Tag Archives: HVAC

2014/09/05 (F) WordPress 4.0

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We awoke to temperatures in the low 70’s this morning and by noon it was forecast to be 85 degrees F with rapidly rising humidity.  We turned our A-C on yesterday and left in on overnight and through the day today.

WordPress 4.0 was released yesterday and just before midnight I updated the four websites I manage, including this one.  I was looking forward to working with the new version today, but first things first.  Darryll called at 8:15 AM to make sure it was OK to come over.  We finished breakfast and then opened the garage and moved a few things that might be in his way. Although we would have liked to continue working in the garage during the morning, before it got really hot and humid, we were glad to have Darryll here working on the HVAC installation.

Instead of working on organizing the garage Linda worked at her desk and baked a loaf of bread while I assisted Darryll.  He wired up the library thermostat and showed me how the wires were connected.  He installed the return air grill, which required some minor drywall trimming, and installed a 6″ combustion air duct in the ceiling of the utility closet.  The duct had a screen on one end with a hood, like a dryer vent, and was open on the other end.  He installed it from the attic side with the hood in the attic and the open end sticking down through the ceiling into the closet.  I may decide to caulk or apply drywall compound to fill that gap between the duct and the hole Darryll made in the ceiling.

Darryll’s main focus, however, was hooking up the four pieces of duct, two rigid and two flexible, that will carry conditioned air into the library and installing the two ceiling registers.  That involved working in the attic which was very hot.  The flexible duct for the two ceiling registers was the same kind of product that was used in the main house; a pre-insulated flexible accordion tubing with an 8″ inside diameter that comes in 25′ lengths compressed to about 3′ for shipping.  To feed the two registers on the lower part of the west wall of the library he cut lengths of 8″ diameter (circular cross section) metal duct and assembled them.  He attached them to the supply air duct (plenum) with flange connectors.  He then slide insulation blankets (tubes) around them and connected the bottom ends of the duct into the back of the register ducts using several elbows to bring the duct around and close to the wall.  Finally, he slid the insulation down and secured it.

While Darryll was doing all of that I finished connecting the AC power to the condenser/compressor. That involved the following:

  • removing the terminal cover panel from the inside of the fused disconnect box
  • knocking out access holes on the right side and bottom
  • mounting the fused disconnect box to the side if the house
  • cutting a piece of 3/4″ plastic conduit for the cable from the soffit to the box
  • running the NM cable through the conduit
  • installing a watertight 90 degree elbow into the conduit
  • attaching the elbow to the side of the box
  • cutting, stripping, and connecting the line wires
  • cutting the plastic armor on the hookup cable to the right length
  • installing a straight screw-in watertight connector on the box end of the armor
  • installing a screw-in 90 degree elbow watertight connector on the condenser end
  • cutting, stripping, and connecting the load wires in the box
  • cutting, stripping, and connecting the load wires in the compressor.

I had Darryll check my work and then installed the fuses in the pull-out disconnect but was not able to get it to plug all the way in.  Darryll bent the blades slightly and got it to seat fully.  (I need to get two different fuses.  All he had were 30A fuses but 20A would be sufficient.  Also, the fuses he had in his truck were notched on one end.  I think fuses with full barrels on both ends would be better as they would have more contact surface than the notched ones.)  I reinstalled the terminal cover panel and closed the box.  I then re-installed the cover panel on the A-C compressor that Darryll had removed earlier.

With the power connected and most of the ducts run, we turned on the 120VAC/15A circuit breaker (for the unit in the utility closet) and the 240VAC/20A circuit breaker (for the compressor/condenser).  Darryll turned the thermostat mode switch to “cool” and the fan switch to auto and the A-C came to life.  Hooray!  I love it when that happens.

While Darryll finished installing the ducts and the registers I connected and mounted the thermostat for the garage furnace and then connected the wires on the other end of the cable to the terminals on the back of the unit according to Darryll’s instructions.  I removed the end panel from the Reznor ceiling-mounted garage furnace, removed the documentation packet from the inside, checked that the gas valve was in the “on” position, and put the end panel back on.  I also removed the protective plastic film from the bottom of the unit.

Darryll gathered up his tools, extra parts, and unused materials and loaded them in his truck. He then pressurized his portable air compressor and used it to pressurize the black iron gas pipe.  It has not been holding pressure, so he pumped it up to 15 PSI and we went in search of leaks with a spray bottle of soapy water.  We used my inspection mirror to see behind and under connections and found three leaks.  One was in a 2″ pipe fitting behind the garage, one was in a 2″ pipe fitting near the end of the run by the generator, and one was at an elbow in the 1/2″ pipe where it exits the utility closet on its way to the garage furnace.

Darryll was checking air temperature readings at the registers and in the main plenum of the library HVAC unit.  The library was 89 degrees F when he first turned the A-C on, and the attic was a lot hotter than that.  He connected his gauges to the compressor/condenser and said the readings were close enough to correct that he did not want to add or remove any refrigerant until the room had cooled down and stabilized at the requested temperature.

I was hoping he would get the job finished today but he needed some equipment, which he did not have with him, to work on the iron pipe and he was obviously tired from a long day working in the high heat and humidity.  He may be back tomorrow; if not, Monday or Tuesday. Whenever he returns, I have complete confidence that he will get it done before the gas meter is hung and that it will all work correctly for many years with very little attention other than changing a filter once or twice a year.

We deferred lunch until Darryll left.  We had chickpea salad on a slice of the bread Linda had baked earlier, corn-on-the-cob, and the last of some fresh pineapple.  Nothing says “summer” like organic, non-GMO corn-on-the-cob.

After lunch I called Bratcher Electric to check on the status of the estimate/quote that Mike was putting together to service our generator, convert it to natural gas, and run a 100A Service Entrance Cable from the transfer switch to the garage panel, converting it from a sub-panel to a main panel.  Karen said they have been really busy but he would work on it over the weekend.

I also called 1-800-Pack-Rat to arrange pickup of the storage container on Friday September 12th.  Steven was not able to schedule the pick-up during the call and said he would contact the local office and get back to me.  I made it clear that we did not want to roll over into another billing cycle and I was calling one week ahead of time as we had been instructed.  He assured me that it would not be a problem.  About an hour later we got a return call and follow up e-mail confirming pickup for Friday, September 12.

Late afternoon I checked on the library A-C to make sure it was not freezing up.  Everything looked OK.  The thermostat was set to 76 degrees F and the temperature was down to 77, so I bumped the setting up to 78 to let it cycle off and on.  Although Darryll did all of the heavy lifting on this project (literally) I spent my fair share of time in the attic on warm days installing the pull-down folding ladder and working on electrical wiring and attic lights.  It was very gratifying to see that all of this work—his, mine, and Linda’s—finally result in something that operated correctly.

We were relaxing and reading when severe weather watches and warnings for our area started arriving on our iPads.  Naturally we went outside to see what was going on.  We were both born and raised in the Midwest, the St. Louis, Missouri area, to be exact, and as kids in the 1950’s, threatening weather was a form of summertime entertainment.  Not that we were stupid; we learned from the adults around us when the show was over and it was time to head to the basement.  When I was about 5 years old we lost a plum tree in our backyard to a close encounter with a tornado.

The gathering storm. The clouds were very dramatic in all directions.

The gathering storm. The clouds were very dramatic in all directions.

The clouds were very dramatic but eventually gave way to a formless mass of gray with swirling winds and a few raindrops.  We checked the Weather Channel app and the Weather Underground Wundermap app on our iPads.  The radar returns showed that we were likely in for some rain, and we got some, but as often happens the worst of it passed north and south of us.  The rain we did get was very welcomed.  We had heavy rain on Monday (Labor Day), Keith mowed the grass on Tuesday, I spread grass seed around on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a flock of six wild turkeys feasted on the grass seed on Wednesday and Thursday. We needed a nice light rain to help the seeds germinate and take root rather than be eaten or washed away in a thunderstorm.

Storm clouds looking east.

Storm clouds looking east.

Around 7:30 PM our power flickered several times and we received e-mail messages from our generator letting us know that utility power had been lost and then quickly regained.  We decided to check the Kohler OnCue software to see what the generator was doing.  We thought sure we had installed the software on Linda’s computer, so we could monitor it from her desk in the kitchen/dining area, but it wasn’t there.  After much searching and head scratching we checked my old laptop and there it was!  When we thought about it we realized that the generator had been installed about a week before Linda started configuring her new Samsung laptop, so there was no way we had put the software on her machine.  We’ve been very, very busy the last 20 months, so it was not surprising to us that we had forgotten the exact sequence of events.

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Approaching from the southwest the clouds got more ominous.

The severe warnings expired at 8 PM and the severe watches at 9 PM, but that did not mean the rain was done.  A big fetch of moisture was located south of Chicago, Illinois and moving through southwest Michigan in our general direction.  The rain was forecast to continue into the early hours of tomorrow but be done before sunrise.  When the rains finally came it rained hard for a while.  Tomorrow is forecast to be a perfect Michigan day and I plan to buy another bag of grass seed to spot seed the areas that got washed away, again.

 

2014/07/25 (F) Assessing The Situation

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We finally got a letter yesterday from Consumer’s Energy requesting payment of the $200 fee for hanging the natural gas meter.  The letter included a rough drawing showing where the meter will be located (south end of the east side of the house where the propane currently enters).  It also shows the route the gas line will take to get there from the opposite side of the street.  The drawing did not correctly show our pull-through driveway in relation to the house, so the actual path will be different.  This was also the first indication we’ve had that the main line will be run down the opposite side of the street, which we prefer over running down our side of the street.

At 9:15 AM we still did not have any landscape workers on site so I went to my office to continue working on assessment items.  No one from Village Landscape Development showed up today and we never got a phone call.  It’s a way of doing business that I simply do not understand.

I finally got around to making my annual appointment with my dermatologist only to find out he is still on medical leave.  I didn’t know he was on medical leave in the first place.  They scheduled me with someone else in the same clinic.

After lunch I had a nice chat with our financial advisor / stock broker at Stifel-Nicholas even though we just saw him three weeks ago.  We got a post card a few days ago indicating that he and his assistant were moving to a different S-N office.  He had not mentioned this when we met in person so we wanted to see what the reason was for the move, which he gladly explained.  No cause for concern on our part, which left me free to worry about other things instead.

As long as I was making phone calls I called Butch to see how things were coming along following the sale of a large portion of their business assets to a company in Nevada.  They still have a lot of loose ends to tie up and a bus conversion to finish, so they are not sitting on their hands.  When the buyers were there a week ago they loaded up as many parts and as much material as they could transport in the vehicles they had, but by Butch’s estimate it wasn’t 20% of the total.

I also had a series of TXT messages with Joe Cannarozzi, the mobile mechanic who has taken care of our bus the last four years.  Joe is relocating from Chicago, Illinois to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and giving up the mobile aspect of his bus repair business.  Apparently his new place has a garage where he will continue to work on rigs, but they will have to come to him.  I hope that works out for him, but it leaves us having to find a mechanic closer to home or willing to travel here.

I finished writing the assessment items for the three remaining Michigan Assessment Consortium Common Assessment Development modules and got all seven sets of items e-mailed to the team.  With that task checked off, at least until I get some feedback, I was free to go to Lowe’s after dinner and pick up some of the materials I need for the HVAC projects in the garage.  There’s a better than even chance that we will not go to our ham radio club breakfast tomorrow in favor of an early start on the garage work.

 

2013_09_07 (Sat) Wi-Fi & Wall Art

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Our day started with the surprise discovery that we did not have our usual domestic hot water.  The HVAC guys were here yesterday working on the hydronic heating system, which includes the water heater, and I had a moment of concern (and annoyance, I admit).  I knew the “boiler” was working because they tested some of the heating loops yesterday before they left.  I also knew it was a zoned system with five loops and more than a dozen valves, so it was possible a valve was left in the wrong position.  Sure enough, the valves for the Florida room (library) loop and the domestic hot water loop were both closed.  I opened them, but unfortunately the hot water tank did not return to its normal temperature in time for either of us to get the hot showers we had planned on taking when we got up.  But we left for our usual Saturday morning ham radio breakfast in South Lyon knowing that we would have our usual hot water when we returned.

There was a good turnout for breakfast and we chatted for a couple of hours.  (BTW: the extended group breakfast chat is one of the hallmarks of retirement, and often occurs on a workday.  It just so happens that Saturdays work best for the members who like to attend the SLAARC breakfast.)

Following breakfast we headed to the recycling center in Howell.  We do not have curbside recycling, so we have to take our recyclables to Recycle Livingston on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Recycle Livingston runs a very efficient operation and always seems to have lots of workers.  We presume are (mostly) volunteers.  Besides our normal recyclables, we have been accumulating corrugated cardboard as we continue to unpack moving boxes.

When we got back to the house we set up the Wi-Fi enabled main thermostat, a Honeywell Focus Pro TH6320WF that TOMTEK installed yesterday.  This thermostat is located at the start of the main floor hallway and controls the heating loop for the living room / dining room / kitchen zone and the air-conditioning for the whole main floor.  When properly configured it allows us to monitor and control these two parts of the HVAC system.

The TH6320WF was fairly easy to set up, in part because it is a very clever device, and in part because the directions are very clearly written.  When power was first applied it came up in Wi-Fi Setup mode and behaved like a wireless host (router or access point), broadcasting its own name/ SSID .  When I opened my iPad2 and scanned for available Wi-Fi networks it was on the list and I selected it.  I then opened my browser (Safari) and pointed it to the thermostat’s home page.  From there, I activated the thermostat’s wireless client mode and connected it to our primary home wireless network.  At that point the thermostat had an IP address from the AT&T gateway and was able to communicate with a website whose purpose is remote monitoring and control of this type of equipment.  Before that could happen, however, I had to create an account on the website.  The account creation process sent us an e-mail.  Following the instructions in the e-mail we completed the registration and activation process.  We are now able to remotely monitor and control this thermostat using a smartphone, iPad, or computer.

The rest of the afternoon was spent selecting and hanging wall art.  While the hanging part can be tedious, deciding what to hang and where to hang it takes time, judgment, and patience.  It was heavily overcast and starting to rain by the time we got started.  The living room tends to be a bit dark on this kind of day so we decided to hang photographs in the recreation room.  We hung 40 objects in the last three days and have at least two dozen more to install.  Getting the “objects d’art” on the “walls d’house” has dramatically transformed the look and feel of the interior and made a significant dent in the “clutter d’move”.

By 6:00 PM we were tired and a bit hungry.  Since Linda had not had time to prepare our evening meal we decided to try the El Patron Mexican restaurant in Howell.  The vegetarian fajitas worked well for us, they had Dos Equis amber on draft, the wait staff was pleasant and efficient, and our waiter had a subtle sense of humor.  Nuf said.

 

2013_09_06 (Fri) House Systems

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I have often commented here about the “house” systems in our converted coach; the water (fresh and sewage) and electrical (lights, appliances) systems and their components that make a large motorized vehicle behave like a stationary house.  Those components include things that are found in any stationary dwelling (water and sewage pipes, plumbing fixtures, electrical wires, circuit breakers, switches, light fixtures, appliances, etc.), things that are found in some stationary dwellings (sewage tanks, macerator pumps, well pumps, fresh water pressure tanks, reverse osmosis systems, power generators and transfer switches), and things that are not commonly found in stationary homes (yet) (various gauges, batteries, inverters & chargers, power protection devices, solar panels, and even wind turbines.)  RVs do not have geothermal or low-head hydro systems.

Today, however, was about actual house systems, that is to say, systems for our actual (stationary) house.  We have had a “rotten egg” smell in our domestic fresh water system since we bought the house and finally called Adams Well Drilling and Water Treatment, a local Howell-based company, to come out and take a look at our current equipment.  Brian arrived as scheduled at 9 AM and we walked him through the complete fresh water system.  He took some water samples directly from the well (before any filtering, softening, or other treatment).  The good news was that our dissolved iron was at 1.2 ppm (mg/L), which is a treatable level, but above the 0.3 ppm at which iron starts to become a problem in the water.  The less good news came from two directions: 1) that our Water Boss water softener wasn’t doing a very good job and 2) we appeared to have iron bacteria, which a regular water softener doesn’t treat very well (or at all) even with the special “iron out” salt.

We discussed a range of options but Brian’s recommendation, which we accepted, was a new water softener and a “carbon unit”.  The carbon unit is self cleaning using special chlorine crystals, and is very effective in dealing with iron bacteria.  We will also have new sediment and taste filter housing installed as part of the installation.  There may be other issues with the water system in this house, which was built in 1977, but the water treatment equipment was probably due to be replaced regardless of what else we do.  The following website from the Illinois Department of Public Health gives a nice synopsis of iron in drinking water:   http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/factsheets/ironFS.htm .

The other fresh water issue we have, based on the testing that was done as part of the purchase inspection, is Arsenic.  The level that came back from the lab was 34 ppb (ug/L).  The old “safe” level was 50 ppb, but the current “safe” level is 10 ppb.  Zero ppb would be ideal, of course, but is not achievable at a reasonable cost. To further complicate matters, there are two kinds of Arsenic found in well water: Arsenic 5 and Arsenic 3.  The prior water testing did not test for these separately, but the sample Brian took today is going to a private lab that can/will test for each separately.  We were told previously that Arsenic 5 is the more typical and is mostly removed by Reverse Osmosis (RO) but that Arsenic 3 is not removed by RO.  The house has a Culligan RO system installed that supplies water to the refrigerator and a special faucet in the kitchen sink.  It was in the house when we bought it and we decided to continue renting it until we could determine our true needs and consider our options.  Not knowing if we had Arsenic 3 in our water, we purchased a special Arsenic 3 filter from Culligan which installs in the manifold after the RO membrane.  We made a call to Culligan to check on our contract and got a call back from our rep (Jeff) who has been a good guy to work with.  Long term it makes no sense to rent the unit, so we are exploring purchasing it or removing it and having Adams install a similar system.

While Brian was doing his thing, Darryl showed up from DMC HVAC.  Darryl did the HVAC installation for our office/library/garage addition/renovation at the old house and did a great job.  When it comes to contractors I like to use local people when I can but I also like to stick with people we have worked with before.  Darryl is not local to our new place, but he is a known quantity whose work we respect.  Although we have a loop from the hydronic hot water heating system in the Florida room/library, it has some issues.

The major issue is that the supply and return lines run through the ceiling and into the wall which adjoins the garage.  We think this house originally had a detached garage with a concrete patio between the garage and the end of the house.  Sometime later a roof was added connecting the house and the garage and the two open sides were closed in with 16 feet of doorwall and fixed glass panels.  The only practical way to extend the heating systems was to run the pipes overhead.

The other issue is that this space does not have air-conditioning.  (There is a small window mount unit in the garage wall.  Yup, it exhausts heat into the garage.)  We have space in a corner of the garage by this room to install a small forced-air furnace/air-conditioner and get the air to/from the room easily along the garage ceiling.  We would also like a ceiling mounted forced-air furnace in the garage so we can store paints and other things that we want to be able to keep above freezing, or bump the temperature up a bit and have a comfortable place to work.  Darryl installed one of these at our old house, and it was a very nice feature.

In anticipation of this work, we had a second propane tank installed next to the garage when the whole house backup generator was installed back in May.  I told AmeriGas at the time what we planned to do so they did a temporary installation of the tank and ran a line directly to the generator.  One of the thinks Darryl will need to do is mount a permanent pressure regulator on the side of the garage and then run pipe to get the propane over to the two new furnaces.

As Darryl was finishing up, Tom and Tom showed up from TOMTEK HVAC.  TOMTEK is a Howell-based company that we decided to have service our hydronic heating system.  It’s an old Weil-McLain Gold unit with some corroded parts.  It was also filled with water.  When we looked at the house originally the heating loop to the Florida room was shut off.  It turned out that something had failed while the owners were away during the winter and that loop had frozen and ruptured.  They repaired it prior to closing, but I never did understand why the system didn’t have an appropriate anti-freeze in it instead of water.  As of today, it does.

One of the nice things about hydronic heat is that it is easily zoned.  Our system has four zones, each with its own thermostat.  One of those thermostats also controls the air-conditioning for the main floor of the house.  That may seem odd, but it is a consequence of the A/C unit probably being added sometime after the house was built.  As a result, the air handler is in the attic and all of the air ducting is too.  It’s a single system controlled from a single point, and is completely separate from the hydronic heating system except for this one shared thermostat.  It was the failure of this particular thermostat that prompted us to go ahead and contact TOMTEK and have them out to service the system and install four new thermostats.  The one that controls the living/dining rooms and kitchen, as well as the air-conditioning, is a Wi-Fi enabled device that will allow us to monitor the temperature in the hallway, which is the most central point in the house, and control the main heating loop and the air-conditioner remotely if we so desire.  Pretty cool; literally.  The “boiler” needed some additional service for which TOMTEK had to order parts, so they will be back another day to finish up the maintenance on the unit.

Overlapping contractors made for a somewhat intense day.  Fortunately there were two of us available to interact with them, and they all got the attention they needed from us, when they needed it.  As soon as Brian was done I called Adams Well Drilling and Water Treatment and scheduled him to come back on the 11th to install the new water treatment equipment.