Removing Insulation from the Hot Water Pipes

Ted surprised me this evening. When I wasn't looking, he removed a good chunk of the insulation that was wrapped around the hot water supply lines in the basement, which feed the radiators upstairs. This is one of the first steps to our basement remodel. A couple of my cousins are coming over next week to help us pull down drywall--I can't wait!

The pipes went from looking like this:

To looking like this:

Sometimes, it's the little jobs that can be so satisfying.

Party on!

Water, Water, Everywhere

We knew last month when we were able to clamber up on the garage roof during a break in the weather that we had a problem with the gutter. It is so packed with old leaf debris that it's like solid, frozen mud. Well, this weekend the temperatures reached the low forties for a day, and things began to melt. And refreeze. And continue to melt.

The gutter is shot. Nothing is actually flowing to the downspout because it is completely clogged; it also has several holes along its length. Water is backing into the wood ceiling beams, soaking the back wall, and flowing in through the doors and windows. When it freezes, it's expanding and crumbling the brick and mortar. Salvaging our 82-year-old garage has shot to the top of our to-do list. Once the weather warms enough to work on it, that is.

Fragments of brick and mortar on a wet floor.

Water coming in around the door. The doors are a lost cause, and we knew from the start they would be replaced.

Water cascading down the wall and in the window. Again, we knew we were going to replace these windows eventually.

So. Mom's vote is to hire a gutter guy to do the work. Ted and I are advocating we do it ourselves. I found instructions online calling the project "challenging" but still doable for the do-it-yourselfer, which we are due to a lack of deep pockets. It's a straight gutter, sloping down to a downspout. No fancy turns. We should be able to do it, right? I did a quick check online and Classic Gutters was selling vintage-looking gutters at $3.00/foot for aluminum. That seems reasonable, doesn't it? Considering when the downspout fell off our condo over the winter, the quotes for that were coming in at $800 or so, including labor. I'll have to do some more investigating.

In the meantime, we're not even using the garage for our cars because it is still full of the basement load of junk left behind by the Previous Owners.

The gutter problem is not the only water issue we had this weekend, either. I neglected to tighten everything up after bleeding some air out of the radiator, and Ted walked into the bedroom to find a pool of water had collected on the newly finished floors. I haven't taught him yet to document all mishaps so we can ha! ha! all laugh at how silly Joanne is when I post them on the blog later. So no photos.

But I did catch this image of Ted, when Mom found that the kitchen sink was leaking. The PO solution was to wrap a rag around the base (nowhere near the leak, by the way, just where the water was collecting). It's leaking down from the actual faucet, but since we'll eventually remodel the kitchen, none of us could get all that worked up about it.

So. Welcome home to us. And how was your weekend?

So That's What It's Called

I'm a child of the suburbs. Although born in Chicago, I grew up in the Northwest Suburbs, in a home built in 1977. Forced air heating was all I knew, and my first encounter with a radiator was in my college dorm. I had steam radiators in a few apartments as well, but never concerned myself with how they actually worked. That was the landlord's job.

Now I live in an 80-year-old brick two flat with hot water radiators--and I have no idea, really, what we should do to maintain them in proper working order. Our home inspector gave a brief demonstration on how to bleed the air out of the radiators and, armed with that knowledge, I rather smugly went from radiator to radiator this week, turning the key and listening contendedly to the little hiss of air escaping. However, only one radiator spat water out of the valve after expelling the air. That's when I realized that whoever painted the radiators in the past had painted the valves shut, and the air was coming out the key hole.

I knew we were going to need some kind of radiator upkeep manual to learn more about the system.

I work as an editor, so I do pride myself on my Google research skills. Yet I am embarrassed to say it took me two days before I stumbled upon the proper name for the type of heating system we have at The Box House--hydronic, which simply means that water is used as the heat-transfer medium. (When I told Ted the proper term, he gives me a look and says, "Yeah, I know." *Sigh* Nobody told me.)

Armed with this new tidbit of information, I quickly found a Web site called Heatinghelp.com. There is a forum for questions and information on the mechanics of various heating systems. They have one book for sale that I might get: How Come? Hydronic heating questions we've been asking for 100 years (with straight answers!). It's $25.00, and not available any cheaper on Amazon, so I may wait a bit before making the purchase.

My question for you all is this: What other resources have you come across for learning about hydronic systems? Later this year, when the weather is warmer and we can open the windows, I want to paint some of the rooms and we will need to move the (friggin' heavy) cast iron radiators to paint behind them. I'd like to do so without destroying the system.

Hey Hey, Ho Ho, These Radiator Covers Have Got to Go

Four of the radiators in the Box House (two in each unit) were protected with metal radiator covers made by a local Chicago-area company. My best guess (and my mom's opinion) dates them to the 1950s, but that's only a guess. Salvage One has one listed on their Web site for $100, but doesn't include a date.

Vintage or no, they had to go. They are bulky, not particularly attractive, and two of them actually blocked access to the valve, as they weren't the proper size for those radiators. (Lord knows when the radiators were last bled.) So Ted and I lifted them straight off and hauled them away to the kitchens. We plan on just sticking them in the basement for now, and possibly listing them on Craigs List later. (Or if anyone just wants to take them off our hands, let me know.)

The amount of dust under them is incredible, and I don't think the Previous Owners ever moved them to paint the walls, as subsequent coats stopped just behind the edges of the cover. *Sigh.* And one of them even has a carpet fragment under it, which I'll have to pull out before we have the floor sanders come in.

Of the remaining radiators, half of them were uncovered while the rest had various contraptions balanced on them to make a flat surface--sheets of painted metal, plywood, etc. There is one in the upstairs kitchen that has a sort of built-in shelf above it, which will have to go as well, but I didn't have the energy at the time to pull out the tools, so it's still there.

Overall, I think I like the look of the bare radiators. There is only one I think I'd like to cover, and that's in the dining room, so I can create a window seat. But that's a project far, far, down the road. For now, we'll continue to just pull out the junk and work our way to those "good bones" everyone tells us the Box House has.