First day recap

I'm happy with the way Rob works so far, as of the first day.  He seems to do good and careful work.  Today he removed the old closet and the carpeting, removed the sheetrock behind the closet, and re-installed the light switch as well as installing the new electrical outlet.  This was less progress than I was expecting, or maybe I was disappointed because he didn't even touch the wall where the new closet is supposed to be, but since he was doing everything by himself it was still about right, and consistent with the quality approach I like best.

Contra or clarifying the last post, I don't think his revised estimate was out-of-line, especially in that the new estimate details exactly the extra work that needs to be done for the sound wall, including the new outlet.  It was mainly the way he presented it that seemed a bit too clever.

He has apparently agreed to move the doorbell transformer to the garage, and has not quoted a price for it (yet).  If indeed he does that as part of the "revised estimate" the revision would be a bargain.  He used the AC line to the transformer to power the new outlet, and removed the transformer, but has not relocated the transformer yet.  What I actually said was I either wanted it moved or disconnected.  He argued strongly against removing the transformer.  Funny, he used the doorbell first-thing-in-the-morning himself.  Then, after he had removed the transformer, after lunch he tried ringing the doorbell a few times before knocking.  Or somehow I remember that, despite being asleep at the time.

I told him about noon that I had wanted 5/8 sheetrock for the closet also.  He asked me to explain why. That sounded like an argument but he denied it was an argument, only trying to help, he said.  I told him it was because of the sound reduction, to help eliminate noise from the street.  Indeed, that was one reason.  I also wanted to go the extra mile in fire safety, though I didn't mention that.  Though San Antonio does not require 5/8 sheetrock in garage walls, some cities do (or used to).

He said that it would cost about $10-$15 extra, and shrugged it off as no big deal.  I hope that means it's OK, I would gladly pay the $15 of course.  It's true that the thicker sheetrock also means more weight, more saw time, etc.  But different only by about 25%.  He could charge me more labor also but didn't say anything about that.

I also said I wanted the fiberglass batts in the closet wall as well as the sound wall.  He said that was fine, he had been thinking of "more green options."  I didn't ask more.  In my limited knowledge, options that are supposed to be "more green" really aren't, they're just cheaper, like cellulose.  For example, cellulose will likely outgas even more chemicals than fiberglass.  And spray foam is even worse.  Fiberglass is better than most insulation for sound absorbing, and that is important to me.  In sealed wall cavities it must be about as safe as anything, and has been used for eons.

The room is indeed looking far bigger with the closet removed.  Now it looks and feels like a real room, such as the bedroom in the 2 bedroom house I rented in the late 1970's, or my biggest dorm rooms in Pomona College's Blaisdell dormatory.  Those were real rooms you could have parties in.

I asked when Rob returned from lunch if he could add a ceiling fan and light.  I said I had been planning to have my electrician do it later, but it might be better now that he had the ceiling actually open a crack.  He strongly agreed with the idea that now was the time.  He said he would check it out.  Later he informed me that there was not enough attic space for him to add the wiring through the ceiling.  So I told him to skip it.  I'm hoping my electrician might be more creative.

Speaking of creative, Rob practically laughed off my idea of putting a hinge on the gable vent and adding lowering stairs.  He said the way to do attic access was through hole inside the house.  I said I did not want such a hole inside my house, though there could be one in the garage, if he could find a place to put it.  No news on that front yet, I may have to get someone more creative to work out the new attic access point also.

During the afternoon, Rob seemed to be coughing quite a bit.  That was after he had opened up a square foot or so of ceiling exposing the cellulose insulation.  I feel sorry for builders.  But I've never told him NOT to wear a mask.  In this case, if I told him something like that, I would expect him to be insulted.

Rob left around 3:30, restoring the power just before he left.  Rather than selectively cutting out the specific breakers, he tended to just shut off all the breakers in the sub panel.  So the kitchen UPS was busy recharging after he left.  The main living room stereo is on a dedicated circuit which can only be accessed from the outside panel, so he never cut that off.

Queens Room Renovation Bid Accepted

I had Rob out on Saturday for an hour.  We agreed to a plan and to a price.  He will remove the existing closet completely, hauling away all the debris.  He will build a closet into the side wall toward the back.  This closet will project into the garage, where currently there is (was) nothing but junk (cleared mostly on Sunday afternoon).  The closet will have a folding door.  He will remove the carpet and repair the ceiling and sheetrock, but not do any painting.  He will also remove the sheetrock from the door wall and replace with double sheetrock with Green Glue between the sheets to improve the sound absorbing.  (He has never done that, but is very interested in learning how.)  The light switch will be relocated from the existing closet wall back to the door wall, so it will be right next to the door.   When it arrives, he will replace the horrible existing window with a Don Young double hung window with lifetime warranty.  And he will fix the broken plaster around the corner in front of the Queen's Room.  He will start on Tuesday at 9am and install the window about 3 weeks later when it arrives from the factory.  He will do the major work himself with two assistants.

He suggested he could float the crack in the ceiling, or cover up around the ceiling with a moulding.  I didn't want him to do that at first, but now I've decided it looks beyond my capabilities to easily caulk, so I'll ask him to float it as he suggests.

I think this will transform the Queen's Room.  It now has a prison-cell character, barely fit for a dog, due to the small space and closet which blocks the view of 1/3 of the room as you enter.  It will be (only) 10 square feet larger, but the increase in space is just at the most important part of the room, where the bed headboard should be, and also precisely where it can open up the entire vista of the room as you open the door, making the room appear as much as 60% larger for the important first impression.  The leaky and foggy window will be replaced, giving a nice view and no cold draft and easy to clean tilt in system.  The bed now being toward the back of the room will face out through the window, just as it should.

****

After he left, I first worried about this Don Young Window.  I checked out the company on the web, and they appear to make premium quality windows, at least as good as national brands like Simonton and Milgard.  They are a regional company who only makes windows for climates like Texas, with strong sun.  They use a patented vinyl and a polymer spacer.  They also make thermal break aluminum windows.  The window lock is a secure cam lock.  I decided the window looked fine, as good as it gets for vinyl.  And it what this builder has been successfully using for 20 years in remodeling, so no surprises as in Lyndhurst where the window is underperforming due to faulty installation.  He has 2 year warranty on installation.  He recommended against the glass break warranty, but on second though I've decided I want that to go along with the lifetime product warranty.

Then I pondered the sound absorbing wall some more.

I finally decided to use real Green Glue and their companion sealing product, which I ordered for delivery in 1-3 days.  I advised him of this and asked about a few other things on Monday morning.

Thermal break window not installed correctly?

Also when I was inside Lyndhurst at 3am on Tuesday morning, I felt the aluminum frame of my Fleetwood Westwood 250 window.  It was cold, far colder than a thermal break window meeting Energy Star requirements should be.  I later checked my bedroom window, which is ordinary aluminum, and it was exactly the same.

I'm now thinking the builders did not install the Fleetwood window correctly so that the thermal break is working. Instead, it is installed so the "inside" part of the window is exposed to cold temperatures in the wood sheathing.  Installed like this, it functions little better than a standard aluminum window not having a thermal break.

Unfortunately, it's probably not worth fixing either, not unless I know Mr Perfect Carpenter and am doing some other work on the building anyway.  I've just been cheated out of the performance of my window.  But to make it better would cost a lot and would create a big mess, and could lead to worse problems.  To fix the problem might require cutting through fiber cement, solid core polyurethane, and sheetrock.  And doing all this while not breaking the window.

But it's of little consequence because the main energy drain will be the A/C, and this window is on the north side so will not be overheated much during summer.  Even with this installation error, I am requiring very little energy to heat the building.

Speaking of A/C, it's interesting that the aluminum frame of the Friederick air conditioner (not running) felt warmer than the Fleetwood window.  I had always wondered how much energy is lost through an unused wall A/C unit, and it doesn't appear to be huge now that the unit is completely sealed on inside and out.

It could be worse too.  (Or maybe it is...)  I was talking to a co-worker today who says she discovered recently that every window in her house was likely installed incorrectly.  A carpenter discovered the problem when installing a replacement window.  Now she knows why many of the windows in her house leak water during heavy rain.

At least I don't have that problem.  Or at least I don't think I do, I've never seen water come in that way.  But just after the window had been installed, I was very worried that it had not been done correctly, and I complained many times to the contractor supervisor, who insisted that it had been done correctly.  And I did not know enough then to refute him.

I did provide the workers with the Fleetwood instructions.  I doubt they read it.  The house wrap, siding, trim, the french doors, and the window were all installed in a big hurry on a drizzly Saturday afternoon.  It seemed to me that all the most critical work was done in a big hurry.  The building wasn't actually finished for two months after that, the interior work taking the most time.

So if I can't trust builders to install thermal break windows correctly, what other alternatives are there?  I'm thinking I might actually use wood windows for my house, either wood or fiberglass.  This is a big change in my thinking, as only yesterday I was planning to get two more thermal break windows for my house.

Ladder Crash!

On Monday night after work (actually, Tuesday morning around 3am) I decided to check out the smell level in Lyndhurst.  It was a cool foggy night, one of the conditions that used to bring out some of the strongest chemical smells in the building.

Upon opening the door, the main thing I smelled was the antique wood table I moved out a few weeks ago, and the Pledge I polished it with.  I could just barely smell the old chemical smell.  The smell quickly became undetectable, but I noticed it one more time while traveling to the back of the room.  After a couple of minutes in the building, even with doors closed, I couldn't smell anything.  I'm counting this as a 90-95% reduction.  One could live in the room now, I think, but I wouldn't recommend doing so without a VOC filter.  But occasional visits are perfectly fine now, I believe.

I wanted to get the external thermostat off the floor (though it is in a waterproof box), so I rearranged things toward the back of the room so I could set the thermostat on top of a small old piece of electronic equipment.  The temp was reading 70 and the setpoint was still 71 but the heater wasn't running probably because of anticipation.  I tried to get the heater running again by opening the front door and letting cold air in.  After three minutes, I gave up on that.  The thermostat is in the back of the room shielded from air movements, which is a good thing IMO.

Not long after that, I heard a big crash and realized that what I had long feared had just happened.  The old wood ladder near the NW corner had fallen because I knocked it down by accident.  And it had landed where the heater used to be.

I had feared that would happen when nobody was around and that it could smash the heater or even start a fire.  So I often had fiddled with the ladder trying to get into a position from which it absolutely could not fall on its own.  This was difficult because when not angled almost straight up, it didn't quite reach the back shelf and so would fall backwards.  But too far in the other direction and it would nearly fall forwards.  I had long fiddled to ensure I had the ladder at the sweet spot where it would keep leaning back on the shelf, even if the building vibrated a little.

So now that the long feared accident had actually happened, what did it do?  Well, nothing.  The heater had been hit just at the right spot so it got pushed out of the way.  There were not dents or even scratches on the heater.  It was still working fine.  WHEW!!!

I decided not to have this ladder upright.  I was thinking of destroying it (as it is actually too wobbly to feel very confident, and it could hurt someone else), donating it, trashing it, or taking it apart to use the pieces for something else.  I have a taller new ladder inside Lyndhurst.  But for now, the best thing was to put it on the floor toward the back of the room, held in place so it can't even rotate flat onto the floor.

And then I retested the heater by setting external thermostat up to 73.  It kicked in and worked fine.  I also thought about changing the "1" setting on the heater to "6" (the maximum) on the basis that this might be better for the relay inside the heater.  But even at "1" I believe the heater kicks on right away just as it would at "6" so I decided to leave the heater set at 1 and the thermostat set at 71, which seems to hold 70 degrees extremely well, just barely dipping to 69 on 50 degree nights.

Privacy panel no longer needed

I'm planning to replace  bedroom window ASAP now.  But I've always like the convenience of the blackout vertical blinds.  I can quickly change the blinds from full open to full closed, and when they are closed there is almost no light in the room, perfect for a daytime sleeper like me.

But for past 15 years or so, I've had a piece of black cloth tacked onto the wall so it covered the bottom 5 inches of the window.  On Saturday February 3rd, I decided to remove it.  I now get all the privacy I need in the bedroom from Lyndhurst, Palmhurst, and the shed my catty corner southwest neighbor has built in their back yard in the past few months.  Whatever gaps there might still be weren't covered by the privacy panel anyway, and the middle 2/3 of the window is blocked by 12 inches for the TV.

That considerably improved the view and the appearance of my room, I think.  I needed to vacuum and hand polish the window sill afterwards.

First February Mow

On Saturday, I mowed the little lawn in front of Lyndhurst.  That has bermuda grass which literally hasn't gone dormant since last year.  It was getting a bit shaggy.  And I pulled a few weeds.  But I quit before doing anything else because there was an intermittent smell of creosote from smoke.  It wasn't clear if there were any actual forest or prarie fires.  It could have been BBQ or more likely fireplace.  On Sunday I watered the potted plants and Palmie in front.  Once again I smelled just a trace of smoke. I figured it might have been coming from neighbor across the street, the "Bar" neighber who has beer signs around his back yard pool and parties (not too loud anymore) on weekend nights.  There was nobody in his back yard so perhaps his party was inside by the fireplace.  That would have made sense on Sunday when it was cool and foggy but less sense on Saturday when it was sunny and 80 degrees in the afternoon.

Doorbell transformer in Queen's Room

The doorbell transformer is in the current Queen's room closet, the closet scheduled for demolition.  My friend suggested putting a cover on it.  But I find that it makes far too much noise for me to be comfortable sleeping in this room, particularly when the closet is removed.  It makes a hum: a very tonal noise, measuring around 22dB.  Even if I could cover it, it would be hard to cover up such a sound, and actually, it appears the electrical code requires doorbell transformers to be in free air.  Usually sensible builders put them in the garage or in the laundry room above the interior sub panel.  But I can see why my home's builder put the transformer in the kid's bedroom closet: because they could save a few feet of wire that way.  Even if this were a closet, I think this is a terrible design.

I could get a quieter transformer, such as this nice looking one from Craftmade.http://www.amazon.com/Craftmade-T1630-Transformer/dp/B001R5UU0W/ref=sr_1_5?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1359793416&sr=1-5&keywords=doorbell+transformer.

But in my experience, no mater how hard you try to make such things quiet, there's always a bit more noise.  And a doorbell transformer hanging out above the Queen's bed, with no cover?  That's purely unacceptable in my view.  It would be ugly and someone could hit it by accident.  BTW it has exposed wire terminals but those are low voltage.

So, the doorbell will go.  I can't remember one of my friends EVER using it anyway.  The button is in a poor position on the left side of the door.  Only church proseletyzers ever use it, as one did this morning.

In theory, I could have an electrician relocate the doorbell transformer to the laundry room, where it should be.  Or, maybe even better would be to just get a new wireless doorbell, whose button could be placed more conveniently and conspicuously on the right side of the door.

But for how little it actually gets used, as in not at all, I think I'll just get rid of it.  As soon as I can safely figure out how to shut off the power to it, I'll remove both the transformer and the outside doorbell button.  I tried several convenient circuit breakers but it appears it may be on the master bedroom circuit that will require special preparation before being shut down.