Year: 2015

Basement Floor Removal – Part 2

March 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments
Clearing out debris

Rob clearing out debris

We kept up work on the basement floor, but the more I used the concrete saw, the more I used the sledgehammer and rotary hammer. The saw was simply too slow and produced too much dust, even using water. I worked out a technique with the sledge where I could get a single crack running the length of the concrete, maybe a foot from the edge, then use the rotary hammer to split off chunks. It wasn’t perfect, but it made shorter work of the floor than the saw.

Quality floor

Quality floor

The concerns I had with using the sledge, namely the ceramic tiles and the clay sewer line, were misplaced. With some safety goggles and a few thwacks, the sledge makes quick work of the tile. The sewer line is buried deep enough that I’m not worried about cracking it, especially since a fair portion of the floor wound up being suspended a few inches over the dirt, leaving cavities beneath it (including an old rat nest and a whole section of bricks).

Breaking up the floor

Collin breaking up the floor

We got the dumpster delivered last Thursday morning, and Sunday Sarah’s parents, sister and brother-in-law, as well as her nephew Collin and two of his friends came out to help load all of the concrete into the dumpster. It was a long day and at one point we started getting concerned it wasn’t all going to fit in the dumpster, but ultimately we got everything we had broken up loaded. There’s just a section at the front left to finish that we’ve been working on this week and hope to wrap up this weekend.

Back of basement

Back of basement (also bricks from under the concrete floor)

We left a small section of floor at the back of the basement that has the washer, dryer, chest freezer, and hot water heater for the time being. We’ll have to remove that later, when we temporarily move out and the sewer and water main are replaced. In the mean time we’ll start excavating the plumbing and get some quotes on that work, and I can finish the masonry and lintels around the front bay windows and start installing the new windows.

A big thanks to Mike, Lee, Nicole, Rob, Collin, Dylan, and Dustin for all their help!

Basement Floor Removal – Part 1

February 24, 2015 / / 1 Comment
LED lights

LED lights

We’ve been hard at work in the basement. Since getting the new electrical installed and putting in the LED bulbs, we’ve pulled up all of the linoleum tile to make way for concrete floor removal. I bought an electric concrete saw from Amazon, but it uses a 20-amp plug. As it happens, we now have two 20-amp outlets, thanks to the new electrical, but we don’t have a 20-amp extension cord. Home Depot didn’t even carry one, aside from a 9-foot “appliance cord” that wasn’t going to reach very far in the basement. I ordered the extension cord from Amazon as well, but I didn’t want to sit idle over the weekend. That meant it was time to break out the sledge hammer and do things the old fashioned way.

 

Using a combination of sledge, pry bar, and my rotary hammer in chisel mode, Sarah and I managed to break up all the concrete on the North side of the basement. We spent a fair number of hours on it Saturday, Sunday, and last night. The other half of the basement (technically sixty percent) we’ll use the saw, since it’s covered in ceramic tile and we don’t want to crack the sewer pipes running somewhere underneath it by swinging the sledgehammer too much. My hands are pretty sore from the sledging we did so far, so switching to the saw sounds like a big improvement. The problem with the saw is dust. For that I’m hoping the shop vac attachment will make a difference, since we can’t use water with the electric saw.

Sarah ordered a dumpster for Thursday, and we’ll have it for two weeks. We need to have the whole thing broken up and hauled out by then, aside from the back corner where the water heater and laundry are. Those can wait a little while longer.

New Basement Electrical

February 10, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Before we start ripping up the floor of the basement, it made sense to put in the new electric. For one, it’s easier to put in overhead lights with the floor a little higher, but more importantly we want to cut down on work that needs to be done after the floor is done since we’ll be in a hurry to get moved back in. Plus, having good lighting down there instead of some crappy dangling fixtures will make working on the floor a little better. I debated doing the electrical myself, but in the end I just called Percy, our electrician, and he and his assistant Kevin got it done in a few days, where it probably would have taken me a month. Percy will come back after the interior walls are up to add a few more outlets and switches, but this gets us 90% of the way there.

New switches and outlets

New switches and outlets

We went the typical recessed can light route. The ceiling in the basement won’t be very high, so anything that sticks down is less than ideal. I bought a few LED light bulbs to decide what color temperature and style we like before ordering a whole set of them. We settled on the 3000K “bright white” since they’re a nice compromise between the 2700K yellowish “warm white” and the 4000K laboratory “daylight”. The bulbs came out to $12 each, cheap for LEDs, but expensive relative to CFL and incandescent until you consider the operating cost and lifetime. A regular 65W bulb costs $3 and  lasts 1,000 hours. A CFL costs $8, uses 14 watts, and lasts 8,000, while an LED uses only 8 watts and lasts 25,000 hours. Including replacement costs and electricity, every thousand hours of incandescent use costs about $13.85, compared to a CFL that costs $3.38 and an LED that costs $1.82. Since we’ve got nineteen lights just in the basement, the payback is there even vs CFLs. We spent $75 more on LEDs than CFLs up front, but even ignoring that the LEDs last three times longer, the electricity savings will pay that back before the CFLs are half used.

New can lights

New can lights

I was concerned about mounting the switch and outlet boxes on the brick, since even though the metal is galvanized, moisture can corrode it. The old finished basement had some extremely rotted boxes and conduit that we don’t want to recreate. Percy sprayed the backs of all of the boxes before putting them up with a rubberized coating to prevent water contact from the walls. Our hope is that along with improved water management, the electrical will stay dry and last a long time.

Outlet box spray coating

Outlet box spray coating

The plan is to install a foam panel system on the exterior walls that will provide a drainage plane behind the insulation. These systems have raceways for the electrical so we can just fit them over the installed conduit when we finish the basement. That will ensure any water that comes through the brick will be able to drain away and that the wall itself is impervious to water and won’t rot. It’s exciting to see more progress,and to see how much the basement has changed so quickly, especially since I didn’t have to do all the work!

Basement Plan

January 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

We’ve worked out our plan for moving into the basement. Part of that is figuring out how we’ll lay out the space, given that eventually it will be an entertaining space, not an apartment. To that end we’ve come up with a way to integrate some temporary bedrooms into the plan without having to change around the walls we want in the finished product.

Basement Apartment Plan

Basement Apartment Plan

In the plan you can see some of the walls are white and some are green. The white walls represent the finished product. We’ll build these walls with the intention of leaving them there. The green walls will partition off some bedrooms and will be temporary (they won’t actually be green). We won’t anchor them to the floor and we’ll take them out as soon as we’re done living there. The top left is where we’ll have a kitchen and laundry space. We’ll put in a utility sink that will serve for the kitchen but we can leave it there for future use. The laundry is there now and it can stay there until we finish the second floor, since it can share the sink plumbing and vent out the back window. We’ll put a counter on top of the washer and dryer to use as a kitchen prep space.

The wall in the bottom right corner is to close off the gas meter, which is a little scary and we don’t want the kids to play around it, hang from it, break it, blow up the house, etc. Eventually, People’s Gas is supposed to move it to the outside, but for now it’s stuck where it is. We may try to come up with something simpler, but this also gives us some closet space, which is otherwise lacking. We’ll set up shelving where we can, but storage will definitely be at a premium.

To get to this point we need the electrical run, the windows replaced, the concrete floor dug up and the foot of dirt removed. Then we start putting stuff in: the interior weeping system, new plumbing (that’s when we have to move out), gravel, rigid foam, wire mesh, PEX tubing for radiant floor heat, and new concrete. With the floor in place we can build the permanent walls and finish the bathroom so we can move back in. Then we put in the sink, build the basement stairs and the temporary walls, and finally move into the basement!

There will be a lot of other projects along the way, some big and some small. Near term I need to install bracing between the first floor joists before the electrical is run, install new lintels over two of the front bay windows, and try to patch some leaks in the gutters to stop water from coming into the basement. We may take the concrete out through the front window to a dumpster on the street, but to remove all the dirt and bring in the new gravel and concrete we’ll tear down the back porch and the garage. We’re also changing the back basement steps including a new retaining wall, and after we lower the floor we need a new back door. Even with some chunks of this work being done by contractors, it’s safe to assume that this will take us most of the year.

Basement Tuckpointing

January 26, 2015 / / 4 Comments
Before tuckpointing

Before tuckpointing

The next step down the road to getting our basement livable is repointing the brick walls. 120 years of water damage, bad patching, paint, and neglect had left the brick in bad shape. Large portions of the walls had been parged with mortar or concrete, which can trap water in the brick rather than allowing it to dry. We started by chipping off the parging. Some of it was so loose and brittle we could snap chunks off with our bare hands, while other sections came off only reluctantly with a hammer and chisel. About the time I got my rotary hammer back from a friend, I decided we just needed to hire out the job to some professional tuck pointers.

After hammer and chisel

After hammer and chisel

We got a couple of quotes, but wound up settling on Tuckpointing Masonry Systems, who Dean had used and recommended. They came in with a crew and after two days of dust and noise, the basement looked amazing. They ground out all of the mortar below grade and completely repointed it. Above grade they knocked out the loose material and spot-tuckpointed where it was needed.

After tuckpointing

After tuckpointing

The other thing we had them do was to rebuild the sills on the front bay windows. The bay windows are taller than the other windows in the basement, extending down to ground level, which makes them susceptible to water coming in. To prevent this, the tuck pointers installed new concrete sills with flashing. The next step is to re-frame the two angled windows in the bay, since they currently don’t have lintels.

Rebuilt bay windows

Rebuilt bay windows

I’ve requested quotes on new windows and asked Percy, our electrician, to come over and give us a quote on new electrical in the basement, including lights, outlets, and switches. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but once all of that is done we start breaking up the floor!