Year: 2016

Basement Weatherization

December 21, 2016 / / 3 Comments

We’ve jumped into winter with a dump of snow and a drop in temperatures, and this is our first winter since we moved down to the basement. The radiant heated floors are a big plus, and having warm feet and 72° indoor temperatures is a welcome change from the upstairs, where our temporary radiators were not up to the task of heating our drafty house, even when supplemented by electric heaters. We had a bit of a problem earlier in the season, mostly because I wasn’t paying attention to a critical detail of our new heating system. In addition to the thermostat and the boiler temperature, there is a dial that controls how warm the basement floor loops can get. Lester, our radiant installer, had left it at a reasonable 80°, but since our brick exterior walls aren’t insulated (yet) and there’s nothing between our heads and the unheated upstairs but a layer of OSB, that wasn’t cutting it for keeping our air temperature where we wanted it. Once I discovered the dial (and Sarah pointed out that she had told me about it after Lester told her), we cranked it up and now the basement is staying warm, mostly.

Window caulking and foam

I say mostly because there was a pretty big exception. Even before the dramatic temperature drop of this week (-7° last night), the kids’ bedroom was cold and our bedroom wasn’t much better. I tried feeling with my hand, using a laser thermometer, and blowing out a candle to watch the smoke, but I couldn’t isolate where the cold air was coming in. I found a few spots around one of the windows in the bay and I caulked it, but it didn’t make much of a difference. We finally broke down and bought a tiny thermal camera that plugs into a smart phone. It’s a lot cheaper than a full size thermal camera, and it actually does a pretty decent job. In the image below, you can see the spectrum temperature range on the left side, from black to white.

Bay window thermal image

I took it into the kids’ room and started finding cold spots (and thus leaks) right away. Most of this was centered on the bay windows, so I spent a fair amount of time caulking and spray-foaming all around, switching back to the camera to get new readings on the heat in various spots. I found a lot of the cold air was coming from the top of the brick walls along the front, and I filled those cavities with “big gap” Great Stuff.

Rob installs rigid foam

After this work, we were still not satisfied with how cold it was, and the camera started pointing us to the sides of the house where the floor joists above rest on the top of the brick wall, notched into a 6×8 rim board. We plan to fill all of these floor joist cavities at the outside wall with proper closed-cell spray foam, but not until all the mechanicals are in and we can do the rest of the exterior walls upstairs at the same time. Given that, we didn’t want to try and fill these all with Great Stuff, and Roxul mineral wool batts wouldn’t do much to stop the air flow. Instead, Rob, Mike, and David came down to help and we cut pieces of leftover 2″ rigid foam (originally for under the basement slab) and fit them between each joist for the length of the kids’ bedroom. The effect was dramatic: the room went from 10° colder than the living room to 3°. The next evening I followed up with our bedroom, but I ran out of extra foam before I could fill all of the joist bays. Even so, it was a noticeable improvement. I went back and found some more cold spots with the camera that I added some spray foam to and all-in-all it’s a lot more comfortable. Of course, now Sarah is saying the kitchen is cold, so I may still have some more work in front of me, but the camera is proving invaluable. Plus, I can lend it to friends so they can use it on their own houses. Thanks to Mike, Rob, and David for their assistance!

Electrical Cleanse

December 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Original panels

We finally have no old electrical in our house! When we bought the house, there were two panels for separate electrical service between the two floors. The whole thing was spliced and festooned with a mixture of wiring from various electrical epochs, like the strata of some ancient city. Much of the house was run with cloth-wrapped cable inside the flexible, coiled “BX” metal conduit. Our house inspector, and later our insurance inspector called it out as a risk. We knew from the start that we’d have to replace it all, but it’s been a long, gradual process. This process started with the basement demo, where I removed all manner of fire hazards. It continued with the first floor demo, then went back to the basement when we started our structural work, and jumped ahead with our new electrical service. It didn’t make a lot of progress for quite a while, but finally early last year we put in new electrical in the basement, got rid of more of the old stuff when we did the back porch demo, and most recently when we started on the second floor.

New panel and old panel

I disconnected the second floor electrical before we did demo, pulled out the majority of the BX cabling during demo, and finished shortly afterward, but there was still more to do. There were three BX cables and one conduit running up to the second floor, including two that ran up the back of the house (on the outside), requiring me to use the extension ladder to get them down. I had also left one BX cable with one outlet in place to service the first floor, but since that was fed off the old electrical panel box, it had to go too. There are now three separate extension cords running into the first floor from separate circuits, servicing the freezer, washer and dryer, as well as lighting/surge strip outlets.

New panel alone

This past weekend I got everything removed but the old electrical panel itself, which included several random junction boxes mounted around the panel and short lengths of BX cable connecting them all. The old electrical panel was itself only functioning as a junction box, since Percy had moved all the breakers to the new panel when he put it in, but that meant I still needed to pull out all the breakers from the circuits I’d removed. Saturday morning I shut off the power on the main breaker and moved quickly to get the remaining wires disconnected, the old breakers out, the remaining breakers consolidated at the top of the panel, and the old panel finally pulled off. The old electrical is finally, officially, gone! I printed some nice new labels to replace the masking tape and sharpie that had served to date. I still need to put some blanks in to cover up the removed breakers (there’s always got to be some little remaining task), and I want to remove the boards that the old panel was mounted on, but I’m still happy that, at least with the electrical, everything we have is new. I’ll be able to say the same about the plumbing just as soon as we get the rest of the old stack replaced.

Second Floor Demo Floor Demo

November 28, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Our demo party filled the first dumpster, so we swapped it for another one the same size and we filled it up too. In addition to all of the remaining plaster and lath debris, of which there was plenty, we took up the flooring down to the subfloor. This was an involved process, mostly because there wasn’t anywhere that had only one layer of flooring. The living room and dining room had a floated Pergo-style laminted pressboard floor that looked like hardwood. It, like most of the work done to the house shortly before we bought it, was cheap and installed badly. Despite being less than ten years old, it was in bad shape and we pitched it. Under that was peel-and-stick tiles, under that was a thin veneer hardwood, under that was the original hardwood floors, and under that was an inch-thick layer of plaster, mud, and general crud from when the house was built.

Under-floor Crud

As with the first floor, we didn’t save the hardwood floors. For one, there wasn’t enough of it. We’re completely changing the floor plan which would complicate any effort to save it, we’re installing radiant heated floors, and they were in really rough shape from all of the nails.

Bathroom floor removal in progress

Living room done, dining room in progress

Because our subfloor is planks that are spaced apart by a quarter inch or more, we couldn’t use a broom to sweep up all the debris without pushing cascades of crud through the cracks and down into the first floor where all of our stuff is in storage. Now granted, we covered everything with tarps and it’s all pretty dirty already anyway from the dust of the demo party and unavoidable debris that comes down anyway, including through various holes in the floors and walls. Even so, we wanted to do what we could to prevent it from being any worse than it had to be. Sarah spent several hours a day over the better part of two weeks sucking up all the crap with the shopvac. We hauled out about eight contractor bags of the stuff and filled our toters a few times, since the dumpster was gone.

Of course, then I went around de-nailing studs and joists and leaving nails and random other bits of crud all over the floors she had just vacuumed, but this is kind of how it goes. I’ll get it cleaned up again after we’ve pulled out the rest of the interior walls and the plumbing and are ready to start putting things back together. It’s already starting to look like the kind of space we can start building things in, but it will really start looking promising once we get the whole floor completely cleared out.

Second Floor Demo Party

November 18, 2016 / / 0 Comments

For the third and final time, we held a demo party. Saturday, with the help of a great many friends and family members, the entire second floor was demolished. We managed to fill the 30 yard dumpster and we still have a fair amount of debris waiting its turn to go down the chute and fill the next one, which arrived Tuesday. Everything that’s left should fit into this second one, and at that point the gutting of the interior will be complete. We were so bent on wrecking things that we didn’t get in-progress photos, but we did get before and after!

Kitchen before (with chute)
Bedroom before
Living room before (ceiling demoed)

I didn’t get the ceiling demo done until Saturday morning because I spent some time improving the chute by adding a wider hopper and putting a ramp upstairs to enable full wheelbarrows to be emptied. I wasn’t able to put the top of the chute at floor level because the downspout cuts across the door, but using a chunk of the ramp I built for the basement dig-out solved the problem.

Part of the demo crew

Part of the demo crew

Friday evening, Sarah dropped off the kids at her parents and picked up two of her nephews, Colin and David, and two of their friends, Dylan and Dustin. I picked up Will, in from Iowa City, and they spent the night. Saturday morning they were joined by Dean and Siobhan and Matt B. We got to work and Sarah’s brother, Matt, and his girlfriend, Amy, joined us in the afternoon.

Kitchen after (with chute ramp and hopper)
Bedroom after (with bonus hidden window)
Living room after

Prybars, sledgehammers, 2x4s, regular hammers, shovels, buckets and wheelbarrows were put into action and the second floor came apart quickly. The plaster and lath, drywall and lath, random fiberglass insulation, and old trim all got ripped down, loaded into wheelbarrows or simply carried to the back, and chucked down the chute, while a rotating dumpster crew with shovels and rakes moved debris to the far end of the dumpster. Dust masks, goggles, gloves, boots, coveralls, bandanas, and hard hats all proved their worth and those cases where people didn’t avail themselves of them demonstrated their importance.

Bump out after
Bathroom after
Kitchen after
Living room after

When she wasn’t doing demo herself, Sarah kept everyone going with sandwiches, water, Gatorade, Coca-cola, coffee, beer, and cider, and when we finished there was lasagna, shepherd’s pie, more beer and cider, wine, and scotch. Sarah’s also been working on clearing out the remaining debris this week into the second dumpster and we’re hoping to wrap that up and get the flooring out this weekend. A huge thanks from Sarah and I go out to everyone that made it!

Second Floor Demo Prep

November 11, 2016 / / 0 Comments

With the drainage project finally wrapped up, we’re getting ready to demo the second floor! As in the past, we’re having a demo party where friends come over to smash the hell out of the walls and tear everything down. To make sure this process goes smoothly, safely, and makes as little mess as possible, we have some work to do up front. First, we need to clean up the first floor. With us living in the basement, and the second floor empty, we’re using the first floor as storage. Between all of our projects, moving to the basement, and life in general, it has a tendency to get away from us and turn into a cluttered, disorganized mess. When we demo the floor above, dust and debris are going to rain down between the floorboards, so everything needs to be as contained and protected as we can make it.

Empty kitchen

Empty kitchen awaiting destruction

I tackled the back (everything behind the wet wall) since this is my de facto workshop where all the tools are kept. After we rushed to finish the basement, I wound up bringing them back up in boxes and not putting them away. I re-organized and cleared out the worst of it, but honestly, I still have a lot more cleanup to do. However, the critical part was I made a space big enough to put all of the kitchen cabinets from upstairs. When we bought the house, we got a bunch of free kitchen cabinets from Sarah’s grandmother (who in turn had gotten them from a friend of Sarah’s parents when they remodeled their kitchen). We’re done with them now, so we’re giving them to Sarah’s parents, since they’ve bought rental property in Florida and want to redo a kitchen down there. Until they pick them up, we needed them off the walls and in the first floor. Sarah cleared up the front of the first floor, which was a bigger process since it involved not just organizing, but throwing away what we don’t want, donating what we don’t use, moving some of what we want into the basement (and finding homes for it all down there), organizing the rest of it into bins and boxes, and finally, covering it all with tarps and drop cloths.

I disconnected the water, which was complicated by the fact we still have the washer and dryer on the first floor and by the way the plumbers replaced a perfectly good dielectric union with a brass female adapter and my side-drain valve with a regular valve (both for no apparent reason other than to piss me off). That meant to disconnect the hot water I had to cut the copper pipe past the valve (which was full of water) and drain it that way. I still need to solder a cap on the pipe. For the cold water (which is all we have for the washer) I was able to reconfigure my press-fit PEX fittings (so easy!). I also disconnected the gas line that went to the stove upstairs. That was made more difficult by the fact it was one 12′ pipe going from the basement to the second floor. Disconnecting it was easy, getting it out of the wet wall was a bit more difficult. We had Lester, our radiant contractor, disconnect and drain the radiators a couple of months ago, so I was able to just lift those off the wall and move them downstairs. I unscrewed the thermostatic valves and fancy stainless steel fittings and saved them in a bag. These radiators will eventually be in the attic bedrooms, since the other stories will have radiant floor heating.

I turned off the electrical circuits for the second floor and took down the ceiling fans and light fixtures, but I still need to remove the actual BX wire cables strewn through the attic. I reclaimed the outlets (few that there were), which we’d installed new when we bought the house. The whole upstairs only had one light switch (in the bathroom) since everything else was on pull chains and a couple of fan remotes. Honestly, one of the nicest parts of the basement is the normal complement of outlets and switches, since they were in short supply upstairs.

Debris chute

Debris chute

Sarah ordered a big dumpster and it was dropped off in the back yard on Friday. Monday I built a chute out of the extension ladder and some 2x4s and plywood to go from the back door of the second floor down to the dumpster that will make the demo process go much faster. We discovered when we demoed the first floor that balloon frame houses lend themselves to a particular order of deconstruction if you want to contain all the plaster dust and mess. By demoing the ceiling first, all the debris falls into the still-enclosed rooms rather than into the wall cavities and into the floor below. By saving the flooring for last, we prevent (some of) the mess raining down between the subfloor boards. Also, by demoing the ceiling before the demo party, we prevent some of the more dangerous aspects of wanton destruction with large groups of people.

Chute close-up

Chute close-up

I got underway with ceiling demo, starting in the back bedroom and kitchen and working forward. We insulated the attic with blown-in cellulose a few years ago, so there was a lot of fluff shoveling, but the chute is working as hoped. The top of the chute is slightly higher than I’d planned, so I need to lower it a bit, but otherwise it’s a vast time saver over hauling everything down by hand. When we prepped for demo of the first floor we took down all the trim, but in the second floor, at least for the windows, I’m concerned the trim is actually holding the windows in place. They’re all cheap replacement windows and they’re less than professionally installed. We may take it easy on those until we’re ready to replace them. The weather is getting cooler and we don’t want any gaping holes in the exterior walls, let alone the possibility of broken glass and injured people.

I expect to finish ceiling demo tonight, the kids will be out of the house with grandparents for the whole weekend to avoid any noxious dust contamination, and we’ll get this, quite literally, knocked out!