finally got back to work.

it's been an on and off week for me here at Cold Comfort. Tracey came up over the weekend and worked on cleaning out the little playhouse in prep for demolition to make way for the new storage shed. We did a little this and that and Bob took the week off to tend to his own work on their house. I kinda sputtered and stalled with the holidays upon us, and I had a time critical project to finish as well:



That took a remarkable amount of time to complete. But it's done, in time.

So, my BoraCare arrived and coming up with what I needed to prepare it in the cold was tricky. Boiling pots of water on the woodstove and measuring this and that. The prep makes 6 gallons,and it wants to mixed hot as the stuff is the consistency of cold molasses. Anyway, that took better part of a morning. That, and I needed a day off, so I checked into a cheap hotel, took long showers, did laundry, and relaxed for a while. Sorely needed break.

So, today, FINALLY, I'm back up on the cam.

Suited up, cloved up, respirator and glasses and went and sprayed down all the sill plates and area where the cabin and the addition connect. Then went back and sprayed it down again. With that done, I went back and caulked up all the wall cavities.



After, of course, vacuuming out all the cavities and such. Then the fun really began.



And I just kept going, until I ran out of batts.



I made it about 2/3rds (or 3/5ths) the way around the room. So, I need two more bundles of batts to finish (I think). That'll be tomorrow.

But really, I have to ask myself, "Who does this? Am I crazy?"

And Happy Solstice!

So, the new year proper begins tomorrow. Welcome Winter!

Moving right along

The day started well. Having taken some of my insulation materials, and used them to wall off some the great big gaping holes in the main structure of the cabin, all of a sudden the woodstove became startlingly effective. Yesterday through the rain I just continued along installing the roof radiant barrier in the addition, and cutting in the foam board wall insulation. Not really a lot to talk about, so yesterday I didn't really have anything to say.

Today however, Bob came over, feeling much recovered and we collected a lot of bags of debris and trash from all the packaging of things that have been acquired and made a run to the dump. So much better. Then we went to the building supply and picked up another load of foam board and fiberglass batts. back to cold comfort and back to work.

With two folks working, the roof radiant barrier went much faster. It's nice to have someone calling out dimensions to be cut rather than up the ladder, get dimension, go down, set the tool, back up ladder to check measurement (measure twice, cut once) back down, make the cut, back up and so on and so on. With two, this is cut down to much less effort.

We got the most difficult part of the roof done. The trusses on this part of the roof had nailers set between them for some reason. Couldn't figure out why. These aren't anywhere else in the roof. So this meant boring holes through them for airflow, and then cutting the insulation into 3 sections, placed separately. Tedious, but not too difficult. There won't been enough airflow to prevent ice dams on this part of the roof. However, it's a very shady section, so one wouldn't get much sun heating so hopefully, the tendancy to form ice dams will be reduced. The ceiling will be VERY well insulated, so I'm not expecting a lot of heat loss through the roof. IN the summer however, there should be good enough airflow to keep the roof heat from penetrating into the living space very much. And that's the primary idea.



pretty tricky to try and get a photographic representation of what's going on up there. But we're nearly done with this part. I'm anxious to actually install the insulation, but a lot has to happen first. I'll be serving all the electric through this space in conduit. So, that work really does need to be done before adding the insulation and closing the ceiling.

With that done, we turned our attention to the walls.




Again, having someone to call out dimensions and help handle materials made this bit go really easily. We got a lot done. Next up, the bathroom and utility closet/laundry, and that will be done.

Again, we're just setting these in place. I'm intending to soak down the sill plates with 'bora-care' before closing the walls. If bugs (ants in particular) make it into the sand floor, that would be 'bad'. I really don't want that to happen. The bora care I ordered days ago hasn't shown up yet. Soon as it does, we can do this for real. Looking forward to it.

So, that's it for today.

Not a lot

happened today at Cold Comfort.

Bob came by, then left. He was a bit under the weather and the cold addition where we are doing most of our work was, well too cold.

So, I busied myself with other things. With the success of my insulation experiment, I went ahead and started cutting in the foam insulation. I'm not going for a closed finish yet, as I intend to treat the sill plates with 'Bora-Care', but it hasn't arrived yet, so I can't really close it all up.



So, I'm sizing and cutting the panels for that time when I can actually close these walls. Got something of a break in the weather for a few days, will be relatively warm and raining. So I brought all the materials inside, put up 4 wheelbarrow loads of firewood, cleaned up around the place some. Since I had all that foam board insulation in the cabin, I used some of it temporarily to close off some of the big gaping holes in the crib, and Wow! all of a sudden, it's HOT in there. In fact, part of the reason it's so cold in the addition is that the woodstove is sucking outside air in through the addition because I don't have a seal between it and the crib. Well I do now. I think it will help.

Sorry, that's it for pictures.

And that's all for today.

not so cold.

Today, temps made it up into the 40s. A very welcome relief. Very nice day.

The sand-filled floor actually broke freezing today, maybe I'll be able to run some water through it in a few days. I'm getting a little desperate, may end up kludging something together with a copper heat exchanger and some sand on the woodstove, the pump out of the waterfall, a water barrel in the basement, , ,

Enough of that.

Today I kept after the insulation. Got one section of the roof radiant barrier done. parts of that were kinda hateful, but that's okay. I'm learning a great deal about what constitutes 'good enough' in the world of frame carpentry. Fairly, there is only so much you can do with what passes for 'premium' certified lumber.

enough, moving along.

So, remember those crazy exterior walls?



yes, the ones with the wall-inside-a-wall? Well, now I need to actually insulate them. I've pondered all sorts of things. Initially, I was going to install a vapor seal, and then blow in insulation. However, no matter how you cut it, blown in insulation settles, and in order to get a really good setup to do it, I'd need the walls to be a couple of inches thicker than they already are. This would begin to seriously eat up the interior floor space. Fact of Life, interior floor space is practically the only thing folks care about when valuing a home. The fact that walls a seriously thick because they are seriously insulated means little. yes, it means something, but banks and realtors could care less.

Moving along, Dealing with the Wous, (walls of unusual size) has had me puzzled for a while, so I bought some materials and did an experiment.



Here we have insulation batts for a 2x6 wall, even though the old exterior wall is a 2x4 wall. A 2x4 wall uses 3-1/2 batts, maxed out at R13. My walls are deeper, so I figured I'd give these R19 batts a go.



I'm getting good expansion into the 'dead' space between the two walls with these 6-1/2" batts. yeah, that's right, these are supposed to be 6-1/2, not 5-1/2. The instructions call for the installer to compress them back into the 5-1/2 space for R18. >shrug<.

Someone is now saying "Wait! Wait! where is your vapor barrier, either you put the batts in backwards (We've all seen it) OR that is unfaced insulation"
How right you are!

First, prepare our trusty machine:



This much thicker material requires 2 passes. Blade must be raised and re-squared, then cut about 5/8ths the way through the top, flip the work end-over-end, and run it back through joining the cuts.




And there's your vapor barrier. After they are all in place, will go back over them and seal up all the gaps with that expanding foam. But I'll use the blue 'window' stuff that won't deform anything.

I prepared the cavities in the exterior wall by cleaning them out, vacuuming them, and caulking all the joints to the siding. Should be quite tight.

I'll be pulling this stuff back out and applying 'Bora-care' to the baseboards before sealing the wall.

So, that's an R10 foam board, overtop of 6-inch to 6.5 inches of unfaced R19 batt. With NO wall stud bridging. This wall should outperform any 'standard' R30 wall out there. Be much more quiet as well.

Sharp eyed folks are asking themselves, "But where are your services?". Big hint. An outlet is a hole in the wall. It just is. So is a window, but they are already there. All services, electrical, plumbing, network, etc will go on interior walls.

pretty cold

Was away for the weekend. Never lit a fire in the stove, none of that stuff. Was by the place yesterday AM, temp was about 18F. This AM, I stopped in, it was 16F. Wasn't around yesterday, and it was cold. Wasn't around much saturday, and it was also, cold.

Too cold in fact.

Bought meself onna them fancy remote IR thermometers. No, they are not all alike. This one is supposed to be + - 2F inside a range one would want for HVAC work, and +- 1.5% overall. Not great, but close enough for who it's for I suppose.

Anyway, much to my dismay, the basement crawlspace, which I expected to be 50-ish, maybe in the 40s, was down in the high 20s. Yes, the dirt floor was showing 22F, the stone foundation, coupled to the ground, showing 29F. Ouch!

I have to get some therms into this area, lest I lose the existing plumbing. Now, I intend to replace it all anyway, but it's nice having a working sink, and toilet. Ya know?

checked the new floor, a whopping 19F. Won't be putting any water in that floor anytime soon.

So, on to other fun stuff.




A rudimentary test of the home made collector. Not very scientific. No real way to measure temps, fancy thermometer or no. Need better stuff for that. I added a sheet of foil faced polyiso insulation to the back of the collector, and set it in the low sun for a while. Once the back of the collector came up to about 100F (which I could measure) I plumbed the collector into the 'water feature'. That stone thing there, with a waterfall and a pool. It has a submersible pump in there, and I knocked a hole in the very thick ice, and connected up to the pump, and ran it through the collector, back into the pool. After about 4 hours, it melted all the ice. So, I guess that means it makes heat. Best measurements I could take showed me adding about 4F to the water, at some flow rate that's way too much. I dunno, not a very good test, but it was something to do.

Since I made a trip to the store for some insulation, I got to play with this new toy:



Back when I still had a job, and still had an income, and knew I wasn't going to have an income for long, I took a deep breath and bought this tool. Knowing I was going to be shaping a LOT (fsvo 'lot') of foam board insulation, some of it foil faced, I figured this was the correct tool. One reason folks don't use more foam board insulation is because it's actually kinda tricky to work with. This tool puts that problem to bed.



My cuts have been accurate to within a 1/16", nature of the material that you can't get a lot closer than that. easy to set up, works great. Jeff Finnel, shineonsolar-at-gmail-youknowtherest. He invented it, and he made it. There aren't many of these. Rumor has it that someone may be interested in licensing it for 'real' manufacture. Good on ya Jeff!

Anyway, with this tool, you can do this:




make cuts EXACTLY the way you want. No kerf loss, no dust clogging up your tablesaw burning out the motor, and the waste stuff is useful, and you retain more material.

So, onward into the cold.


Someone email'd me and asked.

And the answer is yes, there is a 1" or so gap between the roof decking and the 'shiny' side of the polyiso board in that pic. The idea is that the gap creates a radiant thermal barrier. Heat radiating from underneath the roof is retarded by the shiny insulation and convection occurs inside that 1" gap aiming that hot air at the ridge vent, drawing from the eaves. In the winter, any temp differential at all should draw the outside cold air from the eaves, soffit vent, up to the ridge vent, cooling the underside of the roof, which should help prevent heat from the living space melting the underside of the snow cover, which is what creates ice dams at the edge of the roof.

So, that's what he's building in there

The -admittedly- not very suspenseful mystery revealed:
And;
The Pressure Test.



24 hours later, and 10 degrees colder, and what was 54PSI is now down to 50 PSI.

I guess if I were clever, or knew where to look up the forumla(ae) or a generous helping of one plus a modicum of the other, I could determine if that's really a leak, or just changes in 'stuff'. All in all, I don't think I'll worry about it much. It may even be the garden hose fittings I'm using as part of this testing jig that just aren't tight enough. I dunno.

But for the other part, you've already seen this:




And some have actually wondered and even guessed at what it is.

That would be the collector,

Now it's time for the housing:



This is bits and pieces of 2 2x6 boards, ripped in half on Bob's tablesaw and run through the planer, then some strips ripped off of those.






















A bead of tightbond III, the waterproof stuff

























Add one of those strips, pre-drilled of course to avoid splitting that skinny bit of wood.
And yes, just as seen on Late Night TV, the Kreg Pocket hole jig. And yes, it works just like shown in the info-mercials. In fact, it's pretty fun.



The Kreg in action! Now, I gotta confess, a few months back I was staying in a hotel, and was sitting on the bed stunned by the complete wasteland that is TV programming in these modern times; when I stumbled on an info-mercial, and was kinda fascinated. But I let that go. I'm not that silly. However, I'm fortunate enough to actually count some 'makers' amongst my acquaintances and friends. One of the more practically productive makes I've ever had the pleasure to know, Dave Hickey, well, just can't stop making stuff. He's been building interesting and practical and actually pretty well made stuff as long as I've known him and I've known him for quite a while. Well, he told me, (after I laughed at him) that the Kreg was some of the best money he ever spent. Fair enough.



That's what it do!



Okay, add the side pieces of the casing, screwing the collector plate down to the strips on the sides.



Prepare the end pieces. I'm relieving the notches for the top brace for the cover here.



Okay, end pieces in place. Getting closer.



Braces and cover in place. Just to see how things fit at this point. The idea with this thing is to make a solar collector out of regular ole 'stuff' from the hardware store. This collector has 32 square feet of usable collector area. a real 4'x8', nearly 3 (2.97) square meters. It should hypothetically be able to capture something like 6000 btu/hr for a few hours a day. But in reality might actually be able to capture 3000 btu/hr. Could likely do a whole whopping lot more than that during the months no one cares. :) Since I ripped all the lumber down to the minimum size that made any sense at all, I can actually pick the thing up by myself. A commercial collector of this size may cost as much as $2K or so. The material cost on this one is fairly $330, including the stainless steel staples, glue and all that. A bit more than $10/sq-ft.



And here's the sorta completed collector, minus the end-caps.

The two sheets of polycarbonate sheeting are siliconed together in the middle and screwed down to the top brace with tech screws. The edges are siliconed to the frame and screwed down with a strip of wood along the sides. After the silicone kicks for a day. I'll remove the side strips, cut the silicone bead out, unscrew the top from the bracing, and remove it. Then paint the frame and let it dry, and re-silicone everything and hopefully end up with a watertight seal on it.

I've left room behind the collector plate for a 3/8" air gap and 2" of radiant barrier polyiso foam board insulation, and a bit left over for a closing sheet of plywood. It's not really so much about keeping the hot air in, (which is important) as it is keeping water out.

Anyway, that's it so far.

What's he building in there?

Anyway, today;

The pressure test.



This pic was taken about 10 hours into the test. We started with 54 PSI, it's dropped to 52 PSI after 10 hours. Maybe the floor cooled off some. We'll see in the morning.


In the mean time back to this project:



What's he building in there?

FWIW, this is a prototype, I've already sorted out 5 things I'd do very differently on the next one. And there will likely be a next one.




But as they say, In for a penny, in for a pound. Already this far, may as well finish it. Getting closer.

So, how long will it take?

To put up a simple prefabbed pocketdoor frame?

Well, First you have to get the frame,

then you have to put it in.

In our case, all day long.

Hmmm, and haaaed a bit, bought the frame, followed the instructions carefully, roughed in the door frame, then installed the finished frame. Then after a couple of hours fussing with it, went back and read the instructions for about the 27th time, and paid more careful attention, and then pulled the frame back out.

Bob ran home to get his 4' level, as my 7' proved too long to be useful in this case, and I took about 2 minutes, and put the frame back in, then spent about 3 minutes fiddling with it.

Bob came back and we were able to learn the truth. Pulled the frame back out again, and rehung it, again. This time, with fiddling, took about 20 minutes.

So, how long?

6 plus hours for the first one.

Probably 1 hour for the next one.

Shame there won't be a next one.





And no, we didn't get to pressure testing the floor today.

Tomorrow.

how to make two rooms using only one wall

Well,

Start with a big room!

Shoulda taken the day off, but I kinda wanted to get done with this interior framing. Gotta hang a pocket door tomorrow, and that'll be interesting, but a simple long wall with one door frame shouldn't defeat me.



Now I can finally see how this is going to shape up.



The anteroom with the door window. It's not exactly symmetrical, but it's close. The doors will be mirrors of each other, so one can make a mad dash from the guest room to the bathroom should need arise, without having to do an obstacle course through the furniture. :)



The guest room is a bit cluttered, but at least one gets an idea. The room is actually pretty big. Should be ample space. Hope some of you will come visit when all this is done.





Tomorrow,
frame in the pocket door for the laundry. Then pressure test the floor again. With fingers crossed.

The week comes to a close

With some successes.

Sigh;

Burning through wood in the leaky cabin crib like it was free or something. Today was a light day, Bob's back is giving him some grief, even though he hops and rushes about like a teenager on the jobsite. Gives me the willies. Watching him nail together the walls while bending over swinging a hammer between his feet makes my back hurt :)

So, we are taking it slowly and gently. Paying particular attention to where we put fasteners in the floor plates.



Doorway wall for the bathroom is up.



Now, folks with really sharp eyes may do a double take and say to themselves, "Hey, wait a sec, , to which wall are you justifying the drywall?? Are those 24" center wall studs? ? I don't understand." And they'd be right. Good eyes, yes, that is a mistake that will end up getting 'fixed in the mix'. Oh well.

But that's the framing for the back wall of the utility closet.



Here we didn't frame the wall. Decided the only thing that makes sense for the utility/laundry room is a pocket door. We'll put in a 2-10 pocket door and since you can just go buy a pocket door frame and hardware, there is really no way we could frame up our own that will work as well, we basically decided to call it day. We were out of nails anyway.

So, Bob went off to HomeDepot to buy more LED lighting for his and Anne's house, and I went off to do chores.



Have a good weekend.

milestone reached, and holiday fun, and other news

So, today at Cold Comfort, we did a few things, then we fiddled about a bit, then I went off to do some other things, , like update this blog before I run out of energy.

Things got pretty slow around here for a while, with Thanksgiving and all that. Had a good time, met with family, Anne and Dave who we really don't get to see often enough, which also applies to Sally, and Stratton and Carol, and completely fairly to Me Mum, and T's Mum as well. Spent all of a couple of minute with the grandboys and very soon be another Mum-X3. Got to take warm showers a couple of times, drive back and forth across states calmly without hurries, and just take it easy for a few. Had a tasty dinner in the mix. All in all, pretty good.

Then back to it. We had a mere 2/3rds of the FoP (tm) (floor of pain) yet to do. We burned up the rest of our supplies, then we knew what we had. We use on average 7 bags of sand (350lbs dry weight) per sheet of flooring, and had 6 full sheets and lots of bits and pieces to fill to call it done. Off the shop, 7 more sheets of flooring (best to buy just not enough, than to have extra kicking around in the way for years to come) and 49 bags of sand, transported with a Prius with a trailer, and a hearty if aged light toyota pickup. A couple of trips, and it was done, then the big push began, and a half a day of pain, then a full long day, with Bob mixing the sand/cement under an EZ-up in the rain and finally!!!



Yeah, I know, ain't much for look'n at. Sure, this is true. But I promise:



This was an unholy amount of work.

Lessons learned.

If you are going to do this, it's a lot harder than you think.


If you don't need oxygen barrier tubing, don't use oxygen barrier tubing.


Make a VERY CAREFUL and DETAILED map of the floor. You might think you can remember 'well enough' and you might think you can shoot some marking paint to help you keep your bearings, and you've perhaps convinced yourself that it's not really necessary, that you can remember, , but once that floor is closed, you are now blind. You cannot know with absolute certainty EXACTLY where those tubes are.

When the time comes to start adding walls, you had better be really certain you know where it's safe to add a screw, or a nail. Oh my, yes.

Now, I'm pretty sure I know where it's okay to set a screw, , but the screws I'm using will protrude through the OSB flooring by only 1/32 of an inch or so (if I don't overdrive them), yet, putting up the walls is scaring the willies out of me. Really.

All that said:

In the mean time, afore mentioned pre-Mum-X3 became Mum-X3, Welcome lil Jillian!

But that's down there, here at Cold Comfort, the interior walls begin:



Started with the bathroom, as this is the room that will have the most floor penetrations. We measured carefully, wrote down dimensions and notes on the walls so we wouldn't lose them, did everything we could think of, but when it came time to take a drill and shoot holes blindly into the floor, I promise you, we Did Not know everything we wished.

What you see here is the shower pan, and the Sun-Mar composting toilet. Just laid in there to try and determine the final dimensions. This bathroom will be exactly big enough, and not a bit bigger than that. As much as I like roomy water closets and bathrooms, we are space constrained, and hopefully, one shan't be spending one's days in the bathroom, but rather in the living space. So, things are being laid out accordingly.

And that's how things stand, here at Cold Comfort, today.