Builders Share

HVAC Handyman Style (part 3)

After getting the fan installed and wired, (see HVAC part 2 below) I was ready to start installing the ductwork for my air recirculation project.  (I'm trying to re-route warm air from the rooms heated by a wood stove, to cooler locations in the house.)

In the first phase of the project, I cut holes in the master bedroom wall in preparation for the ducts and to determine the exact placement of the fan unit.  Now it was time to cut outlet holes in the walls of the downstairs rooms where I'd be sending the recirculated air.

 

My strategy for cutting these outlets was to drill a couple of guide holes from behind the wall so that I would prevent cutting an opening an larger than I needed.  I wanted to avoid doing any drywall patching.  This meant snaking the drill into a couple of tight spaces but it turned out to be the right method as I was able to cut openings exactly to the size of the duct vents.

Routing the duct through the master bedroom floor and into the downstairs ceiling proved daunting.  I was trying to work with the smallest hole possible in to save cutting away the floor unnecessarily, but I twice had to expand the size of the hole in order route the recirculation ducts around a heating duct from the basement furnace.

I also changed my plan from having the vents in the master bedroom (both recirculation and furnace heat) directing air vertically to directing air horizontally.  This will allow us to make use of the space on top of the box that will house the vents.

The project is yet to be finished because I still need to construct the box that will hide the ductwork and in the master bedroom, but the recirculation of warm air in the house is going well.  The rooms that aren't served by the wood stove are now getting a small shot of warm air.  Before the recirculating fan and ducts were installed, when the temperature in the living room was 72 degrees fahrenheit, the other rooms would be six or eight degrees cooler.  Now, they are consistently two or three degrees cooler.  It's not a perfect solution, but with some tweaking of thermostat that turns the recirculating fan on and off and adjusting the louver that directs the air either to the master bedroom upstairs or the north rooms downstairs, I'll be able to even out the ambient air temperature throughout the house.

 

HVAC Handyman Style (part 2)

This weekend I was finally able to continue installing my custom heat moving system.  When I last left off, all I was able to get accomplished was cutting a messy hole in the wall, but now I've got the system near completion.

After cutting the initial hole in the wall between the attic and the master bedroom, I was ready to position the fan unit in the kitchen ceiling.  The mounting instructions call for the unit to be mounted either on a joist, between joists using a hanging kit, or by building a box frame between joists. My house rarely fits neatly into the plans of modern appliance installations.  The kitchen ceiling consists of drywall mounted on hefty 1x3 strapping that is mounted to 3x8 hemlock beams spaced roughly 30" apart.  And where modern ceiling system are usually square with the walls that support them, mine is not.

If I mounted the fan unit on one of the joists it would look cockeyed to the walls in the kitchen.  For this reason, I decided to mark and cut my hole for the fan first, and then mount the fan as was needed to keep the grill cover square with the walls.

With the hole cut in the ceiling and the fan aligned in the attic, I was ready to mount it to cross pieces screwed into the 1x3 strapping.

Before I started installing the ductwork, I took care of the electrical task.

When I wired the house, I installed a spare circuit for a range hood in the kitchen in case we wanted to add one down the road.  A range hood was not in the budget for the original kitchen, and though at times it would be nice to have one, it's not a priority.  But having this unused circuit available in the kitchen attic was a big help when it came to connecting the fan unit.

The tricky part of the electrical installation was choosing a switch.  I wanted the unit to run on a thermostat, i.e. when the air in the kitchen/living room reaches a certain temperature, the fan should turn on and start moving that warm air to the cooler rooms.  The problem was finding a thermostat that was rated at 120V and worked opposite from a typical heating thermostat.  Mine would need to work  like an air-conditioning thermostat but most of those are rated only for 24 volts.

What I did find was a thermostat switch designed for controlling louvers and booster fans for ductwork.  The Suncourt DS100 to be exact.  In theory this switch is the device I need. It controls power to the device based on the ambient temperature and has settings for either heating or cooling devices.  Since its connections are made using standard grounded outlets, I needed to mount a box and receptacle in the attic.

After mounting the box and receptacle in the attic, I had to connect the previously unused circuit to a new breaker in the panel in the basement.  With the circuit connected, I was ready to test it and the fan to be sure all was working right before moving on to installing the ductwork.

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HVAC Handyman Style (part 1)

It was time to get started on a task I've been talking about for a while.  I've devised a plan for bringing hot air from the kitchen/living room section of the house where the wood stove sits, to the rooms on the north side of the house that remain cool when we're relying solely on wood heat.

NOTE: Click on any of the pictures to enlarge.

This is a common problem with homes that are retro-fitted with wood stoves.  You can't always place the stove in a spot that will allow it to heat the whole house so you either find ways to move the hot air around or you live with the resulting cold spots.

My plan is to install a quiet ventilation fan in the ceiling of the kitchen and duct the exhaust into the north rooms.  I mapped out a route for the ductwork and with that in mind I purchased the fan and the duct.  Now it's time to start cutting into the walls.

The first hole is through the wall the separates the master bedroom from the attic space above the kitchen.  I can access this attic through the master bedroom closet.  (I'll be crawling in and out of that hole a hundred times before this job is done.)

Now a little history:  The wall between the MBR and the kitchen attic was once the back exterior wall to the house.  From the attic you can still see the original clapboards and even a section of the nearly two-hundred year old roof with wood shakes still in place.  There are no records to show it, but the kitchen ell was probably added to the house around a hundred years ago.

History is all well and good, but I need to cut a hole through this wall.  It being a former exterior wall means I've got a little more of a job to do than punching a hole through drywall.  First of all, I know this wall is made of 3x4 studs that comprise the knee wall sitting on top of the first floor's timber frame, but my stud finder gets confused by the strapping and insulation board that's sandwiched in there and it can't reliably tell me where those studs are.  (By the way, 100 years ago, 3x4 meant 3" by 4"--a big hulkin' stud.)

So I decided I should drill and cut where I want the hole to be and hope there's no stud there.  Well, there was a stud right there.  So, now I have to go around it.  This is not a big deal, because what looks ugly now will all be boxed-in later to hide the ductwork.

And of course, by the time I had got all my tools in place, furniture moved, drop cloths dropped, and this first hole cut, it was time to clean up.  A familiar story, but a continuing one anyway.  Stay tuned.

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Work/Play Station

Is there a boy whose room is not a complete disaster area at least 90% of the time?

I've always tried to keep my cool regarding Ramon's cluttered room.  His room is small and most everything in it came by way of me and his mom, so I'm largely responsible for dilemma.  To saddle a six year-old with the problem of organizing hundreds of unclassifiable items of vastly differing shapes and size in a 9x12 space that must also hold a single bed and dresser is simply inhumane.  I know I couldn't do it.

But note that I said I TRY to keep my cool.  For some strange annoying psychological hiccup, I can't help but be frustrated by the clutter that mounts in every corner.  The light saber that crashes to floor from its precarious leaning when I'm coming in to say goodnight sends my blood-pressure soaring.  When I trip over the gigantic stuffed red Clifford on my way to put the Cat In The Hat book back on the shelf, I want to rip his head off.  Clifford's that is.

But then I remember the high-pitched battles of my youth that stemmed from conflicts over what constituted an acceptable living environment.  Or more succinctly, one boy's mess is another parent's nightmare.  My only admonishments to Ramon are, "we've gotta keep the floor clear so it's safe."  And of course this rarely happens.

This all comes to mind because today I installed a small desk in Ramon's room, and in order to do it I needed him to clear out a corner.  I thought maybe this would be an opportunity for dad and son to do a little task together.  Well, it took about two minutes of picking up of toys for Ramon to become completely engrossed in one of the toys he was supposed to be finding a new home for.  His interest in helping dad responded inversely.

I let it go, and finished the job alone.

This little task was mounting a drop-leaf desk on the wall.  It's an Ikea furniture piece that I used to have mounted for myself in a little workspace in the last apartment we lived in.  I'm hoping it'll serve him well as a desk, and the fact that it can fold down out of the way makes it good for his tiny room.

The first thing I needed to do, after toy cleanup, was find the studs in the wall.  The desk itself has four pre-drilled holes for mounting screws but these are not spaced at stud width.  I wasn't about to use hollow wall anchors for mounting a boy's desk.  I could only imagine the desk being torn from the wall and big chunks of the wall coming with it.  I would mount this to the studs.

After locating the studs I had to decide on a proper height.  A quick web search gave me student desk heights in the range of 22" to 30".  I actually think the desks in his classroom are lower.  But I was able to pull him away from his latest endeavor for long enough to help me set a height, and we decided on 27".

With the studs located and the height set, I decided on the horizontal position so that it cleared the loft ladder on the left by an inch, and the wall on the right by a couple inches.  Then I marked the desk where the studs lined-up so I could drill holes for the mounting screws.

A helper would have been helpful for holding the desk in place while I mounted it with 3" wood screws, but I was able to do it alone using a few choice words.  And with the desk in place, I was even able to get Ramon to pull himself away from what was probably his sixth endeavor since that toy distracted him from cleanup, and come try out his new workstation.

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A Light on Fashion

My plans for getting some house renovation projects done over the holidays seem to have gone the way of ribbons, bows and wrapping paper the day after Christmas.

With the holidays over, though, it's time to get back to work.  The first task will be installing a fan and some ductwork to help move hot, wood stove-heated air from one part of the house to the other.  That work lies just ahead.

I did take care of one little task just before the holidays that I have yet to share.  I installed a light and switch in the master bedroom closet.  If you've seen me around looking better dressed of late, that new view of my wardrobe may be the reason.

The wiring for the light and switch has all been in place since I wired the entire upstairs some time ago, but getting a fixture and installing a switch was just another one of those hundred-odd tasks that kept getting pushed-off in favor others.

In this case, the supply comes to the ceiling box first and the wire to the switch extends from there.  Installing the fixture means first, turning off the power to the circuit at the breaker panel in the basement.

Then, at the ceiling box, I connected the neutral (white) supply wire to the neutral (white) wire on the light fixture.  The supply ground wire is connected to both the fixture's ground wire and the ground wire that runs to the switch.  Wire nuts are used to make these connections and I give a little tug on the wires to make sure they're snug and won't pop out when they're shoved up into the ceiling box.

The hot (black) supply wire is connected to the white wire that runs to switch and that white wire is marked with a black sharpie to indicate that it is a hot wire, and not neutral.  The black wire that runs to the switch is then connected to the black wire on the fixture.

The switch is wired simply by connecting the black and white wires to the two switch terminals and the ground wire to the ground terminal.  Before installing the switch in the box, the back of the switch is wrapped with electrical tape to protect the bare terminals.

Once all the connections are made, I push the wires neatly into the ceiling box and screw the fixture in place.  The wall switch is screwed into place too, and then I'm ready to turn on the power.

Wiring tasks like the one above are pretty straightforward.  The most important thing to remember is not to be careless.  Keep an eye out for bare wires and nicks in the insulation.  Don't strip off too much insulation that will leave wire exposed, and don't strip too little so that the connection is not secure.  The book "Complete Wiring" from Stanley has been very helpful to me throughout this project.

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