Professional

2 weeks of neglect, sorry cyberspace. There are many boring excuses but instead I will jump right in and tell you about our heat since I am enjoying it right now and it is super cold outside. 

Our first plumber did not know about boiler installation, and I doubt very much that he knew much about basic plumbing because he left a bunch of concrete in my floor drain. He was not asked to return. Those 2 following winters were freezing. We would wake up with ice in our night water. The damper was not installed correctly and so it kept shutting off the whole system because there was not enough air flow.

Seth had offered to fix the system even though he was also, not a professional HVAC guy, but he was smart and willing to figure it out. This was not the most efficient way to fix our heating system but it is damn near impossible to get any reputable HVAC guy out in the middle of December. So Seth did his research, called on his friends and did his best to cobble together a manifold. It worked for the first night, and then the second night it shut off. He was kind enough to come and troubleshoot it at 10pm because he didn’t want us to freeze. He got it back on, but there were still issues.

Luckily it was only 2 more months of super cold and then the melting rain of March came around and we forgot all about the heat until this fall. I turned on the thermostat for practice in September and realized I would have to find a real HVAC guy, pronto. Going off a recommendation from a master plumber I had to fortune of working with an honest company that was able to fix the vent in less than an hour and it hasn’t turned off since.

I was also informed that my system would mostly likely need to be re run in 1.5 or 2 inch iron for the first branch that would feed the rest of the house. Once it was explained to me it made perfect sense, the boiler is trying to release all the pressure it is creating and was choked up because the supply and return lines were run in .75 or .5 which is half the size they should be. Course to re run all the lines will be a huge project and not one to start in the middle of winter, so remind me in the summer time to remember the snow!

Holes

So I traipse around the Yucatan while Ashby suffers through the winter with a little help from friends and the library and the bath house. I get homesick and return for her birthday in August and set to work on getting rooms buttoned up and heat hot for the winter. First I have to clean up all the rat shit everywhere. It is a mess! No wonder Ashby had a snake in her bed… she tells the story better but I will try to here.

Returning home one evening she goes up to the bedroom. She has taken the real bed, though the milk crate one still exists in the corner. As she is toodling around she sees what she thinks is a rope on the milk crate bed in her peripheral, Odd, she thinks but doesn’t turn to look at it until she sees it move. YIKES!

She runs out of the house and to the neighbors Mitch and Cassy, asking if they would please help her. Mitch apologizes and says he is pretty afraid of snakes too, and Ashby goes back alone, armed with a broom to try and get the snake out herself. After she is in the house She hears a knock on the door, and there is Mitch, a bit sheepish after what was sure to be hell coming from his wife “You better go help that poor girl get that snake out of her HAUS!”

Mitch is armed with BBQ tongs and a long armed spatula and they go up together. At this point the snake is gone, slithered down one of the countless holes in the house. There are so many holes you could drop a TV from the attic all the way to the basement. Even now, with the drywall up the balloon framing allows a straight vertical shot. They are both relieved, though Ashby fears the return of the snake. Mitch leaves her with some sage advice. “Either he found his way out and you never see him again, or… you do.”

Neglect

So it is August of 2011, and we just turned on the house with power, water and heat (the water story will be another post). My sister Ashby comes out from Philadelphia to help me and Kitty move in, which not only includes hauling all my junk but also finishing the bathroom (tiles and such). We have a time of it but I'm finally in! She stays the first night with me in the one mostly clean room shut off from all the chaos of the rest of the house.

When Ashby leaves I am so very lonely. I wander around and try to finish projects but then can’t get my act together. It is coming on October and I am still not anywhere near comfortable. It is desperate times. Then Ashby decides to leave Philly and come stay with me. I am overjoyed. We have a wonderful reunion and it gets a little easier to keep working on the house. I have a reason to make things more comfortable, as opposed to sleeping in filth and eating cans of beans over the bathtub (that was my only “sink” for a while).

Then it gets cold. Really cold. Throughout the fall we shared a bed, until Ashby decided she would rather sleep on milk crates than smell my farts all night. But once it got super cold she was right back in the stink of it. We spent a lot of time at the library and at the Bath House so we could be warm. When all our options were gone we bundled up in bed in wool hats and socks and watched VHS mix tapes our friend Kerry made us. We might have also played a lot of Donkey Kong Country on our super NES.

I had a shitty job at a shitty restaurant and I was itching to get outta dodge. The new year was upon us and so I gave the gift of the Caribbean to myself and my sister and we went to stay with our friends in Mexico for a month. That month turned into 9 more for me and poor Ashby had to go back to Mercy Haus alone. (I think this is when she named it that).

I abandoned my child.

Techincally

*sorry this is late, i have compy issues...

First Snow of 2013! So lets talk heat. There was no way I was using forced air in my house since it is gross even though folks will argue about having the option of ac for our increasingly hot summers. Radiant heat was the only system I was interested in so I had a guy come get me a quote. He took one look at my house and said that he was not going to waste my time, that he did high end projects and that his work would be out of my price range. He did give me some great information, including the Myson Rad catalog and a general idea of the size of rads needed for each room. I set about calculating the cubic footage to heat and the size of boiler I would need to buy.

I needed to find a heating specialist, but couldn’t get anyone to return my calls. A friend introduced me to his plumber who said he could install the boiler. Technically he was able to hook it up to the gas, however he did not set up the manifold, vent, damper or pump system correctly. He also did not size the pipes accurately and this left us with brand new system designed to heat the whole 2500 square house struggling to heat the finished 800 square. I should have known he was an amateur when he installed the thermostat right over the radiator.

I was recently asked to detail the specs of the heating system I had installed for a friend here they are:

Heating: total $6800

$1700 Boiler

Buderus Gas Logano GC124 ii/SSP 85k btu 120 volts

CSI Comfort Supply 412 921 6600  150 Kisow drive 15205  

Similar http://ecomfort.com/gc124-4-ii-cast-iron-gas-fired-hot-water-boiler-chimney-vented-103000-btu-2001.html

$36 expansion tank plus unknown $ for 2 relays and a water pump.

$200 Pex THERMAL pipe amazon $45 for 100 ft. buy metal hangers, plastic will break.

$400 boiler fittings

$2500 Myson Rads special order from Myers plumbing on 5^th

$2000 spent on labor, and there are still issues, but I was not working with a professional.

I used this to calculate the cubic feet to heat, windows and materials do make a difference when in doubt always overestimate and get a bigger boiler.

http://www.chromalox.com/resource-center/calculators/comfort-heater.aspx