Coffee 1-12-113

dcrane wrote:great job and idea on those inside re-usable windows They look so damb good im expecting to see you filling them with argon next
well done mate! im going to make one of these for a very large and problematic picture window (its a perfect solution!) TY bunches!

Yeah give it a go D. They work like a champ. If you make a large one use a cross brace in the middle like the one in my kitchen picture.

Here's a pdf of the instructions that I used to make mine. The only thing I change was that I used pocket screw joints but other than that I followed these instuctions.

http://www.midcoastgreencollaborative.o ... mphlet.pdf

Materials and further stuff here.
http://www.arttec.net/Thermal-Windows/index.html

I made up an inside "storm" window of sorts for the skylights in the kitchen. The kitchen has a cathedral ceiling so the two skylights are in a recessed well as deep as the 2 x 12's used for ceiling rafters. In the winter, the warm moist kitchen air would rise into these wells and condense on the skylights to the point it would run to the lower part of the skylight and drip/ run off.

I made a couple frames from pvc board and used some salvaged lexan I cam across. I put brick molding around the perimeter of the inside of the well, recessed up from the ceiling edge the thickness of the frame and then screwed the frame to the brick molding. I did have to replace the drywall in the wells because of the water damage. Before I put the new drywall up, I put 1/2" foam against the rafters and blocks as a thermal break, then the drywall.

I did put some thin foam weatherstripping between the frame and brick molding. Works very well, the warm moist air doesn't get into the wells anymore, it just flows up the storms which smoothly follow the slope of the ceiling. No condensation on the storms or on the skylights. Been up there since 2006.

Another insulating idea for those with pull down attic steps is to make a box out of 2" foam board to put above the steps when they are closed. The idea is to create an insulated "well" for the stairs to fit up into. I used long nails pushed through the foam board into the sides and ends then went crazy with the duct tape to tighten it up and hold it together real good. Make sure you make it wide enough that the step hardware has clearance to the sides as they swing up. I made the first just a touch narrow and it would scrape and move the box as I stored the steps so after a few years I finally had to make a second one.

Damn, you guys are pretty uptown with your home made windows, inside plumbing, & electricity I gotta get on the ball here.

I know, right Fred? Even have finished walls too. Probably insulation behind it. Talk about livin' large!

titleist1 wrote:I made up an inside "storm" window of sorts for the skylights in the kitchen. The kitchen has a cathedral ceiling so the two skylights are in a recessed well as deep as the 2 x 12's used for ceiling rafters. In the winter, the warm moist kitchen air would rise into these wells and condense on the skylights to the point it would run to the lower part of the skylight and drip/ run off.

I made a couple frames from pvc board and used some salvaged lexan I cam across. I put brick molding around the perimeter of the inside of the well, recessed up from the ceiling edge the thickness of the frame and then screwed the frame to the brick molding. I did have to replace the drywall in the wells because of the water damage. Before I put the new drywall up, I put 1/2" foam against the rafters and blocks as a thermal break, then the drywall.

I did put some thin foam weatherstripping between the frame and brick molding. Works very well, the warm moist air doesn't get into the wells anymore, it just flows up the storms which smoothly follow the slope of the ceiling. No condensation on the storms or on the skylights. Been up there since 2006.

Another insulating idea for those with pull down attic steps is to make a box out of 2" foam board to put above the steps when they are closed. The idea is to create an insulated "well" for the stairs to fit up into. I used long nails pushed through the foam board into the sides and ends then went crazy with the duct tape to tighten it up and hold it together real good. Make sure you make it wide enough that the step hardware has clearance to the sides as they swing up. I made the first just a touch narrow and it would scrape and move the box as I stored the steps so after a few years I finally had to make a second one.

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Those are really nice. Well done titleist1 I think that some sort of plexy or lexan panels would be better but add quite a bit to the cost versus the polyolphin resin film. Plus they would be cat proof too. I have had to have some serious retraining with the spray bottle about leaving those storms alone. I got them nice and tight with a heat gun so they don't attract the cats as much as that rattling plastic but if determined, I have the squirt gun handy.

SMITTY wrote:I know, right Fred? Even have finished walls too. Probably insulation behind it. Talk about livin' large!

Can I join the unfinished renovation club? I've got more holes and unfinished projects around my house it'll never be done.

NoSmoke wrote:Here in Maine the price of metal roofing is pretty cheap because the Amish have a steel mill somewhere in PA and most of the siding comes from that plant. You can buy it off the local building suppliers, but you can cut them out of the picture if you just go to the local Amish Community and get the steel from them. A lot of people here are going to metal roofing for that reason; you can have the local Amish put it on your house for what it would cost just to buy it. A guy at church did that last week and it was cheaper having the Amish put it on his home then it was to even get it to his house by anyone else.

There is a catch though; because it would take so long to get the buggies back and forth, he had to go over and pick them up and then bring them back at the end of the day. But it it is the cheapest steel roofing option.

I don’t know about Maine but these guys supply a lot of the Amish in eastern PA. It is a Mennonite owned business. I have a cousin who does commercial roofs and he tells me this outfit is the cheapest place to get steel roofing that he knows of.

http://www.abmartin.net/

These are Amish guys, though we do have a Mennonite Community not that far away. They have a custom sawmilling business and I have got them to saw logs into lumber for me on many occasions. In a way it is silly because we have a few sawmills in the family, a total of four if you count a 1900 Roberts rotary sawmill, a Thomas Bandsaw mill, a home made chainsaw mill that my father and I welded up, and a cedar shingle mill if that counts. Despite all these ways to break down trees into boards, I found it is just easier and quicker to call the Mennonites in and have them convert logs to boards. They make a nice board and are fast, and how can you beat paying 180 dollars for every thousand feet of lumber (18 cents a board foot)?

I say all this and yet am in the midst of making my living room a bit bit bigger by removing a bedroom and putting up some beams. I figured if I wanted a hand hewn look the best way to do that was to actually hew them by hand. I have one more to go, but chopping out a beam from a log is not that bad. I can make an 8 x 8 beam 12-16 feet long in about two hours using a chainsaw, axe and power planer, which is not that bad. The hardest part is putting them up in the house. The wife is 5 months pregnant so we had to devise a way for me to do all the lifting so we settled on this method, which is crude but effective. It looks pretty messy know but after we get the walls puttied, the trim on and the flooring down, we will have a nice 24x40 living room.

24x40'...That is quite a room. How do you plan on heating it?

Nice NS, now that's a FAMILY room.

Rob R. wrote:24x40'...That is quite a room. How do you plan on heating it?

Radiant Floor primarily.

The rest of my house is radiant floor heat which I love, so I am converting this to radiant floor heat as well. Ultimately I plan to install a boiler in my mudroom and plumb the heat to my radiant floor system so that I have all the computer controls of the propane system, and the back up of propane as well. My propane system was initially plumbed and valved for supplemental heat so it is really easy to do.

We do plan on installing a hearth area in the corner of the living room in the far corner of the picture I posted above. We will build that out of field stone as this is Maine and I have plenty of rock and have built a lot of rockwalls in my life.This hand fired stove will give me the luxury of having either firewood or coal, which leads me to the great unknown...What do I use for a fuel for the Boiler in my mudroom?

In a way I would love a firewood/coal combination, but a combo unit is not all that efficient at burning either type of fuel. A coal only boiler would be great, but I do not own a coal mine and have to buy it...unlike firewood which I have hundreds of acres of. But with a hand fired stove in the corner of the room...an appliance that will keep the rooms warm and the radiant floor heat from coming on...I can burn firewood or coal in that to slake my burning-coal-fetish and the efficiency of having cheap fuel to warm my house.

I envision the boiler in my mud room to be my main heat, just because how comfortable radiant heat is. My father got a pellet/corn boiler for his 5280 square foot home and now that he got the kinks worked out, it is pumping out some great heat at half the cost of oil. It was only $4500 and very compact, perfect for what I would want in my mudroom. It already is capable of burning corn, and I think it would burn rice coal with a bit of modification, and you know me, I like to tinker with stoves. If I went that route it would give me four heating options throughout my home: propane, coal (rice and stove coal) firewood, corn and pellets. I am thinking at this point that having as many options as I can, would behoove me and allow me to take advantage of whatever was cheaper. So I am leaning heavily to the pellet boiler...I mean I am a farmer and already grow corn. I could easily dedicate the two acres it would require to grown the corn to heat my home if pellets or coal grew too high in price.

So I got some thinking to do...

I must warn you, Be extremely careful with that hydrolic jack!!!! I have almoxt been killed and many people have been killed and busted up with that lash up you have. I simply wont do it anymore. the amount of pressure is simply unreal you can apply with that thing and it is not being directed in a straight line. Danger Will Smith!!!!

KEvin

That's pretty cheap for the boiler your Dad got NS. Nice to know it's working well for a home that size (large). Must eat some serious pellets?

Your new room will be awesome! Love the beams. I would imagine that a stoker boiler will be the way to go for you. If you are pumping fluid with it for radiant floors you should have a pretty good capacity too. I'd choose one that can do the job right in the sweet spot at a little below the average temps. That gives you capacity for expansion if needed. Most stokers are multi fuel as long as you can feed them with the drive.

Speaking of beams, I came upon a very old barn that had caved in. Spoke to the owners about salvaging some of the beams. Imagine my surprise when a couple of 12" x12" beams turned out to be American Chestnut!

Yeah my fathers new pellet boiler chugs through some pellets, but his home burned even more oil. He has all radiant floor like me, but oil was costing him $4500-5000 per year so he felt he had to do something. His old house burned due to an outside wood boiler, so my mother, who has lost two homes to fire, was a little gun shy about stoves so they settled upon a pellet boiler built in an outside building. They even have a sprinkler system installed in there...such is their paranoia about fire.

I like his new boiler because it is so compact and I think it can burn rice coal because it really is just an underfed stoker system. Originally designed to burn corn, the owner of the company said they realized pellets was better and so it is billed as a biomass boiler. I just realized rules on here forbid me to hot link so if you (or anyone) wants to see what it is, just do an image search for Amaizing Boiler, the maize being for its original design...for burning corn.

As for the house, thanks so much for the kind words. It is in terrible shape right now due to the rebuild being half done, but I appreciate you being able to see the potential. I am not a prepper really, nor a homesteader, but I am a farmer and being cheap, prefer to do as much as I can, by myself. The beams were just part of that. About 80% of the wood in here has been cut from trees grown on the farm.

But I appreciate salvage too, and am glad you do that as well. We recently put on an addition this fall; a mud room that was appropriated from my Grandmother's house across the road. She had an old 18X12 shed that was not doing much, so me and the wife, bought bags of cement and then using our own gravel (we have a gravel pit here), hand mixed concrete for the slab for it using a wheel barrow and hoe, then jacked the shed up, put skids under it, then hooked on to it with my tractor and pulled it across the road and shoved it into place. It took a lot of work, but saved me a lot of money too. That is just kind of an example of how this place was built, starting from a 24x24 garage in 1994, to the home it is now.''

Yep those chestnut beams were real score. I could saw them up and make some big money to a furniture or woodworker but I'm gonna keep them I think. Like you I like to do whatever I can also and they'll tell me what they want to be transformed into one of these days. Repurposing