Heat and AC Problems

The duct work was all done, and the drywall was all done, and the electrician finished wiring the house.  Next it was time to finish out the heating and air conditioning system.  The HVAC guy came and installed the thermostats and finished up the loose ends. Some of the ducts in the attic already started coming apart, and he had to redo them as they were installed incorrectly to begin with.  He installed the returns and the vents and turned on our new HVAC systems.  The city inspection was done and the systems passed inspection, and everything was finished.

We decided to give our new HVAC systems a try.  The nights were still chilly, so we decided to turn on the heat to see how it works.  The HVAC units are heat pumps, so we expected the air coming from the vents not to be super hot.  We knew heat pumps blow out only lukewarm air.  But when we turned on the heat, the air seemed a whole lot cooler than just lukewarm.  The heat did heat the house eventually, but stayed on almost 100% of the time to heat it just a few degrees.  This really worried us because the house has no insulation and only single pane windows, so we thought it would be almost impossible to heat the house on a really cold day or cool the house on a really hot day.

We decided to investigate this, and we found that the heat was acting very strange.  The heat would go off and then cold air would continue to blow for several minutes longer actually cooling the house.  This didn't make any sense.

After reading information online and reading the manuals for the HVAC systems, we realized that they were installed incorrectly.  The outdoor units were set to run the air conditioning and the indoor units were set to turn on the heating elements when the thermostat was set to heat.  Essentially, outdoor and indoor units were fighting each other, as one was cooling and the other was heating.  This put unnecessary stress on the systems and made them run almost 24 hours a day. We called our HVAC installer, and he fixed the problem.  Unfortunately, the compressor on one of the outdoor units failed.  We cannot say if the failure was due to this misconfiguration for sure, but it does seem likely.  The HVAC installer also replaced the outdoor unit that failed.

We were nervous that the systems were damaged due to this misconfiguration, so we negotiated a 2 year no charge warranty with our HVAC installer.

Since this was fixed, both the heat and air condition work well and easily heat and cool the house.  Even with no insulation and single pane windows, we are able to have the modern comforts of central heat and air conditioning.

Electrical / Hot Water Heater Problems

The lights fixtures are installed, and the plumber has installed the hot water heaters.  We should be able to get hot water in our sink.  The prospect of hot water was very exciting, as we never had it in this house before.  When we turned on the hot water heaters, only warm water came out.  The water temperature was only a little warmer than tap water.  We also noticed the the lights were flickering every time we turned on one of the hot water heaters.  We initially had warned the electrician that we though the old wires could not handle the new electrical panels, but we were told not to worry about it.  This is not good; the wires that delivered electricity to the house were too small and could not handle even one of the hot water heaters. 

It turned out that the wires coming into the house from the electric pole were too small to meet the needs of the modern electrical panels that we had installed.  We called the electric company and requested larger wires to serve our newly rewired duplex. The electric company investigated and decided we needed a new transformer and a new larger electric pole was necessary for the transformer.  They had turn off the electricity to the block while the work was done.

New electric pole waiting for installation

New electric pole and transformer installed

Although we still don't think the new wires are large enough, we'll have to wait until we get the rest of the duplex completed and the appliances installed to really test it out.

After the new electric pole and transformer was installed, the hot water heaters still didn't work that well.  We had to call customer support and troubleshoot the hot water heaters. We found out that the wires were screwed on too tightly and caused the contacts to bend and not to give power to some of the heating elements.  Only one out of the three stages was effected by this, and this made it harder to figure out what was happening.  Once this was resolved, we got hot water!

The little hot water heater that caused so much trouble

Light Fixtures Installed

Finally the drywall is done, so we can move onto to the light fixtures.  The electrician is mostly done with rewiring the house; he has been taking a very long time.

We decided to use very cheap lights temporarily for some of the light fixtures, while the contractors are still working.  We don't want to use the antique light fixtures that we purchased on eBay just to have them damaged.  Those will be installed once we finish the floors and paint, so that will be some time in the future.  There is a lot more work to do before then.

Its very exciting to actually flip a switch to turn on a light.  It took a very long time to get to this point.  We don't take this luxury for granted anymore.

Living room ceiling fan, recessed lights, and new smoke detector

 

Ceiling fans for the high upstairs ceilings

 

Ceiling fans for the shorter ceilings downstairs

Working hallway lights

 

Working front porch lights!

The Drywall is Done!

The drywall was put up on both the downstairs and upstairs.  It took the guys roughly 4 weeks to finish the job which is far longer than the contractor anticipated.  Everything about this house seems to defy time estimates, so that is nothing new.

Now our house is starting to look like a real house.  We just hope that we have successfully fixed all of the leaks! 

Front door and hallway

Hallway, note the vintage built-in telephone stand.  It was moved from another room in the house.

Kitchen entrance upstairs

Hallway upstairs

Living room and entrance to bedroom upstairs

Kitchen downstairs with plumbing for the island

Living room downstairs

Now we have a lot of cleaning to do. There is drywall dust all over the walls, ceilings, and floors.  After that it will tile and painting.  Hmmm, I wonder which one we will tackle next; tile I guess because the plumber needs the tile done to install the bathroom fixtures.

Drywall...

There was a lot of drywall work to do on this house.  Much of the house had wood paneling which we removed, and it will be replaced with drywall.  Some of the drywall was removed due to being moldy from water leaks in the past.  And since we exposed the original taller ceilings, we needed to cover those with drywall as well.

Hallway prepared for drywall.  Stacks of drywall waiting to be hung. The vintage phone stand found elsewhere in the house was placed in its new location.

Kitchen downstairs. Cement board installed for tile.

Upstairs hallway

Upstairs bedroom

Upstairs HVAC duct raceway insulated and ready for drywall.

Interesting Old Wallpapers

Throughout this remodeling project, we found neat old fragments of wallpaper.  This house never had plaster; instead every room and ceiling was wallpapered.  There was a thin cloth that was nailed to the wood shiplap walls, and the wallpaper was glued to the cloth. We removed and saved wallpaper fragments where it was feasible, and we may frame or use them for artwork in this house in the future.

Here are some of the wallpapers that we uncovered:

 

New Plumbing Begins

When we purchased the house, it had two kitchens and two bathrooms (one on each floor).  The plumbing was a mixture of old rusty cast iron pipes and plastic PVC pipes.  Many of the pipes and drains leaked.  On top of that, during the first winter that we owned the house, there was a major freeze that caused our pipes to burst.  We had to redo the entire plumbing in the entire house.

Because we had to redo the plumbing in the entire house, this allowed us to be more creative and flexible with the layout of the house.  We moved the downstairs kitchen to a different room, and we added a Jack-n-Jill bathroom upstairs.  And because we were gutting the house; it opened up the walls and made the plumber's job much easier.
 
Hmmm, why did the plumber have to cut through the structural members?  Turned out the inspector said that this plumbing job was not acceptable, so it ended up getting redone anyway.  We ended up with cut structural members for no reason!  We are not very happy about this.

The plumber had a very difficult time installing the shower base and making it level.  Three attempts and three shower bases later, we have an installed shower base.  I guess the third time's the charm.

The sink drain in the upstairs bathroom also gave the plumber a hard time.  Three attempts later, and it looks like its done.

Attempt #1: Looked good to me, but the inspector didn't agree.

Attempt #2: The drain was outside of the wall.  What kind of sink will work with this especially in a small bathroom?

Attempt #3:  This one is a keeper.

The bathtub drain is not lined up at all with the drain installed by plumber.  I guess he'll need to figure that out when he installs the tub.

Plumbing under the house.

Each time the plumber had to redo the drains, he made new holes in our siding.

Let's just hope that we don't have any leaks after all of this.

Duct work for the HVAC units

Since the house never had any central heating or air conditioning, it had no duct work at all. All new ducts and returns had to be installed.

Ducts in raceway from attic to below the house.

We did not want the ducts to take over the entire attic because we may want to finish out the attic in the future and create a finished third floor.

The attic includes a stairway from the second floor, hardwood floors, and two windows (one on each side of the building).

 We asked the HVAC company to install the upstairs ducts under the attic floor.  The HVAC guys created custom ducts to fit between the ceiling of the second floor and the attic floor. 

 Custom ducts running in the ceiling.

The ducts for the first floor were installed under the house. 

New HVAC units were placed outside on the platform that we built on top of the old brick walls which once held up a wood cistern.

Major Rebuilding...

The bathroom addition added in the 1910's added one bathroom on each floor.  When we reconfigured the duplex, the larger apartment would have a bathroom on the first floor but none on the second.  We decided to add a small Jack-n-Jill bath to the second floor to serve the two bedrooms there.

To increase space in the Jack-n-Jill bathroom, we removed a chimney that was no longer used.  The chimney no longer went up to the roof, so it was completely useless.  We saved some of the bricks from the chimney to use for landscaping, and we gave the rest to our neighbors so they could build a brick patio.

We decided to use pocket doors to save space.  The bedrooms are already small, and we didn't want to take up more space with the bathroom doors.

Doorways to two of the bedrooms upstairs had to be closed off to separate one apartment from another. 

Doorway to bedroom was closed off.  Note the stacked wood; it was originally used to frame the lower ceilings in the house. When the lower ceilings were removed and the original tall ceilings were exposed, we reused the wood for the framing in the house.

The original kitchen for the downstairs apartment was very small, and the dining room adjoining it was very large (about 3 times larger than the kitchen itself).  Since modern kitchens are large, we decided to make the dining room the new kitchen for the downstairs apartment.  We decided to make the original downstairs kitchen into a laundry room and downstairs storage room for the upstairs smaller apartment.

Door closed off between the small original kitchen (in the back) and the dining room.

The original dining room downstairs had too many doors.  It had one door to the original kitchen (which was closed off), one door to the living room, one door to the bathroom next to it, and one door to the hallway.  We decided to close off the door to the bathroom as well.  This allowed us to make the bathroom downstairs larger with only entrance from the hallway instead of one from the dining room and one from the hallway.

Closed off door to bathroom (on right) from the dining room.

New floors are built where the termites ate the original wood floors.  Since this will be the kitchen, we will install tile floors here.