On the Home Front Archives - Page 5 of 10

2012 Home Renovations – Part 05 – Digging the trench for the retaining wall footer

The rain forecast for the next few days doesn’t look very promising, some variation on “Thunderstorms” is being promised through until Sunday. It rained last night so things are pretty sloppy outside now.

The most substantial change is the trench for the footer for the retaining wall

There was a fair amount of work done in terms of preparing the site for the drainage that we are going to need. Including removing the wooden planters that had been up against the house.

And silt fences all around

Note the growing pile of dirt in the front yard – we have plans for this. Originally we were going to have somewhere between 20-50 dump truck loads to take away. So far we have had only 3 to remove the non-reusable stuff that’s been pulled out.

We now have ZERO grass in the back yard. With the rain all that red Georgia clay has become pretty slick and tenaciously stuck to anything that has come near to it!

2012 Home Renovations – Part 04 – Initial scratch and demolition

2012 Home Renovations – Part 06 – The Pool dig has begun

2012 Home Renovations – Part 03 – Clearing the Trees

We had a total of 8 trees cleared by Yellow Ribbon Tree Experts.

Despite a high wind advisory – we seldom have even a breeze here – and at or below freezing temperatures, the guys soldiered through the process and you can see that the back yard is now a much more open space.

We had two motivations for clearing the trees that we did. One was to reduce the possibility of a tree falling onto the Lanai, the other is to remove trees that would be susceptible to dying when we spread some of the earth that we will be removing from the dig area throughout the back yard.

The original conception for our lanai included a retaining wall that would step up to a maximum of about 7 feet in the North West corner. We were concerned that this would become a focus of the pool area rather than merely a supporting structure.

After much discussion, Rich (of DC Enclosures) came back with a suggestion to essentially re-sculpt the back yard to lower the actual hill. The excess dirt would be distributed around the lower back yard and will result in a much more level back yard. This newly leveled area then becomes what we will be seeing as we look beyond the pool.

Our view from the kitchen is now much clearer, I’ve never had such a clear view of the backyard neighbor’s house

The view from the lanai is now much less cluttered

While I wasn’t really focused on the trees for my “before” pictures for contrast here is the area near the shed before

and after

My only real regret is that our Redbud tree had to go. We planted that a few years ago, long before we ever conceived of this pool project. It used to be within the semi-circular retaining wall near the center of both pictures above.

2012 Home Renovations – Part 02 The Before pictures

2012 Home Renovations – Part 04 – Initial scratch and demolition

2012 Home Renovations – Part 02 The Before pictures

Critical to any project is knowing where you started.

I’ve chosen 9 vantage points from which to check out progress.

Beginning by looking out of the back of the house, you can see the view from our current patio sliding door.

Then, stepping out onto the driveway we can see the view through the current lanai, then to our shed and then down the driveway.

Then stepping off our property to get a look at the bulk of our existing retaining wall

After that, the view FROM the shed

And then a survey of the back yard from the far corner

Then, from the front of the house you can see the existing retaining wall, the driveway and the side of the house where we’ll be doing some drainage work

Finally, looking from the front patio down our walkway across the turnaround pad and from the garage respectively.

2012 Home Renovations – Part 01 The Project – Pool, Lanai, Driveway, Retaining walls

2012 Home Renovations – Part 03 Clearing the Trees

2012 Home Renovations – Part 01 The Project – Pool, Lanai, Driveway, Retaining walls

A few months ago, while visiting relatives in Florida, Michelle went out to take in the neighborhood. She came back from this not just a little excited and told me that they’d found a house that was in foreclosure and that I should come and take a look-see.

The house was nicely appointed (what we could see from the outside) with an *enormous* lanai complete with a covered area with ceiling fans, a pool, an outdoor shower and plenty of room to spread out on the paving-stone deck.

We weighed the pros and cons of purchasing this as a second home and, helped by the realization that foreclosures are primarily the purview of speculators and homeless people, we distilled our desire for the place principally to it’s great outdoor area.

So, rather than saddle ourselves with the massive initial debt and ongoing obligations that go with owning such a property, especially considering that we really would only be able to enjoy it a few times a year, we have elected to take what we felt was best in that place and build it into our current home.

The project seemed pretty simple at first, how hard can it be to put in a pool with a screened enclosure?

They call our subdivision “Indian Hills” for a reason. Our house is set reasonably far back on just under a half acre of land with the front yard sloping down toward the street. The back yard is level behind the house for all of *maybe* 3-5 yards before it starts to slope upward. What this means is that we need to make our own level ground. For some reason you don’t install pools on an angle 🙂

Because our yard slopes, not only toward the house but also from West to East, there are drainage issues to consider. Add to this that we have a deteriorating railroad-tie retaining wall supporting our driveway – both of which are original with the 1970’s era house – and we end up with the following project:

Clear area for pool and lanai out back (about 25′ out from the house and about 42′ wide) including removing a bunch of trees
Pour retaining wall along one side and the back of the enclosure area to a height of about 4′
Level out as much of the remaining back yard as possible to minimize the size of the needed retaining wall, otherwise this would need to be almost 7′ high
Install 28′ by 12′ by 4.5′ deep pool with an Endless Pools Fastlane
Build a drainage system to handle the backyard runoff that will be impacted by the retaining wall plus take all of our downspouts and route them appropriately away from the house
Remove and replace the existing driveway and retaining wall

The pool will be furnished by DesJoyaux pools and DC Enclosures will be building the Lanai and overseeing the construction related to the other aspects of the project.

We expect the project to span from February 11 until some time in May.

While we were trying to visualize the project, we were provided with some preliminary plans that serve to give an idea of the overall scope and impression of the project. We’ve since redesigned the pool to be more purely rectangular.

This first drawing shows the overall schematic

Here we see the pool as it is supposed to look coming out of our laundry room

This perspective is looking back *at* the laundry room door corner from the far side of the pool

And this one is an overview from a point slightly above our shed on the hillside

2012 Home Renovations – Part 02 The Before pictures

The Magic Smoke Left my HR23-700 DVR today

I’m glad I was home when it happened. I was watching TV with my wife (Netflix – trying to figure out if we liked “Mad Men” or not) when we started smelling something electrical burning.

A quick survey of the house found that the smell was strongest in the TV room and then I noticed smoke coming out of the back of our entertainment unit.

I powered everything off immediately and hauled out the electronic pieces on that side of the unit which made the source of the problem either my Blu-Ray player and our DirecTV DVR.

Once we were sure what we were dealing with, I turned the power back on and then plugged both units back in. The Blu-Ray player seems fine but the DVR is now just a brick. Once that “Magic Smoke” is released, there’s no going back I’m afraid.

It’s just as well, we were trialing not using the DVR anyway (maybe it was miffed that it was being ignored?). I’m going to cancel our DirecTV tonight. This just forced my hand.

Just a warning to any other HR23-700 DirecTV DVR owners… I’m not sure what you can do to prevent this issue or what precipitated the failure of my unit but I won’t replace it. I’ll get a different brand should we go back to Satellite or Cable. I’ve never been particularly fond of the UI anyway – it’s always be slow and clunky compared to a TIVO.

New Mini Retaining Wall

We did some minor landscaping a couple of years ago but were never really satisfied with how the ground sloped from our new Red Bud tree. So Kim offered to create a mini retaining wall that resolves the issue of our pine bark washing away while also giving us a space to put our underused bench.

Kill A Watt EZ P4460 – Sunbeam Therapeutic Mattress Pad

Back in October, 2008 I picked up the Sunbeam Therapeutic heating pad from ebay. The price was much better than I was able to find either locally or even on my normal shopping haunts on the “intertubes”. I was able to get this new for about $150.

Let me say, in no uncertain terms, this is one of the best purchases I have made in recent memory.

Unlike a normal electric blanket, this heats from the bottom so the bed is thoroughly warm when you get into it, and you are comfortably warm as you lie in it.

You just set it to preheat the bed (I find at least 15 minutes before you want to turn in) and you will not believe how great it is to slip into a warm bed every night.

I’m also able to keep the house and room temperature cooler at night with no decrease in comfort. And, as you’ll see below, the cost of running the heating mattress pad is vastly less than that of running the little room heater that I use in our master bedroom and obviously less than that of using the furnace to keep the whole house warm when you’re going to be ensconced in your bed all night.

As if that’s not great enough, both sides of the bed are independently controlled so his and her (or his and his… hey I’m not judging) preferences can be met. I don’t need much if any heating after I get in while Michelle likes things a little warmer for longer.

But wait! That’s not all! (picture a ginsu knife ad) Each side has 3 zones that can be heated independently. So if your feet get cold but your torso or head are fine then you need only heat that part of the bed. You can heat any of the zones from nothing through 10 different levels. And hot is pretty danged hot. The most we’ve ever played with is level 6 and I’ve settled on level 3 as my maximum.

I keep mine set for head – 1, Torso – 2, Feet – 3 while Michelle keeps hers set as head – 1, Torso – 2 and Feet – 6.

The control is wireless. Of course the mattress pad and the control unit need to be plugged in but the wiring can be completely inobtrusive. Here are some pictures of how I have it set up in our master bedroom. One warning, the remote can sometimes not communicate properly with the receiver unit. When you press any of the buttons, the receiver will make a beeping sound. If you don’t hear this then your command wasn’t sent. Just press another button and press your original again and it will work. I usually turn the pad off and then on again to be sure that it’s set to what I intended it to be.
There is no danger in this, the mattress pad will shut off automatically after 10 hours anyway if you somehow manage to leave it on. And the receiver unit has a light on it representing each side of the bed (sort of the way a stove light lets you know the burners are on). If you crouch down and peek under the bed you can assure yourself that the mattress pad is on or off.

You are sleeping on a mattress pad with wires in it. If you really try you can feel them. There’s no getting away from that. Sunbeam has seen fit to make the pad reasonably thick so I have not found this to be an issue.

As you may or may not know, we had some furnace issues during the cold snap that we had recently. Partly due to the “Sunbeam Therapeutic Mattress Pad” I did not have to rush to address the issue. I had no worries about us being uncomfortable. Add some well-placed space heaters and the furnace is merely an inconvenience rather than a crisis.

The following power tests were done with the unit in “preheat mode” which I understand means full blast. It is very difficult to make claims about power consumption at any point in time as all six zones seem to operate independently of each other. So the peak consumption is created by me letting the pad cool off, then setting both sides for full power.

The results comprise reasonably reprsentative winter use of this mattress pad. i.e. we used it every night and many nights even left it on all night long.

RESULTS

Elapsed time: 546 hrs (about 23 days)
Measured Maximum Consumption 1 side on preheat (Watts): 63
Measured Maximum Consumption both sides on preheat (Watts): 128 (don’t ask why it’s not quite double the single side, the results were the same regardless of which side was the single side)
Measured Consumption when not in use (Watts): 2
KWH: 4.23
Cost –
     Actual (for duration of test): $0.44
     Daily: $0.01 (rounding involved here)
     Weekly: $0.12
     Monthly: $0.53
     Annual: $6.49 < -- Take with a grain of salt. We will probably only use for about 5 months a year.

Cat Tree for Mav and Phoebe

More or less on impulse we bought a cat tree a few days ago off the Internet.

Maverick and Phoebe spend their nights in the laundry room with their cat beds on a utility table (Mav) and the clothes dryer (Phoebe). Michelle has never been a big fan of the utility table, so we’ve now removed it and replaced it with this cat tree.

We picked this up from “CozyCatFurniture.com“. It’s called the “Cat Cheap Tree“. We ordered it on March 28th and it arrived promptly on April 1st. It needed to be assembled, of course. All the parts were in there and everything fit together properly (which is nearly a miracle :)). It’s really nice and solid. Both the cats were drawn to it immediately and “helped” put it together.

I like it enough that I’m thinking of getting another one for the TV room, but don’t tell Michelle!

BTW you can’t quite make it out, but Phoebe’s new collar tag says “Princess” on it in addition to her name and our phone number.

Furnace / Air Conditioner replacement cost

Our house is a bungalow (a “stepless ranch”) comprising about 2,500 square feet. Four bedrooms with two and a half baths. It was built in the late 1970’s and the attic-mounted air conditioner is original while the furnace is probably about 20 years old. Both are due for replacement.

The existing air conditioner is a 4.5 ton Rudd unit and the furnace, well.. I don’t really even know what brand it is. Nor, I suppose, do I really care 🙂

I’ve had 3 guys come in and offer estimates. The first guy was very professional, recommended by a friend who used him to install her furnace. One thing I liked was that he offered a pretty reasonable (I think $140/yr) maintenance schedule to keep everything up to snuff once installed. But he did not do any calculations or measuring besides estimating the needed tonnage of the air conditioning unit based on the power connections and outside coil size and reviewing all the registers and returns throughout the house. He also inspected the current ductwork.

The second guy walked cursorily through the house, indicated a disdain for variable speed furnaces and indicated that he could get pretty much any furnace I wanted for a very good price.

The third guy noted the model number of my existing air conditioning unit and went and looked it up to determine what the existing tonnage was. Then went through the attic to inspect the existing duct work and reviewed all of the registers and returns. He then returned a week later to fully measure all of the rooms and did the calculations to determine the proper a/c and heater sizing should be for the house as well as offering recommendations for additional registers in some of the more poorly served areas of the house.

I discussed a desire to zone the house with each of them, as well as to include a humidifier solution and an allergy-suitable filtering solution.

It seems that to zone the house will require pretty much removing the entire duct system and replacing it.

As my existing furnace is in the attic over the garage, I was warned by at least two of them that a humidifier system up there would need a waiver as there is the potential for freezing and associated pipe bursting issues.

I had initially thought to install some kind of heat pump or heat pump / gas hybrid furnace but it seems that the cost for that would be prohibitive.

<soapbox mode>In the end I’m thinking I’ll just ditch the zoning idea, forget about the humidifier and go with a normal gas furnace as, frankly, I’m not in any position to evaluate these things nor am I in a position assess the value of the opinions proffered by my local installers. It seems such technologies are only for folks with ties to educational institutions and / or the resources to employ experts in such fields. So I’ve resigned myself to the usual “whatever is for sale at a price I can afford and the environment can go to hell” position that we all end up having to take when we try to pursue these things beyond a superficial layer.

I can rant all day on the number of times I do a ton of research into new technologies only to find that it’s all theory and that you can’t actually *implement* what you’ve researched. I’m learning… slowly. I’m starting to drink more booze too.</soapbox mode>

Anyway, I received estimates and would like some opinions on them if you have any experience with these things. I think I’ll try to post the below information in some “furnace forums” I’ve seen too.

This from Coolray:

Trane XV80 (16 Seer) (model numbers unreadable)
Listed scope of work:
Install new Trane (5) Ton XL16I (16) SEER R410A Dual Fuel System to include Heat Pump Condenser, Coil, pad, variable speed furnace, new refrigerant lines, metal plenums, safety pan w/switch, drain sensor, new EWC Electronic(3) zone system, New R8 Supply and return ductwork, new Trane clean effects high efficiency air cleaner and vision pro digital t-stats. Lifetime parts and labor warranty w/annual maintenance.
Steam Humidifier S2000 add $1,295 and will need electrician to add separate circuit.
$11,698 (system)
$ 3,885 (ductwork)
$ 2,915 (zoning)
-$1,000 (federal rebate)
Total $17,528

I’m contacting him now for a simpler quote, in keeping with my reduced expectations above.

This from Seasonal Heating & Air:
(They actually provided me with 6 variations, this is the one most in keeping with what I would want)

Heil Equipment:Premier Grade with 5 year no hassle warranty
Duel Fuel system
4 ton 13 seer heat pump R- 410 A freon
4 ton 13 seer coil
80% gas 100,000 BTU furnace
Remove existing furnace,existing coil,all ductwork and discard
Install all new duct work R-6 Flex
Supply Plenums, Return Plenum
Add 3 supply outlets( master closet, work out room, laundry room)
1 year labor warranty
compressor 10 year warranty
parts 10 year warranty
limited lifetime warranty on heat exchanger

Optional items:
Programmable t-stat(s) 7 day = 100.00
Touch screen thermostat = 300.00
Humidifier(s) = 450.00
Media air Filter(s) system= 300.00
Electronic Air cleaner April Air 5000 = 950.00

Total (w/o optional items) $6,000

This from Bardi Heating & Air Conditioning:

Install New 14Seer 5 Ton R410-A Variable Speed Heating and Cooling System
The above price includes all equipment, labor, and materials to install a new American Standard 5 ton Heating
and cooling system in the attic. Add supply to master closet and hallway. Add supply to laundry and create return
from existing supply in laundry at door. Install 11/8 x 38 refrigerant line set down exterior to new unit location.
The warranty is 5Year Parts, 10 year compressor & 1 Year Labor.

Equipment is (American standard):
AUD120R9V5 variable speed 2 stage gas furnaces
4TXCC060 Aluminum Evaporator Coil With TXV

Total $15,165

So, what do you think?

I’ll post the updated Coolray estimate when I receive it.

New Hardwood Floors – Day 4 (Job Done)

This morning I awoke to the site of my wardrobe looming over me in bed. All I could think of was the old guy scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey” when he’s at the end of his years with the monolith at the foot of his bed…

The adhesive smell was faint in the air but not nearly anything we were concerned about. We *did* leave the windows open (our mattress heating pad being very much appreciated) overnight just to be safe.

The shoe molding has been installed and the job is pretty much finished, at least from the Enhance Floor Trends point of view. There is one small trouble spot that we’re going to have to have them back to resolve where the floor is uneven at the join of the two hallways. More to come on that I’m sure.

Besides that, all that remains now is to go ahead and paint the shoe molding in those rooms that were already the way we like and to finish decorating the remaining ones. We’ll be painting the gym and the TV room wholly different and (I’m told) exciting colors. 🙂

So here are what the floors look like (hover for descriptions):