EcoRenovator - New old guy

Been lurking here a bit and reading everything I can absorb. Your forum really has an incredible depth of talented and sharing people. Cannot thank you enough for all of your efforts!

I purposely skipped reading anyone else's intro posts, because they seem to get a bit formulaic and I'm susceptible. Just wanted to introduce my scattered self. I'm married with a couple kids that have flown the coop. Actually saw the ultrasound pictures of my first grand-child to be last Saturday. He/she will be with us in April or so!! :D I mention this because I seem to be at a stage in my life where I want to leave things better for those to come.

We live in a ranch style house that was built in 1947-48. Absolutely NO thought went into efficiency. It is fairly small at about 1300 sq ft. Plenty for the wife and I. (Often not enough for our hobbies...) The house is clad with brick and when we bought it 11-12 years ago I believed it to be fairly standard construction...

Boy was I wrong!! One of first projects was to replace the 60 year old windows with modern double panes and better insulation. The first few winters the wind would blow right through the existing glass and frames. When we tore into the place to replace them I discovered the houses secret. Under the brick was a 1" air gap and the brick was tied to narrow cinder blocks; there was no space to insulate as the plaster on our interior walls was simply slapped onto the inside of the cinder block!! :eek:

We spray foamed the gap between the brick and cinder (as best we could) and put in the new windows, which made a great deal of difference- no more breezy winter days, plus we noticed a significant decrease in sound level from our neighborhood.

Over the years we've also moved our boiler room and water heater to open up the floor plan and remodel our kitchen. Doing this gave us a larger space for the dining room and our bathroom area (which still needs to be done). Pex tubing was used to replace all our old mix of copper, lead, and galvanized piping. The kitchen and dining area have staple up radiant under tile.

The boiler and baseboard heaters in the rest of the home were installed sometime in the early 80's, with a newer boiler fitted in about 2002. (The plumber that did the work lives at the end of the street.) These are natural gas and probably way over-sized.

Attic insulation was upgraded from r-9 to r-34 this last year. It was a hard call to make on such an old house, but we looked at all our options (which included a tear down and rebuild new) and came to the conclusion that it would payback before we moved/died/won the lottery, etc.

So anyways... I joined to jump into some of the discussions, but more importantly to help add to the collective knowledge as I prefer to take action and try things. The GSHP thread is currently absorbing all my free time! (Made it to P. 86 so far...)

Any ways. Hello all!