A Pause

The pause in my posts is directly related to the fact that there simply has not been much to share. In late March, we had a slew of specialist contractors come to put in all the infrastructure that we need in the space. Plumbers came through and ran the pipes for our toilet...

...And sinks. Here's the shower room:

And the toilet room (which actually will need to be rerouted, since we failed to tell our contractor that we planned to have medicine cabinets, so the recessed box will have to go where the pipe currently is):

The HVAC team brought in our Mitsubishi Hyper-Heating mini-split (I don't know about you, but that brand makes me think of cars and not HVAC units--but apparently they make quite good systems!) and loaded it into the encapsulated crawl space. Then the next two days consisted of running the ductwork after consulting us about where we'd like everything to go. Since the HVAC unit is under the floors, most of our vents are low to the ground (except the return, which is up high since hot air rises and it usually sucks out hot air, though this is a year round system that also provides heat). In the bedroom, our vents are on the floor. In the bathroom(s), they are on the walls just above the floor. In our closet area, one will be coming out of the bottom of our built-in closets. One vent (into the toilet room):

Floor vents in the bedroom:

Return, in the hallway:

After a long walk-through to confirm where we wanted switches and plugs based on both the blueprint and last minute preferences (like how high we want the ones in the bathroom shelving units, etc.), the electrician ran the wiring to all the things. Here's the wall our bed will be on:

One aspect I hadn't realized as we committed to a heated towel rack, steam shower, AND radiant flooring is how many control units we will need on the wall. Here's the wall of the toilet room, looking through the hallway to a similar set up on the wall of the shower room.

The electrician also started getting things set up for our recessed lighting and a box for mounting a ceiling fan:

And got the wiring set up for our outdoor lighting:

They also installed a subpanel in the basement (picture later when it looks more like a real working electrical box and less like an empty box with some random dangling wires). 

The framers also came back to put the hardware in for our panel doors (the metal bits):

That, all together, took us to the end of March. I'm including a lot of detail now but honestly was planning to just gloss over all that stuff. So why haven't we had any updates in April. Because WINDOWS.

We're at a standstill until our windows arrive and they are supposed to be ready this coming week. I know this is a huge improvement over the multi-month waits during the pandemic, but I'm still impatient to get moving, since construction stopped 3 weeks ago while we just...wait. The next step is dry wall and that can't happen until windows (and an inspection, apparently). There's an additional complication--the patio door and transom windows above it won't be ready until June. Usually that's also required to pass this inspection. Our contractor is keeping his fingers crossed that we can get an "all but the doors" inspection to keep going with the construction. Because otherwise we're on hold until June. So...yeah, that's fun.

An update to our last post on metals - we took the safer route and returned to our preferred brushed nickel. After our contractor scared us away with a comment of "no one is asking for gold anymore" (something we don't think is true but was enough to spook us), we realizing we did not want to play into a fad. We know we like silvers and were struggling to match everything anyway, so brushed nickel it is. At least it will match the rest of the house.

Hybrid Hot Water

Our water heater came with our house when we moved in 14 years ago, and kept chugging along, sucking up electricity and turning it into, more or less, enough water for 3-4 consecutive showers (the last one was always a little iffy). We never drained or serviced it, though we did wrap it in a coat of insulation way back in 2012. That was pretty much all the attention it ever got. In 2015, we confirmed through a smart meter that it really was sucking up a ton of our electricity bill.

The energy guide sticker made it seem comparable--even "better" than other hot water heaters. But considering this was early 00s technology at the latest, it really didn't compare to what was available now.

We wanted to get something more efficient. And more important, to me, we wanted to do it on our terms and our timeline, rather than panic-buying something when the water heater inevitably decided to give up the ghost one day (probably in the middle of winter, too).

D did a lot of research and decided we should splurge on a hybrid hot water heater. This went against the opinion of the experienced HVAC guy who installed it, who insisted we were wasting our money. A hybrid system can heat the water 2 different ways. It has an old-fashioned immersion heater, just like our old hot water heater (albeit far more efficient 20 years later). These heat up water relatively fast and are a tried and true, decades' old type of technology. 

The hybrid part comes from the fact that it also heats the water with a heat pump. Now I didn't really know what a heat pump did, though D has bemoaned the fact for years that we don't have one along with our AC (combo units weren't really when we replaced ours in 2015), since they create heat so much more efficiently than standard heaters. The whole story is here (specific to water heaters, though the principle works the same for heating). Here is the key:

Heat pump water heaters use electricity to move heat from one place to another instead of generating heat directly. Therefore, they can be two to three times more energy efficient than conventional electric resistance water heaters. To move the heat, heat pumps work like a refrigerator in reverse.

They require that the room they be installed in stay above 40 degrees (there needs to be some heat in the air to pull from), with a lot of air (they don't work well in closets). Our basement satisfied both those requirements. Because they pull end up pulling moisture out of the air along with the heat, they also tend to dehumidify a room. Considering we run our basement dehumidifier constantly, that seemed like an amazing twofer.

What makes our water heater "hybrid" is that it can do both. Since heat pumps can take a while to heat the water, we didn't want to commit to having a very slow system with four people who all take showers within about an hour of each other. The heater lets us pick how we want to heat our water:

Efficiency means "only use the heat pump" and we're trying that out to see if we can manage with just the most efficient system. So far, so good, at least in the warm summer months (more heat to pull out of the air, cooler showers, etc). The electric setting would turn our unit into a standard water heater. And hybrid, of course, lets the heater pull from both heat sources as necessary.

We also got a bigger tank. The new heat pump is 67 gallons, while the old one was 55. This gives us more ready-to-go hot water. We discovered that once the water reaches the right temperature, it can hold that temperature for a while. We know that because the heat pump is quite loud, blowing a fan sort of like an AC unit. So we can hear when it's running, at least from in the basement. When it got installed, it ran for about three hours nonstop and then didn't start running again late in the evening after two showers.

This new AO Smith is taller but it's actually quite sleek and nice looking. Because of the way it pulls heat in and dehumidifies, it has to drain. Our HVAC plumber installed this rather hilarious/awful piping out the bottom, to the wall under the utility sink, and into the drain. We wanted to drain it there since our rightmost utility sink has a crack in it.

But the pipe was so awful that we decided to risk it, assuming that the amount of water generated by the heat pump won't be enough to be a problem for the sink. Now the pipe doesn't stick out awkwardly into my laundry area.

Here's the whole scene, after some decluttering yesterday as we moved around some shelving and purged some unnecessary junk (hampers we never used, the drying rack to our older dryer).

The system was expensive (our HVAC guy certainly thought it was pointlessly expensive) but there are state and federal rebates for upgrading to this kind of water heater, and we're seeing about 5kWh used each day, which equals about $1. Not a ton, of course, but it adds up (and probably will add up to more in the winter when we use more hot water). More importantly, we (hopefully) have a water heater that will last us another decade or more without concern.

Bye, old faithful!

Old water heater loaded in a truck to be removed.

 

A bit chilly

A few years ago, (6, to be exact) we installed a Nest thermostat as our main heating thermostat. We installed another when we added the sun room. They're only hooked up to our heat, so we don't use them for a good chunk of the year when we switch to air conditioning. But December is decidedly time for heat.

The problem is that the Nest keeps trying to be too smart. We set up a schedule where it should be warm when we get home from work, but to conserve energy, we also set up auto-away. This results in a house that knows when we are gone and therefore does not turn on the heat to greet us. This is what usually greets me at the end of the day.

And our house is so slow to heat up that this basically means we reach ideal temperature right at bedtime. So...not great.

One option would be to turn off auto-away, but of course that's there to help save energy. The next option would be to try out auto-scheduling. I think we tried it out back when we first got it but we didn't like the choices it made. But perhaps if it starts to notice what time we get home in the afternoon, it can start warming the house up in advance in time to reach an appropriate temperature by dinner. We haven't wanted to try it yet, as we enter the unpredictable holiday season, but it's something we plan to attempt in January.

Another frustrating problem with our heating - and this one isn't actually the Nest's fault - is where we have our heating systems. The first one, above, is in the hallway. We do often walk by there, but not as often as, say, the living room. And so it doesn't always *know* we are home even when we are (the whole notion of the Internet of Things is creepy, but this isn't the place to address it).

The other thermostat, which we had installed in our new room, is even worse. Look at this crazy low temperature! Why let the room drop to 58? 

Well, it isn't actually that cold in there. Without realizing what that would mean for the temperature readings, we chose to put this one on an exterior wall. And it turns out that even with decent new insulation, the wall itself is pretty chilly. So we basically just ignore this thermostat completely since it's not a true reading of the temperature in the room, and just let the other one make the heating decision. Not the best choice but we had no idea at the time.

Even when everything is working perfectly, we tend to keep our house just a little chilly (friends sometimes wear coats inside). So the fact that it's cold even for us is probably bad. But doesn't being colder burn calories or something?

The Suspense is Killing Me (I hope not literally)

This isn't the post I planned to write next. I have some exciting kitchen ideas and some beautiful flowers that were all just waiting to be posted. But suddenly, a heating pipe in our basement started leaking. Not onto our heads, because it is wrapped with insulation, but leaking for sure. We could see some wet rusty stuff forming. Super slow, maybe a pinhole leak, and we're not using our heating right now. Not a big deal. D called our heating guy, who was out of town for a few days but promised he would come take a look.

He stopped by today. Here is the leaky pipe, from two angles. Can you guess the potential problem?

Asbestos.

Ughhhhhhhhh.

A mitigation company came and took a sample for testing. What was going to be a minor and cheap repair may turn into something much bigger and more annoying. Stay tuned - we should know for sure tomorrow.

Breezeway 12: heating

Thursday ended with this - blankets and pads all over the new floor and a partially installed baseboard heater. Also the lovely smell of some kind of epoxy.

I was a little confused at why it wasn't all finished in a day - after all, they'd laid the pipes under the flooring and it seemed like it should be relatively quick.

Then I went down to the basement and saw this:

Our heating guy had set up his own table and laid out lots and lots of parts and tools. I guess this was a more complicated job than I thought.

Then on Friday - I saw more to indicate that yes, this project must be making our heating system a it more complex:

It isn't totally finished yet, because not everything is connected. We have a thermostat, though it isn't turning on yet. We decided on another Nest simply because we have another one already and can get them to talk to each other and sync up.

The baseboard at least is all finished, which will also allow us to start measuring to decide if we want to install cabinets between the heater and the windows.

Work has slowed otherwise, and our final punch list isn't moving along too quickly, at least in a visible way (for example, the electrician had to come tweak stuff over two days, but that doesn't make for interesting pictures). Still, the room is pretty much livable and we have started planning decor. A rug is on the way (well, technically backordered) but we can't put it down for a few more weeks anyway according to guidelines we read on polyurethaned floors.

Breezeway 3: electrical, HVAC, and masonry

This week, as we suspected, the big work slowed down so progress looks less dramatic. But some critical infrastructure got put in and we are definitely seeing things come together.

First - the electrician came and wired us up! Nothing is live, but they fed the lines into the basement where they are ready to be linked up to the circuit breaker box. Here are outlets, switches, and (in the next photo) the recessed lighting:

 Here's the wiring to the back patio:

And here's the line to the basement, complete with giant hole in the floor:

You may have noticed in picture one that we also have a fancy new garage door (beat the plywood board from last week. The mason came to remove the brick work and raise the door up the level of the future floors Here's the view from inside the garage:

They made progress on the front wall too, installing the Hardiboard and starting to do some of the decorative work that will make the wall blend into the rest of the house's style. In addition, they pulled up the big slate squares that led to the now defunct entry AND pulled out our mailbox, since the placement doesn't make any sense now without a door there (even if a future owner potentially uses the garage, it still seemed odd to have a post mailbox right there near the house - it would make more sense at the end of the driveway).

Our mailbox is currently hilariously propped up beside our front door (it's on the other side of the door now, but this is a good view of the gigantic post):

We need to decide on a new mailbox. We are leaning towards some kind of wall-mount one right below the entry light on the brick, like this one from Home Depot:

Any opinions, pros, or cons? We could definitely use some suggestions here. No door slots, as we like our front door. Having some security (like this model) is nice, but then we're forced to use a key every time to get the mail out (recall that we don't even use a key to get into the house anymore, thanks to keypad entry).

Finally, onto HVAC. Today the AC people came and hooked up our vents. We have an intake/return (this one here) and two vents - one at each end of the room. This room, while not fully insulated, is now officially "conditioned."

Earlier this week, our heating guy came and put in hot water pipes from our heating unit up to where the baseboard will be installed once the drywall is in.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment. In the meantime, tell me your mailbox ideas!

Breezeway 2: framing and walls

A lot of progress in 3 days - I'm sure at some point, the big work will cease and small adjustments and behind the walls things will make the changes seem much less dramatic. But for now, huge strides.

On Wednesday, I came home from work to find our front breezeway wall and door gone and a whole new wall with windows up:

Here's the inside, partially framed. They took off the garage door and doorframe as well (and inadvertently blocked us off from the contents of the garage, since we have never had the key to the garage door):

Hi doors! Fortunately our builder works with a local salvage company that resells used house and construction supplies for charity, so this pile of stuff all has a potential second life, rather than being destined for the dump:

By Thursday, the floor was framed and the wall was framed a bit more (and we got into the garage):

Then on Friday, our missing back wall was put back up, raised to the right level, but were not fully fastened into place yet (they posted a sign telling us not to actually use them yet):

They jackhammered some of the concrete away from the entrance of the kitchen, also to get set for adding flooring:

This week we also made some decisions - we're going with baseboard heating, to match the rest of the house. It will be a separate zone, but the baseboard will look identical to the newer ones upstairs. We chose this over a few other options. Radiant heat sounded nice but was the most expensive, plus there were issues about what kind of flooring we could use. Electric radiant heat was out for anything except engineered wood (which looked pretty fake) because real wood cannot handle the temperatures. Hydronic radiant heat (i.e. using our hot water running through the rest of the house) was compatible with real wood (only custom slats that are quarter sawn, not prefinished flooring). It made me nervous though to think that the wood had to be very specific or else risked curling. What if it was fine at the beginning and started curling in a few years. Wood and temperature changes are not exactly mutually exclusive, but they are not best buddies either. Plus if something did go wrong with it, we would only be able to access it by pulling up floor boards. That plus the fact that it was the most money made me decide to pass.

The cheapest choice also wasn't to our liking. It just reminded us too much of an afterthought and too much like a hotel. It was cost effective and efficient, but did not go with the house.

We opted to spend more money on the baseboards as a system that blended better into our 1950s house. That also necessitates doing some work on the AC ducts to bring AC to the room as well. Not cheap, but cheaper than the radiant heat and something we already understand.

We also chose our floors. Though by taking radiant heat off the table we could choose from anything, we learned that in the end the difference between using Home Depot prefinished wood flooring (with some pretty negative reviews online), fancier prefinished wood flooring, and custom sanded and stained slat floors was only about $300. For yet a tiny bit more, we could get the fancier quarter sawn wood. We decided to splurge, at our builders recommendation.  Hopefully we like what we get.

A mouse in the house

Shortly after Christmas, one of our cats escaped out the basement door. Not-so-coincidentally it was the same day this happened. In the commotion of dealing with the water and having the plumber over, the door was left open for a couple of hours. The snuggly kitty stayed in and the mouse-killing-always-trying-to-escape kitty left (we did get him back about a month later, fortunately).

Unfortunately, while he was away a mouse got in the house. I came down with the brave new toddler early on a work day. The snuggly kitty was acting very odd, hunkered down in front of the oven. With a heavy heart, I looked under the oven with a flashlight and .... yeah.

Obviously the mouse didn't get into the house from that area - otherwise he would have disappeared. Since we had one potentially effective cat in the house, I pulled the oven away from the wall. Snuggly kitty rushed in. 30 seconds of squeaking later he came out with the mouse! Then he jogged to the dining room table, released the mouse to play, and promptly lost it. Idiot.

But I did see where the mouse went - it bolted to the corner of the dining room where the baseboard heating pipes run. After waiting a few minutes, I stuck my face in the corner. It certainly had at least an inch of space and was quite drafty. The quick solution was to fill in the corner with steel wool and seal the entire length of the wall with expanding foam.

It doesn't look too good, but it's a bit less drafty and hopefully more mouse proof. I may try to razor off the excess foam in the future and see if it's paintable. If I could paint it black, it would be invisible.

Snuggly cat was disappointed with the solution, though.