New England B.S. Thread

Fact

 

No expert re building, but I fought ice dams in the back of my house from the day I moved here in 2004. The ceiling in one of the 2 rooms wasn't insulated and i figured that might help but very little improvement. Both rooms have a vaulted ceiling as well.

The roof is very shallow pitched, plus I suspect that the bathroom (which was insulated) wasn't built properly when it was added onto several years prior to my buying...since so many other things in the room weren't and some of it I could see as bad ideas even not being a builder of any kind.

I would have to rake and/or shovel that half of the roof if I got more than 3-4 inches of snow, I finally reroofed with metal in 2021 and zero issues.

 

@AllTacosFloat

 

About time! I’m looking forward to it

 

Heres my current ideas.

That R36 adds from both layers. The rigid foam would be ISO and id use great stuff to seal all joints.



Idea #2 would be to build some funky baffles that would go below the perlins and create the same 1" gap and either use blow in or fiberglass batts to insulate it all in.

 

I don't think that allows for enough ventilation

 

Rigged up an arbor press to take hole chisels. Way better result and also faster. Still not using electricity so I don't think the spirit of the work has changed.



Zippers are still a nightmare to saddle stitch though. The inner line took almost 4 hours. If you punch the zipper body with the chisels, it cuts fibers which weakens the zipper. I use oversize blunt needles, which push through the weave, but on tough nylon body zippers like this that's a lot of effort and the loop on the thread catches hard every time.

CLC makes decent nylon zipper pouches, check Amzn.

 

KYB strut mounts. Big washer on the top or bottom?

 

big washer on top, bevel cupping the bushing-

 

Thank you. So it's just like factory.

 

Yep, well, at least I’ve not seen any different… of the two brands I’ve seen taken apart, Bilstien and Ironman.

 

I haven't pulled anything apart. I was just wondering when I saw the different sizes.

 

I am through almost 3 tons of pellets and 200 gallons of oil. That has usually been enough to get me through the entire winter. I have one more ton of pellets so I should still be good but I was kind of hoping I would have some left over.

 

I must be close to 1000 gallons of oil

 

I think I’m at 2.5 cord and like maybe 50 gallons of oil. We have that set to like 50

 

I don't miss buying heating oil at all. We had a heat pump installed and it's worked fine this winter even on the coldest (teens) nights. Haven't turned on the emergency heating strips even once.

 

My pellet stove is a fireplace insert in the living room, so it's tough to circulate the heat through the entire house. I keep the boiler at 68 and it will usually run a bit every morning and occasionally throughout really cold days.

I have an 18,000 BTU mini split but I only use it for A/C. It does a decent job heating, but our electric rates are really high so it would probably cost me more than oil and pellets if I used it regularly.

 

My house's HVAC is a nightmare.

The oil forced hot air furnace feels undersized for the house. I have an attached family room with vaulted ceilings that yes, has leaky winodws but is always 6-10°F colder than the main house. I've choked down every vent in the main house to try to force hot air into that room and it still doesn't seem to help much. The previous owners widened a doorway to the dining room which cut the heating duct to our master bedroom. The solution was to cut holes in the floor of the master to let heat rise (stupid stupid stupid).

In 2021 I added a Mitsubishi HyperHeat system, a ducted unit in my attic that controls the second floor and has some drops to the first floor as well as a ductless head in my family room. It's integrated with the heating system. From a heat standpoint it works great when it's on, at the cost of $600/mo electric bills (so much for being cheaper than oil like they said). The integration means that the temperature point in the family room is the control point for the oil furnace when it's too cold to run the main system, meaning to get 68°F in that room my house is at 74-78°F elsewhere, so I disable it.

Also, I'm 99% sure the AC is either sized wrong, or filled wrong, or they did a horrible job explaining to me how it could work. I'm used to the old style AC where it's 110°F outside and you set your house to 64°F, you're getting that at the expense of your electric bill. There are times in the summer when it swings up past 90°F and my house can't get below 78°F even with the thermostat set at 70°F. I was told if I can get a 15-20°F ambient to inside swing I'm going great, and yes, I get that, but I don't get why it will start the day fine but as the day heats up it's like I'm just losing power. I'd expect the unit fan to start going full blast and it will barely be moving. I've had the HVAC company out more than once to complain and they're like "it just is". Honestly, the day the start-up guy came I remember distinctly him not wanting to be here and complaining the whole time. I just have this feeling the refrigerant isn't correct and that they're just ignoring me since it's still a warranty call.

I'm just sick of my house either being a sauna or a fridge in the winter and then a sauna in the summer. If the temps are 45-85°F it's perfect, outside of that and I'm grumpy (simply because I paid a lot for the system).

 

I have a 1500 sq ft ranch and my 18,000 BTU mini split is enough for the whole house as long as we use it to maintain. Like the pellet stove, the biggest limitation is circulation (walls/distance from the unit since it's in the living room). We have to cool the living room a little more than we'd like to make everything else comfortable. If we set it to 68, the kitchen and dining room will be around 70 and the further away rooms, like my mud room/office and the bedrooms tend to hover around 73. We do keep a small window unit in our bedroom so we can keep it cooler for sleeping without making the rest of the house uncomfortable.

I find that even when it's mid 90s and humid outside (hottest it gets here), it appears to be idling about as low as it can to maintain those temperatures. If we're gone and have it off and the house creeps up to 80 it takes a long time to get it back down.

 

This punch press is a game changer.