649 6th

sticky nipple

What were you thinking of!? I've been, um, thinking to myself for the past week as I failed day after day to remove the close nipple on our dining room radiator (to center it better on the wall). WD40 to the rescue, plus lots of patience. I'd spray the seam and exposed threads every day, give it a push with the beater bar -- and strip the nipple to shiny steel. Then I'd give it another spray and prop it against the wall to seep.

The first day I tried to twist this rusty-stuck nipple I watched the WD40 in the hope I would see evidence of it penetrating the threads. Yesterday there was reference to calling a plumber to work some additional torque on the problem. This morning I asked myself. Where does the clinging pool of WD40 go? Is it working some slow alchemy or is it evaporating? Can it evaporate? Just what the hell IS WD40?

This evening I held the radiator on edge and took a seat before spraying the threads. Where does the WD40 go?  And the meniscus of light... fluxed? I watched on with re-doubled attention. It pulsed again. What else could it be but the wonderous WD40 sleekly seeping. I lay the radiator down, assembled my pipe-wrench lever, and gave it a pull. I've been stripping that nipple for over a week so believe me when I say this felt somehow the same but different. I reset the wrench and pulled again, this time closely watching the nipple's threads. They turned. See the impossible happen.

kitchen venting

fall

Fall comes and we find ourselves firmly planted in year two of our renovation. Not a lot of words as of late mainly because house work has become so routine it's sometimes beyond comment.

Work is happening. Maybe not at the rate we had planned, but it is happening. The big plan had us finishing the kitchen by Thanks Giving-- that's not going to happen. One step at a time.

After our late summer flurry of reconstructing the back wall of the house and roofing the kitchen the task at hand was putting it back together. As you can see from the photo we used standard fiberglass insulation. Now you may wonder how this jives with our "green" building approach. Well, it doesn't. Here's the problem (and it's so lame I can't believe it's my alibi) getting green materials in the small increments we need for this house is nearly impossible. We found it out with the Hardi Plank exterior and were right back there when it came time for insulation.

There's gotta be some sort of collective buying power that the Home Depot 2 blocks away has that it could package greener options and still make a profit. In fact I have a whole new integrated marketing plan worked out for Home Depot. If any of you out the know or are the CMO please drop me a line (if I were prone to emoticons I would insert a winky here.)

As you can see from the photos the kitchen is beginning to come back together. The soffit framing has been installed and all of the ceiling insulation (well let's say "most") is up. Electrical is the next thing. The schematic has been designed. It looks like we will run a sub panel off of the main to run the kitchen and bathroom. We did the same thing with the second and third floors. In fact the only thing left on the original electric is the dining room and basement. I expect before it's all done we will rewire that too.

After attempting to use the bathroom sink to do dishes we realized what a wrong headed notion not having a kitchen sink was. We got the old sink out of the backyard and made this nifty 2x4 stand and were back in business. To drain I rigged up a funnel with a piece of tubing (think beer bong) and we were back in business.

Finally, after having sat in the back yard all summer it was time to clean up and reinstall the radiators. We wire brushed the multiple coats of paint off of them revealing the natural metal color. The surface was finished with a clear mat sealant and they were reinstalled (carrying those things up nd down stairs makes you realize exactly how heavy they are). Just in time too the cats are very happy to have them to hug as the evening temps begin to drop.

what'd you do this weekend?

 I think this may be the only existing photo (shocking I know) of the second floor exterior rear. As was the case in the front, there were(are) two lop sided window mountings. The contractor had provided replacement windows for the rear that he was going to install (like a month or so ago). In an effort to speed things along and do it the right way, the line where our work begins and the contractor's ends got a bit blurred this weekend.

We ended up totally reconstructing the exterior wall. We tore it back far enough to insulate from the outside and rebuild. This was sort of a convoluted approach to insulation, but it meant we didn't have to remove the original plaster and lathing on the inside of the house, which is very messy. The windows were the contractor's job, but the removal of 5 layers of siding and asphalt wasn't. I was afraid of what it was going to look like once they were finished "flashing" back the almost 6 inches of siding to "install" the new windows. I was pretty convinced it was something I didn't want. So we did it the right way. All we have left to do is tar paper and side it. We're thinking some sort of metal siding. Think modern or think barn-- either way will get you to the material we're talking about.

Below is each layer we exposed as archeological dig. Well there's one exception: another layer of stone looking asphalt came between the aluminun foil foam board and the green asphalt. This layer was sadly shot with the lens cap firmly in place on the camera.

master of my domain

We beat it! Last night was the official test of how well we insulated the water main running in from the street. The conditions were perfect; high wind, and temperatures well into the teens. We had installed a dense fiberglass insulating sleeve on the pipe and then put pink panther wall insulation above and below.

The amount of wind that was whistling through the cellar was drastically reduced. But mostly, when we got up this morning the pipes were totally fine. It's an odd feeling of accomplish to beat the elements, but I kinda like it.

and there was water

11:45 Monday night, the water is running again-- heat and patience paid off!

out with the old, in with the programmable

In our ongoing effort to see exactly how close we can become with our heating system we replaced yet another part today. Gone is the old school mercury switch of yore and in waltzes....

The RiteTemp 8035, a 7 day programmable unit with large touch screen interface. If we can begin to control the temperature by auto setting colder and warmer parts of the day then we can run the furnace even less (no big news there). Sadly though we may currently be using a similar method to avoid running the reservoir dry. Hence addressing our symptoms but still sizing up how to approach the problem.

If nothing else the new unit comes with a nifty pda pointer-- ripe to be lost.

steamed

We have a bolier issue. When Charlie helped us light it a few weeks back it appeared to be working fine. I was a bit skeptical about the accuracy of the thermastat but we figured that could be dealt with.

Basically, we have a gas furnace that functions as a boiler to make steam that is sent to radiators which subsequently heats the house.

Over the weekend it appeared that the furnace wouldn't come on at all. On closer inspection last niight Micahel discovered (with charlie again participating by phone) that the water level was low hence the furnace would not light (at least that precaution works). He filled it to the proper level and it lit right up.

Now here's the big question. The water was at the proper level when we lit the pilot a couple of weeks back. Where did the water go? It wasn't intensely steamy nor do any of the radiators appear to be leaking (well no obvious signs of water damage).

On the up side, once it cranked back up it heated the house in no time at all.

The plan is to monitor it over the next few days and see if we can figure out what is going on. Eventually we need to have work done on it to install the new low profile exhaust so that we can remove the chimney on the second floor (gets in the way of the proposed stair run). Additionally, the inspector said it only had another year or so on it tops, and with the new square footage we may need more BTU's. Although, if were only adding another 15x24 room it seemed to be PLENTY of heat in our test run last night.