What's been going on INSIDE the house

In a word, Insulation.
Two different types, and two completely different projects, though.

The first is the firebreak insulation, mainly the rockwool that we needed to fire block the framing that we oh so messed up big time.

We originally thought we just needed the fire caulk (bright orange fireproof foam) to fill the gaps around pipes and such. Nope. We needed more.

Areas like around our soffits, and on the third floor in the ceiling joists needed a lot of help.
Below this soffit (see pic) in our kitchen, there's an area to the side of the wall that has a gap. This is where a fire (or in my silly mind, a mouse) could crawl from one area into the next. If a mouse can crawl through it, a fire can, too and it needs to be plugged with firecaulk or rockwool (rockwool is cheaper, but a lot like fiberglass and is itchy - be sure to wear long sleeved shorts and respirators). Jeff also said OSB is a good barrier. We'll have to use that on the other sides of the soffit.

In this case, we just stuffed a bunch of the material into the area with a shim. That's all it takes.

Jeff Bechtold at NKAPC said we could use two bundles of the rockwool for the whole house, so we went to go get them. They were $35 each and they were MASSIVE. One fit in the back seat, the other one we had to strap in the trunk, making visibility um... bad.

We ended up bringing one back, as we really didn't need that much after all.

We had NO idea they were this big. We paid for them first, then went out to the yard to pick them up. Sheesh.

In the last picture here, Jeff even noted that where the framed walls pulled out from the plaster in the kitchen and created a gap-- that needed to be stuffed with rockwool, too.

There are little places like this all over the house. I can't even take pictures of all of them. It's dizzying.

I thought at first that we might have really screwed up by not installing our soffits BEFORE the furring strips, which would have solve a majority of our problems, but then I thought I really wanted to have the furring strips in first to add stability to the soffit.

I guess it's just a matter of opinion.

Anyway, we were really disappointed that there wasn't much information available anywhere we looked on fire protecting a house like this, so we'll be adding more information on this later, along with before and after pictures of where you need to look for fire break problems.

Just remember to think like a mouse, and if you can connect a vertical space with a horizontal space (like climbing up the wall to get into a soffit) you too can fail a framing inspection.

The second insulation project deserves it's own post..... and now on to Insulation, part 2:

Sunday night update - 2nd electrical inspection tomorrow

Argh. It's 10 PM and I just took a shower. One of these days it's going to be nice to not expect a muddy runoff down the shower drain.

Anyway, we've been working on the 3rd floor most of the day today. Mainly we've been furring and framing in the storage area, getting it ready for the spray foam insulation, and building a new partition wall so that we don't need to have an electric outlet on it, but wth, we're putting one in anyway. I'll get a picture soon and update.

Why all the fuss? Well, we're having the second electrical inspection tomorrow. The good news is that when we were trying to figure out whether we really needed an outlet along this 6' wall, we talked to Sheila Spradling at NKAPC, and she waived the fee for the re-inspection. Very cool lady there.

So we put in a bunch of new outlets (five to be exact), rewired another smoke detector on the 3rd floor (a full 12 feet from the one at the bottom of the stairs--harumphf) moved some light boxes and a wall.

Heck, at least I got all of the gunk out of my hair in the shower. If I knock my head on an attic joist one more time I'm gonna scream. If I knock my head into another NAIL in an attic joist I'm gonna scream bloody murder.

I'm tired. And we haven't had dinner yet. I need a glass of wine.

Wish us luck.

Aw crap. Failed the Electric Inspection.

And we worked so hard, too.

I don't think Bob from the NKAPC even looked at the jbox wiring or the connections, which is where I figured they'd be focusing on. Noooo. We lost it on NOT HAVING ENOUGH OUTLETS.

Apparently we missed that part where any wall that is 6 foot or greater must have an outlet. So the wall that covers over the fireplace in the kitchen (which isn't 6" but was close, and is 42" away from the island, which will have 2 outlets) needs one. And the knee wall on the second floor stairs in the office. And the fireplace in the office. And the third floor? Three more. (Two in areas that may never be even reached).

The breaker boxes were replaced and look GREAT if I do say so myself. I thought that would be the most excruciating part of the inspection. After all, it was the hardest. (For me anyway.)

I mentioned before that we wanted to move them from the basement (where they were split into two boxes for the two apartments in the house) into the first floor dining room. Here's where we started:












And here is what we ended up with. I think we should've scored points just for cleaning the darned thing up, y'know?

But that wasn't all. Noooo. There's this code that says we can't just ground the house by connecting the grounds to the copper plumbing pipe and the 10' copper rod embedded under the basement. No, we need a SECOND 10' copper rod embedded into the foundation six feet away from the first one. Sheesh.

The guy gave us our NKAPC sheet with the list of needed outlets and the grounding rod, then checked the part where it said did not pass, needs re-inspection. He also checked the part where we now need to pay a re-inspection fee. I think it's like $30-$50

So it'll take another day to order the NEW (6%$#@*&) copper grounding pipe and dig a hole into the foundation, and run new wires for the six *^&%$#@&^%$* outlets that will never be used, but just in case someone 30 years down the road wants to plug in a vacuum cleaner in a crawl space in the third floor attic, they'll be able to.

Moo. I'm the new cash cow.