As stuff breaks, we get new stuff. We have lots of new stuff. :-(

And yes, I'm using the term "appliance" loosely here.

Central AC and Automatic Thermostat

OK this one was really an upgrade before we bought the house, but it's worth mentioning here. Especially with the fully automatic thermostat that flips between heat and AC without us ever having to touch a thing. We had the work done after we bought the house but before we moved in, and we had the cost worked into the mortgage. It was uber cheap to add the approx $4000 cost into the mortgage, so we did it. I love it because I'm lazy and It Just Works. My father thinks it's nuts that the AC might kick on in the middle of winter because the house gets too hot for some reason. I think if we're cooking a big meal and the house gets too hot, it should cool itself down.

I even bought an add-on external temperature sensor for the thermostat so you can tell what the outside temperature is. It was only about $30 via mail-order and hookup is as simple as two wires going up through the attic and out to the sensor which mounts on an outside wall under the eaves. Now, checking on the outside temperature is as easy as pressing a button in the hall and looking at the screen on the thermostat. We use it daily to check on the outside temp before we go out in the morning, to see the temp before we go to bed so we know if there's likely to be ice on the cars in the morning. That helps us plan for a few extra minutes to warm them up vs. getting a few extra minutes of sleep.

Heater

In the dead of winter, with houseguests coming over, the heater died. The first place we called to come look at (Sears) forgot to show up after a whole day of waiting, and the house was getting mighty cold. The next place we called did show up promptly (for a hefty double-fee because it was after 8pm by then), and promptly pronounced the heater dead, with installation scheduled for the next day - also a rush job because it was so late. I ended up paying about $4000 for a spiffy new "90% efficient" heater, but at least it works and the house stays warm. It's also much quieter than the old model. The install was fine, but a bit of a rush, so after they left I needed to re-do the vent pipe to be vertical and not stick up so much above the roof, and add a fresh air intake from outside the house (so I can insulate the garage later and still have the heater have a source of fresh air for combustion), and seal up the hole in the ceiling sheetrock in the garage.

I also took the time to re-wire the main furnace electrical hookup so it was a plug-in with a switch for easy disconnect. This also allows easy plug-in to a generator if the power goes out. I also moved the thermostat wire from running in with the electrical wiring to coming up along the ductwork and in through a separate hole in the furnace case as is usually done. The conduit used previously was just too small for the electrical wires and the thermostat wire, and the wire that got used was all the wrong colors. It was fun to watch the furnace installers figure that out, though.

I also need to add a dedicated external air intake for combustion air that goes outside the house. When the furnace was originally installed, the garage was uninsulated, and leaked air badly enough that taking combustion air from the garage was not an issue. But, once the garage is insulated I must provide a source of external fresh air to prevent depleting the oxygen in the garage and causing various unsavory issues.

Here's the heater, as installed. Note the huge hole in the ceiling and how the vent pipe is run. It's on the wrong side of the truss and runs at an angle. The vent pipe above the roof isn't plumb as a result, and it looks...funky. It's functional, though...

I finally got around to running the vent pipe properly so it was plumb and not sticking way up over the roof at an odd angle, and I also extended the fresh air intake pipe run into the attic. The capped off black iron pipe coming out of the floor in the corner of the first picture is the original gas line feed to the furnace and water heater. It was abandoned in place when the gas meter was moved to the other side of the house as part of the generator work. It runs all the way out to the side of the house and is capped off there. It got re-used as a an air line to the side yard. The drywall here was patched as part of the work on the garage; that page shows some of the air line work too.

Washer and Dryer

We had previously been using cheap used washers and dryers, and when we bought the house it came with a set that was matching and in good shape, so we put our others into storage and used the ones that came with the house. Then the dryer died, so we grabbed ours out of storage. Then that dryer died. And it was the replacement for a dryer that had died while we were living in a previous rental unit. The washer was the same first one I bought used for about $40 when I rented my first house years ago and was still going strong. Hmmm. Dryers don't go well with me for some reason, I guess. Anyway, I was fed up with fighting with used dryers every other year, so I decided to go get a new matched set. Deb and I both agreed that we wanted a huge set to be able to wash our king size comforter and pretty much anything else we could throw at it, plus I liked the water and power savings from the new front-loading units. So we bought a top-of-the-line Whirlpool Duet pair. Then Home Depot delivered us the display units by mistake, with the drawer pedestals underneath that we had not paid for. In the end, I negotiated for us to keep the display units with the pedestals for no extra charge in exchange for them not having to make an extra delivery for "new" units and for us accepting the cosmetically imperfect display units. Sometimes you get lucky. I was just sick of fighting with stuff and wanted my washer and dryer again so I could reliably have clean and dry underwear when I needed it.

I also decided to turn the washer and dryer set 90 degrees while I was changing them to make better use of the space and put them under the shelf on the side wall. I had to fabricate an extended drain hookup, as well as buy very long hoses for the water to the washer. The dryer hookup turned out to be easy - the cord was already long enough and the vent was in a plausibly good place either way. One added bonus is that I can now reach the water shutoff valve for the whole house - you can see it in the middle of the new section of sheetrock near the floor, along with the pressure reducer sticking out just above it.

Some time after we got this washer/dryer pair, we bought a gas version of this dryer and had it installed. This was part of the gas appliance upgrades for the generator - with a gas dryer we can wash and dry laundry while we're on generator power, even with a smaller generator. I didn't bother to take a separate picture of the gas dryer because it looks exactly the same on the front and has the exact same functionality. (Well almost exactly, it had one extra mode on it - whee.) It just gets it's heat to dry the clothes from burning natural gas instead of from an electric heating element. You can see some pictures of the gas line work in the area of the dryer on the generator page. This was our first "upgrade" of an appliance we had bought that was still working perfectly fine.

Refrigerator

It keeled over right before a holiday, and we were restricted to getting one that was in stock. I really wanted black, but I had to live with white because we really needed one ASAP. At least I got a larger unit and one that has water/ice in the door. I did have to run a water line for the icemaker, but that wasn't too hard.

The first temporary line to the icemaker. I used cheap-o PVC braided hose T'ed off the cold water feed for the kitchen sink, run down under the floor, and back up into the wall. Eventually, I know I'd have to replace it with a real water line, so I just set the drywall back in place until then. Note the spiffy coiling up of the excess water line inside the wall with tie wraps. Very classy...

Later on (years later, sadly), I replaced the PVC braided line with a dedicated shut-off valve T'ed into the main cold water line under the house and PEX tubing running up to the in-wall shut-off valve behind the fridge. This was my first attempt at using PEX, and wow, is it easy. Very much worth it, and highly recommended, even though you do have to buy a crimping tool for it. It took way longer to do the drywall patching and repainting afterwards than it did to run the water line with PEX. I only had white paint at the time, so that's what I painted with. It's a tad bright and noticeable...

I picked up some paint that's a bit closer to being a color match and used that to touch things up. Still not perfect, but much less noticeable. It's good enough until we repaint the entire kitchen; it is behind the fridge, after all.

Dishwasher

The one that came with the house was original - circa 1976 when the house was built. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. It finally went to dishwasher heaven and we bought a new one. It's much quieter, holds more stuff, and cleans much better than the old one - no more pre-washing! Yay!

Stove

Another replace-the-original-appliance, but this time it was not under duress. We decided to convert to gas for the range - see our generator page for more details on the gas conversion project. After looking about at the various units, we opted to get a dual-fuel stove (gas range on top, electric oven on bottom) for the perfect combination. Gas works great for a cook top and gets you more firepower and better heat control, and electric on the oven is preferred, especially when you get the convection features - which we did. It looks good and the cookies it makes are excellent.

Tankless Water Heater

Another upgrade initiated by our generator changes. The water heater was getting old anyway, I knew I wanted a tankless hot water heater eventually anyway, so when I had to upgrade the gas lines and meter for the generator I planned to size this into the eventual plan. When I found a chance to get 12 months same as cash on a Rinnai Tankless Hot Water Heater and get a great deal on all the gas line work inside the house as part of it, I decided to go for it on this upgrade. The never ending hot shower is here! It did require a new outlet to be run so the electronics had a place to plug into, but that was pretty easy to do. The current draw is <1A, so I just added an outlet on the existing heater circuit, which means it's got generator backed power.

One nifty feature is a separate electronic control panel that allows you to easily adjust the hot water temperature from the unit. We set ours for the hottest shower we like to take so that we just turn the water all the way to full hot and use it. That way we've not paying to over-heat the water just to mix it with cold water and cool it back down again. It also prevents scalding, and has the side effect of making the shower immune to the effects of flushing toilets, the washer, and other sudden changes in the amount of cold or hot water being used elsewhere in the house. Other than a slight pressure drop, you don't even notice it. I think that's a pretty neat "feature".

Garage Heater

I want a warm garage to be able to work out there in the winter. The man cave needs some fire, after all. The first step here was to procure a used gas powered heater off Craigslist, and then plot out the install. As part of this, I'm running some speaker wires in the garage so the man cave has rhythmic noise making capabilities. I will also need to insulate the garage to prevent heating costs from going sky-high, and I should drywall it too. That means getting final electrical and other such stuff in the walls before I insulate and drywall.

Here are some pictures of the existing gas line work around the furnace and tankless water heater. Since I was having new gas lines run and a bigger meter installed as part of the generator conversion work, I sized the gas lines to accommodate the maximum number of possible upgrades in the future. The plan was to make sure that gas lines for each of these will be stubbed out and/or tie-in locations available for each of these items. I did that for everything except the heater in the garage. As they say, two out of three ain't bad... (Cue Meatloaf here..) So, I need to un-do a bunch of this and tap into this piping above the ceiling to tee-off a line to the new garage heater, and at the same time I wanted to move the gas lines here to be closer to the back wall and better braced. They were sort of hanging in space and not very well protected, which concerned me.

The future location of the garage heater gas line.

Spare tee added above the center of the garage, with shutoff valve. Just trying to be ready for future work, just in case we have great ideas for new gas line work...

New gas line work around the furnace and tankless water heater. Note that it's strapped down to blocking on the side wall now, and tucked away quite nicely.

Gas line to the new garage heater, sans blocking to hold it in place.

Same as above, this time with blocking and pipe clamps. It's very solidly mounted now.

Gas Line to BBQ

As part of the work to insulate my floors, I wanted to finish up on any remaining projects in the crawlspace that could reasonably be done in the near term. The will minimize the need to work down there with insulation bits falling on my head. One of the bigger projects was running a gas line extension out under the deck to the BBQ so I could forever end my repeated trips out to get a full bottle, and dealing with the bottle running out (or already being out) at inopportune times. Most of the work was done with the new corrugated stainless steeling tubing (CSST) that's getting a lot of attention these days. It's much easier to run for the bulk of the system - pulls like wore, no fittings except at the ends, and can easily match up to any existing beds in the system. Black iron was used to build manifolds with shutoff valves and for the final stubs for the hookups. I also left an extra shutoff valve and capped off stub in this work for possible future use. It's cheap and easy to do now (about $20 in parts), and much harder to do later.

The box of CSST goodies - two 25' rolls of tubing (one 3/4" and one 1/2"), and four fittings with all of the gaskets and such (two fittings each in 3/4" and 1/2").

The manifold that will go under the den (two shutoff valves) and the manifold that will go under the deck (one shut-off valve).

The 3/4" CSST will come into the left manifold and have two shut-off valves T'ed into it. One is 3/4" valve to a capped off stub for future expansion, the other is a 1/2" valve that will connect to the 1/2" CSST that will run out under the deck to the grill. Each manifold includes a "crap trap" on the bottom of it to help prevent junk from getting into the equipment. Some gas feeds are really filthy, and this is good practice to put into the system.

Same, with the hookups that will go on the main gas line that already exists under the den. I had the folks doing the previous work leave me a hookup point under the den when they hooked up the line to the stove. I wasn't sure if it was 1" or 1-1/4", so I got fittings for both. Turns out, it was 1", so I have some spare 1-1/4" fittings...

The marked out locations where the line to the grill will go through the back "stem wall" of the house under the deck. Gas line is on the left, conduit for an electrical outlet is on the right.

The dual-valve manifold is now installed to the bottom of the joists, the 1/2" CSST is run out under the deck, and the electrical conduit is run and the outlet for the BBQ hooked up. It has lights in it, so it needs power. And now I have another outlet out near the yard for use doing whatever I need power to do.

The outlet and 1/2" CSST at the back of the deck. They are safely tucked away under the edge of the deck. The CSST is yet to be hooked up to the manifold and quick-connect fitting that came with the grill hookup kit, so it's left long, coiled up, and the factory rubber cap is still on it to keep junk out of the line until I do the final hookup.

I had to extend the dual manifold input about 5' to get it close enough to hook up to the 3/4" CSST run. The tubing was only sold in rolls of 25' or 50', and 50' vs. 25' was quite expensive compared to an ~5' section of black iron pipe and a coupler. This was easy, cheap, and worked well. Sold!

The manifold that will go under the deck for the grill hookup. Note the crap trap, shut-off valve, quick connect fitting that came with the BBQ hookup kit, and the small piece of decking material it's all mounted to. The decking material is a spacer so that the quick connect isn't smashed against the deck support and impossible to use. I'll screw the entire assembly to the deck with four decking screws once the CSST is connected to it.

This is the existing gas line feed that was put here for the stove previously. The 1" pipe comes direct from the meter connections on the side of the house, and they used 1/2" CSST to make the run over to the stove. I'll be removing the pipe plug from the "bottom" of the T, and adding a stub + T + stub + cap to it. The extra stub + cap on the bottom will be the crap trap, and the T will have a 3/4" outlet to feed a short stub with a valve on it. The 3/4" CSST will hook up to the output of the valve. Why add a valve here? It makes it easier to test the different pieces of the system, and easier to turn things off on this leg of the system if I need to make changes later.

Future Gas Appliance Upgrades

When I had new gas lines run and a bigger meter installed as part of the generator conversion work, I sized the gas lines to accommodate the maximum number of possible upgrades in the future. These have stubs available to tie into, one in the crawlspace and one in the attic. See notes above for the garage heater and BBQ gas line.

The only possible item left that I might add is a small "portrait" gas fireplace in the den. This will replace the existing huge - and completely unused - wood burning fireplace w/insert. When I do this I can remove the chimney and reclaim valuable space in both the den and in the garage. Woh-hoh!

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Page last updated 01/15/2012 03:42:32 PM