holmes on Homes before starting this project, seeing horror stories of bad craftsmanship from shady contractors. Because I knew I wouldn’t accept less-than-good quality, I convinced myself that I would do a better job, but I failed to understand that just because I would doesn’t mean I could. I recently read a blog post by Allison Bailes discussing his experience building a green home and the role his own self-delusion played in convincing him that he could do it himself and to plow ahead despite setbacks. In a separate post he said that one of the top ten mistakes he made building his home was thinking he could save money by doing it himself.

On the one hand, without the self-delusion, he (and for that matter, Sarah and I) would probably never have undertaken the project in the first place. The self-delusion is necessary to convince yourself to do risky things. Once you’re committed, you eventually work a way through it. However, the self-delusion is only useful up front. Once you’re in the thick of it, self delusion only serves to prolong the project by telling you you can do it all. The question becomes, when is it actually a good idea to do it ourselves and when should we hire out?

There are always things that are worth doing yourself. The basement steel beam is a prime example. We started out convinced we needed to hire it out, got quotes of fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, and wound up doing it ourselves for about two thousand dollars. However, without the help of our friend Mike, a construction welder that was able to buy the steel and help us put it in, it wouldn’t have been so straightforward.

A counter example is the first floor LVL beam. We were quoted a bit under five grand to have it done. We did it ourselves for roughly sixteen hundred. That’s still significant money saved, but the time and effort it took, the quality of the finished product, and the lingering uncertainty of whether it was done 100% properly add up to me concluding I probably should have just written the check.

If nothing else, I’ve reminded myself to at a minimum get a quote for the work so I can make an educated decision. With Sarah in grad school for the rest of the year, my evenings are dedicated to watching our son, Derek. That means I can only work on the house on weekends or if I take off work, and individual projects that would take a contractor a few days may take me a month or more. There’s value in that time, and I’m slowly realizing that sometimes I need to pony up the cash if it will get things done. To start with, I’m going to get a couple quotes for the joist levelling and the subfloor. If one of them is reasonable, I’ll save myself a ton of time and effort and hopefully have a better product than I could do myself with the time allotted.

Going forward, we’ll take it one piece at a time. We don’t have a construction loan, so everything is out of pocket. That means we feel it acutely when we make big ticket decisions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth it. I expect we’ll still wind up doing most of this project ourselves with the help of friends, but maybe a bit smaller “most” wouldn’t be so bad.