Energy Audit Day

Yesterday was Energy Audit Day! It was kind of a bust.

I got some free LED light bulbs, a power strip, and a programmable thermostat for my time.
I was hoping for rebates to help with the very small pretty old fridge and the very old range.
Neither item qualified for anything.
I did qualify for a rebate on updating the furnace that is only a few years old, and the hot water tank that only about a year old, though! It all boiled down to how many kilowatt hours things use. Since small fridge is small; it uses about the same hours as a new normal size fridge, so they won't help me replace it. It's "efficient" because of it's size, not it's age. They don't even care about ranges, apparently. The furnace and hot water tank incentives are to jump to more efficient devices - heat pumps and the like.
Energy Guy Nick tested the furnace for CO2 and carbon monoxide, and it was well in the safety ranges. I did confirm that there is 0 insulation in the walls, and only about 6" of insulation in the roof. MassSave likes to see about 12". The cost to me after they do it was quite tolerable, and something I'm likely to do. They also wanted to see insulation on the rim joists, but with all the sill issues, that's not something I'm going to do.
What Nick did find that needs to be dealt with quite soon is mold in the attic. This didn't turn up on my home inspection, (there was staining, but it wasn't active then). MassSave won't put in insulation until it's cleaned up. This was pretty unexpected. Two quotes are being collected next Wednesday. I have no idea how much something like this is going to cost.

Nifty Particulates

One side benefit of getting the radon water handler installed is that they put a particulate filter in line before the radon bubbler. This serves to protect the radon system from building up too much sludge in it's big black box.
The filter housing is clear, so you can see when it needs changing. I don't use a ton of water, and the the well water is pretty clean, but it's neat to see what the filter is knocking out of the stream.

Neat.

 I'm sure much of it is blueish because that's the color of the PEX pipe that Radon Guy Dave used to zig zag all over my basement. (Blue = cold water.) Now that no one should be messing around with the pipes, it should sort it's self out. It will be interesting to watch over time, (but I was also the kid who really enjoyed sticking my head in the pond and watching the stuff under the water.)

What's Done is Done

The most expensive thing I've had to do to this house so far is also the least sexy thing to talk about and photograph.

Hrmph.

This fancy black tupper tub you see above is a well water radon mitigation unit. It basically takes the water from the well pump, bubbles it to jostle the radon out (radon wants to be in the air, not the water) and then blows the contaminated air out while pressurizing the water back to the house.
That black box, it's attached pipes and 3/4 a day's labor is $4500.

Double Hrrmph.

Here we see where the air vent exists the basement, through my plexiglass window, along with the air vent. That funny basketball sized thing on the pipe is a fan that is sucking the radon gas out from under my foundation through holes specially drilled and excavated to collect the radon gas before it passes through the cement into the basement air. This fancy contraption of PVC and fan was an additional $1400.
The nice man has to come back tomorrow and listen to the fan with me, because it's oddly loud in weird places in the house. Idling Train Engine Loud, at least to me. But I might be a bit oversensitive.

Here's where I'll make a note to myself to read all future quotes with a fine tooth comb. I went into this thinking that the total for the job was $4500, because the the number in bold at the bottom of the sheet next to the word "total" was $4500. I was pretty thrilled, until the nice man handed me the invoice. What I'd been looking at was the total for the Water section. There was no total for both Air and Water.
it's work I would have had to do anyway, but I wasn't emotionally prepared to lay it out right then. I'm really pretty angry at myself for missing it. It means that some other things I wanted to do sooner than later will now happen later.

One last insult to injury is that I'd just started considering getting a wood stove an tossing it on the unused chimney to get something resembling warmth in here.

Radon pipe, right in front of the chimney.

That idea was vetoed by the universe.

Not much fun

Even organization has to be done. Sunday was mostly getting pavers to build a shelf unit on, to get all the tools and boxes of chemicals (paint, putty, polish, etc) out of my living space.

Lowes buckets make awesome organizers.

I'm absolutely convinced at some point, that basement was utterly full of coal. In cleaning the walls, I've found it everywhere between the rocks here in the original part of the basement, from the bottom, all the way to the top course of stones.

One of the larger chunks, It really is pretty in the light.

I'm doing my part to sequester carbon by wedging it back in the gaps in the wall. It'll work fine as filler behind the mortar, I hope.

Basement Door

With one side insulated (through I think I'm going to put a sheet of foam board insulation over the top of the silver bubbles) I decided to fix the door. Everything's shifted, so the door was dragging when you opened it. I shimmed it up, filled the holes, redrilled for the hinge, primed, painted and gave it some new hardware, since the bolt that was there was useless.

Door before.

Filled in the holes with little bits of wood and wood glue.

Door after, a lovely "thunderstorm grey".

The door is slightly warped, so in order to seal it so that the draft was minimized, I've put a latch at the top and the bottom. I still need to figure out something to do for the gap at the top, and add some weatherstripping. It opens better and is much cleaner now.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning the foundation, preparing for the eventual re-pointing. The shop-vac has been absolutely key in getting in all the nooks and crannies. There's almost no original mortar left, but I did find this one piece left.

The only piece that I think features tooling.
Since new mortar won't stick to old mortar, it had to be removed.

Not sure if this was original mortar, or just left over plaster from when they were doing the walls upstairs.
The brown fuzzy stuff in the plaster is horsehair.

Window Scramble

The fact that the house has a radon problem is not news. It's part of why I got the house for the price I did. Not only is there radon in the basement air, but also in the well water.
The radon guy has been scheduled to come out next Tuesday. During the quote, he suggested drilling holes through the sills to run the vent pipes. I suggested we not, and maybe run them out a conveniently placed window instead. He agreed. He figured he'd put in a sheet of plywood in place of the window, and I figured someday I'd brick it up.
When I was cleaning out that section of the basement, it became clear that the window is very handy. Loosing the natural light it provides (south side of the house) would be a real shame. I thought about it, called the radon guy back and asked if we could use a sheet of plexiglass instead of ply. "Sure!" he responded. Great! Now I just needed to get a fitted piece of plexi for that space.
But what *size*? To the inside of the window frame or the outside? Plexi is really finicky to cut. He suggested that I have a window place do it. I can cut glass - Ive got the tools and done it before, but not plexi. I pondered.
I was talking to my coworker, Andrew, who is a handy sort. He suggested why don't I just have the window glass in the existing frame replaced with plexi? Then I don't have to worry about the fit and seal so much, and as I have to talk to window people anyway, well?
I made a few calls. I found a place. They could do it, but only had an opening this afternoon. I could do what I had to do for work from home anyway, so I left, raced home, yanked the window out of the house and made it to the window place in time, covered in dirt and cobwebs and lord know what else.
I was in such a hurry, there's not really process photos.

Example of window before. (different window.)

They are just Harvey insulated replacement windows. They are not special in any way, except in that they are decent quality and keep the weather out and heat in. The frames are cemented into the foundations, so this course of action really did make the most sense unless I wanted to chisel the casements out.
One stripped screw head later, the window was out, and a layer of bubble insulation and gaffer's tape applied.

I reinforced the tape when I got home.

They had that window set for me by 3 pm. I picked it up, and they gave me a tube of caulk. "When the radon guys are done," the owner said, "you take this and caulk the crap out of the edges and where the pipes meet the holes. We didn't want to caulk it before they saw it."
With a smile and a thank you, I brought my window home and put it back in.

Can't tell it's different, but it is.

TaDa!
Tomorrow, fixing the latch on the basement door so it actually latches.

More Insulation Fun

Another area of the house that I wanted to insulate was the door to the crawl space.

That little funny door, upper center right.

There is no attic in this house. I'm certain there's a crawl space over the front of the house that has no interior access, but this door accesses the crawl space that extends out over the addition. There is the original roof that separates the two spaces, with no passage between, as far as I know, though there might be one to the upper right, behind the kind of scary hole. I have no desire to find out right now.

The kind of scary hole.

Little effort to remove the fiberglass.
I just stuffed it in the hole.

What we see here is a combination of some sort of loose insulation and fiberglass. That diagonal line inside the crawl space are two cut boards. I'm not sure if they are part of the original roof, or were put there as part of the addition construction. That angle, seen in the frame and those boards, follow the original roof pitch. The fiberglass was being held to the door with a few staples. The door was repurposed from elsewhere. The cross boards are nicely beveled except on the closing edge of - you can see a cut mark extending vertically where the person trimming went a little deep.

Cut marks line up with the flat edge. Bevel seen on top and bottom edge.
Also, no paint where the board used to be, but hard to see here.

Determining the prior life of the door was not my goal (Though I'm thinking it was part of one of the doors removed when the master bedroom was made by removing a wall between two smaller rooms.) Getting the scary hole from sucking the heat out of the house was my priority. Space age bubble blanket and foam board insulation to the rescue!
I stapled on a double layer of shiny bubble in the center to take up space, and then screwed a sheet of foam on over it and trimmed the foam to shape. I forgot to take a picture of the bubble step, but here's the finished result.

Slightly less scary now. Much more insulated.

Pole Switches and a Space Age Basement

The neat thing about this house is that I can do projects when the time presents it's self or the whim strikes. Last night I wandered around putting foam insulation gaskets behind light switches. I took the plate off the pole switch upstairs, took a picture, and will add it to the list of things Electrician Wayne can address the next time I feel like bankrolling his electrical Honey-Do list.*

I think this should probably be updated.

The nice thing is that you can get modern reproduction pole switches that look the same, but are probably a heck of a lot safer.
"Why have Wayne do it?" you ask. "It's just a switch, and that's easy enough to swap out." It's true. And if this was a regular old light switch, I might be tempted to watch half a dozen YouTube videos, read a book about it, throw the breaker and give it a go. I still might do that for a switch in the kitchen. But in this case, I have no idea what the condition of the wires are behind it. If things start crumbling to dust, or something is super wrong once I get in there... well, I'd have to call Wayne anyway, and he's a busy guy.
I've put the plate back over it and walked away for now.

I insulated the basement door too. I'd picked up a roll of this fun silver bubble wrap and just stapled it to the back of the door that goes up to the bulkhead. I may still pick up a piece of board insulation and screw it on over the back, but for now? Shiny.

The staple gun was a good investment 10 years ago.

I'm not holding my breath for epic energy savings from this blanket and the little foam gaskets, but every little bit helps. The oil tank is at around 5/8ths, but I'm still doing anything I can to slow it's roll. I signed up for automatic fill from the folks that have been servicing the system for the previous owner.
Speaking of furnace systems and chimneys, I've discovered the ash out door is only held on with tape, and there's some concerning cracks that ought to be dealt with. Onward, to masonry! (Eventually)

Hrmm. No bueno.

The more I putter in circles, the more things I notice. Which is fine, it all just gets added to the list.





*Addition - Fun thing I figured out while insulating outlets is that "Bedroom 1" (the funny little room that's hiding behind the stair landing) has no electrical outlets. It won't even function as an office right now. That has to be changed, or it really is just a glorified closet.

A little slow

Not much new to report - I did figure out that a number of windows on the second floor were ajar and went around locking things up, which has cut down on the drafts considerably. It's still not warm up there by a long stretch, but it's helped. I also put a few boxes of baking soda around to try to draw the stale smell out. I'm under the impression that the previous owner wasn't really using the upstairs space for a long time (she was quite elderly,) so who knows how long it's not been lived in.
One exciting thing that did happen is that I got my first tax bill. I was under the impression this was handled out of the escrow, so I have an email out to the mortgage guy. I don't know if this was the left over from before I bought the house, or the bit from between when I bought it and now, but I'm hoping John the Mortgage Guy can explain it to me.*

Something to keep in mind for people who are surprised at the furious pace I'm attacking these projects: In order for me to wrap my head around this purchase, I've mentally framed it as a long flip. Not a traditional "slap on a new coat of paint and cheap fixtures" flip, but a "fix it right and enjoy it while you're at it" flip.
Plus, the more I get done now, the longer I will be able to enjoy my work.

Next up on the Expensive Fixes List - Radon Guy comes on Tuesday.
There will be more unexciting pictures of strange equipment after that, I'm sure.

*Update - The town sends me a copy, but RMS had all the info and had paid it already. Hooray!

Two potential keys

After noodling my head around the PF Corbin catalog, I think I've narrowed down the keys to two contenders:

Key type 179 1/4 corresponds to lock type 1285B

OR!

Key type 360 corresponds to lock type 1065.

 They look damned near identical, but I'm positive that one will work and one will not, because that's how skeleton keys roll.
Or not, as the case may be.
Now, to get my hands on one of each. Time to go knock over Etsy and Ebay, and probably some local salvage/antiques dealers.

Front yard view

Sunrise

More on electrical

Wayne was here on Friday (1/4). The drops have been made for the radon system, the furnace wire has been rerouted, the well pump has been given it's own line, the water heater has the correctly weighted wire to it now, the master bedroom outlets have been fixed, and he even gave me a new light at the foot of the basement stairs. It's not exciting for anyone but me, I know.

Well pump has a switch now! And it's own circuit!

Outlet waiting for a radon system.

Fancy new wire to the hot water heater.

Basement cleanup

Besides for the closet, this weekend I felt I had to clean up/out the front of the basement. Very soon, I will have the radon guys in there, and I wanted to clear out everything that had to go so they didn't feel they needed to work around junk. The pipes for the radon should go out the window to the right. It's a shame to loose the window, but a bigger shame to blow holes in my sill. As it is, the sill needs to be re-enforced along that back wall.
I didn't get true "before" pictures - there was a hanging shelf thing against the far wall before I got to it with my hammer and handsaw.

Sort of before.

Repointing the basement has suddenly launched to priority #1.
I like old houses, sans scaly friends living in it with me. Shedding their skins in my foundation.

Table, turned workbench, turned kindling and compost.

Clean enough for the radon guys.

Wore my respirator, and I am very glad for it. It was really dusty. I enjoyed a nice long hot shower afterwards.