Let there be Heat

In case you thought it was all glory...

It's not all about long, luxurious baths and hot, steamy showers with multiple shower heads... although I wouldn't mind if it was. Sometimes it's about getting dirty, real dirty, in the belly of the beast. In this case, the beast = the house. And the belly = the crawl space under the house where the intestines of the house rest.

Thus, we donned our super hero suits - in Dave's case this included the coveralls and head lamp, and in my case (they don't seem to make coveralls in any size other than L and XL) it meant headlamp, knee pads, and gloves. We looked lovely.

But the master suite has been chilly since inception and it was time to remedy that situation. First, we had to cut holes in the floor where the vents would go. We already installed a vent in the bathroom wall, so that was easy. But we added two in the bedroom and 1 vent in the closet/entry area.

And then it was time to play HVAC contractor. Dave picked up all the parts earlier in the week. I unloaded the seemingly innocuous pieces and boxes from the van. There were 2 boxes. One that said 6" and one that was stamped 8". I assumed those were the size of the ducts. But the boxes were only 3 feet long. Well, our house isn't huge, but I was fairly certain we might need a little more than 3 feet of ducting. I slashed open the 6" box with a box cutter and out popped a monster! The silver snake lept up and out of the box and then continued to grow and grow slowly kind of like those 4th of July firework snakes. Crazy.

And fun. By the time I got the other box open, one of our adorable construction kitties had already made her way through the 25 feet of 6" duct. We thought she may also enjoy the 8" duct and sure enough she did:


Bastet coming out of 25 feet of snaking 8" duct.

After all the fun, it was time to get to work: basically measuring, cutting, and duct-taping (ah, duct tape can apparently be used for ducts! amazing!) the snakes to each other and to the vents we had cut. They also needed to be supported from the ceiling. It was rather a long day in a 3-foot tall space, but I still decided HVAC work wasn't that hard and was glad we did not hire a contractor for $1000!

We also put some insulation on the hot water pipes leading from the heater to the shower fixtures while we were in the belly.

Thus, we now have heat in our entire house! Yay! No time like the present as it was below 40F when we awoke this morning, which is unusually cold for us. As an added bonus, the furnace is now a little quieter as its not trying to pump too much air through limited ducts. A win-win day.