Category: home and garden

Michelle finally got her wish to raise some chickens when we picked up 3 chicks from Pistils Nursery. We’re starting with 2 Jersey Giants and a Plymouth Rock, and the girls have already grown by 50% since they moved in. I’m not so keen on the chicks themselves since they kind of smell, but I’m excited to help make the coop and to have nervous pet birds walking around eating bugs and scraps.

Several of our friends have been raising hens for a couple years, so we’ve gotten a lot of helpful advice on all aspects of the process. Our neighbors 3 doors down showed us their coop this weekend (they have a brood of slightly older chicks now as well) and were eager to share both the design flaws and benefits of their coop design. Yesterday I spent a little over an hour using Google Sketch-Up to design a to-scale model, which we’ll need to start building soon.

We each got to name a chick. Michelle picked Layla, Michelle picked Boots (for Ella), and Michelle shortened my pick (Bitchzilla) to just Zilla. The Jersey Giants are already a head taller than the others and seem to have a bit of an attitude (hence Bitchzilla’s name).

Here’s another picture of the ladies in their temporary home:

Our second mail-in radon test results just arrived. We went from 9.8 pCi/L on the first test to 18.7 pCi/L on the most recent. The EPA “action level” for radon is 4 pCi/L, which means we went from over twice the action level to over 4 times the action level. So, instead of travel or a new laptop, we’ll be dropping our tax refunds and “stimulus” check on radon abatement.

Radon is bad. It’s the gaseous derivative of Uranium, which exists naturally in the soil. As Uranium decays (a half-life of 4.4 billion years), it creates other byproducts, such as radon and radium. Radon has a very short half-life – only like 24 hours – but the derivatives are just as, well, radioactive. So, when you breath air with radon and the alpha particles released during its decay, you injure your lungs and the precious nodules that trap oxygen and put it in to your blood. The more exposure you have and the higher the concentration (measured in picocuries per liter), the worse. I don’t have the equivilency in front of me anymore (the library wanted the book back), but breathing at 10 pCi/L, you’re exposing your lungs to the cancer-causing equivilent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The chart didn’t say if they were mentholated or not.

So now we get to mitigate. My parents recently did this, and they successfully “kicked the habit” by installing a well and active ventilation system that draws radon from the soil and vents it above the house. Since we have an earthen-floored crawl space, we have a few more options, but the likely mitigation will be to install vents and pour a slab of concrete over the floor. I’ll be calling in favors for this part, because it’ll take a bucket brigade to hand carry cement to the opening of the crawl space. Sound like fun?

I suppose the positive thing to take away is that our new windows in the basement are doing a good job of cutting down on the the drafts. And to think – when we bought the house we were worried about the furnace leaking carbon monoxide into the crawl space. Too bad there’s not billion dollar industry trying to tell us that radon is safe and non-addictive.

New Year’s Day was dedicated to getting the guest bathroom plumbed. Calling the “guest” bathroom is a little misleading since it’s the only bathroom on the ground floor, so it’s a little more important than the name suggests. Still, it required some tricky removal of old steel pipes and retrofitting with pex. We ended up avoiding doing much damage to the walls, though some patching is needed. We did have to take the shower wall down, and that’s now the only remaining plumbing.

As you can see, there’s a bit to do. But, water is now on everywhere in the house except that shower. I imagine we wouldn’t be nearly this far without my parents’ help. They gave up their weekend and new year’s day to help, though I think they are feeling some home improvement withdrawals. I’m still working on the final cost, but after we return the unused bits, we’ll probably have spent around $600 to replumb the house. Take that fat cats!

Yes, the water is on, and all is well. We have water, both hot and cold, to all fixtures except in the guest bathroom. That the new year’s day project. Installation went quickly, and we only needed two trips to the store today, and one was merely a miscommunication issue. I’ll write more later, but I’m tired.

Addendum

Ok, better rested now, but most of my body is tired. We have hot water this morning, though it starts out a little rusty. I think I shouldn’t have let the hot water line drain back into the heater when shutting of the system. One example of the half-dozen lessons I learned from this project. No major flaws (yet) but several “next time” lessons. I only had to sweat 6 joints since we were able to tie in to the 2nd story bathroom’s newer copper plumbing, though one of the joints was particularly difficult and resulted in me bouncing hot solder off my hand and steaming my wrist. Nothing bad, but it really reinforced how easy working with Wirsbo is. I wish there was more to do. I suppose there is – I still have the guest bathroom.

Oh, and there are some pictures.

Yesterday we shut off the water to the house. We’re replumbing the house with Wirsbo Aquapex. “Pex” is cross-linked polyethelyne, basically a slightly modified version of the same HDPE you get in Nalgene bottles so it is flexible, inert, and can expand to 3x it’s diameter when frozen. Our plan changed a little yesterday because we were going to a) surface mount the replacement pex and b) install next to the existing plumbing and switch over once it’s ready. Neither actually happened.

Instead, we turned the water off and started demolishing the old plumbing and drilling holes for the new, so we really haven’t gotten too far with the new plumbing except for replacing the main and running one length of pex. Plus, we got to rock out to some great tunes. Sadly, the plumbers involved in the construction of the home figured a 1/2″ main would be sufficient. 1″ or 3/4″ is fairly standard, so our pressure will never be great. We’ll have to drill a new main at some point in the future, but don’t want to drop the two grand yet.

Anyway, it’s time to get back to work and actually do some plumbing and some more rocking out. Today’s playlist will include some Don Cab, Tool, Oxes, and Shellac.

Last night’s heavy rains exposed two flaws in our gutter system. I was a little disappointed because I thought my audit of the gutters a few months back had showed them to be adequate enough to last until we have to re-roof. Sadly, water is much smarter than me, and has proved again that it can get anywhere it wants to. Including the basement.

Where all the water is coming from is unclear, but it’s not being shy. Last night it started creeping in on the south side of the house and dripping into the sink (luckily). I had kind of forgotten about one of the downspouts, so I went outside and tried to redirect the flow as best I could away from the foundation. The gutter along the west side of the house had also filled and was spilling over the side. I placed an unused section of gutter below it and directed that flow into another section so the water was routed to the yard instead of the window sills.

It seemed to have worked until this morning when a sudden cloud-burst loosed a torrent on the weakened gutters. Stepping out to investigate meant I was instantly soaked. I had to make some quick adjustments to my already Swiss Family Robinson irrigation system, but I eventually had to go to work. Now I’m thinking about moisture and quietly snarling at the report that the “moisture problems had been fixed” in the seller’s disclosure.

Over the weekend, Michelle and I somehow managed to remodel our bathroom. A few months of mental preparation and a custom vanity were enough that we used all the inertia from tearing up the old peely vinyl to install backer, install the cherry vanity my dad made, lay tile, and install a new sink, toilet and light. I honestly can’t say I know how we got so much done with the baby and all, but we managed. The results (still 10% remaining) so far look great.

The added bonus? We dug the tile out of a dumpster by my sister’s place shortly before we moved. Now we have tan subway tile on the floor and mixed brown ceramics on the countertops. I’d feel even better if we could have donated the old sink & toilet to the rebuilding center, but apparently, they weren’t code. Now – smash them in to bits and slowly feed them into the trash? Not many other options for them unless someplace does porcelain recycling.

Did I mention we dug the tile out of a dumpster? Yeah, even Michelle was in the bin pulling out pristine sheets of tile the the manufacturer was clearing out.