Visible Progress!

After working on things that go inside the walls for quite a while, it's been kind of fun to get the point of putting on the pine paneling that covers it all. The wiring is roughed in and all set so that the rest of the wall can be put together, and the foam wall insulation is all done.

This picture just shows the wiring tidied up:

Next, I sealed each box around the wires with Tuck tape.

Here I've added the fiberglass insulation. I bought fiberglass bats made for 2 by 6 walls on 24 inch centers and then have been pulling each bat in half. It's still a bit thicker than needed for the wall space it is going into, but I think it will work OK.

Now the double bubble reflective insulation goes on. It rolls out and staples on quite easily.

I've used Tuck tape to tape and seal the lap point of the two rows of double bubble and to tape around the outside of the boxes. The video that I watched about installing double bubble said to overlap it 4 to 6 inches, and to use 1/4 inch strips on each stud over the double bubble to provide a surface to attach your wall board. I had a problem when the overlap coincided with the horizontal fire block set at 4 feet from the floor along the wall. This made a bulge that was too thick, so I had to cut out most of the overlap and just rely on the tape. I also decided not to use the extra stripping.

Starting on the wall paneling.

The pine tongue and groove boards I'm using in the back part of the house were all salvaged and required quite a lot of prep work. My father has been a huge help with this. Here's one pile of boards, cut, de-nailed, and ready to plane.

And voila! The wall is up and ready to be sanded and coated with clear coat sealer!

More Wiring and the Insulation Saga

It is rather amazing how many wires it takes to run all of the plugs and lights and things that we generally take for granted in a home. I hadn't planned on making the electrical system terribly complicated, but once one puts in the number of plugs required by code, the wires for switches and lights, wires for the mandatory smoke detector and, since I have gas appliances, carbon monoxide detector, and the humidity detector connected to the bathroom fan (also both mandatory), things start to add up.

In the last post I was busy drilling holes for wires to go through. Since I'm using panel insulation I then had to put cut and place the panels to be ready to string the wire. The electrical boxes had to wait for the insulation to be installed before they could be placed as well.

Since nothing seems to be standard in this house and the walls will be covered with double bubble reflective insulation and 3/4 inch tongue and groove pine panel boards, the boxes need to stick out about 1 inch from the wall. This means that the normal standard electrical boxes with the sealed rims don't work since they are made for a 1/2 inch wall covering material like drywall. I used plastic boxes, but the unsealed type. This means I'll have to figure out other ways of providing air seals around the boxes, apparently.

Here you can see the panels in place and the first wire pulled through. It proved nearly impossible to get the insulation panels to fit snugly in all places and there are therefore cracks in many places. After some experimentation with spray foam, I've discovered that it fills cracks wider than 1/4 inch and less than 1 inch reasonably well. Tiny cracks are awful to fill though. Wish I'd known that before I put all the panels in - I wouldn't have tried so hard to make them fit well! I'm going to try silicone on the small cracks and see if that will work instead.

And here is after the hurricane struck and wires are all over the place. Jim Hardy, a local electrician has been directing all of this, but I've been helping with the less complicated parts.

 So, still quite a bit to do with the wiring - staple and straighten the runs, strip the ends, install plugs and switches, install panels (one as required for the grid connection and a smaller one that allows power input from a generator or solar system), put in the pipe for the incoming wires through the floor, etc. etc. Then we hope that the inspector deems it all appropriate and correct...  so this is to be continued.

Also to be continued is the insulation saga. It's been one of the big factors on my mind ever since I started this project. As I mentioned quite early on in this blog, I decided on polyisocyanurate foam panels because they have nearly twice the insulation value per unit of thickness as Roxul or fiberglass, and more than other types of foam as well. This seemed like a good idea since I have a relatively thin wall and not much space in the roof either. However, after having worked with the stuff I'm not so sure this was such a good idea after all.

I originally intended to put the foam outside the wall, and this would have been a great deal easier. However, all advice that I received indicated that putting a moisture barrier like the foam panels on the outside of the wall would not be a very good idea. Also, the thickness was a problem as it took up most of the small amount of overhang I had from the eves. I therefore put it inside the wall, but this turned into a huge job trying to fit it into every little space between the wall studs.

Additionally, the dust from the stuff is nasty stuff that makes one itch, cough and generally feel rotten. I've been wearing a breath filter and nylon gloves when working with it, and I'm quite certain that it is environmentally unfriendly stuff.

I don't know what I would do differently, if I was to do this again. However, I would certainly look for other options as this insulation job has not been a fun one or a fast one, and there is still lots to do. Stay tuned for more fun with roof insulation... :-)

Wheel Well Boxes

I had been putting this little task off for quite a while, but finally got to it. The wheel wells needed to be covered, sealed, and insulated.

I started with a box made of two by two's and treated plywood.

All of the edges were caulked with silicone sealant.

The spaces were filled with 1.5 inch polyisocyanurate foam insulation and covered with double bubble reflective insulation.

Quarter inch lathing strips were added to give space for the double bubble insulation.

Finally, the whole thing was covered with another box of 1/2 inch plywood. This picture also, unfortunately, gives a nice shot of where I missed with the nail gun when nailing on the external sheathing. I nailed it again by hand...

Thanks very much to my father for helping with this. It went much more quickly with two people working on it than it would have if I had done it by myself!

Wiring and House Wrap

The last few days have been spent on a variety of tasks, beginning with starting to learn how to cut and work with the insulation panels. It turns out that polyisocyanurate makes tiny dust particle crumbles when you cut it, and the particles are nasty. Gloves and a mask to breath through would seem to be advisable. Darn! It does cut easily with an exacto knife though, and can be scored and snapped like drywall, or just cut through with a couple of passes with the knife.

Other tasks have been figuring out wiring, lighting, plug and switch placement and installing electrical boxes, cutting out the remaining windows, putting a strip of treated plywood around the bottom edge of the building in preparation for the housewrap and siding, and getting started on the housewrap. Most of this doesn't lend itself well to pictures, but here a couple showing the first round of housewrap:

I discovered that there are many choices for housewrap available and so ended up doing quite a bit of research as to what is the best kind. I think most of them are probably OK, actually, and from what I can tell good old fashioned tar paper is about as good as any. Tar paper has the problem of ripping easily and getting beat up by the wind if it's not covered fairly quickly though. I chose to use Tyvec stucco wrap because it has good permeability to vapour leaving the house and good resistance to water entering. It also has verticle wrinkles that allow water to travel down the surface of the wrap behind the siding so that it doesn't become trapped there, and it is strong and resistant to sun and wind damage. It does have to be installed right side out and right side up - but that isn't too much of an imposition. :-)

It's pretty easy to put the wrap on, though with one person it would be a bit difficult. It took my father and I about half an hour to put this first layer around though. To finish I need to put caulking around the top edge all the way around the house, wrap one more time around, tape top and the overlap, cut out the windows by slicing along top and bottom and then vertically down the middle and add flexwrap flashing to the bottom window sills - then it will be ready for window installation.
Windows are ordered finally - but won't be here until the end of July unfortunately.

The top section of wrap took quite a bit longer and involved caulking to seal along the top edge and tape on all the edges. It feels good to have it all covered and protected now though.

The electrician is coming tomorrow for a consultation so I can see if I'm on the right track - then I can start drilling holes and pulling wires.

Yet more roof

Since the loft section of the house seemed rather boxy looking to me, I decided to extend the roof line along the base of the loft. This involved making short stub rafters, screwing them to a one by six back plate, adding a plywood top, attaching this all to the wall, and then going through all of the roofing process again, sigh...  I'm really getting tired of metal roofing.

Here's the "before" picture:

Here's the first part of the new roof frame attached to the wall.

 Same thing but with the fascia board attached, on the other side and from a different angle. I also finally cut out the loft windows on this side, but haven't cut the big living room window out yet.

And here's the new and hopefully improved roof-line

There we go. Short and sweet. 

Things go so much more quickly with time lapse photography...

The Porch

I was having some difficulties figuring out the porch roof line so made a quick mock-up with some scrap wood to start with. Fortunately, it didn't continue to look quite this rickety.

Having figured out the angles and basic shape, I started on the real thing. The main posts and rafters in the center section are up here.

The posts started as rough fir 4x4's cut by a neighbour down the road. I had to cut them down with the table saw and then plane them. Here's the planer and a corner post.

And, to make this a bit shorter and to skip the somewhat interminable intermediary steps of yet more roofing, here's the semi-finished product. There are still two railing height corner posts and railing to add, and pine paneling will go inside as the porch ceiling.