So... What are YOU doing? - Part 5

[tango]

I pulled down the section of wall and the draft went away. So I felt around to figure where it was and found a different area was very cold. So I kept pulling sections of wall down trying to figure out where it was coming from and with each section it seemed to move again.

Finally I found it. Whatever knucklehead put the side porch on supported a stonking great wooden beam with the wall of the house. They knocked a hole in the wall and figured they didn't need to fill the gaps around the wood. Needless to say there was a horrendous cold wind coming through the gap. This one is big enough that I'll want to fill the whole thing with building foam and cover it front and back with mortar, but the builders foam wants to be at least 30 degrees (ideally 60) to cure properly. That means it has to wait a while. In the meantime I've stuffed a load of fiberglass into the space.

Funny to think that was was happening was a horrendous cold wind was coming in and essentially blowing over all the wads of fiberglass I was using to try and block it, eventually finding the bit that wasn't stuffed and blowing down through it.

While I was up on the ladder at the top of the wall pulling everything down I found a couple more gaps, which are now filled. There's a gap I can see on the outer face but I don't feel like climbing a ladder outside in the freezing cold to fix it. For now it will have to wait. Next day we get that is even marginally sunny and isn't perishingly cold, I'll be out on my ladder.

Now I have 21 bags of rubble waiting to go to landfill and two big piles of laths waiting to be burned. At this rate I may need to borrow my friend's truck to haul it all away... The laths will burn but the rest of it probably weighs 6-700 pounds. Hauling that lot will be fun...

 

[tango]

It's remarkable how good it feels to get in the shower and wash an accumulation of plaster dust off me.

Before the shower it was time for another round of Fun With Fiberglass, and now I can stand in the rooms I've been working on and not feel a draft at all. That feels good. It also feels good to see that the actual temperature in there is higher than the set point on the thermostat, which means I'm not paying unknown amounts of money to heat the great outdoors.

 

[Lamb]

Tango, glad you got that big hole filled before winter carried on much further! I'm not sure if you're having the extreme temps but a lot of places are in single digits or around there. Don't pay the gas company any more than you need to!! I try to save energy here by not going outside unless I have to. My husband wanted to carry out some trash to the bins and I told him to wait until he was going out to do something else because the cold air would come in from the garage. He gets it now

 

[tango]

Tango, glad you got that big hole filled before winter carried on much further! I'm not sure if you're having the extreme temps but a lot of places are in single digits or around there. Don't pay the gas company any more than you need to!! I try to save energy here by not going outside unless I have to. My husband wanted to carry out some trash to the bins and I told him to wait until he was going out to do something else because the cold air would come in from the garage. He gets it now

I found another nasty gash in the wall late last night. I don't know what prompted me but I just decided to go and feel how it felt in the area I've been working in. There was a cold spot in an area there shouldn't be a cold spot, and it turned out I had another 1/2" gap in the wall across the top of an entire window. So, since it was late and I was wanting to go to bed, I just swept all the debris off onto the floor and jammed a bunch of fiberglass in there.

This morning's job is to pull the frame off another window, clean all the debris around the two windows I know are bad (and the third one I suspect), and blast a load of builders foam in there. Today the temperature according to the thermometer on the side of the house is 10 degrees, according to the exterior sensor on a different thermometer it's -4. I went out with the thermal camera to see if what I've done so far has made much difference (it has, but not as much as I'd hoped so I've obviously got another heat leak) and I'm more inclined to believe the it's towards the lower end of the range.

Lots of black on the thermal camera, which is good. But then with the ambient temperature so much lower I'll need to load them into the laptop and adjust them all for ambient temperature to see how well my work is doing.

I'm tired of the furnace running more or less permanently.

 

[tango]

For good measure, during a late night visit to the bathroom I noticed a chill that I didn't expect. Looks like I've got issues with that window as well. Once I've got the gaps sealed up where I've been working I may just pull the window trim off and have a bunch of fiberglass ready. It's not fun making a late night bathroom visit when it's so cold.

 

[tango]

Fun with tools and mortar today, that involved removing fiberglass. That alone made a nice change.

Having stuffed much of the gap around the beam with building foam I'd padded around it with fiberglass, since even an entire can of foam didn't make a complete seal. Today I cut the beam off only very slightly proud of the wall, so I can put an insulation panel over the top of it. That was an interesting exercise - first of all I tried to cut it with an angle grinder and cutting disk but that generated a huge amount of smoke and only very slowly cut the beam. Also because of the guard I couldn't cut in as close as I wanted to anyway, and I didn't fancy trying to cut without the blade guard in place. So next up was the oscillating tool. The blade I had for it was largely blunt so I bought another one intended for fast coarse cuts through wood. That was just what I needed, and got the beam cut back. Finally I brushed away all the sawdust, cut the face off the building foam to create a slightly rough edge, and filled most of the remaining gap with mortar. The mortar is slightly recessed into the wall - I'm going to leave it to dry and fill the remaining part of the gap tomorrow.

Since I was working and in a frame of mind to keep on working, I pried the frame off another doorway in the same room and pulled down a bunch more of the lath and plaster wall. That meant I could stuff some more fiberglass into the wall that seems to be responsible for much of my heat loss, and also just get a bit more of the mess taken care of.

Now I have 22 bags of rubble, two piles of laths big enough to be something of a liability, and a bunch of bits of broken up drywall. If it would only warm up a little I could get out and burn the laths, but for now they will have to wait. I can step over them...

 

[Imalive]

i got rid of 20 garbage bags. Cleaned up 3 closets and toy boxes. we have room to walk again. Some kids clothes were still good but if they dont put a thing out for the good cause i cant store it here and im not gonna put it on my bike and bring it somewhere.

 

[tango]

Growing weary of the cold. The combination of the cold outside, the way heating air dries it out, and working in a dusty environment and washing my hands fairly regularly isn't doing my skin any good. For what is probably the first time in my life I borrowed some of my wife's moisturizers to stop the skin on the backs of my hands from drying out past the point of discomfort.

 

[NewCreation435]

I started my new job two days ago. I'm just shadowing my supervisor and learning my new job. I did have one session today with a new client and her mother.

 

[tango]

Another session of Fun With Foam, Fiberglass and Fixing.

I figured that although a couple of my windows have concrete between the frame and the brickwork it isn't a very good seal, so I chiselled it out and filled the space with building foam. Then a scan over the wall highlighted a couple more places where there was a draft so I cleared out some more mortar and replaced it. I fixed up another joint that may not have technically needed it but I plan to fill the area with maximum expanding foam and figured a gap was just one more place the foam might leak out.

Sadly I ran out of mortar before I could fill all the gaps, so stuffed a couple with fiberglass as a stopgap and now it's off to the hardware store to get more. I also need some cheap fiberglass rolls so I can fill a couple of large spaces around a door frame. It's an internal door but the spaces around it will allow heat to get into the brickwork, which in turn will allow the heat to escape from the house. So it's better if the heat can't get into the space in the first place.

Just lately I've been more inclined to clean up my work area at the end of each work session. It means more time spent cleaning overall but also means less fine dust all over the place. When I was pulling down large expanses of wall there was little point cleaning up right away as the dust would settle over the course of a couple of days, so I'd go in later and clean up. Now most of the mess I'm creating is very localised, so it's not a big deal to keep the place clean. And curiously, since it's cleaner, it feels like a nicer place to work even though the work typically involves creating more mess.

Having fixed several major drafts in the last few days I'm really starting to feel a lot more positive about this project. For a time it seemed like it was a never ending piece of work, but now as I'm taking these steps, even small steps, towards the rebuilding side of things it becomes much easier to see the way forward and a logical end to the project, or at least getting to a point where some tasks are ticked off and I can forget about them. The first room to be finished will be such a huge milestone I'm realling looking forward to that.

On a far more disastrous note, we ran out of coffee this morning, so need to get more coffee while we're out at the hardware store.

 

[NewCreation435]

Another session of Fun With Foam, Fiberglass and Fixing.

I figured that although a couple of my windows have concrete between the frame and the brickwork it isn't a very good seal, so I chiselled it out and filled the space with building foam. Then a scan over the wall highlighted a couple more places where there was a draft so I cleared out some more mortar and replaced it. I fixed up another joint that may not have technically needed it but I plan to fill the area with maximum expanding foam and figured a gap was just one more place the foam might leak out.

Sadly I ran out of mortar before I could fill all the gaps, so stuffed a couple with fiberglass as a stopgap and now it's off to the hardware store to get more. I also need some cheap fiberglass rolls so I can fill a couple of large spaces around a door frame. It's an internal door but the spaces around it will allow heat to get into the brickwork, which in turn will allow the heat to escape from the house. So it's better if the heat can't get into the space in the first place.

Just lately I've been more inclined to clean up my work area at the end of each work session. It means more time spent cleaning overall but also means less fine dust all over the place. When I was pulling down large expanses of wall there was little point cleaning up right away as the dust would settle over the course of a couple of days, so I'd go in later and clean up. Now most of the mess I'm creating is very localised, so it's not a big deal to keep the place clean. And curiously, since it's cleaner, it feels like a nicer place to work even though the work typically involves creating more mess.

Having fixed several major drafts in the last few days I'm really starting to feel a lot more positive about this project. For a time it seemed like it was a never ending piece of work, but now as I'm taking these steps, even small steps, towards the rebuilding side of things it becomes much easier to see the way forward and a logical end to the project, or at least getting to a point where some tasks are ticked off and I can forget about them. The first room to be finished will be such a huge milestone I'm realling looking forward to that.

On a far more disastrous note, we ran out of coffee this morning, so need to get more coffee while we're out at the hardware store.

It sounds like you are very handy with tools. Once I get done screwing in a light bulb that is about all I can really do.

 

[tango]

It sounds like you are very handy with tools. Once I get done screwing in a light bulb that is about all I can really do.

I'm learning a lot as I go along. Truth be told if you'd told me a year ago that I would be embarking on a project like this I would have laughed at you but, as so often happens, one thing led to another led to another. I figured that pulling walls down and putting insulation in would be easy but having pulled the walls down I found lots of gaps in the concrete wall, mostly where the mortar had come out of some of the joints. So I had to learn how to repair the mortar, which meant a few trips to the hardware store and some time on YouTube watching videos how to do it.

Stuffing fiberglass into spaces is pretty simple, as is squirting a can of building foam. The real test will come when it's time to start rebuilding and finishing it all so it looks pretty. Thankfully with the work I need to do fixing the wall I get to practise smoothing - although it makes no practical difference because it will all be covered over I figure I might as well take the chance to learn how to make it pretty, even when it doesn't need to be pretty.

Right now I'm enjoying the fruits of my labors, specifically being aware that my furnace isn't running 25 hours a day any more. Given the work to fix up the gaps in the walls and stuff fiberglass into places has probably cost me no more than maybe $30-40 (including $15 for a blade that is still perfectly good) I think it will pay for itself very fast. It's also very nice to have gone from a room that felt like it was permanently drafty, to a room that feels more comfortable. I'm still keeping the heating in there slightly lower than I'd normally choose but the fact I don't feel a constant draft across the room is a big step forward.

 

[NewCreation435]

I'm learning a lot as I go along. Truth be told if you'd told me a year ago that I would be embarking on a project like this I would have laughed at you but, as so often happens, one thing led to another led to another. I figured that pulling walls down and putting insulation in would be easy but having pulled the walls down I found lots of gaps in the concrete wall, mostly where the mortar had come out of some of the joints. So I had to learn how to repair the mortar, which meant a few trips to the hardware store and some time on YouTube watching videos how to do it.

Stuffing fiberglass into spaces is pretty simple, as is squirting a can of building foam. The real test will come when it's time to start rebuilding and finishing it all so it looks pretty. Thankfully with the work I need to do fixing the wall I get to practise smoothing - although it makes no practical difference because it will all be covered over I figure I might as well take the chance to learn how to make it pretty, even when it doesn't need to be pretty.

Right now I'm enjoying the fruits of my labors, specifically being aware that my furnace isn't running 25 hours a day any more. Given the work to fix up the gaps in the walls and stuff fiberglass into places has probably cost me no more than maybe $30-40 (including $15 for a blade that is still perfectly good) I think it will pay for itself very fast. It's also very nice to have gone from a room that felt like it was permanently drafty, to a room that feels more comfortable. I'm still keeping the heating in there slightly lower than I'd normally choose but the fact I don't feel a constant draft across the room is a big step forward.

I may have missed something. ARe you rebuilding something or fixing up an old house? Or remodeling a house?

 

[tango]

I may have missed something. ARe you rebuilding something or fixing up an old house? Or remodeling a house?

Fixing up the house my wife inherited from her aunt. Her aunt inherited it from her mother, who inherited it from her father, who built it. It has lots of quirks and foibles, much of it feels like it's designed to not quite be useful (back in 1910 when it was built people didn't hang every single garment, so hanging space is limited but there's plenty of room for shelves).

Some of the walls were cracking (the lath-and-plaster, not the structural walls!) and the wiring needed a lot of attention so I figured I had a project to keep me out of trouble. I'm learning a lot as I work through it piece by piece.

 

[tango]

Today's excitement was a combination of fiberglass, cement, caulking and extruded polystyrene insulation.

First off, I decided to address a draft in one of the rooms. It's always been chilly in there despite having a fairly large radiator, and I discovered gaps around the window frames. The windows are holding the cold out but the cool draft just wormed around the window in blew in underneath it. So an application of caulking left a lingering smell of unwashed feet which really wasn't very nice, but the room felt warmer within minutes. Taking a thermal image of the area I worked showed the temperature range going from 17-53 degrees, to 32-54 degrees, in barely half an hour. So that's should make a nice difference. Funny to think that it took maybe $3 in caulking, which means it will probably pay for itself by tomorrow with the way the furnace has been running lately.

Next was filling the spaces around a door frame with fiberglass. I'm not sure how the cold air is getting in there but it is, and it's seeping out through the open bottoms of concrete blocks. So I stuffed the whole area with fiberglass, pending a more permanent fix. While I was there I noticed a few cracks in the mortar between the blocks, with drafts coming through, so chiseled out the mortar and replaced it.

Finally was a fix that had me concerned about just what I was going to find. There was a horrendous chill coming from under one of the cupboards and I figured I'd sealed off so many major drafts it made more sense to explore this one rather than focusing on other areas that wouldn't yield such a fast result. So I had to get into the cupboards, in a very confined space, and pry the bases up to find out what was underneath. As soon as I started to pry the first panel up I could feel the cold blowing out from underneath it. It turned out there was a gap in the corner of the wall about 1/2" wide, across the entire width of the cupboard and around the corner at the far end of the somewhat confined space. Because removing the whole lot is a bigger job than I want to get into before finishing some other stuff, I made do with stuffing the whole area with more fiberglass, and cutting a nice big square of polystyrene insulation to fit into the end. Then a bit of extra caulking filled in a couple of gaps that were also letting cold air gush in.

By the time I was done the room had gone from feeling distinctly chilly, to feeling quite comfortable. I need to go back in there in a few hours to make sure it wasn't just me warming up having been twisting and working a lot, but so far it's looking very promising.

The thermal images of the outside of the house continue to improve. My original hope was that I could cut my heating bills in half, and the way things are going I think that is readily achievable and I'm wondering if I can cut them further. I just need to keep an eye on things to make sure that I don't cause any problems associated with the savings - because the furnace is running less than it was before the basement is cooler than it used to be, and I don't want to find things like pipes freezing because they were relying on heat leaking through from somewhere else.

I can see some pipe insulation being in my future...

 

[NewCreation435]

that's your idea of excitement hu?

 

[tango]

that's your idea of excitement hu?

I don't know that I'd call it excitement, although there are times I pull something away and have literally no idea what I'm going to find behind it. When I know I'm going to find something ugly, somewhere, but have no idea just what or just where, it can be interesting to see how things pan out. Just one example - I had no idea that I was going to find a beam through my wall with a hole beside it big enough to put my fist in. I had no idea I was going to find big gaps in the wall over the window frames. At present it's a constant quest to both block drafts coming into the house, and find the source so I can fix it more permanently.

The biggest bugbear at the moment is the cold draft coming under the baseboards. They make the floor very cold, and if I put caulking along the bottom the chances are all that will happen is that the drafts will come out somewhere else.

When the weather is warmer I need to look at things from the outside again, with a view to finding gaps that might be letting the cold air in.

 

[Stravinsk]

Among the things I did today:

Play piano like I do everyday. It's been almost exclusively Bach preludes and fugues for a while now, although I do still improvise a bit on original tunes or those of others.

Indoor plants. After all the time I've been doing this, one might think I'm adept at it, but overlooking an important step has meant being satisfied with a mediocre result for a while now. Every time I buy spring onion and leeks, I take an empty glass jar and fill it a very small way with a bit of water, put the plants in them and set them on the window sill or counter top where they get some afternoon sun. Every time the plants grow when I cut them for a little while and then eventually start to wither and die. I figured this is normal due to lack of nutrients after a while since I've only been feeding them water.

Except that the plants where the water has evaporated completely seem to be thriving more than those who have enough.

Stupid me - it's due to root rot. The important step I ignored (and ignored with nearly all my terrariums) is to add a layer of rocks/pebbles with water just high enough that allows the roots to drink from them without completely being soaked in them. Roots need air as well as water.

So that's fixed today for a few of my plants. Now I have to do it with all my terrariums save one that is still thriving for over 11 months now. I must have got the water ratio just right on that one, or that particular plant can tolerate more.

 

[Lamb]

Oh yes, Strav, those rocks are important! I add little rocks at the bottom of my planters whenever I transplant anything. I have a planter basket that I need to separate and I don't know where I'm going to find enough rocks that will be small enough enough for 7 planters! They're definitely overcrowded right now. They aren't vegetables but just houseplants and even though one of the plants died (the florist overwatered it from the start), the others are thriving so well!

 

[Stravinsk]

Oh yes, Strav, those rocks are important! I add little rocks at the bottom of my planters whenever I transplant anything. I have a planter basket that I need to separate and I don't know where I'm going to find enough rocks that will be small enough enough for 7 planters! They're definitely overcrowded right now. They aren't vegetables but just houseplants and even though one of the plants died (the florist overwatered it from the start), the others are thriving so well!

The separation provided by rocks/pebbles is important if no soil, or little soil is used. All my terrariums have soil, but since many of the containers I am using are small, I have not used much. Just a little too much water in setting them up without any barrier can mean roots soaking in water for too long. This depends on the plant, as some plants can thrive in such conditions.

Some of the plants I grow in my kitchen in jars (for example, lettuce, leek, spring onion) -open containers, not closed terrariums - I don't use any soil at all, and up until today, no rocks. These plants cannot tolerate roots soaking for too long in still water. Hence, pebble barrier. Now the roots can drink but a good portion of them and still get air.

The plant that survived 11 months (2 of them, actually) is a type of lettuce plant. This, without any intervention on my part (they are in terrariums). I'm sure it's gone to seed and regrown already, I just haven't been watching it. This plant seems to be different - the soil is filled with roots with no pebble barrier. I must have added the right amount of water and it must be able to tolerate a somewhat wet soil.