Rinnai Tankless Water Heater, $2,700 Installed

This one’s for Buck. We replaced our typical water heater with a Rinnai Tankless unit. We also moved it to be closer to the kitchen and bathrooms. It’s great that these products are much greener than the old stuff, but it’s also a major plus that the hot water never runs out, ever. So, all the family members or guests staying with you don’t have to stagger shower taking, or worry about running out after doing laundry or whatever.

Our local gas company, which also sells various gas products, did the install for about $2,700, which includes the unit. I got some other bids, and looked around online and this is about what you can expect to pay. This assumes there is already a gas line nearby, and that you have enough pressure or large enough line. When it’s on, it’s on, and if there isn’t enough pressure the performance of your heat system, stove and everything using gas will suffer. Mounting it on an exterior wall also keeps the cost down. That way the intake/exhaust pipe can run straight out the wall. There are outdoor units, but I’d rather not have my gear out in the elements.

One feature that’s really cool is the thermostat. We have it next to the unit for now while we renovate this house. Some people like to put it in or near a bathroom. You can adjust the thermostat when small kids take baths, or set it wherever you like it when you take a shower and just turn on the hot water, and ignore the cold. When you effectively bypass the mixer this way the water will always be the right temperature even if someone flushes a toilet, or the water pressure just drops.

There is a lot more I could say about tankless water heaters, but the bottom line is we are completely happy with ours. You can read more them about at the Rinnai site.

The pics here (clockwise from left) show the installed unit with water lines and the natural gas line in place, exterior intake and exhaust, the thermostat, and the Energy Guide card. Click it for a larger image.

Electrical Upgrades III — Revenge of the Lath

Here’s a peek at the continuing destruction of our house. Mountain Lights Electric came back to rewire the main floor of house, including a lot of new outlets (with three prong receptacles!), isolated ground circuits for the computer stuff, cable and telephone, some new outdoor outlets, and various other tweaks in the basement. Three guys, and me, for two full days and the cost of time and materials was about $2,000. We did everything but the kitchen since that’ll be gutted later.

I did some prep work to save time, including cutting all the holes for the new outlets in the plaster walls and drilling holes to route the cables from the basement. Here’s what I learned about cutting old plaster: Don’t do it. But if you have to, be sure to take your time. You can’t really use a stud finder on plaster because the lath makes it really too thick. You can try to use a RotoZip or equivalent. It’s probably the easiest way to make clean cuts, but the amount of fine dust is ridiculous. Picture thick white clouds in every room of your home. You can try to catch most of it with a shop vac, and it’ll be easier if you have a helper. The challenge with that is that the fine dust will quickly clog the vac filter. Also, if you try that I recommend using another hose to vent the exhaust outside of the house.

I was lucky to have Mr. Cool here to help when all this prep was going on. Here’s how we did most of it. I used a RotoZip or just a drill to make holes in two diagonal corners. Then, I would take a piece of stiff wire, bend it a bit and stick it through the holes to check for studs in the way. A small hole is easy to patch if you have to move over some. Next, I used saber/scroll/jig saw by starting in the drilled holes and cutting the two sides from that corner. This worked well most of the time, but you’re lucky to get a blade to last more than one or two outlets. The first pic is what success looks like. The second is what happens when you’re tired and impatient. If the saw blade catches the lath it can push it back into the wall and cause all sorts of pain. The last pic is typical of what the house looked like while the electricians and I were working. Also, notice the utter lack of insulation in these exterior walls. Another project…

Doing the Demo — Extreme Jackhammering!

To quote Killing Joke: “Complications!” That is what we have. There’s a lot going on in this corner of our house. The gas company is about to trench, run a gas line, and install a meter here. Also, and related, our heating contractor, Bullman Heating, is about to install our new heat pumps on this side of the house. Then, there’s the lame moisture and rot problem. The soil actually slopes toward the house and along with some other issues it has caused the sill plate and some of the framing to rot on the other side of the brick. Our general contractor, who won’t start for a few more weeks, is addressing that issue by installing a french drain, applying a moisture barrier, and framing repairs.

Finally, we wanted to get rid of the exterior stairway to the kitchen. No one in his right mind would walk down the retaining wall stairway just to have the climb back up to the kitchen. Eventually, we hope to have a deck that spans from the retaining wall to that little suspended entrance.

I took out the stairs easily enough, but there was a sidewalk and footer (hidden by the ivy) that also had to go. With the extraneous concrete there, correcting the grading and installing the french drain would be a real pain once the heat pumps were installed. I tried to do it with a sledge hammer and pinch bar, but the footer/sidewalk at the base the stairs was, and this is ridiculous, over 20 inches thick. Time for a little extreme jackhammering. Look for me at the X Games.

Electrical Upgrades, 400 Amps! — Green Building?

A major part of the renovation and “greening” of this 1924 house is upgrading the electrical service and wiring. Of course, these improvements also make the house a safer place to live. The first phase of this work was upgrading the service from a skimpy 100 amps (inside) with a hodgepodge of fuse panels and scary outdated stuff, to a massive 400 amp meter base and two huge 200 amp panels with tons of room for additional circuits.

Adding more electrical capacity may not seem like the green thing to do at first, but in this case it is. We’re in the process now of installing Trane 16 SEER high-efficiency heat pumps for each floor of the house. Because they are zoned and will respond only to their targeted areas, the entire system will be even more efficient. The catch is that under peak demand significant amperage will be required to power each of the systems and their accessories, along with the rest of the house.

After talking to a few electricians we hired Mountain Lights Electric here in Asheville, NC. The cost for all the hardware and the work to upgrade to 400 amps was about $3,600. Their work was excellent and communication with main man Nicky Allen was fantastic. When you jump up to 400 amps all the gear is more expensive and that was a big part of the cost.

While we were at it we decided to get the power run underground. More money. This time it was the power company getting paid. The power line runs behind our house and they treched it all the way up the hill. You can see in the pics below that apparently it takes a village, of electricians, to get it done.

Before: panels everywhere, worn weatherhead with multiple splices, tiny meter and ragged entrance

After: jumbo twin panels, mega meter base, convoy of power co. trucks in front and back, a lovely trench (click for mo’ bigness)

Asbestos Abatement Hoochie Coo!

Our 1929 house only had heat, not air conditioning. Now it has nothing. This week we had the boiler and all of the piping with asbestos insulation covering removed from our basement. This was a major step in making this place green, healthy and safe to live in, and for the trades to work in.

We love radiant heat and I even like the look of the radiators. Unfortunately, after getting some bids, replacing the boiler just didn’t make sense. It was expensive, not as efficient as some other systems, and we still wouldn’t have air conditioning. Also, removing the piping and insulation instead of just encapsulating it will make re-wiring the house and running ductwork much easier. I like a tidy ceiling.

We chose NEO Corporation to do the work, and we’re happy with the outcome. We also employed a third party company to perform a visual inspection and final air clearance sampling. Glove bags were used to contain the asbestos while the pipes were cut. The work included removal and disposal of:

• Approx. 220 linear feet of asbestos containing pipe insulation and pipes
• Approx. 350 sq. feet ceiling tile (which also contained asbestos, but not enough to require treating it a hazmat)
• The boiler and related plumbing

The cost was $6,400. The third party air sampling was done after all the work was completed and the cost for that was about $500. The work started on a Tuesday morning and was done the following Thursday afternoon. And it was loud, loud, double loud.

This boiler was probably original to the house. A label on it listed heat output for hand, coal and fuel firing. The house has a driveway that leads to a narrow garage that was originally a coal dump. From there, coal could be loaded through a hatch into another holding area closer to the boiler. In these before pics you can see the behemoth boiler (over 5 feet tall), the coal hatch, some coal (still lingering in the corner!), the piping, a branded asbestos label, and the lovely suspended ceiling.

These during and after pics show the signage on an exterior door, the sealed off basement stairwell, some of the air sampling gear, the exposed ceiling, the missing boiler, and this one weird radiator that was overhead in the one basement room with a plaster ceiling.

Green Renovation — Moldy Floors Must Go!

The first floor of our new old house used to have wall to wall carpet. It was taken out shortly before we bought the house, revealing wood floors with black fuzzy lines in most areas. Those lines were mold. Apparently there was a moisture problem. It made the floors look bad and the whole house smell even worse, on top of that it’s bad for you. Thanks to my brother we got some Sodium Percarbonate and mixed it with hot water to mop the floors. It worked! See the before and after pics below.

After it worked so well in the first room I mopped I decided to try a control to make sure it was the sodium percarbonate and not just the scrubbing with hot water. Although mopping and scrubbing with plain hot water did remove some of the black mold and it didn’t do it nearly as well. Also, just using water wouldn’t actually kill the mold. In fact, it could add to the problem down in the cracks. Now, the house no longer has that musty moldy smell. But when I was mopping it was extra-double-stanky.

Unlike chlorine beach, sodium percarbonate is an environmentally safe bleaching agent that breaks down to oxygen, water and sodium carbonate or soda ash. It can be used as a laundry detergent, a deck cleaner, and in many other applications. Read more about sodium percarbonate at Wikipedia.