Preventing Attic Moisture

Today we installed our studor vent and further weatherstripped/insulated the attic hatch. It's a nice feeling accomplishing these small tasks. The problem at hand was the fact that the vent pipe from the upstairs bathroom plumbing opens in the attic, when it should go outside. Rather than cut a hole in the (slate) roof, we found a much cheaper solution: the studor vent. It allows fresh air into the pipe, so that the drains can drain properly, but prevents any errant sewer gases from getting up into the attic.

Of course, no good project gets finished without an extra trip to the hardware store. We discovered that the vent we bought, though adjustable for both 1.5 & 2 inch pipes, did not in fact fit the 2 inch pipe currently in the attic. So Jake made a run to Ace. Although we only needed about two inches of pipe, it only came in 5-foot lengths. Here's how Jake got it home:



We used PVC primer & cement to "weld" the pipes together.



The hardest part of the job was getting the cans opened! Check out Jake using his brute strength.



And here it is, the glorious studor vent, installed:


While Jake took care of the plumbing, I worked on weatherstripping the edge around the hatch, and putting new insulation (w/ a vapor barrier) on the hatch itself.


It felt good to get these things finished. While I was cleaing up in the basement, I took a bit of time to look more closely at our paint can collection, left by the previous owners. Checking out the labels yielded some interesting results:



Here's a timeline for some of the painting done in the house:

04/16/1998: Dining Room painted pale yellow

07/02/1998: PINK Room painted, well, PINK

07/30/04: basement wall painted bright orange

????at some point, they bought a $5 gallon of "oops" paint in a green color that I suspect is what's in the bathroom. Funny.

The information above comes as a bit of a surprise. We had previously made some surprising findings regarding the PINK color that seemed to be all over the house. It would seem that the previous owners (they bought the place in 1998) immediately painted OVER the PINK in the dining room, but then shortly thereafter, painted the (brownish) wallpaper in the pink room PINK. Strange.

Anyway, that's all for now. Happy Spring to all our faithful readers.