The Hunt!/Eric's new dump.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Looks like a South Carolina yard

I have three large pine trees left to cut, unfortunately, they're all leaning in directions that make it difficult to just chop and drop, I'll have to get up there and tie them off, and put tension on them while I cut.

Don't think you can just notch them in the direction you want them to go?

this is my next project, whoever poured this foundation on the patio needs to be shot if they're still alive...



I kinda have a plan, but it's not evolved enough yet to discuss.

There was probably dirt there when he placed it. What does the runoff/drainage look like during heavy rains? (like this weekend...)
Gotta be *that guy*... for a patio, slab on grade is fine...

[ericjon262]

the pine trees, they're leaning enough, and have enough branches on the one side that they are leaning, that I don't think they will go the way I want even with a well cut notch.

The patio, well, it's been washed out to some degree since I bought the place, but I also assume whoever did the patio did the garage at the same time, which has similar workmanship issues. while from a load standpoint, I agree that a deep footer isn't necessary, from an erosion standpoint, I disagree, it needed some kind of footer here, and other places around the perimeter. this is made especially apparent by the fact that the ground isn't flat in this area, and the slab is thus, not poured at a uniform thickness, around the perimeter. the "patio" at one point, was enclosed, and made "part of the rest of the house" it really should not have been, if nothing else, because the slab underneath sucks.

I think my plan is going to be to support the roof with temporary structures, take down the walls, bust the perimeter of the slab, dig and pack a reasonable footer, then lay block on top to support the walls, and the roof. unless I can come up with a reasonable way to to get some concrete under the slab, and bonded to the underside of the slab.

[pmbrunelle]

From an erosion standpoint, shouldn't grass help keep that from happening?

Do you really need the square footage of the patio area? What about just demolishing it completely and making the house how it was with its old exterior walls?

[ericjon262]

From an erosion standpoint, shouldn't grass help keep that from happening?

Do you really need the square footage of the patio area? What about just demolishing it completely and making the house how it was with its old exterior walls?

It may help, but I still don't like that the slab doesn't extend below grade at all.

Do I need the square footage? Eh, that's debatable. At this point, I have already made moves towards closing in the "patio" properly, and the plans I made would definitely improve resale value, not that I plan on selling anytime soon though.

[The Dark Side of Will]

From an erosion standpoint, shouldn't grass help keep that from happening?

Do you really need the square footage of the patio area? What about just demolishing it completely and making the house how it was with its old exterior walls?

It's inland South Carolina... Pine forests have made the soil so acidic that grass doesn't do well.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I think my plan is going to be to support the roof with temporary structures, take down the walls, bust the perimeter of the slab, dig and pack a reasonable footer, then lay block on top to support the walls, and the roof. unless I can come up with a reasonable way to to get some concrete under the slab, and bonded to the underside of the slab.

You may be able to dig the footer just outside the perimeter, then place reinforcement & concrete under the edges without breaking the slab up.

[ericjon262]

I think my plan is going to be to support the roof with temporary structures, take down the walls, bust the perimeter of the slab, dig and pack a reasonable footer, then lay block on top to support the walls, and the roof. unless I can come up with a reasonable way to to get some concrete under the slab, and bonded to the underside of the slab.

You may be able to dig the footer just outside the perimeter, then place reinforcement & concrete under the edges without breaking the slab up.

thats a possibility, I'm also considering Patrick's recommendation, while the additional square footage would be nice, and a huge bump in resale value, not enclosing it would get the house nicer, faster, and free up money for a proper shop space, which also potentially gives a larger resale values too. I could also try and set it up such that I can enclose it later too.

[ericjon262]

so, I've made a significant change to what I was going to do with the house, I decided not rebuild the "patio" space, as it would just cost too much money to properly enclose. probably won't be a ton of pictures, as most of the work is kinda hard to capture in a picture right now, when it's a little further along it should get easier.

as the image below implies, I'm executing significant changes, as quickly as I can complete with high quality results. the purple box is a dead space I didn't realize existed behind the fireplace.



I may have mentioned it earlier, but the floors had a significant hump in them, I pulled all of the flooring up in the kitchen, dining room, and most of the living room, followed by the subfloors in the kitchen and dining room. I found a significant portion of that hump was actually caused by the sub floor being two different materials, and two different thicknesses. most of the issues with my hump will be solved by replacing subfloors in the areas that were the kitchen and dining room, although I will need to flatten the tops of some of the joists, and support or replace a few undersized joists.

the only way I could move the bathroom the way I am, is to remove the ventilation from under the house and install it in the attic, my house currently has a Train package unit, that works quite well, so I decided I would run it up through the floor in the area marked in purple. I did some quick math, as well as looked at a few charts online, my current ducts have about the same cross section of a 16" round tube, so I'll make the ducts round out of the unit under the house, and take them into between the walls. My joists are 16" OC, which is a problem for a 16" diameter pipe... to make things fit without smashing the pipes and complicating the duct work, I built a reinforced box cut out 2 joists, and will support the long ends underneath. the short ends catch another beam a about 2 feet away, and don't need the additional support.





the larger yellow mark will be what I am going to call a "step in" pantry, and the kitchen counters should wrap around similar to how the red line shows, although I haven't yet determined the exact kitchen layout yet. the smaller yellow area will be a "broom closet"

The bedroom in the bottom right corner is more or less unchanged from my former plans, except now, it has it's own bathroom and walk in closet. the closet will house the main breaker panels, and the odd shape of the closet is from contouring it to match the back of the fireplace and maximize available space. it was mentioned by a colleague, that the small nook is a great spot for a gun safe, something I had not considered. I do have another small plan that will be near the ceiling in this space, but I haven't completed a plan for it yet, so I'll discuss it later.

I am planning on installing a tankless electric water heater, which is the reason for "breaker panels" above being plural, as the tankless electric heaters draw quite a bit of current. if gas was easily available at my location, I would rather use that, unfortunately, it's not without buying a propane tank.



both panels are capable of being de-energized via the breakers on the outside of the house, as per current code requirements.

over my next days off, I hope to get the panels energized so I can be completely divorced from the old panel, the plus side, I'll know what is connected, and how, the downside, I'll need to scramble to get power back to some parts of the house to maintain lights, hot water, and power for tools. I also hope to be able to get the rest of the old ductwork removed from the house so that it's out of the way of the plumbing I'll be doing soon too.

I still have a few significant obstacles to overcome,

1) there are 2 windows on the side of the house that need to go away, and one that needs to partially go away, this wouldn't be a problem if the house wasn't brick, and not just plain brick, so I need to source the right brick, and hopefully I won't have to buy an entire pallet when I don't think I'll need a whole pallet.

2a) I need to get the ventilation plenum figured out, this isn't exactly something I've had to do before, but I would like to run the main trunk duct to a plenum, and distribute from there. I feel like distribution from a plenum should result in more even airflow to each room.

2b) a return header will also be needed, however, I don't feel the return is as critical as the supply, as the supply should dictate return flow, as long as the return isn't a restriction. Thoughts?

3) cleanup under the house lots of old material, from previous owners, I also should work towards encapsulating the crawlspace, and adding insulation, especially under the new bedroom where it will be more difficult to get to later.

4)Kitchen layout. it's honestly the most dreaded part of this for me, the kitchen in my last house was easy, I couldn't really change it at all, this one is a blank slate. I'm fairly certain where I want the sink to go, other than that... who knows.

then the real problem, I have no sense of style or taste when it comes to home type stuff, and the girlfriend seems to be no real help... lol.

[Shaun41178(2)]

I installed some gaskets today. You tore up your flooring.

I'm slacking in life

[ericjon262]

Unfortunately, what is described above was significantly more than a day's work.

[pmbrunelle]

Some thoughts:

Plenum concept would ensure equal pressure to each duct, but each duct has a different length, number of turns, etc, so it doesn't mean that the resulting flow would be the same. And depending on the rooms, they may not all need the same cfms, so I wouldn't get too worked up over this. Vent registers are adjustable, so you can use them for balancing.

Yes, supply defines flow, as long as return is not restrictive. In my house, where bedrooms are supplied with a 40 sq. in air register, and return was only by the gap underneath the door (approx. 30 sq. in), I can say that that amount of return area wasn't enough. With the door closed, I noticed that the temperature wasn't comfortable; some multiple of supply area is probably desireable for return.

At my place, I have the air intake for the furnace in the central open common area (hallway, kitchen, living room). So, to complete the return air aspect of my renovation in a simple manner, I'm planning on putting air transfer grilles in the bedroom doors to return the air from the bedrooms to the common area.

Assuming that you're re-wiring the entire house (are you?), I would divide the house into two halves, and then place each breaker panel in the middle of each half. This would reduce the length of the cable runs for each circuit, and hence cost.

I don't really like to have a sink on an exterior wall, due to the risk of the pipes freezing, but I guess that's not a concern in South Carolina...

I'm in the middle of planning a kitchen/bathroom renovation now, and while I'm not so sure about designing a kitchen specifically, like you, I know how to design stuff in general, so jump into it.

Rather than pay an interior designer to design my kitchen for me from A to Z (while not being able to read my mind and meet my undocumented requirements), instead I paid for a consultation where I presented my drawings, and then she gave me her opinions/suggestions. That was for the layout; I'll be going back for another session later about tile shapes/colours/materials, etc.

[ericjon262]

Some thoughts:

Plenum concept would ensure equal pressure to each duct, but each duct has a different length, number of turns, etc, so it doesn't mean that the resulting flow would be the same. And depending on the rooms, they may not all need the same cfms, so I wouldn't get too worked up over this. Vent registers are adjustable, so you can use them for balancing.

right, and centrally locating the plenum would result in the runs being closer to equal distance, it's also worth mentioning a smaller room doesn't require the same amount of flow to circulate air to/from as a larger room.

Yes, supply defines flow, as long as return is not restrictive. In my house, where bedrooms are supplied with a 40 sq. in air register, and return was only by the gap underneath the door (approx. 30 sq. in), I can say that that amount of return area wasn't enough. With the door closed, I noticed that the temperature wasn't comfortable; some multiple of supply area is probably desireable for return.

At my place, I have the air intake for the furnace in the central open common area (hallway, kitchen, living room). So, to complete the return air aspect of my renovation in a simple manner, I'm planning on putting air transfer grilles in the bedroom doors to return the air from the bedrooms to the common area.

so, I would have to do more research to make sure of this, but I'm fairly certain that code now requires return ducts to each room I'm expecting the ventilation to be a fairly large project once I get around to it.

I did find this link that appears to give a fairly in depth description of the system development process.

https://aircondlounge.com/hvac-ductwork ... -size-cfm/

I may end up hiring the duct work out, but it will probably need to wait until the walls are more finalized.

Assuming that you're re-wiring the entire house (are you?), I would divide the house into two halves, and then place each breaker panel in the middle of each half. This would reduce the length of the cable runs for each circuit, and hence cost.

I am rewiring the whole house, it's a slow process, but progress has been steady, I'm hoping to have the outlets and lights in the master bedroom done this weekend. I'm about halfway done already. putting the panels on opposite ends of the house wouldn't have been a bad idea, but it also would have incurred the increased cost of the service cable to the panel, which is not insignificant. I also already purchased romex for the job, so the money for wire was mostly already spent.

I don't really like to have a sink on an exterior wall, due to the risk of the pipes freezing, but I guess that's not a concern in South Carolina...

I'm in the middle of planning a kitchen/bathroom renovation now, and while I'm not so sure about designing a kitchen specifically, like you, I know how to design stuff in general, so jump into it.

Rather than pay an interior designer to design my kitchen for me from A to Z (while not being able to read my mind and meet my undocumented requirements), instead I paid for a consultation where I presented my drawings, and then she gave me her opinions/suggestions. That was for the layout; I'll be going back for another session later about tile shapes/colours/materials, etc.

pipes freezing can be a concern, although conditions have to be a bit abnormal for it to occur, especially with proper insulation. all exterior walls will be insulated, ideally, the front walls with mineral wool, which is thicker, denser, and helps with sound transmission, but is more expensive, so I'll probably end up with fiberglass.

I designed what I believe to be an effective bathroom, for the available space, I have an 8 foot square area, the door will be approximately centered on one wall, swinging in, and to the left, immediately to the right, will be the toilet, with a wall separating it from a 5 foot bathtub, on the left side, will be a double sink, and cabinet , possibly one on either side of the sinks. presenting the design to a designer for consultation isn't a bad idea, as they may have further insight to things that I am not currently considering. I have some loose ideas for the kitchen, again, mainly the placement of the sink and dishwasher, maybe once I have something more planned, I can take that and the bathroom plan in for a consultation and bounce a few ideas around.



here's the first iteration of the kitchen, the wall on the left is pretty much the only part that's figured out. I have 13 feet to work with, two lazy susan corner cabinets take up 6 feet of that wall, a dishwasher takes another 2 feet, leaving 5 feet, so either a 30" sink base, with a 30" standard base cabinet, or a 36" sink base with a 24" base cabinet. The area designated for the fridge (F) isn't big enough, so I'll have to play with the pantry space a bit, but I haven't solidified any of that, or the other wall yet, in fact, I have a couple other ideas I may still explore for that.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Silly me for thinking R was refrigerator

[ericjon262]

Silly me for thinking R was refrigerator

it's alphabetical, "Range" comes before "refrigerator"

I made some revisions, it works out to about 13x11 for the "kitchen" although the kitchen is open to the rest of the space, which is about 13'x36'



right now the design is based mostly on stock cabinet sizes available at lowes and home depot, but we'll see what actually ends up in the space, their stock cabinets aren't exactly high quality.

[pmbrunelle]

I don’t really like the corner counterspace next to the fridge; looks like it is obstructed and hard to use. Can you put the pantry in that corner? Maybe not possible with the vent area…

You’re not drawing in OnShape like you often do?

Are you making your Paint drawings exactly to scale, for instance 1 pixel = 1/2 inch?

Even if you don’t end up using stock cabinets, it may be good to design with standard dimensions, so that in a future renovation, off-the-shelf cabinets could be used.

[ericjon262]

I don’t really like the corner counterspace next to the fridge; looks like it is obstructed and hard to use. Can you put the pantry in that corner? Maybe not possible with the vent area…

I hadn't really considered it that way, but you're very right, I hadn't considered that the fridge was full height compared to the counters for some reason. I made some revisions to the drawing to move the fridge 18" further from the corner, and I think I like that much better, except for the dead space created behind the fridge. I'll upload a picture of the revision later.

the ventilation makes this house a PITA no matter how I do it, I guess there's another alternative that I haven't discussed, and that would be running the ventilation to the gable on the outside of the house to get to the attic. this would have some energy efficiency concerns compared to running in the house, and would also be slightly complicated by the tree near the unit outside. in some aspects, I really like the idea, in others, not so much.

You’re not drawing in OnShape like you often do?

Are you making your Paint drawings exactly to scale, for instance 1 pixel = 1/2 inch?

Even if you don’t end up using stock cabinets, it may be good to design with standard dimensions, so that in a future renovation, off-the-shelf cabinets could be used.

yeah, the kitchen and bathroom drawings are close to scale, not exact, but pretty close. if this were a new house I was building from scratch, I would be cool with taking the time to generate a drawing in OnShape, but OnShape greatly exceeds the accuracy of the existing framing, walls aren't square to each other or plumb, floors aren't flat, ect. I felt like it would end up being more work, for a drawing that really isn't anymore helpful than my quick paint sketches.

So far, all of the details are being drawn to standard dimensions, or as close to as possible for that very reason.

[ericjon262]

so, a few updates. I got the master bedroom wiring mostly finished, later this week, I'm going to try and get most of the other circuits landed in the breaker panel and run to their respective areas,

I also removed the window that was on the wall, in what it now going to be the master bathroom.



hopefully on my day off, I can lay the brick to cover the sheathing. The brick is a problem all on it's own though, the house was built in the 50's, and the brick are a full 8", which is no longer standard, a standard brick is now 7-5/8" which isn't massive deal is there were bricks available that match the color and texture of the bricks on my house... last week, I drove all over the area trying to find something to match, with no luck. to make matters worse, I threw a bunch of bricks I found in the yard, in the bottom of the swimming pool before I filled it in.... DOH!

I ended up going back to where I had found the bricks I put in the bottom of the pool, and thankfully, I was able to find about 95 more that were buried just below the surface. the unfortunate part, is that I need to fill in that window, and make the other two windows on that wall smaller, 95 bricks is barely enough to cover the one window... The window furthest away needs the least amount of change it will be in the kitchen, but it's currently too low, and would end up below the counters. I might just frame the opening smaller, and put a small piece of siding where it's been made smaller. the window closest in the picture is the bigger problem, it's closest to the road, so it's the most visible, and therefor the most noticeable if it's not nicely finished. the solution I came up with is to change the geometry of the window, I'll reframe the opening making a new header, and build the opening much wider, and install a sliding window, or a picture window that isn't as tall, then the brick removed from up high will be salvaged and installed in the lower part of the opening. hopefully I can make up the difference, and minimize the number of bricks that don't match. the annoying part of all of this, is that the texture of the bricks is pretty unique, if they were just smooth, I could easily paint them, and the majority of the people would never know any different, but the texture is aggressive enough to show through paint.




if I need more brick than I have, my current plan is to get some salvage brick that I was able to find locally that somewhat match the color, then intermingle them with the brick I have that match so that hopefully they don't stick out terribly.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Because I hate everything that I was able to come up with to make the HVAC work, I'm considering another option, that I'm not too fond of, but would eliminate all of the existing problems I have. If I install a new, split HVAC system, then I only have to run to refrigerant lines to/from the condenser and compressor. the only downsides, are that my current package unit works, and it would cost a significant amount of money. That said, because the current unit does work, I could install it in the shop and provide some amount of climate control.

[ericjon262]

I don't think I did half bad considering this was my first time ever attempting brick work...





there's a window in the hole now, but I still need to finish installing it, along with bricking up the other opening, and making the last window a little smaller too. I also need to do the brick sill for the opening in this picture still as well.

[ericjon262]

ugh... more masonry, and of course there's a brick in each course that isn't standard...



I have and old circular saw that was cheap, and crappy, so I bought a diamond masonry blade for it, and cut down one brick for each course, then I proceeded to start mixing mortar and laying brick, I'm still not good at it, so it still is far from perfect, but it will be good enough for my desires. the exceptionally crappy part about the work this time, was that I had 3 bags of mortar, I thought I needed 5, home depot had 2 on the pallet, and one of them was busted to bits and half on the floor, I politely asked for the guy not doing shit to get more down with a forklift, as there was plenty up top, but after waiting 45 minutes, I decided I would see if I could make it happen with what I had... well, just barely didn't have enough, so 5 hours later I go back to home depot, not in a rush, and guess what still hasn't been restocked... ERG. this time I had to wait on them, but at least the guy there now actually got the shit down...

here it is in all it's crappiness. I still need to do the sill under the window, and put trim around the window. the most important point I've learned from all this, is that brickwork is harder than it looks, and mixing mortar is actually pretty difficult, not like physically, but getting the mix right. it's very easy to turn mortar into useless slurry with only a light misting of water.





I still need to scrub everything with muriatic acid as well to remove some of the mortar staining, but overall, I'm OK with the result.

[ericjon262]

because the bathroom with the "X" on it below is going away, I decided it would be a great idea to try and get the bathroom with the circle on it cleaned up enough to use...



I started scrubbing and cleaning and checking things out, everything worked, but the drain for the tub wasn't working... I opened the small closet door to find wet wood inside, not something I was hoping for...

then I found this thing of beauty...





no wonder it was wet... I'm glad I hadn't been using this bathroom, however, I now get to fix something I was planning on replacing later next year... DOH. the sad part is, the guy who owned this house before me was allegedly a plumber... the solder "joint" in there is shameful... I also found that the tub drain, which wasn't draining, is also leaking... ERG. as well as there's additional unused plumbing under the house... Hopefully I can wrap all that up tomorrow and start work on demolition of the other bathroom.