The Death and Rebirth of My HVAC System

Smack in the middle of an epic heatwave, on or around 6/13/2017, I realized that my air conditioner wasn't working.  I didn't realize it at first.  I keep my house on the warm side - with the A/C set to around 75.  Also, because I have a one zone system and 4 floors + a basement, I'm used to the situation where it is 15 degrees warmer upstairs.

However, when I was playing guitar on Tuesday evening and realized I was literally pouring sweat and Jalapeno was panting on the floor next to me, I checked my thermometer and it was in the high 80s on the 3rd floor and over 90 degrees on the 4th.  That wasn't normal.  The outdoor unit seemed to be working... the fan was spinning.  The unit in the basement was making noise.  But nothing was cooling down the house.

To complicate the situation, the only fan I owned was one used for construction projects (such as blowing plaster or brick dust out the window).  Elora was fine in the basement.  It stays relatively cool down there - mid 70s.  However, poor Jali was another story.  I put him in daycare.

Early the next morning I had to leave for my sister's surgery in Hershey.  I called Air Dynamics HVAC from the waiting room and we arranged a time for them to come out.  (They would have been willing to rearrange things to come that day, but I wasn't home).  On the way back to Philly, I stopped at Kohl's to pick up a few fans to tide us over and ordered two more on Amazon.  (At least I'm prepared if there is a next time... which now that I own 4 oscillating fans, there probably won't be).

In the end, the problem was diagnosed as a leak (of unknown size) in the coil.  It eventually had leaked out all of the refrigerant and so there was nothing to cool with.  They estimated that my unit was 20 years old and it still used R22 refrigerant, which is also very expensive, since it is being phased out.  We ended up topping off the refrigerant (not cheap, although he sold it to me at cost) to allow the system to be used for a short time and moved ahead with planning a new system.  Once Bernie and I settled on a system, the biggest obstacle was figuring out how we'd get the outdoor and indoor units in place.  I have a very narrow and windy staircase leading down to the basement and the alley access to the area in back of my house is also more narrow than the unit of the size I needed for my house.  As part of the work, we also planned for moving a few vents into more central locations to allow for better air flow.  (For example, the only supply vent to the back of the 1st floor was underneath some built in shelves... it wasn't doing much but cooling down my juicer).

Today (7/17) is the day that the crew arrived to do the work.  I assumed that there would be a fair amount of distractions with the project (and was correct), and I also needed to complete some planning for my upcoming 40th birthday party, so it has been a good opportunity to catch up on personal work that can be more easily interrupted than let's say, a conference call.

The album speaks for itself, but here are a few highlights of the work:
- The new outdoor unit is twice as big in every dimension than the old one (see the comparison).

Bernie believes that I was probably undersized to begin with given my space limitations, but he really did not want to have me spend the money on another undersized unit and continue to live with very hot 3rd and 4th floors in the summer and freezing cold 1st and 2nd floors in the winter.   I really appreciate his dedication to this.
- The crew ended up building a wooden frame, similar to the type that I imagine the pharaohs in Egypt were carried around on, and carried the new unit over the top of the fence through an alley about 1/3 of the width of the unit and then into my backyard area through a 10' section of fence they removed temporarily.
- My spiral staircases made poor Elvis, who was assigned to do the duct work on the 3rd floor, dizzy.  They could not believe I was running up and down the stairs all day, but I'm very used to them.  He moved the vent to the middle of the room - coming down from the ceiling with spiral ducts - so that I'd get more air flow.  I think it looks pretty cool!
- They had to remove my door in the basement (temporarily) to get the indoor unit down there, but nobody fell down the stairs or broke the walls, so that's a plus!
- The crew was here for almost 12 straight hours and didn't stop for anymore more than a cigarette break until I ordered pizza and chicken fingers for them at 5:30pm.  By the end of the day, we were all pouring sweat!

Even though we did inadvertently let every insect in Old City into the house with all the in and out that was necessary, I'm super pleased with the team who did this project and with Air Dynamics.  I would recommend them to anyone!

Here is an album of super interesting HVAC pictures :)

Bathroom Facelift

Although I haven't posted for awhile, I've been hard at work on several projects at the house.

One of the big projects that I started Memorial Day weekend and finished at the end of June is a project to update the fixtures, faucets, and mirrors in my bathrooms, repair the 3rd floor bathroom ceiling where there had been a leak, and then freshen up the paint throughout.  (The project idea started by just replacing the sink faucets, but there was significant scope creep).

The previous owners of the house appear to have loved that bright, shiny yellow gold color, because they put it everywhere.

Both bathrooms used large full length mirrors, oriented sideways, for the vanity mirrors.  The mirrors had antiqued gold frames and were 2-3x as wide as the vanities.  Used as full length mirrors they are actually quite beautiful, but they overwhelmed the room as vanity mirrors.

The sink faucets were both of that bright gold color with white porcelain accents and neither drain trap worked properly.

Finally, all of the outlet plugs, towel holders, and toilet paper holders were the same color and the toilet paper holders were embedded into the wall.

In the end the entire project cost me about $1,000, but the changes have really made a huge difference to both bathrooms and brought them more in line with my personal preferences.

2nd Floor Bathroom
Pictures
Either nickel or bronze could have worked with the second floor bathroom.  The shower has nickel accents already.  In the end, I decided to go with bronze for rest of the room, and I think that worked out well...with the possible downside that the accents are dark like the wall paint color, and in hindsight, nickel probably would have brightened things up a bit.  Oh well... I fell in love with the faucet and installed that first and planned everything else around it.

Working in this room was a perfect of example that sometimes it is the projects you expect to be simple that end up eating hours and dollars.  This was the first time I had replaced a drain trap and faucet myself, although I'd seen others do it.  I read the instructions a million times, spent hours making sure I had the right size fittings for my supply lines, and that project actually went incredibly smoothly.

Feeling confident, I started on what should have been a simple project... replacing the switch plates.  When I removed the bright gold switch plate from the GCIF outlet near the sink, I found that the entire outlet was being held in place by very little... mostly the switch plate.  It was installed upside down, attached to a thin metal shim, and it basically fell out of the wall, when I took the face plate off.  Soon after it tripped the circuit breaker and smoke came out of the outlet.  Not a good sign.

I did some research and headed to home depot.  I found a new GCIF outlet (this time that actually matched the AMP of the circuit it was attached to).  [Side note:  That type of outlet is expensive!  I had to make sure to get it right the first time!]  I talked to one of the home depot employees about how to handle the fact that there was nothing to attach it to in the walls and showed pictures of the current set up.  He advised me to get a plastic box for it and not use the metal that was there and explained that if I could reach my hand and a small piece of 2x4 into the hole, I could probably drill it into the dry wall from the outside, and then use that to attach the box.  It was tricky, but it worked!  I was also able to replace the outlet without issue and it tested in the green.  The outlets actually have excellent instructions with them.  This was one of the first times, though, that I felt I intuitively understood how the wiring was supposed to work rather than just listening to instructions.  It finally made sense. I'm not bragging, because it took a long time.  Electrical currents and projects related to them have never made intuitive sense to me, even as far back as middle school shop class... I just memorized the things the teacher said so I could do them... but it didn't click until 25 years later. :)

The final unexpected obstacle with this bathroom came, when I went to replace the flushing handle... again, another "simple" project that I actually started at about 15 minutes to 5pm as my last project before happy hour.  Again, I read the instructions many times, and started in.  Unfortunately, the bolt was rusted in on the original handle.  I'm not sure how long it had been there, but obviously many, many years.  Thankfully, one of my plumbing wrenches helped me out by providing enough of a strong hold that I was able to get enough leverage to budge it.  By the time I was done it was after 6pm and I was covered in sweat, but I had a bronze flushing handle. :-)

The following weekend I just had left the straightforward tasks of painting, installing new door handles (another new task for me, but pretty easy), and installing the new mirror.  I'm really happy with how it all turned out!

3rd Floor Bathroom
Pictures

I made all of the same changes to the 3rd floor bathroom as I did in the 2nd floor bathroom, except without the blown GCIF outlet.  Things went pretty smoothly for my 3rd floor projects with the exception of the ceiling work, which was a bear.  The 3rd floor bathroom ceiling is vaulted and has a skylight.  I needed to buy a new 10' ladder in order to reach the highest parts.  There was damage to the highest piece from a (now fixed) roof leak.  The roof leak also sent a crack running down most seams of the ceiling.  I also wanted to clean up the previous work I had done with my skylight finishing, if possible.

Here is what I learned from this experience:
- I really hate working above my head like that.
- I'm really not that good at patching/sanding.  It could be that I'm still feeling out what the proper products and tools are to use, but I'm not great at getting it all smooth.
- I should have used joint compound and metal tools for my skylight finishing work to begin with... not mud.
- Although joint compound is perfect for skylight finishing, it isn't the same as mud and doesn't sand well, so should not be used for general wall patching, when one runs out of mud.

The ceiling needed a lot of work, and in the end, for all the reasons listed above, the work isn't perfect, but I think it looks pretty good.  I was able to improve the original skylight work, but other areas where I inappropriately used joint compound that wouldn't sand, don't look as good.  On the plus side, the entire ceiling is the same color now and there is no more leak damage!

I was also able to apply a new skill when it came to patching the large holes left by removing the embedded toilet paper holders.  I used the same technique used for mounting the 2nd floor outlet box and drilled pieces of 2x4 into the surrounding wall around the hole (from the inside), creating a frame.  I then attached a piece of dry wall to that frame and patched up from there.

What I'm probably most proud of in this room is that I was able to find a large shower curtain with a pattern that pulled together the paint color, the new brushed nickel accents, and even use of the full length mirror that had been above the vanity.

Sad post script:  About a week after completing this work in the bathroom, I took a bath last night and went to the 2nd floor to get shampoo.  I noticed when I did this that water was leaking from the 3rd floor into my 2nd floor shower at a really good clip.  I'm not sure for how long this has been happening.  I would normally never be in the 2nd floor while using the 3rd floor bath... but there is evidence that it has been happening for a while.  :(  I had a plumber out to look at the 3rd floor back and it is one of the jets that is leaking.  He wasn't about to fix it, as he doesn't work on Jacuzzi tubs.  For now, I put a plastic bag over it to plug the jet with some white duct tape.  It doesn't leak when just used as a shower, and I can't deal with one more big repair right now.