Hardwood Install - Long Lost Vent Uncovered

Shortly after finishing the hardwood install in Joshua's room I figured out that I had accidently covered over one of the vents in the floor. I had a guess where it was but wasn't exactly sure. Since I didn't have access to underneath the floor I couldn't find the vent that way so I tried various other ways to find the hole. A studfinder, magnet and 'knocking' were all unsuccessful. So was turning on the A/C and waiting for condensation or feeling a cold spot.

This week Rosemary brought home toy stethoscope from her school. It also got cold enough that we needed to turn on the furnace. With the stethoscope I was able to very faintly detect where I though the vent was.

I then drilled a 3/32 hole into the floor at that point, 3/4" deep. Then a paperclip to ensure that I had drilled through where there was no subfloor. Success. I used a 1/2 spade bit to open up the hole, then the paper clip again to determine how close I was to the edge of the vent (very close). A jig saw finished up the job.

A Tale of Two Water Heaters

Did you know that there are three types of venting for hot water heaters? I didn't which lead to the following fun activity over the weekend.

First, we have been renting a water heater since 4 the past 8 years. At a little over $220/yr, that's $1760 I've thrown away. I always intended to replace the rented with one we bought but never got around to it at the old house.

For the new house I was planning on starting out with a new purchased unit right away. Unfortunately I got some misleading information from the rental company and didn't read the purchase agreement correctly so we ended up renting the one that was already installed. When I asked the rental company how much to buy it out they told me $1100 so I told them to take a hike. They are also going to charge me $60 to close the account, and would have charged me another $100 to remove the old water heater.

I decided to remove and replace it on my own.

I'm not a plumber or pipe-fitter but I've done some plumbing in the past, mostly successful. I figured it would be a unplug the old and plug-in the new situation and I could handle it.

So Friday I drained the old 60 gallon take. Naturally there is no drain in the house below the level of the tank so I drained it into buckets then dumped the bucket outside. 1.5hrs. Turned off the water supply in the house and cut the pipes.

Soldered some threaded connectors onto the 3/4" water pipes, dropped the new one in place and hooked it up with some SS hoses. I couldn't get the sediment collection black gas pipe off the old heater and home hardware had closed for the night, so I filled it with water and called it a night.

Saturday morning I went out to home hardware, picked up the yellow teflon tape for working with gas connections, the black pipe bits I needed to hook up the gas and some ABS pipe to complete the duct work (uh oh).

At home I hooked up the gas, checked it with a soap and water spray, hooked the ABS up for the vent and fired it up. I was really happy that I'd got the whole thing done without swearing or leaking. The vent at the top seemed warm but not too bad.

Put my tools away and waited for the hot water to flow.

First sign of trouble, Rosemary says "I see smoke in the backyard". Hmm. Take a look at the water heater. The ABS that I'd bought that morning is melting. Did I buy the wrong ABS? Nope, the old stuff is melting as well. Hmm. Turn off water heater. Check manual. Check Internet. Oops.

Turns out there are three kinds of venting. Conventional, Direct & Power Venting. This site has pictures of all three. You definitely need to ensure that you have the correct type of venting for your application.

It turns out my old one was a power vent, but I'd bought a conventional vent. My fault for buying it at HD and not finding someone there to help my pick the right one.

Drained it (no fun). Returned to HD and picked up a power vent unit. First one was $599, power vent was $779 (6 yr warranty). No problems hooking it up. I laughed. I still think it's funny. Good lesson.

Things to look for after you move in

Since we've moved into the new place I've been changing out all of the incandescent bults to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). The CFLs are cooler (temperature wise) and use much less energy than the incandescent bulbs. Though more expensive initially they'll more than pay for themselves in the long run.

Once the CFLs do burn out (5 years?), our local recycling center will take the CFLs and dispose of them properly, so the environmental issues (mercury) is not a concern for me.

The light fixture in my new office was flickering while I was working, leading me to wonder if it was the electrical, the fixture or the bulbs. Here's what I found when I pulled the glass cover off to change it to CFLs :

Probably the clown renters decided to put two 100 watt bulbs in a fixture that was rated for 40 watts. Idiots. I'm glad the house didn't burn down before I decided to change these out. I immediately when and checked the rest of the fixtures, luckily this was the only one that had the wrong bulbs.

We had an extra fixture from one we replaced earlier so I threw the damaged one in the trash and now my office light is back to normal.

Painting and Staining aren't so bad after all...

I've always disliked painting. It's been my least favourite part of any project. Trying to paint around trim or windows, keeping the paint from getting on the ceiling or the walls and cleaning brushes have always frustrated and annoyed me.

This past month I've done more painting that I have in the past 5 years. This weekend was a painting/staining marathon for me. I did windows, doors, trim and then to finish it off I stained the deck as well.

At the start of the weekend I thought that'd I'd be so sick of painting that I'd never want to pick up a paintbrush again for the next 5 years.

But come Sunday afternoon it didn't seem so bad. Cleaning brushes isn't so bad after all. As long as you don't get too crazy over the trim it doesn't seem to be too difficult. Hmm.

I haven't painted for two days now and I kind of miss it. I'll look around for something to touch up tonight...

Some work done

Finished painting the frame for the bathroom window and garage door last night. Didn't have time to pull off the door and scrape/prime it. Had to run to HD instead to pick up more supplies for other fixups.

Stain and screws to patch up the deck, construction adhesive to fix some failing trim, light bulbs for the vanity.

A while ago we got a letter in the mail from HD saying 'In thanks for your recent purchase, here is a gift card'. I figured it was a marketing stunt to get us in the door and the card would be $1.00 or something like that. When I used it last night I found out it was a $150 card!!! Glad I didn't lose it. Turns out it is from my Christmas tool purchases where they had the spend X dollars get a gift card for Y dollars. It would have been nice if they would have indicated somewhere in the letter that was what the card was for...

No 'after' pictures as I couldn't find the camera this morning.

Windows and Doors

Back to work on painting the windows and doors over the weekend. Found some nice surprises with the window and door on the North side of the house. Both had significant rot that needed to be cut out and replaced. On the right you can see one side of the door trim that was rotten. I cut out the lower 6 inches and replaced it with good wood. Joshua gave me a hand nailing in the new trim.

The window was just as bad on each side, and I also ended up replacing the entire piece of trim at the bottom of the window. After nailing the good wood in place I finished off the joints with some bondo to blend in the new pieces better, than caulked, primed and put one finish coat on. Tonight will be the last finish coat, but I'm only half done.

Because of the bad fish flies I couldn't pull off the door or the sliding window for strip / painting, but now that the fish flies are gone (temporarily) I'll pull those things off and get to work on them. I should be able to strip / sand / prime them both tonight.

Scrape, scrape, paint, paint

A good weekend working on the house.

Friday night I cleaned the fish flies off the shed then scraped off all the loose paint I could. Rather than stripping it down to bare wood I decided to just clean off the loose bits, prime and them paint it. It was last painted in 2003, so it wasn't in too bad shape. There were a couple of non structural rotted pieces of trim on the doors and I did rip those and and replace them.

Saturday I cleaned of the fish flies (again) and primed all of the bare wood areas. I am using an oil based primer and finish coat, so cleaning the brushes is a pain. Saturday night we took a trip to home depot to get some more paint for the trim. I still have some paint for the main shed body so I had them shake that, but I was out of the 'silver gray' for the trim so I bought a quart of that paint. I'd saved the original label so they were easily able to mix it up for me.

Sunday morning we went down the road to do a sprint triathlon. Other than having a terrible swim I had a good time and the weather cooperated.

Sunday afternoon I got back to work on the shed. Painting always seems to take longer than I think it should and this was no exception. I think it took about 1.5 hours to paint the trim and touch up the main body as required. It'll still need a second coat in some places so I'll finish that up late tonight when I get home.

I forgot to take before/after pictures of the shed, but it was looking better on Saturday after the primer had gone on, now it looks almost like a new shed. With the new roof I put on last year it complements the backyard instead of being an eyesore like others around the neighbourhood.

Here's a picture of Joshua and I before start of the triathlon.

New Fridge / Water Line

We had a new fridge delivered the other day. Our previous fridge came with the house which we bought 6 years ago and was probably 10 years old when we took possession. Masking tape held the seals in place and it had a paltry 15 cu ft of storage space.

Rosemary wanted the new fridge to have the in-door ice/water dispenser and we shopped around a bit before deciding on a 22cu ft model that would just squeeze in between the counter and the outer wall of the cabinet line (a 5/8" piece of plywood.

The room underneath the kitchen is unfinished, and the cold water pipe runs about 8ft away from where the fridge is (in the floor below) so I was able to easily tap into the line to run the 1/4" copper pipe to the fridge. I had previously installed a saddle valve on the line for filling up Joshua's water table when it was in the basement, so I decided to pull the copper line out of that and reuse the valve. Later when I read the instructions for the fridge it said to not use that type of pierce valve, but it's working fine so I'm leaving it.

I ran 20ft of 1/4" pipe up the floor to the fridge. Since the floor was all tiled I wanted to run the pipe up through the drywall right behind the fridge. Using the floor register as a reference I measured out to where I thought the wall was, crossed my fingers and drilled a 3/4" hole in the subfloor. If I missed on one side I'd hit the tile, the other side would be the cherry hardwood in the dining room. Lucky for me I didn't miss.

I carved out a hole in the drywall and then poked up a clothes hanger through the hole, grabbing it with a pair of pliers to fish it through the drywall. After taping the 1/4" pipe to the wire I passed it back down the hole and then completed the hookup.

Rosemary is happy with her new fridge and lucky for us Joshua has not yet discovered the water/ice dispenser...

Don't Worry Bee Happy

For the past few years I've been seeing bits of sawdust in the air and on the deck in our backyard. I've also seen large bees around, but I never connected the two together until this weekend.

Sitting out on the deck after dinner I noticed some sawdust float down and followed it up to one of the cross beams (2x10 PT) atop the deck. Standing on a chair I found a 3/8" hole in the cross beam, with bits of sawdust slowing being pushed out.

I couldn't see what was pushing out the sawdust, and no amount of banging on the wood would make the creature show it's face, so I waited for a few minutes before getting tired and climbing down. I looked around the deck and found 5 other holes, most older and more weathered than this one, but didn't see the occupants of any of them.

Guessing it could be ants or hornets, maybe termites I was hesitant about sticking anything in the hole and getting some nasty bites back in return. I sat back and waited. Eventually I saw one of the large bees I'd seen in the past buzzing around that general area. Sure enough the bee eventually popped into the hole.

Now my decision was whether to get rid of the bees or to let them 'be'. I tend to lean towards letting things alone that don't harm me or cause damage, so I left this alone and looked up "bees and wood" the next time I was online.

I found 'carpenter bees' on wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_bees. The description definetly fit my bees, and since they "will not sting unless directly provoked" and "Since the tunnels are near the surface, structural damage is generally minor or nonexistent", I decided we could let them bee.

I've been watching the bees the past few nights, and three things I've noticed :

1. The seem to have trouble finding their hole
2. If they are near the hole and I move to get a better view they immediately fly away from the hole
3. If they are in the hole, no amount of banging on the wood will get them to come out

Just about time to mow...

Here [rd.com] is a good explanation of lawn mower blade sharpening.

I'll have to post before and after of the lawn later - after I actually mow the lawn. I think I'm the last one on the lawn not to mow. Most other people have already mowed 2-3 times.