Handyman's Dream

Don't you have new front steps yet?

2009-06-13T10:11:00.010-06:00

Since having the front step removed almost a month ago, I have been slowly plodding along, building a replacement. We decided that we would make the front step a bit bigger - the concrete version was 8' wide and 3' deep. The new step is still 8' wide, but now extends 5'6" from the house. Palatial, I know. However, since our entryway inside the house rather small, this will give us a bit more usable space for the stroller and other related baby paraphanalia (in the summer, anyway).
After attaching a ledger board to the house, I built the other three sides of the step, and haphazardly attached it, as you can see below. Thank goodness for milk crates.

From here, I put the rest of the joists in place. I spaced them 12" on centre. The Rhino Decking I am using recommends spacing them every 16", but the added expense was minimal, and I figured it couldn't hurt to have them closer together.

From here I put on the 9 stair stringers required to cover the 8' span (I chose metal so that there would be no potential for rotting wood - more on this later) and I was ready to attach the deck boards! I chose to use construction adhesive on deck boards that couldn't be attached with the clips so as to avoid having any screw heads on the surface of the step. Below you can see my "weight" on the first board.

Here you can see the clips that Rhino Decking uses.

I had almost all of the deck boards down when it started to rain.

After waiting out the rain and finishing the surface, I began the process of attaching the decking to the stair stringers. The method recommended by the guy at Windsor Plywood was to pre-drill the decking, and put 1/4" lag bolts through the decking and the hole in the stringers. I did the math (108 bolts, nuts and washers) bought the bolts ($23.50) and then decided to see if construction adhesive would work. 108 silver heads on my so-far-screwless deck? Not if I can avoid it. The adhesive held the top step well, so I figured it might do the same on the metal stair stringers. Time will tell! Gluing was arduous, as I had to do each piece of decking individually, clamp it in place, then wait for the glue to set. 24 hours after placing and glueing a piece, I could remove my clamps, and go on to the next one. This was a 6 day process. I glued the kicks in place as well, using a piece of decking fascia that I cut to size on my new (to me) tablesaw. Here's what it looked like when I was doing the last step.

One thing I didn't really think about when shelling out the $2.69 per lineal foot for the decking was that I would need to cover up the ends of the deck boards and the visible joist. If my deck were all treated lumber or cedar, it wouldn't be an issue, as it is expected that you'll see the cut ends of the boards. However, since the deck boards are made from recycled plastic, they don't have the same look. And, since I installed grooved boards so as to be able to use the clips, they look even less appealing to the eye. So, I bought some fascia moulding, which the fascia board will slide up in to. I attached it using screws (boo screws, but no other really good way to do it - I have a limited clamp repetoire).

However, on the sides of the steps, there is no wood to screw in to. In hindsight, I should have used treated stair stringers on the ends. However, standing between me and that modification at this point is a ton of construction adhesive. So I've had to make do. Thank goodness for duct tape.

This morning I ran out of fascia trim, and so will have to make a trip back to Windsor Plywood sometime next week to get one more piece. After I have it, I will be able to install the fascia, and, finally finish the front step. Here is what it looks like right now. Stay tuned for the final product.

A "New" Tablesaw

2009-06-12T22:48:00.000-06:00

I recently purchased a "new" tablesaw -- a 1940s or 50s Atlas Model 3100 8" Bench Saw. I paid $95. For the whole emotional story, click here. If you're not interested in the story, check out the pics below. What a beauty.

The badge showing model and serial number. I wonder if the patent is still pending?

Brace the Foundation Walls

2009-05-19T21:09:00.007-06:00

If you remember, a few weeks back, some buddies and I gutted the basement in preparation for bracing. The two long 42' walls are slowly tilting in, and one of them has a horizontal crack. Daryl from Michel Construction came in with the best quote ($4000) and came off as the most competent and thorough of the contractors I tried. His quote included 17 4” I-beam braces cemented into the basement floor and reinforced on the floor joists as well as an engineers report stating that the basement was sound. While this work isn’t exactly rocket science, it is ugly, loud, dusty, finicky work, and I really didn’t have the time to do it myself. As well, getting an engineer out to inspect before and after can be a $1000 to $2000 touch alone if you just call someone out of the phone book. Daryl knows an engineer. I sure don’t. And the report is just as valid, regardless of how much I (or Daryl) pay the engineer.

The first thing Daryl and Chad (his employee) did was create holes in the basement floor. To be up to code, the braces must extend at least 3” below the surface of the floor. I marked the hole so you could see it.

Next, they put the i-beam in place, bolted it to the 2X10 rafters, cemented it in place, and carved the crack out before filling it with grout.

The final step was to block back the brace with 2X10 pieces (seen in the picture above sitting beside the braces) and voila – 17 braces in place, and a basement that will never move again! The next step will be to draw up a floor plan, frame the exterior walls, spray-foam the headers, insulate the rest of the walls with R-20 fiberglass, vapour barrier, and drywall. This will be enough to qualify me for the money from the Energuide Grant Program. All that will remain after that is to frame the interior walls, install a bathroom, drywall, install doors, paint the whole thing, install in fixtures, trim, and install a suspended ceiling. Maybe I should have said the “next steps”…

Demolish the Crumbling Front Step

2009-05-17T09:41:00.000-06:00

As you can see, our concrete front step has seen better days. In the swamp-cum-residential neighbourhood we live in, the shifting soil wreaks havoc on all things foundational. Though the damage to the front step is unsightly, given the urgency of repairs to other areas of the Handyman's Dream (such as the state of the basement) the front step took a back seat. Or would have. If it weren't for Canada Post, or, more specifically, our letter carrier. You see, the letter carrier left an offical note in our mailbox last fall, stating that unless the step was repaired immediately, mail delivery service to our address would cease because of the dangerous steps. Now, I will admit - it is not safe to walk up the right hand side of the steps. Those three feet are hazardous. However, located immediately to the left of the 3 hazardous feet is 5 feet of hazard-free step. I have clarified this below:

The compromise reached with the mail carrier's supervisor was that he would walk on our lawn and reach up to the mailbox, avoiding the step. See below:

So, the supplies are purchased, and the front step has been removed:
I have to wonder what the mail carrier thinks of the pit of rubble he has to reach over to deposit mail in our mailbox. I expect another letter any day now...

Knowing that our mail service may cease at any moment, I went to our local Windsor Plywood after work the other day to buy the supplies needed for the new step. I got treated lumber for the joists and Rhino Decking for the surface of the front step. It is made from recycled pop bottles, and never needs to be painted or stained. We also decided that instead of building another 8' wide and 3' deep step, we will build one that goes out 5'. Our front entryway is small, so this will be one way to create a bit more space. Now, to find the time to build it...

Move Water Lines

2009-05-11T20:23:00.000-06:00

Another job to be completed before the basement could be braced involved moving some plumbing. The main water line that ran from the basement floor up and straight over to the wall needed to be moved. There was not the requisite 4" of space between the pipes and the wall. (That is how much space the I-Beam will occupy once the braces are in place.) Even if the lines were 4" away from the wall, I don't really like the idea of having water lines run in an exterior wall - especially in a province where -40 is a common winter temperature. I recall, not so fondly, spending a large part of my 2003 Christmas break repairing such a problem in our last house, where the pipes froze, burst, and flooded the basement. Or part of it anyway.

I lack in plumbing prowess, though I did pick up a few pointers watching our water softener being installed a few months ago. The main thing I learned -- use a lot of heat. A lot. More then you'd think. Seriously.

Though I knew my new "heat it hotter" method was bound to succeed, I still enlisted the help of two handier-then-usual friends. Luckily, three showed up, the third having total plumbing prowess, fresh off a multi-year renovation of an early 1900s house in Toronto.

Since we were moving the main line, I decided I would replace the 50 year old shutoff valve that could give up the ghost any time. I wasn't sure exactly how everything would come apart, so I decided to do a Canadian Tire run mid-repair. The City was scheduled to turn off the water at the street at 11:00am. Around 10:30 we turned off the main in the house, and began disassembling - the job involved moving the water heater as well.

Eleven o'clock came and went, as did 11:30, and I called the city, only to be reassured that the water would be shut off. Then a knock at the door. It was a friendly city-worker, asking me to check if the water was off. I checked, and told him "No." He shook his head, returned to the outside valve, and returned a few minutes later. "Now?" I checked again. "No." "Well, I can't turn it off. Someone will be out next week to fix it."

Pardon? Next week? What? But my protests were in vain -- apparently the shutoff was broken. Kind of begs the question - what would they have done if I had a pipe break and the only shutoff keeping thousands of litres of water out of my basement did not work? I guess I should consider myself lucky that they caught it when they did.

That said, catching it when they did was not helping my plumbing job. However, four heads being better then one, we made a plan, and decided to add another shutoff into the main line just after the old one. We couldn't wait until the city fixed their shutoff because the guy bracing the basement was coming the next day.

I won't lie to you -- it was not pretty. We heated it hotter, a lot, and ended up cleaning up a lot of burnt pipe. Funny how that never happened to the water softener installer...

While two of us worked on moving the main, the other two ran pipes to move the water softener. Since we couldn't cut the main pipe that comes up from the floor, we had to use a 45 degree elbow to change the direction the meter aimed. Here's a close up of the finicky messing around we had to do. Note the old shutoff, new shutoff, and lovely 45 degree elbow:

All in all, it was an ugly job, and it took us the better part of 3 hours. Brutal. Here is a picture of what remains in the basement:

Gutting the Basement

2009-04-19T11:29:00.001-06:00

The Handyman's Dream is located in a neighbourhood that used to be a swamp. Seriously. In the 1960s they filled it in. And built houses. Like ours. Consequently, basements in this area shift and twist and fall apart. Floors heave. And crack. Most often, long walls get horizontal cracks like the one below -- builders weren't big on vertical rebar in the 60s apparently.

The crack above was revealed when three friends and I removed the wall paneling and drywall that adorned the two 42' walls of our basement to prepare for bracing. While this crack is minor in terms of size (some houses have cracks three or four inches wide) our exterior walls are slowly tipping inwards. The strategic placement of 4" I-beams every four feet will stop this movement. The beams are cemented at least 3" down into the basement floor and bolted into the floor joists above, creating a brace wherein for the wall to move, the entire house must implode - though I don't think it ever comes to that.

While we are taking the bracing as an opportunity to make our basement more functional by putting insulation and gyproc on the walls, the removal of the existing panelling presented us with quite a different option we never considered. Wallpaper. On the bare concrete walls. Seriously. Why not?

Here is the first bit we found. Nice. However, soon this was revealed -- not one, not two, but THREE layers of wallpaper. (You have to look very closely at the top of the photo to see the bottom layer.)

And, just for good measure, a fifth type of wallpaper (with a bit of crack thrown in...)

This discovery leaves some burning questions in my mind: Were all the wallpapers visible at the same time? Who chose them? Why? Was it once styllish to wallpaper your concrete walls? Why? Could I strip this paper and sell it at a vintage/retro building supplies store? Would it be worth the effort?

Once the bracing is done, I'll post some pictures and go into more detail about how that process works. Stay tuned!

Here's a pic of the trusty truck that was used to cart the crap away to the dump -- thought it deserved a mention. We own 1/4 of the truck, which has turned out to be a pretty good ownership arrangement - rarely do all of us need it on the same day.

Bamboo Flooring...c'est fini!

2008-11-15T23:33:00.000-06:00

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I've been ruminating about sustainable flooring. While, I ordered 700 sq. feet of vertical (the way the strips of bamboo are laid) natural (referring to the finish) Silkroad Bamboo. We really liked the look of the vertical compared to the horizontal because the knots in the bamboo aren't as noticeable. Also, the vertical is a little bit harder. I was initially a bit concerned that there wouldn't be much difference in the color and texture of individual pieces of the bamboo, however I was reassured there would be variation.

The final room was completed just today, with the help of a friend. So, the main floor of our house now has tile in the kitchen and dining room, and bamboo in the livingroom, hallway, and three bedrooms. The bamboo looks like this when installed:

I didn't need to worry about variety in appearance, as the two pictures above attest.

Here's a shot of me in action, the used PowerFist cleat nailer I found on usedregina.com doing a dandy job.

The bamboo we bought came in 3' lengths only. I was a little bit concerned that the floor would end up looking like a click-together laminate because of this, but by staggering the starting row, I was able to avoid this. I started the first row with a full board, the second with a half, the third with a three-quarter length, the fourth with a one-quarter length, and then back to a full board again. Unless you look really closely, you don't notice that the boards are all the same length. Installing the 3' boards was really nice, because there were very few warps or bends in the boards. Any small gap that resulted after putting the board in place was quickly tightened up by the cleat nailer. My dad tells horror stories about installing really cheap maple hardwood, and having to wedge a screwdriver into the subfloor to hold the warped wood in place so a nail could be put in. This install went much more smoothly.

We chose the natural bamboo -- the other option was carbonized. Bamboo isn't stained, it is actually cooked. This means the color runs the whole way through the wood. The cooking burns the sugars in the bamboo, and this causes the darkening. The darker a bamboo is, the softer it is. A third type of bamboo available is strand-woven, which also comes in natural and carbonized. It is much harder (and much more expensive.) We didn't go with it, because even the natural is rather dark. (Though since then, my mom has put in the natural strand-woven, and I think it would have looked fine in our place.)
Here's what our living room looks like now that it's done!

We are very happy with the finished product - eco-friendly, non-gassing, sustainably farmed. I'll keep you posted on how it wears!

Replacing the Entry Doors

2008-09-14T11:40:00.000-06:00

In an effort to continue to improve the energy efficiency of our house, parts of the last two weekends have been committed to replacing our two entry doors. This job was not nearly as huge as the Cathedral Ceiling Insulation upgrade, thankfully!

I did the back door last Saturday, working alone, and it was arduous. Taking the old door out (which is explained online as simple removing the interior trim, cutting the nails, and watching the door fall outward) was a pain because the Dream has no trim on the inside. Instead, there are drywall corners that run up to the edge of the door. Also, instead of having exterior brick mold (which could be pried off to access the nails needing to be cut) our doors had one solid piece of wood that was the brick mold and frame. I ended up cutting the frame into many pieces, and prying each one off the studs, causing more stucco damage than I would have liked. After a mere six hours, the metal door was installed. Only once did I have to fully remove the door after shimming it and setting the screws on the hinge side.

When planning to tackle the front door, I knew that going it alone wasn’t going to be the best idea. With my co-owned reciprocating saw out with its co-owner, I borrowed my Rain Farming Friend’s saw, and about 3 hours of his time. *I co-own a reciprocating saw, as well as a 1984 Chevrolet 1/2 Ton. Almost all the time this is handy - especially when the time came to pay for said saw and truck. In fact, this was the first truck or saw related conflict* The second door went in more smoothly thanks to another set of hands. Now, instead of two circa 1961 wooden, constantly expanding and contracting, doors, we have two Energy Star approved, fully sealing and sealed doors.

Before we call in the Energuide for Houses folks for our follow up visit, we’ll insulate the basement (only about half is insulated right now), seal the electrical outlets on the exterior walls, and possibly upgrade the furnace. Though we need new windows, and could use some extra r-value on our exterior 2X4 walls, that’ll have to wait until we win the lottery.

For now, we have some nice(r) doors.

Farming Rain

2008-08-08T11:35:00.000-06:00

After completing the roof renovation I put up new fascia and soffit, as well as eavestrough. When running the downspouts, I decided to try to run them into rain barrels. On the front of the house, facing the driveway, this wasn't possible. However, on far side, and on the garage, it worked like a charm. There's something about having perfectly clean water run into a storm sewer that seems so ridiculous -- I use water from the tap (that had to be treated) to water the garden. I have two black steel rain barrels that fill when it rains. (I traded my old eavestrough for the barrels - win-win, I'd say.) However, my setup is pretty Mickey Mouse compared to my friend's rain operation, or, as I will now refer to it, Rain Farm.

He has a large house with a large garage, and two 45 gallon rain barrels. Not so fancy, you say, well, that was until today. Now, he still has a large garage, large house, but instead of just 2 measly rain barrels, he has 12. Twelve, I said. He was working in his back yard the other day and peered over his fence (not in a creepy way, it's a 5' fence, you can't not peer over it) and saw 10 rain barrels lined up in his neighbours back yard. He checked with his neighbour, and found out that they used to be hooked up in series to collect rain, but became too much hassle for the old man. He was looking to get rid of them. My buddy jumped at the chance, and now has a veritable Rain Farm. A great example of conserving, happily mixed with a little bit of obsessing.

Eco-Friendly Flooring Options

2008-07-25T21:14:00.000-06:00

The Handyman's Dream came with tile, laminate, and carpet throughout the main floor. The carpet is in the three upstairs bedrooms, and has seen better days. These days were a long time ago. Perhaps in the pre-Cambrian era.

Looking to replace the carpet, I did some research. And, after reading about carpet, and all of its benefits like trapping allergens, being hugely wasteful, and giving off volatile organic compounds (VOCs) - more here - I was completely turned off replacing carpet the with carpet. In terms of the environmental impact, the salespeople will say that nylon carpet is recyclable, but regardless, I still hate the waste involved in having to replace carpet every 10 or 15 years, if not sooner. Also, we have cats, and love being able to vacuum the tile and laminate and get rid of all of their hair. If you want, you can check out what the carpet industry has to say about this - but I'm not sold.

Since we were looking at replacing the carpet (about 450 sq. feet) it didn't seem to make sense to leave the laminate, which runs in the hallway, and the living room. It is in similarly bad shape. There are many scratches in it, and there's one spot near the bathroom where, when I hit it just right, and am wearing just the right socks, the splintered "wood" catches me and I get a sliver. It would really improve the look of the Handyman's Dream to have only one other floor covering (besides the tile) on the main floor. As such we've decided to explore some eco-flooring options.

At first, I had a line on some reclaimed maple flooring from an old church, but it still had the nails in it, and would need a LOT of cleaning up. I would probably have had to plane 1/8" off of each piece. Since my time becomes more and more valuable every day, this option was rather unappealing. However, a maple floor would surely outlast 2 or 3 carpet installations before it would need refinishing. As my dad put it, "Maple is a lifetime floor." However, the guy selling it would only sell me 1500 square feet (I need 700) and at $1.50 a square foot. Yikes. I did some digging, and, generally, reclaimed, unfinished maple, sells for between 25 and 75 cents a sq. foot. If you can find it. I still watch, but am losing faith that I will find any. Quotes on refinishing the floor range from $4 to $6, and installation comes in at about the same. Luckily, I'm handy, and would do the work myself.

To replace the laminate with new hardwood seems wasteful when considering how long it takes a tree to grow, and when you take into account that there is some reclaimed floor out there.

Another option is bamboo. However, there are many horror stories about bamboo flooring out there. Cheaper bamboo may have been harvested early (after 3 years, instead of 5 or 6) resulting in wood with a high moisture content that is softer than older bamboo, and will be more prone to expansion and contraction. Also, some bamboo is taken from panda habitat. And we all love pandas. Also, most bamboo on the market is bonded with adhesive that gives off VOCs - kind of missing the point here! Formaldehyde (which is in all particle board, MDF, OSB - read, every piece of furniture in your house!) is the most common VOC, and is in many sealers as well.

I was able to find a few lines of bamboo flooring that are sustainable, or market themselves that way, anyway. One is a company based in Vancouver - Bamboo Direct - their line isn't in retail stores, which keeps costs down (Bamboo Direct being their name!), but the shipping required to get the bamboo to us in the Prairies is cost prohibitive. Their floor is more expensive than the cheap stuff at Home Depot or Costco, but it gives off less formaldehyde than found in the air naturally! Teragren bamboo flooring is another brand that stands up to the low-VOC and sustainable production test. Their site has a bunch of information about the legislation of VOCs. I found a store in a nearby city that carries (or can order) the Teragren line, but it is over $8 a square foot, which is too pricey for this Handyman. The third line of bamboo I found was Silkroad carried by Nadurra - located in Toronto. This company has been around since 1994. They offer all kinds of wood, and had a very reasonable shipping cost. Their finishes are low-VOC and their bamboo is grown sustainibly. We've ordered samples of Silkroad and from Bamboo Direct, and will see how they look before we decide what to do. Hopefully at the end of it, we flooring that is eco-friendly. Or as eco-friendly as can be reasonably expected within our budget. The Handyman's Dream needs lots of TLC...

Insulating a Cathedral Ceiling

2008-07-08T11:25:00.000-06:00

The Handyman's Dream was built in 1961, and has cathedral ceilings throughout. While this is an attractive architectural feature, it means that there is no attic, and hence, very little insulation. Living where we do - where winter's weather regularly hits -40 degrees Celsius - this is a problem for us, and the environment. Though we have a newer furnace, last winter it ran most of the time just to keep the house inhabitable. We must be the gas company's best friend!

Above our interior ceiling drywall, where a normal Canadian house would have an attic with at least R-40 insulation (R-60 is recommended), we have an 8 inch space, and R-8 insulation. Had, that is, until last weekend, when we did a major upgrade to the roof.

I have been mulling over this renovation for months - as my father so kindly pointed out while we sweated atop the roof on Friday, I may be a little OCD. Touche. There were a couple options for adding insulation, none of which were particularly appealing.

Option A: Add insulation on top of the existing insulation. This means removing shingles, lifting the plywood, adding insulation, putting the plywood back down (if it can be saved) and then shingling.

Option B: Add insulation below the existing insulation. This means framing the inside of the ceiling with 2X4s (in the house), move the electrical boxes down, have someone come in and spray foam the space ($7000), drywall overtop, mud, prime, and paint.

In the end, I decided not to go with spray-foam insulation (mixed reviews and very costly) and chose Option A. However, in order to add enough insulation for the R-value to increase substantially, a step had to be added -- after removing the plywood, additional space would have to be added to the rafters to allow for ventilation. So, we had to nail 2X3s on top of the rafters. This meant that when replacing the fascia, custom 10" fascia would have to be ordered.

The first day, we worked on one side of the house, and stripped shingles, lifted plywood, moved 3 light fixtures (or, more accurately, my dad moved 3 light fixtures) nailed 2X3s on the rafters (thank God for framing nailers and air compressors) and re-sheeted. At 9:30pm (and after amassing a combined 52 man hours between me, two buddies, my dad and brother) we were done. My wife provided us with lunch and supper in true farm-wife fashion. By the end of the third day of playing farm-wife, no doubt she was grateful I didn't choose farming as my career.

This shows how we added the 2X3s, and then laid the insulation in place. There needed to be at least a 1" air space above the insulation, which is why we had to sister the 2X3s in top of the existing 2X8s.

This is the giant reflective surface we made. If you look closely, you can see we're dying a slow, hot death...that insulation sure works at reflecting heat..

That night, with half of the roof covered only in plywood, I heard thunder. And heavy rain. By the time I got up to the rooftop, and laid out all the poly I had in the garage, the rain had stopped. All the poly did was hold the moisture against the tar paper. I was mocked thoroughly the following morning for my efforts, since it was a very localized rainstorm, and my buddies (who all live within 10 blocks) had noticed no rain. I say better safe than sorry. In reality, the mocking gave them something else to do, rather then think about the still-monumental task facing us.

Day two we changed some tactics - first off, since the day before was close to 30 degrees and we were laying down heat reflecting insulation, we decided to start at 6am and break from 1:30 to 3:30 or so.

My dad wasn't there, but two other buddies replaced him. (Don't tell him that it took two to replace him - his head is big enough.) One could only be there in the am, but decided he wouldn't leave until the remaining 30 bundles of shingles were up on the roof. He was true to his word, and he made our job the next day a lot easier. We also worked from one end, re-sheeting each section right after we insulated, so as to avoid the heat reflecting off of the insulation. We got the same amount done as the first day (minus the electrical) in just 37 man hours. Not bad!

The whole time we were working, the fear was that someone would miss a rafter and step through the ceiling, into the house.

This is Stu, the one holding the blue gatorade and looking at the camera.

This is the hole he made in our kitchen when he missed a rafter. He was okay, thank goodness. Almost gave my wife a heart attack, mind you.

That turned out to be the only mishap of the day, and we were done by 5:30, even with our two hour air-conditioning break.

Day three we shingled.

Here's the tar paper and shingles, ready to go -- because it is a low slope roof, we had to double tar paper, and glue every shingle tab down. This wasn't as bad as it sounds. We had an air nailer, and with 4 guys placing shingles, one guy cutting edges, and one nailing, we did both sides in record-ish time. Only 48 man hours that last day. I still have some sealing to do, but it can now rain as much as it wants!

So, the shingles are done - now I just have to do soffit and fascia so that the roof gets some venting. All in all it was quite a lot of work and I can't imagine how expensive it would have been to hire someone to do it. It didn't even end up costing me much in beer, because by the time we came off the roof each day we were too exhausted to drink anything but water. All in all, 8 of us worked on the roof, and put in almost 140 hours over 3 days. Now all I need to do is find new friends...since the ones who helped aren't returning my calls anymore.

Carpet: The Devil in Disguise?

2008-05-16T11:11:00.000-06:00

The Handyman's Dream has carpet in the three bedrooms upstairs. Gross carpet. I don’t think it is that old (the color and style are contemporary-ish) but it is worn. And stained. And, according to Ecoholic, trapping dust containing heavy metals, pesticides, and persistent fire retardants. Not to worry, though. An environmental engineer told New Scientist magazine that you’d only have to vacuum it 25 times a week for several weeks to bring the levels of contaminants below safety standards. USC did a study in the 90s and found DDT imbedded in 1/4 of the carpets they tested. Even if some of this is conjecture or hyperbole or, well, downright false, I’m still not interested in having carpet in my house. We’re not sure when it will go, but it will go. And we will enjoy it going. But, what to replace it with?

Bamboo is much more sustainable then hardwood, as it grows more quickly. However, a lot of bamboo has formaldehyde in it. If that scares you away from it, consider this – all MDF board (except that from IKEA) has formaldehyde in it as well! Take a look at your kitchen cupboards. Oh my. Reclaimed hardwood is great in theory, but at upwards of $10 a foot, no teacher I know will be installing it any time soon. So, we’ll keep investigating our options. I found a company out of Seattle, Bamboo Hardwoods, that owns a factory in Vietnam, and works with local farmers to ensure sustainable farming practices of bamboo. Another criticism of bamboo is that it is soft – in fact, the darker the color, the longer it has been cooked (carbonized) and the softer it will be. Also, if bamboo is harvested early (called Green bamboo) it will be softer than older bamboo.

So, we have some choices to make. But I doubt we'll choose the Devil's floor covering...

Be an Energy Star!

2008-01-25T14:22:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, the Handyman's Dream didn't come with appliances. When shopping, we tried to be as environmentally friendly as possible. We decided to purchase new ones. This wasn't a decision we put much thought into -- the new machines are so much more efficient than old ones. Then someone mentioned the idea of reusing, and we considered whether buying used machines would have made more sense.

However, would it? If I don't buy someone's somewhat efficient used appliances, most likely someone else will. Chances are that the person buying a used machine is buying it to replace a machine that is older (and less efficient.) So, by not purchasing used, we've left them for someone who cannot afford the brand new (more efficient) machines we bought. Or so the rationalization goes...
So, we read up on the Energy Star program. Currently, our government offers a tax rebate of 5% on appliances that qualify as Energy Star. So, with this information, we headed out to comparison shop. We needed a washer, dryer, fridge and stove.

Washer: All front load washers are Energy Star and use around 150 kwh per year. So, we bought a front load washer. No-brainer.

Dryer: NO dryers are Energy Star. We still bought one, as the idea of hanging laundry in -40 with a windchill doesn't work so well. Though, frozen sheets are pretty cool. We try to minimize use of the dryer.

Fridge: Very few fridges are Energy Star. I read a bit, and learned that side-by-side fridges are the least efficient. There was debate over top or bottom freezer, and the consensus was that they were similarly efficient. We chose a top-freezer because it was a bit cheaper.

Stove: While in Cambodia, we had a gas range. After 2 weeks of living with the in-laws and using their electric range, we decided to investigate the cost of going gas. We called a plumbing company, and they said it would cost between $300 and $500 to move the gas line (It ended up being $450.) We figured that the savings on electricity and the convenience of having instant heat as opposed to slow, electric heat, will cover this cost over the time we're in the house. However, for some reason, gas stoves do not qualify for the tax rebate. Huh? Gas furnaces, yes, but stoves - no? Yup. Thanks Gov't.