New House Journal
Aug. 14th, 2011 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shavastakPart Twelve: Insulation At Last
So the store finally got a new insulation-blowing machine. We picked it up on Wednesday. Chris and I brought it home in Sue's van, along with its 100 feet of hose. We set it up outside and tested it, and it worked! Hooray!
Chris prepped the attic by putting up paper tabs that measured the thickness of insulation in Rs. Sue hooked up the hose pieces inside and helped Chris feed one end into the attic. I hooked the hose to the machine and prepped the hopper by feeding in half a bale. The insulation, which was mostly cellulose (but I saw occasional bits of plastic and once a piece of foil), tended towards the tan/beige colors and wanted to break up into large chunks. Also, once it broke apart, it tended to toss up dust that got into my nose and made me sneeze. Hoping I wasn't allergic to it, I soldiered on, eventually asking for a dust mask to keep down on the sneezing. Some of the bales were on the bluer/greyer end, and cooler-feeling, and broke up into smaller chunks - there were about three of those, out of the 20 bales we had.
After five bales I would shout up to Sue "LAST BALE!" and she'd shout up to Chris, and Chris would finish the quarter of the house he was working on and move over to the next quarter. After 10 bales, he came down to take a break, and said there was a dust cloud blowing down the street. I warned him to stay hydrated and told him to get a glass of chocolate milk after he was done (to replenish fluid, protein, and carbs - it's a good after-exercise drink). I got dusty on the arms, and Chris got completely filthy from top to bottom, and Sue got the easy job - standing in her room and relaying signals from me to Chris and back. (Her back had started to hurt, so we didn't want her doing any of the heavy work.)
So anyway, the attic is insulated and the air conditioner is already having an easier time keeping up. It turned out to be not quite as much insulation as we wanted, but it is such a huge improvement on the paper-thin insulation that was there that we're happy with it.
Our next big projects are the drain, discussed in a previous entry; the doors - the front door and especially the basement door need to be replaced; and the air conditioner needs to be looked at by a maintenance person and we need to figure out where the filter goes. It's silly, but we can't find a place for it. When Chris put a filter in what we thought was the obvious place, the AC literally froze up, so we're waiting for a professional opinion before we try again. All of it has to wait until my disbursement comes in, though...money is short because of how much we've spent on the house and on eating out while we had no kitchen to work with.
The unpacking proceeds apace. Chris unpacked a good three or four boxes from his room today. Sue's room is mostly unpacked. I have my clothes in my dresser and in the closet in her room. We have some costuming items that will slowly end up in the office closet. Chris has planned one more check through the coat closet to find give-away candidates. We've sent two or three big boxes to goodwill and habitat since we moved in. So, that part of our lives at least seems to be going well.
So the store finally got a new insulation-blowing machine. We picked it up on Wednesday. Chris and I brought it home in Sue's van, along with its 100 feet of hose. We set it up outside and tested it, and it worked! Hooray!
Chris prepped the attic by putting up paper tabs that measured the thickness of insulation in Rs. Sue hooked up the hose pieces inside and helped Chris feed one end into the attic. I hooked the hose to the machine and prepped the hopper by feeding in half a bale. The insulation, which was mostly cellulose (but I saw occasional bits of plastic and once a piece of foil), tended towards the tan/beige colors and wanted to break up into large chunks. Also, once it broke apart, it tended to toss up dust that got into my nose and made me sneeze. Hoping I wasn't allergic to it, I soldiered on, eventually asking for a dust mask to keep down on the sneezing. Some of the bales were on the bluer/greyer end, and cooler-feeling, and broke up into smaller chunks - there were about three of those, out of the 20 bales we had.
After five bales I would shout up to Sue "LAST BALE!" and she'd shout up to Chris, and Chris would finish the quarter of the house he was working on and move over to the next quarter. After 10 bales, he came down to take a break, and said there was a dust cloud blowing down the street. I warned him to stay hydrated and told him to get a glass of chocolate milk after he was done (to replenish fluid, protein, and carbs - it's a good after-exercise drink). I got dusty on the arms, and Chris got completely filthy from top to bottom, and Sue got the easy job - standing in her room and relaying signals from me to Chris and back. (Her back had started to hurt, so we didn't want her doing any of the heavy work.)
So anyway, the attic is insulated and the air conditioner is already having an easier time keeping up. It turned out to be not quite as much insulation as we wanted, but it is such a huge improvement on the paper-thin insulation that was there that we're happy with it.
Our next big projects are the drain, discussed in a previous entry; the doors - the front door and especially the basement door need to be replaced; and the air conditioner needs to be looked at by a maintenance person and we need to figure out where the filter goes. It's silly, but we can't find a place for it. When Chris put a filter in what we thought was the obvious place, the AC literally froze up, so we're waiting for a professional opinion before we try again. All of it has to wait until my disbursement comes in, though...money is short because of how much we've spent on the house and on eating out while we had no kitchen to work with.
The unpacking proceeds apace. Chris unpacked a good three or four boxes from his room today. Sue's room is mostly unpacked. I have my clothes in my dresser and in the closet in her room. We have some costuming items that will slowly end up in the office closet. Chris has planned one more check through the coat closet to find give-away candidates. We've sent two or three big boxes to goodwill and habitat since we moved in. So, that part of our lives at least seems to be going well.
