Blown Air Heat BEGONE! Hot Water Radiator Replacement

 

That pictured is what remained of the 30 year old heating system you had for this house. Sitting in the yard, waiting to be picked up. Begone!

I hated that system. I hated that system to the tune of $30K. Not so much $75K, which was the price my dear and beloved long time contractor pitched to me. He's not happy, but I have other projects and those may be fine for having him be all expensive and whatnot. He's knocked the price down to $50K but still. I put it on hold thinking I would just replace the old blown air heating system with a new one.

But then I happened to chat with a neighborhood plumber who lived not too far away. I mentioned how I hated the drying heat of the blown air and how freaking loud and annoying it was. 

Oh, let me tell you.

Our bedroom was right above the basement furnace. You, previous owner, were upstairs. So you didn't really hear the system kick on and bang when the blower fan was done. It would wake me up in the middle of the night and I HATED it. 

You had several other options to heat the house. Upstairs you had electric baseboard heaters and the mini splits. The heating was just for the basement and the first floor. I hated the heat it produced. After 19 years of living with cast iron radiators, heated air was just inferior. 

So I was chatting with a plumber about the system and he supposed he could do it for $20K. $20,000? I could do that. It wound up being $30K in the end.

It took 2-3 weeks for them to pull out the old system and put in the new system. 

Come this winter we'll know how good a replacement it was.

Why did you make the garden anti-human?

 I came from a neighborhood where, despite gentrification, I kept the bars on the windows. Some of my newer neighbors were more trusting and took off the unsightly bars. I'd been there too long and saw too much to even think about it. Also I was a single woman, sometimes living alone (roommates come and go), so hard pass. Also the bars were cheaper to maintain than an alarm system.

So I get why you planted thorny plants and bushes and the tall decorative grasses. You probably wanted privacy and protection. But as I worked in it, it just seemed anti-human or anti-mammal. I would accidentally hit or touch the sharp thorns from time to time and it got old real fast. It was also worrying because we have a young child and he cries a lot and loudly when he gets hurt. I had to get rid of the thorny thistles and plants for his sake.

I got rid of the high grasses. You won't see them pictured.

Why?

'Cause they gone.

I got rid of the low pointy plant.

I got rid of the pointy plant holding up the unidentified vines.

I cut back the pointy plant near the widow.

In the long run, I'm going to get rid of the big bushes. I want to expand the kitchen and those bushes are in the way.

Your pond

 

I think this will be going to Community Forklift.

You had a pond in the backyard. There were no fish in it. It was just a garden feature, but we had no interest in it. Well I had no interest in maintaining it. As far as I was concerned it was a breeding ground for mosquitos.

My husband was supposed to fill it or keep it drained. But the rains would fill it back up and make it a mosquito nursery. Eventually he and some teen aged helpers dug it out. And then there was the hole to fill up. It got filled with leaves and other fall debris. When the new drainage system was put in, workers dumped clay dirt on top.

We still have a lot of brick and stone and other random things that surrounded the pond. Those are also awaiting to go to Community Forklift.

I am hoping to replace the garden with edibles with no garden features like a pond.

Drainage

 We knew the yard had a drainage problem. One of the first things we did when we bought your house was have a temporary pipe to send some roof water away from the house.

It's getting close to being a year and we need to do something. So I got three bids, well honestly I got one bid. Three guys came out. The first came from a neighbor. He never emailed me a number.  He's was the lowest. But not emailing me a number, after I asked, was a flag (not a red flag, but I've been ignored by contractors before). Second, young fellow, got a bid to me quickly. The price is a bit high, but the company presented the exact thing I wanted. The third guy, sent a proposal and was the most expensive of them all. He convinced me that I will need an interior french drain. His bid didn't have a number but when he was at the house the number he gave was way up there.

However, we did an interior French drain at our old DC house. I do not have the mental energy for doing that all over again, now. Maybe in the future.

Despite the plastic and all the stuff our contractor did, dust got on to the upper floors.

I decided we'll do this when Destructo-Kid is 7 years old. Then we can relocate, temporarily and someone will be more mature and will understand what we are doing. When we moved into your house Destructo had been to two different schools in one year with a third on the way. We don't want to unnecessarily add more instability to his life.

Right now, we are concentrating on the outside. The drainage we are going to deal with is outside. We will work our way inward and deal with the fact that you have no french drains and the sump pumps are not connected to anything. But I'm happy you had two pumps. Thanks.

I want radiators part 2

 Continued from Part 1.

Let's talk about what I want.

I want modern radiators.

This is Hudson Reed's modern single flat panel radiator. It is 25" high, 16.5 inches wide and a little over 2" thick. Output for this is 420 Watts (1,433 BTUs). That' not enough for our largest room

I plugged in a calculator and so we need about 12,000 BTUs.

 

The large vertical panels look like the kind we need, but I don't know if I care for those. I like the horizontal radiators for the sole reason that I want to put gloves on them and then put on toasty warm gloves.

 This one puts out 8893 BTUs. So this on one end of the room and another on the other side.

I also like Runtal's baseboard radiators.

Runtal has some other good modern looking radiators.

I want radiators part 1

 So thank you previous owners for the various heating and cooling options in the house.

The main source of heat is the blown in hot air which is gas fueled. 

Gas. Love it. That's one of the reasons why we bought your house.

There are other options. Love that the Mitsubishi mini splits are in most rooms, providing another option for heat.

But, I miss my radiators.

Look at that beautiful thing. I loved putting my gloves on top of the radiator and a bathrobe fresh off a radiator is a special luxury.

The blown in hot air is not working for me. It's not working for my husband, as it irritates his sinuses blowing dust around.

So now I am fantasizing about replacing the hot air system that appears to have been around since the house was built in 1940.

I miss that warmth.

So.... we bought your house

 Dear Former Owners,

We know your names, but it isn't necessary for anyone else to.  We bought your house. You lived here for over 50 years. You raised your kids here. You made some renovations.... thank you. You made this place yours. 

Then you retired and decided for your own reasons to move and sell the place. Once again, thank you. Because otherwise we couldn't have bought it.

And now it is ours. Just as the house I lived in for nearly 20 years now belongs to a single guy, because we sold it.

So here we are borrowing each others houses. I say borrowing because before I owned my DC house, it belonged to many others. It was built in 1874-ish. Now your house was built in 1940 and despite you living here so long, you were not the 1st owners, or the 2nd or even the 3rd.

Anyway. I digress.

I am blogging this because I want to document and share how I want to change your house, because there is so much here still that reflects you and the previous owners, but I want to make it mine/ours.

I want to change everything. The yard, the shed, the interior of the house, the exterior, I want to deal with the drainage, everything. All of that will cost money.

I did this before with my DC house. I radically changed it and made it mine. Now the single guy will make it his. The changes I make are no reflection on you. Your house served you well. You had things in it that made you happy and worked for you.

But now it is our house. There are some things that do serve us well and there are things that don't serve us well.

Anyway.

Thanks for selling your house to us.

Let's get to work in making it ours.