Shocking!

When last we left our intrepid heroes (i.e. us), we were dealing with some seriously scary electrical problems. So about a week over when the electrician came to take a look, we were convinced (ok, just me--D is a bit more level-headed) that the house was going to go up in flames.

The electrician crawled around in our attic space for a while, looking at the wiring. (Since our energy guys are coming back to fill this space in and seal the hole, the below pictures probably represent the only pictures we'll ever get of our "attic." None of these pictures are actually of the spliced wire problem--no way was I crawling around in there to get to the problem.)

He came to the splice pretty quickly and noticed that it had been done as a way to bypass a short circuit. He guessed, correctly, that if he fixed the splice with a junction box, he would trip our circuit breaker. So he fixed the problem but created another one: finding the actual source of the short circuit.

We had two options: he could crawl around up there looking for the place where the wires were connected wrong or he could just start laying new wires. The first option could potentially be cheaper if he found the problem quickly (once he started with new wires, it would take a while to get them all laid out and installed). However, if he couldn't find it for a while (or even at all), it might turn out that we should have just put in the new wires. But we opted for the gamble and he started hunting.

The entrance hole to the attic was in our master bedroom, so that's where he started. He checked and took apart (in this order) our closet light, our main light/ceiling fan, our bedroom light switch, our two lights in the hallway, our light in the hallway closet, and our main light in the extra bedroom (which he confirmed was not rated to hold a ceiling fan--more electrical box and joist fun later when we decide to install one)

FINALLY he reached the light switch in our extra bedroom.

All the short circuits and the fire hazards and this was the culprit:

Not only was it the culprit, but it turned out to be a stupid problem. The grounding wire wasn't correctly wrapped and two pieces of metal were touching, causing a short. The attic splice had been made as a work around for what literally took 3 minutes and about 2 inches of electrical tape.

So in the end, about 5 cents in supplies and 4 hours in labor. Oh well, that's how it goes sometimes. The electrician was very nice and we definitely felt comfortable with his work and pricing, so at least now we have someone we can rely on the next time something breaks.

Insulation and Some Expensive Discoveries

Hi there! We haven't posted much because we've been so busy doing work (and paying other people to do work) that there hasn't been any time to blog! But rest assured that the next few are pretty exciting and reflect some major changes. Today, I bring you the follow-up to my post on our energy audit. We agreed to most of the recommended updates to the house and had some workmen come fix up our attic (both the knee walls and the actual top of our house) and basement (in the laundry room area as well as the crawl space). Five guys spent almost 8 hours helping us stop air flow into and out of our house. How did they do it? Read on:

First they headed to the knee walls, the storage attics in our upstairs bedroom with the tiny Alice-in-Wonderland-sized doors. Originally, their proposal was to fill the knee walls to thoroughly insulate them, rendering them inaccessible and useless. I requested that they come up with a new idea that would let us keep our storage space. And it was a good thing I did--we had to empty everything so that they could get in and work, and it was amazing how much we've managed to hide in there in just the 18 months that we've lived here.

So they brought in these giant insulating boards (all of these things have R values, i.e. how much energy they save, but those figures escape me). The boards were so huge they had to cut them in half just to get them up the stairs.

Next they drilled tiny holes into our attic floors, spaced so that there was one hole over each joist. Why? Well, that comes later.

Next the shiny boards got installed on all the outer walls. As you can see from the above picture, we had some insulation in there already. So they didn't need to add much into the roof joists before installing the boards. The boards got sealed with foam to further block out air flow. Now our knee walls look like little rocket ships!

(By the way, these guys were really awesome and let me take pictures and always were happy to show me what they were doing. Contact me privately if you want their information.)

Just that step took them a while and there was one guy in each of our knee walls for most of the morning. When they finally finished putting up the wall insulation, it was time to "dense pack" foam into those little holes in the floor. They ran a tube from the insulation truck (yes, there was a truck which has a singular purpose of blowing foam) through our windows and into each little closet, filling the joists up with foam to block air leaking in where the wall and roof meet. They had to be careful not to fill joists that corresponded to our over-sink lamp in the kitchen, because it burns too hot, so there was a lot of measuring to make sure that they only insulated in the right places.

The sound and appearance of the fluff traveling through the hose was really cool, so I tried to get a video for your viewing and listening pleasure (make sure you have your sound on):

(OK, not that exciting I guess. Unfortunately Blogger will only upload it as such a low quality that you can't really see the fluff through the hose. I guess you had to be there. But hey, first posted video! Go me!)

Next they covered up the clothes in our closet and cut what apparently was a man-sized hole in the ceiling to get to our otherwise-inaccessible attic. It was here that we encountered our first snag. Apparently there were some wiring issues up there (not a real surprise, I guess) that actually cause one guy to get a shock! There was a splice or two that needed to be put in a junction box and something up there was shorting out our circuit (thank goodness for circuit breakers). Since insulating up there would make it hard to access these problems and because, in the words of one of the contractors, "the insulation is flame retardant, but I still wouldn't want to put it near a known fire hazard" we had to halt work on the attic.

They installed this lovely "sealed" board that the electrician would be able to easily removed and agreed to come back later once we had the problem fixed. (It has been by now, but that's for a different post.) We still haven't managed to find a time to get the energy guys back out to insulate up there, but I'm sure that will happen soon.

And so it was on to the basement! A team headed downstairs and started insulating our crawl space. They noticed that it was actually possible to see our first floor from up through the boards in the basement and since the crawl space is (was) essentially outside, it's no wonder that the half of the house over the crawl space was always so cold in the winter. So they packed a lot more insulation up between the floor joists and then nailed up panel similar to what they put in our knee walls upstairs. They enclosed the pipes in the insulation too, so theoretically the hot water in the heat system will still be hot by the time it reaches the guest room and office.

This is also where problem two was discovered, though it wasn't something that halted work. One guy noticed that a sewer pipe running down the corner of the crawl space was a little damp. That wasn't good. He deduced from looking at the pipes that the problem was probably in our second-floor bathroom. We immediately stopped using it and started trying to find a plumber (again, already done and the subject of anther post).

In the laundry room, the guys put up some insulation along the outside wall because little bits of sunlight were actually visible. The white puffy insulation was sealed off with more orange stuff and should make the basement a little more pleasant, temperature-wise. There should also be less humidity down there, and in fact we are already noticing that the dehumidifier isn't turning on as often as it was just before we had the basement fixed.

So the final results from all of this work? Well, the guys started and ended the day with another round of blower door tests. Just like back in February when they did the audit, their morning reading was about 7000 cubic feet per minute, which means that a lot of air flows through the house (for reference, new homes are at about 2000 cfm). After all that work, which doesn't even include the attic, we got a reading of 3500 cfm. That was an incredible 50% difference. What this should mean for us is that it will be easier to heat and cool the house and maintain our desired temperature, because we won't be losing our warm/cool air by having it leak through all these cracks. The upstairs should not be as hot in the summer and the half of the house above the crawl space should not be as cold in the winter. So we're keeping our fingers crossed.

What were the cats doing during all this commotion? Well we stuck them in one of the rooms that wouldn't need any work and they spent much of the day trying to escape through the tiny crack under the door:

Exhaustion and Desperation

Thatching and dropping seed didn't really do much, so it's time to bring out the big guns. We spent Sunday raking little rows into the ground and putting Scotts Patch Kit everywhere we could. We also looked into getting our soil tested, but it's been way to wet to go out there and dig up some samples. It's on our to-do list, though. We're thinking of sending off three unique samples: front lawn, back lawn, and front flower beds.

Every weekend (at least for now while it's not scorchingly hot with man-eating mosquitos) we've been trying to get out and coax our lawn and garden back to life. Obviously our hard work and desperation seeped through into real life and my parents are taking pity on us and coming to help us this weekend.

Knowing when to quit, we decided that despite the fact that we want to plant edible things, this year we're going to stick to planting them in pots, that way they will take less weeding and care and we won't have to build a garden that would probably just fail anyway.

So here we have basil and cilantro (in theory, one day):

Parsley and cilantro in these little guys (which will live inside on our window once they germinate; for now they live in our upstairs hallway in the warmth and darkness):

(We're growing a lot of parsley and cilantro because they are last year's stock and were stored pretty improperly, so if any germinate at all, it will be a small miracle.)

We're also starting some 2011 seeds: cherry tomatoes and scallions (and more basil) to transplant into large outdoor pots (thank you, Costco).

Even if none of these grow, we won't be out too much money or effort, at least.

Finally, a couple of questions to anyone who might know flowers. I've been operating under the assumption for two springs now that these plants are roses. I've been researching how to deadhead and prune them and what to feed them. I'm only finally coming around to the fact that they are probably not roses at all. Now I realize that there are a lot of kinds of roses. But these don't smell like roses, they don't have thorns, they have barky stems all the way up to the flower, and they bud in twos and threes.

So what the heck are they?

Flower identification question number two: these are everywhere and look a little like dogwood but I'm pretty sure they aren't (dogwoods have clumpy little pistils in the center, don't they?). So what's your guess:

While we slave outside to make the yard look nice, these guys loll about on the window and watch. On a recent vacation, we saw a ceramic "beware of cats" sign that looked custom made for our babies, so we couldn't resist. Don't they look like critters you need to beware of?

Plants for a Healthy Home

Interior decorating advice, feng shui, environmentalists, and common sense all suggest that we should add more greenery to our home. Having plants inside can improve air quality, create a calming ambience, and help fill in empty corners.

One problem: we can't seem to find any cat friendly ones.

As I mentioned before in this post, our green cleaning guide lists 7 plants that contribute to good air quality and 6 are toxic. The remaining plant, spider plant, will basically make a cat high (an effect that our black and white cat once discovered and within a day, we had only a tiny little nub of spider plant yet, since he had devoured most of it). We use this ASPCA site for guidance on plant toxicity.

We even ignored the advice, since it seemed our cats ignored the Devil's Ivy (also known as Golden Pothos) plant that we've had for years (it comes from a cutting off a plant that has lived about as long as I have--seriously, this plant and its offspring will live for all eternity).

But when we recently lowered it off a top shelf to a lower shelf on our TV unit, our cats became pretty ill. It took a few weeks for me to realize that they were nibbling on the leaves.

In fact, it seems to me that just about every house plant--at least the common ones sold at Ikea and Home Depot--seem toxic. So besides hanging the plants from the ceiling out of reach of the cats, we need some new suggestions. Do you have pets and plants? What kinds of house plants should we bring into our home*?

*Caveat: I kill pretty much everything, so bonus points for any suggestions that are also hearty.