We had nice bright sun dogs (as well as a wind chill advisory) to greet us on Friday morning.Well, according to the internet it is -19 outside right now, with today's high temperature forecast at 2 degrees. So I figure that is a pretty good excuse to stay in help out with the recently neglected blog for a while.
We are still working on the wiring. It is actually quite close to being done. I need to run cable for the smoke alarm circuit and the baseboard heaters and finish up all the connections on a couple of lighting circuits. It shouldn't take more than a day. Most of the outlet circuits have been tested and there weren't any surprises — everything worked.
The cold weather has really slowed down the work in the granary. The woodstove can get the temperature quite comfortable out there, but it takes several hours so it doesn't work that well to just put in an hour or two after the kids are in bed. The weather also causes a lot of other projects to take priority, mainly keeping the tractor running so we can clear snow, clearing snow, and keeping all the cars out of the ditches and starting.
The ditches are full of snow, so drifts can wind up covering the roads even if we just get a little wind without any new snow. We figured out during the last cold snap that the block heater on the tractor wasn't really working and needed a new cord. Fortunately we could replace it from the outside so we didn't have to drain the block to get at it. It has been nice to be able to work with John on the old tractors and other things around here. Most of the machinery here is older than I am and has a lot of little quirks that he knows all about. Generally when something around here is broken he knows better than I do what needs to be done to fix it, but he sometimes doesn't have the eyesight or hand strength to do it (although it is pretty amazing what he is able to do at 86). So when he works in management and I provide the labor we are able to get most of our problems solved.
We have also been dawdling a bit on finishing the wiring because we have to make some decisions about whether to have bath and kitchen fans. I had been planning on a pretty conventional building plan, with fiberglass insulation and poly vapor barrier and kitchen and bath fans venting both to the outside. Heidi went and called a passive building architect from Minneapolis and he made things complicated. In the buildings he designs he tries to control all of the air coming in and out. He recommends using spray foam insulation and then installing a heat exchanging ventilation system. It is a ducted system that brings in fresh outside air but passes it past the air that is going out in a heat exchanger. The system he recommends won't work in our house because we really don't have anywhere to run large ducts. However, they do make a similar thing that is just like a wall or window mounted air conditioner. This architect was also very much against fiberglass insulation with the poly barrier. He says it winds up trapping too much moisture inside the wall and causing problems later. He admits that plenty of people, including most of the local builders around here, do build that way though. If I was building from scratch I think his ideas would be great, but I don't know how well they would work in a retrofit especially since he uses triple-pane windows and more outside insulation, which we didn't use and can't change now.
We are thinking about doing the spray-foam downstairs but not in the addition. I'm leaning toward installing a bath fan that vents out but just a fan with a filter over the stove — especially since I'd have to cut a stud and put in a header to vent the stove out.
I have a little time to think about it since I broke a rib playing basketball last Sunday. I just thought it was going to bruise, but it started to get kind of painful especially after I spent Tuesday afternoon digging my car out of a snow drift (with some much appreciated help from our neighbor Lauren Witte and his tractor). So I went to the doctor on Wednesday and he said it was broken. I don't have to do much as far as treatment because the bone is held in the right place to heal by the muscle and cartilidge. I just have to avoid being hit in the side again (no basketball) for two weeks. I can work as much as I feel up to, but I think it will be a few days until I want to work on things where I have to stretch my arms over my head much.
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