78 new of 191 responses total.
If you wash the food off dishes there is not much for bacteria to grow on. Leftovers probably have a lot more bacteria than washed dishes. We put the last two space heaters under the front windows and the thermostats around the corner from them (doors in the way otherwise). I don't think it much matters what time of day we use heat, but the second meter makes it possible to get a lower rate at all times of day in winter. The next big challenge is to find a way to get the wires upstairs to the heaters (before closing in downstairs ceilings). Also the heaters should ideally be installed after the downstairs floors are tiled but I think we can put them in later.
Trying to find a way to put on IKEA light fixtures with a 1/2" pan and maybe a 1/2" round extender instead of a 1" wiremold box, to get it 1/2" higher up but that leaves a 1/2" gap. There is a lot of phone miscommunication going on with Jim, who refuses to come here, and the person doing the wiring. We have had the fixture on three different ways now and may go back to the first. We started by testing the four 3-way switches with a battery and LED and rewiring two so the switches were all down when the lights were all on. ---- a while later The extender is off, the pan is off, and we are going to put back the wiremold box. Only two hours going in circles. The fixture will be an extra inch down from the ceiling. We may even get up a smoke alarm (on wiremold box) today.
For $6 at ebay (has been as low as $4.50) I can get a Tork 125V 1000W 24-hour timer to use with the water-heater relay (120V) to turn the heater on and off at 30 min or longer intervals up to 24 times a day. I could put one with each thermostat (line voltage, non-programmable) to turn the heat off and on again once a day. $24 for four heaters. Much cheaper than programmable thermostats since I don't care what the temp drops to in 8 hours (1-2 deg F?).
The timers are actually $4 plus $2 shipping and combined shipping could be less. We got two ceiling lights in and started the first smoke alarm but the round metal plate that will hold it against the ceiling needs a couple of screw holes added first. Interesting effect of bulbous detector (alarm) against flat round metal box.
Ts Taylor emailed with his phone number, offering to help with the wiring, but I somehow deleted his email - please send it again (or could someone else who knows him send it to us or email us and I will send our phone number)?
The cheap Tork timer is $6, good for 15A. The heaters would work on a 15A circuit but we already have a lot of 20A breakers and No. 12 (20A) wire. A line-voltage thermostat is as low as $5, programmable $25. I asked at an online forum whether these timers wear out faster than programmable thermostats. Several reviews mentioned that some models go bad in a year or so. They are mechanical. A 20A mechanical timer is about $25. Someone at this forum said we should have wire brushed the paint off the box before added the ground bars, and grounded them to the neutral bars with the same wire as to the water pipe. But I think we are supposed to keep the ground and neutral bars separate in this main panel without bonding screw (another long discussion at two forums).
Jim says he has removed paint but it is not necessary. The mechanical timer by Tork (discontinued - lots of places have them marked way down in only almond color, $4 plus shipping) requires a 2.5" deep electrical box which I can't find for sale, and since we are doing surface wiring it would stick out rather far. A thermostat is 1.25" to 1.75" deep. They should not go in the same box or the timer will heat the thermostat. It is more work to use two boxes (including the wallboard). Standard boxes are 1.5", deep ones 2", and you can get shallower ones (1"?). The cheaper (mechanical - bimetal) line-voltage thermostats regulate temperature to within 3 deg F and do 2 cycles/hour, which I think means they would only go on and off twice an hour. If I get heaters that are 2-3 times calculated heat load, that would be about 10-15 min on and I think it could easily overshoot by more than 3 deg F with a lot of insulation. Bimetal types click, electronic types have TRIACS (quiet) which wear out. A much simpler solution is an electronic programmable thermostat, in one box. They should be kept away from drafts, supply air, and the sun.
Wikipedia discusses thermostats. The bimetal (mechanical) ones are built into baseboard and fan-forced heaters and turn things on and off. Programmable electronic ones can work like a lamp dimmer and reduce heat output, if I understand correctly, for more even temperatures. Or turn the heat on and off every minute or so. A hydronic heater would average things out anyway. Electronic ones can have relays (which click) or triacs which wear out. Turning the heater on and off a lot wears it out. Our plug-in hydronic heaters have never worn out - maybe they are talking about the fan types. It would be nice to postpone all this a year and just heat with the 1500W bathroom fan-forced heater with bimetal non-programmable built-in thermostat. Which should arrive some time in the next week but not be usable until we get an electrical inspection before having the meter installed in the time of day electric panel. By which time it won't be heating season.
LuxPro ELV4 (from the maker of the classic white windup kitchen timer) is a SP thermostat, heat only, 45-90F, electronic, with thermostat and clock and backlight, requires two AA batteries, allows 4 different heat periods a day, different settings weekdays and weekends, is $32 at http://www.westsidewholesale.com with free shipping for orders over $50. The LUX LV1 no-programmable model is $18.16. This is overkill but obviates the need for thermometer, clock, second box, and more wiring time, and may eventually pay for itself ($60 extra for five of them can save at least 15% of at least $100/year, 4 year or less payback). It should also even out temperature swings when the heat is on compared to a mechanical timer or thermostat. http://airnwater.com sells the heaters relatively cheap, with free shipping and currently 10% discount. Forget ebay. Today we will be wiring in three smoke alarms and two junction boxes for the alarms (which need to be wired to upstairs ones) and the lights. Jim's bathroom ceiling heater came today. He has a timer on the wall for it already (running his 300W heat lamp). My 750W hydronic heater came two days ago. Jim likes to test these.
The smoke alarms (photoelectric, 120V with 9V battery backup, interwired) are going in today (or at least one) on round wiremold boxes except for one on plain octagon box in the cellar (required inhabitable attics and basements, which I interpret as including uninhabitable basements which contain HRVs and dehumidifiers subject to electrical fires). The round 14-3 was too fat to fit through a hole so we had to replace it with a newer flat type. We will use it where there is only one not two cables. The alarms need to go on the ceiling at least 4" from a wall or corner, away from drafts or air supplies, stoves, combustion appliances, sinks and other sources of steam, and dust. Or on a wall with top between 4 and 12" from ceiling (which we will probably do upstairs, or use wiremold). They come with cute little pink shower caps to use while dusting. You should test them weekly, change the batteries once in a while (yearly?), and dust them when they get dirty so they will keep working. The GFCI and AFCI breakers also need to be tested regularly. I wonder if anyone does any of this testing. We have little stickers to go on the electric panels about these breakers/outlets. We got photoelectic ones for detecting smoldering fires (smaller particles). The radioactive ones detect more active fires. Some alarms use both. The next building code (not yet adopted by Michigan) will require sprinkler systems. The alarms are needed in bedrooms, in hallway to bedrooms within 21' of bedroom doors, one in basement, one on any other floor. We will do the kitchen despite the possibility of false alarms. Photoelectric give fewer false alarms and these can be turned off for a few minutes while you are chasing burnt food smoke out the doors and windows. I want to know if I am burning food, from another room. One alarm in, two more to go today, then a junction box for them. This one is wearing its cute little shower hat to keep out cement dust. The house is overheated due to this hot weather (nearly 30 F) and the sun shining in. UP to 53, which feels even warmer because the walls are 53 due to insulation. We have been taking off layers and I am not even working very hard, just fetching cable rippers, linesmens' plyers, nipples, green wire nuts, green grounding screws number 32 or smaller, No. 14 bare wires for grounding, brown tape and scissors, No. 1 philips screwdrivers. Now we are going to drill another hole because it proved too difficult to put even a skinny 14-3 through an existing hole with four cables in it (one No. 10, one No. 12, two 14s). Once all the wires are in and approved, I think we use firestop caulk in the holes around the wires. First they get stapled to the nearest board. Once the hole is drilled I go back to unrolling the coil of 14-3 and pushing it through a hole in the bottom of a stud wall into the crawlspace, where my friend pulls it in the direction of the cellar ceiling to attach to an octagon box and another smoke alarm. I was told to push through another ten feet, then pull back another ten feet. Now to choose a spot on the ceiling and install the alarm. One alarm per hour is splendid progress - we were missing a nipple for the 2nd of 3. --- One cellar smoke alarm in, but we will need to move it to put on the cellar ceiling before we do the outside faucet there. And the light. Lunch break (6:30 pm).
Events at http://a2reskilling.com from 11 to 5 today include: tanning animal hides, bike repair, ropemaking from wild plants, darning, singing in circle, writing haiku, making sauerkraut, presure cooking, mushroom logs, home funeral, and meditation. Our friend's fiberglass-cement demo was not even on this list but there is a PDF schedule of events. Rudolph Steiner School Newport Rd south of the river 11 to 5. Bring your own lunch, or at least your own plates and cups, or buy compostable ones there (Zero-Waste). I should go pack lunch and supper. This evening's schedule is a toilet repair for the neighbor and another smoke detector. These reskilling events seem to take place at least twice a year. Anyone with a skill is invited to teach it. What skills would grexers offer?
I thought I had posted my architect's invitation to her event: how to make
a fiberglass-cement house (demo in a yogurt cup):
I wanted to invite you to my session in the Reskilling Festival this
Sunday Feb 10th, 4pm, where I'll be giving an update on the progress
of our house, and mixing up a bit of our Glass Fiber Reinforced
Concrete mix so that people can experience what it is like for
themselves as they make a small pot out of it (materials cost $2).If
you want to RSVP for my session, you can go to
http://hourschool.com/courses/mi-passive-house-update-diy-gfrc-pots-in-ann-
arbor-mi,
and if you want to see what else is at the festival, see the
festival site http://a2reskilling.com/
Christina
My builder will also attend so we will be working a short day (eve).
We had an interesting day at the reskilling event. Talked to a newly appointed U of M mycologist who was selling mushroom spawn, someone demonstrating a very small steam turbine, sang rounds in a circle, and ran into several people we knew including the electrician who kindly took a look at our electrical panel and other wiring briefly once and said he would call this week about checking out our work before the inspector comes. Our friend showed a slide show of how she is building her house (complete with mud and ice) and then she mixed up a batch of fiber-reinforced cement (the new drill burned up in the process but she had brought the old one) which people played with in yogurt cups and also troweled onto a piece of styrofoam. One guy was really into it and wanted to cover the whole board so I suggested she hire him to help build the house on weekends (he agreed). He works for his father who trims trees and is big and strong. Our friend is small and stronger than many men. My 'builder' left at 5:00 to fix our neighbor's toilet while we cleaned up so I am not building today. There were people selling all natural organic vitamin-rich catfood and 'no-sugar' dog cookies (made with honey) and caps made from wool they spun themselves and books about gardening with native species. SOmeone from Project Hope in Ypsi talking about their Feb 16 seed exchange. Two women making soil blocks to plant seeds in (just dip the tray in water) and someone tanning animal hides. A sock darning class. A freecycle table where I found shoes, wool sock and gloves for our architect friend and two winter jackets (medium tall so not as baggy) and overpants for Jim and a wool hat for me. A big meditation class which we skipped. Ditto on bike mechanics and repair. Rudolph Steiner school is full of student drawings, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, on all the walls and even outdoors. A fun place. There was even a biodynamics table. Lunch was not organic (most of it) or whole grain but the dishes (please donate 10 c each) and utensils were compostable.
The 'glass' fiber in the cement is actually zircon fibers, a few inches long. The tape for cement board is probably the same. Glass does not hold up to alkaline environments.
LOL. If you are going to put honey into something, you might as well put high fructose corn syrup into it since at a molecular level, they are almost identical. As a sugar addict myself, I have been sucked into the idea that even though HFCS is bad, honey somehow is good since it is "natural". Not so! It is still sugar.
I have noticed that products sold in the store advertised as low-fat are always high in sugars, and those advertised as low-sugar have sucralose and/or other artificial sweeteners. ALDI now sells Stevia powder. The cat cookies looked quite good enough for humans - all natural ingredients. The dog biscuits had things like kale and blueberries along with locally purchased organic chicken from Sparrow Market. People treat their pets as family. Builder has not shown up or called yet so we may have time to learn to empty the waste and refill the yellow toner in the color laser printer so I can print out over 20 pieces of evidence in color of neighbors' misbehavior.
I am drinking Diet Rite. I think there is a vending machine on the other side of a Black Hole and that's where this cola comes from. It's like "hungry water" from the RO system which leeches nutrients on its way through the pipes.
Does anyone reading this know how to get hold of tsty?
regards,ts 734,817,1982 tsty@cyberspace.org tstytest@gmail.com
Re #127: Did youy mean ziercon or zirconia fibers? Zircon is zirconium silicate (a semi-precious mineral) and zirconia is zirconium oxide. I believe it is zirconia that is made into fibers for various purposes.
Re #128: You are quite right that HFCS and honey are very similar in their composition, but it is misleading to say "It is still sugar.". There are many kinds of "sugar". "Sugar is the generalised name for a class of sweet-flavored substances used as food." They differ in taste and behavior as nutrients. There are even indigestible sugars.
The fibers were in a bag labelled zircon, probably being zirconia. Thanks for tsty contact info - I hope he does not mind it being posted here. At least I cannot accidentally delete his phone number again ;=) Is Stevia sugar? Licorice?
as far as I know, there is a big difference between honey and high fructose corn syrup. Honey doesn't spoil, ever. Can the same be said of HFCS? As I recall, even honey product spoils over time, and it is 50%honey, 50%HFCS.
re #131 Does anyone reading this know how to get hold of tsty? By the toe, ponytail, or goatee?
I called and he called back and will stop by to help Wednesday. He is still very happily married and does not mind his contact info being made public on grex since it is already in his plan. We need to make the electric panel, wires in the crawlspace and wall look less like tangled spaghetti, and he may have ideas on how to get the circuits to upstairs and between rooms upstairs (through walls and floor).
I know TS has posted it online before, so I didn't think it would be a problem to post it again.
Thanks, Tony. Today I ordered three 24-hour timers for $17 including shipping, a discontinued model that controls 15A (or 1000W tungsten) rather than the other 20A model. Our relay for the water heater only needs about 1A at most. They wear out after 5-10 years so I am set for a while. I also ordered two heat-only LUX ELV4 electronic programmable thermostats. I want at least one programmable on each floor and maybe a timer on the others. After putting in the last downstairs smoke alarm, we discussed where to put the upstairs ones, using wiremold to run the wires on the ceiling like the lights, or high on the wall (tops 4-12" below ceiling). On the downstairs or upstairs lighting circuit (if on the upstairs, move one downstairs light to upstairs circuit). Also where to put the lights and switches and how to wire between them (through the walls and floor). And the upstairs outlets - how to get the power between different sections of wall with door between them (probably through the floor). How to get one upstairs outlet on the refrigerator circuit (for a freezer or a summer kitchen) and the upstairs bathroom outlet on the same circuit as the downstairs bathroom outlet (junction box in crawlspace?). We need to do 90% of the upstairs wiring (planning, first outlet in a wall) before putting on the downstairs ceiling. I got back at 8 pm and our architect friend gave us a private showing of the video we missed yesterday while helping her setup. Very complicated house that will be heated through PEX tubing with water that is heated during the summer by the sun and stored in a very well insulated place then pumped through the floor. 16" thick wall insulation - styrofoam blocks with fiber cement for strength on the outside. It looks a lot like adobe construction but the 'stucco' looking part is a grey skin over a white interior. There is a special plastic sheet outside to keep water away. They will be heating partly with sun, which there is more of by March once the stored hot water has cooled off. They will cool in summer with the same stored water. The house reminds me somewhat of an Egyptian temple. In the photos, you can see the neighbor's house above them on the hill - double garage without windows, house some place behind it. The neighbors have never shown any interest in the housebuilding for two years now. The cement gets pumped and sprayed on the walls where a crew trowels it flat. This crew was not ver perfectionist so the owners will have to put something smoother over the inside walls. There are also standard wood-framed walls and ceilings and roof with drywall on the interior (not cement board as in my house - too hard to work with). We had considered plaster over metal lath and did the front porch wall that way but it is awful to work with - hard to get smooth, sets much too fast, and you need to clean out the bucket completely between batches because any gypsum that has started to set acts as a catalyst for the next batch if even a trace is left in there. The thinset can in theory be worked for 2 hours but we used up each batch in about 30 min (5 lb instead of 5 lb powder). We considered a skim coat of plaster over 'blueboard' drywall. Through about the 50s people used to put a thick (1/2"?) coat of plaster over plaster lath, which is 2x4' pieces of dense gypsum board. It made for a nice dense hard surface that cracks at all the seams. Nowadays drywall is taped and sanded. I may use drywall on the ceiling as it would be difficult to skim coat a ceiling and the ceiling does not need to be hard since nobody will be bumping into it. (Jim says he once drove a forklift through a drywall wall, and we had a friend whose dog would go through the wall during thunderstorms). Before plaster lath, there was 19th century wood lath, made by sawing thin sheets of wood and soaking them in water and letting them crack - the Museum on Main St. has a sample in the attic. Some time before the 30s this was replace with thin slats of wood that people plastered (or cement stuccoed) over. The idea was to force some of the material through the cracks so it would hold on tighter. They are now making and advertising less dense drywall (that you can talk through) and sound-resistant drywall (has several layers in it which block sound?). There is greenboard with water-resistant paper, and a drywall in which the paper is not on the surface but ground up and mixed with the gypsum. There are at least two kinds of cement board. Durock is reinforced with glass (zirconia?) fiber. It is flexible, and rough surfaced, and harder to cut. We used it on the outside of the house, 4x8' sheets. You put it up with rust-resistant Durock screws (from scaffolding), mix up a bucket of grey cement-based powder (with some polymer in it) and trowel that on, then paint with latex-sand mixture and it lasts forever. Looks like rock, and there are two colors of lichen growing on the wetter areas of mine. It can also be used behind or under tile. Hardiplank is exterior cement board with often wood-grain effect, put on like regular wood siding but it won't rot or split. Our neighbor has it. They sell a less outgassing type without the woodgrain, in 1/4" or .4" thickness, for use with tile (the thinner stuff goes over a wood floor or counter). We used that for the walls, with Hardibacker screws (square drive). I got lots of opinions what to coat it with if used without tile and ended up using thinset mortar, the more expensive grade with a lot of added polymer to make it much stickier because the board is smooth and I apparently got a cheaper Lowes grade without polymer in it. I got it with white instead of grey sand. It can be left as is, covered with a concrete patching product to make it slightly smoother, painted with cement primer and then other paint, or tiled over later. Or you can tile directly without the skim coat. To skim coat, you spray the board so it won't absorb water from the mortar, mix up a batch (the recipe is for 50 lb but we got a kitchen scale and a tofu tub to mix 5 lb batches). Smear it on the wall, then trowel it flat. It smells for weeks afterwards and most of the water comes back out and we pour it out of the dehumidifier and reuse it. Before troweling we used zirconia fiber tape on the seams, and mortared them and the screws a day ahead of time. Before that we put acoustic sealant in the corners and along the floor edge. I got the most expensive type made with butyl instead of acrylic caulk, to keep it flexible. It never hardens so needs to be protected. The board is a real pain to cut. You score it with a special carbide tipped knife then break it at the cut, which looks easy in youtube videos but in reality if you have a narrow piece to remove you need to clamp it to some angle iron (bedframe) and push down on that, also using a board underneath. Cutting irregular shapes out is tricky. Someone sells a drill attachment that nibbles a line through the board which we ought to buy next time. The cement dust gets in everything and is bad for the lungs so I wore a mask over my nose. I tried wearing goggles but the mask made them fog up. I would mop up the dust before sweeping and wring it outdoors. This kept us overheated at 40 degrees. Wiring is more taxing on the brain but less on the back. The board was harder to put up because it went over flexible metal resilient sound channel (for sound proofing), which tends to bend away from your screw, so you need to clamp the ends of it, and first drill a depression, then put in the screw, then sometimes back it out because it hit wood when it should not have, and mark blue chalk lines on the board showing the safe area between the top of the wood and the top of the metal and try to hit those. We had to put some screws in then remove them and cut off the tips with a special bolt cutter so the tips would not hit wood in some areas. The boards we used on the walls were 3x5'. The windows started about 35" from the floor so we ran a row of boards sideways under them then an upright row above that. These boards weigh 40. For the walls without windows we will use the 80 lb 4x8' boards. The ceiling is 7' 6" so we have to trim a few inches off each board, using bedframe. When we do switches and outlets they will be surface mounted. Instead of cutting out a rectangle for an electrical box (which is pretty difficult in cement board using a drill) we will drill large holes and run wires though, then screw the boxes (handyboxes not gangboxes) to the outside of the wall (and probably use firestop caulk around the wires). Same for the ceilings, but with a round metal plate above to distribute the weight and a threaded arrangement under that to hold the wiremold box. Cement board has the advantage over drywall of not needing sanding. And it gives you twice the exercise.
Re #136: "Honey with less than 17.1 percent water will not ferment in a year, irrespective of the yeast count. Between 17.1 and 18 percent moisture, honey with 1,000 yeast spores or less per gram will be safe for a year. When moisture is between 18.1 and 19 percent, not more than 10 yeast spores per gram can be present for safe storage. Above 19 percent water, honey can be expected to ferment even with only one spore per gram of honey, a level so low as to be very rare." "HFCS consists of 24% water, and the rest sugars." So, you see that the reason that commericial HFCS might spoil (fermemt) is because it contains more water than honey. Bees figured this out a long time ago and make their honey with low water.
The library has a new cookbook for dogs (cooking for them, not cooking by or with them). One recipe calls for sauteeing finely cubed boneless skinless chicken breast with ripe tomatoes and blueberries. The dogfood at the festival also had blueberries. What is this with dogs and blueberries, some new fad? I doubt the dogs care about the taste. Also why can't they eat the other half of the chickens? Does canned dog food now advertise white meat?
resp:134 honey and HFCS-55 (the most common variety) have pretty much the same combination of fructose and glucose. Your body reacts to them the same way. The one benefit of honey is that it contains trace bits of pollen which can be beneficial but these days the big commercial honey producers are removing that stuff and what they sell is actually so similar to HFCS that while not completely identical, might as well be. People have a strong bias that what is 'natural' is healthier than what is man made but in this case, there is no difference. Honey is just as bad for your body as HFCS. I guess there are other forms of sugar as you mention so I'll just say that HFCS and Honey are similar sugars.
Honey usually has more taste. Today we need to put a smoke alarm and a light in a small room with metal wall and ceiling studs and joists. No need to drill holes for the wires because they come with premade holes, but you need to add plastic grommets to protect the wire sheathing, also use clips instead of staples to fasten the wire to the studs. There are special boxes for metal studs, and the grounding is done differently (maybe this assumes your walls are grounded?) but since we are putting all our boxes on the wall surfaces we can use handiboxes and wiremold boxes as usual. Hopefully TS can help with this. The metal studs etc. constitute a box inside a box and will make this room more soundproof - a place to escape to when there are garbage trucks going by continuously, or neighbors with power mowers. My piano has headphones so no need to put it in there to keep noise in. The window would benefit from a metal shutter. We won't actually put in boxes or fixtures, just wires to a junction box downstairs (not connected to the electric panel) so we can close up the downstairs ceiling then wire upstairs another year. We may need to wire between 3-way light switches through the floor. Repeat this for outlets and heat and doorbell etc. Getting a late start after trying to put yellow toner in the laser printer cartridge and discovering the problem is that the previous owner put in a new cartridge and neglected to remove the tape over the slot that lets toner out. Now we can print smoke alarms in brown or orange instead of pink. Yellow on white is not terribly legible. The printer was free at the curb.
Roger (my builder friend) just put a motor on the table saw with bolts and a large door hinge, after removing a mouse nest from it. We compared stories of electric stoves short-circuited by mice. My 60's model came with an electrocuted mouse in the top panel. It has remained 50-52 in here for a few days without the space heater apparently going in (it feels cold when I touch it), because it is up in the 20s and 30s now and there is enough heat from the dehumidifier (660W, runs continuously at high setting including defrost cycle) and 400W of fluorescent lights plus occasional incandenscent watts as well. When it is 0F outside double this amount of heat will keep it at 70, in theory. First we need to add another set of windows. And glaze the porches so heat does not escape when we go in and out. WIthout all this, a 70degF rise should require about 70/20 x 1000W or 3500W (much of which will come from cooking and sun).
The heater went on for a few minutes while we were planning how to run lighting and smoke alarms upstairs. We found a way to run only two more wires up for lighting - one in the wall between bathroom and bedroom, and one in the wall between the other bedroom and a smlaler room, then snake them both downstairs using some existing holes in the wood to a junction box. The four smoke alarms will probably need three but maybe only two runs. We decided to leave the 3-way switch for upstairs hall/stairway light but add a motion sensor that senses both motion on the stairway and motion in the upper hall (people coming out of bedrooms). We also planned how to run power to more upstairs outlets from the two there. We managed to avoid wiring in ventilation shafts, where we would have to put wallboard and ductwork before wiring (though it might mean fewer holes in wood). Through the edges of a slanty closet area over the stairs, through the floor to go around doors. Parts of this can be done after the downstairs ceiling. If the upstairs bathroom door swings out (against a shaft/shelving area) not in (against another shelving area) both the light switch and the heater can go where the door wood have swung in against, making the wiring much simpler and also pointing the heat in a better direction. Jim was very much in favor of the outswing door and will be happy about this. I should post floor plans some day - we have them plain, with plumbing, with lighting, with wiring, with smoke detectors, or with heaters. It got too crowded to combine them, but now we need to draw in the outlets to make sure the heaters don't go under them, and the door swings to place the switches and heaters (can't be behind a door swing). Jim drew a big pink circle connecting the four upstairs smoke alarms but in order to conform to reality we are changing this to two (three?) zigzags. It drives him crazy when he has to change all his lines to show where the wires are in practice rather than in theory. He drew in outlets every 12' or so, and we moved them to be on both sides of where beds might go. He drew a door swinging to where we want to put a heater so we reversed the door swing (it can block a closet when open). Armchair architects don't have all the information. Roger is replacing the lighted 3-way switch for upstairs hall light with a rocker-type unlighted one because we will use a motion sensor light up there. Also putting in a shallower gang box and wiring it neatly to impress TS and the inspector, with green wire nut instead of green clip. The box is embedded in a doorpost. There are three others like that, one of which we need to move out of the doorpost because it will keep us from putting in a 1 3/4" metal exterior door (or probably any thickness door). It will go inside a shelving area instead, where we now have enough room because we don't need to wire in that area. One new outlet or switch or light a day is good progress but so is 4 hours of planning rather than putting things some place they will need to be moved, or discovering we need to run three wires in a hole made large enough for two.
The three of us just spent two more hours fixing up the drawings to be closer to reality, removing two theoretical doors, moving a theoretical heater, moving/adding future outlets and a timer, and putting two switches back on the non-hinge side of two doors. One upstairs light needs to be moved to a downstairs light circuit (you can have only 9 fixtures on a 15A circuit even though we will use LEDs, about 27W per fixture or less, because someone might want to put in 105W of halogen lights instead of the LEDs which wont' go bad for 30 years). We now have up to date electrical drawings to show TS. The bathroom space heaters arrived. They and the water heater go into the second electrical panel, which I hope TS can help us hook up to the meter because Roger has never done that.
I spent an hour on the phone with my architect Christina Snyder talking about heat recovery ventilators - ductwork, dampers (you can adjust the supply air ends to give variable amounts of air which is necessary since all the ducts are 3" and rooms are different sizes and the longer duct runs have more friction), and balancing. She thinks I should have someone balance the runs (it may be required) but I would prefer to wait on that and do the whole house - why balance three rooms that you can just leave doors open between? Because of continuous ventilation, the whole house islikely to end up the same temperature unless I close off unused rooms (I should mark the dampers so they can be put back to the balanced positions again). She thought I should set the thermostats a bit higher than I wanted to compensate for 8 hours without heat (11 am to 7 pm peak rates) but I don't expect the temperatures to drop more than a few degrees anyway. We will need some way to cap off the upstairs ducts until the upstairs is done - I suggested plastic bags with rubber bands - and/or only run them above the floor and use couplers later (which leak some). She also suggested 120F hot water. New faucets are required to have temperature regulators set to 110F - maybe they can be adusted to 90. I had hoped to set the hot water to the desired end temperature so as to avoid the need for mixing hot and cold. I was going to spend the morning on legal stuff but time flies. Ductwork is much less stressful.
TS said everything worked but the electric panel should look neater. He checked it out with his meter. It does not need a bonding screw in the second panel but he thought we need a bonding wire to the new grounding bars but Roger says that does the same as a bonding screw which the inspector said to NOT have so we will have the inspector let us know. TS is willing to make the panel neater. Today we ran up all the wires needed for upstairs smoke alarms and lights (and nearly ran out of those wires) and realized we have not planned out how to do the heat. Jim suggests one circuit per heater, though the 20A breakers can easily handle two (500+1500 or 750+750) with junction boxes (and a bit less wire going through the crawlspace). We are quitting before dark to go work on wiring diagrams.
A 20A heating circuit can handle 18A of heat, which is two 750W or one 750W and one 1000W or one 1500W plus one 200W heater. We will attempt to combine two heaters per circuit using more junction boxes under the stairs or in the crawlspace, for only 4-5 instead of 7 heating circuits. The hydronic baseboard heaters are mounted to the wall. The power supply can come in the back (from the wall) or the bottom (from the floor), left or right. The power goes first to the thermostat then the heater. In the heater you need 90 deg wire (something that won't melt at high temperatures - 90C?). The fan-forced heater needs 60 deg wire. We can run THHN (thin) wire in EMT conduit from thermostat to heater if it is the right kind. Probably through the floor between them because there are doors in the way otherwise. For the smallest room, which has a 150W heat load, we have a 200W cove heater which goes on the wall. Aluminum plate, quiet, radiates heat so imperceptible it appears not to be on (also it radiates it over your head). We can change it to something else later but if we go to 500W we will need to change the bathroom heat from 1500 to 1250 - it comes with jumpers letting you set it as low as 375W. 1000W/ 120 = about 8.3A. Both heaters came with complete installation instructions, including how to hang drapes over the heater so they don't block air flow. The fan-forced one includes the back box that inserts into the wall and the other comes with little feet that don't actually support it but have holes through which you can feed the power (wires) from the floor. If we put it in now, we can take it back out to tile under it, assuming we calculate the location of the mollys holding it in the wallboard correctly (leave about 1" under the heater). I have the senior citizen electric rate. Cheap if you use 10 KWh/day but 3 times that rate if you use more. This last month I lost - 20 KWh/day, half of it at the triple rate. The regular rate is about 2/3 usual. I will keep this rate since I will not be heating with this meter next winter and you can't change it more than once a year. The heat is up to 53 inside so I can turn off some of the lights. The dehumidifier is down to 60% and should not be running as much now.
Christina researched the proper tape to use to join the vapor barrier in the window jambs to the mortar on the cement board. First we are supposed to pain the surface with about $50 worth of paint, then use $200 worth of special flexible strong tape, then another $200 worth of another tape with fiberglass reinforcement between the new wooden casing and the wall. Supposedly this will give us a better vapor barrier and keep the insulation dry. Used when you are trying to reeally minimize heat loss so as to go 100% solar. Roger and I planned out the wiring paths for two more upstairs heaters that will be on the same circuit. 2x750W. The smallest room will have a 200W cove heater on the wall, on the same circuit as a 1500W bathroom heater. If 200W is too little we can change to 500 and rewire the bathroom heater to 1250. The two big downstairs heaters are 1000W and need separate circuits unless we can combine each one with a 750 upstairs instead. I have 2.5 days off for legal writing - what fun. Roger promised to fix some roofs and chimneys that cannot wait until June, in other cities.
I just got an electric bill slightly higher than Jim's for January. Jim has senior rate with heating, which means 5.6 cents/kwh for the first 10 KW/day, then 8 cents/kwh. I have the senior rate without heating, because they eliminated that rate, which means after the first 10 KW/day it goes up to 16.5 cents/kwh and I used 20 (because Jim has three layers of glass and a foil shade between two of them and I have only two layers and no shade) which Jim used 25. He keeps it about 55 and I kept it around 50 to cure the mortar. People who have the rate can keep it. Today was more legal stuff and now taxes - I have a two day 'vacation' from building to catch up on other things (including design). The water heater timers arrived from ebay. To get a reasonable electric rate for heat we need the second meter installed (after inspection) but before installing heaters it would be nice to get all the dusty work done - cement board, mortar, tile, drywall - so the heaters don't get ruined by the dust, therefore I will overpay for heat for another two months.
Today after finishing JIm's taxes we took a walk to the post office to mail them early and stopped at Big George's. The washing machines have become enormous and would probably not fit the space I left in the bathroom for them. Why so big? Do most people want to wash large quilts at home? Or are bigger Americans simply wearing clothing that takes up more space in the machine? The refrigerators are also bigger, but they had a 12 cu ft and a 10 cu ft by Danby that were the same width (about 24") and two depths. The deeper one would not fit in the space we were originally going to leave in the kitchen next to the door but we already rearranged to give the refrigerator unlimited space - someone could go up to 42" wide and as deep as they want. The new electric smooth-top stoves now have up to 5 burners some of which are 12". THere was one induction cooktop for over $500. Our induction hotplates were about $60 each. They had an unvented power clothes dryer. The washers and dryers are full of complicated controls that I bet people rarely use. I have a commercial washer that lets you set three water levels and several temperatures and not much else - works fine. We got it free because the gasket was leaking.
I know of people living in apartments that have their own washer and dryer in their own apartment [rather then a shared laundry room for the whole building], so if you wanted something small, Sindi, they're out there. Before my parents passed away they had one of those stackable ones in their apt [in a retirement village]. The washing machine was on the bottom of the unit with the dryer above the washer and it was located in a closet next to the bathroom. So maybe you'd save on water if you got one of these smaller units?
They also had a couple of the stackable units. I already have a washing machine that works (the frontloader, which does save on water because it uses about half as much water). The newer toploaders seem to all be omitting the vane, but still need more water because the water has to come to the top of the clothing. The front loaders move the water through the clothing instead of vice versa. Water is cheap, but heating it is not, and a lot of people insist on washing with hot water. One more morning off to do my own taxes then back to wiring to the first outlet or switch or light on each run upstairs, and heaters up and down, and water heater and relay and timers (three) - another week of wiring? After that I need to acquire a quick knowledge of plumbing.
Taxes done. We are moving a temporary upstairs outlet to a permanent location from which we can feed the other outlets in that half of the house, then wiring in the first upstairs smoke alarm. We calculated how much more 14-2 to buy to do the rest of the upstairs lights and the two water heater minute timers (70' or so - we will buy a 100' roll). After the smoke alarm, we need the 14-2 to do two more runs - junction box to upstairs light, and junction box to breaker - before redoing the three light and smoke alarm junction boxes on a new board, and maybe also boxes for the 24V transformer (doorbell, LED house numbers, electronic latch...), water heater 120V relay, and water heater 24V timer - on a second 2x6 board under the other three. Then we can connect the smoke alarm junction box to the downstairs lighting junction box and turn on the breaker and have ceiling lights again. (After which we wire for the upstairs heaters, and one downstairs heater on the same circuit as an upstairs one, and the water heater, and call for electrical rough inspection, hopefully after TS makes the panel look prettier, and get the time-of-day meter installed so we can heat for 6.2 cents/kwh instead of 16 if it is not already past heating season).
The hydronic heater wants 90C wire. Lowes has no idea what that might be and Stadium Hardware closed at 5 but an online forum explained that wire made since about 1984 is all 90 C and older wire 60 C. The fan-forced heater calls for 60 C or 'standard' wire and we will call the company to find out if it can be used as a junction box (run wire to it, then from it to another heater). Monday. It attaches to a stud on the right side and you knock out a knockout on the left side for the wires, but we plan to use it sideways (the website says that is fine - up, down, sideways) to blow towards bathtub instead of toilet so we are putting in a horizontal 2x4 to attach to and 'left' will be down. From there we could run another wire to the right and up to the other heater upstairs if allowed. The instructions also say to have an electrician put the heater in - that is us. (We are it?). First the wire to the light switch gets moved so it attaches to the bottom of another horizontal 2x4, leaving the area above it accessible as shelving from the toilet side (12" deep). THe area below the switch will be a rollout basket (12" wide 30" deep) for dirty laundry, with a towel bar on the front. I can't imagine having some electrician come design it this way. We had the good sense toleave 2' extra wire for the light switch and not attach the switch to the wire yet. The bottom of the heater is optimally 18-24" off the floor, it is 10" wide (high in our case) and the light switch bottom at 42". The north side of the shelving/heating/light switch area will contain 2 or more ventilation ducts. With careful planning nothing will get in the way of anything else but most of this has to be done before the rest of it.
We found a way to run wire to the heater in the furthest upstairs room without going through a beam or the middle of shelving area, using one or more of the holes for the downstairs bathroom heater, adding three 2x4s horizontally, a slightly lowered ceiling, and other things I don't quite follow such as a diagonal hole just missing the floor and going into bottom plate and then the wall, wiring two heaters into a junction box in crawlspace where they can be separated later if we want more than 200W in the smaller room, by adding a second junction box going to a separate circuit. Using 90 C wire. The area under the 2x4s will be accessed with deep drawers and that above it with shallow shelves reached by sitting or standing on the toilet. The wire for the bathroom light switch will attach under the 2x4.
Can'tput the heater in sideways, or within 4.5" of a wall (or the door in it) so it has to be facing the space above the toilet, which is a bit harder to wire, and the wire has to come in from the top left even though we are bringing it up from the floor so we may put in an extra stud (short) to nail to. I can't imagine an electrician producing a good result here that also lets the space be used for storage. Roger has been using large green wire nuts to connect the ground wires, which crowds the boxes, so I approved purchase of a spiffy but expensive special tool to apply (cheap) copper crimps instead. It comes with a wire cutter too. He is off doing a few minor repairs for a neighbor while I warm my hands under an antique 300W tabletop electric heater that makes the 43F more tolerable when we are eating lunch or on the computer. I also have but don't use an under-table electric foot warmer (boot warmer?). 100W? We need to decide on the surface of the wall next to the heater, and if tile, measure the tiles we will use in order to install it 1/2 or 5/8" out from the surface. Perhaps with longer screws we could stretch this to 3/4". Wallboard with mortar 1/2", tile 1/4" or possibly more. The gang boxes are adjustable after you put them in, but then if you use that kind you need to notch out the surface that goes against them to accomodate the screws or at least get pan head screws.
We spent an hour counting up how many wires go into which junction boxes under the stairs, and how many cubic inches are required. Upstairs lighting 24 cu inches (4x4x1.5" box), upstairs lighting and smoke alarms 30 cu in (the latter because they use 14-3 cable with more wires in it). Relay needs a 3.5" deep box, transformer a shallower box because it sits on top of it, and the 24-hour timer can probably go in a single-gang box not a 4x4. Roger drew out the wiring diagram showing two minute timers in series (or parallel?). The relay gets power from the lighting circuit. When it is switched on (both the 24-hour timer and one of the minute timers has to be on - i. e., it is off-peak and you turned on the timer for 10 min to take a shower), the relay magnetically pulls shut both legs of the water heater circuit (30 A) and you get hot water. The wiring details are not drawn yet, just the outline. We wired all three light switches and decided we need to add a couple of boards to support one piece of wallboard before we add a 2x4 horizontally to support the wire coming up from the crawlspace to the top left of the heater, which will go in last so we can get at the inside of that ventilation shaft to put in ductwork. Or at least I can get into that spot. Roger just managed to drill through several thicknesses of bottom plate to the crawlspace and now needs to drill the top plate for the upstairs heater and we will run two wires down there to a junction box and then another to near the time of day meter. Our tiles are 1/4", the board is .4", and if we keep the mortar to 1/10" we have a 3/4" wall but it is probably 1/8". Spread it to 1/4" with a rake and then smoosh it flat. You can use longer screws to gain a bit of depth. Our relay is double pole double throw for 240 volts (two legs are switched). I need to go move a lot of things out of the way.
Had to move a phone, a light, a clock and a radio out of the way and then a board that used to be a temporary wall in order to drill down from up. The 2' long drill made it down and is now going to drill up to make the hole neater. Then we may put back the board that was a wall, and the phone.... I need to take all the radios away - does anyone else still listen to over-the-air radio?
I turned off the dehumidifier yesterday because it reached 60% humidity and
the fan runs continuously even when the compressor is off. The temperature
has fallen a few degrees and I thought it was due to dehumidifier being off,
but it was because the upstairs space heater (on low) was unplugged when we
moved the outlet and never plugged back in. So the 400W of fluorescent light
have kept the house at 43 degrees (up to 47 with us working in it and warm
outside).
About to run three 12-2 NM-B wires - two between future locations of
two space heaters and a junction box, one from there to the second electric
panel.
Tonight we are discussing with our architect friend (1) how to tape between the vapor barrier in the window jambs and the cement board wall, to which the casings will attach. Our friend came up with a $500 solution involving two kinds of special tape and some special paint. I suggested two widths of Tyvek tape. (2) ventilation, manifolds, slope, noise reduction, balancing, filters.... She showed photos of the first Michigan Passive House, with round and square vents (you can use either one for in and out, on walls or ceiling). It is 3000 sq ft including heated basement, plus an apartment with outside stairway on top of a large garage. The opposite of what we are building and no need to plan how to use every bit of space, also they are in the middle of nowhere and not trying to keep out the noise of power mowers, garbage trucks, or helicopters. The garage looks bigger than my house.
I was told to schedule some inspection in the very near future in order to extend my permits. Since it will be a couple more weeks for electrical I offered to have the porch and walls inspected and was told to do that as a 'partial final'. Since I have only the electrical and building permits, this implies that if I am making progress I can get the building permit extended, which is helpful for my mental health. I am supposed to schedule an inspection for this week but I am also supposed to do a lot of legal stuff before Friday - so who needs to sleep or eat? (Or grex). I have three more hours before we get back to wiring to make photocopies.
Today we planned out how to put upstairs and downstairs bath on one circuit, and upstairs laundry area in one 'bedroom' and the laundry outlet in the downstairs bathroom on another circuit and ran wires from breaker box upstairs to them through the kitchen wall anda new hole in the porch floor. We are putting in junction boxes upstairs for now instead of outlets. Next we need to run from there to the downstairs bathroom. And wire from downstairs refrigerator outlet to upstairs freezer outlet, and downstairs junction box for upstairs lighting to an upstairs light switch, and run wire from the 24-hour timer (not yet there) to one minute timer in downstairs bath then from there to upstairs minute timer. It adds up to 7 wires in one hole so we need a second hole. Most people do not run wire from cellar to upstairs to get it to downstairs but we had to avoid a plumbing wall and some ventilation shafts. We actually put in three wires, which is 1 per 2 hours, not bad. And two new holes, and four boxes that will be changed later. We need to run wire tomorrow between refrigerator outlets, and between bath and laundry outlets (from down to up or vice versa depending on your viewpoint) then figure out the junction boxes. The downstairs bath light is going on the upstairs lighting circuit so it can share a double box with the upstairs minute timer, and the upstairs stair light can therefore stay on the downstairs light circuit (max 9 switches). To reach the bathroom and laundry outlets downstairs from upstairs we are coming down in one conduit (for two wires) behind the window casing and then into two boxes in series.
Tyvek tape seems to stick fine to mortar but Christina still thinks we should use the much more expensive stuff she researched. She and Jim can figure it out - I am too busy photocopying legal stuff and helping with wiring. I calculated about $200 worth of the expensive tape, vs a few rolls of Tyvek tape from the hardware store. First she wanted us to put on about $100 worth of special cement primer under the tape over the mortar. We should maybe tape before the walls are inspected.
New problems. We started with a pile of rather old (but unused) wire, and
it turns out some of it has undersized grounds, which are no longer code.
Luckily we caught this quickly and replaced the 14-2 but I just noticed the
10-2 is the same (it is also black instead ofwhite, and NM not NM-B. The NM-B
is 90C and the NM probably 60C. Roger says the small ground would be
irrelevant since the metal water heater is also grounded to the copper pipe,
but code is code.
Turns out we probably need to replace the smaller outlet and switch boxes to
some with more cubic inches and TS will help with the calculations.
A 2x4 handybox is 13 or 14.5 cu in (probably depends on the 1.5 or 1.75 depth)
and an outlet with two cables both 10-2 counts as 4 (black and white) + 1
(ground) + 2 (outlet itself) = 7 x 2.25 (factor for No. 12 wires - NO. 10 is
2.0) = about 16. In the wall boxes also have a cable clamp for another point,
or 18 cu in, but they are available in 3" depths, I think. The surface
outlets that daisy chain to another outlet (2 cables) may all need 4x4x1.5
("four square") handiboxes. Or box extensions but I don't want a 3" deep
outlet box on the surface.
Today Roger showed up only 1.5 hours after he said he would and the three of us spent an hour figuring out how to wire two junction boxes for lighting, one for smoke alarms, a relay, a 24V transformer (unrelated), a 24-hour timer, two windup minute timers, a toggle switch, a lot of lights, a water heater... so as to have the water heater on from 7 pm to 11 am during heating season, and only when switched on with the minute timers otherwise, with power to the relay and timers from the upstairs lighting circuit so that you can put the upstairs bath light switch and one time in the same square box, and the toggle switch and downstairs timer in another square box, with the relay under the stairs and the 24-hour switch next to the toggle switch, the smoke alarm junction box fed power from the downstairs lighting circuit, no more than 9 lights per lighting circuit, and no more than 6 cables per junction box. I already calculated sizes for the junction boxes (4x4x2 or was it 2.5). This puts the relay near the water heater and the two timers near each other. The toggle switch will be brown and clearly labelled Summer and Winter or OFF and Automatic. Then as we were leaving to work Roger got a phone call from someone who said he had promised to work for her today and he was going to come back later this afternoon but it is 6 pm so I am going to try for 12 hours sleep. My average for the past 14 months has been 4-6. I took a sick day yesterday but spent half of it photocopying and printing and then as a special treat we went to the art museum for 30 minutes after dropping off the photocopies, fixed a friend's laptop (the DC jack was plugged instead of soldered in and the plug was loose), and then diagnosed a neighbor's desktop (three bad caps, power supply and motherboard). I look forward to a normal life again some day.
I hate to think of what the people are going to have to deal with when Sindi is gone and they have to figure out why in the hell their water heater doesn't work most of the time.
Everything will be clearly labelled. Without the 24-hour timer, future owners would be paying three times as much for hot water during non-heating season. Future owners can leave it on every day in the summer if they like a hot bathroom, but not have it heating in the middle of the day, by default, or switch it off then and only turn on when needed. Roger apparently forgot to let me know he was not coming. Saturdays he likes to get a late start and work until 10 pm. I woke before 5 am as usual from the stress. This will end some day.
We called Roger, who showed up around 4. Someone who asked him to do a minor repair also wanted him to replace a sink and a counter top (with one that looks nicer). He was supposed to postpone this sort of thing until June. We have been working since 4:30. Calculating required box sizes, looked up ratings of metal boxes, could not figure out how to attach the gang boxes to studs, Jim says they attach to drywall and to use the blue plastic ones that nail on instead. Pulled three wires from down to up for refrigerator and upstairs lights. Spent the rest of the time rearranging junction boxes on paper and in real life for upstairs and downstairs lights, smoke alarms, finding some place to put them where all the wires would reach. We will have to redo two of the lighting wires that are too short for where we need to move the junction boxes so we can cover the wall under the stairs with plywood but leave the boxes accessible. Or redo the longer wire from junction box to panel. We have assembled all the different sizes of clamps and will do the actual work tomorrow bright and early (2 pm instead of 4:30) until we finish, with a bit of daylight to help since this lighting circuit (which also powers smoke alarms and water heater relay) is turned off while we work on it. Time to go make supper, eat, and go to bed so I can get up and generate more pages of printed paper before building again. Opera does not work to schedule inspections (or to view permit information). Nor would IE 9, so they suggest Firefox or Chrome.
I just scheduled an online inspection using Firefox. You have to accept cookies to even view permit information, which makes no sense to me. This is a 'partial final'. Another option was 'drywall-screws'. I hope they are not expecting to see the screws in the cement board because we mortared over all of them, as required by code for fire-stopping reasons (keeps the metal from melting as quickly). I read that inspectors sometimes check that you put in enough screws - in one house the ceiling fell down and killed someone because of not enough screws. We overdid the screws, of course. They will also inspect the porches. You need railings to 36" (with only narrow gaps between rails, I think it was 6" or maybe 4" but we put siding over them instead) where the floor is a certain distance above the ground (24" I think). We also added screening (used) to block the snow and rain. Once the house has a CO, I can remove all the screening, rails, and siding, and enclose the porches properly with glass for solar gain. In the meantime they are useful only for storing lumber.
Today after Roger's monthly Friends' Center potluck (we help, he is in charge of potlucks) we finally got up the board for the three junction boxes, in fact we put up four boards because two were too narrow to staple and Roger put up three before figuring out that the boxes could go lower and we would not need to replace any wires, so we had to add the fourth on the bottom to staple wires to. We were able to use existing holes and run the final 14-2 to the electric panel. We switched the wires for two circuits (what was downstairs lighting power is now upstairs because it would not reach the downstairs box). We are feeding the downstairs lights from the smoke alarm box instead of vice versa. We even managed to reuse a box with a few knockouts knocked out by careful planning. I had written in china marker on each wire things like 'Smoke cellar' and 'Lights up West' and 'lights down bath' so we then labelled all the upstairs circuit stuff with red tape (there will be a 24-hour timer added soon) and the downstairs stuff with green tape, and sorted things out between the junction boxes (pulling a few wires back out of holes and pushing a few other through holes because the boxes were moved from right to middle of the area) and put in the clamps but still need to make all the connections (after the 24-hour timer wire goes in - first we need to choose where to put the timer, which should be near the relay, which goes near the water heater but they can't be blocked by it, or be over the tub). We need to hook up the new downstairs power (replacing what is now upstairs power) to the electric panel and move over the little pin that makes A (former downstairs lights) and B (lights in unheated areas) go on and off together to B and C (new downstairs, and A will be upstairs). Hoping TS will help with this and make straight runs instead of wiggles. We also prettied up the porch for inspection, swept, moved the refrigerator away from the junction boxes and water heater so we could work there.
Roger finally got the table saw working (from various parts - Jim had
collected 4 motors, various bases, etc.) and it needs adjusting. One of the
four motors was a mouse house and the wires got nibbled - saws should not be
stored in open sheds. The mounting plate has a large door hinge in it, and
some large bolts. The base is smaller than the saw but they will be bolted
together. This will let Roger make jamb extensions and it might work better
than his chop saw, which was adjusted to 90 degrees and was cutting at a
larger angle. I noticed that a 13.5 inch board was 1/4" short along one side
and when I measured the angles were off. Adjusting the chop saw one degree
fixed the problem. Never assume things work.
We should probably start hooking up the wires in the junction boxes
since we will need tomorrow (daylight) for the electric panels if TS
does not have time to help with them. The porch light circuit is off because
the other light circuits are off and it is hooked to what was the downstairs
circuit and will be the upstairs circuit (for lights) and we don't have the
new downstairs circuit even wired to the panel. We can plug in a light on
the porch, I suppose.
I would like to go home and cook supper before 9 pm but we can't always
have what we want.
It is a balmy 48 F inside today because it is over freezing out.
Feels much warmer than a normal house does at 55 because the walls are about
room temperature.
We wired up two of the three junction boxes and started putting on the covers. The boxes are right up against eacah other and the covers are wider/higher than the boxes. Roger put on the middle cover overlapping the left one and the right one over the middle one and I am going to make him take off two of the boxes and move them slightly apart so things fit right. Yesterday did not go well. I was too tired to cook and then woke up at 3 am too hungry to sleep. Tonight I will try to cook for a few days. (If I don't, Jim just eats ice cream). Jim has been making me breakfast and packing lunches for us both. Roger only eats meat and avoids carbs (except for donuts, cookies, cake, and ice cream) and we cook vegetarian but since Jim has been redistributing Friday leftovers from the Salvation Army food program, he sometimess gets cooked meat which he saves for Roger (and mixes with lettuce so he will at least get a few vitamins). I got back to sleep for two hours and woke up hungry and also coughing but the show must go on. Today we are supposed to start at 10 am and end by 6 pm so I can have supper and try to get some sleep before tomorrow's inspection. We need to decide where to put the water heater and expansion tank and water filter and relay and timers so we can wire for them. The relay box gets connected to the power for the water heater, then feeds the water heater, and is wired to the 24-hour timer which is powered by the upstairs light circuit and controlled by a toggle switch and two minute timers (any of which can turn on the relay if the 24-hour timer is at 11 pm to 7 am or 'on').
This morning we discussed where to put the water heater etc. and took measurements (Jim will draw it up) and now Roger is moving the three junction boxes so the covers do not hit each other. Not an easy job.
Junction boxes are done except for replacing the supply wire to one of the lighting circuits, the first one we ran to the breaker box, accidentally using 12-2 instead of 14-2. This is legal but inconsistent and confusing, also the wire is a bit too short so the ground would not reach the top screw of the added ground bar. Our half a roll of 14-2 was a few feet too short (as we learned after pulling it through) so we took it out and will buy a new roll. Pulled 12-2 through for the upstairs west thermostat (and figured out where to drill through walls and floor to reach the heater) and now doing the same on east side - managed to reuse holes. Thermostat to heater (twice) will require creative routing through the walls, ceiling and floor, new holes. It is helpful to have daylight upstairs but Roger is using a trouble light in the crawlspace to carry the wires through the crawlspace, staple them along joists, and then run through cellar (under porch) to breaker box (on porch).
Three more heating circuits wired (except for thermostats and heaters). The next door neighbor stopped by and ended up helping adjust a saw base for an hour. After we did 2 hours planning and 6 wiring. Typical day. I have been sweeping up piles of saw dust all over the place - it looked like a lot of ants got loose in a sandy field. I never knew what a house looked like inside the walls before building one.
The saw is no longer wobbling - one leg was adjusted longer than the others. Still no inspector. We removed the 12-2 that should be 14-2 from the panel and are about to reuse the wire in several short runs between upstairs outlets that go through the floor to go under doors, then in conduit behind the door trim (rabbetted, which means a notch in the side, rather than dadoing behind it). We will leave the ends free to put into upstairs outlets another year, but the wires have to go in this year so we can put up ceiling. There is a problem pulling a wire through an angle with a board in the way and the hole already has two wires in it and is tight we another hole may be needed... (ROger says it is going now, he scared the hole and it is letting him go through). How late do inspectors work? It is already 15 min past lunch hour ;=)
The inspector showed up and was wondering what he was supposed to inspect. I was told to get a 'partial final' and he said that comes after rough plumbing, wiring, and mechanical, and makes sure the holes in the walls for those have not caused problems. He explained where to put firestop, and thought we ought to add more fasteners to hold the joists to the studs but after he left Jim said we had already put twice as much as needed in the form of ring-shank long stainless nails. He admired our soundproof room and took a photo, and was very friendly and helpful and said he would talk to the building official and tell him we were making progress. And it was okay to put plastic over the inside of the porch screen door to keep the porch dryer and wondered why we were required to finish the porches in December. Then we planned out how to do the rest of the upstairs outlets and ran one wire and it started sleeting and Roger left while the driving was still possible and may take tomorrow off. Jim and I need to decide just where some outlets go so we know where ot make holes in the floor. We put the end of a wire to a future smoke detector into a wiremold box, with wire nut on each wire to make it all safe. We removed the 12-2 that was there instead of a 14-2 and discovered it got ripped in the process and could only be reused in two shorter pieces. We do not need the wallboard inspected unless it is a 'rated' wall in an apartment building or commercial building but he kindly listened to us tell of our experiences cutting the board. He was properly impressed with the stainless steel roof. Nice guy. I get tomorrow off to do other things that need to be done because it will be too snowy for Roger to drive from Chelsea. The other things are important but won't be fun - more details in a few months.
We fixed up the CAD drawings for heat and outlets - lots of changes. The 'bedroom' upstairs (half of which is labelled laundry) now has two AFCI circuits (shared with two other spaces), two laundry outlets next to the sink that are GFCI (one will have a GFCI outlet) fed from the panel, which feed the downstairs laundry circuit, and one refrigerator outlet (fed from the downstairs refrigerator outlet - it would have been more direct to feed the upstairs one first). I hope this is code. You need GFCI next to sinks. We could view that end of the room as a kitchen. Refrigerators within 6' of sinks are supposed to be plugged into GFCI outlets, which are not good for refrigerators so they made an exception for refrigerators in kitchens. It might be better to label that area as 'summer kitchen' instead. A kitchen needs GFCI outlets over counters but since it is not a kitchen at the moment there are no counters, however there are GFCI outlets over where there might be counters next to the sink. If it is a bedroom we need AFCI outlets, which I have at the other end of the room, to prevent fires in walls. Since the outlets in the kitchen/laundry area will be on the surface, they can't cause fires in walls. I might actually use that room as a kitchen, in which case you need TWO kitchen circuits both GFCI, but one of them is a GFCI laundry circuit. It could be a kitchen while I finish off the downstairs, then a laundry to replace the downstairs laundry. If they object to the non-GFCI outlet for the refrigerator (or freezer) I could move it to the other end of the room. Hopefully they will accept this odd arrangement. Major plan change - we had moved the bathtub (in the plans) to where the downstairs bathroom freezer was supposed to go because the new code required GFCI anywhere in a bathroom, and moved the freezer upstairs to the bedroom/laundry/kitchen space. It was originally going in the cellar but that also needs GFCI outlet (below grade). Just noticed from Roger's measurements that the new bathtub spot is only 28" wide and bathtubs are 32". We could narrow the door from 32 to 30", or put the bathtub back where it used to be and the water heater where the freezer was going to go. Where the bathtub used to go is under a sloping ceiling and a tall person won't be able to shower very comfortably but they can shower standing over the floor drain instead. Or we could omit the bathtub and have a shower.
You should only need 1 GFCI plug on a circuit. It will shut off the whole circuit if there's a short.
Yes, the first one in series should be GFCI. The inspector wants us to add some very large screws, but Jim called the nail company and the stainless ring-shank nails we used to attach the band joists can hold 568 lb each (shear strength) which is about 4600 lb per joist, 10' long and 16" apart. We did our original calculations assuming the stainless nails had the same strength as plain steel ones, and they are even stronger, and we doubled the required number of nails from 2 to 4 every 16". Jim phoned the manufacturer. They now make spiral shank nails even stronger. Yesterday was a snow day for Roger, today may also be, leaving us time to work on drawings and other urgent paperwork. We goofed off last night - went to a lecture on history of trumpets - and I was able to sleep 7 hours instead of 5-6. Got to get back to the paperwork. A neighbor from a few blocks away emailed that he shoveled my walk yesterday, also that of my next door neighbor (who was going to shovel mine) and an older neighbor on the corner whose snow we usually shovel. Last time this neighbor came to shovel, my other next door neighbors had beaten him to it. Jim's next door neighbors (two boys) had done his walk so we did a few other walks. A LOT of people simply left all the slush on their walks yesterday, which will freeze to solid ice this week and make transportation really difficult. Branches down all over due to the weight of t he wet snow. Bathtubs are 30 not 32, but we also need 3/4" for wall surface and something hopefully for door trim. The other end of the bathroom is 33" wide. Moving the bathtub means also moving the timers, and a longer plumbing run of copper but shorter of drain PVC.
We have two light switches in metal gang boxes with nailing (screwing) brackets on the sides, which are too shallow. Can't find similar deeper ones - the brackets for what we found attach to the fronts not the sides of the studs, and wrap around them, and our studs in that location are sideways. Jim suggested hammering the brackets flat, but then they would still get in the way of the wallboard (cement not drywall). We can use the blue plastic boxes, 4x4, but I would prefer narrower metal single-gang. We have two 3.5" deep metal gang boxes not designed to screw to a stud - the screws connecting the sides to the tops get in the way, but we could carve out a bit of wood for the screws, take the boxes apart, attach the sides, then put them back together. Take off the side not attached to the stud because the screw on the attached side will be embedded. These are 'old work' boxes with ears that can be attached to the wallboard, so we could temporarily attach them to something else (turn 90 deg and screw to a stud?). Next problem - there will not be enough headroom for a shower if we move the tub to where the door does not hit. One option is to put a separate shower where the tub was going to be, in which case we need to move the water heater, maybe to the cellar, losing its heat in winter. Another option is to shower sitting down on a shower seat, or standing over the floor drain in the middle of the floor and using a handheld shower head. Roger and Jim are discussing how to run the plumbing from cellar to upstairs. We had three holes for this purpose in an exterior wall shaft, and used one for wiring instead already. I lean towards water heater in bathroom and shower seated in tub, or in mid floor, with hand-held shower head. There will be an upstairs bathroom some day with lots of room to stand up in the tub. The downstairs bathroom is supposed to be handicap accessible thus the shower-in-middle-of-room (sitting in wheelchair if necessary).
Jim is researching rules about height of ceiling above tub. Michigan residential code does not mention any, but some places required 80" or 5'6" above the tub floor. Or a 24x30" area a certain height. Where we might put mine is half slanty overhead but I could easily shower sitting. Or standing over the floor drain with a hand-held shower. Jim wants me to not have a tub or shower stall. I had no tub in my apt for 28 years. Actually he wants me to have one only upstairs - I don't know when I will ever have the energy to finish the upstairs. Or whether I will have the strength to climb the stairs by then. A shower stall is now required to be 30x30" or even larger, or if 25" in one direction at least 1300 sq in. Inside dimension. With 22" opening. Bathtubs have to have temperature limited to 120F. I have a mixing valve left over from dialysis that lets you choose your own temperature, which I hope is acceptable, so that I can set it lower. We are done running wires to upstairs - what is left can go along the ceiling and walls, and through walls. Downstairs we need to put thermostats in two walls which are not yet built, and find a way to run wire to outlets along the exterior walls from the interior walls, or a crawlspace junction box, in two rooms. And replace a bunch of electrical boxes with bigger ones. And decide where the bathtub and water heater are going so we can wire for the water heater with relay and various timers. We need to put in upstairs GFCI bath and laundry outlets so that the downstairs ones which they feed will work, in electric boxes which go on walls which are not yet there. The inspector wants some engineer to approve our stainless ring-shank nails. Or make us put two large screws in between two nails near the ends of studs which might split from all the fasteners, which nails are 3" apart. I got back by 8 pm and had time to cook and eat supper. ;=)
Sounds like you are making good progress!
Nice to know at least two people are still reading this. Jim drew me a ledger, which is a board nailed or screwed against a wall or joist that something else sits on, which means if you put a lot of weight on what sits on it, the joist can pull the top of the ledge away from what it is attached to, therefore you need screws. We don't have ledgers so should not need screws. Jim's next idea is to call the company that makes the joist hangers and see if they have any approved constructions, then email his nephew the structural engineer. I researched live and dead weights. 40 psf (pounds per square foot) for non-sleeping rooms. Our nails can hold 300 psf. LiveDead load - use actual figures. Wall - with cement board both sides, about 3 lb/sf. Wall over joists supporting bathroom - 5x8' = 40x3 = 120 lb. Floor over joists supporting bathroom - maybe 4 lb/sf (includes wood as well as tile and cement board). A 5' wide room with joists at 16" has about 4 joists. 50 sf floor = 200 lb. So 120 lb wall, 200 lb floor, on 4 joists that have nails in them that can support about 4600 lb per joist, or 20,000 lb. Add in a cast iron tub full of water at 700 lb, about 1000 lb. The inspector wants two screws with shear strength about 1200 lb each instead of four nails at 550 lb each.
those stainless nails sound pretty strong for nailing up, jesus...what's the problem
The problem is that code now requires screws not nails for ledgers and these are technically ledgers. Ledgers are normally boards that something else rests on top of and thus the tops could be pulled away from what they are attached to. Ours cannot because there are joists holding them in place. The Fastenmaster company tech support said NOT to use Ledgerlok because they will split the 2xs, they are only for girders, but we could use Headlok which are skinnier and longer. He thought we would need 3 instead of 2 screws. The comparative strength is 226 vs 233, which is nearly identical, so i asked the inspector if we could use two of these. Tech support said to predrill though the website says not to bother.
Three of us spent the morning debating where to put water heater and bathtub. We could move a doorway 1.5" and narrow it 2" and put the bathtub where you can legally stand up in it but that reduces wheelchair access, so we decided to leave it under the slope where it is legally a bathtub not a shower and then our architect advised against this because it would require a plumbing wall sitting on top of the floor membrane so she wants to rush out tomorrow and help with the decision. So we got nothing built today. If we move the tub we have to rewire between two timers and decide where to put the relay again and maybe build another wall. Easier to move a doorway? Remove two studs and add one stud.
I think we will try to saw off two 2-stud posts and move them over, AFTER unwiring a light, two switches, removing wires from holes (moving a hole too), redoing the top of the door opening, adding two more studs to the side of the door.... A few days' work but it puts the bathtub in the right place and makes plumbing and water heater wiring better and easier after that. This gives us 31 inches of wall plus 1" of doorjamb for 30" of bathtub. Roger says you can't put a bathtub where someone can reach a light switch or outlet while standing in the tub (even with GFCI?) and is not sure whether it is legal to reach one if you are using a hand-held shower, and in any event you should not be getting them wet. Planning further ahead would have saved a lot of time.
You have several choices: