FIRST: I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BOILERS AND THIS POST DOES NOT CLAIM TO KNOW ANYTHING.  TALK TO A PROFESSIONAL IF YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS ABOUT YOUR HEATING.

So, our dreary old boiler (circa 1958) “seemed” to be on the fritz a few weeks ago and now it’s working “fine”.  I say “seemed” because it appears to be working now and I say “fine” because it’s working as well as any 55 year old boiler should work.

The Story: Sometime in December (2012) we were noticing a gas smell coming from the hallway adjacent the boiler.   Obviously, any time you smell gas you should call the gas company. Oh, we also noticed our heating bill was $100 more than the same month last year. So, not sensing any danger, I called a plumber.

The Plumber: (Who, by the way, I trust and would recommend to anyone who asks) The Plumber looked at the boiler and said, “you’re not burning all the gas in your boiler and the orange colored flame indicates the boiler is inefficient”.  There was also pounds and pounds of black carbon inside the boiler that had accumulated over the years. Finally, he pointed out that the boiler (in it’s current state) could be a carbon monoxide problem. He said he could clean the unit to see if this might help.

The Cost: We then talked about boiler units and the cost. He recommended the “Solo 110 Triangle Tube” for our house (our square footage about 1750).  The unit is $3,500 and the install would be about $3,000 (all estimates on the high side). I shrugged, I really don’t have $6,500 dollars just laying around. $9,500 with a new water heater system!!

The Cleanup: I took off the smokestack and the top “dome” lid to the boiler and power washed the whole thing with a garden hose. FYI: There is a TON of copper in these bad boys and they’re probably worth something just for the metal value. Anyway,  I removed about 5 pounds of black carbon caked to everything and after using the shop vac to suck up all the water I used a blow dryer to get the unit dry enough to start up.

The Realization: When I started the unit I noticed the gas was coming out with WAY too much force and the flame was having trouble burning all the gas.  I adjusted the valve “thingy” (photo below) and the boiler burned with a consistent blue flame (mostly). I’m now convinced the unit was receiving too much gas  and could not burn all the fuel efficiently.

THE MATH: My TOTAL Yearly Natural Gas bill is $1,221.  If I subtract $168 to heat my water and run laundry ($14/month) the total cost for the current (old) boiler is $1,053/year. Now, considering this thing is so old I probably need to spend $200/year on maintenance and considering this old tank runs around 70% efficiency, maybe even 60%, my yearly cost to operate is “old bertha” is $1,253…ugh.

Now, replacement cost is $6,500 and the new boiler would be 95% efficient (claims the manufacturer).  So, the difference in cost would be 25% or 35% less per month based on efficiency. I’m sure I can get this down to $5,000 but let’s use $6,500 for now.

On a YEARLY basis a new boiler “could” save $263 (25%) or $368 (35%) per year.

So, best case, I save $568/year (I’m not paying for the maintenance of $200).   Or, maybe the new unit is only saving $263/year because I don’t have any maintenance with the old unit.  My best guess is that it’s somewhere is the middle between $263 and $568, or $415/year.

($6,500 install cost) / ($415 yearly savings) = 15.6 Years to break even but with piece of mind

Now, this doesn’t account for the increased cost of gas and assumes the new unit will be completely trouble free (probably about 90% chance of that).

I also have to consider the new unit won’t last 50 years but I’ll probably sell the house by then.  I think a respectable life on a new boiler is 25 years because they have electronics and they are not as heavy duty.

Oh yeah, there’s the whole environment thing too.

-Andy

Here’s the Unit (Notice the electrical starter we added, this was about $700 to retofit on the system).

Picture Showing Handle/Lever “Thingy“:

We’ve replaced all of the appliances in our kitchen with stainless steel appliances.  We started with the refrigerator (Samsung) when we moved in about a year and a half ago, then the range (Electrolux) about a year ago and finally the dishwasher (Samsung) about 6 months ago.  We really like the look and function of everything, but I noticed the refrigerator and dishwasher started getting “water marks”- some looked like splashes, some like water drips, some like the marks left after cleaning with a wet sponge.  The water mark’s would not wash clean, even after repeatedly scrubbing- even when using special stainless steel cleaner.

We had the same sort of marks on the dishwasher (more like long drips though).  The range top was fine, but the front stainless steel on the range door had similar marks.  After trying to live with these for over a year, I finally did something about them.  After a little googling for ideas, it turns out to have been tarnish.  Though stainless steel won’t “stain” (rust) it WILL tarnish- and I think this depends on the specific type of stainless steel that is used (for instance the range top was fine and I know some appliances have a special finish where you don’t even see finger prints).

The solution? Silver polish!

I used the Wright’s Silver Cream that I have for my silver candle sticks- it actually says on the jar that it can be used on stainless steel too.  You apply it with the hexagonal sponge included in the jar, then buff it off with a paper towel and THEN use the stainless steel cleaner to remove all traces of the silver cream.  As you can see by the black paper towels, there was quite a bit of tarnish on our appliances.  After an hour or so of cleaning all of our kitchen appliances, they looked BETTER than new!

One of the features of our house that we really like is the center atrium.  We never really had a vision for the atrium though, it just sort of evolved.  Here’s what we had to work with when we moved in:

(view from the office):

The very first project we tackled in the atrium was to lower the planters. The dirt was held in by the bricks and the level was almost flush with the top of the bricks- a few inches HIGHER than the siding and window sills.  Our pest inspector had pointed out that having dirt up to the wood window sills and siding was not good (burying wood in dirt eventually turns the wood into dirt… and it makes it easier for termites to get to the wood)- the soil level should be 3-6″ below the siding/sills.  Before we could lower the dirt, however, we had to remove the white marble rocks that surrounded all of the plants.  Andy’s mom did this project on the weekend we moved in (she is very industrious!).  Next, we started de-foresting.  We began by transplanting the ferns to the back yard but we kept some of the tropical plants including all of the birds of paradise plants (we moved two from the back yard into the atrium). Our de-forestation efforts cleared enough way that we could start removing dirt.  As we did this, we noticed quite a bit of wood damage.  The bottom 2-3″ of the east wall of the atrium (the one next to the long planter) was rotted, as was the windowsill on that wall. There were also a couple patches about 12″ square on that wall that had rotted. Our initial plan was to replace the siding on the entire wall- and since that would be about $400 worth of siding, we put the project on hold.

Next, we replaced the lighting in the atrium- previously there was a one fixture that was wired with an old extension cord that went through the boiler exhaust vent to tap into the light in the laundry room, and another that piggy-backed off that one (again, hard wired with an old extension cord) that showcased the fountain in the corner.  Both were replaced with two matching minimalist fixtures (Home Depot Clearance) centered on the long wall of the atrium.

Once it started to get hot last summer, we quickly learned that our atrium was serving as a green house (hence the lush plant life).  One particularly hot July day it was about 90 degrees outside and 120 degrees in the atrium.  Since we were borrowing my brother-in-law’s truck and the atrium cover was old, cracked, and leaky anyway, we decided it would be a fun afternoon project to remove the covering of the atrium.

Not only did that make it much more pleasant on summer days, it also gave us a view of the hills from our dining room.

The next project we tackled was the sliding door between the garage and the atrium.  You can read about that project here.  This picture shows how you could see into the garage from the atrium (it’s also a regal picture of Honey Brown staring at her food!):

To patch the atrium side of the wall, we got 2 sheets of thinline Beckenridge Eichler Siding from Jeff, the Eichler Siding guy.  It was a bit tricky to install and we ended up with a 1/2″ gap between the new and existing siding- but it was nothing that a fresh tub of wood putty couldn’t handle 🙂

A pretty painless project was to add some privacy to the tall narrow window adjacent to the front door.  Previously it was completely transparent allowing someone to see clear into our house from the street:

I simply covered it with transparent contact-paper using a spray bottle and squeegee method:

Clearly, a new frosted window would be nice- but you can’t really beat a $6 fix (from Target) that takes an hour!  It even fooled a neighbor (who has an AWESOME house in our model) who was tempted to try it on her own window!

Speaking of contact paper, we needed to find a slightly classier solution to our don’t-run-into-the-glass-door problem than what we currently had in place:

(wait for the solution, I don’t want to give away everything yet!)

The biggest transformation came in the spring when we decided to plant hops (the kind that goes into beer) along the long wall in the atrium.  We had limited time before the hop vines would be climbing up the wall, so we had to do something to repair the wall of siding which had several rotted spots and a rotted bottom.  Rather than replace all of the siding, we decided to do some patching.  We had extra siding from where we replaced the sliding door on the other wall, so the smaller patches were pretty straight forward.  For the bottom 2-3″ of siding that was rotted all the way across the wall (from having dirt against it for years), Andy simply trimmed off the rotted part (plus about 1-2″ for a total of 4″) with his circular saw, installed a long strip of wood (that looks like a baseboard) and siliconed the heck out of everything.   Andy is a master at carpentry and I am a master at wood putty and paint, so once everything was painted, it was hardly noticeable as a “patch”.  Once we got that wall patched and painted, Andy installed some steel wire for the hops to climb and I got to work prepping (scraping and sanding away a LOT of old paint and caulking lots of gaps) and painting (Behr “creek bend”) the rest of the atrium.  Here she is now:

As you can see, it’s a perfect place to relax, drink some coffee and read.  Especially with some machine generated relaxing nature sounds.  We thought about getting a fountain for ambient noise, but this is much cheaper and easier to maintain!

Here’s our new view of the hills from the dining room:

You’ll notice that we don’t have nearly as many tropical plants as we started out with… some were badly sun burnt when we removed the plastic top from the atrium, some died from a combination of neglect and cold temperatures over the winter, and lots were trampled with my ladder as I was painting.  Oh well- at least the hops survived!  I also planted an herb garden- the basil, parsley and mint (which I transplanted from the side of the house) are doing really well.  The parsley is ok, but the cilantro died by a combination of getting paint spilled on them and being trampled by the ladder.  I think this little patch of dirt is quite perfect for plants- last year we had some MAMMOTH tomato plants growing there:

The brick perimeter to the planters is not the most beautiful or sturdy thing (in some areas the bricks are simply staying in place from gravity, not mortor), but it provides enough of a barrier to keep Honey Brown out (too bad we can’t say the same for my sister’s dogs!). Speaking of Honey Brown, she really enjoys the atrium too- mostly because we spend time there now too:

Though Honey enjoys baking in the sun, we’re a little more fair-skinned, so we brought in an umbrella ($50 from Home Depot) and the umbrella stand (which came for free with the house) to provide some shade and some nice cheerful color:

Oh, and here is our more classy solution to our running-into-glass-doors problem:

More contact paper!  I used a circle punch to make a bunch of dots, then stuck them to all of the sliders at eye level.  So far, so good! They’re on every sliding door in the house (except the ones with the plastic grids that look like fake window panes).  Before we have our friends with toddlers over again, I think we’ll have to stick more up at 3-year-old height (and maybe even Dog height).

Another quick project was to doctor up our door stop (we like to keep the front door propped open so that Honey Brown can explore the front yard).  We had been using an old brick but it started crumbling, so I make a quick “brick cozy” for it by wrapping it in some scrap fabric and quickly stitching it together.  It took all of 10 minutes:

Some day we’ll have a nice solid door…in a different color… some day.  The third project that made its way into the atrium is our stump table.  It’s a remnant from the giant oak tree we had cut down last winter:

It’s the perfect height for our chaises.

That’s all for now- I’m sure the atrium will continue to evolve (as I slowly kill more and more plants).  We’d like to add some outdoor speakers, replace the tile floor (it’s cracked in many places and also uneven), maybe put in a big dining table and some outdoor heaters instead of the chaise lounges and maybe even build a retractable cover.  For now, the atrium is good enough and we have bigger fish to fry anyway (like replacing the siding)!

Before we moved into our house, we knew we had some damage to one of the beams in our office (the front room off the atrium).  Our $400 pest inspector made this clear when he stuck his screw driver into the beam and left the lovely holes to remind us of his $400 bill:

This beam runs from the wall adjacent to the atrium, across the office, through the front wall of the house from which it extends another 3 feet, for a total of 16′ in length.  It was also clear that the exterior of the beam had some damage and it was starting to sag (due to damage to the post holding it up) which was affecting the siding:

Apparently this is a very common problem with this model of house- water intrudes around the beams which stick out from the front of the house with no eave to protect them.  We have a neighbor a few houses down who apparently faced a similar situation since he is now missing one of the beams that should be sticking out of the front of his house- it’s pretty obvious that it rotted and simply fell off (there’s still part of the rotted beam there).  Anyhow, this is the main reason we chose to extend our roof– to prevent this from happening again or to another beam. However, before we could extend our roof, we needed to replace this beam since the roof would be resting on top of it.

We thought about hiring this work out and talked to a contractor about it when we were shopping around for contractors to extend the roof.  After having one of them explain the process to us, Andy felt confident that he could do it with the help of the best brother in the world, Tim.  We also knew that if it got to be too difficult to handle, we could call the best contractor in the world, our friend Kevin Sullivan who helped replace the beam above our garage last summer.

The first step (done by Tim with close supervision from Honey Brown) was to build a false close to where the rotted beam was in order to support the roof while we replaced the beam.

Once the false wall was up, Tim started removing the drywall around the beam.  Like most of our house, the dry wall was applied directly to the existing paneling, making for extra laborious demo.  As soon as we started, we realized the damage was REALLY bad- the entire post holding up the beam was rotted.

Next came the fun part of taking out the rotted beam.  The exterior part came out pretty easily.  It was less attached to the rest of the beam than to the flashing!

The rest of the beam was attacked with the sawzall in about 3-foot sections.  As we (and by “we” I mean Andy and Tim) removed the old beam we came to realize that the ceiling was holding the beam up rather than the other way around (as we removed each section of beam, the ceiling seemed to breathe a sigh of relief).

While Tim and Andy were removing the old beam, I was busily priming and painting the new 20 foot beam (which was delivered to our driveway that morning by Golden State Lumber).

As Andy and Tim moved the beam from the street to the front yard, they started to get a feel for just how heavy a 20′ douglas fir beam is.

Our original plan was to simply insert it through the hole left by the old beam until it hit the opposite side of the office (13′ away) where it would rest on another post. We quickly realized that is much easier said than done.  Our first modification was to insert the new post on the exterior wall as clearly, the 2 layers of siding would not be enough to hold up that side of the beam.

Then, the boys built a “shelf” to rest the beam on which would prove to be extremely helpful as we slid it across the room:

Being scientist types, we decided to use some tools of physics to help us out, such as a lever created by our little giant ladder.  We also realized that our other ladder, a  4′ aluminum ladder was not nearly as sturdy as the kitchen table. On our first attempt we (and by “we” I truly mean myself included- though I lent more “advice” than muscle) got one end of the beam resting on our newly installed post like so:

At this point, we realized we would need to enlarge the hole that the beam was to slide through.  This meant removing the newly installed post and putting up a temporary one that was a few inches shorter.  We also learned that taking the beam down from that position is much harder than getting the beam to that position.  Trial 2 involved Andy on the roof with a harness.  The beam sustained some grass stains and I though we broke Tim.  Trial 2 was a failure.  Finally, at the end of the day, as many of our neighbors drove very slowly by the house taking in the scene that was unfolding on the front lawn (and likely wondering how long we were planning to keep the kitchen table on the front lawn) we had success!

Once the beam was pretty close to its final resting place, we simply had to re-install the permanent post and attach the beam to the post on both sides of the room.  We used some steel brackets as well as some 2x4s.  We later screwed through the roof into the beam, but not until just prior to getting the new roof. We also had to trim the beam on the exterior to make sure it was even with the others (we left it a foot or so long on purpose so that we could be assure it wouldn’t be too short).

This is also about the time we realized we may as well remove all of the walls in the office.  This would allow us to check the posts supporting the other beam (it was in good shape-phew!), install an overhead light in the center of the ceiling, ground all of the electrical:

replace and add insulation to all of the walls:

And remedy some of the sloppy trim and drywall work like this (notice the crack in the corner of the wall and the way the window casing is inset in the drywall):

Tim had gone home (exhausted and sore) so Andy hung the new drywall and I was in charge of the taping and mudding (apparently this fell close enough to the realm of painting which is clearly my territory). I was very nervous about the taping and spent many hours researching online how-tos (http://www.familyhandyman.com has some great how-tos, as does youtube).  Luckily enough, I procrastinated long enough that Uncle Joe took the initiative and did all of the taping for me (during his vacation no less!), leaving just the mudding.  It turns out you can do a pretty god job with drywall mud even as a novice, it just takes LOTS of time and sanding.

For the wall color, we chose Behr’s “Reflecting Pool.”  In the Home Depot, the color looks very grey, but in the office it is a very pale blue, which Andy likes very much (I had voted for “Dolphin fin” which is much more neutral, but got vetoed).  Ultimately, the office doesn’t look TOO different from how it started (the light fixture is way too small for the room- it’s just a place holder until I find something better), however the temperature difference from the insulation is quite noticeable- it went from being the hottest room in the house during the summer to the coolest!

Some day we’d like to replace the flooring and maybe the desk, but for now it’s good enough.

Aside from making all foreseeable protrusions to the roof, we had another major project to complete before the roofers arrived- and that is extending the roof line in the front of the house.  This is arguably the most exciting of the roof projects as it’s the biggest impact.  Here’s what we were starting with:

Notice how there are 8 beams sticking out from the front of the house topped with a trellis?  The problem with this set up is that the beams themselves and the areas surrounding them are very susceptible to weather, specifically water intrusion (the white one in the photo above was in such bad shape the entire beam needed to be replaced).  There is also no eave on the front of the house to protect the siding from weather.  For these reasons and aesthetic ones, we decided that now is the perfect time to extend the roof line (by 33 inches to be exact) all the way to the end of the beam.  Several of our neighbors with the same model house have done the same thing- so we had plenty of examples to look at before we committed to this very large project.  Also, the back of the house has an eave over the extending beams, so it made sense to us for the front to be the same way.

I should mention that we considered hiring this project out, but after talking to several contractors, Andy decided that we would do it ourselves (by we I mean Andy and his little brother Tim with advice from our favorite contractor, Kevin and a tiny bit of help from Mary).

First, we removed the trellis.  Although several neighbors have added similar trellises and they are definitely better than nothing, they were not original and do not do a good job at protecting the house, so we wanted something better.  Judging by the condition of the wood, ours was probably about 5 years old.

This picture nicely demonstrates several concepts

1. The siding on the front of the house is in really bad shape- notice the green tint and the horizontal seam?  I’m no siding expert, but I’m guessing those things are not good.
2. The house is pretty ugly “naked” like this (in my opinion).  Some neighbors have naked houses and seem happy with them while others have gone a step further and completely trimmed back the beams so they are flush with the house and do not stick out at all- I’m personally not a fan of that either (although it may solve some of the water intrusion problems).
3. We did this job (yes We, as in Andy AND Mary) after work one evening- hence the bad lighting.
4. Andy really loves his Sawz-All.  It’s probably his most used tool after the drill.

Removing the trellis actually took a bit of engineering.  See, it was attached to the beams via nails so large they are better classified as stakes.  To pry the trellis off of the beam we used a combination of a steel post, the car jack and a sledge hammer.  Safe? No. Effective? Yes.

Next, Andy ordered the lumber which consisted of 1.5″x6″ tongue and groove, 10″ fascia (which we later trimmed down to 8″) and lots of 2×4’s (we had to make a second trip to San Rafael lumber for the plywood). He ordered all of the lumber (except the plywood) from Golden State lumber in San Rafael who delivers directly to our driveway.  Even though Andy has a truck now, this is still much more convenient considering the tongue and groove came in 16′ lengths and the fascia boards came in 20′ lengths and his truck bed is nowhere near that long.

Because my least favorite thing is painting tongue and groove ceilings, I decided to prime and paint the tongue and groove before it became the ceiling of the eave (so that once it’s installed, it will just need touch-ups).

Honey Brown was very curious about the 24 16′ boards that were taking over her back yard.  I only painted one side (the only side that will be exposed- as the under side of the eave).

Once the wood was prepped, the protrusion projects completed and Tim (Andy’s little brother) was in town, the extension officially began.  The first step was removing the flashing:

then the siding and finally the berm at the front of the house.  The berm basically extends about 4″ up above the tongue and groove that comprises the ceiling.  This step was nerve wrecking because it meant that we were seriously opening up our house to a complete soaking if nature decided to rain.  I believe a sawz-all, wedge and sledge hammer were used to remove the berm.

Once the berm was gone, the tongue and groove went directly on top of the beams (just like in the back of the house) and they started building a new berm from 2×4’s:

Plywood was added above the tongue and groove to try to bring the level of the eave up a bit so it wasn’t a low spot of the roof (we are enlarging our existing down spouts but did not add any down spouts to the eave):

And a fascia board was added.  This took a lot of debate over how to compensate for the un-levelness of the roof line- the fascia could be level or it could follow the roofline but not both- so we came up with a bit of a compromise.  Andy, Tim and I can see precisely how it’s not level, but hopefully it’s not as apparent to others.  We also confirmed that there are neighbors whose rooflines/fascias look way less level than ours.

And finally, the fascia board got topped by a new piece of flashing (this step was done by the roofers):

Sure, it needs a top coat of paint (everything is at least primed) and our house still needs new siding and paint, but we think it’s a huge improvement- both aesthetically and functionally!