7 inches of Agribalance wonderland

They sprayed yesterday -- Monday!

Here are a couple pictures I took when I went back to turn on the exhaust fans. The house is uninhabitable for a bit longer since the foam is still outgassing, but it looks awesome!

Can't wait till it gets cold! Did I just say that?

Sunday hustle & an unplanned circumcision

So last week sometime the spray foam people decided to show up on Monday rather than Tuesday, and Saturday was Gillian's birthday party, so I ended up with a pretty narrow window of time to finish all my prep. There wasn't a ton that was still left to do, but enough to fill quite a few hours.

First things first: fixing the screwed-up B-vent. I didn't take a picture, but my roofers had called me to tell me the vent pipe for my water heater was coming out of my roof at a funny angle, and "what did I want them to do about it?" I told them just put the boot on it and be done, because when I left the pipe, it was pretty straight, but maybe a little skewed.

When I got home I saw the pipe -- it was protruding from the roof pretty much perpendicular to its surface. It looked horrible! So I resolved to first find a shorter pipe, because it seemed awfully long, and also to secure it properly (previously, it was a slightly outlandish series of pipe straps holding it in position).

Finding the 2' double-wall 3" pipe took me about an hour of driving from Home Depot to Lowe's to another Lowe's. Of course it was in the last store I searched. I explained to my friend Melissa that it's impossible to call one of these stores to ask if they have anything in stock, because

1. They might say they have it when they don't
2. They might say they don't have it when they do
3. If they tell you the truth, you still can't trust them (see 1. & 2. above)

Anyway, I had a piece of angle iron that I had been intending to use to secure the pipe earlier, and so on Sunday I popped out the old pipe from the boot, replaced it with the new shorter pipe, and secured the thing so it wouldn't move, period. More detail than you want:

Ceci pipe ne va pas nulle part.

()

Pipe smoked, I stared at my water heater for a few minutes, wishing I could spend the time to get it hooked up now that the hard part (venting) was done, but decided it'd be best to move on to other more pressing matters, like the wiring situation.

In the front of my house there are 3 areas that needed my attention: the porch light, the duplex switch next to the front door, and an outlet just below it. All these were wired with knob and tube, and rather than tying into it and boxing it in with the spray foam, I figured I'd just rewire it with new Romex.

I decided this time that I'd better cut open the walls because the electrical boxes I had would be impossible to hit with a tape from above, and if there was any insulation in the walls, it would be absolutely impossible. I wanted to know the answer to that question too.

I rotozipped some access openings for myself and fairly rapidly was able to fish down wire from above. I decided to put 2 14/3 into the switch panel, just in case I needed to add capacity sometime in the future. I suppose it might have been smart to do something similar with the outlet too, so perhaps one outlet could be switched, but it's too late now! Here's the finished work (well ok, it's not finished, but the part I needed to finish by Monday is finished):

I spent some time in the attic doing final cleanup, pushing all the remaining out-of-service knob-and-tube wiring going into outer walls back down into the wall and removing the knob, so anyone opening the wall and looking at the wiring will immediately recognize that it's defunct. I wonder what the owner of the house was thinking when they sheetrocked -- I cut through just 3/4" sheetrock to get to the wiring and insulation in the front, yet the old wiring was left behind. (Prior to that I wondered if they maybe had just sheetrocked over the lath and plaster, as they have done with the ceilings.)

I've heard so many different opinions on rewiring knob and tube so I still wonder if it may have been folly to do so, but when this sheetrock job was done -- probably less than 30 years ago from the look of the insulation -- it would have been cheap and easy to rewire with Romex. Oh well. Easy enough to do it now too.

Final result in the attic -- well, again, not final, but done enough for insulation. Yes, I wear those awful crocs when I work on my house. I'm lazy.

In this last picture you can see the 14/2 to the porch light (from the left), two 14/3 from the switch at the front door (top middle) and the single 14/2 going to the front outlet.

At around 7:00 I realized my flat bar was missing -- probably sitting right next to my old pipe wrench, wherever that is -- so I had to take another trip to Lowe's to pick up a new one for finishing the demolition on the outer wall in my bathroom, because the insulation guys were going to spray it too. (I like the idea of a bathroom with no drafts, and that's what spray foam excels at -- sealing air leaks while insulating too.)

I had to pull out a bunch of trim to clear the outer wall completely, and one of those pieces had a towel hook on it that I wanted to save. The screws were stripped though, so I figured maybe if I just cut the piece of trim the hook was on, I could detach it later. Radial arm sawed through one side, cut through a small trim nail, and then figured, hey, I might as well separate the small trim piece from the larger one. Clumsily though I sliced my thumb on the razor-sharp half-nail I'd cut through with the saw.

Detour upstairs to the kitchen. Let it bleed for a bit. Taking a look at it, it seemed like a clean cut, and I knew I still had work ahead of me. While holding a paper towel on the thing to allow it to clot and stop bleeding, I remembered I had a sample package of Dermabond, so I used it to seal the cut. A little more waiting around for the thing to cure and I was back in action, mostly.

Finally, once all the sheetrock was torn down, the insulation (R-11 fiberglass) pulled out, all of it bagged & put on the back porch, screws unscrewed, nails pulled, all debris swept up and bagged, and the floor vacuumed, the result was pretty nice:

Spent some more time in the attic doing some final vacuuming and cleanup:

Went to bed very dirty and tired.

Some random attic wiring

I'll backdate this when I have the date of the picture, but this is a junction box I was particularly happy with for the kitchen light, an outlet there, and the light above my basement stairs.

If you're thinking to yourself "how can this junction box do all that with just 3 wires," the answer is that there are 2 more wires coming into this box from below. This also marks my first use of 3-conductor wire (with ground). Using 14/3 lets me use a single wire for an outlet and a switch for a fixture, and remedies this crazy wiring situation which was all done in 14/2, along the hot leg to the ceiling fixture:

Gillian's tile pattern

Here's a tiling pattern that Gillian made a couple weeks ago:

Vent like you mean it

I mentioned in the previous post that Andrew came today to work on the venting situation.

Here's the lovely hold he cut in the side of my chimney, with the vent running down:

Here's the vent coming out of the top of the chimney. It's since been run through the roof:

And here it is, screwed onto the draft hood of the water heater, flowing gently up and into the chimney:

You can see my expansion tank in the upper right corner too.

Bathtub of doom

Andrew was over today working on my water heater venting situation. Really, he was here to make sure the work got done. That's what I pay him for. OK, I pay him because he knows what he's doing, but also because he'll gently push me along and encourage me to leave some of my OCD tendencies behind. Like peeling the label off the top of my vent cap. Which nobody will ever see.

I figured I'd better buy the bathtub today, because Andrew's ready to go (he's going to push the bathroom project) and I am ready to bathe. So I went to Lowe's where the bath guy helped me figure out how to get the tub I want. And then I went to Home Depot to check their prices. Of course they're the same, but HD offered a 12-month zero-interest store card, where Lowe's only offered 6, so decision made.

I paid a little more for the tub to be delivered to my house. It weighs 440 pounds. I think that's probably for the best. And I think Andrew is going to have to reinforce my floor.

Here it is -- a left-handed American Standard Spectra 5 1/2' cast iron apron-front tub:

It probably weighs more than a Kia Spectra.

So it's before 4pm, and I could go to the Y and take a shower and get some real work done today, but I'm going to just skip it and enjoy the Christmas party at the Admiral tonight.

Ten at a time

Right now, all I can think of is Breakout (or Arkanoid) when I deal with bricks. I dealt with many bricks on Saturday, moving them out of the attic where Andrew had stacked them after deconstructing the chimney. The chimney is now down below the level of the "joists" (I use quotes because to call my ceiling joists "joists" seems awfully generous). Eventually I'll post a humorous picture of the ceiling joists, but until that point, I'm working on becoming less embarrassed by them.

Anyway, here's the leftover chimney with a bit of liner remaining:

I moved the bricks down in a milk crate, nine at a time -- and carried one down with me each trip I made to stack the bricks out back. Here's my ingenious "pulley" system. Again, quotes because the "pulley" is a collar tie. This time there's a cracked-up liner in my bucket.

I also pulled out the last liner visible in the first photo that was above the joist level. I had to break it in half (rather than cut the furnace vent) but you know what? It felt good to destroy. It always does. Despite the dust.

Order to chaos; chaos to order. About 150 bricks stacked behind my house waiting for a purpose. Or Freecycle.

Casualties of war

No, not a construction wound!

But if you have any ideas what to do with these gorgeous rococo frames, let me know in a comment. I have 2 of them. Both desecrated.

Damn lead vent pipes

So I have this lead vent pipe in the corner of my house that I'm removing, since I can replace it with an AAV and not have to have another hole in my brand new roof. I was hoping it'd be possible to cut it at the basement level and pull it all the way up through the house, but it seems like that's not going to be possible.

I actually climbed up on the roof just now to check. The roofers had tried to pull it up and told me it felt like it was trapped by a coupling, and now that I've had a chance to yank on it, I feel the same way. So I have to cut it in the attic, but the clearance is terrible: it's right up against a rafter at the very corner of the attic.

I charged my old Olympus camera too, since it's waterproof and smashproof etc. so I can take more pictures. So far I have been taking pictures with my iPhone, which I don't touch when my hands are really nasty, or carry in my pocket when I might sit on it, which is pretty much all the time at this point.

Anyway, the pipe was finally cut after some wrestling with a compact hacksaw, a hammer and a chisel. In the end I just motored through with the reciprocating saw; I think my blade is curved enough that it just bounced off the rafter...

Attic cleanup & wiring day

So I'm covered in soot. Or something black and dusty and awful.

I went to have some breakfast at the corner market in my work pants, because I was lazy. I think they thought I was some kind of insane vagrant. For the record, breakfast was a delicious piece of vegetable-packed strata. (Stratum?)

Today I'm hoping to finish cleanup in the attic. Yesterday I moved the bricks Andrew dismantled to the back patio and cleaned up. I'd also like to fish some wire in the front of the house, in preparation for the spray foam.

The list of what has to be done before the spray is as follows:

• Roof penetration for water heater B-vent, securing this vent in place. This will probably require fully plumbing it to the heater before the foam is sprayed, to make things easier for myself
• Replacement of knob and tube at the house perimeter from the attic, so that it can be covered by spray. So far this includes a duplex switch at the front of the house, the exterior light, and an outlet at the front. I'm also considering adding a light to the back porch, but it could be wired from elsewhere easily enough (or I could just drop some wire through that wall and leave it for when I'm ready)
• Removal of the lead vent in the corner of the house
• Final cleanup in the attic. I want to blow a bunch of air through there for a couple days while I still have gable vents to get as much of the nasty particulate out as I can. Ancient coal dust, or something

Time to quit dawdling and get down to business. Which unfortunately will probably involve lots of washing filters, because this fine dust clogs all my filters in about 10 minutes of vacuuming.

The house blogger's creed

Preface: OK, I've gotten some confused responses to this, so bear in mind this is a parody of the "Rifleman's Creed."

This is my house blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My house blog is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My house blog, without me, is useless. Without my house blog, I am useless. I must post in my house blog true. I must blog more cleverly than any other blogger who is trying to outwit me. I must outsnark him before he spams me. I will....

My house blog and myself know that what counts in this battle of renovation is not the brand of drywall screws we use, the noise of our wet/dry vacuums, nor the construction dust we make. We know that it is the final product that counts. We will finish trim...

My house blog is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its features, its intricacies, its toolbars and its templates. I will keep my house blog clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before God I swear this creed. My house blog and myself are the defenders of good design sense. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but Peace, socialized medicine, outlaw of capital punishment, legal marriage for all, decriminalization of marijuana and free beer. And hopefully a nice house.

NB: This is my first post to this blog. I've backdated other posts to the time when the work described was done.

Snap, crackle, pop goes the 4" cast iron pipe

So I decided that I didn't want to have a nasty old piece of rusty cast iron sticking through my beautiful new metal roof. (This may seem bizarre, and it probably is, but when I get an urge to tear something apart, there's nothing really to stop me.)

I thought to myself: "Hey, you cut through that 2" cast iron pipe in about 15 minutes, so it should only take an hour to cut through a 4" pipe." And then I wondered why I thought the word "only," and set out to find a better solution.

This is the answer:

A snap chain cutter. It's a giant, heavy tool whose sole purpose is to clamp down really hard on a pipe with a very thick chain that has circular carbide teeth contained in it. And you know what? It works really well.

I hear tell of something similar with a ratchet action, which would probably be even better. The snap chain cutter required two people, and I think it's not really designed for use on pipes that are vertical, because one of the levers has a flat spot on it, probably for putting a foot on top of while it's on the ground. Still, Jacob helped me make 3 cuts in my stack pipe in about a half hour, and most of that time was spent hyperventilating after coordinating our strenuous effort to clamp the jaws together as we gradually increased the tension adjustment.

It's a great tool because it's elegant in its simplicity, and it just plain old works. I rented it for $15 for the day.

Here's the new PVC installed:

In which I replace a compression coupling

After being nearly frightened out of replacing an old "dresser coupling" by my plumber, I decided to just deal with this.

The water coming into my house from the meter is plumbed in galvanized steel, and quite a while back I'd ripped out all the old (out of service) galvanized pipe from the basement. So I knew it was in terrible shape, and my plumber scared me into thinking perhaps even looking at the supply line coming into the house wrong would cause it to explode, and then cost me lots of money to re-run new pipe to my meter (under the sidewalk, all the way at the curb).

But then I decided to poke at the old compression coupling, and realized it was not that difficult to remove, so I pulled it off. The galvanized coming up (you can see it in the top of the picture at the right) didn't look to be in terrible condition -- the pipe wall was still fairly thick at least -- and so I cleaned up the stub as best I could and picked up a new compression coupling at Home Depot.

Yeah, I bought a galvanized coupling. Sue me. The brass ones were like 20 bucks and I think the rubber inside this thing will go before it does. The brass stub cost me about 9 bucks anyway.

This doesn't leak, and seems to be quite sound. I've got it uncovered and have been looking at it occasionally to see if there's any leakage, and there has not been any since it was installed (I backdated this post to 11/14, but it's now about 3 weeks later). Case closed. Soon I will bury it a bit to immobilize it -- apparently pipe motion is bad for these couplings, which makes sense.

I don't look forward to the day when the supply line from the meter does spring a leak. I'll probably be too OCD to replace it with PVC, and will insist on copper, just like I did for the house plumbing (instead of choosing PEX).

Tiling ideas for the bathroom

While visiting with my mom on her birthday, I found myself in a toy store. My mom loves them, and so do I, and I found a great "art toy" called Trapecolo. It's a set of trapezoidal colored tiles and a hexagonal tray, and with it you can create designs like this one, which we made:

The difficulty I have now is that I can't find trapezoidal ceramic tiles suitable for a tub surround. There are so many neat patterns that can be made -- abstract ones, geometric ones, and even this one which Julia made:

I think it looks like a dancing ant, but I think that may just be all the lead I've inhaled.

If you have any leads on trapezoidal (or even equilateral triangle) tiles, please let me know.

Alligator extravaganza

So I was in the middle of sweating my new cold supply lines, but wasn't ready to make decisions about routing near my water heater. Having just bought some of those Gatorbite caps to use to test my work as I went along, it occurred to me I could use the same type of fitting to make temporary connections between my new work and the old plumbing in the house. Here's what I ended up with:

Kind of pricey, and (this is a backdated post) I haven't reused it, but it was cool to see how these fittings work. And hey, if I ever need to make a temporary connection between 3/4" and 1/2" again, I've got it made.