Steamy Goodness!!!

We Have Steam!!!!!!!!!!!

Good thing we're in the middle of an October heat wave....

Finally got around to replacing the bashed on steam generator for our silly shower in the master bath.

Here's a shot of the unit before installation.

Its the only 120V model Jacuzzi makes...... it seems pretty budget...

The spot on the wall where the old unit was.

Step one new unit mounted to wall.

Had to use anchors...there's never a stud around when you need one is there?

Cold water supply hooked up.

That white tube on the bottom is a water filter.

See the brass rt angle on top of the unit and the half a union coming out of the wall? I had to figure out a way to hook the two together...

The old push button in the shower was destroyed so I had to replace it with the new one that came with the kit....

Except for some crazy reason..the hardware on the original was not water proof...

Those screws are totally rusted!

I had to chew out the plastic to get rid of this old mounting bezel.

Bezel gone.

You can see right through and into my closet!

New switch has no complicated clamping mechanism.

Just 100% Silicone caulk on the back side.

Union Adaptor Widget.

To hook up the steam generator to the steam delivery tube I had to fab up the above adaptor...ya I know my soldering skills suck...but it didn't leak. I had to go around to EVERY place that sold plumbing in the area to find the exact same 3/4" union...of course the PO bought it at Home Despot...

Here's how it all looks put together.

And now lets push the button and see what happens....

Steam!!!

It took about four minutes to fill our little shower with steam.

Its a great thing that I got this all done during an October heat wave!

Hope it stays warm and sunny through Halloween!!!

Though, we can't wait for it to be Coooooold so we can try the steam shower.

Next Up, Halloween, for sure this time.

DIY HVAC with Plans!

Okay, How Crazy am I???

I'm going to do my own HVAC!!!

It's really not that I want to...it's just that I don't have much choice.

Right now there is one forced air unit in the basement that supplies air (poorly) to the two basement apartments AND the main floor of the house....with the thermostat (t-stat) on the main floor of our house...

This has to change of course.

There needs to be two separate forced air systems: one for the new legal 3-2 apartment in the basement and one for just the main floor of the house...

I talked to a couple local 'well respected' HVAC places, but what I got from them was not encouraging....they both were going to do the system completely using flex duct and just use basic rules of thumb to size the equipment and place the registers...which means to me that I was going to get a non-optimized system sized incorrectly...this matters because what usually happens is they size the furnace too big and you get short cycling...where the furnace cycles off-on in quick succession...bad for the equipment, and the larger furnaces always cost more.

An Aside On Local HVAC Contractors

I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of CA HVAC types (at least in this area) are fricken lazy and mostly inept. In the SF Bay area..where it really never gets super cold (Think a winter in the North East for comparison) or super hot (summer in high humidity Georgia) I believe this has caused the HVAC types to become lazy...

They can throw together a system using b.s. rules of thumb and over sized power plants and it's okay..nobody's going to freeze to death...and the local building dept isn't requiring people to show real HVAC plans either...

In other parts of the country to get a building permit, the HVAC contractor needs to do a manual J load calculation and a manual D duct calculation. The manual J is where they actually calculate the heating-cooling load of the home based on its size, construction, location. A manual D is where they then calculate the placement of the heat registers and size of the ducting.

I talked to like eight local HVAC guys and they ALL acted like I was crazy for wanting the Manual J & D's done...we don't do that here...one place referred me to an engineer that wanted $1200 to do it!?!?!

End Aside

To The InterWebs!

I found a place online that will do the Manual J,D calcs for you, for a fee of course.

Its kinda got a lame name... PerfectHomeHVACDesign. 

The guy that runs it seems pretty reasonable and I like what he's sent me so far.

You send him the floor plan, window-door schedule and what your existing equipment is (if you have any) and he sends you back A LOT of info...most of it you don't need except where he spec's the equipment and the duct maps.

Here's what the HVAC plan looks like.

For the basement.

Take a look at the plan. Some things I've never seen on a local HVAC install. The outside air vent and the jumper vents between rooms. It seems like that around here they just say the space under the door will work.. I asked the designer about that and he said that you'd have to make sure that there was 1.5" clear under the door! How many people have that much clearance?

For the Main Floor.

We have the ducts shown for both as he had to move some around to make them both work.

Here's just the register locations

What he did was use two existing registers and the existing intake for the return air for this floor. I will have to add registers to a lot of places like the bathrooms and whats called the study (really the kids play room) on the plans. Not super fun but we're taking the ceiling down in the basement anyways so it will all be open...gotta do it now.

I think it will be nice to have a house with a correctly designed forced air system.

The single unit that's currently heating the area is a 100Kbtu, the software says that we only need a 45Kbtu for each level..and even then those are on the big side...but its the smallest size unit generally made. We had to get multi-stage burner and fan speed units to keep them working correctly (not short cycling).

Parts List From Hell

I went through the above diagrams and I believe I've figured out how many widgets I need to buy.

Anybody want to check my math?

Wow HVAC stuff is expensive.

Just did an online order (free shipping and no sales tax!) for the two different heating units, special venting supplies, thermostats, and supply and return air plenums...I think all the big stuff and I spent over $3000!!! Holy Fricken Moly!

I still have to buy all the widgets above! Speaking of..

Does anybody know of a DIY friendly local store that carries this kind of stuff?

I don't think Home Despot does but who knows....I can buy a lot of it online but that seems kinda silly, no?

I've gotten the impression that HVAC places that stock this kind of sheet metal are pretty anti-DIY...or am I wrong about that?

Next up....Halloween!!!!

Art Deco Movie Theater....

That's the look we've decided to go for in our TV room.

To that end we've bought some odds and ends.

Like these cool outlet and switch covers.

Notice the cool repro push button switch. Its a 3-way and a dimmer!

This art deco-ish overhead light.

Annnd the main thing, this super cool new sleeper couch!

We think this couch looks super deco movie theater.(gotta hide that made in America tag better next time I take a picture).

It is a TIGHT squeeze though. Now we can fit 4 adults in comfort to veg out while staring at the flat screen. The couch is comfy and soft.

We bought the couch from the same place in SF where we have literally bought every other bit of furniture we own. Its called Build A Sofa and you can literally customize just about every aspect of the couch. For ours, we wanted it to be a foot wider and a sleeper...no problem they said..it just costs more. You can choose the fabric and the piping color and how many pillows and how firm the cushions are...and its made in America!!! I'm not going to say that their stuff is heirloom quality..its certainly waaay better than IKEA. To get the same level of quality you'd have to pay at least twice as much from a place like Macy's.

Up Next
We want to paint the walls in the room the same color as the piping on the sofa, a sorta steel blue.

We also have to figure out what an 'Art Deco' window treatment would be? We hate the blinds (that don't work anyways) but are stumped as to what to replace them with. Any ideas?

Another Deadline Met!!

The end of Sept was also the deadline for us to get our plans re-submitted to the city with all the changes their plan check engineer wanted.

As usual it was a crazy last minute rush with me having to rush over to the engineers office so he could sign and stamp the plans. Then when I got to the building dept. the women who usually handles this stuff was off and the person filling in had a different take on what I needed....I only had 2 copies of the plans but she said I needed 4 because planning had a hold on the plans...This was serious, new news to me. Last I heard we had passed the major design review and planning had signed off on all of it....

I had to rush home and print out two more sets of the plans...luckily the sets for planning did not need to be stamped and signed by the engineer.

Without Further Ado...The Plans!!!

Here is the framing plan for the main deck.

I have to add two 2by12's to the spots noted to beef up the rim joists...that is going to suck as I will have to shorten the existing joists then install the new rim and re-attach the joists.

Here is the post-footing plan.

The existing footings are 12" square...which means I will have to dig up and redo the three footings that need to be 18"...that's not super great...but now I won't have to dig up all the footings and redo them.

Construction Details.

Framing Plan for the Balcony.

I'm going to have to do some work on the landing and the stringer connection....which will be fun as its super high in the air...

Some Renders of the different views of the existing stuff.

I had to put the note in about the floor to floor distance as the cities engineer didn't believe it was 12'. He thought it was more..
And Finally the plan for our super fab kitchen.

I'm seriously hoping that the cities plan check engineer takes another 3-4 months to look this over. My biggest fear is that he'll get back to me quickly and they'll issue the permit at the beginning of winter and I'll lose several months of outdoor construction time because its raining...only have a year to finish everything after the permit is issued....

Bees!!! Bees!!! Bees!!!

Stinging Death From Above!!!

or

Raining Sticky-Sweet Goo From Above!!!

I hate bees....hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, bees....ow, my back hurts...

So, this past weekend, (the first weekend in October) was do or die time. Remove the bees before the neighbors came back from vacation...

We knew that there were two separate hives in the walls of the house, as we've talked about before.

In preparation to remove the BIG hive I built a little clean room out of plastic sheeting and tried to cover things up as much as possible.

Clean room.

Supplies

That white box on the right is the new hive box. I way, way under estimated how much plastic sheeting I was going to need for this...

Suited Up And Read To Rock!

Luckily a local bee keeper (thanks S) had a complete bee suit that I could borrow..though I don't think she realized the horrors I'd be putting her suit through..

I climbed the ladder and started cutting..with the carbide blade it went pretty fast and pretty soon I had the entire hive uncovered.

Closer look at the hive.

The hive was one joist bay wide and ~7' looooong....
Close-up of bee central.

Old House Aside... Check out the clean cut on the lathe and plaster! 

I used a short carbide blade and it worked awesome. With the short blade you can hold the shoe against the plaster so there's really no vibrations and no shaking loose of surrounding plaster. I kept the speed at medium and there was no burning either.

It's funny, the first thing I thought after exposing the hive wasn't OMG I'm surrounded by stinging hell..it was, 'Hey, I've got full 12" joists supporting the 2nd floor of the house, hurray!!!'. The house appears to be built pretty solidly with full 12" joists supporting the two main floors..don't know yet what the top floor (which used to be the attic) has....

More Creepy Bee Pics.

Next The Official Bee Guy climbed the ladder and smoked the bees out...ha...

Actually they barely noticed when I cut the ceiling down around them..which I thought was weird..but WOW when he applied some smoke...MAN the level of noise goes from unsettling to HOLY CRAP!!

What he had to do was scrape the honey comb off the ceiling and try to keep it in as good as shape as possible.

Part Way Done.

He would then hand the chunk of comb to me and I would attempt to vacuum off the bees. The pieces he was keeping went into the new hive held in place with rubber bands.

The Bees just loved Andrew..

Closing up the hive.

I wish I had a video of this..he had a bee vac that was FULL of pissed off bees...then he just opened the vac and dumped the bees on top of the new hive...

The rest of the comb I just vacuumed the bees off of, and put them in big trash bags...we filled 3 BIG contractor bags with excess honey comb..

This is also the point where I was getting stung...on my fricken finger tips!! He'd hand me a chunk of comb and bam I'd get zapped on the finger tips!!! so much fun..we spent like 5 hrs doing this..scraping comb, vacuuming bees, getting stung... I got stung 16 times..turns out I don't really have any reaction to the stings other than the initial pain...

An important step is to seal the bee hive entrance up to stop the bees coming in the house..

I bought the wrong kind of foam so when we thought the hole was sealed it really wasn't...

Then it was vacuum, vacuum, vacuum up the remaining bees and try to clean up the HUGE amazing mess we had created.. On the drop cloth in the entryway was a thick layer of plaster dust, honey, and dead bees...the front entryway to the house was just coated in honey...in fact EVERYTHING was coated in honey..the walls, the tools, us...It had been raining honey on us all day.... We were soaked through with HONEY...so, gross. did I also mention it was really hot that day??? Ugh!!!

I thought pulling down the ceiling in the old place and having it rain rat poop on my was bad..this was worse, wet, sticky, stingy...ugh...

It was a looooong hard 8hr day of overhead labor...ouch, we were both hurting at the end of it...

But, remember that there were two hives.....

The next day I came downstairs with baby madscientist and this is what I saw...

A LOT of bees on the window...loud angry bees...didn't phase baby madscientist at all though..

So, the first thing we had to do on the second day was fix our f-up from the first. We used the bee vac and got the rest of the bees up...then we used the correct super expanding foam and just sprayed the heck out of the place...

There was a stud bay above that had a lot of bees in it so I foamed that up and just foamed the heck out of the area...

One disconcerting thing..(ya just one) there wer a ton of bees boiling out of the hole where the closet bend goes up through the ceiling...this is odd. As I'm pretty sure that it's just plywood, cement board and tile up there...where in the heck were the bees coming from? Did they colonize the underside of the toilet?...Now I'm afraid to pull the toilet to reset it correctly on its flange (it wobbles, but doesn't leak)...

After the super foam job and one more run with the vacuum it looked like we had finally filled the entrance...

Now on to the second hive in baby madmadscientist's room....

Annnnnnd we're done... well, we forgot to take pictures.. but this hive was way, way, way easier to do.. just drywall, no lathe-plaster, very small, just the space here where an old gas wall heater used to live...and lots and lots of foam...

This extraction was textbook and only took a couple of hours...

While small, the hive appeared to be very, very, very old..

Bee Graveyard...

This stud bay was filled with dead bees...like two feet thick..that was kinda gross, the ones on the bottom where practically compost...smelled weird too, kinda musty...

We foamed the HECK out of the entrance and got it right the first time..no new bees...

Here's a couple shots of the outside of the entrance..we foamed it good...

Die bees DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Got a little over exuberant with the foam...die bees die!!!

On the second day either of us hardly got stung...I got stung only three times...but one of those times.....
Some sort of special ops bee got me.. It crawled up inside the leg of the bee suit. All the way up my leg and into the shorts I was wearing...it was stopped by the snug elastic leg band of the tighty-whiteys I was wearing...and it stung me right there!!! If I had been wearing super cool boxers it probably would of stung me on my meat and two veg!!!

We loaded up the hives into Andrew's Car and cleaned up our mess as best we could.

We had tracked honey and dead bee guts down the stairs and all over the front house entrance...
I got to break out the mop bucket and hot water and moped everything...then I mopped it again...and then I mopped it again..

Everything is sticky from honey, all the tools, the shop vac, the extension cords...everything we touched...door handles...walls..windows... This is going to send me to the nut house chattering about 'Sticky, sticky sticky....'

Oh, almost forgot, my 'haul' after 12+ hrs of work...

HoneyComb.

Guess what everybody is getting from us for Christmas???

Funny enough, I have no desire to even taste the stuff...Andrew said it tasted quite good...it was raining honey on him so hard that it leaked thru his netting and into his mouth...

Final Tally
me-20 bee stings
Andrew- way over twenty..mostly on his fingers...
200 pounds of honeycomb extracted from the big hive...
20 pounds of honey comb for us to keep...

Parting Shot.

This was taken midway through the day...at this point I was thinking...I shoulda hired a pest company to kill the buggers then I coulda 'removed the comb' with a flat bladed shovel and been done with this entire mess in half a day with no stings...This experience really, truly sucked...just about as bad as getting an MRI (my new standard of super suckiness).