IT'S COMING TOGETHER

I thought I would update this post with some pictures.

The bottom picture is a picture of Jay Harding of Harding Electric.

The top is a picture of Gene and his son.

Jay Harding of Harding Electric in Palmyra came out to see us this week and he is working on pulling together the electrical receptacles we need and want.

This morning, Dave and I will be going to Brighton to pick up our lighting fixtures from Tuthill Lighting on Monroe Avenue. Can't wait. One fixture has not come in yet and Bruce at Tuthill is working through the manufacturer to figure out the problem. I don't know which fixture is not here but I'll learn that later.

The sun is shining today. Yipee! We have had an awful lot of rain.

As part of our geothermal system going in, a man named Gene will be coming on Monday to cut holes in the house for the duct work.

I left Gerry Knibbs a message that we hope to be ready for drywall at the end of August. I haven't heard back from him yet on his availability.

I don't know if I mentioned before that our rough plumbing was finished about three weeks ago and passed inspection with no problems.

Yup. It's finally starting to all come together. I'm planning family dinners again for starting in January, after the holidays. Where will the holidays be this year? Our house, of course. :)

LETTING THE LIGHT SHINE INSIDE

Tomorrow, Jay Harding (Harding Electric) will be stopping by. We told him that we have finalized our electrical plan. We have realized that if we ever want to move in our space, we must hire some people to do work we know we could do ourselves - if we had time. So we are continuing to scrape together what money we can and hiring what we can.

Our plan for the interior is that Dave will lay all the fixture boxes because we are very, very specific of where we want them and not just on the nearest available stud. the outlets we are not as concerned about. We hope that Jay will give us a quote on doing the outlets, the switches, etc., and pulling all the wires. We are hoping that we can line him up for about two weeks from now. We shall see how everything goes.

We like working with Jay and he has done work for us before.

LET THE LIGHT SHINE IN 3

In trying to save money we have tried to do as much as we can ourselves. To save some money on the electrical work we contacted our friendly local electrician, Jay Harding of Harding Electric (585) 329-1784, in Palmyra. He came out and talked with Dave about what Dave could do and purchase and what he, Jay, could get at a better cost.

Jay told Dave what to buy and also told him that the electrical box should come off the damp outer stone wall. Jay suggested Dave build a frame to hold the new electrical box on, just forward of the wall. Dave liked the idea and got to work. Jay came back and rewired everything, put up the new box and also removed the barn from the house, which was something we had wanted done since we bought the place. Cost: $500.

LET THE LIGHT SHINE IN 2

These first of these pictures shows some of the debris that I had to clean off from the top of the stone foundation and around the sill. Corn cobs and all. The next picture shows the remnants of the shelves loaded up to take to the recycling/landfill center.

LET THE LIGHT SHINE IN

This remodeling project has taken eons longer than I ever thought it would. Part of the reason is for stuff like the stove (see earlier post) and things like moving the electrical box.

The bottom picture shows what we started with. The old electrical box is to the left and then this big old set of shelves had to be taken down (my job) and all the wires overhead moved. The picture on top shows the wall after I removed the shelves.

THE BIG GULP

Well, we had been hoping to foot the bill for everything with savings. We decided to take the big gulp and obtain a loan to get the heating and cooling system that we think is best. That is, we are going geothermal.

Again, we talked to several contractors at the Rochester Home show. We contacted three of the contractors we talked to. One never called me back. The other two were Geotherm, Inc. (Jesse Cook) (www.geothermhvac.com) and Energywise Partners, LLC (David Neale) (www.evanhee.com). We received comparable quotes from both companies and were happy with both people.

We ended up going with Jesse Cook for just a couple of reasons. One of the reasons was that he wanted to put in more piping for the water to flow through and the other was that he also wanted to hang the heat pump from the basement rafters instead of on the basement floor. Dave also felt Jesse was a little on the perfectionist side, a lot like himself. Dave liked that.

We took Jesse's quote to the bank and received a loan for the work. Jesse is also going to supply the duct work and the whole house heat exchanger. Of course these last two things were not figured into our loan so we are scraping together more money.

The duct guy that Jesse uses will be in next week to make the holes where the ducts will go. He expects to be at the house about four hours. That's cool. He will come in later to install the ducts.

Just the geothermal system will be $20,000 plus. Gulp.

As stated everywhere in this blog, we are in this house for the rest of our lives, and God willing, we will have long healthy lives. So, with that said, we are also looking at our lives as we age and retire and want to keep our monthly expenses as low as possible. We should be able to heat our home for about $400 a year with this system.

TO SPRAY OR NOT TO SPRAY

Our insulation change was decided after attending the Rochester Home Show this past winter. We talked with several contractors but liked Mike Jag of Jag Construction (www.jagconstruction.com). Jag offers spray foam insulation and we liked what we heard. It is more expensive but the trade offs seem to be worth it. It will take only a few days to completely insulate our house and the insulating properties will be spectacular. Plus, Mike gave us a 10% show discount and there are tax advantages as well that made this a wise choice. We expect the insulation will be coming in within the next month.

Another point I got snitty about with Dave was that I felt like we are going to have to triple insulate the walls and this irritates me. First, we will be adding pink fan-fold insulation to the bare outer walls between the studs. This is for the foam insulation to adhere to. Next, the spray foam goes in (3"). Then, we have been told by another energy solution person (see later post) that we need to make sure there is no way for convection to occur in the walls, which will cause moisture. Therefore, we will be adding bat insulation on top of the foam. I'm irritated because it will be a three-step process now and also because it will cost us even more money. But, I don't think there is any choice. We move forward.