Energy Savings

Last winter we ran out of propane twice. We had a small propane tank, that we have now replaced with a big guy that was a big part of the problem. But, we were still using a lot of fuel. We went through the house looking for and filling in all kinds of holes. Why a 6 inch row of 1/4" wide holes along the top of wall just below the ceiling we don't know; filled all those in. Checked weather stripping. Match around windows to see if there was air coming in. Nothing, everything was checking out. Still a lot of fuel was being used.

When we took the metal dwn from interior walls to put up on the exterior of the garge look at what we saw. That is light coming up from the apartment into the attic. If light is escaping; heat is escaping, warm air rises. This looks like we may have found our problem.

 Okay, found the problem but didn't know what to do about it. The previous owner put in the type of can lights that cannot be covered with insulation. Insulation has to stay 6 inches away for air exchange and so the lights don't over heat.

Spent a little while on the internet and discovered; this is a common problem. And lots of tutorials on how to fix this. We needed to make little houses for all 28 lights. You make these out of rigid foam insulation and metal tape.  

We started with 4x8 sheets of the insulation and started cutting                                   

At this point we were on our knees with a straight edge and utility knife making cuts. Wait a minute, always use the right equipment. Into the Workroom and onto the table saw, didn't take long to make our pieces and it saved our knees and backs.

Now we have all these squares we need to build open bottomed boxes out of.

Reflective sides to the inside and tape away.

What's wrong with this picture? Oh, right reflective side to the inside. Those had to be taken apart and redone.

Here is the start of our little houses. I spent a Sunday afternoon  listening to television and built and built. I wanted a picture of all them done but Bill was too quick in getting them into the attic.

This is what we see in the dark with the apartment lights on. Totally darkness. That is light coming in through the apartment door glass. There are two lights in the bathroom that are under the planking the HVAC unit sits on that we couldn't cover.  Our heating bill will drop considerably this winter. 

Our next project with this is to trade all 28 light bulbs to LEDs. Then we will have no fear of anything overheating. Went to buy the LEDs and got  sticker shock. I bought one and only one. Told Bill we will by two a month and at the end of two years we will have replaced all of them. He spent some time on the internet and found a web site 1000bulbs.com and they are half the price as in town.

Hopefully, this has solved our heating bill problem. We will know the middle of January.

Ready For Fall Tornados

The storm shelter that came with the property was hardwired for electricity. But there was no electric wire going to it.

 Ran wire from the West Wing into the storm shelter. We have this space between the shelter and the wall that we are talking about what to store in it. It is too good of a space not to use.

 Probably didn't need to but Bill went ahead and built a casing for the wire to run through for protection.

 Electrical wire to connect to the light.

 Of course, no power yet so the trusty trouble light gets to hang out with Bill again.

The fluorescent light didn't work so he had to test all its wires. Didn't have to replace the transformer in it just tighten everything up. We don't plan on having power very long when we are down there so we also have big flashlights stored inside the shelter.

We have light! When Bill told us to "Quick, quick get in the shelter." he is such a good actor Sutton thought there was really a tornado on its way and moved very quickly. He may have been disappointed that we were just having a trial run. A winter project I will do is to decorate the shelter. No reason to just look at bare walls while waiting for havoc to rain down upon us. Our shelter is registered with the county and our friends and family know where to look if the roof falls on the door. This is something the I hope we never ever have to use.

Knee Pads

The concrete floors can get pretty cold and hard on our old knees. We have knee pads we can wear but they can get pretty uncomfortable. They are used for big jobs like laying floors and such. For little jobs we use something very special.

 We went to the Super Bowl and these were on everyone's seats. There is a flap that hung down and had all kinds of goodies in it. There was a portable radio and headset so you could listen to the game and other stuff I don't remember. Michael Jackson was the half time show. He started singing and we didn't know where he was. OMG, he's on top of the endzone scoreboard!!!!! Then came floating down to the field on a wire. It was very exciting.

Now we use these cushions for our knees instead of our behinds. And remember the great time we had.

Trash To Treasure Again

Framing the doorway from the garage to the Workshop. The exterior walls on the metal buildings are 8 inches thick. So this 8 inch thick door opening had to be framed and trimmed out before we could hang the doors.

First step was to solidify everything with a good stout 2x8.

   

Shim anything that needed to be shimmed.


What to use for the trim. Surely, there is something in the old trim wood pile that can be used. Sure enough just what Bill needed to do the job. This trim came from a rent house that had a door between the two bedrooms. Took that baby out and closed off the wall last year and now we have this great wood for our project.

Have to make everything fit together seamlessly.

They open and close beautifully.











The doors are wonderful. They just need the trim painted, door handles put on and a floor bolt to hold the door,we won't use often, shut. We are assuming we have some lever door handles in our door handle boxes that we will spray paint Rubbed Bronze to match the other handles in the garage.Would prefer not to buy new ones.

Shouldn't everyone have workshop doors that look like that. We will see these everyday when we come and go between the Residence and the West Wing to go to work when our businesses move out there. Because of that we wanted everything in the garage super nice.

Out of Sequence

Normally when building painting is one of the last jobs to get done. We are doing nothing in the correct order and that includes the painting.

We decided that we loved the outside garage door trim color so much that we wanted the interior garage door trims to be the same color.

 Time to take the bland primer white to a deep "Cowboy Boot" brown.











First fill in the staple holes with a wood filler and sand it smooth.











It was a cloudy stormy day and we don't have lights ran to the garage yet since the roofers haven't fixed all the roof leaks. So in order to have light to paint by I moved this ceiling fluorescent light around with me. I was painting two different door trims on opposite walls and it had to be moveable.

 Here is the door going into the West Wing finished except for the door handles. We keep forgetting to pick them up or we remember and then realize we don't have the house key to get them all keyed alike.

This will be the door going into the Residence. Gotta get those roof leaks fixed so we can put up dry wall to put the door in. The grand kids think it is so much fun getting to walk through the walls instead of using the doorway. We have some real rebels on our hands.

A Man After My Heart

I truly dislike anything out of place. "A place for everything and everything in its place", is one of my mottoes. (yes, this is the way you make motto plural it just looks weird)  Bill doesn't always think the way I do. The garage and Work room are his domain so I try not to even look at them. This weekend a job he tackled was to organize the 3rd car part of the garage. Until the roof leaks are fixed we can't put up shelves or anything so it's not an easy job.

First thing he did was pull all the toys out and do something with all the wood the framers and roofers used and then left. This is still good wood and we can use it for something somewhere.

He stacked all that wood between the studs for now. A lot of that will be used when he frames in the extra chair and folding table storage closet that will be going into this area.

Here everything is in its place except the grand kid toys. We are keeping them in the Residence still because it is closer to the front drive for them to play. We want to get another Go-Kart but there is no floor space left. We need a barn, but that is way down on the to do list.

Illumination

Last winter was the first year in our little aparment. It seemed that it wasn't very energy efficient we were always having to call for more propane. This winter we will have a larger propane tank so hopefully the monthly top offs will be enough. We have filled in lots of little holes where air was coming in or escaping. We have added weatherstripping around doors. We hadn't noticed the attic though. Lots of insulation up there. We knew the can lights didn't have insulation around them bescause of the type of can they are.Hadn't thought past that.

When we took down the metal skin to put it up on the exterior of the garage look what we saw one night. There are no lights turned on in the attic. That is all the light escaping into the attic from the can lights. That means there is that much of our warm furnace air escaping up during cold weather. This summer isn't an issue since hot air rises, winter is a different thing.

 So, onto the internet to find a solution. We can't put insulation around these cans and we didn't know what to do. How we figured things out before the world wide web I don't know. Come to find out this is a common problem and there is an easy but time consuming fix. If it was for just a few lights it wouldn't take that much time but we have 28 we need to fix.

First step is to buy sheets of rigid insulation foam board.

 Then cut them into strips and ultimately into 12 inch squares. We started out on our knees with a straight edge and tape measure. Bill quickly figured out that the table saw could do a quicker and easier job of this.Always find the best tool for the job.

 Once the squares were cut it was time to assemble our boxes. You can see our bird from Zimbabwe and a painting that our exchange son, Marcio,  brought us for Christmas one year. It is of a church that we saw when visiting him in Rio.

 All of these squares need to be made into boxes. These boxes will then be put over each of the can lights to stop air drafts. They need to be big enough for air to still circulate around and they cannot be totally air tight.

Hm-m-m what is wrong with this picture? I am assembling the boxes while listening to television; the movie must have been interesting. I constructed 3 boxes inside out. I have to take these guys apart and rebuild them. Actually after cutting the sides open I was able to flip them over and just had to retape 4 corners instead of 8 corners. They aren't as pretty as the others but will work just fine.