House renovation gourmet....sorta

House renovation cooking...sorta

September 26th --  I have always thought that when people call themselves "foodies" it is pretentious and unnecessary, especially  if true.  I enjoy cooking and trying new recipes, but I would never call myself a foodie.  I would call myself someone who has sometimes equated cooking with chemistry -- it is all about the elements and how they react with one another to form something different and surprising.  Also, like chemistry, it is often all about the tools and techniques.

Living among the ruins with no kitchen, few kitchen tools, no stove or oven, and only a microwave that is on its last legs, (well, I do have my espresso machine and grinder), the options are limited and the challenges great.  

Tonight I decided it was time to cook.  In the refrigerator I had some eggs,  cheese, green onions, basil from the garden, spinach and a sweet red pepper.  The result....a pretty decent microwave frittata-like dish.  Not only was this pretty tasty, but the result encourages the possibility of other warm dishes to come.

This really was a chemistry experiment that turned into an edible dinner as the eggs and cheese set in a way that I never imagined was possible in the microwave.  Nevertheless, I am counting the days to when I will have an actual kitchen again!

Where there is heat, there is fire....

Where there is heat, there is fire....

September 25th  --  Yesterday's blog post was all about the zone heating system.  The heating contractors arrived before the framers and continue with installing a maze of furnace venting and pipes for the vacuum zone system.  As I was leaving one of the guys was about to cut a hole in the red oak floor to install a heat register in the foyer, which has never been heated in the 110 year history of this old house.  I told the guy that I was excited that there would be heat in the foyer, but I couldn't stand to see him cut a hole in my oak floor, and I asked him to wait until I was out the door.  This is what I found when I got home.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        There is a maze of vents and pipes throughout the flooring (yes, eventually, the red oak floors will be repaired and patched to look like they do in the photo above)

As I closed the front door to walk to the car to drive to my office, the plumbing supply truck pulled up and the soaking bathtub was delivered and is still sitting on the front porch.  How they will get this up to the upper level is beyond me.

And, the fireplace in the master bedroom on the upper level has been installed:

And,  the fireplace in the gathering room addition on the main level has been installed.  .  

Here is the vent for the main level fireplace, and soon the mason will install brick on the exposed plywood.

Speaking of the mason, he is busy laying brick around the foundation of the house. 

Below you can see the "brick ledge" that was part of the foundation and how the new construction will "fit in" with the original house with this brick element.  Eventually all of the brick will be painted all the same color.

The sun is starting to hang low in the sky and is casting this weird beam of light against the newly installed door that leads to the mud room.  I look forward to discoverying how the light will play against the doors, windows and decks of this house with the seasons.

Standing inside the gathering room, here is a view of the rear-entry door.

 This project will begin its fifth month in a few days.  Before construction started a colleague who also lived in the midst of a renovation was trying to give me advice, and the thing that has stuck in my mind was, "At the end of a long day at work, you will be excited to finally come home to discover what additional piece of the final puzzle has appeared."  

I can't wait to come home from work tomorrow.

Bring on the heat...

Bring on the heat....

September 24th  -- Fall has arrived; the days are growing shorter, the nights are getting colder and I'm ready to bring on the heat.

The work pace has slowed a bit and it is now all about getting the "subs" to finish their part of the project.  The heating contractors are working away to install what is a relatively complex zone-heating system.  Complex in the sense that there has been so much new construction in terms of walls and rooms, that they have to design where the heating vents will go.  A tricky part of this is that there are three rooms on the upper level of the original house that have heat registers in the ceiling and the heating ducts have to go through the attic, where there isn't much space for the crew to do their work.  These photos illustrate the challenge:

This is the "hole" in the upper-level bathroom that heating ducts will need to travel from the basement.

At the top of the "hole" you can see furnace venting that will travel through the attic.

 And, then the vent has to travel to the heat registers in the ceiling (this is the ceiling of the upper-level bathroom that I'm currently using).

This is the "old" furnace, a Lennox circa 1970s...

The "trusty" Lennox furnace used to be positioned here:

And the new, Bryant 92% efficient furnace has been positioned in its place, along with the control box that will run the vacuum system that will operate the dampers for the zone system (more about that in a bit).

The new heating system will have four zones -- old house, new house addition, upstairs, and downstairs.  The zones are defined by the duct work.

Here are a few shots of the duct work as it comes off the new furnace and travels across the existing basement to the crawlspace under the new addition.

 Here is the duct leaving the basement and entering the crawl space under the addition.

One of the challenges in heating the house is that the original house outer brick wall and lath and plaster wall construction is rated at R 7 (the R-value is the measure of thermal resistance -- the higher the number, the better the insulation) and the new house construction will be rated at an R-value over 20.  The building codes here require that for the section of the roof where there is no attic, the R-value must be 38 (foam insulation will be shot into the space between the wallboard and the roof rafters).  So, the challenge is to heat the "colder" parts of the house (R 7) without baking the "warmer" parts of the house (R 38).  The most energy efficient way to do this is by using a zone heating system.

A zone heating system divides up the entire house into different zones and each zone is controlled by its own thermostat.  Since there is one furnace, the challenge is to control the heated air that travels through the ducts to the different zones of the house.  Since this is a forced air furnace, one way to control the heat through the different zones is to use dampers in the vents to increase or decrease the flow of the heated air.  

Zone heating systems have been around for a while, but most have used motorized dampers which are prone to problems - the more moving parts, the greater the chance for a moving part to fail.  To avoid these problems a vacuum system is being installed in my house.   Each zone will have its own thermostat.  Each thermostat sends a signal to the furnace and the furnace heats up and turns on the blower motor to circulate the heated air.  The signal from each thermostat goes to an electric control unit that uses the vacuum system to open or close the dampers in the vents. 

Here is a photo of the damper mechanism that fits in the venting.  As shown below, the damper is positioned in the "closed" position so that no or very little heated air will travel through the venting.

Here is the damper mechanism in the "open" position so that the maximum amount of heated air can travel through the venting.  The dampers can also be positioned in between the "open" and "closed" positions as shown in these photos.

In the photo below, you can see the little "nipple" where the vacuum hose will connect to the damper mechanism to control the position of the damper in the vents.  The design is very simple, very few moving parts, and much more reliable than damper systems that use servo-mechanisms or motors to position the damper to control the amount of heated air that flows through the vents.

This will be a four-zone system.  There will be one thermostat or zone for the upper-level master bedroom and dressing area (the master bathroom will have radiant heat under the tile floor so there won't be cold tile floors).  A second zone will be the upper-level bathroom, bedroom (that I use as a home office) and sitting room.  The third zone will be the original house main level foyer, living room, dining room and guest room/bath suite.  The fourth zone will be the kitchen, laundry room, gathering room addition, mud room/rear entry and main level bathroom.

The framing crew is down to two guys who are doing "mop up" -- which includes finishing details.  The door that leads from the upper-level master bedroom to the covered deck was installed today, as shown below.

The photo below shows the new door as well as the framing for the fireplace that will be installed in the master bedroom.  This is a steel door that has a blind inside the window panel that I can adjust as this is a west-facing door.

The framing crew also installed the siding to the back of the house as well as the cedar shingles that you can see above the siding (starting above the windows).  The siding and the shingles will be painted when the entire house is ready to be painted. 

The mason is also back to install brick around the foundation of the addition and on the west side of the new addition where the new fireplace will be installed. This brick will tie the design of the new construction to the brick of the original house.   In the photo to the right you can see where that the brick will be laid up to the soffit (below the covered deck) for the fireplace for the gathering room addition.


With the shorter days and cooler nights, and no functional heating system,  the main way to "warm up" in the morning is the old fashioned way....jump into a hot shower.  The average first frost in these parts is in about 2.5 weeks, and the first snowfall could happen anytime.  It is almost time to set up the down sleeping bag in the alternative sleeping arrangement!