THIS BLOG CAN BE PRETTY BORING! Unless you are interested in energy conservation, how to stay busy in retirement, how to unify internal and external environments, and the like.
FIRST: A quick update on the SNOW STOPPERS. Corning has had some snow; we had a moderate dump (10 cm or 4 inches) a week or so before Christmas. The stoppers worked very effectively, What you can see on the roof would have slipped off well before this pic, taken mid-morning. In fact, it took several days of fine weather to melt the snow away. Despite sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures the house remained cosy with little increase in heating costs. It was particularly pleasing to see the my roof retained snow quite a few days after the neighbors' roof snow had disappeared. So there!!!
NEXT: My smugness quickly evaporated when I noticed a small pool of water at the base of the toilet pedestal in the upper bathroom! "A fine Christmas present from the House", I thought. Recalling the disaster I discovered when upgrading the kitchen (the ancient dishwasher had long secretly leaked water, rather destroying part of the subfloor and requiring and extensive 'fix-up') my imagination rapidly dreamed up a similar situation in the bathroom floor. Nonetheless. hoping for a simple repair of the leak (remove the toilet pedestal, remove the old wax seal, clean up the area, replace with a new seal, replace the pedestal), I set to but soon discovered that the whole underside was quite a mess. I had to replace the closet flange (at the top of the drain connecting with the sewer, repair the subfloor, reset re-tile the floor and then, finally, reset the toilet pedestal. Off and on, as the area dried out, this took a week, but the project was completed just one hour before my friends, invited around for drinks, began to arrive on Boxing Day! 
I will spare you discomfort by not showing some pics (I had to remind myself every so often that the mess really was only rotting wood composite). You can see how a section needed to be removed and replaced with sound plywood. Then it was a matter of adding thinner layers to adjust the new floor to the same level as the original.
This made the way clear for new tiling, after all the remaining linoleum had been removed (much work with the heat gun and scraper).
Just as I had done in the kitchen, I used a form of tiling with edges designed to overlap and glue to each other. You get just one chance to get proper alignment because that glue really does stick! For the new floor I chose to using tiling that looked like three tiles (1 foot by 3 feet) per section, This took an hour or two to work out the detail of the best way to do it.
Finally, much to my relief, the job was complete with only trim to be put in place to finesse the work. After which I was very pleased indeed to be able to show off my working, leakless water closet.LASTLY. Since discovering the delight of radiant heat that you might recall I installed in the sunroom as part of the concrete floor, I have longed to place hot water tubing under the floor in the upper area of the house. This would be simple enough to do since I have suspended ceilings in the lower level. Just a matter of removing the ceiling bats to reveal the upper floor purlins. PEX would be threaded between to purlins and then connected to the boiler via a valve to mix the very hot water with cool. Apart from having a cosy, warm floor I reasoned that using cooler water and more effective radiation, I would save money on the supply side and increase efficiency at the same time. My preliminary costing of this was about $2K and I thought I might do the tricky work over the Spring and have it all connected in the Fall.
Eventually, I realized that it made no sense to rely entirely on water heated with natural gas that, despite the increasing supply, would be likely to rise in price over the remainder of my time in the house. Why not use a heat pump that would extract heat from the air? This would work down to minus 14 degrees F, after which I could re-invoke the already installed hydronic system. This way I would only pay for the electricity to drive the heat pump installation and the fan in the header unit.
Consequently, as I write this, Pete and Tyler are installing a Mitsubishi system. The pump is outside my west wall and operates through a header unit in my kitchen, living area. My sister in Adelaide has had a similar installation for a decade now and I am impressed with how it functions. The additional advantages are de-humidification in the Summer and availability of cooling when needed (not so important as the former function), and air filtering.
Compared with underfloor heating this approach adds significant cost that I estimate will be recovered over three to five years. We shall see. The clincher was that the financing for this is at nil percent over four years,
On the left, the outside compressor and at right, the indoor header. Now all connected and working well. I will track gas and power use over the next two months to see how this bet pays off.
