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Basement Demo: Plumbing

January 13, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Hot Water Line

We’ve been tending to a sick baby, so there hasn’t been much time to work on the house. The time I have found has been split among a number of things which makes for small progress. The ever present basement demolition makes the top of the list. I gave my friend Dean a tour of the basement and he lent his sweat soldering tools and skills to a pressing problem: disconnecting the basement supply plumbing. The plumbing runs through the center wall which will be take out to replace the main beam and columns. Getting it disconnected is the first step in removing it.

The basement supply plumbing is copper, while most of the rest is galvanized steel pipe. The hot water had been tapped off of a line that was originally for the laundry. Because we’ll be putting the laundry back in the basement at some point, we needed to disconnect the branches to the basement kitchen and bathroom while leaving the laundry connected. There was a cutoff valve that should have made this easy, but even closed all the way, water was still coming through. I wound up shutting off the whole water heater, which services the second floor. Once that was done, Dean was able to cap these two branches.

Cold Water Line

The cold water line looked simpler but was quite a bit more problematic. Again there was a shutoff valve, and again it didn’t completely stop the water. I vowed to use nothing but quarter-turn valves when I install the new plumbing. The next step was to turn off the water main to the house. Even so, there was still pressure. So we opened some faucets to drain the lines. Surely, now it should be fine? Of course not. This water line was tapped off the supply line to the steam boiler, which meant the low water cutoff valve on the boiler water feeder was opening and allowing water to flow back into the pipe! At this point Dean had a great idea: remove the whole valve. The other side of the cutoff valve we were capping was galvanized, which is threaded pipe. Some twists of the wrench later and we had removed the whole thing. Now, completely free, we were able to solder on the cap. A little plumber’s putty put the valve back on and we were done. The next step will be to pull all the now loose copper pipes out of the basement. I have a bit more electrical to pull out of the ceiling, and then I need to tackle the gas lines. Once that’s consolidated and re-routed I can finally take down the remaining drywall.

Floor Joists

The next thing I worked on was a bit of scouting and measuring, to ensure my floor plans are accurate. While the inspector had told me the floor joists supporting the second floor were 2×6, and the ones in the attic definitely were, I had acquired some doubts. A couple weeks ago I jumped up and down and judged the floor to be fairly stable considering that assumption. The only way to confirm was to rip a whole in the ceiling of the first floor and measure it. We already have a number of holes in the wall, so it was a pretty minor thing. The result was good news: the joists are 2×10! That means all of my concerns about sistering and reinforcing are for nothing. We can just add some better blocking.

Wall studs

I also measured the exterior wall studs. They’re 1 3/4″ thick and 3 3/4″ wide, which is thicker than today’s 2x4s, but not as big as I originally thought. Regardless, I’ve gone back to my floor plans to calculate accurate measurements once we add extra thickness to the exterior walls for better insulation. That work is still in progress, but I’ll share my revised floor plans when they’re ready. My house model is also coming along, in all its 3D fanciness. We’ve been looking at the extravagant examples on Houzz for inspiration on some of the details, and it’s coming along well.

Basement Demo: One Fire Hazard at a Time

December 30, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Several posts ago I shared some videos of the, er, shall we say imaginative electrical “planning” in the basement. Last night I worked to dismantle the festooned conduits. The lines I took down yesterday mostly serviced the first floor outlets, but they were all run along the ceiling of the basement, preventing me from taking down drywall. Surprises were in store from the outset as the first junction box I opened rained roach carcasses down.

Roach-filled Junction Box

Fortunately they weren’t all that way. Most of them were so full of wires they couldn’t really accommodate a roach oasis. I had to cut power to one of the basement lights, which unfortunately was the living room where the debris pile is located. I’ll be using work lights for the time being. One of these lines was a particularly scary bit of electrical-taped wire segments strewn across the laundry room plumbing, so I was glad to get that removed as it seemed more than a little bit of a fire hazard.

Wire Bonanza

Getting this out will make it a lot easier to remove the rest of the ceiling drywall, though the discovery that there are actually five gas lines running from the meter at the front of the house to the utility room in the back will complicate things. I knew there were at least three, but five? Almost all of them are going to be in the way when the center beam is replaced because they run down either side. Most are mounted to the drywall, so I’ll either need to disconnect them or work around them. Let me tell you, shutting off the gas for extended periods in winter while I remove and re-route lines sounds like a lot of fun.

In any case, I’ll at least be able to report progress to my insurance agent the next time they call asking for an update on the three issues they had with the house: the roof, the garage, and the electrical.

Floor Plan Update

December 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Floor Plans

I’ve made progress on the floor plans. I haven’t made a fancy 3D model of all of them like I did for the first floor, but here they are in a rough model of the house. I’ll get around to a more comprehensive version eventually, but  having the floor plans themselves is the more important part. It incorporates some minor changes to the first floor plan, including pushing the stairs back toward the center of the house and adding a landing to the stairs with a 90° turn. That puts the hallway into the center of the house so that it takes up as little space as possible.

The second floor gets two good-size bedrooms at the front, a full bath in the middle with a laundry closet off of the hallway, and a large master suite at the back with vaulted ceilings and a big walk-in closet. Up in the attic is another bedroom and a large storage closet. The basement gets an open area for pool table and bar, a theater room, a half-bath, utility closet, and space for storage and a workout area.

With the exception of a possible sink in the bar, all of the water supply and drain will use the existing wet wall, which will simplify plumbing since we’re living in the house and can’t take it all out at once. The plan also calls for removing the overhang on the second floor. It’s a nice way to bring in sunlight but we’re concerned about it’s structural integrity as well as properly weather sealing it. Instead we’ll incorporate tube-style skylights into the second floor to bring natural light into the interior of the house. There are a number of other details that aren’t revealed or included. We’ll probably need to have a lower ceiling in the office on the first floor to accommodate some of the drainage from the master bathroom, there will be some bulkheads along the south wall of the first floor for HVAC, the existing load bearing walls will be replaced by structural beams, with columns integrated into walls carrying the load to the new footings we’ll put in the basement.

Despite doing all of this work, I’ll still need an architect. I’ve been doing some “light reading” of the Chicago Building Code. While I think with enough time and energy (and more than a few flashbacks to Drafting class in high school) I could learn all of the requirements for a proper set of plans , ultimately the plans need to be signed by a licensed architect anyway. Given that, why not take advantage of the fact they already know the code and requirements far better than I ever will, plus can bring new ideas to the table that we may not have considered? Cost is the only reason I’ve avoided it so far, but realistically it’s a bad place to try to scrimp. Having scale drawings showing what we’re looking to do will hopefully make it less expensive if nothing else.

Odds and Ends

December 21, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Bathroom Light

Despite the newborn, I’ve been finding time to spend on the house, mostly thanks to Sarah handling the lion’s share of babying. While work continues on the seemingly-unending basement demolition, I also did some odds and ends that needed doing. For starters, I finally fixed the bathroom light fixture that I’ve been meaning to rewire since before we moved in. Yes, we need another light bulb, but more importantly it lights up and works with the switch.

Insulation

Next on the list was getting the house a bit better prepared for the winter. For starters, I added some weather stripping to the front door so the foyer wasn’t so drafty (I’m pretty sure it would have snowed in the foyer otherwise). I can’t say it’s great, but it’s at least an improvement. Then I wrapped the steam pipes from the boiler in foil-faced insulation, so that more of the heat would make it to the radiators upstairs and less would be dispensed into the stifling basement.

Pipe wrap

I wasn’t entirely convinced this would pay for itself in only one winter, since we’re planning on ripping out the boiler and radiators in the spring, but it’s definitely made a difference and once the gas bill comes around we’ll see. It only cost about $40, so the return on investment won’t be too hard to find.

Dwindling Debris

Finally, as I said I’ve been working on the basement demolition. The massive pile of drywall is gradually getting smaller, though there’s still more to rip down. I need to get the old plumbing and electrical removed before I can get to some of it, so that’s my next focus. I haven’t filled up the garbage toters every week, but I’ve lost count of how many times I have.

Garbage Bags

Here’s last weeks allotment. I’ll be filling them up again this week since they collected today. I need to clear out room for some drywall that Sarah’s sister found and get the plumbing out so that we can finally bring back the structural guys to re-quote and then hopefully start work. Oh, I’ve also been continuing to work on the floor plans. I came up with a second floor plan that I like, as well as the attic. It may need some tweaking, but it’s getting close. Once that’s done I need to work out where how the electrical and HVAC will run. Suffice it to say that we’re keeping busy!

Baby Time

December 6, 2011 / / 0 Comments

On November 29th, 2011, our son Derek was born. We’re thrilled to have a little bundle in the house but it may mean the next couple of months are a bit slower on progress. I’m going to work on the plans for the other floors so that we can get started on our permits, but the basement may not see a ton of activity. It’s not quite to the point that we can bring in the structural guys yet, though it’s close.