Wintertime Projects?

Haha. I love VT. But I honestly hated doing snow removal for money. Now that I’m not getting paid for it, I even love that part :rofl:

Snow should be a one day event, in January. No more than 3 inches. But if you’re happy, I’m happy.

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Infinity, FYI on your radiant floor heat. If the rim joint is not externally insulated the floor joists might act as a heat sink and negate any btu gain, get some 3/4-5/8 pex and just install loops on upper 1/2 of walls and and in rafters of loft, taco 07 pump up to 300 ft per loop , if you really want it on floor add polyisio foam on top of your wood subfloor then then use 8” wide 3/4 “ plywood or foam to make sleepers install your 1/2 pex in between 3/4 gaps and add new subfloor on top. Did 2,800 ft pex in my home with this process on the concrete slab basement works great with 100-130 degree water depending on the outdoor reset controlling the condensing boiler. bigger pex more btus image pic of pex going into subfloor on top of concrete slab

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That’s some really interesting info. I think my floor is pretty well insulated (4” xps + 1/2” foil faced), but there is no thermal break between the floor and rim joists. I hadn’t even considered that as an option. I could also see the plywood itself acting as a bit of a heatsink, conducting heat out under the bottom plates.

But we’ll see how it goes with the pex I’ve got under the floor. I might even try and borrow a FLIR camera from someone to see what’s really going on.

One thing I did that I don’t think is pictured well in my first post, is equally spacing the pex between the joists. None of the tubing is running right up tight alongside the wood.

So it’s technically still winter according to the calendar here in South Carolina. But it was over 70 degrees here twice already this week and will hit it again tomorrow. I had been putting off a project since November as I wanted to tackle it on a warm day and well I guess I had to do it.


Our house has two exterior water spigots on it (green arrows) but neither were near where I park the truck (red box). I mean, don’t most people wash their car in their driveway? Anyways, no spigot on the driveway side of the house = me dragging out the hose and rolling up the hose over and over again to mix my batches for the house washes. Well, the spigot on the side of the house had some sort of chemical reaction with the brass? from the hose I had connected to it and apparently decided to adhere itself together. I noticed this fusion around Thanksgiving but never did anything with it as I was afraid the CPVC piping under the house would break if I twisted on it too much. Well, yesterday I decided to twist it, and, of course it broke the water line under the house. Since I already had the channelocks out I was able to turn the water off at the meter pretty quickly.

Easy fix, and since I was under the house anyways I thought it be a great time to add me another spigot on the other side of the house (red arrow). Mission accomplished and thoroughly tested while I washed the truck this afternoon and prepped my batch mix for a day of cleaning tomorrow is this great 70 degree winter wonderland!

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Last couple days I’ve been working on electrical at my house. Finally got the shed hardwired in (240v @ 40a), and also hooked up an inlet box for our portable generator (240v @ 30a).

Had to play circuit breaker tetris to get the two new breakers installed in the appropriate slots. Also tore out more drywall than I had initially hoped (hit a wire buried up in the ceiling with the drillbit: POP, blue flash, lights out! Had to go digging to fix the nicked wire)

^ Fabricated my own interlock plate because they don’t make any for these older GE panels.

^ btw, the panel is much better looking with the door closed :rofl:

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I had no idea that I’d have occasion to use this so soon…

@Innocentbystander, any chance you could snap some pics of that ZombieBox at your offgrid camp? Like, inside and out views? There’s no way I can justify a $1000 box for an $800 genny, but I’d like to try building something similar, to cut down on the noise.

Absolutely. I’ll be down Monday night. I built one off of a design I found on YouTube also. I took it apart for another project when we got the Zombie box but I’ll try to find the video

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Good job making your own interlock switch, but for the future this place has kits for most panels.

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That’s good to know. I’m not sure if their kit would’ve worked for my exact purpose, though. I used a slim (one inch) dual pole breaker, and had to space it down a half-slot so that it connected to both phases of the panel. I fabricated the interlock so that it covers the vacant top slot.

I’m also happy that I saved $70 with 45 minutes or so of extra “work” (I use the word loosely, since it was a lot of fun making it) :smirk:

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Careful, you might make @Hotshot jealous with that nice set-up.

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Subscribed.

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“Snow, that white stuff that falls out of the sky” :joy::joy: love your work :ok_hand:

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It’s not much, but it’s mine… and I made it :upside_down_face:

I would’ve loved so much to have something about twice as big. But that’s just not in the cards at the moment.

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It’s impressive.

If I built one it’d look more like this:

image

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I know we’re past winter, but I’m still working on the barn. Installed an outdoor shower for post power washing bleach decontamination. Makes Britt’s asthma kick up if I come in the house smelling like bleach.

This just hooks up to the hot water spigot on the wall of the house. Water heater puts out just the right shower temperature.

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Nice!!!

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Don’t forget to have Code Enforcement check your work :grin:

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Funny side point to that: I got a call late last year from the town assessors office, saying that they got my building permit app, and needed to come by and take some measurements, and if “10 minutes from now” would be a good time. I waited around for awhile, since I thought it would be nice to introduce myself and make some friendly conversation. They never showed up, and I don’t think they ever came by since then :man_shrugging:

That’s literally the most interaction I’ve had with any authorities since acquiring the permit. (I’m open to the fact that I might have some ‘splaining to do if they ever do stop by and see water and electric running to the shed…)

We’ll see how much they ding us on our tax assessment next year. Probably won’t be anywhere near what I have into it :smirk: