What home improvement work did you do today?

They are all outside around me. Most of us don't even enclose them. I am because I'm tired of dealing with the freezes. But yeah, I grew up seeing them outside. From systems like mine to softeners to more.

Even people with garages will put them outside down here to avoid losing garage space

But yes, very very different climates lol.

 

Another episode of fixing the old honda since they don't make them anymore. The self-propel died halfway through the lawn last weekend.

The cable went slack. I thought the problem was at the bottom but it's not accessible without taking it all apart.



So i just cut a hole in the deck above the drive.



Well there was nothing wrong with it down there and I realized the plastic mount broke at the top.
Fixed it with zipties. The repair has lasted one mow so far lol. I think in about a month it'll need some epoxy.

 

Man, this is all stuff I'm slowly learning. I just got back Saturday afternoon from our new house in Camden ME. We're slowly working our way to moving up there. The previous owners had the place for 2yrs, bought it from an older couple that had it for the past 40-50 years best I can gauge (maybe more).

Younger couple, I believe, and maybe not so knowledgable with home repairs and such. I applaud they had heat pumps installed, and started working on a number of modernization features around the house. They spent a lot of money on things to make the house more energy efficient and less reliant on oil, and they paid out the nose because I guess they couldn't do any of the work themselves, either lacked the knowhow, confidence, or both. I knew there were issues with the place, so I stayed a full 8 days from closing onward, to work through a lot of it. And man was it a lot of work...

The rear deck, I couldn't touch, but I see the person who built it didn't bother to poor the footers past the frost line, and the supports were definitely over-spanned. I'm assuming they didn't do down 36-48" or whatever was required. Long support beam thru the center is twisting and the concrete pads its supports are on have twisted, which is what I believe always happens if you don't go below frost line?

I was stoked to see they, at some point, installed frostproof hose bibs. I learned you need to disconnect the hoses on those before things start freezing. One more thing I needed to learn about, how you must disco the hoses for it to work right. If it ever blows up or needs replacement, I'm screwed, because ....

I read the report from the home energy audit they had done telling them to encapsulate the basement sills and this would "fix the humidity in the basement", and I'm disappointed they went through with it because the company that did the work did so like a drunkard at a urinal, coating the entire wall with the stuff. Now it's virtually impossible to access any wiring/plumbing/etc/ that was run along the sills, or up into the exterior walls, so the wiring I could've easily done 18 months ago will be so absurdly difficult, and I'm pissed. It really sucks because I think the non-air-tightness of the basement sills was actually helping with airflow. Then they listened again, and removed 2 of the 3 dehumidifiers down there, so humidity had been spiking to 65% every time the new heatpump water heater they installed kicked on ... best I can tell, at least, and yes, you'd think it'd be the opposite, but the humidity meter I have showed humidity would spike about 10-30 minutes after the water heater kicked on, without fail, despite me finding no condensation. I think the problem is, the cold (but dehumidified) air coming out of the water heater is causing dew point spikes? I can't explain it. I added another dehumidifier and kicked the WH into vacation mode, and I haven't seen a spike since, steady ~52% percent on average.

I would've also loved to have finished out the wiring properly with 12/2 or 14/2, but the bastards just sprayed right over wall footer access, and even clear over the freakin' basement windows, which probably could've used replacing due to the wood condition, and replaced with something modern. So now I guess I'll be removing the windows from the outside, to electric-turkey-knife the foam away, to install new 2- or 3-pane windows, hopefully with non-wood casings. I'd love to figure out some ventilation system for those windows that would let me exhaust air from the basement on a controller, but I may end up having to use the chimney stack cleanout in the basement to get air out of the house instead.

And the foam bit me in other places, like ... there's really cool vintage Rittenhouse Sheraton/Lyric doorbell from the mid/late 40s installed (non-working), but both were ran using cloth wire. I'd been planning to refurbish it, which I did (though I couldn't get the yellowing out of the chime cover). It was cloth-wired, and I couldn't even figure out where the old rear/side doorbell was terminating originally so see if I could get the rear/side door button up and running again b/c it's buried under foam. For the front door, I ran new 18/2 for the doorbell up to the encasement, cut and spliced into the cloth, only to find the (original?) doorbell switch was non-functional. Replaced it with a Ring doorbell, which worked swimmingly, but the transformer they had installed (a Faraday "1574") doesn't have enough oomph to power both the Ring doorbell and the Rittenhouse chime - I thought it was a 16v which is what that Rittenhouse calls for, but the Ring shows it's only pushing 12v AC. I guess I'll hafta swap in a new 16V/30VA transformer next time we're up there to resolve that (I hope).

Turns out the HVAC was also using cloth wiring. There was this weird section of cloth spliced into the basement section, but I hoped it was just through a small section in the middle because it was modern 18/5 out of the blower housing, then 6-8 feet of cloth, then 18/5 again where it disappears under the white PVC or vinyl moisture barrier panels someone installed. When I popped off the t-stat ... cloth wiring. Inever got a chance to dig deep enough to find where the cloth HVAC wiring is going up to the t-stat, but I guess I'll be pulling the white moisture barrier panels to find the wire and hope they didn't staple the cloth wiring to the studs, so I can use the old wiring as a chase for the new 18/5, kinda like I did getting the doorbell wiring up the wall.

At least I didn't find anything but remnants of knob and tube , but no actual knob tube. They claimed there was no cloth wiring in the house, but I found it in at least 4 places. It apparently had been rewired from knob & tube with some BX, to single conductor (no ground, and probably white asbestos casing), and a lot of places had modern Romex in either 14/2 or 12/2 flavor. Most of the cloth was tied to wall switches and ceiling pancake boxes, a job I'll need to tackle at a later date I guess... but I got most of the light fixtures updated/modernized which makes the wife happy. I also found at least one place someone neutral-jumpered ceiling lights from mystery outlets.

I also found something weird when I scanned the box to label circuits on the new 200A panel they'd had installed, some outlets were lighting up at 2 or 3 breakers.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. I probably could've spent the next 2-3 weeks up there fixing all the shit that needed to be addressed, but had to get back to ATL. Big chore was: Electrical safety, security/monitoring stuff, internet/technology, better lighting, and getting everyone a bed put together to sleep on.

 

I was going to really dive into this and had a big response, but I think what you need more than that is a beer and a "you'll get though this! Just one bite at a time". Hugely frustrating, and I'd be tempted to just burn it down and get some insurance money. Maybe there's some local hooligans at the gas station in town you could hire

 

Haha! Yeah. I'll get through it, and appreciate the sentiment.

Would love to burn it down, but the house is 125 years old and has extremely good bones! It's really nice on the inside, it just needs the TLC and proper care of someone who understands how to take care of "seniors"

Big thing will be getting up there full-time so we can work on it. The piece of property it's on is gorgeous, and we have exactly what we want space-wise to build an ADU to accomplish other goals which should help w/retirement.

 

Well its good to hear there is an end in sight ha.

I would say, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Some of the modern materials are great and nice in new homes, but they may mess up an environment that's worked for over 100 years "as is" and it looks like you are seeing that. Once you are there everyday and don't feel rushed, I am sure it will come together better!

 

It'll take 1-3 years of casual (but fun/enjoyable) work get the house to a level I'd prefer it, an "end in sight". It'd take 5-7 years for me to be "happy".

The house has seen a lot of hands, and lots of decisions from those hands, mostly good, some not so great. But it's a known milltown, house built by millworkers, true, authentic craftsmen working with old quality wood, enormous beams, all of which I've read in historical documents worked at the nearby mill ... it's rock-freaking-solid. It had one above-average-quality addition onto the back half of the house to add a sunroom 40 years ago, which also expand the two upstairs bedrooms. Bedrooms are huge, full bath is medium-ish sized, downstairs half bath is small. Living space is solid, property is enormous with a river crossing one border and a mountain less than a mile beyond the river. The views are stupendous.

The reality is, if we can get the kids up there and in school, they'll be in a better space overall, and my business opportunities would likely increase We'll be living in ~40% less sqft of house, going from a 3300sf 5BR / 3.5BA to a 1800sf 3BR / 1.5BA which would be an adjustment. But if we could knock out an ADU on top of the current garage, it would make things much, much easier.

Yeah, very much so. I'm shocked at how shitty pine is these days, but in general, the product quality today is half what it was 20yrs ago. Everything is defective or dies within 5-10 years. Nothing built to last, wood harvested too early. One thing I'll say about the town and surrounding area though, there's access to quality stuff, and lots of older stuff that's prime for re-use.

Thing is, I can't get upset with the former owners. I get what they were aiming to achieve in their 2 years there, I think the only major misstep they really made (IMHO, I'm not a professional) was letting someone encapsulate the basement, everything else I've seen is generally done right - I really wish there was an easy way to get that damn foam outta there. They did a lot of good - installing heat pumps in key places, upgrading things for the woodburning stove to make it more effective, upgraded to 200A electric service, and rewired as much as they could afford, with many intentions: Electric car charging station, induction range, and I believe they ultimately intended to go to solar, hop off-grid. It genuinely makes sense with this place, the location, the property, it's a great candidate for that stuff, with a good break-even potential 5-10 years out.

I'll feel better when I can get back up there and service the basement sump, then throw it on a battery backup/powerstation (power doesn't go out often, but ...), replace the HVAC wiring and install a smart t-stat with some zone controls, seal off the trapdoor hole I found for the sunroom addition which they apparently missed (and so did the inspector ), replace the small garage door, and we probably need to replace the 275gal oil tank sooner than later, also in the basement. Basement has a poured slab w/perimeter drain, nice SuperSump system, dimple membrane, encapsulation over membrane, I think they were really close to having something nice and dry down there, with minimal humidity.

 

Let me know how your power bill is this winter with those heat pumps. We put one in my MIL's 900 sqft cabin and we get close to 1k bills from it on cold months and on real cold days it just fucking dies. It's not a mr.cool but a higher end unit, or was, 5 years ago when we build the house. She also has a small propane stove that works in tandem which goes through about 100 dollars in propane a month. Great in the summer tho, her energy use is very limited during the warmer months. I'm like Hank Hill myself, give me that sweet, sweet propane!!

 

I remember you warning about that and a few other things, you've shared some sage advice thus far, and I appreciate it! Hope you don't think I'm not listening, it's all sinking in, I'm just one of those people who teeters between optimism and realism. I try not to be a pessimist, and it usually does my mental health well, even when all signs point to the worst

FYI, I'm also a gas man, they left a really nice nearly-new Weber Spirit grille that's similar to what I've got here in Atlanta. It almost makes up for the lack of gas service you can get to the house. I prefer cooking everything with gas. No dice. They killed the gas pipeline that was slated to go from roughly south Bangor to Bristol a couple years back. That would've been my ticket.

I don't have historicals on electric with the heat pumps yet, or how the bills changed from 2023 when they bought, through 2024, and into 2025. What I know so far is this:

• They did a shedload of efficiency improvements in the attic, basement, windows, doors, all part of a larger energy assessment to identify and resolve leaks, prevent heat loss/cold entry and have some hard numbers to prove those steps worked extremely well
• Winter '23-24, they used 525gal oil to heat the place, installed the heat pumps in 2024, and winter '24-25 winter they only used 100gal of oil, which save (at least) about $1300 in oil
• For heat '24-25 they split duty between the woodburning stove in the front living room, and used the dumb thermostat to cycle hot air from that room throughout the house, something I'm sure I can improve with a smart t-stat
• I haven't been able to figure out if the new Mistubishi heatpumps have a way to check usage-hours, might help calculate that
• Heating oil is running about $3/gal right now in the area, on-par with gasoline; they left us about 2½ cords of dry, seasoned wood in the woodstock for the stove, and another half cord or so waiting to be split
• If we updated the woodburning stove to something with automated pellet-feed, in combo with a smart t-stat, with minimal usage of
• There's a vintage woodburning stove (an old Scandia 308) in the basement also, technically still connected, but all dampers to/from it are closed

Will be interested to see how this winter goes, but I also know we won't be there for the entire winter. This year, we can only swing up there a week at a time, every 5-7 weeks. Slowly moving up furniture etc. as we go, and I'm hoping to line up to start building the ADU once snow melts.

I've almost got everything we could possibly need for smart devices to automate the function of the house as if it's occupied, track temps and humidity, track electrical usage, etc. and hope to know more by March/April timeframe.

 

Sounds like they did a ton of good stuff. And mitsubishi is supposed to be the best, the cold weather tech must have advanced since we bought ours 5-6 years ago. I hope i eat crow and we can just get a new unit and not entire new system!!

I also didn't know you have a wood stove, that or a pellet stove can go far too. We thought about adding a pellet stove and it was actually more expensive than electric and propane around here ha! I bet firewood is readily available up there tho! Keep us updated and good luck!

 

We looked at the pellet stoves MESys sells, looks like the fully-auto units run around $5k-6k. Pellets run around $250/ton. Breakeven is 5-7 years out if my math is right. Ultimately something like that would replace our oil furnace, which is hooked into the ducting in the house. They also sell a boiler centric unit if you're like our friends down the street (up there) and have water baseboard heaters. I dunno...

 

Absolutely exhausted and now laughing...

Chopped another bucket and half full of fire wood by hand... Loaded 2 trailer loads of logs for the dump and then took a shower... neighbor came over with a log splitter and said he has it for free for the rest of the week... so now the real fun begins... but not until I assemble another stand.





oh yeah, I mowed today too...

 

Had to leave work early due to a leak at the main water inlet to my house. Thankfully my neighbor saw it from his driveway and called to let me know.



I cut out the existing coupling and replaced it rather than add another possible failure point. Also put in a new ball valve shut-off to replace the old valve that didn't work, and replaced the hose bibb (or spigot, depending where in the country you live).




Even gave the copper pipes a little cleanup/polish since everything else looked nice and new.


I didn't worry about the drips of primer or visible glue since these pipes live inside of insulation year-round. I thought I was done and had saved myself hundreds (whole job cost $50 including a lifetime supply of 3/4" PVC, primer and glue). Then my wife hit me with the, "Well since you've got the water turned off anyway..." and I ended up replacing the push-pull shower valve in our guest/kids bathroom and then another hose bibb/spigot in the back yard.