Since we're
having our pellet stove installed in a few weeks (Aug. 23), I've got some things I
need to get ready. Last fall when I did the overhang project, I
removed all the nasty insulation from the overhand on the front of
our house, but left the nasty stuff that was on the side. Once the
stove is installed, I won't get easy access, so back with the
gloves, facemask and vacuum to get it cleaned up. You can see the
clean fluffy yellow stuff I installed last fall. The brown paper
stuff is what had to come out. You can even see the filth sticking
to the sides of the ceiling tiles. All of it gets
vacumed.
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That one piece of
insulation was fourteen feet long. That's a lot of nasty stuff.
Luckily it got a little less nasty the further I got from the
corner.
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Once vacuumed and clean, the next step is
re-insulating. First I'll fill in all the holes with caulk or spray
foam, then install new insulation. One
issue with the side walls
is my foundation - the top is exposed. The upstairs exterior walls
of the house actually sit on the outside edge of the
concrete
block foundation wall. The inside wall obviously sits on the inside.
This leaves a small portion of the foundation wall and cavities
open. Question is do I fill the cavities, cover them, seal them,
worry about moisture, etc. I decided to simply cover them with half
inch
plywood. It won't totally seal or completely insulate, but
will slow down drafts and keep critters out. On the outside floor
joist, I'll install pieces
of insulation foam then tack
fiberglass insulation over top of it all. Won't be the best, but
should be a lot better then what was
there.
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Once all the insulating
is cleaned up and taken care of, I'm going to complete the ductwork
over the stove to the floor above. Before we had
our floors
installed, I cut holes for vents above the area where the stove
would go. In the ceiling above the stove I'll install another vent
and
duct it to the vents in the floor above. The arrows indicate
my floor vents. Unfortunately my ceiling tiles don't line up exactly
to the location of
the stove, which will require more ducting.
Hopefully all the frustration of installing the ducts will
be worth it and the heat travels up like
expected.
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I figured out the what to do
with the openings in the top of the concrete blocks. A little
black plastic as a vapor barrier, a board cut to fit
(scrap no
less!), some screws and voila! Should be a hell of a lot better
then the way it was. The hard part now is do I stay
concentrated on
just the pellet stove corner or do I keep this
solution moving around the other two walls of the basement? As
tempting as it is to make more
of it right, I have to keep
focused on the corner since I'm limited by time .
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A little self
portrait action. I'm waiting to get sick from hanging out in all the
filth. Last year when working on the overhang project it finally got
me. The foam board insulation I got is
in 8' lengths. The scrap boards I was using to cap the foundation
were only 6' long, so I had to put up a
second cap board to put
in the insulation board over the pellet stove area.
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It was quite the jigsaw
puzzle to get an 8' long 15.5" single piece of foam board up in this
tiny space, but I got it up. Probably should have
waited to take
this picture as I still need to add some spray foam insulation to
the seams and wire access point. Last step is install the
fiberglass insulation before I duct up the vents.
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Pellet stoves obviously need pellets
to burn. Part of the deal with the stove we bought (the deciding
factor for us) was three tons of pellets for
free. The only
stipulation was you had to get them. The shop has them, but you need
to get them home. One ton of pellets comes on a
single pallet.
That pallet is four feet high and by feet wide. It holds fifty
forty pound bags. I was picking up three of these pallets today.
That's
six thousand pounds of wood pellets to move in a day. My
truck is a 1/2 ton pickup. I actually made an attempt at
finding a cheap heavy
duty delivery method, but nothing really
worked out. I used my truck instead.
The shop opened at 10am.
I left the house a little after 9:30 to be there when they opened.
The drive home wasn't too bad. I was mostly
concerned with my
brakes since I have a leaky wheel cylinder (causes the truck to pull
to one side when you brake), but I kept good
distances between myself and
the cars in front of me and took it easy.
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Once home it was through the front yard and back
it up towards the pool. We decided the concrete deck area was the
best place for them.
It gives them a solid surface and sort of
keeps them out of site - at least when the pool season winds down.
The real work was unloading each pallet from the truck by
hand and stacking them at the pool. In my haste to get things done I
unloaded the
first pallet to the deck then restacked it before
heading back for the second pallet. The smart thing to do would have
been to unload the first
pallet, go get the second pallet then
unload and stack it on the first pallet, then go get the third
pallet to unload and stack on the second and
finally restack the
first (laying around on the deck) on the third pallet. If done that
way, I would have only had to lift 8,000lbs today. By
unloading
and restacking the first pallet right away, I screwed myself into
lifting 10,000lbs. That's right. I personally lifted five tons of
wood
pellets today. Neeless to say I'm a little
tired.
The other stupid thing I did was not use this ramp
until the third load. What a difference it was to stroll up and down
then have to step up and
down (with a 40lb bag on my shoulder)
from the truck.
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Here's the final stack. Of
150 bags only three were defective. I exchanged the first one I
found on one of my trips. The last two I found in the
third
batch. I'll have to get them replaced later this week.
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Luckily
they come with giant bags to cover the whole things. I still need to
secure them and I'm getting a larger tarp to cover them again. It's
really important to keep them dry.
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