Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Geothermal HVAC

While technically not a DIY project we decided to switch our oil boiler and an undersized SpacePak air conditioning system with a geothermal HVAC system. It should save us between $250 and $300 monthly on fuel bills. That's a very conservative estimate, I'll post the actual savings as we get the system up and running. Also we should drastically increase the comfort level in the house as well.

With the undersized SpacePak if the temperature got above 85 degrees the system just couldn't keep up. We would set the thermostat at 68 and parts of the house would reach 90 degrees in the evenings. If night time lows dipped into the mid 60s things would cool off but if it stayed warmer the house never could catch up. With the heat this summer we had to do something.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Laundry Room Interuption

The laundry room renovation took a back seat while we had a geothermal HVAC system installed. As luck would have it lines for the new unit had to come in through my brand new drywall. Now I will be covering the duct and pipes before moving on with the renovation of the laundry room.

Laundry Room Part 5

Here's after taping and the first coat of joint compound. I still need to sand and do some more sanding. But I was very happy with the result.

Laundry Room Part 4

Hung my first drywall. I about the gaps between the pieces but the more I read about them the less concerned I was. Some tape and joint compound should fix it.

Laundry Room Part 3

With the plumbing fixed and the damaged drywall removed the next thing was to tackle was the floor. The lovely blue and white tiles turned out to be asbestos based so pulling it up wasn't a DIY option but sealing it up was. Self leveling concrete worked great. A little like the consistency of a of a watery milkshake and a bit smellier than I would have liked but the end result was worth it.

Laundry Room Part 2

Because the drywall got so wet when the spigot was turned on, I had to replace a few sections. First step rip out the bad sections. Pretty easy.

Laundry Room

A cracked fitting on the line to an outdoor spigot left water damage to the laundry room. Some new pipe, a new spigot, and a little solder was all it took to fix the pipe. The rest of the room was a different matter.