De-Winterizing? No... Re-Winterizing! Posted on 02/13/10
Okay, so I tried to de-winterize last weekend, and failed. Over the course of the week I had the people who'd installed the furnace (Highlands Plumbing & Heating, nee Horrel-Neiderhiser Plumbing & Heating) come up and fix it, and turn the heat on. The plan was to have these guys heat the place up, then drive up and turn on the water so the home inspector could do his thing next week. Well, they say no battle plan survives its first contact with the enemy.
While the heating guy was successful turning the heat on, what I didn't account for was how the mass of snow on the roof would react with a warmer house. Despite the huge amount of insulation up there, the roof will get warm enough to melt some of the snow. And these big eaves, so wonderful most of the year, are fantastic at refreezing the snow melt as it comes down the roof. Yep, we have ice damming, and water's getting into the house. Not much water, but really, how much water coming in from the ceiling is acceptable? I'd guess none.
Additionally, the real estate agent decided to schedule the home inspection on Friday, the day before I was driving up to check the heat and turn on the water. Somehow, and my agent can't explain it to me, the water got turned on before that inspection. I'm guessing ghosts.
So, we can fix the leak by turning the heat off, which will staunch the snow melt, waiting for the roof to clear naturally, and then installing some of the heated wires on the roof that give the snow melt an escape route (I have these on the back roof actually). However, because the ghosts turned on the water, turning the heat off means re-winterizing the plumbing, which means blowing all the water out of the pipes with compressed air like I did back in October.
So I had a new plan. Instead of going up to turn the water on, I headed up with tools and the compressor so that I can re-winterize.
Well, it turns out that there was no way the big compressor was going to make the 50 yard trip from the road (finally plowed) to the house. Not a chance. I could turn the water off, but there was no way I'd be able to blow out the lines, I had to formulate an option C.
I decided that the best plan would be to keep the heat as low as possible, and concentrate it where it's needed. Almost all of the plumbing is in the bathroom, and the bathroom walls. I set the thermostat, which is right outside the bathroom door, down to 40 degrees. This should keep the bathroom just slightly warmer than that. I closed every other register and threw carpet scrap over them to keep the heat out of the rest of the house. I also closed all of the doors (except the bathroom), and even used a mattress to block the hallway at the living room end. Hopefully this will keep the rest of the house at, or around 30-35 degrees.
I drove up to the PA house this weekend. I finally have an offer and needed to de-winterize (summerize?) the house for the home inspector. Alas, with all the snow this was not as easy as I'd hoped. First, the heat came on, but didn't stay on. The propane line had frozen and the thermostat had packed it in. Once the propane in the line was depleted the furnace shut down and that was it, no heat. Well, without heat I wasn't about to turn the water on. Oh well, at least I did some snowshoeing. I also shot a short video of the place. Enjoy.
Went up to Pennsylvania to winterize the house. I didn't do this last year and spent around $500, maybe more, for propane to keep the place above freezing all winter. Not again.
Drained the water lines, tanks, and filters, opened all the valves, and put non-toxic RV anti-freeze in all of the traps. Turned all of the circuits off, except the front door light and living room lighting. Finally, I cleaned up and took as much stuff out of the house as possible. I even left notes to remind myself that all the valves are open (before I turn on the well pump and flood the place).
With any luck, come spring, everything will be just as I left it.
The house is on the market, finally... or at least I think it is, I haven't checked the MLS. I drove up to drop off some paperwork a few weeks back and took these pictures. Lots of snow up on the mountain this year. Anyway, while the inside looks great, the outside needs some love. If spring breaks before it sells (and considering the economy, I expect that) I'll spend a weekend or two up here and do a little exterior work and slap it with a coat of paint. Curb appeal, right?
In addition to the house, the Element is finally on eBay. We bought ourselves a Subaru Outback back around the beginning of February (see the previous post, about the Xtracycle). I love the Honda, but the Subie has four real doors for getting the baby in and out. Once the Element is sold we'll only have the Outback and the Westy. It feels good to be selling things, but it'll feel even better when they're gone.
Drove up to do some painting and finish work, and that's what got done. First, obviously, was the skylight trim. Took more than a little filler to make it look good, and even so, it's a good thing that the skylight is 10 feet up. While here I also painted something that I've been meaning to paint since the sheetrock was done, the electrical panel cover. You have no idea how much better that looks to me. Oh, and all the closet doors got two coats as well. Paint? Check.
Sorry about the crappy iPhone photos, I left the camera at home. D'oh!
I went up to the house this time to do just one thing. Finish off the gaping hole in the ceiling. I've been worried about how I'd do this ever since I decided to insulate and put some kind of ceiling in place... years ago. As is usually the case when I end up obsessing about somehting like this, I shouldn't have worried, it was pretty easy in the end.
This first photo shows what I did. The near window shows the initial wrap, simple 2x10 lumber. The far window shows the second layer added, simple 1x8 pine.
And finished up with 1x4 and 1x8 pine. All it needs is a little filler and some paint.
My brother came up to the house for the weekend to help me with a few things. Partially because I needed the help, and partially because having him there helps keep me motivated and working. I really needed help with placing the last few patch pieces into the corrugated ceiling. We also hung the microwave, put handles on all the cabinets and replaced the faces in front of the sink, installed the track lighting, built an attic door, installed the flooring beneath, and hooked up the washer and dryer, and put up wire shelves in the closets. The other huge (Huge!) favor Danny did for me was to pick me up in Morgantown and drive me up to Pennsylvania. This allowed me to finally drive the Westy home. Thanks Dan!
It's been a little while since I posted any pictures of the 388 house. More than a month. Well, I've been busy. After the ceilings there were a million little details to get done before the party, and then there was the party, and now I'm just trying to get as much done as possible before the new one arrives.
Anyway, since I probably won't get back here for a few weeks, I found a few minutes to shoot a few photos as a record of my progress and to post here. We'll start with the basic shot that you've seen before, now with 100% more kitchen than last time. if you look up you can see that I still have some strips of ceiling to fill in up near the beam soffit.
Here's another shot of the kitchen and then the bathroom. Without going back and checking, i'm not sure if I posted any shots of the long completed bathroom. I did however finally get around to painting the trim. You can't see much of it in this shot, just a little behind the toilet. Was originally going to be white, but I really like the slightly darker mustard color much more.
Here are the two smaller bedrooms. The carpeting was installed a few days before the party and looks great. Before the carpet guys came in I had to trim out the opening for the crawlspace, which is in the lower photo. After they left I installed the handles. This past week I installed the baseboard trim in all three bedrooms.
This is my old bedroom, you can see the heater in the closet. I'll be making a cover for that soon. You can also see the track lighting i installed in this room as opposed to the soffit lighting in the other tow rooms. This past week I completed the trim around the windows. Most of it was constructed of inexpensive laminated shelving lumber trimmed down to size on the table saw. It's a little rougher than I'd hoped, I should have spent more time sanding it, but it'll do. Actually, I think it looks pretty good.
And two last shots of the livingroom/kitchen again (click for larger views). Still lots ot do, but it's really coming together. You can see my biggest 'to-do' in the shot of the livingroom, the trim around the skylight. Soon.
Well, here they are, corrugated ceilings. It was a lot of work, but my brother Danny and I finally hung the ceilings. Other than a few adjustments, a filler panel or two, and possibly some kind of trim, they're done.
We cut the 12' x 26" panels using an abrasive blade in my old circular saw.It worked. The sparks where so dense that they melted a new hole in the back end of the saw's plastic housing.
We attached 2x4's to the ceiling beams, and simply screwed the panels up. Simply is a big understatement though, it wasn't easy. One of the problems was that in the bedrooms the pieces were as wide as the room, and fitting these flimsy, sharp-edged panels into the room, let alone getting them in place, was rough. Required a lot of touch ups to the paint afterwards. I'd also recommend snapping a chalk line for your screws too, we didn't, and it's pretty obvious in a lot of places.
Here's my old bedroom. The bedrooms came out really well. In this shot you can see that I added a box for a ceiling fan.
The standard shot of my living room/kitchen. You can see one of the areas that still need filler pieces along the soffit on the left.
Another shot of the kitchen, looking towards the northeast corner of the house, we'll call this the dining nook. It's so strange, there used to be a wall here, anda scary, dark closet.
The kitchen will go there. You can see the cabinets all built up sitting in the middle of the room. And below? that's what the kitchen will look like when it's done, more or less. One of these days, maybe I'll even install that window I framed out in the blank space above the sink.
Found this little guy living in the shed up in PA this week. I have no idea what kind of snake it is, but it was definitely more afraid of me than i was of it, so I'll make the assumption it wasn't poisonous.
