Hot and Cold

One of the must haves for the house for me was air conditioning.  I know that BJ really didn't think it was a must, but let's get real.  This summer had more 90 degree days then not.  The humidity in this part of the country is out of control.  We have a baby who sweats like her daddy, which means that I know she would have a lot of trouble sleeping because her natural core body temperature seems to hover around 200 degrees.

The other issue that we did not realize until it was pointed out by my father was that this house was heated by oil.  Now, most homes with oil heat have a 500 gallon tank out back or in the basement.  We had two.  That means that is takes 1,000 gallons of heating oil to heat this house at some point throughout the fall and winter.      Multiply that by the going rate for gas and we were in the $3,000-$5,000 range for heating our home.  We decided we also needed to go with a more affordable option.  While solar panels don't really do with the look of a traditional colonial built in the 1600's, a nice underground gas line would suit us just fine.

The logistics of these upgrades in a house made of plaster is easier said than done.  How do you run duct lines throughout an all plaster home?  Well, you don't.  The proposed system for the air conditioning would have to be able to go through these walls while still maintaining the integrity of the house.  We could go with what was called a high velocity system which is extremely costly.  It requires small tubing to be run in the walls and often a condenser is mounted somewhere in the house.  We did not have a space to really put the condenser.  As an alternative, our HVAC guy recommended a split hybrid system which would allow traditional ducting on the first floor and wall mounted units on the second and third floors.  I was not a fan of the idea of wall mounted units, but it seems that they are highly efficient due to the fact you can shut off the units when the rooms are not in use. The units also serve as the heating units for the rooms.

We settled on the Mitsubishi system that allows multiple wall units to be hooked to one outdoor unit.  I have to say that the pieces that have been put into my house scare me so far.  There are tubes running all over the place and lots of things sticking out of my walls.  There is also this crazy box of tubes in what is supposed to be my laundry closet.  Here is what I saw when I went to the house recently.


This is a revision to the original plan.  They were able to run duct work down from the third floor and into the ceiling of one part of the second floor.  This is the big silver worm growing in my eaves.

This is actually the location of a wall in the 3rd floor family room.  The wiring sticking out of the imaginary wall is where the heating/cooling unit will go.  Look at all that old knob and tube wiring that is going to be ripped out!

Another example of where a unit will be mounted in one of the bedrooms.

The ceiling in the 2nd floor hallway now has all kinds of tubing running through it.  

This pretty feature now resides where I hope my washer and dryer will also fit tucker away in a closet.

The piping as it was run outside.  Eventually this will be hooked to the outdoor portion of the system.

As for the heating portion, we got Delmarva Power to run our new gas line so that we can heat with natural gas now and avoid the gigantic oil bill this year.  At the same time then took our electric service underground and ran other conduit for phone and cable so no one else needs to tear up our yard again.  I have a whole different post for the electrical portion of this project.

Treasure Hunt, Part 1

I have not posted in a while because there is just a flurry of work going on.  For a while things were quite slow.  Then all of a sudden thing took off.  They finished up the structural work, they started the HVAC, and they finally got the electrical started.  There are lots of surprises and changes going on. But before we dive into those pieces, I thought that I would share some of the cool finds so far from the house.

First thing that we discovered was a well.  This isn't just some little wishing well where you drop and penny in and see the bottom.  This is a 30ft + deep well with water still in it.  The walls of the well are fully lined with brick.  It is quite the structural feat.  But is is really really scary for a mother of a curious nine month old.  I know that she is not strong enough to lift the steel plate that covers it over, but as a child of the 80's, visions of Baby Jessica flashed through my head when this well was discovered.  Then to make matters worse my husband brings up a reference to the movie, The Ring.  Great.

The well itself was on the architectural drawings that we got from the previous owner.  But since the above ground piece is really not there anymore we did not pay attention.  Our HVAC guy, who also digs for glass bottles as a hobby pointed it out to us.  Today the guys on site lifted the heavy metal plate so I could see inside.  Whoa momma!  Can you see the bottom?  Because I sure can't!  I am not sure what we will be doing with this find yet.

The next find wasn't so scary at all.  As I mentioned, our HVAC guy digs for bottles as a hobby.  He asked to dig on our property and look for a privy, which usually turns up the best finds.  He never found the privy, since more than likely our garage was built on top of it,  but he did find a Coca Cola bottle from the 50's or 60's in our crawl space.  The thing that makes this find cool is that it was made in the Wilmington, DE where our home is.  It is in great condition.  

I have a few more treasures that were recently discovered that I will share shortly.