Here we go!

It's insulation day! (1 of 3, anyway.)
We discovered fun things about the construction of my house, and what outlets are on the same circits as other outlets. It was exciting!

Working their way around the house.

They have been really good about trying to keep clean.

Hole waiting for insulation.

White paint over burgundy paint over white paint.

Well, there's your problem

See the little louvered vent above the second floor windows, right under the roof peak?
That's a gable vent.

Ian and Windy were over the last two days getting the ventilation set to right in advance of the insulation people coming on Monday. Part of the deal was to make sure that the gable end vents, visually obvious from the ground, were wide enough to ventilate correctly.
I got a text this morning, as I was on my way into work to call about the vents.
"It's blocked" he said, " the one in the old side of the house, away from the driveway. With drywall and insulation."
"Huh?"
"The opening. Is blocked. Also, the "opening" is low."

Ah. To open it completely would expose the gable vent to an area that is currently the master bedroom.

"Send a picture?"

Bonus: abandoned wasp nest.

The solution (of which there are no pictures) was to open as much as could be opened above the ceiling level, to at least get SOME airflow in that end of the house.
And other bonus: They left the clapboards on and just vinyl sided over it, so I know the house was white, and the trim looks burgundy*.

*Edit 10/17 - The more I look at it, it appears that the house was burgundy and then painted over white. I think that's siding, not trim.

The mold has been mitigated, and the bulkhead painted.

Tuesday I took a day off from work because the Mold Men were coming!
Puroclean sent a two-man crew out and one of them spent a good 5 hours up in that cramped filthy hot attic crawlspace documenting and cleaning. There's no action shots, but they did send me a nice document with some before and after pictures.

The top is before cleaning, the bottom is after.
The profusion of roofing nails made it difficult to get super detailed.

I plied them with gallons of water and a bag of potato chips when they were done. After the bill was taken care of, I had what I'd been waiting for.

(They really need to take my check and get their printer heads cleaned.)

While the nice men were dealing with the issues in my attic, I couldn't just hang out and do nothing. I also didn't want to be underfoot, so I went outside and started cleaning up a flower bed in a funny cement planter that needs to go. I figured I could empty it and back fill it with gravel to create a pad for a generator. I got out all the yard tools and started wacking away at it when I discovered the most curious thing.
Crocuses. In September.

Before

After

Crocus. Actually not a true crocus, but a "Naked Lady"
Autumn Crocus, which is a member of the lily family.

Well. I couldn't be killing these lovely little flowers trying to move them right now, so I had to find something else to do.
I was standing right next to the bulkhead, as seen in the right of the before and after photos.
The kind of rough, a little rusty, in-need-of-love bulkhead doors...

Ok. New plan. Paint the bulkhead.

Scrubbed.

Before. I didn't want the little rust to become big rust.

I love my palm sander. Once of my best purchases.
Took it from course up to fine , paying special attention to the rusty spots.

First coat of white Ben Moore Direct To Metal paint. I remain skeptical.
I had to drill out the handle.

First coat. I rolled it, and it's kind of patchy. I'm not a fan of this whole "Paint + Primer" trend.
I just wind up putting on multiple coats anyway.

Coat number 2 drying a few days later.

After a number of hours of dry time, I through the plastic over it while I went to VT and it was supposed to pour.

New handles! So much cleaner!
Such a crappy picture, making it look like it glows!
(It doesn't glow.)

So that was a nice little project to get out of the way. I have to deal with the poorly painted and pealing flashing above it, but the doors are in better shape now.
Next up will be the front door.
I'm anxious. But it will be ok.

Perky.

Dryin' out!

I have been doing a ton of research over the past couple weeks (well, months, really) about a dehumidifier for my basement. It's really wet down there, even after the gutters. (They helped, but didn't solve the issue.) What I've got is a good case of rising damp and a super porous foundation of dry-laid field stone and some roughly dressed granite.
I knew that manually emptying a dehumidifier wasn't going to work to fix the problem, because I'm not home to dump it so much of the time. I looked into dehumidifiers with pumps, but they all got terrible reviews. It seems that you can dehumidify or pump, but you can't do both, economically, with one machine. I agonized over this, because even cheap dehumidifiers aren't cheap, and I hated the idea of spending money on something I knew going in was likely to break.
Then one day, a happy accident of key word searches yielded a different idea. If a combo dehumidifier and pump stunk, what about separate gizmos? It's not like I'm trying to dehumidify a finished space, I don't need this to be pretty - I need it to be functional.
That led to me purchasing:
• a Frigidaire 70 Pint Dehumidifier,
• a Little Giant Automatic Condensate Removal Pump (with Safety Switch and 20ft. Tubing.)
• a 25' heavy duty extension cord
• and a 10' garden hose (that I needed to cut down)

After a lot of reading and a little monkeying, the rig was rigged! And it worked!

That's not a leak, that where I splashed water when I was pouring it
into the little pump to make sure it worked.
(It worked.)

I don't have a reading of what the humidity was when I left on Friday morning, but it was so moist the water was condensing on the water filter cover attached to the radon system and dripping to the floor. I left it running continuously to try to draw it down hard, and by the time I got back on Monday night, it was down to 60%!!
I have the machine set to 45%. We'll see if with all this rain the little machine that could can get there.
I'm afraid of what the electric bill will be, but it'll be cheaper than the house rotting from the inside out.

The hole is good for something!
But I need to get a longer hose to get it further away from the house.

So that's the expensive and thrilling conclusion to the saga of of moisture issues in the basement. With the addition of a fan in the crawl space, hopefully it will be well and truly under control.

The Roof, the roof, the roof is ...

...not on fire.

(Props to the Bloodhound Gang, who get referenced every time I have to deal with a roof. What can I say? I was impressionable in 2009.)

I met with John the Roofer this morning. He confirmed a few things - that no ridge vent will work because of the ridge beam, that there are no soffit vents because the construction method means it's solid there and unvent-able, that some sort of powered solution is going to be my best bet, and that the roof is nearing it's end of useful life.
He's going to work up a quote (itemized) that will include:
• installing two powered box fans, one in each crawl space. (He'll run the wires down, but the electrician will have to connect. Which is good, because I like Wayne the Electrician, but he's not as young and nimble as John the Roofer.)
• new roof (asphalt on top, and either rolled or metal on the lower)
• leveling out the roof over the bathroom
• run of gutter on the north and east side (he's up there anyway.)
• repointing the chimney (again, he's up there anyway. Just have to get some sacks of lime for him to use, and make sure he doesn't hit it with portland (unless that's what's up there.))

We talked about radon, electrical, and how the fewer holes in the roof the better. He suggested removing the un-used chimney, but I'm not ready to do that just yet. I will hold onto my hope of being able to reuse it somehow.

Brrr.

When the Mass Save Energy guy came out, I made a point about asking about the windows because they are kind of crap. Sure, they keep the weather out, but not much more than that. I could tell by the amount of masking tape Ms Mary had gobbed on the frames that there are issues. Energy Guy said that there were loan programs, but not much more - Mass Save doesn't deal with windows, really.

Well, the weather has gotten downright chilly. With the temperatures plunging into the negatives last night, I set about turning the house into a cave, hanging blankets over windows that didn't have roller shade, and even over some that did. In the kitchen, one of the worst offenders is over the kitchen sink. The window well is about 10" deep, so I took a tension rod and put a folded fleece blanket over the opening. It's not air tight at all, as you can see from the line of light coming over the top. In some places it's only one thin layer deep, wehre you see it's lighter.

Very fashionable, thanks to my dear friend Monique.

My indoor/outdoor thermometer lives on that shelf, so I can see the temps when I'm doing the dishes. It's where my parents have theirs, so it's a familiar location. This morning, I pulled back the leopard print to see what it was outside.

34.2* inside, -7* outside.
I didn't bother looking for the night time lows.

Please, tell me again about how double paned windows are better simply by the virtue of being double paned? 
Granted, I keep the house at 60 at night. But that's 34.2* in my house. Right above the sink, with pipes and stuff that you do NOT want freezing. I left the faucet dripping last night, and dripping today while I'm gone.

In other news, the breakdown of mold men looks like:
#1 - $1700 (estimate)
#2 - 3900 (quote)
#3 - no show
#4 - $1700 (estimate)

Gutter guys looks like:
#1 - $975 (quote)
#2 - $930 (estimate)
#3 - comes on 2/11 at 10 am

Now there's a roofer in play. He's going to come out when he can actually see my roof (not just snow) and not damage anything when he goes up there. Including himself. I find this approach exceedingly reasonable.

Mold, it's not just for old bread.

Entertained two different mold remediation contractors yesterday. It is confirmed - the attic is hosting a not-inconsiderable amount of mold.
Come to find out, there's a huge disparity on just what exactly constitutes "mold remediation". One outfit will clean it and then paint over it. The other outfit will clean it, and then fix the ventilation that let to the problem in the first place. I'm sure there's going to be lots of dollar signs involved in either. I've got a few more concerns coming out next Tuesday to give me their two cents. I feel like I have to understand what all my options are, and these two original outfits feel light years apart.

Last night the deep freeze broke, and everything started to melt. On one hand, that's awesome, because I might get the rest of my driveway back. (I only shoveled half.) On the other hand, now I know exactly where the water is getting into the basement (and evaporating, sending moisture up into the attic, where it allows the mold to grow.) It seems that the gutter downspout extenders have done the trick on the south side of the house, but the east and north need some attention. Gutters will have to be added. On a whim, I emailed a local place to see if they can come give me a quote next Tuesday while the other mold people are here. Then I can decide if it's worth doing myself or paying someone else to do it.

Onward.

Found a use for those hot air vents.