Insulation done yesterday and some canoe
Oct. 9th, 2010 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillYesterday the insulation guys finished putting in the insulation.
Pretty much all of Thursday was taken up with putting in the soffit protectors. Okay let me explain what that means; soffits are vents into the attic from the outside of the house--they look like little grills under the eaves, and they (combined with either a ridgetop vent or vents in the ends of the gables) make sure that air can flow through your attic so moisture doesn't build up in there and cause rot. So you *don't* want your soffits blocked with insulation, and that's where the soffit protectors come in; they are stapled between the rafters and basically turn the rafters and the roof between them into a tube that runs to the soffits. They are a couple of feet long, so when the insulation is blown in, they still stick up over the top of it, providing little tunnels for the air from the soffits.
Our roof isn't very steep, so there isn't much room down by the soffits. There's a reason why I paid good money to have someone *else* do this for me. The whole thing was complicated by the fact that the kitchen and 2 bathroom fans vent into the attic, and I insisted that they be protected with some sort of baffles too--I need my fans to actually vent. At one point we had to establish where the guest bathroom vent came up into the attic, because when I went up to inspect they'd only fenced off two vents. I crawled back to the ladder, down it, marched through the house, dripping the old insulation (cellulose) as I went, and turned on the guest bathroom fan, while the master carpenter hung out in the attic, trying to see where the air came out. He eventually found it way over by the outside wall--it had been hidden by a little fiberglass batt, probably when the first insulating job (a piddly R-19 but standard when the house was built) was done.
Since this new layer of insulation was going to end up well over the level of the joists, I insisted that they prop up a crawl-way on 2 x 8s so that if we ever needed to get to, for example, the dryer hose, we could, without swimming through the insulation. That probably added several hundred dollars to the operation, as they had to put 2 x 8s all the way to the back of the house, blow in the insulation, and then nail 2 foot wide lengths of OSB over them--it's not so much the materials, though that probably was a chunk--but it takes a while to do something like that.
Actually blowing in the insulation (I was in the woodshop, puttering around designing the thwarts for Constance) probably look less than an hour.
And now our house has a very fluffy white blanket in the attic. Which I hope will help reduce our heating and cooling bills for the lifetime of the house.
And Thursday I made cardboard patterns for the back thwart and foot thwart respectively, and drew out the back thwart on the ash I had (several times, actually) and established that no, I absolutely could not fit the foot thwart on it too, and (after the insulation guys were done) went to Jeffries and bought a piece of ash for the foot thwart. Which only cost me $ 2.43--I actually regret losing the driving time more than anything else.
And today I drew out the foot thwart pattern on the new piece of ash, and thought about bandsawing everything out but decided that I really needed to work on the seat because the thwarts would be much quicker than the seat. So I planed the seat some more and got the pieces closer to level and square and the same height as each other, and laid out the mortises and tenons. And right about then I wanted a break (laying out mortises and tenons is harder than it sounds) so I went off and cleaned out some more driveway cracks and sealed them and then Kip came home and I remembered I needed to fix the mower flap back on the mower so I did that.
And then I thought I should clean out under the house because all the junk we had to take out of the attic for the insulators is waiting by the curb for junk removal on Monday and wouldn't it be clever to get the junk out from under the house too? But I'm too tired.
Tomorrow I need to actually *cut* the mortises and tenons. And possibly the thwarts too. And putty some driveway cracks and clean out under the house.
Pretty much all of Thursday was taken up with putting in the soffit protectors. Okay let me explain what that means; soffits are vents into the attic from the outside of the house--they look like little grills under the eaves, and they (combined with either a ridgetop vent or vents in the ends of the gables) make sure that air can flow through your attic so moisture doesn't build up in there and cause rot. So you *don't* want your soffits blocked with insulation, and that's where the soffit protectors come in; they are stapled between the rafters and basically turn the rafters and the roof between them into a tube that runs to the soffits. They are a couple of feet long, so when the insulation is blown in, they still stick up over the top of it, providing little tunnels for the air from the soffits.
Our roof isn't very steep, so there isn't much room down by the soffits. There's a reason why I paid good money to have someone *else* do this for me. The whole thing was complicated by the fact that the kitchen and 2 bathroom fans vent into the attic, and I insisted that they be protected with some sort of baffles too--I need my fans to actually vent. At one point we had to establish where the guest bathroom vent came up into the attic, because when I went up to inspect they'd only fenced off two vents. I crawled back to the ladder, down it, marched through the house, dripping the old insulation (cellulose) as I went, and turned on the guest bathroom fan, while the master carpenter hung out in the attic, trying to see where the air came out. He eventually found it way over by the outside wall--it had been hidden by a little fiberglass batt, probably when the first insulating job (a piddly R-19 but standard when the house was built) was done.
Since this new layer of insulation was going to end up well over the level of the joists, I insisted that they prop up a crawl-way on 2 x 8s so that if we ever needed to get to, for example, the dryer hose, we could, without swimming through the insulation. That probably added several hundred dollars to the operation, as they had to put 2 x 8s all the way to the back of the house, blow in the insulation, and then nail 2 foot wide lengths of OSB over them--it's not so much the materials, though that probably was a chunk--but it takes a while to do something like that.
Actually blowing in the insulation (I was in the woodshop, puttering around designing the thwarts for Constance) probably look less than an hour.
And now our house has a very fluffy white blanket in the attic. Which I hope will help reduce our heating and cooling bills for the lifetime of the house.
And Thursday I made cardboard patterns for the back thwart and foot thwart respectively, and drew out the back thwart on the ash I had (several times, actually) and established that no, I absolutely could not fit the foot thwart on it too, and (after the insulation guys were done) went to Jeffries and bought a piece of ash for the foot thwart. Which only cost me $ 2.43--I actually regret losing the driving time more than anything else.
And today I drew out the foot thwart pattern on the new piece of ash, and thought about bandsawing everything out but decided that I really needed to work on the seat because the thwarts would be much quicker than the seat. So I planed the seat some more and got the pieces closer to level and square and the same height as each other, and laid out the mortises and tenons. And right about then I wanted a break (laying out mortises and tenons is harder than it sounds) so I went off and cleaned out some more driveway cracks and sealed them and then Kip came home and I remembered I needed to fix the mower flap back on the mower so I did that.
And then I thought I should clean out under the house because all the junk we had to take out of the attic for the insulators is waiting by the curb for junk removal on Monday and wouldn't it be clever to get the junk out from under the house too? But I'm too tired.
Tomorrow I need to actually *cut* the mortises and tenons. And possibly the thwarts too. And putty some driveway cracks and clean out under the house.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-10 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-10 02:05 pm (UTC)I need to clean everything loose (left over from the previous owners) out from the crawlspace of the house, get heavy plastic, and cover all the dirt down there. It would be good if I stripped the old tattered insulation off all the heating ducts, sealed them, and reinsulated them, but that may have to wait.
I need to putty all the cracks in the driveway to keep the water out of the driveway foundation, because it will ruin the driveway calling for much more expensive and time consuming repairs. But the hands-and-knees work involved is so hard on my back I can only do it for an hour or two at a time and every crack needs to have the dirt painstakingly broken up and scratched loose (I'm using the handle of a file) and then swept or vacuumed out so the putty will stick.
I need to get the damn roof completely redone because the incompetents who did it five years ago didn't put drylock (a kind of rubber flashing) in the valleys and now the roof leaks when the wind is from the wrong direction. I have it in the queue with a well respected roofer, but it will be about five weeks before they can get to it.
I need to do some of the prep work for the League of Women Voters Candidates Forum--sort out who has our promotional banner and make sure it is coming, make a program to hand out with the attending candidates names and races and space for notes plus a LWV membership form on the bottom, photocopy said program and get it to the forum, buy (the League will reimburse me) two easels and get a large piece of posterboard made with the League's contact info.
And one of these days I really should update the League's website, but that will have to wait.
And in the meantime, the nicest days of autumn are slipping away and MY CANOE IS NOT FINISHED!
AAAUGH!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 01:49 am (UTC)Speaking of roof leaks, I've been trying for over a year to track down a leak somewhere near our woodstove chimney. The rain runs down the outside of the chimney and puddles on top of the stove. I thought it might be due to the way the chimney sections were installed (I think they were put in upside down) so this summer I capped the chimney with heavy plastic and duct tape: result - no change. About a month ago I sealed an area about four feet in diameter around the chimney with roofing cement and reinforcing tape, and so far, so good, but we haven't had a real gully washer yet to prove the concept. We really need to completely reroof, since our asphalt shingles are at least 30 years old and starting to show their age, but it just isn't in the budget right now.
You may get lucky with the canoe, though. Sometimes there are some decent days as late as mid-November, and perhaps you can get it finished by then.