Tag Archives: HVAC platform

2014/0729 (T) Utility Closet

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It was in the mid-40’s when we got up this morning so Linda made oatmeal with walnuts, dates, raisins, cinnamon, and a little brown sugar.  It was a hardy and satisfying breakfast on a chilly morning.  I checked in with some of the blogs I follow using Feedly on my iPad and then, as we were getting ready to work, Steve showed up with four workers (Kyle, Tommy, Spencer, and Mark).  Steve did not stay and work today but Mark operated the excavator and the guys got a lot done.  By the end of the day we were finally able to see how it was all going to come together.

Our focus today was the utility closet in the garage.  Much of what we did required two people, and we made a long day of it.  We finished framing the west wall, stood it up, got it into position, plumbed it, and secured it.  We then framed the south wall with the rough opening for the door.

The installation of the door was challenging.  All the framing was plumb in two directions but our first attempt at installing it resulted in the bottom latch side not closing by almost an inch when the top latch side was seated correctly.  Everything was plumb on both jambs, the door was level and plumb, but something was obviously wrong.

As we started to break for lunch I got a call from Darryll.  He was wondering if we could run the 2” iron gas pipe through the attic from the east end of house to the west side of the garage.  I told him I would check the access and call him back.  While he was on the phone I got clarification on the size and location of the HVAC unit and the ducts for the conditioned air supply and return.  As a result I will have to move a duplex outlet I installed the other day, run a new/longer wire up the sub-panel, put insulation into the lower half of the wall cavities, and install/finish a piece of drywall.

We spent the afternoon trying to figure out what was wrong with the door installation and fix it.  Everything was plumb and we thought everything was square.  It turned out that the two ends of the wall were out of alignment which was forcing the bottom of the door out.  (The inside angle between the west wall and the south wall was less than 90 degrees.)  Once we realized what was wrong we were able to fix it.

We had a green salad and Amy’s roasted vegetable pizza for supper at 6:30 PM.  After relaxing for a while on the deck with a glass of Leelanau Cellars Summer Sunset wine I secured the plywood platform to the base with screws and then caulked the two edges where it met the back and right side walls.

We drove to Lowe’s at 8 PM to get a box of steel cut masonry nails.  I need two or three to secure the free end of the bottom plate of the west wall.  While we were there I got a set of new blades for the Milwaukee Sawzall reciprocating saw but forgot to buy more shims.  We always like to leave a reason for a return trip to the home supply stores.

 

2014/07/28 (M) Reprieve

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I was awake early, fell back asleep, and finally got up at 7:30 AM.  By the time I had the coffee made Linda was showered, dressed, and starting to assemble breakfast.  We had barely finished eating when we heard the happy sound of landscape workers.  Steve had five young men on site to do the hand work and was here most of the morning and part of the afternoon running the excavator.  By the time they all left for the day a little before 5 PM they had made a lot of progress with the retaining wall project behind the house in spite of the muddy conditions from yesterday’s rains.  It’s amazing what can be accomplished when people and equipment show up and work all day.  If that happens the rest of the week they might actually get done by Friday.  Linda and I figure it will be Labor Day.

As planned, I resumed work on the utility closet in the garage after breakfast and a brief chat with Steve.  I cut a 48″x48″ piece of 3/4″ plywood down to 46″x40″ and did some minor trimming to get a clean fit on the base we built yesterday.  I then cut the top and bottom plates and the end studs for the west wall from 8′ long 2″x4″s.  I ran out of the 3.5″, 16d nails I needed so I drove to Lowe’s to get a 5 pound box of them.  While I was there I also picked up some primer and paintable caulk.  I assembled the outer pieces of the wall and added an additional stud to the free (south) end but did not cut/install the other three intermediate studs.

The wall is taller at the north end than the south end because the concrete garage floor drops slightly towards the north wall of the garage.  I stood the wall up to make sure it fit snugly (it did) and to force the top plate into alignment.  I was pleased to see that the free end will plumb quite well in both directions.  I will measure the other three studs tomorrow, lower the wall down to install them, and then stand the wall back up, plumb it, and secure it to the north wall, the platform base, and the ceiling.  Once that is done I will secure the plywood platform to the base using screws and caulk the edges along the north and east walls.  When the caulk has cured, hopefully later in the day, I will prime the plywood and the exposed 2″x12″ base board.

I quit working on the construction around noon, got cleaned up, put a load of laundry in the washing machine, had a bite of lunch, and withdrew to my office.  I searched through my Outlook inboxes for all of the e-mails related to today’s FMCA Education Committee meeting only to discover that the meeting was scheduled for next Monday and would be an informal work session rather than a formal meeting.  That was a lucky reprieve for me and allowed me to catch up on other e-mail and work on the roster and financial records for our FMCA Freethinkers chapter.

I had hoped to spend the evening selecting and processing a few photos and uploading a few blog posts but I ran out of time and did not get to these tasks.  We streamed last week’s episode of Endeavor on our Apple TV device and then turned in for the night.

 

2014/07/27 (N) Attic Access

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We had a long day of work today.  We were up just after 7 AM, had a light breakfast of toast, fruit juice, and coffee, read a few blog posts, and got to work.  My first task was to apply a second, light coat of drywall compound to all of the divots in the wall.

Our main morning task was the installation of the fold-down ladder for the garage attic.  It was definitely a two-person job.  Per the instructions, we installed temporary installation boards to support the assembly while we secured it in place.  The installation required one of us to be in the attic and that job fell to me.  We put the assembly on top of a plastic shelving unit to get it close to the ceiling.  Once I was in the attic with all of the tools I would need, including a headlamp, Linda slid the shelving unit so the assembly was directly under the rough opening.  It was still too far from the ceiling for me to reach from above so she placed two footstools under it.  I was then able to reach one end from above and pull it up into the opening while she lifted the other end into position from below.

We read and followed the directions carefully so we already had the pull string and T-handle installed.  That allowed Linda to move the plastic shelves out of the way, carefully open the door from below, and position the step ladder.  I dropped her the cord for the worklight and then had enough light to work comfortably.  We temporarily secured the unit with deck screws.  They were cheap screws and the heads tended to strip easily, but we got them in far enough to hold the unit in place while I installed the lag screws.

The 10 lag screws got installed through pre-drilled holes, six of which went through metal hinge plates.  The instructions said to drill through these holes into the trusses and headers, but the folding ladder hardware made that difficult, and my drill buts were all a bit short to do much.  By cutting the zip ties and partially unfolding the ladder I was able to get all 10 lag screws most of the way in with my drill.  They all had to be shimmed.  The final tightening was done with a socket and ratchet.

We took a break for lunch around 1 PM and had leftover miso soup, tofu hot dogs, and fresh apples.  I made a quick run to Lowe’s to get some additional electrical parts I needed to install lights and a light switch in the garage attic.  While I was there I also bought a baby gate for our basement stairs.  Up until now we have blocked the landing for the basement stairs with a couple of chairs when grand-daughter Madeline has come to visit.  Now that she has successfully spent the night at our house we anticipate many more such visits and wanted a more permanent solution.

The device I bought had a gate with a latch.  It was designed to be installed under tension, but the directions said it had to be anchored to the walls if used at the top of a flight of stairs.  We were not thrilled about mounting it to the walls, but we did.  The installation took about an hour to complete.

Back in the garage I found an old, unopened drywall sanding/finishing sponge.  It had a 1/4″ thick coarse pad on one side for sanding.  The regular sponge side was used to wipe off the drywall and slightly wet the areas to be sanded.  I let the sanded areas dry, wiped everything down, and applied a coat of white exterior semi-gloss to the area of the two existing walls and the ceiling that will be inside the utility closet.

The probability of rain rose steadily though the day and finally resulted in thunderstorms around 4:30 PM.  Steve said yesterday he would be here today and I tried to get him to understand that based on the forecast he needed to be here early.  He wasn’t.  He showed up with the excavator about an hour after the rains, by which point the retaining wall work site had turned to mud.

He took the excavator back there anyway and we watched him work while we had dinner, which consisted of a very nice green salad with strawberries and the rest of the Pad Thai from last night.  (Even left over it was still exceptional.)  He was moving boulders and a lot of dirt trying to get rid of the small mountain range that blocked the flow of water away from our lower deck and was spreading the dirt around in an effort to create some of the final grading.  He brought a helper with him and they had long lengths of drain pipe that I think the intended to install.  But the skies darkened, the rain started, the wind came up, and the warning sirens came on.  He shut off the machine and the two of them made a run for their truck and left.  More rain is forecast for tonight with a chance of thunderstorms, possibly severe.  The probability for rain on Tuesday is currently 60%, and stays at 40% through Wednesday.  At this juncture it appears that they won’t get much work done here this week, and their machine may be stuck here until it dries out.

After dinner Linda and I finally built the base for the platform where the library HVAC unit will be installed.  It’s a 40″ deep x 46″ wide box with center cross bracing.  It’s made of pieces of 2 x 12 on edge.  We set it in the northeast corner of the garage, leveled it with shims, and secured it to the studs in the walls with 3.5″ nails.  I had to make all of the cuts with my Rockwell 8″ circular saw as the chop saw won’t cut something that wide.  I did not cut the plywood platform as I need to install it after the new (west) wall of the utility closet is in place so I can nail through the base into the wall studs.  I will, however, cut the plywood tomorrow before the wall is built as I will be able to set it on the base and trace around it on the underside to get a perfect fit.

My goal for tomorrow is to cut the platform, build the west wall, set it in place and anchor it, and install the platform.  Linda has a 12:30 PM dentist appointment, so I will have to do most of this work by myself.  By that point I will need to get cleaned up, shift gears, and get ready for a 4 PM FMCA Education Committee work session.

 

2014/07/23 (R) My Platform

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The primary elections are just around the corner but my platform has nothing to do with politics.  My platform is a 46″ x 40″ surface 12″ above the floor in the northeast corner of the garage, or will be once I build it.  This platform will be the base for the new HVAC unit for the library and I need to have it built before the equipment gets here and Darryll shows up to install it.  Once the unit is installed I need to enclose it to isolate it from the garage to prevent explosive vapors or noxious fumes from entering the combustion chamber or fresh air circulation.  That will require the construction of two walls one of which will have an exterior grade door.

John’s chop saw, which I borrowed the other night, allows me to make more accurate cuts (clean and square) than I can with my circular saw.  In the meantime I have some work to do removing/installing a few studs in the north wall of the garage and running some new electrical wire.  I need to run 120V 15A circuits for the furnace portion of the library unit and for the ceiling mounted garage furnace and a 240V 20A circuit for the library air-conditioner.  Eventually I will have a 240V 30A outlet for our radial arm saw, which would be great for the woodworking aspects of this project, but that’s a project for another day.

Three landscapers showed up a little before 8 AM (Tommy, Matt, and Spencer).  Tommy was on the phone with Steve getting their instructions for the day and then they got to work building an additional section of the west retaining wall with medium size boulders and preparing the area under the east end of the deck for a layer of egg rock.  They took off around 9:45 AM for some unknown reason, but the sound of their truck reminded us to put the trash out at the street for pickup.  They were back in a little while, worked until noon, and took their lunch break.  By 3:30 PM they had the boulder wall built, the egg rock placed, a strip of edging set into a small trench, and small boulders placed on the eastern slope below the large boulders.  That certainly looked like progress.

Linda worked at her desk until mid-afternoon and then started working on dinner.  Although simple in presentation at the table, she put a lot of time into our meal.  She made a potato and lentil curry that was very good with deep, complex flavors, and garlic naan bread.  Both were as good as anything I have ever had at an Indian restaurant and the naan was vegan, made with unsweetened soy milk in place of dairy milk and olive oil in place of dairy butter.

I spent most of the day taking the measurements I needed to turn my mental concept for the utility closet into a set of design drawings from which I could produce a material list.  By supper time I had a good set of drawings to guide the carpentry work but was still puzzling over some electrical issues.  By the time Linda had dinner ready I was ready to set thus project aside for the night.

It was after 7 PM by the time we finished eating and cleaned up, but that left us plenty of time to sit on the deck and enjoy a cool northwest breeze and the muted light of scattered clouds.  It eventually got too cool to stay outside so I worked at my computer until bedtime.