Hopefully this will Help with Heating this winter

JakeCK

New low e triple track storm windows. 19 total new storms, 6 left to be installed tomorrow. Hopefully this will help with the heating bills this winter. The last photo shows just how bad the old ones were.

There are some windows that did not get new storms. They are 6 windows in the front, and two in the att. Three front windows already have newer storms from about 10 years ago, two windows are new crappy plastic pocket replacements I want to outright replace again, 1 is a closet window that is an odd shape, and the attic windows I'm not sure what I'm going to do with yet. If I ever finish the attic they'll need to be outright replaced with larger windows for egress.

On a slightly unrelated note I'm waiting on a quote to correct the venting issue with the boiler. The tech is still waiting on prices for parts. This is an individual recommended by @captainco

JakeCK

Some more help with heating: R13 polyiso on the foundation, still a work in progress. The foil faced polyiso is fiberglass reinforced and rated to be left exposed, the white faced polyiso will be getting covered with drywall soon. Technically it is all foil faced but the white ones are actually painted foil if you read the specs and scratch it lightly.

Also had the entire front porch/steps demo'd and rebuilt and had the footer and storm drains repaired under them. They weren't collapsed like we thought but rather demolished. At some point the water line was replaced and they demolished the storm lines while running it into the house. We found a brick, yes a full sized brick, and a 1x2 shoved into it and the lines were simply smashed or removed. All of the footer drains, and half of the downspouts just emptied right into the ground below the steps and footer and had washed out all the soil between the storm and sanitary laterals. There was a lot infiltration of the storm into the sanitary as a result. It had caused more than one backup at the floor drain. Never a fun time.






The supervisor was supervising.







Not heating or plumbing related but still nice none the less. Had the one corner of my garage repaired and the man door opened back up. I installed the door my self after the masons we're done. It is nice being able to get into the garage with out having to open the big doors. And if I do heat it, it'll stay warmer when I walk out of the building. Also note the hole drilled for a new 100 amp sub panel and a second hole for low voltage like Ethernet. The original conduit is actually rusted in half and has the wires exposed right at the ground. Plus the single 15amp circuit is not even close to enough power today.

Jamie Hall

looking good!

Steamhead

Of course it will help. The question is how much. I've done quite a bit of similar work to my house. I posted about it back in 2006- here it is, pics are gone but the heat-loss figures are still there:

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/108819/the-hole-in-my-bucket-gets-smaller-steamhead/p1

JakeCK

I honestly do not know how much it'll help or how to accurately calculate it but I have heard anywhere between 10 to 30% of heat loss is via the foundation. The R13 should nearly eliminate that. The areas that will be getting a 2x4 wall will also have R13 rockwool inside of it as well for a total of r26 for the finished areas. Unfortunately I have no way to insulate the slab short of ripping up the concrete. Way out of budget. I'll just have to control humidity closely to control any dampness there. Keeping the basement warm and dry should keep even the concrete floor above the dew point. I will also be using one of those frothpak sprayfoam kits on the rim joist and the underside of the new front porch. 

The new storms are harder to figure out. The house already had storms, but they were very leaky, and had no low e coating. But the air space between the two panes was still there. Without a door test I have no idea what the infiltration rate is and what it will be.

I also got an estimate for injection foam in the walls and spray foam in the attic......

Yea that ain't happening. ROI could very well be negative. It cost me less to have the front porch and steps rebuilt. 

For those who ask why not just replace all the windows here's what the dinning room windows look like now from the inside. Why would I rip out those gorgeous stained wood windows and replace it with cheap plastic?

hot_rod

Remember to take the window shaker out this fall

JakeCK

hot_rod said:

Remember to take the window shaker out this fall

Every fall. I end up with a small stack of them in the basement. Pita

mattmia2

JakeCK said:

hot_rod said:

Remember to take the window shaker out this fall

Every fall. I end up with a small stack of them in the basement. Pita

We can show you how to redirect that energy in to installing mini splits. actually a conventional split system isn't that hard either, just more work and requires more attention to detail.

JakeCK

mattmia2 said:

hot_rod said:

Remember to take the window shaker out this fall

Every fall. I end up with a small stack of them in the basement. Pita

We can show you how to redirect that energy in to installing mini splits. actually a conventional split system isn't that hard either, just more work and requires more attention to detail.

I hate the look of those wall warts. Still looking into the a2w heat pump options and with that I could get ac as well. Set of water lines up to the attic and one in the basement to a set of fan coils and I could easily have two zones of cooling with out the wall warts and the refrigerant lines on the outside of the house.

captainco

Remember the blonde joke: A blonde has all new windows installed in her house, A year later the window company called and ask why she hasn't made a payment. She said she wasn't a dumb blonde. The salesman (salesperson-sorry) told her they would pay for themselves!
jake- the contractor knows how to do it after we went through all the diagnostics. The question is if he is smart enough to do it. If so there will be a lot more people they will be able to help in the future,

JakeCK

Three inches of rain just dumped on this house in 30 minutes. The basement is still dry. 😁

mattmia2

JakeCK said:

Three inches of rain just dumped on this house in 30 minutes. The basement is still dry. 😁

My power is out because of that storm. I don’t think we got much rain but about 5 minutes of wnd

JakeCK

mattmia2 said:

JakeCK said:

Three inches of rain just dumped on this house in 30 minutes. The basement is still dry. 😁

My power is out because of that storm. I don’t think we got much rain but about 5 minutes of wnd

I didn't know you were that close to Ohio. It poured for an hour straight here at work. I don't know exactly how hard and how long at home but I'm only 10 miles down US42 from home so I doubt there was that much of a difference. If I had the time I'd post a video I recorded of the noise in the shop. Could hardly hear the machines over the rain pounding the roof. 

This is what it did for an hour: I feel sorry for the guys stuck in their vehicles during lunch. Lol

JakeCK

Some more updates.

1: Got the polyiso insulation up behind the breaker panel. That was not fun. But it made for one clean looking installation however.

2: Started work on my garage subpanel. Reused my old 100 amp breaker panel. Just had to remove a bond between the neutral & ground bars. Got it energized and installed a dedicated 30amp 130v outlet for the RV. No more dog bone taking up one of my valuable 15amp receptacles. And I can fully power the RV while not popping the garage breaker. Now to install a mini split out there so I can use the garage year round. 

Protip: when pulling 1awg wire in 1 1/4" conduit, if you think you have enough lube, you don't. Use more, lots more. That sucked

3: repaired and cleaned up the front flower beds after everything got tore up from the construction. Part of reworking the front flower beds also included extending it out past the side of the house so the retaining wall protects the gas meter that was relocated in January. My elderly neighbors have been known to miss their driveway... By a lot.
And lowering the overall height of the bed to allow better better drying of the foundation to the exterior and to let more sun hit it as well. 

Phew...

Still so much more work to be done and I'm rapidly running out of nice weather. 

Need to get the exterior door out of my daughters room, the front door needs to be removed and rehung with proper flashing, and the siding around it needs to be fixed too 

Another project about half done is another run of conduit out to the garage for ethernet and coax. The Ethernet is for both a wifi ap, security cameras, and general data use. I have the wifi ap's bridged right now but ever since I replaced the garage doors with triple layer aluminum doors the wifi signal is very weak. A light rain knocks out the signal enough for the cameras. The coax is for the satellite dish that's mounted out there. I hate the look of the wire hung between the two. 

JakeCK

Update on the new storm windows. They most definitely changed something. The only time my windows would fog up before would be when it was extremely cold, generally when we were getting down close to design and running a humidifier. The RH in the house would be consistently lower then outside starting from now until spring, mid winter we would run up to three of them across the house and hardly keep the RH above 30. Instead this fall so far it has been holding around 50% regardless of what's going on outside and the dehumidifier has continued to run occasionally in the basement. Normally it's stopped running by now. 

One difference is that I have yet to relight the boiler. I'm waiting until this Friday when the work on the venting will be done. I've been using a two small space heaters to boost the temp up to 70. One on each floor. Last picture shows how much energy it was taking to hold the house at that temperature. If someone wants to run the numbers have at it. Most energy used during a single hour was around 3Kwh right around 3am last night. And got down to around 40f. Seems excessive for a 30f delta T