Tag: basement

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!

Basement Challenges

September 21, 2016 / / 1 Comment

There are some downsides to living in a basement (who knew?!). These are amplified when it’s an old basement with brick walls, and even more when said walls have problems with moisture. We’re tackling the drainage project to hopefully address the biggest problem, which is water coming in. However, that isn’t going to solve everything. Because the roof, gutters, and siding are all problematic, water is coming into the brick wall above grade. Worse, the outside of the above-grade brick is parged in concrete, so the water has nowhere to go but inside. The result is humidity, mold, bugs, and brick efflorescence. None of these things is particularly pleasant to live with and none of them are solved by the drainage project. We plan to fix the roof, gutters, and siding, but there are a bunch of dependencies we have to do first, and that’s going to take some time.

Efflorescence

Efflorescence

We’re running a dehumidifier most of the time, as well as open windows and fans. We put a retractable screen door on the back door so we can improve the air flow there as well, but that doesn’t help when it’s muggy and rainy outside. We also picked up a used portable air conditioner from Craigslist on the cheap, but it’s missing some parts and we still have to get it hooked up. Hopefully between the two we can keep humidity under control. On top of that, we have good quality air filters running. We’ve sprayed for bugs a couple of times and picked up some stronger stuff to try on the centipedes. If it doesn’t improve, we’ll call in an exterminator.

We looked into painting the rest of the walls with Drylok, but that would actually make things worse. For one, Drylok is a water barrier, not a vapor barrier, so the moisture would still be coming through, which means it wouldn’t actually stop the efflorescence or humidity. On top of that, Drylok can actually host mold and make that problem worse. The only thing it might help with is closing up the hidey holes the bugs are living in and stop some of the fine brick dust from raining down on the curb.

We could remove the parging on the outside, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t put up on a great-looking brick wall in the first place, not to mention the damage the parging has done to it since. Removing the parging would mean re-pointing (and replacing) a lot of brick. On top of that, we discovered the color of the face bricks on the front of the house is a rather, um, strong red, and we’re not big fans of it. That means the face brick would either have to be painted (and re-painted every 3-5 years), or replaced, both of which are pretty unappealing. In short, it’s an expensive project that probably wouldn’t actually solve the problem, because the underlying cause is the roof, gutters, and siding.

Since that’s not possible immediately, we’ll need to spray a mold remover/mildewstat/fungicide periodically and try to keep the efflorescence under control by cleaning it and spraying a water/muriatic acid solution. We put some of our wire shelving up against the outside wall, and at a minimum we’ll need to pull it back an inch or two, since as it is the efflorescence is snowing on our food (yuck). We discussed putting something between the brick and the shelf, but we’re concerned about anything that would reduce air flow across the brick and potentially make it easier for mold to grow.

All of that means that, in the end, we’re just living with these problems for the time being. Until we can stop the water from coming in, the basement is going to be somewhat unpleasant. That may rearrange some of the priorities on our project to speed up the outside, but it doesn’t change our immediate next steps: the drainage project and the second floor demo.

Basement Progress Update

August 24, 2016 / / 0 Comments

We’ve been busy in the basement! So busy, in fact, that I haven’t been doing a good job of posting about it, nor even taking all the photos that keep the posts from simply being my long-winded explanations of why everything takes so damn long. So, in the interest of getting everyone caught up to where things are, I’m doing a catch-all post on the flurry of basement activity. My last update was August 5th, but the work it described took place in mid-July, so we’re actually a quite a bit behind. Let me jump to current though, and say we met our deadline of August 20th, and we are living in the basement. I’m actually typing this while sitting in the living room of the basement at an actual desk.

Temporary walls framed
Drywalling temporary walls

So, a lot has happened since we mudded the permanent basement walls. We got the permanent walls painted, the tub tiled, grouted, and caulked, and the bathroom and kitchen cabinets installed. That let us call back our plumbers, who got the finish plumbing done and reconnected the water heater in the basement. With that goal met, we framed and drywalled the temporary walls. These walls create bedrooms in the basement while we’re living down here, but once the rest of the house is done we can take them down and the main area of the basement can be finished as an entertaining space. We didn’t bother mudding this drywall, but we did paint it. I installed the interior doors, which included three doors in the permanent walls (bathroom, mechanical room, and between the front and back rooms), and two bedroom doors in the temporary walls. We cased the doors as well as the window in the kitchen.

Tiling in progress
Finished bathroom sink and mirror
Finished tub with LED lighting

I installed the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, along with the additional bathroom lighting. When we tiled, we installed a metal track at the top of the tub wall and ran a strip of adhesive LEDs along it. These are connected to an additional strip above the mirror and hooked up to a power supply inside the top of the medicine cabinet, which is switched on the same circuit as the overhead light. The tracks are covered by a snap on plastic diffuser. We’re pretty pleased with how this turned out. All of it is either waterproof or wet-rated, so the shower shouldn’t cause any issues.

Flush-mounted sink
Cabinet support frame
Test-fit
Installed, pre-dishwaher

In the kitchen we installed a butcher block counter with a single basin sink (Amazon literally sold us the kitchen sink). The sink was originally going to be under-mounted, but there wasn’t enough room for the clips inside the base cabinet. Since the sink can be mounted either way, I opted for top mount, but routed the top of the counter so that it sits flush, making it easier to wipe the counter into the sink. My measurements didn’t properly account for the curb when I bought the cabinets, so we built a wooden frame for them to sit on top off. This puts them about 4″ taller than typical, but we’re tall and it works for us. I also didn’t properly account for the dishwasher height being greater than the cabinets minus their feet, and had to retrofit the frame with reciprocating saw, oscillating tool, planer, socket wrenches, and additional 2x6s. The dishwasher is installed, and I never want to think about it again.

Painting with Drylok
Painted curb and wall
Painted bay

 

We painted the curb and the bottom foot of the wall with Drylok waterproofing paint. I’ve read a lot about building science and don’t want to seal brick, but despite our exterior water management efforts and interior weeping system, we’re still getting water coming through the walls on heavy rain. By only painting the concrete and the brick below the frost line, my hope is that water will be forced down into the weeping system, but won’t freeze within the brick and damage it. Having a radiant-heated slab should also prevent freezing. It’s been raining enough that the Drylok wasn’t able to dry fully. I bought some additional waterproofing putty for active leaks that I still need to install.

Temporary walls
Gas line painted and mounted
Door installed and cased
Window cased

I put up privacy film on the window along our neighbors walkway, put pipe insulation on the incoming water line to prevent condensation, added a light switch in the mechanical room, ran a gas line for the stove, put up shelves, moved the phone line for our Internet connection, put up a shower curtain rod, swapped our mud rings for metal electrical box covers, painted the old part of the gas line before the meter and mounted it to the wall. Sarah hung shades, scrubbed, mopped, and scraped the floor, and watched our two rambunctious children while I spent countless nights either in the basement or running to Home Depot and Menards. Sarah’s parents, her brother-in-law, and her brother all pitched in with assistance on trim, painting, the cabinets, the door handles, and brushing down the walls. My mom came up multiple times to watch the kids so Sarah and I could both do tiling and painting. Dean and Matt B came to help us move last weekend, and while there’s still a ton of stuff upstairs to be sorted and packed into storage, we’re moved. We couldn’t have made the deadline without all their help and we’re very grateful for it. Without the deadline fixed in our minds, this easily would have taken an additional month or two, and I’m so glad it didn’t. We lived in the second floor for five years (exactly). Considering we wanted this to be a five-year project, considering we shifted to the basement plan in November of 2014 (21 months ago) and planned for it to take about a year, and especially considering how very far we still have to go to finish this crazy house, I’m relieved.

Living room, before furniture

Living room, before furniture

We’re planning to relax a bit, but we still have a lot to do, just to get the basement situated (and not leaking) and to get the second floor ready to demo. The next couple weekends are relaxing (going to the beach and going camping), but hopefully after that we can get settled and start on the next exciting, exhausting, and endless phase of this project.

Basement Permanent Wall Drywall Hanging

July 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Dean and Hector

Dean and Hector

Dean and his dad, Hector, came over on a Saturday to help me put up the drywall on the permanent walls in the basement. All of the permanent walls were also insulated with Roxul Safe’n Sound for sound proofing, as well as reducing both condensation on cold water pipes and heat loss on the hot water pipes. We’re using ⅝” moisture resistant (green board) drywall for all of the permanent walls in the basement. We’re still working on our water issues and I don’t want to replace anything we’re putting in because it got wet. Using ⅝” instead of ½” adds addition sound proofing and fire protection.

Insulating plumbing wall
Insulating between rooms
Drywall!

In the case of the bathroom, the first step (after putting up the ceiling) was to install the tile backer for the tub surround. We’d originally planned to install a fiberglass surround that fit the tub, but even though I ordered the correct piece I received the wrong one. We didn’t realize that until the plumbers tried to install it. When I went to get the right one I found they were out of stock across the city, so we just gave up and decided to tile it. It’s more work, but the cost is similar and it will look nicer, plus I’ve got a cool idea in mind that I’m going to try. I bought Hardibacker instead of regular cement board and screwed it to the studs with the appropriate special screws. After a variety of conflicting information and opinions from various sources, I elected to install the bottom edge of the backer board ¼” above the tub flange. In a couple of spots the gap was bigger than planned so I went behind and added some wood blocking between the wall studs.

Work in progress
Derek and Sarah checking out the progress
Carefully cut plumbing penetrations

It took most of the day, but we got all of the drywall hung. We have one section of exterior wall framed and drywalled right now because it has plumbing on it and we want to put cabinets on it. I got to use my collated screw gun (previously employed for screwing in the first floor subfloor) to rapidly put up screws with decent success not under or over-driving. My skill level is improving, but it does leave room for improvement. The rest of the exterior walls will be done when we refinish the basement into an entertaining space, and the temporary bedroom walls will be drywalled as soon as they’re framed. For the duration of us living in the basement we’ll have the exposed brick and rafters “loft” look, which is fashionable right now anyway. After hanging the drywall (and backer board) the next steps are mudding and taping the drywall and backer board seams.

As always, a big thanks go out to Dean and Hector. Once again they’ve been a huge help!

Basement Rough-in

June 22, 2016 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a long time coming (like most things in this project) but we’ve passed our rough plumbing inspection for the basement! We passed our electrical inspection a month and a half ago, but we’ve grown used to the plumbing going slowly. This phase of the project was frustrating because we couldn’t do much ourselves to speed the process along, and we kept running into issues. Fortunately, all of them have been resolved.

Bathroom rough-in

Bathroom rough-in

Our new water service is a 1½” copper line, whereas our old service was only ¾”. Because of that, when we installed our whole-house water filter a few years back, we ran ¾” pipe. The plumbers took out a lot of that line when they brought in the new service and started adding branches for the bathroom, including the connections for the water heater ( temporarily on the first floor) running mostly in 1″ before and after the filter. On top of that, when I went to hook the filter back up, I realized that the new curb in the basement was preventing the filter from sitting close enough to the wall to connect to the existing pipes, meaning I was going to have to reconfigure it anyway. I bought new, bigger, 1″ filter housings and asked the plumbers to re-plumb the remaining section so that everything would be 1″ (and to add back the water heater hookup while they were at it).

Filter re-installed

Filter re-installed

The plumbers seemed vexed by the filter setup and I had to have them come back and change it multiple times until it was correct. This added weeks to the process all by itself, on top of the generally slow work they’d been doing. Then they asked for their money, so I asked when it was going to get inspected. That took another couple of weeks to get the inspector out, but they finally wrapped up Thursday of last week.

Ejector pit and main stack
New water service and grounding strap
Finished electrical work (Ok, there’s one BX line in there yet)

The electrical work went quickly because a lot of it was already done last year, but there were a couple of additions and modifications. We had to redo the grounding strap because the water service moved to the front of the house, add outlets for the sump pump and ejector pit, and add the switches, lights, and outlets for the bathroom and other new interior walls. We still need Lester, our radiant contractor, to come back and connect the PEX lines in the slab and disconnect our radiators on the second floor, but that shouldn’t impact the rest of the work we’re doing.

We were gone all weekend, but now I’m finally back to work, with a new goal of getting us moved into the basement by August 20th, the fifth anniversary of us moving into the second floor. I think if we’re still living in the second floor more than five years into our “five-year project”, I’ll have to start considering arson. There’s a lot to do, starting with the venting for the bath fan, leveling the bathroom ceiling, and a few other minor tasks. That will be followed by drywall and tiling, the temporary walls, and the bathroom fixtures.