All Forum Posts by: Ryan Booth

I'll second the passive solar heating, especially with the dark/black wall coating behind the glass, and that wall should be generally south facing. It should be reasonably easy to remove if desired, one thing to check for is any passive water heating tubing or similar behind the glass. 

For the new main electrical service, $750 is a very reasonable price. I would go with that. 

As far as the A/C, Here is my suggestion. 

1, Working with a 40 year old house, you'll want to put in an all new duct system as well as equipment. And don't assume the original system was designed right, it is almost certainly sized wrong. You can design your own duct system, spend a few hours reading up on it and on youtube, and you'll probably do a better job then 90% of the HVAC contractors out there. Be sure to read up on how to seal duct work properly.

2, Pick up the phone and call a few HVAC companies, tell them you want to pay them by the hour at their service call rate or higher to come out and remove the refrigerant from your old system. 

3, Buy and install all your new equipment, spend plenty of time reading the manuals and watching youtube videos on how to do it. And silver soldering (Brazing) copper pipe isn't that hard, just practice a few times first. Be vary careful on proper flue and vent design for the furnace, you don't want to either burn the place down or kill someone with carbon monoxide. 

4, Call up the HVAC company and have them charge your system by the hour plus refrigerant costs. You may have some trouble finding one do to liability concerns and or they may want to spend extra time looking the system over before they charge it. 

The downsides, 

1, The equipment manufacturer probably won't warranty the equipment, since it wasn't installed by a certified/professional installer.

2, You'll still probably spend more then $1000 for the HVAC company to remove the refrigerant from the old system, then charge your new system by the hour (Think $120 a hour) Plus the refrigerant costs. And they won't be providing any warranty at all, since they didn't install the system. 

3, if it doesn't work, your on your own to figure it out. 

4, You'll have probably 1 to 2 days full time installing all the equipment, Plus a day for the ductwork design and install. Plus a day researching and figuring out how to do everything. Those are very rough estimates as I have no information on the size of house or system.

If you have the time to burn, give it a try. The worse that will happen is you'll end up paying an HVAC company to go through the system and fix any mistakes you made.  On that note, a good HVAC tech is hard to find, be sure to call around. Ask if they are "NATE" (North American Technician Excellence) certified, not a guarantee, but at least shows they make an effort to keep themselves educated. 

You should be able to find a drafting/engineering company that would do all the drawing/structural for a reasonable price ($2000+) And then pull the permit yourself. You can also draw your own plans, but it can be a painful process for someone not familiar with all the code and design complexities that building departments like to have spelled out on a set of plans. Either way you end up doing it, (assuming it is in California) get an energy company to do your title 24 compliance calculations. 

First a couple of questions, 

1, What is on the other side of the cement wall? is it another room? or is it dirt/outside?

2, What is the age of the house? Anything older then the late 70's may have lead paint to worry about. 

3, Are the other 3 walls in the room "standard" wood frame and drywall? 

If there are no lead paint concerns, and no water migrations issues from dirt etc. on the other side of the wall. I would suggest scraping and or taking a grinder with a wire brush to the wall to remove all the loose "plaster" type material. To match the other walls in the room, I would suggest skim coating the cement wall with drywall mud and then texturing. An alternative would be to attach furring strips and hang regular drywall over the wall then finish it as needed.

Yes, 

A 3/12 ceiling is about 14 degrees and that should work fine to redirect the light straight down. It should fit fine in almost all of the standard 6 inch housings. Appearance wise, the edge of the "eyeball" will stick out of the ceiling slightly, instead of being completely flush or recessed. 

Along with sloped ceilings, we use the "eyeball" trim to "throw" light against a wall or highlight a fireplace etc. 

Ryan

Catherine, 

If the flex problem is do to the multiple layers of backer board, or the subfloor flexing between joists, then the idea of removing the grout, adding screws and going back with new flex grout might work. And the island shouldn't have much of an effect beyond the tiles immediately around it. But If you are dealing with over spanned floor joists that are causing a lot of flex or bounce, then that will need to be addressed before you take any steps to repair the floor. 

The problem of course is too much floor flex, which could be one of multiple issues already listed. 

If the contractor refuses to redo it, or you want to try something else first, a possible work around would be replacing all of the existing grout with new grout that has a flex additive in it, or one of the newer epoxy grouts.  Depending on how badly the floor is flexing, this may fix the problem.

If the tiles haven't cracked or started to come loose (tap on the tiles and see if they sound hollow) the new grout might be a permanent fix. If the tiles are starting to come loose, time for a new floor. 

@Tim Kaminski Yes, that is correct, assuming you have a wire that you can get ahold of... In a remodel there may already be a wire from the wall box (and switch) up into the ceiling area that fed other lights. Or if you have access to an attic space above the room, it is usually pretty straight forward to drill a hole in the wall top plate from the attic side and use a "fish tape" to pull a wire out of the switch box. If don't want to poke a hole in the drywall above the existing switch box, use a reciprocating saw (sawzall) to carefully cut the nails on the old box and take it out. This gives you a box sized hole in the wall to work with, when your done, just put a "cut in box" back in and your good to go. If you are starting from scratch without a existing switch or lighting, you can often source power out of a nearby plug (assuming it is a 15amp and not a 20amp) to feed your switch box. 

If you are between floors or have no attic access, you generally have to cut a few holes in the drywall, usually one high on the wall just below the top plate and another in the ceiling near enough to reach over and get a grip on the wire. Once your in the ceiling, you can usually route the wires around without too much trouble depending on rafters/ceiling joists etc. 

Another item to consider, a lot of times when a house is wired, they will run the power straight to the lights in the ceiling and use a "switch leg" down to the switch box to control the lighting. So when remodeling, you need to check in the switch box to see if there is a power feed as well as a wire up the wall to the ceiling area. If only a single romex wire in the box, you'll have to find the power wire in the ceiling, easy enough if there is only one light in the room.

For existing customers in our area, I charge $40 an hour, which starts when I leave the shop and ends when I get back, the jobs are usually within a 15 to 20 minute drive. But they often have to wait a little to fit into our schedule, unless it is an emergency of some kind. Also our main work is contracting, the "handyman" type of work is a small part of our time. 

Wiring recessed or "Can" lights is about as easy as electrical work gets, most modern quality recessed lights are almost plug and play, assuming you can get the wire to the light. 

For most remodel work you would cut a somewhat precise hole in the drywall, pull your wiring out of the hole, make up the electrical connections and tuck the wiring and housing up into the hole until it "snaps" into place. Make sure you get the "IC" (insulation contact) rated housings if you will be using them anywhere they may come in contact with insulation or other combustibles. 

As noted above, recessed lighting consists of 2 components, 

1, The "housing" ($8-$20 each) that you either mount to the framing for new construction or "snaps" into a hole cut in the drywall for remodel work. The housings come in several sizes, the most common by far is 6 inch, followed by 4 inch for some applications. 

2, The "trim" or "trim and light" ($5-$40+) which you install in the housing, usually after painting is done, come in a huge variety of styles and features. From a small piece to go around an incandescent bulb, to expensive LED tilting "eye ball" trim.  

Anther possible difference between "new construction" and "remodel" is the type of connector inside the housing. Most will be a standard E26 (Edison type, 26mm) screw in base for the bulb, but in some areas, such as here in California, all of the new construction housings must have a 2 pin connector so that you cannot install a regular screw type bulb into the housing, instead you have to use a high efficiency bulb with a 2 pin plug. So here we have "old work" housings that mount to the framing and look just like new construction housings, except they have a bulb base instead of a 2 pin connector. 

If you are going to install one in or next to a shower, make sure it is rated for "damp" locations.