At Home In The Woods

[B7510HSD]

The heater is not fixed. The next morning it shut off after running 30 seconds. You can get it to work by taking off the grill and pushing a reset button. Yesterday I called the manufacturer. They are going to send me a new thermal overload device and a new grill with larger openings in the grill. The support person said that sometimes the heat from the elements causes the thermal overload to trip.

Gald to hear they are taking care of the problem!!

 

[Obed]

Today I ran a temporary Cat 6 wire from the phone network box in the basement to the office/dining room and moved the internet DSL modem from the basement into the office. Now my laptop has internet access via a network cable without having to use wireless. Our desktop computer does not have wireless and can now get on the internet.

I had a string running from the low voltage box in the office down through the wall into the basement for pulling network wires. Today we found that the string wouldn't budge. Either the insulation crew, drywall crew, or trim carpenter must have done something to bind the string in the wall. The string was useless so we had to run a fish tape from the basement up to the low voltage box. Once we did that, we pulled a new string down to the basement. Next we pulled a Cat 6 wire from the basement to the LV box in the office. We also made sure we left the string hanging so we can pull more cables. This wire is just temporary; eventually all the Cat 6 cables will run to the network closet.

The blue connection in the phone network box is for DSL internet; the orange connections are for phone lines. Very often, phone companies do not split the DSL signal from the phone signal. When that happens, you have to hang a filter on every phone in the house to remove the DSL signal from the phone line. We specifically asked the technician to split the signals in the phone network box.

The phone company has been very good at working with us; I've been happy with their service. They allowed us to locate the phone network box inside our house in the basement. Since the phone line runs from the street underground all the way to our basement, it will make it a little more difficult for a thief to cut the phone line before breaking into the house to prevent a security system from dialing out.

I do wish we had cut off the conduit sticking through the basement wall before the black phone line was pulled through it. I kind of thought the phone company would cut the conduit at a lenght to suit them but they just left it as is. I may eventually cut off that conduit and rerun the phone line to the network box when I don't have anything else to do in about 20 years.

I connected two pairs of wires in the Cat 6 cable to the phone network box and to two wall jacks. One pair is for DSL internet; the other pair is for the phone line.

 

[Obed]

We've been living in the house for a week now and have been letting the old cat get used to the house a little at a time. Tonight will be the first night she sleeps in the house overnight. We've been taking her back to the the camper at night until now. She has learned to go through the cat door that leads to the garage where her litter box is located. I really like not having a litter box inside the house.

The rainbow colored pants are on our 11 month old daughter. She is enjoying the house. She goes all over the place and is into everything. She follows me around the house on all fours like a puppy dog. She didn't have very far in the camper that she could go. Now she travels all over the house and loves it.

 

[CurlyDave]

...I do wish we had cut off the conduit sticking through the basement wall before the black phone line was pulled through it. I kind of thought the phone company would cut the conduit at a lenght to suit them but they just left it as is. I may eventually cut off that conduit and rerun the phone line to the network box when I don't have anything else to do in about 20 years.

You can cut that conduit in a few minutes without harming the cable inside by using a piece of mason's twine in a sawing motion where the conduit comes into the wall. You will cut through the conduit in seconds and then you just "walk" the cut portion around the conduit, taking care to keep the cable out of the way of the twine.

Use a good quality twine--Home Depot is good, I have never had any success with Harbor Freight twine for this application.

 

[tommu56]

You can cut that conduit in a few minutes without harming the cable inside by using a piece of mason's twine in a sawing motion where the conduit comes into the wall. You will cut through the conduit in seconds and then you just "walk" the cut portion around the conduit, taking care to keep the cable out of the way of the twine.

Use a good quality twine--Home Depot is good, I have never had any success with Harbor Freight twine for this application.

good point Dave using string but leave it 1or 2" away from the wall that way when conduit leaks water in to it and runs through conduit it can be deflected and not running down the wall.

tom

 

[Obed]

You can cut that conduit in a few minutes without harming the cable inside by using a piece of mason's twine in a sawing motion where the conduit comes into the wall. You will cut through the conduit in seconds and then you just "walk" the cut portion around the conduit, taking care to keep the cable out of the way of the twine.

Use a good quality twine--Home Depot is good, I have never had any success with Harbor Freight twine for this application.

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

 

[Obed]

good point Dave using string but leave it 1or 2" away from the wall that way when conduit leaks water in to it and runs through conduit it can be deflected and not running down the wall.

tom

I hadn't thought about that. Good point.

 

[tommu56]

I would cut the pipe and see how it lays on the cable and forget about it if it doesn't bother any thing.

If its in the way of something I would just unhook NIC and if there is a problem say you mean I wasn't suppose to do that!!!!!!:confused2:

tom

 

[Obed]

The exhaust vent piping for the gas furnace and gas water heater drain into the bucket shown in the picture. We have a floor drain below the bucket. However I have not yet run the floor drain piping outside from the exterior wall to daylight so the floor drains can't be used. So for now, we are draining the condensate from the exhaust vent piping into the 5 gallon bucket. We ran the heat pump for a few weeks and got very little water in the bucket. However, after we started running the gas furnace when it got cold outside, the five gallon bucket was almost completely filling with water in one day. Now I check the bucket every day.

Our furnace is set to run the heat pump until the outside temp gets down to 25 degrees F. At 25 degress F and colder the heat pump turns off and the gas furnace kicks in. Inside the house, you can tell when the gas furnace is running because the air coming out of the registers is much warmer the gas furnace is being used. If we were to leave the house for more than 24 hours, we would need to set the furnace so that the heat pump would solely run, ie. no gas, in order to prevent the bucket from overflowing.

 

[tommu56]

plumb it in t one of these

Little Giant 554405 Automatic Condensate Removal Pump - Vcma Series

There is usually a contact in them to shut off some thing if they get full and don't pump out hook that in series with the gas valve

tom

 

[brandoro]

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

I would just slide the piece of conduit down the wire to just beside the network box and put a couple of straps on it and leave it there. then no fiddling with connections, it will look neater and protect the wire a little bit.

I have a condensing furnace and have a pump just like the one in tommu56's post. It works well and is quiet enough. My floor drain is too far away and everything else is higher than the furnace drain so the pump was a good solution.

 

[B7510HSD]

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

Couldn't you cut that with a tubing cutter like you use for copper pipe??

 

[eepete]

Tubing cutter works great on conduit, then as tommu and brandoro said don't worry about getting the cut piece off. I'd attach it to the wall close to where the telco wire comes in, and dress the telco wire so that it's got a drip loop on it.

So it will look like "you meant to do that" because the pipe will hold the drip loop in the telco wire :thumbsup:.

I put gravity condensate drains for the heat pumps when we did our house, the little pumps are nice but it's one more thing to maintain and break. Using one as a temporary measure is OK, it's a time and money and priority thing- the exact sort of problem any good engineer would love to obsess about.

Obed, tnx for the pix of the daughter and the cat/door.

couple + kid + cat = Home.

Sometimes the simplest equations are the hardest ones to solve :laughing:.

Pete

 

[srs]

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

OBed, open the side of the network box and mark exactly how the black phone cable is coming in and how it is connected. Disconnect the wires, cut the conduit, shorten the black phone cable if needed, then reconnect. No biggie!

 

[PAGUY]

Obed - for a temporary fix use a couple 5 gallon buckets side by side and drill a hole the size of an old piece of water hose and step down as many connections as you have five gallon buckets. No more worry of 24 hr empty .

PAGuy

 

[Obed]

I'm anticipating a battle with the H&A guy. We have two auxilliary H&A return ducts in the ceiling, one in the master bedroom and one in the hallway. The primary return is at the other end of the hallway in the wall down near the floor. The H&A guy did not think about how to a return filter grill for the returns in the ceiling. His worker just terminated a duct in the ceiling. The framing around the ducts in the ceiling do not accommodate a return filter grill.

When we asked him about putting filters in the ceiling, he said it can't be done now. So he installed some sort of inline filter at the end of the auxilliary return where it meets the primary return. He does not intend on providing us a return filter grill where the far end of the returns terminate through the ceiling.

The picture shows a temporary filter my wife cut to size and stuffed in the duct in the ceiling to prevent construction dust from entering our HVAC ducts. I don't think I'm going to accept not being able to put a filter in the ceiling. You can see the amount of dust that collected in just a few weeks, albeit during construction. I don't want years of dust collecting in the ductwork of the auxilliary return. I'm expecting the H&A guy to refuse to change the ceiling grills. Keep in mind that the framing in the area above the ceiling can be accessed from the attic by unscrewing one or two pieces of OSB.

Remember, this is the same guy who has been very inflexible and hard to work with. For example, he ran the bathroom shower vent ducts so that condensate drained toward the inside of the house instead of the outside of the house even though I asked him before he started to do otherwise. He didn't forget; he was just obstinate. We had to change the ductwork ourselves after he left. That's just one of many examples of his inflexibility. He is also someone who has been bad about no-showing and not returning calls.

We'll see how the ceiling return filter grill issue turns out. I plan to have him finish all his other work before I re-adress the grills with him.

Yesterday the H&A worker came out and balanced the air flow through the registers in our house to try to get even temperatures around the house. This worker has been doing the most recent work in our house and we like him; we just don't care for his boss who is the owner. The worker was instructed by his boss to get the final check from us when he came out to balance our system. The worker was supposed to bring with him 2 floor registers we are missing but forgot them. We had also talked to him earlier about the ceiling return filter grills. I had told the worker that if he would just provide us the parts that we would do the work ourselves. I don't think he had portrayed this info to his boss; I'm not surprised because his boss can be hard to talk to.

So we didn't give the worker the final payment. In addition, we wanted to test out the system balancing ourselves before paying. The worker asked if he could come back today. We told him no, that today would not be a good day for us but he could come back the following day. Well this morning the boss called my wife and asked her if she was at home. I overheard the conversation and told her to hand me the phone. I told the boss that we weren't available today to see him. He became very rude and asked why not, what were we doing? I didn't answer that question; what we were doing was none of his business in my opinion and he was being rather obstinate. He demanded "Where's my money?" I stayed professional and told him that we wanted to check out the system and if everything met our satisfaction that he could be paid tomorrow. He told me or, more accurately, ordered me to call him.

Tomorrow I will call him and have the discussion about the two return filter grills in the ceiling. I'm expecting it to be a battle. But right now, they haven't put covers over the returns in the ceiling. Thus there can be no question that the work is not finished, even though putting covers over the ceiling returns is a small thing. Personally, I feel that I am going the extra mile to not make them redo the ceiling returns with grills that will accept filters and am offering to do the work myself if the H&A guy will just provide us the parts.

Unfortunately, sometimes these conflicts are part of the building process, especially if you are a homeowner without the experience and clout of a general contractor. I'm sure the subs who take shortcuts and I call them on it think I'm the problem, not them. I'm sure it goes both ways. I suspect that being a homeowner instead of a GC causes some subs to choose to be harder to deal with because they don't expect to get subsequent work from us. That view is short-sighted but nevertheless it exists. It is a minority of the subs that have shown this poor attitude with us. We had several subs that dealt professionally with us and have worked with us as well as they would have given a GC.

Tomorrow won't be fun but it will be good to get this sub out of our life. We have figured that if our H&A system has trouble in the future, this guy would be very slow at fixing it even if we could even get him to come out at all. We probably would just call someone else.

 

[RadarTech]

Obed,
how do you go about balancing the air flow?
we have that problem in our house..

2 bedrooms get down right hot and a third stays rather cool.

I agree with how you have managed this difficult contractor.

J

 

[charliepff]

Obed,

I love your thread. I spent a few days with my wife reading all of the posts. I must say you are a lot calmer then I am. I worked as a supervisor for an electrical company for about ten years. I would have never ever come close to treating a customer like that. There is absolutely no reason for it. There is always way's to compromise and you have definately done that by offering to do the corrections yourself. We just had a similiar issue with the company that installed our wood stove. It is ok though, because they will never get my business ever again.

On a lighter note. The house looks great and glad to see you are finally moved in.

 

[tommu56]

Amazon.com: Return Air Filter Grille: Home Improvement

and

White Return Air Filter Grill

You should have asked the hvac tech if he did side jobs for the "future reference" and cut out the boss


tom

 

[radioman]

Obed,
how do you go about balancing the air flow?
we have that problem in our house..

2 bedrooms get down right hot and a third stays rather cool.

I agree with how you have managed this difficult contractor.

J

zoning is best way to adjust.