No more winter winds....

Luckily, even though it is a 1920's house, it has replacement windows.  However, they were cheap replacement windows 20 years ago, so they leak air like a sieve.  Even though this has been an extremely mild winter thus far (58 degrees on Feb 1, 2016 and 52 degrees on Feb 4, 2016), I am still committed to making energy efficient improvements.  Enter the interior storm widow build.

If you have not heard of interior storm windows, maybe you have seen people in cold climates cover their windows with plastic to stop the draft coming in?  This is like that, but better.  I have built frames that are then wrapped on both sides with shrink wrap plastic so you end up with a double glazed plastic window insert.  The frames are made 1/2" smaller than the window openings.  This enables them to be edged with 1/2 by 1/2 foam weather stripping that makes them a tight press fit into the window.  It also seals the window area, and makes a big difference in air infiltration.  With less air flowing into the house, there is less hot air being displaced, so the house stays warmer, and the heat runs less.  With a cost of between $10-20 per window, this may seem like a large outlay of money, but my dad, who has also done this, said for the 60ish windows in his house, it paid itself back in under a year.  While I have not kept detailed records, and also have not done a winter in this house without them, I cannot speak to how quickly they will pay themselves back.  On the other hand, I can feel a marked difference in how warm the house feels, and how long it takes for the heat to kick on.

On a tip from my dad, I bought pre-primed, finger-jointed boards, as my windows are white.  This means that I did not have to paint them to match, which cut down on the time it takes to cut, assemble, cover, and install them.  You do have to be careful when assembling them to make sure the primed edge is facing in, as I ripped 1x4's in half, so one edge is bare wood.  The added complication for me was that I used half lap joints to assemble them (stronger than butt joints), so I had to consider which side the dado's were on.  Not all of my interior storms ended up with white borders on the inside, but it is trivial.

Because these windows are covered in shrink wrap material, if a storm window has a dimension of more then about 50", a cross piece is necessary.  If the crosspiece is not used, the shrink wrap will pull the center of the frame inward, making it no longer line up with the window frame (read: it leaks air, otherwise).


If you do a good job measuring where the crosspiece gets installed in relation to the window, it essentially disappears where the two window halves meet.  This makes the interior storms almost invisible.















On the other hand, if you are installing one where no one is likely to see it, who cares what it looks like.  This is covering the hatch to the attic crawl space.  I attempted to weather strip the hatch and insulate it, but both were poorly executed due to space and time constraints.  The hatch is the weak point in the attic insulation at this point anyway, since I blew in about 25 bags of cellulose insulation this fall.  When the house was inspected we were told there was only 0-10" of insulation up there.  In climate zone 6, code for attic insulation is r-49+.  With a maximum of r-32 up there, we were deficient in insulation, especially when you consider that over the dormer-ed sections had none.  By cutting access holes and blowing in 25 bags worth of insulation, we are now above r-49 pretty much everywhere.  The only places the are deficient are the attic hatch and the cathedral sections.  Those are posts for the future though!

Sometimes you just get fed-up....

I have a washer that works pretty well.  It came with the house.  I am not looking to replace it until it fully dies.  Until then, however, I am not interested in fighting with it every second or third load of wash, having to wrestle it back into place.  Part of the problem is that the washer is missing one of the pads on its feet.  I have it shimmed so it is level, but it is not shimmed with rubber, so it has a tendency to walk.  It also is sitting on a not 100% level floor.  The whole floor is sloped to the gravity drain in the corner of the basement.  Also, there are dips and divots and waves in the concrete under the washer, so it doesn't have to move far to then be out of level.  Once the unit is out of level, it walks to the end of its leashes (aka- water hoses), so in an attempt to save a major water issue, and to stop wrestling the damned thing, it has been bolted to the floor.  I realized that it still needs some ability to move, but not much.  It also needs to be removable for when it dies.

Yes, I could have just bought a new rubber foot for the washer and hoped that would fix it.  Sometimes when you are mad, though, you just want to show the damned thing who's boss.  This is one of those times.  Eventually I may build a platform for both the washer and dryer, and that will need to be bolted in place, so in an attempt to justify my poor rationality in this case, I now have the bolts in the floor.

Steampunk? No, just plumbing......

Having bought a 1920's house, there is still a cast iron (clawless) claw-foot tub in the bathroom.  While I love the style and size of the tub, it makes plumbing in the modern era more difficult without spending a fortune on new fixtures.  When we moved in, there was just a sprayer hose connected to the hot and cold water mixer.  We replaced this with one that came off the unit we had in the apartment.  When we did this, we got full city water pressure.  This makes for a great shower, in the sense that you can essentially pressure-wash yourself.  It also makes you go through hot water like no one's business.  While I like the high pressure, I would rather spend less on my power bill, since our hot water is electric.  Enter my plumbing.  I needed to get the system so that I could put the shower head on that was regulated to 2.5 gallons/min.  Not only will this save us water, but it will also use less hot water, so therefore less electricity.  When I get my solar hot water system set up, this will be moot, but I have not gotten there yet.


So, I had some 1/2" copper pipe and fittings, but I had to pick up a few other parts to make the unit work.  I could have spent several hundred dollars on a new plumbing fixture that had both a tub faucet as well as the shower riser.  Instead, I spent a few dollars (>10, excluding tools) to build the riser.  Now I have the shower head mounted with the sprayer attachment.  Once I took a test shower, the pressure is way down, but I no longer run out of hot water in 5 minutes or less.



I do have to note that neither am I a plumber, nor did I look up if this passes code, but I am sure the 1920's faucet doesn't pass modern code either.  And while I was going to pat myself on the back for sweating the pipes and fittings together without any leaks (since I have never done this before), I did notice after a day or two, the bottom fitting was leaking a bit.  I took the whole riser off and re-sweated the fitting, and it appears to be fixed.  I do have to give it a few days though to see if it is really fixed, or just another 2 day repair.