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Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius
Vinyl is waterproof. It doesn't give a poo poo how wet it is. It's the adhesive that can fail and result in curling; the water tolerance of your install will be dependent upon which adhesive you use.

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kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
If the water gets between the pieces of flooring and rots out the wood it's attached to, it's going to peel up no matter what adhesive was used.

tetrapyloctomy
Feb 18, 2003

Okay -- you talk WAY too fast.
Nap Ghost
Yeah, the flooring itself is waterproof. In the kitchen it's glued down and then grouted (though it can be groutless and sealed instead) and in the basement it's floating.

Here's the kitchen ...


... and here it is up close.


Likewise for the basement.


It's not clear from the basement shot, but the carpeted floor slopes toward the door, so on the far end of the column there's about a four-inch step. I'm not sold on what they did with the baseboard as a result, but changing it would be more of a pain in the butt than I want right now. Anyway, other than that and the repetitiveness of the planks (exacerbated in some places by how it was laid) I'm really happy with how it turned out. (Edit: phone-post typos.)

tetrapyloctomy fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jun 14, 2016

Laminator
Jan 18, 2004

You up for some serious plastic surgery?
That looks nice, never would have guessed it was vinyl by how it looks. How does it feel - does it have that kind of sticky feeling that some vinyl flooring has?

Magnus Praeda
Jul 18, 2003
The largess in the land.

Laminator posted:

That looks nice, never would have guessed it was vinyl by how it looks. How does it feel - does it have that kind of sticky feeling that some vinyl flooring has?

I just installed LVP in two rooms. I don't know what the stuff tetra installed is like but this feels... not sticky, but kinda like wood with a thick coat of poly? It's noticeably softer than wood but it still feels pretty good underfoot.

tetrapyloctomy
Feb 18, 2003

Okay -- you talk WAY too fast.
Nap Ghost

Magnus Praeda posted:

I just installed LVP in two rooms. I don't know what the stuff tetra installed is like but this feels... not sticky, but kinda like wood with a thick coat of poly? It's noticeably softer than wood but it still feels pretty good underfoot.

Same. I can also feel the slight floor flex that the prior tile installation hid. There are huge differences between manufacturers and product lines, though, and some were just unacceptably ugly in person (though none were nearly as bad as sheet vinyl in appearance or in feel).

Sorry for the vinyl flooring derail. =) Kastein, are you going to tile under the cabinets or place the cabinets first? It probably won't matter since your tile install will be done correctly, but boy did it cause issues when we went to replace the tile.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I don't mind the derail at all! The more you guys tell me what you think of the flooring you spent $$$$$$$$ on, the less I have to worry that I'm going to hate whatever I buy.

As for tile, convince me one way or the other. I haven't made up my mind and honestly wasn't sure which way was the "right" way.

tetrapyloctomy
Feb 18, 2003

Okay -- you talk WAY too fast.
Nap Ghost
I think as long as you've got a good, solid installation you're fine laying the tile and then putting down your cabinets.

However, in my kitchen there were multiple issues with the tile installation.

First off, there was no cement board, just plywood on top of the original subfloor. This isn't too terribly uncommon, apparently. This guy also did that in the master shower, and just out of view on the upper edge of the photo of the kitchen is the patchwork from when we had to tear out the ceiling due to a leak from cracked grout.

Second and more importantly, the floor is seriously uneven. If you take the first image of the kitchen, there is a one left-to-right crown at my feet and another at the wall on which you see the thermostat, with a dip in between. Just past that wall the crown flattens out and it's level from the cabinets to the wall at the middle of the door. HOWEVER, from the middle of the door to the outside wall (on the left of the photo) it drops about 2.5 inches, and from the edge of the cabinets closest to our viewpoint to the far wall it also drops. The dishwasher literally barely fits on its left side but has a quarter inch (at least) on the right). In short, the only "flat" part of the floor is directly in front of the stove and fridge to the edge of the door. You can see it waviness a bit in this picture, but it's less apparent than a photo from when we moved in because a) they used some leveling compound to ameliorate the waviness enough that the tile could adhere, and b) using 16" tiles instead of 12" tiles gives you fewer "parallel" lines to compare.

Third and of unclear significance is that the radiant heat in the kitchen floor runs straight from the boiler without a mixing valve. Our HVAC guy says that'll beat the poo poo out of tile as well. Glad it's that way in the master bath too!

What all of this meant is that a) the two mildly cracked tiles when we moved in rapidly turned into two dozen shattered remnants, and b) the flooring guys basically said, "We will not put tile back in here because it's just going to crack again." So you're then faced with either ripping out E V E R Y T H I N G to replace E V E R Y T H I N G, or you cut the tile out and replace what you can get to. We went the latter route. The new vinyl tile is under the fridge, but ends just under the dishwasher (where, come to think of it, I am a little annoyed because they did a poor job with the transition and there are some cracked pieces of old tile, I need to e-mail the head guy). With the new (thus far unpainted) quarter-round at the bottom of the cabinets you'd never know it, but should we ever renovate the kitchen we'd have to address that.

So there you go. If you do your tile right, you can do it first. If think you'll ever want to or need to change the floor, you either plan way ahead and have tile edges terminate just under the cabinet edges or you lay the cabinets down first and tile around them. If you're planning on selling this place in the next few years after you renovate it, just tile everything. It'll save you a lot of hassle cutting tile, and I suspect you'll do a solid install and your buyers won't have the white-hot rage issues I now do.

Speaking of which, the A/C compressor on the downstairs unit failed. Rather than pulling a max 27 amps, it's pulling ONE HUNDRED TWENTY. Guess that would explain the lights flickering! Looks like the unit, a single-stage 3.5 ton, was not only mis-paired to a 4 ton heat pump used as an air handler (?!), but given the HVAC guy's engineers calculations was WAY oversized for the space and construction type, so it short-cycled its was to death thirteen years after installation. Guess where my next paycheck is going?

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Wow, that sucks! I've been debating doing air conditioning for the 3 bedrooms but haven't decided for sure yet.

I'm leaning toward using some sort of vinyl, wood, or engineered laminate in the kitchen at this point. I hate how obnoxious tile installation is and I don't like dropping a glass or plate to be a guaranteed shattered glass or plate and maybe a chipped tile too, and I love how wood floors look. Need to discuss this with the GF before making solid plans, though. Can't decide if the cabinets should go over the flooring that way either, but guessing it'd be fine.

tetrapyloctomy
Feb 18, 2003

Okay -- you talk WAY too fast.
Nap Ghost

kastein posted:

Wow, that sucks! I've been debating doing air conditioning for the 3 bedrooms but haven't decided for sure yet.

I'm leaning toward using some sort of vinyl, wood, or engineered laminate in the kitchen at this point. I hate how obnoxious tile installation is and I don't like dropping a glass or plate to be a guaranteed shattered glass or plate and maybe a chipped tile too, and I love how wood floors look. Need to discuss this with the GF before making solid plans, though. Can't decide if the cabinets should go over the flooring that way either, but guessing it'd be fine.

I swear to God I'm not a shill for Mannington, but so far their "wood" vinyl is the only stuff I've liked when I saw it in person. Other manufacturers' planks were either printed without texture, had limited texture, or were super glossy; a lot of them also scratched really easily, which is not going to fly with our pets. Something to bear in mind with it, though, is that since it's not actual hardwood it has repeating patterns. In a couple of places our installer started a row with the same print (which is inevitable -- I don't know how many patterns there are per style, but it can't be a lot) and didn't cut the planks to be different lengths, so you see the same "knot" in the wood the same distance from the wall a few times. If you want the look of wood in a location where you don't want to have to worry about moisture, go for the vinyl, but otherwise just get wood. With tile ... it's harder. I actually like the LVT we put in more than the old tile, but one again it's critical to look at it in person because some of it just looks like poo poo.

Regarding the air conditioning, it sorta doubly sucks because I'd called the guy out when the OTHER outside unit wasn't running. He changed the capacitor (and never billed me, come to think of it) and it's been fine, so I thought we were all good ... and then one dinner we noticed the lights flickering a little in the dining room. A few days later my wife and I were downstairs watching TV and the overhead BR40 LEDs were REALLY dimming (as they're really susceptible to power fluctuation). I went outside and the larger unit that covers the basement and first floor was intermittently buzzing. The HVAC guy stopped by today on lunch break from a nearby job and confirmed it was a binding compressor. He does Lennox and York; the former has a good reputation and the latter does not, but it sounds like mainly longevity is related more to preventative maintenance and installer quality than it is to manufacturer, and since Lennox is pretty picky about its installers it makes them look better as a manufacturer. This poo poo is confusing, though. I had sort of decided we'd go two-stage or variable compressor with a multispeed air handler -- that way we'd have the power to cool things of when Philadelphia hits the low 100s in August, but wouldn't short-cycle the unit in June and additionally could run at the lower stage(s) to keep the humidity down without having to crank the temperature way down low. The HVAC guy thinks he can save me some money and get the same effect with a smaller single-stage unit and with altering (mumble mumble something about running the handler longer) to keep the humidity level lower, and says that the variable units have been failing more frequently, blah blah blah ... so now I have no goddamned idea how to cool this place down and not have to go through all this again in a decade. Amana has some units with lifetime compressor warranties, but it sounds like OTHER components are taking them out of service, and since only parts are covered and not labor ... you get the picture.

If I figure anything out on the A/C front, I'll let you know. Were I in your shoes I'd consider some of the ductless mini-spits -- there are some that do ceiling cassettes, which are a lot less unattractive, and you could just cool down certain rooms instead of ducting a larger zone. If your furnace is oil, then they'd also be nice to use as heat pumps with the more expensive furnace fuel only being expended when it's really cold. For some reason I'm assuming you have radiators, so if you have forced air I guess you already have ductwork and all of this musing is moot. =)

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
The furnace will be natgas fueled forced hot water radiant, I've bought it and it's sitting in teh living room waiting for me to install it and all the heating stuff. Due to the way the house is built and my dislike of chopping up major structural beams, I won't be doing central air for HVAC, but I do have an extra fairly useless area of the attic available for an evap unit and wouldn't mind putting the condenser side on the roof or outside if necessary, and there's plenty of space in the rafters available for AC air ducts to the 3 bedrooms and upstairs hall. Thus, I'm considering that route. I'd really like to avoid minisplits simply because I don't like how they look. I'm also not afraid of doing the AC install work myself if it saves some money, I've got all the equipment (gauge set, can taps, vac pump, experience, etc) to do automotive AC repair and recharge, plus everything I need to braze AC tubing, so I'm not really averse to learning how residential AC is different and getting any EPA certs I need to handle the refrigerant they use.

Good to know about those types of flooring - thanks! I always wondered how people avoid a repetitive "wood" pattern, guess the answer is they don't really. Fortunately the style we liked the most was a natural woven bamboo style, at least for the bedrooms, so there's no repetition. For the kitchen and dining room I'll just have to be careful to not make it look copy/pasted if we go with a screen printed style.

Darchangel
Feb 12, 2009

Tell him about the blower!


Zhentar posted:

Vinyl is waterproof. It doesn't give a poo poo how wet it is. It's the adhesive that can fail and result in curling; the water tolerance of your install will be dependent upon which adhesive you use.

I see.

kastein posted:

If the water gets between the pieces of flooring and rots out the wood it's attached to, it's going to peel up no matter what adhesive was used.

Concrete slab, single story, in my case.

tetrapyloctomy posted:

Yeah, the flooring itself is waterproof. In the kitchen it's glued down and then grouted (though it can be groutless and sealed instead) and in the basement it's floating.

Here's the kitchen ...


... and here it is up close.


Likewise for the basement.


It's not clear from the basement shot, but the carpeted floor slopes toward the door, so on the far end of the column there's about a four-inch step. I'm not sold on what they did with the baseboard as a result, but changing it would be more of a pain in the butt than I want right now. Anyway, other than that and the repetitiveness of the planks (exacerbated in some places by how it was laid) I'm really happy with how it turned out. (Edit: phone-post typos.)

Huh. Never realized that you could grout the vinyl tile.
If I'm surmising correctly, this stuff is glued down like some laminate/hardwood flooring, or regular tile, not self-adhesive?
I'll have to go check flooring stores and/or home centers and see what's up.

Thanks (and thanks kastein for letting us poo poo up the thread.)

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

kastein posted:

I always wondered how people avoid a repetitive "wood" pattern, guess the answer is they don't really.

You can take steps to make it less obvious, by being careful about which boards you use where and by cutting boards to offset them.

beep-beep car is go
Apr 11, 2005

I can just eyeball this, right?



kastein posted:

I'd really like to avoid minisplits simply because I don't like how they look.

I'm glad I read all the way through, because I was this close to recommending a minisplit! We have one in our house for the upstairs, and it does a very good job of keeping the three bedrooms up there cool (so long as the doors are cracked open while you're sleeping). It's seems pretty cheap to run too and is way quieter than a window unit (never lived anywhere with central AC, so I can't offer a comparison)

tetrapyloctomy
Feb 18, 2003

Okay -- you talk WAY too fast.
Nap Ghost

kastein posted:

The furnace will be natgas fueled forced hot water radiant, I've bought it and it's sitting in teh living room waiting for me to install it and all the heating stuff. Due to the way the house is built and my dislike of chopping up major structural beams, I won't be doing central air for HVAC, but I do have an extra fairly useless area of the attic available for an evap unit and wouldn't mind putting the condenser side on the roof or outside if necessary, and there's plenty of space in the rafters available for AC air ducts to the 3 bedrooms and upstairs hall. Thus, I'm considering that route. I'd really like to avoid minisplits simply because I don't like how they look. I'm also not afraid of doing the AC install work myself if it saves some money, I've got all the equipment (gauge set, can taps, vac pump, experience, etc) to do automotive AC repair and recharge, plus everything I need to braze AC tubing, so I'm not really averse to learning how residential AC is different and getting any EPA certs I need to handle the refrigerant they use.

Good to know about those types of flooring - thanks! I always wondered how people avoid a repetitive "wood" pattern, guess the answer is they don't really. Fortunately the style we liked the most was a natural woven bamboo style, at least for the bedrooms, so there's no repetition. For the kitchen and dining room I'll just have to be careful to not make it look copy/pasted if we go with a screen printed style.

I love our cast iron radiators. LOVE. The radiant floor in the kitchen and the master bath is pretty good, but other than keeping your toes from being cold it just isn't the right choice for a 90 year old stone house.

I definitely agree that mini-splits ain't pretty. The in-ceiling cassettes, though, don't look any worse than a ceiling vent. If you're going to go ducted and do it yourself, just do a lot of reading and practicing so your eventual buyers aren't staring down some irritating repair/replacement bills. Looks like a matched two-stage compressor and multispeed air handler will set me back about $6300 from the HVAC guy I like, and given than the unit itself will run about $4k the labor seems about right.

Darchangel posted:

Huh. Never realized that you could grout the vinyl tile.
If I'm surmising correctly, this stuff is glued down like some laminate/hardwood flooring, or regular tile, not self-adhesive?
I'll have to go check flooring stores and/or home centers and see what's up.

Thanks (and thanks kastein for letting us poo poo up the thread.)
Yeah, you glue it down with spacers and then grout, or you glue it down without spacers and then seal. Looks pretty good so far.

pointers
Sep 4, 2008

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

You can take steps to make it less obvious, by being careful about which boards you use where and by cutting boards to offset them.
yeah, this. Planning the layout was arguably the most frustrating part of the installation, but planning a row out before you cut makes a huge difference in how it looks.

I've installed grouted vinyl tile w/ adhesive backing and interlocking engineered hardwood/laminate floors. The vinyl tile is pretty forgiving of uneven floors. The interlocking laminate was much less forgiving, something like self-leveling concrete is a huge help.

The surface of the vinyl "hardwood" that was previously installed held up very well against years of multiple cats/dogs in the house, but over years of seasonal expansion/contraction some places have gaps between the short ends of the board. Those particular rows run perpendicular to a door with some shady weatherstripping, so there was more expansion/contraction than in the rest of the house, but I think the tongue-and-groove design (vs interlock) also contributed.

ExplodingSims
Aug 17, 2010

RAGDOLL
FLIPPIN IN A MOVIE
HOT DAMN
THINK I MADE A POOPIE


kastein posted:

The furnace will be natgas fueled forced hot water radiant, I've bought it and it's sitting in teh living room waiting for me to install it and all the heating stuff. Due to the way the house is built and my dislike of chopping up major structural beams, I won't be doing central air for HVAC, but I do have an extra fairly useless area of the attic available for an evap unit and wouldn't mind putting the condenser side on the roof or outside if necessary, and there's plenty of space in the rafters available for AC air ducts to the 3 bedrooms and upstairs hall. Thus, I'm considering that route. I'd really like to avoid minisplits simply because I don't like how they look. I'm also not afraid of doing the AC install work myself if it saves some money, I've got all the equipment (gauge set, can taps, vac pump, experience, etc) to do automotive AC repair and recharge, plus everything I need to braze AC tubing, so I'm not really averse to learning how residential AC is different and getting any EPA certs I need to handle the refrigerant they use.

Good to know about those types of flooring - thanks! I always wondered how people avoid a repetitive "wood" pattern, guess the answer is they don't really. Fortunately the style we liked the most was a natural woven bamboo style, at least for the bedrooms, so there's no repetition. For the kitchen and dining room I'll just have to be careful to not make it look copy/pasted if we go with a screen printed style.

If you're going this route, like anything, it's all about planning. Trying to set it up so you have the correct equipment size, correct duct sizing, correct everything. The life an efficiency of and AC unit is pretty much all done in the setup.
The install work is the easy part, that's just connecting tubing, making boxes and running wires. But doing all the heat load calculations and stuff is where you have to put some time in.

Then there's adjusting the charge, getting the correct subcooling and superheat, and all sorts of other fun stuff. It's a bit more complex than dumping a can of keyboard duster in an car AC system.
Not to say it isn't doable. If you're serious, I'd recommend picking up a ductualor form Trane to start. You'll need that to start sizing ducts. I've still got a bunch of papers on calculating heat load and ductsizing and stuff too, if you're so interesting.

immoral_
Oct 21, 2007

So fresh and so clean.

Young Orc

ExplodingSims posted:

If you're going this route, like anything, it's all about planning. Trying to set it up so you have the correct equipment size, correct duct sizing, correct everything. The life an efficiency of and AC unit is pretty much all done in the setup.
The install work is the easy part, that's just connecting tubing, making boxes and running wires. But doing all the heat load calculations and stuff is where you have to put some time in.

Then there's adjusting the charge, getting the correct subcooling and superheat, and all sorts of other fun stuff. It's a bit more complex than dumping a can of keyboard duster in an car AC system.
Not to say it isn't doable. If you're serious, I'd recommend picking up a ductualor form Trane to start. You'll need that to start sizing ducts. I've still got a bunch of papers on calculating heat load and ductsizing and stuff too, if you're so interesting.

As a HVAC Sheetmetal guy, I can attest to installing being the easy part.

daggerdragon
Jan 22, 2006

My titan engine can kick your titan engine's ass.

kastein posted:

Wow, that sucks! I've been debating doing air conditioning for the 3 bedrooms but haven't decided for sure yet.

I'm leaning toward using some sort of vinyl, wood, or engineered laminate in the kitchen at this point. I hate how obnoxious tile installation is and I don't like dropping a glass or plate to be a guaranteed shattered glass or plate and maybe a chipped tile too, and I love how wood floors look. Need to discuss this with the GF before making solid plans, though. Can't decide if the cabinets should go over the flooring that way either, but guessing it'd be fine.

I have laminate in the kitchen. I now also have a wide thick cushioned rug in front of the sink/dishwasher part of the "kitchen triangle" because:
  • water will eventually slop its way over from doing dishes/mis-pouring pasta/spoons that do this/what have you and if you're not careful to immediately sop it up, it'll work its way in between the laminate boards and swell up at the edges ever so slightly
  • I've fumbled and dropped a soap-slippery crockpot more than once. The first time it left a bowl-shaped dent in the laminate wood, but now that the rug is in place, it just makes for a damp rug.
One con to think about : if you need to replace a damaged board(s) and the board(s) are at the "beginning" where you started interlocking them, you have to tear out the entire floor to replace the damaged boards, then rebuild the entire floor.

Engineered laminate is supposed to be more water-resistant, so you might want to consider that in the kitchen and cheap out on the rest of the house with regular laminate wood.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

kastein posted:

I'd really like to avoid minisplits simply because I don't like how they look.

Aside from the ceiling cassettes tetrapyloctomy mentioned, there are also full on ducted cassette mini splits. It should still be smaller, cheaper, and more efficient than a standard air handler & split system.


If you really care about dehumidification, get a Daikin Quaternity. I believe it is the only residential system available with hot gas reheat (there are two coils in the air handler, so it can run as a true dehumidifier when cooling isn't needed).

tetrapyloctomy
Feb 18, 2003

Okay -- you talk WAY too fast.
Nap Ghost
As an addendum, for the sanity of whoever buys this house from you: for the love of God, just THINK for a second when you place your copper for the A/C. Right now the power, copper, and condenser lines for the two units exit a hole near the base of the back of the house. No problem there -- it's tidy and out of the way.

It's also inaccessible for replacing the lines. We could leak-test the lines and re-use them, but first off there's a decidedly non-zero chance this guy didn't nitrogen purge the copper when putting the thing together, and crap copper installation would basically give the manufacturer a reason not to honor the warranty since flaking oxides apparently love to destroy compressors. Secondly, it is almost assuredly going to develop a leak anyway since instead of bending a single piece of copper there's, like, eight elbow pieces that provide sixteen more opportunities for pinhole leaks that you'd never be able to track down. So the copper is going to be replaced, but there's no way to get to the goddamned hole in the wall without literally tearing down an entire basement wall and re-drywalling afterward.

Oh, and did I mention that we probably only have a few years left on the upstairs unit and would have to do it all again?

Instead, we have to drill another hole through the stone wall about five feet off the ground and eighty inches left of the outside door. It provides a straight shot from the outside world to the air handler, down a chaseway that has nothing in it and that would have also been almost a straight shot down from the air handler in the attic. It is loving baffling why this course was not used in the first place other than that it is not quite as aesthetically pleasing. gently caress the rear end in a top hat that renovated this place.

Don't be that guy.

I swear to loving God, if I were building new (which at this point I don't know if I could given my thoughts on contractors and subcontractors right now), water, power, drainage, and HVAC would all be accessible without cutting holes in poo poo. I don't care what it did to the floorplan or usable space.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
No worries there! I hate inaccessible poo poo so much that I've got two 2" PVC conduits from the basement to the attic just so I never have to cut drywall again. My room thermostats all have 1/2" EMT runs and steel double-gang oversize boxes. Every wall of every room has 1" EMT running from the attic or basement to one of those boxes for comms stuff, too. And the old chimney chase, while I could have reclaimed it as floor space, has been kept as a place to run cabling and pipes, there are removable fireblock panels at every floor level but it goes all the way from the attic to the basement otherwise, with a hinged access panel at waist height on each level. If I do an AC system, the refrigerant and condensate lines will be run through that chase.

I haven't done jack diddly squat in a few weeks aside from clean and organize because the clutter/construction disaster was taking over again. Once I've got some more done it'll be construction time once more. However, the kitchen subflooring is now complete (aside from two 2x8 foot sections along the base of a wall shared with a room that still needs demolishing, which I'm leaving undone as of yet to keep as much debris off the kitchen floor as possible. Also, I forget if I mentioned it here but we now have a real refrigerator instead of the dorm fridge I've been living with since 2011. It's really weird having fridge/freezer space again.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
It is far too loving hot and humid for this poo poo but I got some framing done. Master bedroom closet:


Need to do some ceiling framing, fireblocking, and sundry other small framing carpentry stuff and then I can get out the ship augur and linemans pliers and start wiring.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I've been slacking because it's been roughly the temperature and humidity of the dark lord's grundular region, which results in a serious lack of motivation to do anything resembling work outside of the one air conditioned room.

That being said, I finally got off my rear end and Did Some Things:

Leveled and installed the mini-ceiling rafters and furring strips for the master bedroom. I could have done without this, but the conduit runs were going to get in the way of the sheetrock otherwise and it gives me a spot to mount a ceiling fan and the smoke detector.


Did some fireblocking, again in the master bedroom. About a quarter done, hoping to finish tonight.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
No pictures because I forgot, but I've finished the fireblocking in the master bedroom, mounted all the electrical boxes for the outlets and light+fan switches, and pulled half the cable for the outlets. Hoping to run the rest of the outlet cabling, install the smoke detector + light/fan boxes, and pull cable for them too tonight.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Again no pictures... but we do have working outlets in the master bedroom now!

Hoping to do the fan, smoke detector, light, and low voltage lighting wiring tonight.

dreesemonkey
May 14, 2008
Pillbug
Doing the wiring is some of the most tedious stuff, but at least it means you're closing in on fiddley stuff. After that it's big things that can go fast-ish (insulation, drywall).

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I actually like wiring stuff, go figure, I'm an EE :haw:

If I ever actually got a full evening of work in on the place it'd be done a lot faster. Think it only took ~3-4 hours to pull all the romex, install all the boxes, and wire all the outlets. There are either 9 or 10 in a 13x15 room, which is pretty close to groverhaus status, but is the least I could do to meet my requirement of an outlet every 6 feet without hanging boxes between studs.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Oh yeah. Some rather unsettling news. Last night while working on the house I saw and killed a pretty worrying number of carpenter ants, including a winged one about 1" long, which generally indicates there's a nest nearby.

I'm worried I may not have found and killed them all after all. Fortunately all the new wood I have put in is not rotten and a lot of it is pressure treated, so it'll just be a matter of finding their hiding place and murdering them all again.

Beach Bum
Jan 13, 2010

kastein posted:

Oh yeah. Some rather unsettling news. Last night while working on the house I saw and killed a pretty worrying number of carpenter ants, including a winged one about 1" long, which generally indicates there's a nest nearby.

I'm worried I may not have found and killed them all after all. Fortunately all the new wood I have put in is not rotten and a lot of it is pressure treated, so it'll just be a matter of finding their hiding place and murdering them all again.

Out at the farm ant patrol was a weekly ordeal. Get thee a pump sprayer and some good insecticide concentrate.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I'm less worried about the ants and more about what part of my house they happen to be eating right now. Especially since I thought I had found all the active nests and eliminated them.

dreesemonkey
May 14, 2008
Pillbug
FWIW I've attacked some bitchass ants with this stuff and it's like ant-crack. It works best if you can get it close to the source (obviously). We had some moderate ant problems earlier in the season and they went apeshit for this stuff.

Dirty Beluga
Apr 17, 2007

Buy the ticket, take the ride
Fun Shoe

kastein posted:

I'm less worried about the ants and more about what part of my house they happen to be eating right now. Especially since I thought I had found all the active nests and eliminated them.

Carpenter ants only eat soft, rotting wood, Relax and let them demo the old rotten studs for you!

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.

Dirty Beluga posted:

Carpenter ants only eat soft, rotting wood, Relax and let them demo the old rotten studs for you!

Well, this is true... until they run out, then they go for the not rotten kind too. When we did the new beam and support posts and I rebuilt the foundation on my parents back entryway 2 years ago, we found ant tunnels 3ft into a solid beam. They had eaten almost all of the rotten support post, then run out and made forays out into the solid beams trying to find more.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius
The queen needs to nest in moist wood, to keep her eggs from drying out. The workers can handle the dry wood just fine, so they will indeed tunnel and nest elsewhere once they've had their way with the soft rotting stuff.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
We've done a bunch of cleaning and reorganizing and the master bedroom is now fully electrified, aside from hanging the ceiling fan (which would get in the way of insulating and sheetrocking.)

Also, filled in the last few gaps in the subflooring in the kitchen, so for the first time since 2011, there are no places in the house where you can accidentally fall through the floor.

And installed a bunch of smoke detector Romex runs, decided on locations for all the lightswitches in the living room, stairwell/hall, and kitchen, and installed the boxes. We're trying to determine which way the projector will face in the living room because that determines where the A/V cable conduit and box will be placed. Never realized that projector placement was such a complicated task, all the projector screen size and screen-to-projector distance calculators seem to want the number of footlambert-candle-lumen-ounces-per-hogshead, the projector make/model, what phase of the moon it will be, my mother's maiden name, and the length of my dog's dick before they'll tell me where to mount the loving projector. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that I don't really know what projector we're getting nor what size screen we'll be using so I threw up my hands in disgust and worked on other stuff.

Next week we're in Seattle for a friend's wedding so the next two weekends are going to involve fuckall nothing for progress, sadly.

Oh yeah, I installed like 30ft of 2" black steel pipe in the basement for the air compressor. There will be a 3/4" drop to a standard 1/4" I/M type airchuck every 10ft or so all the way around the basement, plus the outside one, which I'm changing out for a 1/2" standard airchuck (for my 2500 ft-lb air impact) with an adapter to 1/4 I/M for every other tool I use. Hanging 2" steel pipe alone is a pain in the rear end, but somewhat simplified by putting a temporary hangar up at the far end and adjusting the angle of the pipe with it.

Also ordered all remaining tooling I need to route the radiant turn panels myself, and did a bunch of furring strip stuff in the master bedroom. Getting furring strips perfectly flat on wavy lumpy old rafters is my new least favorite thing ever.

dreesemonkey
May 14, 2008
Pillbug
Wow, 2" air line is going to like triple your compressor storage, haha

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
There should probably be about 70-80ft of it all told. Assuming 80ft, that's 13 gallons... compressor's 50. It would nearly triple the storage available on my dinky little DeWalt jobsite compressor, though :v: (4.5 gallons)

Oh yeah I also finally got around to changing out the last two regular plain jane breakers in the upstairs panel for the CAFCI ones I should have installed in the first place. gently caress me, HomeLine QO GFCI and CAFCI breakers are expensive... just buy the drat Homeline panel, seriously, the QO's not worth it IMO. Every time I buy CAFCIs for this thing I wish I paid attention to breaker prices when choosing the panel, it's like disposable razor blade and ink cartridge pricing.

Seat Safety Switch
May 27, 2008

MY RELIGION IS THE SMALL BLOCK V8 AND COMMANDMENTS ONE THROUGH TEN ARE NEVER LIFT.

Pillbug
Why buy a bigger compressor when you can Smokey Yunick the problem away?

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kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Because 2" black steel pipe at HD is $9 a foot cut to length or $36 for 10ft lengths :sigh:

Fittings aren't cheap either. I think I paid 11 apiece for tees and like 8 or 9 for 90 degree elbows.

I think I'm going to have more into the piping than I do into the compressor, but that's only because I got it for free needing a new motor.

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