My new project
 

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1310992241

I'll get into more detail later today when I have some time!

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What I had to work with. This is the simple attempt at finishing a basement when I came into the project.

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And after We tore everything out.

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Colin and Lane with the home made saw horses.

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Enough R-13 bast to cover all of the perimeter walls.

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Enough foam to bring the walls to R-29 and the floor to R-16.

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Had to tear out a column and put some LVL's in instead.

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Foam on the floor.

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Then down goes the Advantech subfloor. It's screwed down with 5" tapcons.

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Then foam on the walls.

Also check out the new radon stack in that last one. It penetrates the slab in two places on separate sides of the house. I got the previous owners to install that. It brought the radon down from 19.x to below 3. Once I'm done sealing up the house I'll take measurements again. I might have to install another stack.
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Then framing.

I recently got the heat load calcs back and they are basically 0. The basement can be heated with 4 75 watt incandescent bulbs at -5. It also is improving the existing load of the house by about 25%.
Unfortunately I was becoming deathly ill during this whole process so progress has slowed to a crawl in the past two weeks. I have all of the wiring done, including running CAT-6 all through the house, and the framing is finished. I'm probably in it for about $5,000 in materials all done and said. It's interesting to see how little it costs to do this kind of thing when I'm not subing out plumbing and electric. Tomorrow I spray the band joist area with foam. I got a 600 board ' kit. I have only ever used the 200 ' kits before so I've had this one warming up for days now. The manual J suggested that 10% of my whole house heat loss was through the band joist and the masonry above grade. So I'm nipping that in the bud right there.
More to come.

Geez. No one? Lol

I thought this was pretty interesting. An entire finished basement that needs 0 heating. Maybe everyone has R-30 on their basement walls.

Was gonna check out the huge amt of pictures when I got home, then forgot. :) I'll get back to ya.

Only thing I wish was you had spent a year there so you had a direct comparison to see just how huge this improvement actually works out to. It looks like it should be great. I totally wish I could do the same at my place. How are you handling the increase in floor height at the doors? I have the headroom to add insulation but the basement door swings only 1/2" above the floor Same with the interior doors

Well there are no interior doors left over. I tore everything out and have been burning it all in the (poorly made) brick fireplace in the yard. The door to the bulkhead is garbage and is slated for replacement so that's that. It's nothing more than some tongue and groove boards and a latch. The ceiling is pretty low. It's 2 1/4" polyiso and 3/4" Advantech sub floor then I'm going to have a firm carpet put down so I'm raising the floor about 4". Sucks. Fortunately it'll really only be the kids down there and they are smaller than I am. I'm not going to put a drop ceiling in like usual. I'm just going to put up a light colored wood paneling. I could probably sheet rock it but I don't think I'm going to ever sheet rock a ceiling again.... ever... in my life. It's going to stay unfinished until I figure out things like HRV/AC duct work and minor plumbing. Even with the crappy basement door and windows the previous owners showed me their utility bills from last year and the coldest month was only $100 in gas for heat and hot water. I'm hoping to get it to the point where it only takes that much to heat the house all winter. I'm not going to be able to afford to get there this year though.
I'm having an energy audit in the next couple weeks so I'm hoping to get Mass Save to air seal my attic and whatever else they want to do. Then I'm going to bring my attic to R-60. Then I've gotta get the HRV and so on installed and running before I close up for the winter.
Next spring is tearing the siding off and recycling it (it's aluminum), wrapping the entire board sheathed house in bitchathane and screwing 4.5" of polyiso on.

No one said you can't just slice a couple inches of the bottom of the doors though.

No, your progress is quite impressive, but it's a bit of info to digest.

So, here are a few questions:

• What is the new headroom in the basement?
• Did you consider building a cold closet in a corner of the basement?
• How are you handling moisture / water?
• What are you planning for windows and the exterior door?
• Why did you start in the basement? I'm guessing it was the least disruptive place to start a major insulation project.
• What are the basic stats on the rest of the house?

Good work, keep us updated!

Tim

The headroom is under the 7' code requirement but only by a couple inches. Maybe 6' 10" or so.

I did consider a cold cellar but space is limited and I won't be keeping a garden that can produce enough roots to necessitate it for a long time so that project is on hold for 8 - 12 years.

The basement id bone dry. Every basement in the area is. The previous basement construction was cheap garbage and there wasn't a single sign of mold or any kind of rot. The previous owner was an architect and she kept her drawings down there. I was prepared to hammer out the perimeter and install drain tile but it appeared to be completely unnecessary. In fact, I took out a carpet they had on the floor that had a layer of poly under it. The underside of the poly was completely dry. This is why I decided it was OK to use polyiso instead of XPS like normal. I am taking extra measures to channel rain water away from the foundation though.

The windows will just be regular awning basement windows. Double pane. I'll make Lexan inserts for the winter with additional framing to fit a 2.25" piece of polyiso in at night or when not in use. The door is going to have to be custom made due to its size so I'm going to go all out with a fiberglass filled metal door with a magnetic weather seal like a refrigerator has.

The reason I started with the basement was that finishing it doubles the square footage of the house instantly. I value peace and quiet but my children don't and it's not right to expect them to. So I'm making them an entire floor where they can smash things and scream ride scooters in the winter. Also, right before I was getting ready sign papers my mother told me to be prepared for my daughter to move in. The last time she said that I brushed it off and then she moved in for 9 months so I took her seriously this time. I'm making her a bedroom down there. She's 11 and my other children are 5 and 2 so she needs her own space. Oddly enough two weeks before I began construction her mother had an episode displaying her unhealthy frame of mind and all kinds of insanity came to light. So my daughter is indeed living with me now.

The house is an 1100 sq ft ranch. I chose it because of how easy the geometry of a ranch is to work with. Finishing the basement effectively makes it a 2200 sq ft house. Crazy that you can double the size of a house and drastically decrease its energy usage for under $10 K. The foundation of 40' x 20'. It's pretty simple. Fiberglass in the attic and a little cellulose. Nothing much. Some outdated fiberglass in the walls. It's got an 80% efficient Buderus boiler for heat and hot water. One really key feature is that close to 1/4 of the wall space has baseboard radiant heat. The shear volume of radiator is allowing me to run a really low temp water. I had been planning on scrapping the boiler for 2 ASHPs but it would never ever pay off.

Very nice work so far! I was curious about the polyiso when I saw you using it for the flooring but see you explained that already. Definitely keep us updated. I'm curious to see how the spray foaming goes for you.

I'm liking the project. Ditto on the serious interest in the spray foaming.

I have to insulate after I do some interior wall framing and wiring. Spray foaming is my intention as we did it when we built our house nine years ago and we've been reaping the benefits ever since.

Be nice to know how hard it is to do and what the cost per square foot of wall space. Of course, how deep your cavity is too.

Well I'm going to be foaming later today so hopefully the pictures will be up tonight.
It's really not that hard. You just need to make sure the tanks are warm enough and shaken up a bit. Like I said earlier, I have never used the 600 board foot kits before but I have certainly used the 200 board foot kits. I hear it's harder to get every last bit out of them. Oddly enough the 600' kits costs as much as 2 x 200' kits. Remember when you're spraying to not go longer than 15 seconds before giving a squirt or you need to replace the tip. You only have a dozen or so tips in the kit but you can order more if you want. Last time I did this We managed to get through an entire 200' kit only using one nozzle. We just kept a trash can near by and gave a squirt from time to time. Remember to start counting as soon as you take your finger off the trigger. Also you can only spray a couple inches of thickness at a time so you need to make a couple passes.
Oh yea, and a 200 board foot kit covers (theoretically) 200' x 12" x 12" x 1".... a board foot. YMMV.

OK. All those eager for foaming picture.... behold:

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Connecting the hoses to the tanks.

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Budding young ecorenovator Jad the Millenarian. He is attached to the point of distraction to all things construction, building or tool related.
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That's about it. It's pretty simple. It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to do but it is DOG work. I just camped out in an area foaming bays a little at a time and then going back for a second coat. Once I had made it all the way around I did another pass along the entire perimeter. And I did the whole thing with only one nozzle!
Man this stuff is nasty! I'm glad I've got it over with. Cellulose is a MUCH nice product to work with. Ironically it's also a much nicer product to live with.

What brand foam did you use? Where did you get it from?

Tiger foam. Got it from them. They're based out of NJ so it's only 1 day to ship to me. Also with the contractor's discount the stuff is a lot cheaper than any of the lumber yards out here sell it for.

One thing I forgot to mention: I had the tanks in a closet with 3 x 75 watt light bulbs shining for 3 or 4 days to warm them up. They need to be warm all the way though, not just to the touch. I put them in there, clamped the lights on and then piled polyiso scraps on top. As a result of good heating and shaking I got almost everything out of the tanks.

Very nice. I noticed you took the very sensible precaution of gloves. I'm sure it's as gooey as Great Stuff foam, so it would be a chore to get off.

Thanks for posting the pictures.

Faugh! I've spent all afternoon putting up unfaced bats (you can't use any kind of vapor barrier in a basement application, even kraft faces) and putting up sheet rock. It had remained cool down there until I spray faomed. I had to open up all the windows and put fans in the door ways. The temperature went up to about 95. Now it's NEVER going to cool off down there! It's about 10 degrees hotter down there than it is upstairs! I moved a huge pile of polyiso sheets to a different location so I could work and the floor under them seemed cold in comparison. When the boiler fires up I can't even hear it but I know because of the massive heat radiating from it. Man! I'm going to have to put fans in again tomorrow morning at about 4 AM to cool it off. Insulation is great but the door swings both ways.

Pictures to follow soon.

Lane took his wife and four children and went home so I'm flying solo. Working with two people is more than 2x as fast as one! Been hanging Sheetrock since about 7 AM yesterday with only a break to sleep.

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Unfaced bats only in basements. there has to be maximum drying to the interior.

I'd say I'm about 3/4 done.

Drywall id my least favorite part of the job. Unfortunately it's really the only part people will see. I'm not too good with finish work.I usually sub out this garbage. But when it's your house and every penny counts you do it yourself.

Hows this coming?

Uhhh. Just trying to finish up the drywall. I'm not too good at that. I can do it and I can make it look good but I'm pretty slow. I've got it all hung and am in the mud/tape phase. Then I have to fasten the sub floor to the slab. I took a leap and did something I've never done before. I just laid the sub floor down on the foam boards. Usually I'd put sleepers down before the sub floor. I was hoping since I used really heavy duty subfloor (3/4' Advantech) that all would be well. I thought it would just kind of float. Well some of it has bowed and the Tapcon screws I was using can't pull the bowed boards down. So I have to drill huge holed through those sheets into the slab, epoxy lengths of threaded rod in and then bolt the boards down. That will happen as soon as I'm done with the walls. I've enlisted the help of a friend who;s a lot better with drywall so I hope to be done with that by the beginning of next week. So the basement still isn't done which means my entire family is 1/2 moved in to this house which is driving me bananas. Just last night I finally got my projector mounted. In my old living room I just kept it on a shelf. My new living room is too long so the picture was way too big for my screen. I had to run a cable through walls and to the attic and I had to put an outlet on the ceiling to accommodate a ceiling mounted projector. Took me hours but now it's all done. I watched a movie the other night for the first time in a month and a half.

I've only done a tiny amount of drywall, and that was enough. I'm really not looking forward to doing it when we gut the upstairs to insulate... At the least I hope I got semi-good/fast after doing 4 bedrooms.

Quick update:

I'm almost done finishing the sheetrock. I'll be finished tomorrow. Then all I have left is to put up the trim and bolt the floor down. The rest of the family is going to do the painting. That's when I cut bait. I still have other IMPORTANT work to do in the house. For example my bedroom walls are still the pink the previous owners painted them. 0.o

Picture to follow soon. Because I know everyone id dying to see photo archives of the fantastic job which is putting up sheetrock. :p

Drywall is done! Well, except the portion where Jad the Millenarian decided he'd help out and drove a couple screws into the wall when I wasn't looking. I have the floor swept, vacuumed and wiped. I just finished installing all of the electrical sockets and all of the paint is here. Unfortunately carpet for the floor is going to have to wait until my bank account has time to recover. All of the painting will happen in the next several days. After that my family is going out of town for most of next week so that's when I'll be bolting the floor down. BTW, if anyone is between here and D.C. where they are going, and you need something from MA just let me know.

Great to hear. I bet its nice to be done sanding! I'm sure it looks great. I do look forward to pics. :)

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And a cross section of the wall

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I'm priming now. Two weeks ago it seemed like this day would never come.

I'm done with drywall. I think if I had to do this over again I would hire someone to do it all. If I count my time as money it would be a lot cheaper and it would have been a better job. I'm just not good enough at this to make it reasonably fast. A pro could have done a better job in much less time. That being said, my job came out looking pretty good.

Wow that is a LOT more drywall than I thought it would be. If you had to guess, how much do you think that would have cost you to have done?

Are you going to drywall the ceiling? and insulate it?

having done drywall to save money before I also swear the next time I'll pay someone. The savings isn't much and pro's do it way way faster then I can.

Well, this morning I wrote a long and comprehensive response to Daox's last post. Unfortunately I clicked on submit right when the forum was down and I don't have the gumption to re write it at this time. I'll tackle it later. The moral was that DIY sheetrock finishing is a bad idea. Save up a little longer and hire someone else to do it. You'll spend a little but more but it's certainly worth it!

@raydias, I am certainly NOT going to rock the ceiling OR insulate it. I am going to put some tasteful, light colored wood paneling up on the ceiling. I always talk about never finishing sheet rock again but for several years now I have been pretty firm on the FACT that I will never finish a sheetrock ceiling again….EVER. What would insulating it do? Keep the heat out and the basement would be colder. I am fortunate in that this house has loads of baseboards so I can run the water at a reduced temperature. Especially after I outsulate the walls above grade. I'm aiming to tear out the fiberglass, dense pack the whole thing from the outside and add R- 32 on top of that with polyiso, topping it off with a rain screen, ship lap and oil based paint. Once that's done the majority of my fuel will go to heating water for showers and the like. I'm going to rely on the HRV duct work to circulate the miniscule amount of heat the basement needs from the main floor. There is a great case study done by BSV where they retrofit three houses. In one of them the owner wanted to save a few G's so he skipped insulating the basement. They tried to remove the basement from the conditioned area. And it didn't work. Plain and simple. The Building Science Corp. couldn't even do it. So my rule of thing regarding ceiling insulation is, don't do it at all unless you are, 1. Putting it above your head in an attic, or, 2. Putting unfaced batts in to deaden sound, which I will be doing in the bedroom seen. My daughter will be moving in there and it's right above my movie theater (AKA living room during the day).

Well look at that! Progress, right here in River City!

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Not much left to do really. I didn't have time to finish the trim before the carpet went in so I'll have to tape it off and paint it when it's done. Then I have a couple windows to put in still. After that I'll leisurely put up a drop ceiling. The door went in yesterday. That was a PITA. It's some fancy fiber glass job.

Oh and one more thing. I haven't done any work on the rest of the house at all really aside form changing out light switches and so on. Nothing that effects the performance of the house form and energy conservation point of view. I have yet to even turn my thermostat on. The coldest it's been is 68° in the early morning. The I have never lived in a house that retains it's heat so well. So now I know from experience how much heat is lost through the basement.

hey, super nice job s-f. What a difference it makes, looks fantastic. :thumbup:

I used to hate drywall but then I got a bit zen about it when I realized that all I had to do was expect it to take forever. And expect to put up 5 layers of compound until it was perfect. After that I was good. It helps that every time I do another bit of drywall it goes a little easier. That said, your drywall project was way larger than anything I've done yet.

I installed the door on my "power shed" and I had it all perfect then went to open the door, because the install directions said, "from the exterior raise the door into place, then, from the inside, place the shims..." Exactly how I was supposed to magically move through a solid door? So I went to open the door and the guess what, the black tab that held the door shut, and the install sheet said "do not remove the black tab until..." well. It held the door shut. So I had to lower the door. Pull out the black tab ... and of course I totally messed up the door fit and it took some time to get it back to level and square. Which I managed, because I ignored the install sheet and just started putting in screws ... ragga fragga bing bang :mad:

looking forward to the "final" pics.

Agreed, its looking great down there.

Not 20 minutes after the carpet guys drive away:

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It really ties the room together.

They didn't even let me paint the trim!

Well, not that I even had the paint, but that's aside form the point!

On a more practical note, I finally turned the heat on this morning. It got down to 66 in the house. The boiler fired up once when I turned the thermostat on and once about an hour ago. A little background about S-F: I have FROZEN every winter of my 32 years. Growing up my room was in what originally was, and should have remained, an attic. So it was hot in the summer, and I mean HOT, and cold in the winter. Cold as in there was a pane missing from one of the windows. There was a register for forced hot air but none ever made it up there so I put blankets and homosote over it to deaden the blaring volume of the full concert grand piano my mother likes to play at unholy hours. Since I have spent three New England winters fully out of doors. In a tent for one. In a van for another and sleeping wherever in the city for the other. Otherwise I've been too indigent to even think about using heat. Well, when I moved into this house I decided two things. One is that I'm not going to freeze this winter. A little cold is good but 2 pair of long johns, wool socks, slippers, sweater + sweater vest and a wool hat just to sit and eat isn't happening. Fortunately I also decided I'm going to spend less on heating utilities. So I think I'm going to keep the house at 68 all winter during the day and around 60 at night. If the gas bill starts to get around $50 a month I'll just spend a little more money I don't really want to spend and drill and fill my walls.

looks even better "decorated."

Hollie Mollie!! That's one heck of a lot of WORK! That would have killed me!!
Looks very nice down there. You did an excellent job.
S-F, when you renovate something, you don't fool around!! :thumbup:

I kinda know what you mean about the cold. I'm one of those people that hates winter.
Growing up in SW Texas might have something to do with my intolerance to winter in MA. ;)

Right now, we have our 4-Tons of Sanyo humming along at 22C (71.6)
which, I will turn way down to 20C (68) while we sleep tonight.. :o

We've been burning $2.60 a day during this latest cold snap.
One gallon of heating oil would be about $3.60 these days.

At these prices, I guess we can afford to keep warm as toast this winter!!

Cheers,
Rich

Thanks! And My personal opinion is that housing should all be superinsulated. I think that for the average person who isn't building new and isn't rich keeping passivehouse ideals in mind is a good start. Houses just shouldn't need heat! I make heat as I burn my rice and vegetables in my body and I burn fuel to cook them. That should be enough unless I decide to heat the outdoor winter with it for some unfathomable reason. :confused:



I'm keeping a close eye on your ASHP projects. My estimated heat load for the basement included the use of an HRV which would move some air heated by the main floor to the basement. It's looking like an HRV may not be in the budget this winter so I may nee some heat source down there or else my daughter who sleeps there might freeze. A minisplit has crossed my mind more than once. If I get too cold and decide to go ASHP you'll be one of the first people to hear about it.

Thanks for chiming in on this thread and keep up your enthusiastic work!


Colin

We keep our house at 68 while home and 60 when not. I find it pretty comfortable almost all the time unless I'm physically exhausted. I also keep an eye on the humidity of the house to help that out too.

Your heat is radiant is it not Daox? Do you think that bringing the temperature up from 60 to 68 all the time is using unnecessary fuel? Much like the way that accelerating is where you spend fuel in a car as even compared to high (relatively of course) RPM highway driving at a constant speed.

Some of my heat is radiant, but without the solar panels up I won't be using that at all this year. My new little on demand hot water heater just doesn't have enough oomph to do more than one thing at a time, plus its electric and more expensive to run.

Colder is always better and the farther back you can set the thermostat the better. The only exception being when you have a heat pump and it has to kick in resistance heating. Heat loss is always proportional to the temperature differential, so the colder the less heat loss. Also, furnaces are most efficient when running for a long time vs short times. That both adds up to farther temperature setbacks being a good thing.

Yes I see all that. There are two lingering points for me though. The first is that the peak efficiency of my boiler at least is reached within (a couple minutes) so a longer run than that isn't going to make it any more efficient. Second is that it takes longer for radiant systems to heat the house than forced hot air so there could be quite a big demand to bring 60° air, floors, jugs of water, etc. to 68°. I control my thermostat with Z-Wave and have it bring the temperature up in steps in the morning to deal with this.

Warm as toast!
 

That's why I only turned the Sanyo twins down a little bit last night..

6.8 kWh in 10 hours. 680 watts all night long on average.
I think 15 cents an hour is worth being able to get up late,
and walk around semi-commando style to make my Inka drink.. ;)
No goosebumps on this old hide..

Last 24 Hours Weather: ,

Since midnight..
High Temperature 38.9°F
Low Temperature 29.8°F