more renovations
Aug. 15th, 2005 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonEveryone who doesn't care to read about or see house renovations or alternative energy installations, feel free to skip this now. Fair warning ;>
On a totally different note, here's a picture of one of our houseguests cleaning up some of the debris the morning after a bardic circle. Oh, there are some choice stories, and no, I'm not tellin'.
Anyhow, aside from a massive top-to-bottom house-cleansing due to incoming in-laws (they're spending a week scouting out the area for possible relocation -- the power of the grandchild strikes again!), my partner got the floor tiles in the hall bathroom grouted, which means tomorrow I can put the toilet back in, and then build the wooden shelf for the green glass starfish basin bowl and put in the keen in-wall copper sink fixtures I found. Pics on that as it progresses.
In the meantime, I did some minor demolition work in the master bath, taking out the horrible Hollywood dressing-room-style lighting and the glued-to-the-wall mirror and putting in a mirrored shelving unit that had originally been the top of the yardsale dresser I bought for $45 a few weeks back and turned into a china hutch. Here's the bathroom before. Ick. Here's a shot of the new light fixture installed, just after I cracked the mirror (turns out there was simply no good way to get it off in one piece, guess there's some bad luck for me, but I have to admit, I was secretly glad for the excuse to make lots of glass-breaking tinkly noises ;>). Here and here are two angles of the work in progress at its present state. The next steps are taking out the sink and faucets, putting a 2" thick walnut-stained moisture-sealed wooden top over the formica top of the vanity, cutting a hole and dropping a beaten-copper basin sink onto it, with antique-style copper plumbing fixtures, and dropping a wooden panel off the side of the vanity to make it the same width as the mirrored shelving unit (the extra space added to the side is where the trash can and plunger, etc will go). This is remodeling on the ultra-cheap, but I like how it's coming out.
And I got the 957-gallon hot water storage tank into the basement and set up, with the help of my father-in-law and Lovely Housemates. This beast (48" tall and 86" in diameter) is a heat storage unit that goes in as a companion to the wood-fired boiler I'm putting in sometime in the next couple of weeks to replace our current oil boiler. The tank acts as a big general-purpose heat battery, which allows the wood furnace to be fired up maybe once a day in the winter, once a week in the summer. The furnace burns very hot and very fast (greatly increasing efficiency, decreasing smoke/pollution and creosote buildup in the chimney), and heats the water in the tank, and the tank heats the house via the radiators and provides domestic hot water for the next 24+ hours. A very nice way to go, especially because I can later add a solar hot water system or propane backup to the same tank -- anything that makes hot water can be used to heat/"charge" the tank. It's also a seriously oversized system for our current house, so if I want to make an addition out back, and/or put in radiant-floor heating somewhere down the line, no problem. And none of us have to be a slave to a wood burner that needs to be constantly fed and tended. A full load once a day is just fine by me.
So here's the tank in its squashed-so-it-fits-through-doors form, and in its intended location. This is, er, me getting tanked in the tank, after installing the bottom and base. Don't worry, they eventually let me out. (Cool Hand Luke moment... "Anyone caught not turning off lights, or bringing bad wine into the house...spends a night in the Tank.")
After vacuuming out and cleaning out the tank liner (any sharp things in tank, plus 957 gallons of hot water = very, very bad), with some moral support, I made my break for it, and the tank was finally in place. The 4 120 lb heat exchanger coils still need to go in and soldered together, and some sensors need to be placed, but it's mostly done. No water in it yet, though, so the real test is yet to come...
The real key here is whether I get the furnace in and installed before I head out of town for a bit...since the in-ground oil tank (ugh) for the oil heater has to come out of the ground dry/empty, and there was no point in buying expensive oil we wouldn't use anyway, the tank hasn't been filled lately, and at some point, we'll run out of oil and everyone starts taking cold showers (no problem with heat in August, 75-80 degree days, 55-65 degree nights). At that point, though, the pressure builds rapidly for me to get the wood furnace in IMMEDIATELY. I could come back to a rather hostile house if they have to go a week or two with the only hot water coming off the stove ;>
On a totally different note, here's a picture of one of our houseguests cleaning up some of the debris the morning after a bardic circle. Oh, there are some choice stories, and no, I'm not tellin'.
Anyhow, aside from a massive top-to-bottom house-cleansing due to incoming in-laws (they're spending a week scouting out the area for possible relocation -- the power of the grandchild strikes again!), my partner got the floor tiles in the hall bathroom grouted, which means tomorrow I can put the toilet back in, and then build the wooden shelf for the green glass starfish basin bowl and put in the keen in-wall copper sink fixtures I found. Pics on that as it progresses.
In the meantime, I did some minor demolition work in the master bath, taking out the horrible Hollywood dressing-room-style lighting and the glued-to-the-wall mirror and putting in a mirrored shelving unit that had originally been the top of the yardsale dresser I bought for $45 a few weeks back and turned into a china hutch. Here's the bathroom before. Ick. Here's a shot of the new light fixture installed, just after I cracked the mirror (turns out there was simply no good way to get it off in one piece, guess there's some bad luck for me, but I have to admit, I was secretly glad for the excuse to make lots of glass-breaking tinkly noises ;>). Here and here are two angles of the work in progress at its present state. The next steps are taking out the sink and faucets, putting a 2" thick walnut-stained moisture-sealed wooden top over the formica top of the vanity, cutting a hole and dropping a beaten-copper basin sink onto it, with antique-style copper plumbing fixtures, and dropping a wooden panel off the side of the vanity to make it the same width as the mirrored shelving unit (the extra space added to the side is where the trash can and plunger, etc will go). This is remodeling on the ultra-cheap, but I like how it's coming out.
And I got the 957-gallon hot water storage tank into the basement and set up, with the help of my father-in-law and Lovely Housemates. This beast (48" tall and 86" in diameter) is a heat storage unit that goes in as a companion to the wood-fired boiler I'm putting in sometime in the next couple of weeks to replace our current oil boiler. The tank acts as a big general-purpose heat battery, which allows the wood furnace to be fired up maybe once a day in the winter, once a week in the summer. The furnace burns very hot and very fast (greatly increasing efficiency, decreasing smoke/pollution and creosote buildup in the chimney), and heats the water in the tank, and the tank heats the house via the radiators and provides domestic hot water for the next 24+ hours. A very nice way to go, especially because I can later add a solar hot water system or propane backup to the same tank -- anything that makes hot water can be used to heat/"charge" the tank. It's also a seriously oversized system for our current house, so if I want to make an addition out back, and/or put in radiant-floor heating somewhere down the line, no problem. And none of us have to be a slave to a wood burner that needs to be constantly fed and tended. A full load once a day is just fine by me.
So here's the tank in its squashed-so-it-fits-through-doors form, and in its intended location. This is, er, me getting tanked in the tank, after installing the bottom and base. Don't worry, they eventually let me out. (Cool Hand Luke moment... "Anyone caught not turning off lights, or bringing bad wine into the house...spends a night in the Tank.")
After vacuuming out and cleaning out the tank liner (any sharp things in tank, plus 957 gallons of hot water = very, very bad), with some moral support, I made my break for it, and the tank was finally in place. The 4 120 lb heat exchanger coils still need to go in and soldered together, and some sensors need to be placed, but it's mostly done. No water in it yet, though, so the real test is yet to come...
The real key here is whether I get the furnace in and installed before I head out of town for a bit...since the in-ground oil tank (ugh) for the oil heater has to come out of the ground dry/empty, and there was no point in buying expensive oil we wouldn't use anyway, the tank hasn't been filled lately, and at some point, we'll run out of oil and everyone starts taking cold showers (no problem with heat in August, 75-80 degree days, 55-65 degree nights). At that point, though, the pressure builds rapidly for me to get the wood furnace in IMMEDIATELY. I could come back to a rather hostile house if they have to go a week or two with the only hot water coming off the stove ;>
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 09:22 pm (UTC)Dern near off topic but bardic related
Date: 2005-08-16 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 03:24 pm (UTC)Re: Dern near off topic but bardic related
Date: 2005-08-16 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-16 03:37 pm (UTC)The water in the tank itself actually never comes out of the tank, it acts as a big heat battery, transferring its heat via three large heat-exchanger coils to the water that goes to the radiators, and one coil dedicated to heating the water that goes to the domestic hot water line. So I think what that means is that we have essentialy unlimited hot water, as the tank/heat exchanger should be able to heat the domestic hot water faster than we could use it, even with all of the showers in the house going at the same time. Woo hoo!