We need more insulation

I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but we need more insulation. Jake, John, and Rose have installed all the R-19 and all the R-13 available, so their work here is done (at least, John and Rose's work is done!). The room looks great!
Here's the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom, all R-13 insulated!



This wall needs some more R-13, but it's not critical, since this is mostly in on the wall between the two bedrooms, and on the chimney, and in the closet, which is on the other side of another closet.


Thanks so much to our guest workers, John and Rose, who came all the way here from Washington state only to get put to work. Thanks!!!

We'll be trying to fill the last few bays soon. Our drywallers arrive on August 6th to put in real walls! Woo hoo! It's nice to think about painting the room and not having to see all this insulation!

The Insulation Team Continues their conquest of the spare bedroom

Jake, John, and Rose were at it again this morning, installing insulation in the spare room. It's looking great!

And they're officially out of R-19. I can't believe it. We still have the R-13 for the interior walls, but we're trying to figure out if we should buy more R-19 to finish up the outside wall:



This afternoon's project will feature our Master Plumber, John, who will be installing a new utility sink in the basement. There was one there before, but it was busted up and pretty gnarly looking. We bought at new one at the ReStore, but we haven't felt brave enough to take on another plumbing project on our own. Here you can see the place where the old sink was. That black tube that runs into the drain actually comes from the upstairs dishwasher. Strange.

Insulation!

Jake, John, and Rose installed the insulation in the slanted part of the ceiling this morning. They did a great job with the R-19 and staple gun. Here are Jake and John, hard at work:


And here's Rose, taking out nails in the wall so that our drywallers can do their jobs.

And here it is, the slanty ceiling all finished (except for drywall):


In the world outside, the workers succeeded in adding wood to fill the gap in the fascia boards, so we can no longer see outside from inside (even without the insulation in there!). Here's a sample of the little view to the outside world from destruction day in June (it might be hard to tell, but that's the neighbor's house and windows you're seeing through the crack in the middle):

And here it is now:




Also on the outside, they started taking off the section of rotten shingles on the driveway side of the house. Check out the mess:


That's all for today, since we had to let our guests out to play for a while. We'll get them back to work tomorrow morning, no doubt.

Destruction!

We knew this was coming, but it's still a bit shocking. Yesterday we demolished the spare bedroom.

This picture gives you a good sense of some of the problems:

There are lots of massive holes in the plaster (see white patches on blue area) and the plaster that is there is very soft and broken under the thick coat of shiny blue paint. The ceiling is made up of some very ugly white cardboard tiles; in several spots they are broken and stained, adding to the ugly. That red area is actually paint over wallpaper. Check out the texture:


There is no way to get that shiny paint and wallpaper off without doing further damage to the plaster. Thus, demolition! [Also, it's an opportunity to 1) improve the insulation and 2) see inside our walls, both for curiosity and to see if there are any problems.]

We at 83 Durant are incredibly thankful to our friends, Elizabeth, Ian, and Mike, who gave up their Saturday to break our house with us. It was a long, dirty, and at times dangerous job, and they were awesome! Thank you!

We started with the ceiling, and made our first exciting discovery: someone put the tiles in OVER the old plaster:

This actually works out well. We're going to leave the old plaster and the newer nail boards, and just have the drywall done over that. Less mess. We know (from being in the attic) that there is plenty of insulation above there, and it seems best to let it be.


Red balloons be gone! Also, this picture begins to give you the sense of the DUST we raised. It was really, really, really dusty & dirty.

Here's Ian uncovering the chimney:

It seems, from the circular patch of cement, that there may have been a woodstove in this room long, long ago.


This is the closet after we've removed all the plaster -- those lathes will also go, but we think they look pretty cool.


Another exciting discovery was the true nature of the built-in shelves: they are not original! Here's the pre-demolition situation. On this wall, we have a closet (to the right) and a built-in shelf (to the left):

Once we got through the plaster, we realized there was some rather modern framing around the thing:


Inside the new framing was the original built-in, which is identical to the one directly downstairs from it, in the pink room:


Elizabeth and I went to town on the dry wall behind the area formerly known as the built-in. We will probably put full-width, floor-to-ceiling shelves into this nook:


Here is a scary discovery, though not exactly something we didn't know about already:


It's not a great picture, but what you're seeing in the middle there is our next door neighbor's house. Yup, you can see outside from inside. This is the spot where the fascia boards meet the roof. Someone ripped out the oldwooden gutter and put up new fascia, but for some reason, didn't bring the fascia all the way up to the roof. The gap here, which runs the length of the house, is something our roofers mentioned, and they're going to fix it (hopefully soon). But it's a bit shocking to see it from this side!

Here's an example of some of the completed demolition:

It's roughly the same shot as the first one on this entry. Scary!

Here's a shot of the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom. It was easier to deal with because it didn't have any insulation at all, but it did have the plumbing and the electricity, so we had to be a bit more careful. We did manage to blow a fuse by incorrect handling of the lightswitch box, but no one was injured.


We cannot believe the tremendous pile of trash that this project created. Who knew that all this stuff could fit in the room????



Today we have some cleaning to do. Tomorrow we seek out some drywall contractors, and sometime before we schedule them, we need to install insulation. We have some leftover from a previous job, but we'll also need more. It has been a very busy weekend! Thanks again to Mike, Ian, and Elizabeth -- we couldn't have done it without them.

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.

The Insulation Itch

Sometimes, I get the itch to do something around 83 Durant. Today, after a long day of sitting at my desk and in meetings, I just wanted to do something more substantial than make up lesson plans and quizzes. It was 6 pm. Is this really a good time to START a home project? Generally, no. But, as Jake wasn't here to talk me out of it, I decided:

Why not insulate?

Indeed, why not?

Many times, these sorts of evening/nighttime projects that I begin do not end well. I'm pleased to tell you now, that this one was a success!

As you may recall from previous posts, the basement laundry room/bathroom is clearly mid-project. [That would be a project started by the previous owners.] Framing has been built for insulation and drywall, but some of the bays are empty. I decided to work on the two full-sized empty bays, as portrayed here:



As you will also remember from a hilarious previous post, we have plenty of insulation to fill these bays. To my disappointment, Jake was correct in his calculations, and I indeed was incorrect: there are five pieces, each 93 inches long, in the package. And they E-X-P-A-N-D when you open the plastic.



Lucky for me, these pieces are each exactly the length I need for the height of the wall, so all I needed to do was shove them up into the space between the studs. I also carefully carved out spaces for the pipes in the area (compacted insulation doesn't do its insulating job).



I used my handy staple gun to staple the Kraft paper to the stud, and voila! It's insulated! It didn't take long at all.



For future reference, I include the photo below to show the location of pipes. We're hoping to move the washing machine (and hence, water & drain pipes) over to this area sometime in the not-too-distant-future.



And here we are, with the two bays complete! I'm so pleased! There are still the two corners to deal with, as well as a few other spots down here, but for now, this seemed like a good night's work. In the (hopefully) near future, we'll finish up the remaining bays, and then we need to cover up this Kraft facing. It's not really supposed to be exposed like this (some kind of fire hazard). Drywall is the fancy way to go, but I'm not sure we need or want to do that. At the very least, we need to staple up some plastic sheeting to cover this up and contain any stray fiberglass particles.



While in the basement, I also took on one of those longstanding WHHHHHAAAAAAAT? issues: the red sweatshirt stuffed into the hole in the chimney. I removed the shirt, shoved some nice fresh insulation inside, and then covered it with a brand new flue stop from the hardware store. It's basically a metal plate with prongs on the back to hold it in place. I sealed the whole (hole) thing up with caulk, and here it is!!!



R.I.P. Old Red Sweatshirt:


And by the way, safety first when dealing with insulation. I wore long sleeves & pants & gloves, all of which went into the wash immediately after I finished. A face/nose mask and goggles, too -- that stuff is nasty! By the way, I got some how-to tips on this project from a book I borrowed from the library: Time Life Books: Insulating and Weatherproofing. It was the updated, spiral-bound edition, and it is a great resource.

The whole deal took me about an hour and a half; still plenty of time afterwards to clean up and blog it all before Jake gets home from class. The question is, will Jake notice the new insulation? I suppose the real question is, will I be able to contain my slightly giddy pride in my accomplishment long enough to let him notice it?

More Infrared Images

In reponse to popular request, and because I just think these images are really cool, I'm including a few more images from our Infrared photo report. You should be able to click on the images to see bigger, full-page versions.

This first one is from our bedroom, and it does a nice job of showing the contrast between an insulated and an uninsulated area of the wall:

This is the outside wall in the upstairs bathroom. Said bathroom does not have a radiator in it (though it does have that mysterious hole in the floor). It also has a non-functioning electric heating element under the sink cabinet. We have hooked up a small electric radiator in this room, but the corner pictured here is rather far away from that heater.


Perhaps the most serious problem that the photos uncovered is the place where the one-story flat roof on the back of the house meets the side wall of the back of the house. The pictures below are from the pink room. The very cold spots on the ceiling and at the top of the wall are at the spot where the flat roof meets the exterior wall. There's also an uninsulated bay in there between the room and a closet.


So it seems that the flashing where the flat roof meets the house has some gaps, or is uninsulated. Interestingly, the bathroom that was the victim of frozen pipes earlier this season is DIRECTLY ABOVE this area of the house. This would seem to explain the freezing.

We also have another cry for help to our readers. We thank all of you who made suggestions to our previous issue (the basement window well). Here's a photo:



This is in the ceiling in the basement laundry room. I know, I know, it's a light socket. That much is clear to me. The problem is, as you may be able to see, the pull-chain that is supposed to turn it on and off is completely missing. It would be very handy to have this bulb operational, to provide more light in the laundry room. Any suggestions on what to do about this?

On Calculations and Basement Hydration

Our insulation arrived today, via the friendly Man in Brown. I was rather shocked to see how very large the four boxes were. I did in fact order four packages of insulation, but somehow, I thought they were going to be...uh...smaller.

Here are the specs I read on the website, and which you also see above on the packaging:
Sq.Ft. 48.96
6-1/2 Thick
Wdth. x Lgth. Ins. 15 x 94
Includes 5 pieces

So I thought each package contained 5 pieces which, together, were 94 inches long. Since we had four empty bays in need of insulation, each 93 inches tall, I ordered four packages. It seemed perfect.

(You can see for yourself if this is a reasonable mistake to have made by looking at the site where I bought it here. Perhaps mistake number one was having no idea how much insulation should cost per foot. I dunno, it seemed reasonable.)

It was brought to my attention by my mathematician husband that in fact, the packaging meant that there were 5 pieces, EACH being 94 inches long. So we now have FIVE TIMES the insulation required for this job.

I feel kinda dumb.

On the bright side, we do have plans to tear out the plaster in the spare bedroom, which would be the ideal opportunity to add more / put in new insulation there, and these batts will be perfect for it.

Also, I like that they're KRAFT-FACED BATTS. I wonder if the Kraft food people are the same people responsible for the Kraft paper on the insulation. I wonder if Kraft cheese provides any insulating benefits. Many readers are already aware of my previous encounters with bats, so the fact that I would welcome this many batts, kraft-faced or not, is rather surprising.

_____

While I was telling my mom the above story, she happened to ask if we had any water in the basement (the presence or absence of water inside our house is a regular discussion point for us). I realized I hadn't checked the situation with the problematic basement window by the driveway lately. We've just had a ton of rain on top of snow and sleet, so it seemed wise to investigate. There were, predictably, some very wet towels inside that window. No surprises; fixing that is a spring plan, and the towels were doing just what they should. You can see the state of things here:














The surprise was water on the floor in several previously dry places. None of the water was by walls, so it seems that the water was seeping up through the floor, through various patched cracks in the cement. Oh dear.


It's not an enormous amount of water, but still, I don't like that it's there. Water is our enemy. [A colleague in my department told us that, in a frightening, dead-serious way.]

We're not on red-alert, but we do need to keep an eye on this new development. Sigh.

Planning & Purchasing for upcoming Projects

It has been a rather uneventful weekend for house projects, though the credit card has been seeing some action in the service of upcoming projects. Using a sweet 20% discount coupon, we bought a bunch of R19 insulation batts for the basement, where there are a few bays in the laundry room without any insulation at all. We also learned about some energy efficiency initiatives, including a tax credit for adding insulation. We're also thinking about a couple of new storm doors (one for the kitchen and one for the pink room), but those projects will wait for now.

We would like to add insulation to the walls and ceiling, particularly in the areas of the house that always seem cold, like the kitchen. The trouble is, it's hard to figure out where there is already insulation. So it looks like we may get some thermal photography of the house done, so we can figure out what's worth doing, and where to do it.

We also made a trip to the attic to assess the vent pipe situation. BTW, all is well up there, no visible water or varmint problems that we could see.


As you may recall from earlier posts, this is the situation:

The Studor Mini-Vent will be our solution. Check out the stats here.

So we've placed our order for that, as well as some insulation and weatherstripping for the attic hatch. We're hoping that once these two tasks are done, we will have sealed off the last remaining source of moisture and warmth, and that our attic will be in tip-top condition.

I also set about ordering some objects to solve our hole problems, also known as some of the "WHHHAAAAAAT?" situations in our house. Specifically, we have a hole in the basement, on the chimney, currently filled by a red sweatshirt. I discovered that the piece we need is called a flue stop, so I've ordered one of those.
[I would normally advise against decorating ideas that begin, "Wouldn't it be funny if…" for much the same reason I advise against witty bumper stickers: Even if it's funny the first 100 times, that's still only the beginning. That 200th time you look at your joke wallpaper/bumper sticker, I guarantee it won't be funny. That said, we don't spend too much time in the basement, and wouldn't it be funny if we got this flue stop? -jb]

I also ordered a couple of really large corks to fill the weird hole in the bathroom floor.

So fans of 83 Durant can look forward to some small but hopefully successful and educational projects in the near future (probably over Spring Break).

We did do another draining of the boiler today, and found much less of the gnarly water.