Little House on the Hillside

Death by hypotenuse

 I just completed the first of two staircases. I decided to begin with the one from the basement to the first floor, since any mistakes I made would only be seen by those people we lock downstairs (bad kids, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc). That was a smart move. While I am very happy with the results, I am glad I will not see them every day of my life the moment I walk in the front door, which is where the other staircase is located. While they are very nice for basement stairs, they are not quite up to snuff for the general living area.
     Stairbuilding begins with a ruler, calculator, pencil, big eraser, and a pad of paper. After you take a few measurements on-site, there are a number of equations you use to figure out your unit rise, unit run, stairwell opening, total rise, total run, carriage length and headroom clearance. Trust me, in 16 years of Catholic schooling my homework was never this hard. Once you have things worked out on paper, you grab a 16 foot 2x12 and lay out your stringer with a framing square. Once all your lines are drawn, you take a measurement from one end to the other, and that should match up with the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the stair stringer as it sits in the opening, which you figured out previously on paper. Confused? Take a number.
    Lo and behold, my hypotenuse on paper did not match my number from the actual layout. Cursing Pythagoras, I had to re-adjust my layout marks twice more to get ‘close enough’ to the correct measurement for the hypotenuse. When that was finally achieved, I cut the two stringers, wrestled them inside, and began the process of getting them positioned correctly in the stairwell opening. When all was plumb and level, I sat back, called Anne, and we surveyed my handiwork. While surely handsome, a nagging fear we had for the past few months materialized into full fledged terror: where the heck are we going to put the woodstove?
     Let me take you back a bit, to a cluttered office in Walpole, NH, the HQ of First Day Cottage. We were meeting with First Day’s founder and mastermind, David. As we went over floor plans, we weren’t sure where put the woodstove in our open-concept first floor. David unhesitatingly drew it in front of the basement door, sort of in the middle of a major traffic pattern. With the gift of the self-confident, he assured us that the central location would be perfect, not too obtrusive, it would all work out. With the meekness of the overwhelmed, we said OK, and moved on. (note: this is not a knock on David, we love the guy, I just want to illustrate how things on paper do not always work out in real life).
     Returning to present day, Anne and I looked at the staircase, where it would end, where the door would have to go, and the clearance needed for a door, all of which dictated where the wood stove would actually end up. Not so good. Smack in the middle of everything. We had visions of future toddlers stumbling into a 500 degree cast iron stove and knew we needed something different to happen. We discussed stove relocation, which is extremely tricky because the stovepipe needs to exit the roof in a logical spot. We talked of stair reconfiguration. We talked of adopting kids who were already old enough to know not to walk into a red-hot woodstove. Eventually, as darkness descended, I said I’d mess around with the design tomorrow and see if I got lucky. Well, the sun shines on a dog’s ass some days, as the saying goes.
     With the addition of a platform at the bottom of the stairs, cutting off one tread and riser from the stringer, changing the angle, giving up some headroom, and a bit of divine intervention, the staircase somehow worked out. We managed to move it back about 18 inches and change the door orientation, which allowed us to move the stove out of the major traffic pattern and back it up against a wall. When the walls are built, I’ll post a picture which will illustrate this whole deal. But rest well knowing that when you come and visit, and if you’re balance has been compromised by a few too many gin and tonics, the chance of you receiving third-degree burns has been greatly lessened. This is our gift to you. Thank us later. In the meantime, pass the gin.

Homework

Stairs1

Stairs3

Stairs2

All pane, all gain?

     The entire house now being completely fenestrated, we seized the opportunity to test out our passive solar gain. One of our hopes is that with the windows and doors installed, the interior of the house will stay warm enough to work inside comfortably. This should prove to be true on sunny days, and it will be interesting to see how it works out on partly cloudy days. We have a kerosene heater as a backup, but I figure since we have been working outside all winter, even a slightly warmer house will be an improvement.
     To test our theory, we brought our indoor/outdoor digital thermometer to the hillside and installed it in the house. Over the course of a few work days, the results have been surprising. It seems that when it is quite warm outside (around 55 degrees F), with the sun shining and the windows and doors closed, the house stayed cooler than the outside temperature. I had expected it to be warmer, with the windows magnifying the heat intake and the insulation trapping it in. Not so. The inside temp stayed about 10 degrees below the outside temp. The next day, when we opened the windows to let the warm outside air in, the inside was markedly warmer, with the temperature differential between outside and in about six or seven degrees. On both of these days, however, as evening approached and the outside temperature dropped, the inside temp held constant, eventually becoming higher then the dropping outside temp. And yesterday, with the outside hovering around 35 degrees F and no sun in sight, the inside was a constant 7 degrees warmer than the outside temp (making it a balmy 42).
     So it seems that I don’t know what the hell I am talking about. I thought that with house sealed, and our south side with plenty of windows letting in lots of sunlight, the inside would heat up markedly, and make the inside warmer then the outside. This doesn’t seem to happen when the temperature outside is above 40 or so. In one way this is a bit depressing, as I was looking forward to a warm early spring of inside work. But it does seem to bode well for a hot summer, where the house will stay relatively cool, which is a good thing, considering the whole global warming issue.
     On a side note, it is amazing how much a window can make a structure look more house-like. The transition from gaping holes in the side of the house to finished and regulated openings is quite dramatic. It is one of those moments when you feel as if you are turning a corner in construction.

Sealedup

Why the internet is inherently dangerous

     Today I learned a valuable lesson about advice you read on the internet: there is always the slight chance it may kill you. I guess I knew that, somewhere way back in my brain. But an event this morning brought it rushing to the forefront with a bang.
     Recently, I have been having problems with my cordless drill. This is an 18-volt Milwaukee, a serious piece of toolery that has bored many a hole and driven thousands of screws. Always reliable, it never failed. Until now. The last few days, it seemed the batteries were not taking a charge anymore. This happens after awhile, but I felt it was a bit early in its lifespan for this to happen, so I was puzzled. But, I did use it a lot in the dead of winter, so I chalked it up to overuse and environment. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I was thinking about how odd it was that all three batteries should go at once, especially since one was much newer than the other two. But I didn’t entertain this thought for too long and I began to research the cheapest place to buy a replacement battery on the internet.
     While reading Amazon’s user reviews, it seemed many folks were lamenting how crappy Milwaukee batteries are, which is such a shame because the tools themselves are top notch. As I skimmed through them, resigning myself to the $50-60 I was going to have to shell out, I came across one reviewer who reported a quick and easy way to revive an old battery. All you had to do was take a regular 9-volt battery, align its positive and negative terminals with the corresponding terminals on the drill battery, maintain contact for thirty seconds, and voila! The drill battery is wiped clean and will now accept a charge again. Simple as pie.
     Have you ever made a pie? Not so simple, especially if your crust is from scratch. But I read on, and another reviewer said he tried it and it worked great. This is awesome, I thought to myself. I have to try this. So I grabbed a 9-volt from my guitar tuner, matched up the terminals, and counted to thirty. I then plugged in the drill battery into its charger, fully expecting it be as good as new and take a charge. The red light went on, and 1 minute later, it went off. Damn. It didn’t work.
     Ok, maybe the 9-volt was too weak. Plus, I didn’t run down the drill battery completely. I knew I had a brand new 9-volt in my tool bucket on the hillside, so I figured I would give it another shot down there. As soon as I arrive, I take the drill and clamp the trigger in the ‘on’ position, and let the battery run down. This doesn’t take long. In the meantime, I grab the new battery. In an uncharacteristic flash of foresight, I also grabbed my safety goggles. These are pretty cool as safety goggles go, orange wraparound ones that sort of make me look like Bono. So I put on the goggles, grab the two batteries, touch the terminals together, and begin counting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twentyBAM! I jumped about three feet in the air, dropped everything, and counted my fingers. All there. Looked at the drill battery. A little singed, but seemed to be ok. Found the 9-volt battery—toast. It had exploded, shooting some undoubtedly toxic goo across the room and leaving a trail of plastic shards on the floor. As I stared at it, it popped again, and I jumped again, and promptly opened the door and kicked the battery into the snow. Holy cow. Once my heart rate returned to a semblance of normal, I tried to piece together what had happened. Over the course of the workday, I think I figured it out.
     You see, the problem with the drill doesn’t seem to be the batteries. I think it is with the drill body itself, specifically where the body connects with the battery. It doesn’t seem to be drawing power from the batteries like it should be, accepting only a trickle at a time. This proved out when the drill would not work until I banged it against something, thus confirming my suspicion that certain pieces were not meeting up like they should. This would explain all of the problems. The batteries seemingly to be out of juice, but not taking a charge, was really the drill not accepting the charged battery. Thus, when I tried to charge the battery, which I thought was dead, it was actually almost fully charged, which was why it wouldn’t accept a charge from the charger. So when I thought the battery was discharged, it really wasn’t, it just wasn’t working with the faulty drill. This leads to me trying to jump start an almost fully charged 18 volt drill battery with a 9 volt battery, but electricity doesn’t work that way, evidently. What actually happened was the 18 volt battery was sending a lot of juice into the little 9 volt battery. Ergo, the explosion.
     So what have we learned here? Trust the little thoughts in the back of your head. Trust logic. Don’t mess with electricity. If safety goggles are cool and make you look like an international rock star you are much more likely to wear them. Conduct experiments that have a chance to go horribly wrong outside of your brand new house, not inside the future dining room. And, most importantly, beware the misinformation highway. It’ll put your eye out if you’re not careful.

Kablooie