The Historic District

Really cool job on the windows. Drool, drool. About heat gain/loss on fireplaces-when we have a big fire in our living room enough of the heat makes its way upstairs to impact the bedroom thermostats. Some of this is convection up our main stairway and some is the heating of the chimney through the ...

We never noticed a draft next to the fireplace. but that room just had a hard time keeping warm even with the thermostat a few feet from fireplace. We cut a piece of rigid insulation to make a "door" for the front of the firebox. It now seals pretty well when not in use. It made a noticeab...

We love our fireplaces too. Put off having them inspected because everyone I called said we would have to line the chimney and put one of those ugly aluminum dampers on the top. After looking wistfully at our empty fireplace for three years, we finally bit the bullet. Much to our surprise, the firep...

The heat pump sounds interesting. It would be cool to get more detail just out of curiosity is there a particular website that inspired this project? Phil No website, just an uncle who is a very good hvac guy. One of the few guys in the mid west who actually knows his stuff when it comes to old boi...

Craigs list is a wonderful thing. Running all your water through a manifold is genius. We had a valve fail as in totally come apart last month. All the water coming into the house was spraying all over the mechanical room, no water pressure at all upstairs. My hero just turned off that circuit and a...

Most pex systems seem to run to a manifold then they all feed from that From a larger diameter supply. I once saw a guy that ran pex in a loop. It’s fed from two directions. His theory was that if it's run in a loop and then if anyone takes water from anywhere in the loop it’s being fed in two direc...

We are trying to set aside some funds for when we have to handle the next chunk of plumbing repairs. We're not even at the replacement stage yet. The funniest thing we found was a drain line sealed with electrical tape. The weirdest was a lead toilet flange that had been cast in place and was of a ...

After family dramas and tragedies, we are finally able to return to working on my kitchen. We knew we wanted to re-plumb the bath above it before we did anything about the ceiling, but it quickly became a "have to do this now" situation when the bathtub stopped draining at all. The PO who ...

Last week we officially finished the total re-piping of the hot water. It starts with a 7 section manifold, so all baths etc. get equal water pressure for boiler. We can finally take two showers at once! With 5 people that is so cool you cannot imagine. Only had to put a few tiny holes in plaster to...

I often ask myself why I am such a perfectionist. Life would be so much easier if I weren't. Then the universe answers. A couple of weeks ago I was agonizing about trying to get off a final layer of paint/distemper that insisted on flaking. I tried most of the suggestions I got from everyone here, ...