Day 0
[Click any image for a larger version.]
This was the right time to do a little publicity, and send mail to various local lists and friends telling them how an "unusual renovation" was just beginning here and that they should wander by and look at it. While a deep energy retrofit isn't necessarily for everyone, I was hoping it would at least give other people some ideas. |
Day 1: the main retrofit begins
Those first small stripped areas were to better facilitate attaching scaffolding brackets to, so they could get their Alum-a-pole system set up. Having the siding out of the way would reveal more solid material to screw into. |
Taller poles went up onto the high shed-dormer wall. |
But parts of it were tough and well nailed together, and resisted the demolition efforts a little here and there. |
Another few minutes and a bit of sawzall work later, the rest of its support structure fell and was promptly cut up for disposal. |
And drop they did. They spent a couple of hours shoveling shingles off the edge onto the tarps below, and pulling up large chunks of stuck-together assembly where it could easily be pried loose ... |
... and summarily flung off into the yard below. Whee! Hulk smash! |
As soon as the front was clear enough with the lowest courses of sheathing taken off, the "chainsaw retrofit" could begin. Only here it was done with a sawzall. This would conveniently take away even more decayed wood in the discarded rafter ends. |
Meanwhile, the guys working on the shed-dormer roof in the back had it almost clear. |
I went over to pick it up and realized it was one of the moldiest boards from that area, featured near the beginning of section 01, and now I could examine that fungus up close. |
The toilet-stack hole had to get enlarged a little later, so they could get a cutter in and chop off the cast-iron pipe and transition it to PVC before exiting the roof. First noted in part 01, this was my idea but based on numerous references I'd found about condensation resistance -- a metal pipe sticking through the roof would transmit cold to the inside and collect moisture that would then drip down the chase, so changing to PVC as low down as practical would remove that thermal bridge. What I didn't get was a look at, let alone a shot of, the tool they used to cut the pipe but it was probably similar to the chain cutter described here. | |
Why "stink pipe"? The phrase seems to have been coined when the first
"water closets" were being built, as plumbing designers began to realize
[sometimes the hard way] that sewer systems need to be vented.
This page gets into some detail on the subject.
The project-manager had gone out to fetch the rubber coupler earlier, and at this point was on the roof helping work on the pipe-cutting operation but had left the coupler on the bench down below. He spotted me near it and called down for me to toss the coupler up to him, which I managed to in a beautiful lob up two stories' worth and right to him. He snatched it out of the air and said "you're *hired*!" |
Art shot: a bit of tarpaper or shingle hung up in the tree, amusingly intercepted on its trajectory to the dumpster from above. |
In the thick of the activity, the lumberyard delivery truck arrived with all the foam insulation and some other supplies. |
Now that they had plenty of plywood, they could start ripping down some of the 3/4" stuff. |
They rolled out another course all the way across, and then kept working more of it upward. |
What I'll probably never know is what happened to all this debris. At least it wasn't a huge lead-paint hazard, per my tests, but while Synergy and I had talked about a *possibility* of recycling the shingles and such which would have required a second dumpster and more careful sorting that didn't even come close to happening, and everything got indiscriminately pitched into one skip and hauled away and that's all we knew about it. |
That led to these amusing items kicking around the worksite for the rest of the job. I still have them, in fact. |
The back deck needed the same Grace treatment, but they needed to pause at the [new, brilliant white!] stink-pipe and make sure it was flashed up correctly with some smaller pieces. |
More courses went up the deck the same way, as the release paper was simply fed overboard for the ground guys to pick up. |
Here's how the chimney hole got framed in -- simple and effective, and now covered with Grace on the outside. As I'd said, like the chimney was never there. |
And here's how things looked after day one. The guys had accomplished quite a bit, and *I* was tired from just chasing them around with the camera all day. And we would do it all over again tomorrow. |
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