Heat your home with a Server?

Read about this recently: Nerdalize is a company who installs server racks in your home which look somewhat like a radiator. Servers shed so much heat that they figured someone could take advantage of this heat rather than the hosting company paying a huge monthly air conditioning bill.

What do you think about this? I think the idea could have legs.

More Adventures in Home Owning

I come home tonight and the furnace isn't working. I troubleshoot: you know, make sure the switches are on, water level in the boiler isn’t too low, etc.  Everything seems ok, but it appears that there is no power going to the electric low water cutoff. So I call the oil company and tell them what I did.

On the phone, he has me put a multimeter on the leads of the high-pressure controller, one at a time. I tell him the readings, and he tells me, "you see that curly pipe coming out of the bottom of it?  Hit it with your hand as hard as you can." Furnace turns on. He says "I'll be by in the morning to blow out the gunk." 

Why didn't I learn a trade?  If I had a time machine, I would go back and give 20 year old Ian a slap and tell him to become a plumber.

So where's the fire hydrant?

I hope you never have to ask this question.

Early on Monday morning, we heard something at approximately 1:30 AM, got up, and looked out the window. We didn't see anything except a car parked in front of our neighbors house, but it didn't look like anything was wrong, so we went back to bed. The next morning, we saw a piece of a bumper on our sidewalk. When we went out to look, there appeared to be a lot of debris on the road. And the fire hydrant was missing!

As it turned out, it wasn't actually missing. It was in my front yard, somewhat embedded in my front porch.

Here are some pictures showing the damage:

The hydrant hit the corner of my front porch, damaging the clapboards on two sides of the house. It completely destroyed the gutter running along the front of the house, and also appeared to have buried itself into the ground right where I built my french drain. I am not looking forward to digging that up again.

I proceeded to crawl under the porch and this is what I found:

As you can see, the brick column supporting my porch has shifted significantly. Contractors have been coming to the house to see what needs to be done to repair this.

"But Ian," you say. "Doesn't a large high-pressure fountain of water spurt out of the sidewalk when a fire hydrant is knocked off it's mounting bracket, just like the car chases I saw on TV when I was a kid?" The answer, remarkably, is no. Fire hydrants are now designed to shear off cleanly when hit, becoming deadly house-damaging missiles. The coupling that connects the hydrant to the water main seals off when it breaks, so no fountain appears and nothing looks wrong when you're stumbling around in the middle of the night trying to figure out what the heck you just heard.

Thanks to the wonder of Google Maps, I am able to show you the scene of the crime before the accident:

I walked off the distance from where the hydrant used to be to where it landed, it was over 43 feet. Here's a picture that gives you a better idea of how far the hydrant traveled:

The police car you see in the shot is the officer driving away with our accident report. The estimates aren't in yet, but I guess this is going to be a costly home insurance claim. I still can't believe the driver got away with this.

Even though this has been a very large hassle to deal with, I'm very glad that the hydrant didn't kill someone or end up on the couch in my living room.

Update: The hydrant is back - my wife reported that the Department of Public Works sent a crew of five guys to our corner who installed a brand new fire hydrant.

Installing a Whole House Fan

I installed a whole house fan a couple of weeks ago, and have enjoyed the cool results ever since. The purpose of this kind of fan is to suck cooler outside air in through any open windows in the living area and push warmer air into the attic, where it will vent out any gable vents or open windows.

After a lot of research, I decided to purchase a unit called The Ghost built by Tamarack Technologies in Buzzards Bay, MA. I was drawn to this model for a number of reasons, but the main ones had to do with ease of installation:

• It is contolled by a RF remote, so you don't need to wire up a switch in the house.
• The fan has a 6-foot cord which plugs into a standard outlet, no need to run a junction box to the fan.

One concern I had was that The Ghost seemed to be designed to cool a much larger house than the one I live in. I called up their sales department, they said a larger fan could possibly over-pressurize an attic, forcing stale attic air back into the living space. Fortunately, they manufacture a smaller model named the HV-1600 that I ended up purchasing. I've been extremely happy with this unit.

The fan installation went well. There were two main parts to the job: getting more power up to the attic from the main panel, and the installation of the fan itself.

Running the power went a lot smoother than expected; I found an abandoned vent pipe ( I believe it was once connected to a long-gone furnace) that ran from the basement almost up to the floor of the attic. It didn't go all of the way up, but I was able to access it in the wall between two of our closets on the second floor. I tore into the wall, cut a hole in the pipe with a hacksaw and tin snips and used it as a conduit to run some armored cable the rest of the way to the attic. After pulling the cable, my father helped me install a subpanel with a couple of breakers. I then wired up a plug close to the point where the fan was going to be installed.

Installation of the fan was straightforward. The lower housing is separate from the fan itself. You need to cut into a rafter and frame a box for the lower housing to sit in.

After this, you then cut an opening in the ceiling below and install the grate. Surprisingly, this was the hardest part of the job, mainly since my 1890's house is really overengineered by today's standards. The lathe and plaster in this part of the house was in much better shape than my kitchen. I was also down to my last wood bit for my RotoZip (and I didn't feel like making a run to the Depot), so I went really slowly. If you are installing the fan in a house with drywall I think it would go much quicker.

Once the grate is installed, the fan (complete with insulated motorized doors) simply drops into the lower housing and is affixed with screws. You plug it in and you're ready to ventilate!

Using the remote is very easy. There are two buttons labeled "1" and "2". Pushing 1 turns the fan on; the insulated doors open up like a missle silo and the fan turns on. Pressing 1 again closes the doors and shuts the fan off. The "2" button is the fan speed control; high/low. High is pretty loud but seems to move a lot more air. I typically keep the fan on low.

If you're considering a whole house fan, I would strongly recommend this unit.

Stripping Paint

It looks like my blog is turning into a home improvement blog lately. I suppose that this is because I've been interviewing rather than coding. At any rate, my mom informed me of another really neat product which worked pretty much exactly as advertised. It's a paint stripper called GAL Ready Strip Remover, and it's supposed to be environmentally friendly. I used this to peel off about seven (honestly) layers of paint off of some drawers in my pantry, which was preventing them from closing properly.

Basically, GAL comes in a 1-gallon bucket. You open it and there it is, a blue sticky chemical soup that's colored somewhere between robin's egg blue and teal. You brush it on the area you want to strip and then go off and wait for it to dry. In my case, I waited over a day for some portions to dry since there were so many layers of paint. When it did finally dry, you take a scraper to your now-removed paint.

I am always surprised when a new product behaves exactly like it does on the 2AM informercial. I give GAL Ready Strip the Goodsell seal of approval!

Stripping Wallpaper - the real deal!

Ever since my adventures with Ask This Old House, a number of people have asked me how I was able to remove 3 layers of wallpaper off my old plaster walls. In a number of nights and weekends working in my kitchen, I cobbled together a fairly decent process of removing wallpaper from plaster walls, which I wanted to detail here for posterity. WARNING: There are different techniques for removing wallpaper from drywall which I am not going to discuss here. You'll have to do your own research on the different techniques needed to remove wallpaper from drywall. Additionally, I was fortunate enough to have walls that had been painted with a primer prior to the wallpaper being put up. If you aren't as lucky, I feel sorry for you. Again, you'll need to read up on how to deal with this situation on This Old House or another home improvement site.

Research:

I read a number of articles on the This Old House web site and a great book called Sheetrock & Shellac: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Art and Science of Home Improvement. S&S isn't a home improvement book, but a collection of essays detailing the author's (mis)adventures renovating a 150 year old Connecticut farmhouse. Pages 36-37 detail his experiences in removing wallpaper, which I found to be really handy. The first two-thirds of the book are a great read if you're living in an old house, the final third details his experiences building a vacation home. I strongly recommend it.


Tools and Chemicals:

1. After trying a number of different wallpaper removal solutions, I discovered that the enzyme wallpaper glue dissolver named DIF seems to work the best. You buy it in a small bottle that you then mix with water. This appears to be the most cost effecient solution - they also sell it pre-mixed, but that doesn't work as well, and is more expensive.
   While you're in the aisle with all of the wallpaper removal chemicals, you will be tempted to buy a bottle of DIF gel which is smurf blue. I didn't have great results with it; it also made a blue stain on the wall wherever I used it (nothing permanent, the blue residue washed off with hot water).
   If you've decided to mix your own solution, you'll need to buy a utility spray bottle. Ace hardware has one with measuring lines marked on it that you can use to easily mix the DIF with the water. It costs about $1.50, and is worth every penny.
   The bottle has a 24 oz capacity, you put in 2 oz of DIF and fill up the remaining 22 oz with tap water. Use hot water to mix up your DIF solution; the hotter, the better - hot water seems to make the solution work faster.
2. In order for the the DIF solution to work, it needs to come into contact with the wallpaper paste. The paste is inconveniently located behind the sheets of wallpaper. I bought a little tool called the Paper Tiger, a handheld device that has three rotating wheels on it with lots of fine, sharp teeth used to make holes in the wallpaper. The holes will allow the solution to penetrate behind the wallpaper and get into contact with the adhesive. Because of this, the more holes in the wallpaper, the better.
3. To actually remove the wallpaper from the wall, you'll need a wide-blade putty knife or a long-handled wallpaper scraper. You'll also need a narrow putty knife to get into small areas, like the edge of the door molding and the corner of the room.

Safety:

1. If you ignore the safety instructions on the DIF bottle and spray the solution in a poorly ventilated area (like my pantry, for example) it can actually make you light-headed (feel free to ask me how I know about this). Because of this, I really recommend buying some sort of breathing mask, or at least get a fan to pull air into your location.
2. You should also wear eye protection and a pair of chemical-resistant gloves when you're spraying.
3. Don't forget to wear your old painting duds too, since the solution smells a little when you're right on top of it.

My Technique, for what it's worth:

1. Score the wallpaper with the Paper Tiger. Do it in lots of circles, and don't press too hard on the tool, the teeth are really sharp and will penetrate the wallpaper easily. If you push down on the Paper Tiger, you run the risk of making hundreds of pinpricks in the plaster - which you will then need to cover up with joint compound prior to painting.
2. Mix up your DIF solution following the instructions above.
3. Spray the walls! Since this technique is for plaster walls, make them really wet. The wetter, the better. Remember what I noted about having good ventilation in the area you're spraying.
4. Spray one area at a time - no more than you can scrape off prior to it drying (meaning don't spray the whole room at once).
5. Go and do something else for 15 minutes. The solution needs some time to soak in and start breaking down the adhesive.
6. After 15 minutes, spray the area again. Go and do something else for another 10-15 minutes.
7. Grab your preferred scraper and go to town attacking the wet wallpaper!!!!
8. Depending on how many layers of wallpaper there are, you may need to repeat steps 1-7 a couple of times. I had three layers of wallpaper in some areas, I had to do some areas two times, others three. Your mileage may vary.
9. When you're done scraping off all of the wallpaper, there will most likely be some glue residue left on the wall. Reapply more DIF, wait for it to work (only 2-3 minutes now since you're applying it directly to the glue) and scrape again.
10. When you have all of the big bits of glue off, scrub the wall with a wet sponge to remove any leftover chemicals and glue residue (your results may vary, some walls are easier than others).

As you can see, removing wallpaper is a time-consuming pain in the butt. However, this is a good example of something you can do-it-yourself with a really low probability of breaking anything!
And don't forget the motto of the DIY-er:

There isn't anything you can do to your house that you can't pay someone else a
lot of money to fix.

So get scraping!

Resources:

Here's some good articles from This Old House, my source for all things broken:

• Stripping Stubborn Wallpaper
• New Way to Strip it Away

I also have a subscription to This Old House Magazine. Every issue is packed full of useful information.

Ask Me About... Ask This Old House

Tom Silva and the crew from Ask This Old House helped fix the kitchen walls in MY old house on April 24, 2007. What a rush!

Check out the entire set of pictures here.