Greetings!

For friends and family, this is a site to see what we've gotten ourselves into and how we're doing. For people who care about Big Red, it's a chance to keep posted about what we're doing to preserve and restore her. It's also a place for people who love old houses and appreciate what they mean as much as we do. We hope you'll be pleased with the results.

Friday, July 10, 2009

knock knock...



I had been planning to finally do an update to this blog...we have been working on lots of projects inside (Elena's bedroom, finishing the upstairs hallway floors, landscaping) and then we got a knock on the door yesterday. To keep the story short, it was a group of girls from Canton. One of them lives in a house similar to ours and she had picked up a postcard (I think from a garage sale)that reminded her of her house...but it was ours. So they drove over to Wyoming to track the house down.

We were thrilled. This image shows a tremendous amount of detail about how the house looked circa 1907. Right off some things stood out to us- the original railing on the sunroom roof was much more ornate. In fact, the wall of the sunroom was totally different. Additionally, the railing on the turret roof was in plain sight! There are window details that have changed and even more amazing..it appears the paint scheme was different than it is now. There appears to be a 3rd color (or use of red) on some of the detailing! It's totally amazing how one small black and white photo with some heavy "haze" can provide so much information. We've been playing detective since we got it. Can you spot the well in back?

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Captain Nemo called. He says turn it up to 11.


Or: hot water heating system has gone kerplunkity plunk.

The first few months of winter, we seemed to be in pretty good shape. The heat was working fine, although we began to notice a gurgling sound in the pipes. You see, we have baseboard hot water heat. Over about a week, the gurgling sound began to seem more pronounced. I also noticed that the tankless water heater was working round the clock to keep the water heated. What's more, the pressure seemed to be dipping....I thought that maybe we had a leak somewhere in the system, but I couldn't find it. I put some additional water and pressure in the system and hoped for the best.
It seemed to be ok for about a week and then the pressure took a nose-dive. Heat in the house began to drop.
Finally, the tankless boiler stopped firing...and that's when the fun began.
The first picture is how the system was....
It turns out that the pex connections had begun to leak in several places....including one over a foundation wall, such that it wasn't readily visible. The leaks were causing the system to constantly have to add water and then heat the new water...eventually the cycling fried the controller board on the boiler.

After a couple repair bills for people who had no idea what they were looking at, I managed to get a really awesome company called Wayne Heating out. They gave me the bad news.

1. (I knew this one, but had hoped to deal with it later in the spring) The pex connections were failing. The early plastic pex connectors have a tendency to fail under heat loads. This meant that I'd have to track down all of those connections and have them replaced. That meant cutting holes into the ceilings of the two rooms that had ceilings in the basement to locate the piping and joints. The second picture shows one of the pex connectors and the next photo shows a sample hole.

2. The system had some issues. As it was, it was going to cost a substantial amount for the controller replacement. Additionally, there is an "acid wash" that several of the companies that came out told me would need to be done for the system as it has small diameter "tubes" that can become clogged and less efficient. All three companies that came out agreed that the cost of getting the existing system ship-shape was probably better spent by upgrading to a larger system. The choices varied, but essentially they all came down to a larger tankless system capable of higher BTU output, and a recommended secondary hot water tank for domestic hot water that pulls the heat from the tankless boiler. In addition, the newer and larger systems don't require the acid wash.

So, we hired Wayne Heating to put in a Weil-Mclain system (insert Tim Allen grunts here). They agreed to do a significant part of the labor including the replacement of all the pex connectors with a brass version by the brand name of "Shark-bite" and to do a couple other things...1. add a hot and cold outdoor spigot for the driveway. 2. connect the water on the first floor bathroom sink. 3. Move one radiator from an upstairs room to the basement. 4. Install an extra baseboard from the attic into the basement. 5. Reconnect one of the baseboards in the entryway that wasn't connected to the old system.

They also recommended that instead of having the whole first floor set of baseboards in one big "loop" that we break that loop into two. This allowed them to set up a much larger feed pipe to the two loops and substantially increase the amount of hot water going through the loops. What does that mean? It means that the back room off of the kitchen and the kitchen are both now as warm as the rest of the house.

The last picture is of the new system.

They were very busy, but managed to get us worked in and had the system put in and all my extras taken care of in just under 3 days. We rented a hotel room for a couple of those, and we toughed it out for a few days with cold water. You haven't lived until you've taken a shower or two with water that is about 40 degrees. Good times, good times.

This may put an extension on how fast we get around to painting the exterior this summer....but that's ok.