A Tale of Insulating, Heating and Soffits

Last week at this time we ended our blog with this statement: "With luck our heat will be installed and this time next week we could be fully insulated and heated!"

Well, it thrills me to say that……. Hopefully next week at this time we will be fully insulated and heated!

What happened? Some, but not enough. Everything just seems to take longer than anticipated. Barb has been going crazy on the insulation and I have been working on the soffit.

One of the things that stresses us out about building a house yourself and that is the fact that we cannot do everything and need to have to subcontract out some things.  Relying on other people to come when they said they would and do the work they promised (and sometimes paid in advance for) is very frustrating!

The first was the garage door guy who was over a month later than promised. We were really stressed with him as he wanted $5,000 in advance to pay for the materials then would not return our calls or texts. He finally got the job done but it was literally more than a month after he said it would be done.

The second was our heating guy. Although he did not ask for any money up front he was over a week later than promised, And again, very poor at communicating; why he missed the scheduled date or when he will be out. Calls, emails, text go pretty much ignored. I get there may be delays but at least communicate them! He did not show up last week as promised. He finally did show up this past Thursday morning unexpectedly and got most of the installation complete.

That is one drawback of not using a local and well known contractor is that you are on the bottom of the list and their bread and butter customers get put ahead of you. We dealt with that on another house that we built where we did not do any of the building but acted as the contractor subbing out the installs so we were aware of delays but it still raises the blood pressure!

Well, at least the boiler is installed and hopefully he will be back next week as promised for the final hookup. The system itself looks great! It is a combination fire tube boiler for heating the in-floor heat and a tankless hot water heater for our domestic hot water needs. Kevin said he has installed a lot of them over the years and are a good unit. The specific one we got is a new model and is supposed to be more efficient and have a longer life than its predecessor.

The unit itself is about 4'x2' so you can get an idea of the overall size

There are a few things one does not think about when it comes to having systems like this installed such as venting and getting a gas line to the system. Well, we actually did think of the gas line and had an idea where we wanted to run it. We also had them install a run for our stove while they were at it. The venting was another story. Because the main unit was being installed under the stairs, they could not go straight up into the floor space and out the side of the house. Instead they had to go out sideways into the laundry room then up into the floor. It will require me to soffit around a small section of pipe but it is in an area you will not even notice it.

He was able to stack them so they took up less room

As I said, Barb has been busy insulating the ceiling. She has the entire loft area done and is now working off the scaffolding in the great room. I have yet to even touch a piece of insulation, she seems content to do it all on her own. She has had to google a few things and call Forrest and Kevin a few times but it is all going well. For example; How do you insulated around the can lights? Well, there are a couple kinds of can lights, some you can insulated right up to (type IC), others you have to build a box around. We did not consider this when picking out and installing our lights. Luckily the ones we picked out were the type that allowed for insulating right up to them and she carried on.

Barb sitting on the job again, 16' in the air!

She only has had one mishap, well actually two. When she was using the staple gun to tack the insulation to the ceiling she accidently hit her thumb. It hurt enough that she quit for the day but she was right back at it the next day and within an hour or so she stapled one of her fingers!

The soffiting is going well. Putting up the F Channel and cutting the soffits to length were a little more time consuming than I anticipated. For anyone doing this in the future I would recommend a corded circular saw. Cutting steel with the battery operated DeWalt burns through the batteries pretty quickly.

Yes, I am wearing safety glasses

Once the F Channel is up and soffits cut to length, the actual putting them up goes pretty quick. Especially when your neighbor has a staple gun that punches through steel that he offers to borrow you!

The hardest thing, or I should say the most strenuous was putting up the high pieces of firerock between the house and the garage. It is only 8 upper level pieces but really hate doing it so I have been putting it off only doing 2-3 pieces the last few weeks. Now that we are almost all the way insulated I need to get it done. The problem is that I have to cut the pieces to fit the roof angle then position the sheetrock at the base of the ladder, push it 12’ up the ladder while trying to climb it.
A 12' x 4' piece of 5/8" sheet rock weighs a little over 105 lbs.

Up we go!

1/2 way there!

Almost lost it!

Success!

As if trying to push it up the ladder is not hard enough, then I have to get it onto the 5/8” ledge of the piece below it, slide it into place then screw it to the wall. Strenuous and nerve-wracking all at the same time!

The weather cooperated this week with 40's, 50's and even a day in the 60's! But the bottom is falling out the next few days.

Funny story of the week comes from our daughter Jessica. For the past few years every Halloween she buys back some of the candy her kids get for .25 each. In year past they get so much that they would be on a sugar high for weeks. Well this year was another banner year for the kids especially when they went to their neighbors who work at Hersey and dumped an entire bag into each of the kids candy sacks! She ended up buying back over $30 worth of candy .25 at a time from EACH of the kids and they still had plenty left over for their sugar high!

Our disgusting story of the week happened just tonight. I wanted to get the tanks dumped before the couple of cold days. Since we have a dump station right in the garage it is not a big deal. Well, I hooked up the hoses, pulled the black tank only to find out of the hoses had a huge hole in it! Ugh! I shut it off but it was a little late. Nothing a little bleach and water won't fix.

On the deer hunting front, the big one is still eluding me but I did get a picture of one of the little guys ripping up one of our pine trees!

And I saw this guy a couple times, he is big bit still not big enough!

Well, we are full of water and ready for the cold snap, we did not winterize this time as it looks as though we can survive single digits. Wish us luck!