Team Seacats

БогородицаIt’s no secret I stay pretty busy – this time of year is crazy.  However, I have managed to clear a couple of weekends lately to dedicate myself to the garage and progress is being made…the list of major items is down to 1.5 (run compressed air distribution lines and button up the heat pump installation).  I have a dream to be in the upstairs portion by 2012.  This will be a quick update on a couple of projects that are completed or nearly completed.

I had left the old shop opening a little rough from the old days when I cut the window opening down to the floor before anything was built of the garage. This opening was pretty rough and slightly too narrow for the door I had planned to install here.  The opening where the window was also turned out not be plumb and so I had to cut an inch out and square up the opening…that is SUCH a messy job since the block in this structure is real cinder block that used coal cinders as filler in the concrete…the dust is black as night.  I also had left the block at the top of the opening to support the top plate and ceiling joists and gable end of the roof structure and that needed to be removed so the top of the opening could be made higher and the support structure more permanent.  Strangely, my ceiling joists are running in the wrong direction over the workshop – parallel to the ridge line in the roof.  I needed to be conservative with the bracing to make sure nothing moved because I couldn’t really depend on what was and what wasn’t load bearing since it was screwy.  The interior of the shop also has a stucco finish so I had to learn a little about that too:
p style=text-align: center;a title=DSC_1932 by Team Seacats, on Flickr href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamseacats/4869847234/img src=http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4073/4869847234_d24b34b114.jpg alt=DSC_1932 width=500 height=333 //a
Old picture showing the first cutting of the new opening/p
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the new header installed and braced. I had to install bracing in a series of successive steps (prior to this, the braces were on the interior of the shop to the ceiling to carry the joist load)./p
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the new stucco. I stapled wire mesh to the face of the wood header and troweled two layers of morter mix / stucco. The texture is a little different than the original walls – but it’s plenty close enough./p
p style=text-align: left;I eventually decided to forgo the use of a door here and will just trim out the opening as a pass through. The shop is pretty small and it would be inconvenient to have this door in place. However, I had kinda liked the thought of having the compressor behind a closed door so you could have a conversation while it ran. Maybe I can box it in and insulate it if I can give it some good ventilation with a fan on a relay or something.  Or, perhaps, I’ll change my mind and put that door in later./p
Up next was some more work on the heat pumps. I had several insulation contractors provide quotes and one of them got pretty uppity with me about my self-installation heat pumps.  I later discovered that his company also does heat/air – so he was apparently taking my degree of do-it-myself personally.    He also quizzed me relentlessly on the sizing of the units…who did your load calcs, how many people did you include in your calcs…or did you ignore the fact that people affect the loads?, etc. etc.   I was genuinely getting close to asking him to leave but I kept my cool because I didn’t want to do insulation and he seemed to come from a pretty successful outfit.  I explained that I used a high end software package to calculate heat loss and so forth…he continued to try to poke holes in my efforts. I walked him around the side of the building and showed him the installation of the outdoor units and his attitude shifted pretty quickly and he started asking me details about my installation, not out of spite this time, but (I think) genuine interest.   I sensed him reverting back to a diminutive tone when he grinned sheepishly and started to ask what I planned to do with two dryer vents (insert sarcastic tone) – but before he finished the last word, his voice trailed off as it dawned on him that I was using those to cleanly snake the linesets into the interior wall structure and I think he was genuinely impressed. I probably should have asked him to leave anyway – his quote was 3 times the price of the three others I got and he refused to insulate the floor between the garage and upstairs and kept repeating that I didn’t need to insulate that.  I guess he wasn’t listening to me when I kept repeating that the downstairs area will not be heated and cooled all the time.

Through all that, however, he did make me start to question my load calcs so I ran through them again later. I had about 12% capacity remaining with the outdoor temps at 95 degrees…and it happened to be over 100 for several days at that time. I started to think that perhaps I had gotten a little overzealous with trying to size the units exactly right and didn’t include enough safety factor…a dirty air filter or anything that might cause a slight loss of efficiency might leave me with a cooling/heating system that can’t keep up.  For the garage, I had accepted that the heating system would not be able to overcome the heat loss through the slab with and indoor temp at 74 when the outdoor temperature was below freezing (which would be fine…I just plan for the system to dust off the cold downstairs)…but if I was going to start making changes, I might as well be warm (or cool) everywhere I might possibly want to be…..so I bought two new 1.5 ton heat pumps – this time with a 21.5 SEER rating (just shy of the best efficiency you can get).  Thankfully, they mounted to my existing mounts with only a minor adjustment.
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one of the line sets prior to wrapping with vinyl bundling tape (yes…all 50 feet of it – and all I could find was 2 bundling tape!)/p
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the openings in the top plate to get the linesets into the floor structure/p
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Linesets in the wall and snaked to their end destinations in the attic over the old shop!/p
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The new 1.5ton heat pumps with linesets ready to flare and attach/p
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Hey man, nice flare….where’s you nut? Uhhh, errrr…that was a practice flare….yeah./p
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Another good looking flare (with the nut pre-installed this time)./p
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Installation finished with aluminum tape to protect the foam line insulation from the UV / weather (and it looks all cryogenic and stuff).  I still need to finish up the upper unit and we’ll be finished out here./p
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Hot.  That’s been the word of the day around here for about two months now.  Working outside, especially in the upper level with no ceiling or insulation to offer protection from the radiant heat coming from the roof, is brutal.  I’ve been working in the early weekend mornings upstairs until it gets too hot and then moving downstairs until I’ve had enough (usually around noon).  I then retreat into the house to catch up on things there.  During the week, I’ll sometimes wait for the sun to go down and put on a head lamp to do some work in the garage and office followed closely by a fan.

I’ve been slow to get updates here – I have several to make and will break it up a little into different sections.  For now, a simple post about sofit baffles.  Sofit baffles protect the vented sofits from insulation and other debris that might block the air flow into the attic.  They’re needed especially when you will be working with a blown-in type of insulation.  I was a little unsure about the ridge vent roof ventilation system having heard some negative things about it.  Since then, I’ve become convinced that most of the time folks have issues with a ridge vent, it’s probably because of inadequate intake ventilation in the roof…i.e., the ridge vent can only vent as much air as can be drawn into the attic.  So I studied sofit baffles and settled on this particular ABS plastic type.   I had to order these because most of the readily available baffles are of a lightweight foam type that are exceptionally fragile and just tuck straight down into the sofit. They offer very little shielding from the top plate and if pressed lightly, can buckle and fail.  You can’t really tuck insulation in with those foam ones without risking breaking them.  The baffles I ended up with first staple to the top plate of the wall and they lay across the top plate horizontally toward the roof sheathing where they bend sharply and follow the roof sheathing upwards.  A few staples through the baffle attaches it to the sheathing and holds it in place. The molded stand-offs in the baffle allow multiple channels for air to flow from the sofit into the attic space while still allowing insulation to be tucked in deeply above the top plate to reduce any (very common) cold spots during the winter around the perimeter of the ceiling/wall joint.  I first thought I was going to use a pneumatic stapler to attach these but the staples were shot so violently that it was shattering the ABS plastic.  A manual stapler didn’t have the same issue…so I ended up manually stapling them in place.

I finally found some time this holiday weekend to invest some more time on the Garage Mahal and made some decent progress! The two 1 ton heat pump outdoor units are mounted and one is even wired. I have to get a couple more electrical fittings to finish wiring the downstairs unit. The writing / descriptions below are a little rough…I’m short on editing time (as usual lately).

My first time working with vinyl siding was rough…I don’t know anyone with direct experience that could help me sort out the trimming details so I had to figure it out as I went along. It took some time to get it right – but it is right ‘perty. I purchased a couple of brackets to mount the heat pump units on the wall. This gets them off the ground and provides more opportunity to get them further out of the weather and hidden. I had intended to mount them in a completely different location, but after conferring with Bonnie, she pushed for mounting them under the stairs on the north side of the building. This messed me up on the refrigeration line-sets because the two (rather expensive) sets I already bought were too short now. I’ll see if I can exchange them for a couple of longer sets. I’m also short on the control wiring to the indoor units so an inquiry as to the store’s return policy and some more buying are in my future. All said, I am quite happy with where they ended up. After trimming in the stairs with some lattice, the units will have a very protected and hidden home. I am a little concerned that they may be a little noisy facing the primary back yard – but these are supposed to be exceptionally quiet units…so fingers crossed.

The wall mount consists of a pressure treated 2×4 coated with multiple coats of stain, caulked to the sheathing/house wrapped wall, and secured with long lag bolts to 2×4 blocking I installed on the inside of the wall. After trimming out the first piece of wood, I decided I needed an easier method of providing a base for the ‘elbow’ of the mounting brackets…so I whipped out the welder and welded large washers on the head of more lag bolts. These are screwed into the wall (again into reinforced blocking) and lined up perfectly with the bumpers on the ‘elbows’ of the brackets. That was much easier than mounting another 2×4 and trimming it out. They should hold up just fine (everything caulked for good measure with a very long life caulk). I then trimmed in a couple of dryer vents to form an entry cowling for the refrigerant line-sets to enter the wall. They’ll later be sealed with expanding foam to keep the critters out. The electrical boxes were mounted to the wall with long wood screws and spacers to keep the boxes just barely spaced from the siding…again plenty of caulk applied. I also ran some PVC roofing material under the stairs to divert rain/snow/ice from getting to the units…I hate seeing heat pumps covered in ice during the winter when they’re trying to heat! The 220V 12 gauge power was also pulled to each unit – though I need to tie it into the breaker panel. I also started boring the 2″ holes for the four lineset tubes in the wall headers. I’ll end the linesets and control wiring in the areas that the indoor wall units will reside and can move on to making a couple of minor changes and finishing up the electrical wiring (which is very close to being ready for inspection!).

I’ve been doing nothing but wiring for the last month or so.  Every time I move on to a new task in the garage, I’m reminded at how poor my time estimating skills are with these kinds of jobs I’ve never done before.  Though I thought that I should be done with the electrical work by now, thanks to three solid days (or more) of help from David Strickland and Tim Owens, the wiring is nearly completed for both the upstairs and downstairs.  23 recessed can lights are in place switched on 4 different banks upstairs and I’ve gone nuts with the number of outlets.  There are three circuits of outlets (I think 28 in total) and eleven network outlets – some of which will double as telephone connections.  I couldn’t resist putting in so many outlets – the space is so modular I thought it best to simply have a plug wherever we might want to put equipment because it’s easier now before the insulation .  Downstairs, there are six eight foot double tube florescent strips forming two runs down the length of the garage and specific workbench lighting.  There aren’t as many outlets downstairs but there are plenty with several mounted above “benchtop level” on the wall where there will be a long work table.  There are four exterior outlets – one of them 30Amp to power the RV.  I will have to be judicious with simultaneous power consumption and though it’s going to be a rare occasion that we are using much more than a computer and one or two lighting circuits, the 100Amp service will not power everything at once.  I hope I don’t regret not installing a 200 amp service (that would have required extensive rework on my house’s main electrical service and circuitry).

To finish things, I have some work to do with the HVAC.  I need to determine if my 25′ lineset for the upstair unit will allow me to install the two outdoor units side by side or if they need to be mounted one above the other (they’ll mount on brackets on the existing exterior wall).  Once that is determined, I can mount the disconnect boxes and run the wiring for those units.  All that is left after that is to run the 100Amp power feed from the main electrical box and then to schedule a rough-in electrical inspection so I can move on to hiring insulation and drywall contractors.

Several of these boxes are network – they’re not ALL power!

Electrical Panel before cleanup:

Electrical Panel after cleaning it up – I spent most of today wiring that cabinet alone…(I am short one 15amp breaker..hence the blank spot).

I need to call my original contractor out and get them to fix this leaky door that I already had them reinstall once…

Sorry it’s been a while since the last post…It seems like I get fewer and fewer breaks anymore and I’m not making the progress on the garage that I had hoped by this point.  However, the things that are coming along are coming along quite well so it’s still gratifying.  I have been working on several different projects in and out of the garage and I hope to put up several posts in the next week or so updating the status on things.

During a warm snap several weeks ago I was finally able to complete the complex curved fencing that I had been scheming about ever since the garage project began. It was as difficult as I anticipated but the result was better than I could have imagined.  This curved fence section is roughly 30 linear feet of fencing and ties into brackets I had previously welded on the primary hinged fence posts. As I did on the back fencing, I used 2″ galvanized EMT conduit for the fence posts because it has a thicker wall, was available in 10′ sections, and was cheaper than the 6′ 2″+ thin wall fencing posts available at the big box hardware stores. Standard 2″ EMT conduit fittings were used to mount the fencing braces – although this time I installed stainless steel plates between the wood and the EMT clamp out of concern that the wood may compress overtime and allow the clamp to lose pressure and slide. The long braces are constructed from multiple layers of 1/2″ pressure treated plywood that were soaked for a few days and then braced around the curve of the driveway and screwed together. After drying for several weeks and waiting for a warm enough day to stain, everything was put together. I was concerned about the open grain of the plywood so I applied about 8 coats of stain to the braces to hopefully extend their life (I don’t want to have to make those again any time soon!). Should they fail in the future, I’ll probably try to heat some plastic decking boards and use them to form the curve.

Rats! – I didn’t get a photo with all the pickets trimmed and in place…there are 3 pickets missing in this photo