Looney Tunes - Back in Action for the PlayStation 2. There is this jump that Daffy has to do between two pillars that is driving me crazy. The two pillars have buttons on them that Bugs and Daffy have to stand on to open a door. Getting to the top of the pillars is pretty easy now, but takes some amount of time and you have to fight with the camera. When Daffy makes contact with the second pillar he always jumps off because I don’t stop his “flight” in time.
Sounds like fun, but I refuse to call them toots!
I have an inline duct booster fan with a control. I would recommend just putting one in your existing HVAC duct that runs upstairs. Also, if you don’t already, use your HVAC fan on “On” rather than “Auto” whenever there is an unwanted temperature differential. Overall I don’t think your idea about repurposing the chimney with additional duct work to move air is a bad idea. Especially given your description that multiple renovations have been done and perhaps a holistic approach to the HVAC system wasn’t taken. Our HVAC contractor re-routed our gas furnace’s exhaust gasses that had been going from the basement all the way through all the floors to the attack, the newer model just goes out the wall in the basement. The old exhaust was used to add a return from the upper floor to the basement. And of course, always check that you have more than enough insulation.
A better solution in this case would be a split unit to move the heat out of the home envelope completely.
We added a return to our upstairs and added an in line booster fan to our HVAC system to move more air up stairs. This helped a lot, but I have to agree that first I would look into insulation as it is a cheaper solution and closing a few downstairs vents as needed.
I initially had the opposite problem where my uninsulated cinder block basement was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and my basement didn’t have any HVAC registers or returns. The only air conditioning it got was from a window AC unit and leakage from the HVAC ducts. Over several years I ended up adding 2" foam insulation internally to all the exterior walls, insulating the ceiling to the basement (mostly for sound absorption but it also helped with floor temperatures), and adding returns and registers in the basement. I also added an inline booster fan to help pull air up to a second floor bonus room that was an addition. Now the basement is always comfortable, the second floor is much more comfortable, and the energy costs are about the same. My moisture levels are 30-50% in the summer.
I did a radiant barrier on my rafters to guide heat up from the soffits to the ridge vent and then insulated the joists. Blown in insulation is pretty cheap. While doing other work I also insulated my southern facing garage wall and of course insulated the garage door (and sealed the edges). This made a noticeable difference in the temperature of the garage. I can turn a couple of fans on in the garage and leave the door to the house open and achieve a very reasonable temperature in the garage if I plan on being in there for a length of time. This helps in both summer and winter.
I installed cable in a couple of apartments I rented. I just made it look professional and nothing was ever said about it. In one apartment town home I even had access to the attic and was able to run cable in the walls. I did have to drill through the floor and door headers in some instances, but it can be done.
I still use Dia Diagram Editor for most things. I just wish it was still being updated.
I have a list of of interesting characters, but sticking to pure “fantasy or folklore” I will go with Aasimar.
I have two IoTaWatts (https://iotawatt.com/) for all the circuits in my home. I also use Z-Wave and Zigbee devices to monitor individual plugs (I love these). I send data from all of this to an InfluxDB database and then into Grafana for displaying pretty graphs. Everything is running on my Windows desktop. The IoTaWatt doesn’t require internet access to work. I have been very happy with the setup and once setup it hasn’t required much maintenance.
The system is also good for recording temperatures, solar power information, and anything else that can make an API call. Not sure why your Z-Wave is falling off the network, for that I use a Hubitat and mostly Inovelli, Zooz, and THIRDREALITY ZigBee plugs.
When I start a personal project I create a readme file that has a ToDo section and a Change Log section. Anything I think of that I might want to do I put under ToDo, break it into small chunks and prioritize it. When a task is completed under the ToDo section, I move it to the Change Log section. Easy to maintain, track progress, and documents both a Road Map and Changes all in one place. It also has a section for references to shared assets that need attribution. Actually to keep it simple the same document usually also has an about section, an installation section, and a usage section.
I don’t really know of a way that you can add insulation without taking up interior space, exterior space, or replacing the wall with more modern materials.
Is the house occupied? If not, can the existing floor/decking be removed to get direct access to the crawl space and supports? If so, that will make the job so much easier.
While you are at it, have you considered digging out underneath the house and creating a concrete and cinder-block basement? It would cost a bit more but since you are already doing major foundation work, it might be worth it and would dramatically increase the square footage of the house. Adding a basement would allow you the freedom to bring in large excavation machines to do the digging with.
If you leave the driveway in front of where the garage door is, you may want to think about a curb stop or two so no cars accidentally accelerate into your new living room. You also mentioned leveling the graded garage floor so you are probably fine on this point, but, you will just want to make sure that outside the new wall water doesn’t run back and stand.
I back up everything. I use Stablebit Drivepool with duplication for all of my source code, media, photos, documents, music, books, laptop backups, etc. I back that up periodically to a Drobo DAS and 8 Bay USB enclosure setup under Drivepool. I also have off site backup (working on a new NAS which will be accessed over a VPN). I don’t want to spend the time worrying about loosing anything I have put time and effort into. Been there and done that. Drives are relatively inexpensive but can fail without warning.
Wow, what did he “fix” then? He did a terrible job. I understand an electrician not fixing the cement block, but they should have properly installed and secured the box flush with the concrete.
They make circular conduit cutters not much bigger than the conduit itself. They go for around $25. One of those would easily fit in the opening you have. Be sure to turn the power off to the circuit first though.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/General-Pipe-Cleaners-GPC-1-2-in-Auto-Cut-Copper/1002782800
Electrically speaking it is in the proper housing, but the box is not secured, so I would ding it for that at the very least. I agree about cutting the conduit back and putting in a proper secure box and then cementing around the box. You could also use a surface mount box. In that case you would cut the existing conduit back, put a 90 degree elbow with a enough conduit to extend past the wall edge. Patch the wall and then install a surface mount box where the wires are connected in.
This reminds me that I am stuck on Dev is You, level 19! Probably been stuck for a couple of years now. Now I need to go and try again.