Fun With Foam.
Well, kind of. Cellulose insulation doesn't begin with F but does look a little bit like foam. Today's task was lifting a load of it from the space over our bedroom. I need to replace the insulation with a more uniform layer. It's slightly frustrating because 9 inches of cellulose has a comparable R-value to the 9 inches of fiberglass I'm going to replace it with, but I need a uniform layer that I don't currently have, and I need to replace the wiring in the space as well.
Today I lifted and bagged up somewhere between 250-300 gallons of the stuff. For the most part I can scoop it out with a doodad I cobbled together from a piece of metal roofing, and when it gets to the corners and the scraps I roll out the cobbled together separator I made out of a garbage can. It's not the best but for the most part it works. It could really use a much wider hose but that stuff is unpleasantly expensive.
For good measure I found a couple of wires I wasn't expecting. It looks like our bedroom once had a proper light fitting that was removed when ceiling tiles were fitted. But instead of doing things properly, whoever did that job just cut the wires off. So that means I had live wires left floating around in the insulation. Tomorrow's job will include cutting the power so I can cut off the cables that once went to a light fitting, and tape up the part I cut. That whole section is knob-and-tube so sooner or later it's all coming out, it's just a matter of when. Hopefully sooner rather than later, I just need to figure out how to do it all in a sequence that doesn't leave me without lighting upstairs for any length of time.
Later this week I'm going to borrow my friend's truck for a monster trip to the landfill. I have 24 bags of rubble, 10 garbage bags of cellulose insulation, a pile of laths, a pile of lumps of drywall, a box full of what are essentially giant wooden splinters, a box of old roofing and a box of wooden scraps. And my wife's car that I'd normally use is in the garage. It's looking likely that it's time to replace it. If we can get it going again for a reasonable price I'll keep it as a beater so I can still haul stuff around, and take all the seats out except the driver's seat.