12MONKS HILL: An open door...

The holidays are behind us. Things have settled down. We're back into a routine and ready for the next project. A door was opened that we couldn't help but walk through. Money being cheap we decided to leverage the equity in our mortgageless home to make the move to installing a whole house heating system. We could have taken money out of an IRA but with the market still in pretty good shape it was a relatively easy financial decision.

We're contracting this work out to a local business with a very good reputation. We decided to go with a forced air system rather than the base board hydronic due to the price of copper. We'll put it into what we are calling the mechanical room (or second bathroom to sound nice).

The room currently holds the pressure tank, the water heater, and a toilet, hence the "second bathroom" title. It's not much at this point. In fact it's pretty rough but in time...I keep telling Carol that I'll make it right!

We'll shift the pressure tank further to the right closer to the corner and then move the hot water heater back against the wall. Because there is a vent on the wall (apparently there was going to be a gas water heater at some point...if they ever had the gas hooked up...) we'll need to remove that vent to move the water heater. And then we'll pull the toilet and move it toward the hot water heater to make room for the furnace, trying to get it as close to the center of the house as reasonably possible.

While we're doing all of this work, we'll change out the waste line (which is currently a 4" line to the septic field) to a 3" line to the outside wall where it feeds into the septic line, bringing it up to code. When all the heating work is done, we'll reseat the toilet and find some place to add a small sink, making use of the small and less than appealing" vanity which is currently in the main bathroom.

At this point, there is a gas line, with regulator valve all, which is "live" just outside the front wall of the of mechanical rooom (er...second bathroom). We''ll tap into that and have a "header" built with four lines to feed a new stove (converting from propane to natural gas), the furnace, a clothes dryer (she'll be so glad not to have to go to town to do laundry, or to hand wash and hang out by the wood stove, the unmentionables), and an extra line in case we someday want to change out the hot water heater.

It snowed again, blessing us with a meager 2" coat to freshen things up. It's still quite cold (getting down to below zero at night and highs in the teens to low twenties during the day) so our contractor is busy on emergency calls (as he describes "fixing those who don't like to do regular maintenance). But we expect them out tomorrow morning to begin this next phase. And once that it done, I'll get back to work replacing the toilet, running water lines for the sink/vanity, and insulating and covering the walls.

In the meantime I have a bit more insulation work to do in