He started by going over a printout of the last year of my energy bills. He gave me an idea of the averages used by other similar houses and let me know where our usage for the past year falls on that scale.

When I told him were looking at the possibility of replacing our furnace and adding central air, he explained to me the factors that go into determining the size of units we need.

1. Square footage to heat and cool
2. Number of windows and doors on exterior walls
3. Existing value of insulation

With that in mind, he figured that our house probably needs a 60,000 BTU furnace.

Now, one important thing about the existing furnace is that the home inspector we had to look at it wrote down the wrong date for when our current furnace was installed. He accidentally wrote down 1983, which is correct for the water heater. But the furnace was installed in 1997! Keep in mind that three contractors came out and looked at our furnace and also didn’t notice what year it was, or did notice and didn’t choose to point out that our furnace is supposed to last 20 years and probably doesn’t need to be replaced. We were thinking of replacing it based on it being nearly 25 years old! With this new information, we’re not necessarily bent on replacing the furnace part. It’s still under consideration.

He went through the house and helped me identify the weakest spots in our insulation. A lot of that was painfully obvious, but it was good to get a few suggestions on how to most cost effectively repair those weaknesses.

One major weakness is the coal chute. He recommended bricking it up with hollow glass bricks. That way we can let in light, but it’ll be a good insulation for the spot.

Another important aspect of our insulation that’s lacking is the attic. Everyone thusfar has described the attic as a “half story” but on account of the insulation properties he noted, the MidAmerican guy said it’s just a converted attic. The things that indicated to him that it’s never been considered “living space” are that the floor and crawlspaces are packed with insulation but there’s no insulation under the roof. He said I can change that and then it’ll be more efficient, but it will require tearing down the plaster and lath ceiling, insulating that space under the roof, and then putting up drywall. I suppose that’s an option, but I think we’ll go ahead and improve the window insulation, put doors on the crawlspaces, and see how well the place stays heated and cooled this year before deciding to add that task to our list. It may be possible to remove some of the insulation from under the floorboards in the meantime, but I don’t think that’s really even necessary.

Finally, he was satisfied with my intentions to fix the windows, but told me it would be wise to insulate the walls. They currently have nothing inside them. He recommended hiring a contractor to blow insulation in from the outside. They’d have to take off the top strip of siding, drill the holes there, blow the insulation in, and then put the siding back. Also, his suggestion for agreeing on price was to say we’ll pay you for the labor, plus we’ll count up the bags of insulation at the end of the job and pay you according to that. That way they have more incentive to use more insulation in our walls so they can get paid more for it, thus doing a better job of insulating the place.

Now that I have specific recommendations for improving the insulation, I can qualify to have MidAmerican energy pay up to 70% of the cost of insulating my house, up to $600. We’ll probably apply that to having the insulation blown into the walls.

So with all that information in mind, we’re going to contact back the people we got quotes from, ask them to adjust the quotes for leaving the current furnace and just adding A/C and ductwork and then see what we’re facing as far as cost. I’m guessing it’ll just be as simple as deducting the cost of the new furnace from the total and probably adjusting the labor cost a bit, but I guess we’ll see.

[tags]insulation, furnace, air conditioning, contractors, energy usage, attic, coal chute[/tags]

Quote #1:75,000 BTU 92% Amana Distinction furnace $5824.00
14 SEER A/C $116.48
Humidifier $350
Additional ductwork for attic: $128.48
Additional ductwork for downstairs: $136.48
Labor (?) $268.56

Quote #1 total: $6824.00

Quote #2:

75,000 BTU 92% Rheem furnace and 2 1/2 ton 13 SEER Rheem A/C $4680
Additional ductwork for attic: $500

Quote #2 total: $5180

Quote #3:

Goodman, model GMH95070, 95% furnace and 13 SEER R22 GSC13018 A/C: $3,500
OR
same furnace with 14 SEER SSX14018 that uses R410 instead of R 22: $4,400
Additional ductwork for attic: $1,400

Quote #3 total: $4,900 (Option 1)

[tags]budget, air conditioning, contractors, furnace, HVAC[/tags]

The total job is going to cost about $2800 to replace all 20 of our storm windows, including the porch, plus replace the old attic windows completely with new awning windows that actually vent all the way.  We’ve paid the $1400 advance payment and they’ve given us a 3-4 week lead time to manufacture the windows (here in Des Moines!) and schedule the work.  I’m so excited!  And I gotta say, it feels good to be going with a local company.  They’ve been completely professional and helpful all along the way, including letting us try out all the features of their windows in their showroom. 

 I’ll come back with more on this in a month or so when the work begins!

[tags]storm windows, windows, budget, Des Moines Rehabbers Club, future plans[/tags]

Part of what’s got us so busy this week is that we’re gathering quotes to replace our furnace and add A/C. We were planning to wait until the weather warmed up to replace our furnace.  No, I lie.  We were putting off replacing our furnace indefinitely.  But an ad we received in the mail for a local company reminded us that it’s the off season for purchasing a new furnace, so we’d probably get a better deal doing it sooner than later. 

We called the company in the ad, Leechman Heating and Cooling, a Service Master company, to come over and give us a “comfort assessment.”  He had a worksheet to fill out that asked about what’s comfortable about our house, what’s uncomfortable, and what we’re looking for as solutions.  He measured all the rooms, walked through the house recommending new supplies and changing around returns in most of the rooms, checked out our existing unit for us, and took all this information back with him to his company.  We scheduled a time for him to come back this week and discuss what he put together for us, so he came back last night. 

He came back with two options.  One with a heat pump, a 92% Amana Distinction furnace, a builder’s model humidifier, and added duct-work in our house is $7891.  The other with a 92% Amana Distinction furnace, a 14 SEER A/C and a builder’s model humidifier (plus additional duct-work) is $6824.00. 

 Both options include a really good warranty, and their own company’s service warranty is included with the installation.  Also, they provide a digital, programmable thermostat.

We’re getting two other quotes from two other smaller, more independent companies later this week/early next week. 

 One of the big questions I have for the other two people coming to look at our house is whether the additional duct-work and supplies/returns are really necessary or all that beneficial.  Another is about heat pumps vs. air conditioners. 

I’d welcome any advice, links, or wisdom from my readers on this topic (as always!)  Leave me a comment or email me at kelli@ournewoldhouse.com.

[tags]Amana, furnace, air conditioner, air conditioning, thermostat, budget, future plans, duct, heating, HVAC[/tags]

On Friday after work I drove up to Clear Lake to take care of some cleaning, check on the state of the yard, and swap many of my summer clothes for winter ones. I’d been listening to the weather report all week and when they told me it was supposed to get down into the low 30s at night I decided it was time to light the furnace. Most people don’t like the smell the furnace puts out the first time it’s lit for the season. But for me, it’s got some sort of nostalgic quality. I dug a frozen pizza out of the freezer and settled in for the night.

I got a lot done there and got a good night’s sleep. In the morning I drove back to Des Moines to fulfill the commitment I made to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity that afternoon. One of the attorneys I work for babysits for a single mom who has two kids. She’s trying to qualify to receive a Habitat for Humanity home. The program requires that anyone receiving a home put in a certain number of hours’ worth of sweat equity. They will accept volunteer hours done on that person’s behalf to go toward the quota, so this attorney put out a call for people to volunteer on the woman’s behalf. Since they already had enough help working on construction projects, they sent me to the local ReStore, the Habitat for Humanity version of a Goodwill, St. Vincent DePaul, or Salvation Army thrift store. If you’re a house rehabber, or if you’re just doing some small jobs around your house, it really pays to find your nearest ReStore. They receive donations of both new and used home improvement items ranging from antique doorknobs to professional kitchen ranges. It also pays to check back with the ReStore every couple of weeks or so because they’re constantly changing their stock. The location near my house even keeps a log of special requests customers are looking for. If there’s something you really need and they don’t have it in stock, you can sign up and leave your phone number and if they get a donation that fits what you need, they’ll give you a call. When I arrived, the volunteer coordinator put me right to work cleaning the grease and dust off a professional stove, grill, and steamer that had been torn out of a huge home out on the west side. When I was done with that, she had me dust and find the shelves for a fourteen foot tall book shelf that came out of the same house. I put in 3 hours of work and then grabbed a cart and did some shopping. I found a shower extender for a clawfoot tub, EXACTLY what I need, for a dollar! Yes you read that right, the thing I’d budgeted $200 for cost me one little greenback dollar. I do need to find a connector piece for it, but I figure it shouldn’t be too tough to ask the local hardware store for something to attach a 3/8 inch fixture to a 1/2 inch faucet. In addition to that little gem I found two 24″ bathroom towel bars and matching washcloth hooks and a robe hook for the door. All those cost me $40. So my total purchases were $41. I was expecting to spend $80 on the towel stuff, so I was just as happy as a pig in slop over my little adventure! Additionally, I scoped out their selection of pedestal sinks (one top half was only $15!), their cabinetry (I’ll definitely take measurements and check back for upper cabinets for my kitchen), and asked about the likelihood of finding landscaping materials. Holy cow, it was an awesome adventure!

I pretty much called it a night after that. Today I got up late, took a leisurely shower, and drove out to Johnston to have a birthday lunch with my Grandma, the original east sider of the family (along with Grandpa, who grew up in Highland Park). It was great to catch up with the family, and after the party was all cleaned up I headed back to our new old house to unload my car and tackle a couple of projects I’d assigned myself for the weekend.

One was to hook up the washing machine to make sure it and our plumbing work. I’d never hooked up a washing machine before, but everything went pretty smoothly. I do have one leaky spigot, but it’s convenient enough for me to turn it off when it’s not in use and turn it on when I need to run a load of laundry. Check that off the list!

Next I wanted to see how far I could get with scraping the wallpaper in the front bedroom. If you’ll remember, there is a layer of paint over that wallpaper, which makes a seal that the Downy/water spray can’t really penetrate. So I have to sort of hack away at the paint layer first and then use the Downy on the remaining wallpaper residue. It’s rather laborious, but luckily for me I have another Grandma right down the street who makes these kinds of tasks go much faster. She called me just as I was sitting down to start scraping above the baseboard and told me she’d seen me drive by and could she come over and work on the dining room wallpaper? When she sets her mind to finishing something, by golly she gets it done, and I could tell it had just been bugging her that she hadn’t finished a room before she left for New York on an American Legion trip. So I set her loose in the dining room while I tackled the bedroom. We both made a ton of progress despite my breaking two razor blades and slicing my finger open on the second broken one. Once I stopped the bleeding, I took a trip to the grocery store to buy band-aids, Neosporin, and more Downy. Grandma and I worked on the wallpaper until 8pm.

Tomorrow my goal is to get down to Menard’s and take care of two things: 1) the fixture to attach the shower unit, and 2) find pieces of pipe and the necessary mounting brackets to make a full sized shower curtain rack. All the pre-made kits I find are just big enough to enclose half the clawfoot tub in a circle. I want a shower curtain around the WHOLE tub so I’m going to have to build one myself. Thanks to the $50 gift card from Menards and the $25 one from Home Depot that my super generous friends gave me as housewarming gifts, I’ll have that project covered as a freebie!

I’m off to a well-earned shower now. Pictures soon!

First the electrician came and he was super professional, friendly, and really knew how to deal with our house. In fact, by the time I got in to work he had already emailed me a fully itemized quote, with everything we talked about on site, AND his total price for everything is exactly what we were hoping to budget for initially, right around $5,000. Of course, we have a little extra money available should unexpected things come up, but he seemed really confident in how smoothly this job would go. We will probably get a third electrical quote, just for good measure, but this guy has all but won the bid already.

The chimney sweeps came next at 9:30. There were two people, the person who owns the business and her assistant of seven years, who is also fully certified. They did their inspection and then we sat in the air conditioned living room to discuss our options. This company offered two solutions: 1.) insert a stainless steel liner through the chimney and get it working as a traditional fireplace, or 2.) install a wood burning stove insert with a lined chimney pipe for increased energy efficiency. There would only be a difference of a couple hundred dollars between the two choices, so after hearing all about the stove insert and how it works and all the options we have with it (it does have the option to look like a regular fireplace if you want that ambiance) we’re leaning toward that. Either way, the work will cost just under $4000, which is GREAT for our budget.

After everybody else left, Brandon and I went outside to measure for building our retaining wall planting beds on the south side of the house. I had forgotten my tape measure, but we found a yard stick inside left by the previous owner, so while Brandon walked the area measuring with the yard stick, I wrote down the measurements on a diagram. I’m going to take that information tonight and start drawing a (mostly) to scale diagram of how these will be laid out so we can plan for how much it’s going to cost.

It was so much fun going through everything with Brandon. He’s really caught the enthusiasm to get started now too.

(Excited squeal and happy dance!!!)

[tags]budget, chimney, contractors, electricity, fireplace, landscaping, retaining wall[/tags]

My trip to the hardware store had two purposes: to buy some things we actually need, and to scope out prices and plan for future projects.

Here’s the stuff I put on my list to buy:

• latex gloves
• a gallon of kilz
• a couple new brushes (since the foam ones I used last time have since bit the dust)
• a face mask
• furnace filter
• protective eye goggles

I got all those things.

More importantly, I did some planning for future projects. Here’s what I came up with:

We want to remove the countertop sink in the bathroom and replace it with a pedestal. I found a really lovely one for about $60. Faucets tend to cost between $40 and $60, so I’ll budget for $60. That doesn’t include any additional plumbing hardware we’ll need to connect it with, so I guess I’ll add $30 for that and come up with a total sink replacement budget of $150.

We need to buy a refrigerator. Menards had a 10 cubic foot self defrosting fridge/freezer for $309. We were hoping to spend no more than $400 for a fridge, so that’s probably what we’ll go with. I had hoped to buy an Energy Star appliance, for the tax break, but they only had one at Menards and it was around $600. This one only uses 386 kwh per year, though, so it’s not like it’s an energy hog.

We can borrow most of the power tools we’ll need from friends and family, but we wanted to see what it would cost to buy them anyway, because it’s always nice to have your own tools.

I found two circular saws that I liked and that were in my price range. One was a Tool Shop brand. It was $23.66, a nice compact size, and had all the standard features. I found a Skil one at Sears, though, and it felt more balanced in my hand. It costs $39.99. They had a Craftsman saw at Sears that I picked up but it just felt awful. All the weight was in the back and it felt really bottom-heavy. It was also $39.99 on sale.

The Skil reciprocating saw was $54.99 on sale, but the Masterforce, which comes with an actual hard case rather than a canvas carrying bag was $64.00 regular price, so I’d probably go with the Masterforce. Everything about them other than that was the same, except I like the pivot foot on the Masterforce better.

I wanted to see what a chainsaw would cost, so I looked at the 14″ ones, both gas and electric. I was really surprised by the difference in price between the gas and electric. Gas was $109 and electric was only $34.99. The electric one at Sears was $59.99. I don’t actually plan on buying one very soon. We already have an offer from my mom’s boyfriend to use his next week.

The big project I’m going to work on planning for is the retaining walls and planters to fix our erosion problem on the side of the house. I still haven’t measured for how big these retaining walls are going to be, but I got prices per unit for all the supplies we’ll need, so once I have measured we can figure out how much it will cost. Here’s a list of supplies I will need for the project (and the prices I gathered today):

• Paver base (50 lb. bag – $2.38)
• Pea gravel (50 lb. bag – $2.39)
• Retaining wall bricks (88 cents each)
• Top soil (40 lb. bag – $1.14)
• Flagstones ($1.44 each)

So, the plan as I see it in my head, having never done this before, is this:

1. Measure the area to build the walls
2. Add up how much of the supplies I’ll need
3. Buy the supplies I’ll need, plus extras
4. Put the first layer of bricks together so they fit properly
5. Mark the final layout where the walls will go
6. Dig a swath for the base layer of bricks
7. Pour paver base into the swath and tamp it down
8. Build the brick wall
9. Put a layer of pea gravel inside the planting area
10. Put a layer of top soil inside the planting area
11. Put some plastic edging strips at each end of the pathway between the two planting beds
12. Level the ground and put down paver base
13. Lay flagstones to make a path
14. Pour pea gravel around the flagstones and up to the walls to fill in the rest of the space
15. Plant hostas and other shade loving plants in the planter beds

At least that’s the plan as it appears to me in my current state of being under the influence of a valerian root sleeping pill. We’ll see how coherent all this looks to me in the morning.

[tags]budget, Clear Lake house, future plans, gutters, power tools, retaining wall, trees, yardwork[/tags]