JANUARY UPDATE 2015

I do admit...
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.

A YEAR LATER...

GOLLY, GOLLY, GOLLY!!!
Almost a full year since a posting on this blog.  Some tangential references in the original blog (LifeAccording...) only.

It was very nice to have the path during the Winter and Spring, when the ground was either boggy or under snow.  It was, however, the occasion for my only fall around the house so far, one replete with irony.  We had some freezing rain (rain that falls through a sub-zero layer of air, becomes supercooled, then forms smooth ice where it comes to rest).  Around 8 PM, I recalled that I had left my cell phone in the car and (for what reason I cannot guess - a case of 'What was I thinking?'), determined to go out into the still, dark night to retrieve it.  Of course I slipped and fell onto my back, with a slight bump of the head on my nice slippery concrete path.  Lying there in the darkness, once sure I was OK, I pondered how, had I been properly hurt, late at night, no one about, how convenient it would have been to have a cell phone to call for help. Hmm, that would be the cell phone in my car, which, had I not attempted the retrieve and fallen, would have had no need of! I think this is what some term a 'Wake Up Call' so I am making sure that, as I approach the doddering stage in the distant future, the house and grounds are safe.

In terms of heating during the colder months, the house actually performed better after all the work that Isaac did, in terms of winter heating bills, comparison with the average of gas used in my neighborhood (as set out on my gas bill), and comfort.

However that nice white steel roof, which works so well in the hot months to keep the house cool, turned out to have a down side in Winter. Snow is translucent so, when the sun is out, the roof warms, causing the lowest layer of snow to melt. Whereupon the entire layer of snow slides off the roof!  A local avalanche!  Even a little heat escaping into the roof space can cause this.  Like with a real avalanche, when lovely soft snow falls and then suddenly comes to a halt (on my deck for instance), it turns almost into concrete!


Another effect is that the roof is now bare of snow, which happens to be an excellent insulator, resulting in greater loss of heat than compared with the snow in place.  The answer is snow stoppers. Here is a picture to show what I mean.

Actually, the ones Daniel has installed on my roof a couple of weeks back, which is less steep than this, are plastic and there are four rows of them.  I am hoping that this will keep a nice blanket of snow over most of the roof and that I will not have to shovel concrete-like snow, fallen from the roof,  from off my deck.

Most of my time has been devoted to make the sun-room, my lower rear entrance, cosy for Winter. I redid the outside tiling and painted the inner surface of  the dwarf wall with waterproof paint.

I will let you know how it all works out.

IS THAT LIGHT I SEE AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

SOME STRANGE THINGS HAPPENED THIS WEEK.
After somewhat of a hurry up, with bad weather impending, I finished the path down to the garden shed and cleaned up the pad where I want to park my car in the winter months.  The really strange this is that, when the rain came, I still found myself wanting to walk on the grass!  Not to worry, I got over that strange state of mind and now enjoy getting out of the car and walking all way up to the rear steps without stepping on a single blade of grass.

Speaking of grass, I noticed that my lawn seed in the strip above the French drain actually germinated this week.  The soil temperature hovered around 48 deg. F for several days and then warmed stimulating a germination.  Now if the frost does not kill the young shoots...

You can see one of my young mulberry trees alongside the path.  I suppose that, in a couple of years or so, I will be cursing the purple stains of mulberries on the path.

The second strange thing was that Daniel, my contractor, slipped and fell from off the roof onto the old deck, fortunately without injury (other than a certain loss of dignity).  Over a beer he told me that it looks as if he will be moving to Boston at year's end.

Later this last week, I was painting my front door and also renewing the draft seal at the bottom.  What was strange about this was that I realized  this was, strictly speaking, a maintenance job.  The weather has been cold and I had been awaiting a warmer day so that I could remove the door.  On Friday it was warmer outside than inside so off came the door for this work.  The main reason was to renew the draft seal, the last thing I can do to seal up the house.

I finally competed the sealing up of the loft above the stairways.  This how it looked before I started this work.  Quite a lot of air was able to move between this space and the attic above.  The problem was that the space was somewhat irregular due to the shape of the stairways up and down.

I solved this by walling off the difficult spaces above the stairways making the space cuboid.

Once I had completed the drywall work, I could not resist using up some old paint stock to make it all look pretty.  The ceiling is white and the interior walls a kind of daffodil yellow.  The wall next to the exterior cladding is blue, same as the exterior walls.  Both this wall and the ceiling have the InsulAdd treatment to reflect heat back into the house.  I had some old vinyl composite tiles, as you can see, stacked on the floor.  Now the entire floor is tiled, so it is just like any other room in the house.  Mostly, I will be the only one to see this.  It will become a store room.  I suppose that is yet another strange thing.

What all this has been about is sealing the house as much as possible, so as to conserve heat and keep heating costs to a minimum.  According to the gas company billing, my usage is about one quarter of the average of the houses in my area, so I have been doing fairly well in this quest.

The real test if all this is the 'door blower' test.  With this work done, I invited Jason (the air conditioning specialist) back to do the 'after' measurements, compared with the original measurements.  An airtight plastic shroud including a powerful fan is placed in the front door way.  When the fan is actuated it blows air into the house.  With all the windows and doors closed, it becomes possible to measure the proportion air escaping to the outside through various cracks and crannies.

This test indicated that I have been able to achieve, by this work and other work done by Jason's company,  a further 25% reduction in loss of air to the outside.  This will amount to a saving of about $200 per year in heating costs, so I can expect to recover the cost of this work in about five years.

Just in time, it seems...
Night time temperatures are now dipping below freezing and daytime ambient temperatures are falling to within 20 deg. F of freezing on most days.  I run the house at 65 deg F, a comfortable level for me as I dislike an overly warm house. Even with only a few hours of sunshine each day, the house warms some five degrees through insolation (heating via sunlight), so the heating only turns on some hours after sunset.  Overall, I am quite pleased with all this and consider all the work that needs to be done to be done.  In a year or so, I will consider adding underfloor heating to improve efficiency but am nearing the limits of the law of diminishing returns.

What these strange events mean is that I have come to the end of renovations and improvements to make the house into a comfortable pad for an ageing bachelor bloke.  What will I do with myself, I wonder, with the ending of over two years of devotion to making the house into what I want it to be?

I will explore that challenge in the original blog (LifeAccording...)

PATHS, DRAINS, AND LOFT

WELL, I HAVE BEEN A BUSY ONE...
Working outside when it is fine and inside when it is not.  With the Fall/Autumn on me, I am very concerned to have the outside of the house ready for Winter.  A major focus is to have a path leading from the garden shed to the back stairs, up to the deck and across to lower entrance into the sun-room.  Even though the Farmers' Almanac is predicting there will be little snow before February,  I am sure we can bet on quite a bit of rain.  Here in Corning when it rains it pours, often turning the back yard into a quagmire.  Since I like to park in the back alley (means I don't have to figure out on which side of the street to park and can keep the front screen door locked), I do want to keep my shoes dry when walking up the rear yard.  A slightly related issue is the need to improve water drainage from off the roof, since some really heavy falls of rain result in some water entering the lower level at the front corners of the house.

It is just over 50 feet or 15.5 metres from the rear stairs to the concrete slab on which the garden shed sits.  As I am almost finished this project, I am ready to tell its story.  This is what it looks like as of this evening (you may notice that I have a second raised garden bed alongside the path).  The first step is to excavate a strip about four feet wide, eight inches deep, eight feet long (roughly 1 m x 20 cm x 2.4 m), then to place a moisture proof membrane in this trench.  Next I lay in about three inches of rubble from the pile behind the shed (sorry, non-metric from now on).

This is very much smaller now, being originally some eleven tons of river rubble.  The pile on the right of the picture is the crude material and has lots of large pebbles.  This crude stuff forms the first layer.  I then sieve the large pebbles out using the excellent Robert-made device in the center of the picture. The resulting large pebble pile is at the left.  This material is very useful for making French drains.  The refined stuff  I mix with cement for a middle layer of about two or three inches.  Finally I use proper concrete mix for the top two and one half inches to ensure a good hard, durable surface.  All this is a lot of digging, carting away of earth (see the growing pile to the right of the path in the first picture), and various mixing, which is why I am only doing two slabs at a time and getting on with other jobs while the slabs cure.

I am very proud of the traveling form-work I have devised.  You may be able to make this out in the picture at the left.  This has enabled me easily to keep the path straight and to ensure a regular decline toward the shed pad.  By some miracle, the eventual end of the path will be exactly at the level of the pad at the left of the picture.  With luck and weather permitting, I shall have regained possession of the pad behind the shed, next to the alley-way, within the next week or so.  Then I will be able to park the car and make my way to the rear of the house without getting my shoes wet all, or sinking into the mud or snow!

When not working on this, I have constructed a smaller path leading to the steps descending to the sun-room door (see the middle of the next picture). Between this path and the lawn is a strip that I have just re-seeded.  Below this is a French drain to ensure water drains towards the fence and does not affect the dryness of the sun-room.  You might recall that I have had a problem with small amounts of water moistening the foundation walls of this room.

'What is a French drain?' you might well ask.  Basically a trench about 18 inches deep and 15 inches wide with an agricultural pipe at the bottom (a drain pipe with lots of holes), covered with large pebbles (from the rubble pile at the back of the shed), and finally about three inches of sandy loam to enable grass to grow on the top.  I am very pleased with how this has turned out.  I have to relay some of the tiles to the left of the path as I did a poor job of it in the first place and they have become detached due to the freezing and expansion of casual water last Winter.  Live and learn, as the saying goes!

I have done one French drain on the weather side (West) at the front of the house and will do three others so as to have good drainage at each corner of the main structure.

Well, what about the loft?  More of this in the next posting.  I have had a problem with air entering below the ceiling and above the stairways.  This is a space about seven feet long, five feet wide, and four or so feet high, above the stairs.  In a cold climate, when there is likely to be snow on the roof, it is essential to keep the air between the roof and the ceiling completely separate from the air in the house blow.  This greatly aids climate control; more importantly, it prevents the formation of 'ice dams' at the lower edge of the roof and the gutters.  That is the problem of the loft and how I have fixed it is the subject of the next posting.

IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END?

TWO PROJECTS TO REPORT ON...
Today I put the final licks of paint on the outside of the house.  I suppose one could entitle this moment so:"Blue, blue, my house is blue..."
I started with the southern wall, along the rear deck, late in June, of which you saw some pictures.  Quite an easy segment, as it turned out.  Each of the large walls presented peculiar problems.  The western wall came next.  Here the main problem was getting used to being up at the end of a fully extended 24 foot ladder.  Of course, I managed to choose the two worst weeks of our Summer, either rain or thunderstorms, or hot and humid days that I accounted as four to six T-shirt days.  I drank quite a bit of beer until I discovered Indian Tonic Water, careful not to drink more than one beer an hour and not before 11AM.  Also, I had to learn not to use various ladders and planks to paint sections of the wall.  By the end of this wall (two coats of paint), I had mastered ladders and was climbing somewhat like a monkey.

The eastern wall presented rather different problems as the cable, telephone, and power lines had to be accommodated.  On one evening, I had quite an interesting time convincing myself that I could negotiate the various lines and reach the pinnacle of the roof line.  I was painting the fascia and the soffits as well as, a somewhat darker blue. Here is that wall. 

A quick course in self-management of fear of heights was in order toward the end of the day.  Figuring out the segments and order of painting them was also a bit of a challenge.  Here you can see I am well on into the first coat of paint.  With the Insuladd additive, it did not matter too much about keeping a wet edge; besides, these two end walls were quite large and the paint polymerizes really fast in the warm weather.

Just for completion, here is the northern wall which, as I remarked, I finished just today.

This has made for quite a pretty house and it seems my neighbors love the colors almost as much as I.  Bye the bye, my flowers are doing very well, as you might see.  Unfortunately, the transplanted dwarf firs eventually expired (all my other trees are doing well, cluck, cluck).

While I have been laboring outside, Daniel has been busy within.  The bath was removed and a window placed high in the outer wall to let in light and provide for additional ventilation.  The bath was really heavy (375 lbs/ 170 kg) and proved quite a challenge to get out and take away to Habitat for Humanity.  It took some shopping to settle on the shower alcove but I love the outcome of all this work.

I have some painting to do (ceiling and walls ) but this must await my return from the Great Northern Rockies Ride that I am to do with my long-time friend, Brian.  We plan to ride some 520 miles from Midway BC across the Rockies and then down to Glacier National Park in the first two weeks of September, and then up and over to catch the train from Western Glacier National Park back to Seattle.  The last day will be quite memorable, riding the Road to the Sun and managing a 5,500 foot climb, then descent, along the way.

My garden is taking shape and doing well enough.  In order to attract humming birds I planted a patch of bee balm in my one raised bed.  I was rewarded eventually by visits from at least two of these amazing birds as they took nectar from the flowers., for two or three days. They are so small and agile.  At first glance, I thought I was seeing a bumble bee (the first was head on to me) but was delighted to discover it was actually a humming bird.  The bed is occupied by an enormous rhubarb plant, six geraniums, some carrots, and the bee balm.

So, a final pic of the humming bird attraction:

The trees at the right have since been 'sacrificed' and the bee balm patch has expanded considerably.

My large, aged azaliah at the front had to be reduced in size so I could us a smaller ladder on the lower norther wall.  Now I have lots of cuttings to be potted tomorrow.  If they take, I will plant them alongside the foot path at the front in the Spring.  Lots to do before the ride, mainly cleaning up and finishing of jobs abandoned temporarily to get the painting done.

With the replacement of the front gutter, all the major work on the house will be done.  I cannot believe that I have almost come to the end of two years of work on my little house, my home sweet home.

Maybe one more posting (it is hard to give up)!

NOT FINISHED YET!!!

NOT BY A LONG WAY.

One might have thought that, with the kitchen remodel done, I would have run out of steam.

Not so, there is lots of work to do in the garden.  I am sorry to report that the transplant of the four dwarf pines from just in front of the house to alongside the foot-walk turned out to be a total failure. The trees eventually dropped their needles and will be replaced by new dwarf pines from the nursery.  Too bad but, as the saying goes, nothing ventured...nothing gained.  On the positive side, most of my initial tree planting is gone well, with just three or so more to be done.

Daniel will be back mid-July, to do the small remodel of the upper bathroom.  A shower recess will replace the bath, a window will admit light and air, and a new light and ceiling fan will be installed.  I have a bath in the bathroom downstairs and, much as I like a good soak, the usual for me is a quick shower.  As I grow older, I am concerned to make bathing safe, so showering in the bath is a hazard to can do without.  Already this bathroom has some sturdy grab handles.  The other day, I avoided a fall out of the bath courtesy of one of these handles, installed for the well-being of the previous aged owners.  The recess will have a tiled sit-me-down, so that I can scrub my feet.

Mean while, I am embarked on painting the exterior.  The soffits will be sky blue and the walls a lighter blue. I have been trying out possible colors on the southern wall, which is easy to do from the deck level.  The really 'techy' bit is that I am adding a product (Insuladd) allegedly developed by NASA for coating the Space Shuttles.  The object is to include tiny ceramic micro-spheres, that enclose a vacuum, and are very white, that have the ability to reflect significantly heat and light.  The idea is to make the paint for the walls extremely reflective, while retaining the color.  The expectation is cooler walls in the Summer and retention of heat within the dwelling in the cold months.  If this works with the walls, I will repaint the ceilings, using this additive.

Out of the packet, it adds 20% to the paint volume and raises the price by about 30%, so with energy saving and increased comfort within the house, this might be a very good deal.  Anyway, I have the first coat on the southern wall and it looks very nice and was exceptionally easy to apply.  Here are a some pictures of the early work.

 Sorry not to have included a pic of the entire wall but I just plain forgot to take one!  Next time, with a report on effectiveness.

Well, this brings me to a related topic.  Earlier this week, I had a Home Energy Audit done on the house.  New York State pays for this for impoverished folk like me.  Actually, it is not all that much related to income and it is good that this state, which has double taxation (income and sales taxes), and runs ever at a loss, affords this benefit to its residents.  Jason, the technician who performed the audit, had not heard of this product and was quite interested to follow the project along.  He is back with his recommendations this week.  I will try to have the western wall done with at least one coat before his return. If so, he will take temperature reading of the interior and exterior wall on that side.  He was impressed that the combination of the reflective steel roof and soffit ventilation maintains the attic temperature at about ambient levels.  His neat little temperature meter showed a nice uniformity of temperature across the walls and ceilings.

However, I sense that the afternoon sun on that western wall does raise the interior temperature of that end of the house by three to five degrees.  Next posting will report his recommendations and what I propose to do based on what he has to say.  Watch this space!

The weather has warmed up and day time temperatures have been as much as 85 degrees F (19 deg C), and fairly muggy these last four days.  Thunder storms were predicted for late this afternoon and evening.  Doubting that these would eventuate, I did some weeding and a little watering of the garden.  However, across the lane,I spied a neighbor washing his new car.  This will guarantee some rain, I thought.  Sure enough, spots of rain began to fall, then heavy rain in bands, with thunder in the distance.

Altogether, a nice rain and a fall into the low 70's.  I opened up the doors and windows to let the freshened air in.

A final note:  on Thursday, my washing machine gave up the ghost.  I thought to repair it myself; an internet search indicated a faulty timer and possibly one other part needing replacement.  This work would take about 30 minutes to do.  Alas, these two parts would cost almost $200!  With other things possible to go wrong, I elected to buy another machine for $300, delivered, installed, and the present machine taken away!

SPRING HAS SPRUNG...

THE WINTER HUNG ON GAMELY, long and cold.  Spring had the occasional moment and certainly her foot in the door.  Now it is Spring, Spring, and more Spring!

I got the Kitchen Remodel out of the way just in time although it is still somewhat of a shambles in the below-deck Sun Room, with bits and pieces of timber piled up here and there, waiting to trap the unwary foot.  I have 15 or so flower plants on the go and around 20 trees at various stages of infancy.  There are certainly signs of a certain 'cluckiness' in me as I transfer the plants from inside to outside in the morning and back in at night.

So...the switch from inside to outside has definitely taken place.

Four dwarf firs had been transferred, a week ago, from their most unfavorable placement in the shadow of the north-side of the house and now stand sentinel duty alongside the sidewalk, leaving just the holly plants and the lone Azalea along the immediate house front.

 I was sure they would not survive the transplant and they were poorly rooted we (my friend Walt and I) were not able to get much of a root ball.  However, with proper soil, mulching and watering, they seem to be hanging on.  They join a small fir further into west lawn area (excuse, if you can, the auditory pun), from my good friend Uma's home.  It will eventually dwarf them.

Also, two mulberry trees were delivered mid-this-week and duly planted near the east-side fence.  These are American Black mulberries and I hope they will show the large, long black fruit that is the hall mark of this variety.  I love mulberries, the fruit of heaven!

The hollies have been severely pruned and moved to better positions now that the firs have gone.

I am sure that little of this will grasp your attention for long.  The purpose of  all this planting is to further unite the house with its living environment.  The trees will act of provide shade and direct the breezes.  It will take a while for all this to sort out, since trees are not at all like Jack's magic beans and do not grow overnight.  At 76 this month, I am unsure of how much of all this I will see, hopefully all of it.  Just the doing of it will get me there.

As I signed for the house on my birthday (May 29, hint, hint!) and moved in on June 1, this will make just two years that the house and I have been made one.  It is a bit like a marriage, I suppose, since the house certainly has much that is old, borrowed, blue, or new.

The garden will be slow progress, so postings to this Blog may become few and far between.  There will be a modest remodel of the upper bathroom.  It needs light and I can make do with just one bath (there is a nice one downstairs) so it will be come a 'shower room' rather than a 'bath room'.  Sometime  in early Summer will see this work done.  Also awaiting me, the painting of the exterior.  An immediate project is to entice the humming birds to my rear deck.  Somewhat more interesting, perhaps.

Though you will not hear much of it, the work of the garden will ultimately be the more fundamental and I hope to enjoy the gradual development of a 'mini-forest' as my surrounds.