Year: 2013

First Window Installation

September 25, 2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

With the prep work for the radiant heating complete, we can focus on getting the windows and doors installed. I came up with the plan a while ago after reading up and watching some Building Science materials. The first was the back window in what will be the office. It’s the only double hung window, but the reason I decided to do this one first is that it opens onto the enclosed porch. That meant it was easier to install and it was covered in the event we ran into snags.

Original window removed

Sarah’s dad Mike, Rob, and Aaron helped me re-frame the window opening, moving it about six inches over to allow for the future stair landing when we redo the back porch. We mended and sistered a stud that became one of the king studs and put in a proper header with ½” insulation separating the 2x6s. This resulted in a somewhat ridiculous 8″ of solid framing in the wall. Good thing we’re putting on exterior insulation! Then we installed new sheathing in the closed up portions and cut back the siding around the opening, then caulked all of the seams.

The next step was to build the plywood box that extends out from the exterior wall so that the window was properly supported on the outside after we add two inches of foam. We added the Tyvek house wrap to the sheathing and then the glued on two 1″ layers of polyiso rigid insulation, ensuring that the seams didn’t align and taping everything with Tyvek tape. Normally these would be attached by screwing furring on, but the siding is a long ways off and we’re planning to use metal furring strips that we don’t have yet.

Re-framed opening

We added clapboard at the bottom to slope to the outside and installed a WeatherMate drain pan on top of it. Next we used flashing tape along the sides and put the window in place with shims at the bottom. We secured it with straps on the outside face that were screwed through the foam and into the studs. I’ll need to finish the interior with some Great Stuff and backer rod. I’d like to thank Mike, Rob, and Aaron for their help and their patience with my non-traditional window installation!

Completed window

This window was kind of a prototype, so I have a few lessons learned. First, the project took all day for the single window, and we had three people working on it. I need to streamline the process for the remaining windows. Some of the time was because we hadn’t done it before, but I’m also hopeful that if I pre-cut the material (studs, foam, plywood), I can install them faster.

Window sill detail (Credit: Building Science)

Next, I’m a bit confused by a couple of details of the Building Science plans. First, their instructions leave the entire window sill area (highlighted above) effectively un-insulated, though it is air sealed and drained well. I think in future windows I’ll use spaced shims rather than beveled siding so I can fill the space under the pan flashing with expanding foam.

Window head detail (Credit: Building Science)

Second, considering how thorough the plan is when it comes to water management, the plywood extension box seems strangely left out, particularly at the top (highlighted above). The house wrap is underneath the foam specifically to handle water that might get inside, but the water is then directed onto the exposed plywood and trapped there because the foam is taped to on the outside of the plywood. We wrapped the corners of the housewrap to the plywood with Tyvek tape, but I think I’ll wrap the housewrap over the plywood at the top for the rest of the windows to create a better drainage plane. I may even try to add a slope to the sides so the water can continue to drain down the wall, but we’ll see how ambitious I get.

There are six windows to go: three along the side and three in the bay in the front. We also have the front door and the back sliding door, though the back sliding door will have to wait, since the porch stairs are in the way. We’re planning to install the door next weekend and hopefully I can get all the windows in the following week. Wish us luck!

Wet Wall Expansion

September 20, 2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

Wet wall

I like to think I’m a planner. I spend at least as much time figuring out how I’m going to do something before I attempt to do it, occasionally far more. Sometimes this planning pays off and sometimes I realize that I failed to consider an important factor. The wet wall was one of the latter. It’s comprised of two full 2×4 walls with a narrow space between them, except for the end, where the refrigerator will sit further back than the rest of the kitchen wall, allowing the front to be at counter depth without being an expensive counter depth fridge.

I researched refrigerator dimensions and decided that the kitchen wall should be six inches forward of the wall behind the refrigerator. I spent time researching how to support the wall when it doesn’t sit over a joist, decided to double up the bottom plate so that when we install the radiant floor and hardwood floors we’ll still have a large enough nailing edge for drywall. I measured and installed the wall bracing on the kitchen side exactly where the wall cabinets will hang so we have a continuous nailing surface and don’t have to hunt for studs. I used screws to put the blocking in the ceiling rather than nails because I know that when we redo the second floor we’ll have to replace that floor joist. All of this constituted good planning, but I neglected to consider the other reason the wet wall has a narrow space: it’s a wet wall.

The wet wall contains all of the plumbing that support the second floor. The toilets for the second floor bathrooms will use 4″ PVC drain pipe which will travel through the wet wall at an angle. The gap between the two walls was only 2½”. The only way to install that would be to notch out the studs, top plate, and bottom plate. I decided instead to expand the wet wall I’d just framed.

The good news is this wasn’t terribly difficult. I cut the nails holding the top plate with a reciprocating saw and tipped the whole stud wall until it rested against the chimney. Then I was able to cut all of the nails holding it to the floor, tap it a measly 2½”, and tip it back into place. A lot of time with a measuring tape and a level got the wall aligned properly. I picked up some 6″ screws to go through the double top and bottom plates into the joists and with Sarah’s help, got them all in.

Expanded wall

Like every project, there are a couple of punchlist items. I have to put some studs into the outside wall for drywall nailing edges, which means I need to put in spray foam since the studs will close up a couple of spots. I’ll also try to remember to think things through a tiny bit more in the future. At least we caught this right away, and not when we’re actually trying to install the drain plumbing.

Wet Wall Re-frame

September 5, 2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

Floor joists

After the wet wall demo and finally resolving the drain cap issues, we were able to get the wet wall re-framed. The first stage was sistering to two of the existing floor joists, which I did with Mike’s help a couple of weeks ago. These joists are in the kitchen, directly below where the cabinets, refrigerator, and oversized range will go, so reinforcing the joists will help support that weight without it flexing overmuch.

The existing joists are not level, due in part to the outside walls not being at the exact same height as the beam and in larger part to the joists themselves bowing, tapering, and generally being wonky. We compensated for some of this by jacking up the old joist before gluing on the new ones, but in the end I wound up using my laser level and a planer to bring down all of the high spots.

After that was done, I installed the new joist that replaced the rotted one, which was thankfully much easier to make level. Lastly, I installed blocking between the new joist and the next joist over in order to support the wet wall itself. Normally walls parallel to joists sit directly above them, but in this case the wall needed to be in line with the PSL column, which is between joists. The blocking is installed every 16″. Because I had planed down the joists to be level, installing the blocking was pretty straightforward.

Level subfloor

I then installed the subfloor. This was complicated by all of the pipes, and I had to cut notched sections and piece it together. I managed a decent job and I’m pleased to say that the subfloor is as close to level as anything in this house is likely to get. There were some low spots in the joists, so when I glued down the OSB subfloor, I only put screws in the corners. Then I let the bead of glue cure, acting almost as a shim. I’ll follow up with the screws afterward. My fancy collated screwdriver is missing its screw bit, and the screws I bought are square drive anyway, so I’ll wait until the new bit arrives to put those in.

Ceiling blocking

I was all set to install the wall itself when I realized I needed blocking at the top as well. Unlike the nice and level floor, the ceiling was incredibly warped in both directions and partially rotted. I had to custom cut and fit each piece of blocking. This was easily the biggest pain in the whole project. I installed them with screws so I can adjust them from above when we do the second floor. At least one of the ceiling joists will need to be replaced at that point. We’ll be able to do that without disrupting the first floor because the first floor ceiling will be suspended on furring under the joists. When we install the furring, we’ll skip the joists that need to be replaced.

Wet wall

With the blocking in place I was finally able to frame the wet wall. It’s two rows of 2x4s, with the kitchen side not extending the entire length. This will create a nook for the refrigerator, so it sits flush with the counter without being counter depth. I installed bracing between the studs (not pictured) to add rigidity, bring the studs parallel with one another, and create a continuous nailing edge for shelving and cabinets.

The wall will eventually extend another couple of feet past the column, but that can wait until I do the rest of the subfloor. I’ll also frame an access panel for the plumbing, but I’m not in a rush to do that either. The main focus is getting the wall up so that the radiant heating plumbing has something to be attached to. Lester will be coming on Monday to start that work.

Drain Cap Mishap

August 28, 2013 / Matt / 1 Comment

Fernco Cap

When I demo’d the wet wall, I cut off the tee of the soil stack for the first floor bathroom drains. It was a 4″ cast iron pipe. I cut it because it was notched into a completely rotted floor joist. I wanted to replace the joist, and since there wasn’t going to be a drain there it didn’t make sense to notch the new joist. I had picked up a 4″ rubber pipe cap from Home Depot, assuming it would fit.

Of course, it didn’t fit because it was meant for 4″ pipe, not the fitting that 4″ pipe fits into, which has a noticeably larger diameter. For the time being I put the test plug back in. I went back to Home Depot for some other things and discovered they didn’t carry the larger size, because it’s not a common diameter. Menards, however, carried it as a special order with free shipping, which made it cheaper than most of the other online sources for it. I placed my order and got back to work.

As I discussed in my post about our latest run-in with unexpected plumbing, we couldn’t finish the joist repairs on Saturday because we were still waiting on the cap. Scheduled delivery was Monday. Monday I worked from home and waited expectantly for UPS to deliver the cap. Hours ticked by, the mail came, the evening came, but no UPS. I checked the tracking and they said they had delivered it, leaving it by the garage. That was strange. Why would they walk all the way into the back yard and leave it there, especially when there were people home? Nonetheless I searched the back yard, all around the garage, re-checked the front porch and anywhere else I thought they might leave a package, and found nothing.

Frustrated, I went back to the tracking page. It had been delivered to Hebron, Illinois. For a moment I was thoroughly confused. How on Earth would it have wound up- and then it hit me: our friends Mike and Steph lived in Hebron. I had ordered Mike a Menards gift card as a thank you when he helped us put in the footings in the basement. Menards had helpfully saved the address and somehow left it as the default. When I ordered the part I didn’t check the shipping address and sent the drain cap to them. To be clear, Mike and Steph’s house is 70 miles from ours, so getting it from them is non-trivial.

The unfortunate part of this is that I need this drain cap before I can put the joist in because there is quite literally no clearance to put it in later. As it is the joist may have to bend slightly around the drain (still better than a giant hole notched in it). I need the joist in place so I can put in the subfloor, and I need the subfloor so I can re-frame the wet wall. I need to re-frame the wet wall so Lester can run the plumbing for the radiators and install the boiler, so we can have heat this winter. I took off Thursday and Friday of this week in anticipation of getting this work done. I need this drain cap!

The good news is that I found out Grainger stocks the part in Franklin Park, which is quite a bit closer than the alternatives. I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning and when I eventually get the other one from Mike and Steph I can just return it to Menards.

Update: Further Mishaps

I drove to Grainger and picked up the drain cap yesterday morning. When I got home I discovered it too, did not fit. Where the other cap was too small, this was too big. More than that, the slope of the tee meant that a cap was really ill-suited to the task because it didn’t have a straight edge to clamp to. I went back to Home Depot and looked around until I found a Fernco 4″ to 2″ reducing plug. Then I got a 1 ½” cap that fit into the 2″ opening. Ugly, but effective, and it fits into the hole rather than over it. It took me multiple attempts and a lot of pounding with a rubber mallet, but I managed to get it installed and the joist in place.

Unexpected Plumbing, Part 3

August 26, 2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

Saturday we had a bit of a whoops. We had been working on sistering floor joists as part of the wet wall reframe, and hit a stopping point due to an ordered part not being in yet. It was getting into the evening and we had dinner plans at seven. I figured one quick last thing before we wrapped up would be to install a plug in the smaller drain, where the first floor kitchen sink had originally been.

Drain with tee and elbow

It was as simple as unscrewing the existing galvanized line from the cast elbow and putting in the plug. I braced the pipe while Mike unscrewed with the pipe wrench. We first started turning it at the tee, but the pipe wouldn’t clear the floor, so we decided to loosen it at the elbow first. That’s when the tee abruptly cracked.

Broken tee

Crap. The cast iron was completely rotted, most likely due to people putting the wrong stuff down the kitchen sink for too many years. Now we had a dilemma. We needed to fix it quickly, and I didn’t have a coupling for the PVC pipe that the cast iron transitioned to directly below the tee. I did, however, have a brand new, 10′ length of PVC left over from the water heater venting. We measured and realized that not only would it fit, we could also resolve a long standing issue in the basement. The 2″ PVC drain went directly into a 3″ PVC drain in the floor that was cracked. It also had several capped branches on it, all of which could be eliminated.

Basement connection

Check out that beauty! They had put on a side drain for the tub, another side port that required water to travel up for the basement kitchen sink, and the gap where the smaller pipe went into the bigger one was filled with Great Stuff foam that bubbled out every time we ran the dishwasher. Mike ran to the hardware store to buy a reducing coupling and I cut off both the cast iron tee and the top of the 3″ PVC pipe, pulling out all of the existing PVC.

Much better!

Mike got back and we installed the reducing couple and fitted in the new 10′ PVC pipe. With a few inches cut off at the top, we reused the rubber couple to join it back to the cast iron going up to the upstairs kitchen sink.

Rubber couple

Despite my warnings not to use the sink, Sarah managed to run the kitchen faucet while I was standing under the open pipe and then later poured out part of a 2-liter of pop (fortunately I wasn’t under it the second time). She apologized for forgetting and said she was just hungry. We did make it to dinner, albeit a little late; the sushi was really good!

Links

Projects

Archives

Advertisement