Sump Pump Day

Still E
Back in the begining I talked about a little pump being broken for the ac that pumped water outside. I had it draining on the floor and into the sump pump hole that didn't have a sump pump in it.  That is the same place I had the dehumidifier draining.  The ground kept on soaking up all of the water and I never had a problem.  Well this past weekend I looked in the hole and it was finaly almost full.  Ut oh.  Cackys mom is at the house and I am going to have to turn on the AC?  I don't think so.
Dan and I got to work. I had ordered a refurbished sump pump on ebay.  It was about 45$ shipped which is less then half the price they were in hope depot.  Our major problem was that the whole in the cement was not big enough for the float to move freely.  We measured the home depot pumps too, they needed the same amount of room that the one I bought needed.
Dan came up with the plan, we put the masonary blade back in the circular saw and scored a line as deep as we could into the concrete basement floor and then used a cold chisel and a 4lb hammer to break away the rest of the concrete.  We then dug the whole deeper lined the walls of the hole with chicken wire and mixed up some quick setting concrete to go in the whole and line the walls.

While the concrete was hardening we ran the electrical and the plumbing for the pump.  We extended the ac drain line into the sump pump hole and set the dehumidifier up on the wall with a drain line into the sump pump hole as well.

Let me tell you, but setup works like a champ, it's quite and just works.  We also put a one way valve just after the sump pump so the water that is pump up the tube can't come back down after it hits that valve.

New Roof

Still Eamonn posting.  Hopefully after things get caught up Cacky will keep up with this.
When we bought the house there were leaks in the roof, actauly there was a hole in one place as well.  Dan and I had patched the roof (mostly him). 
It rained one day while we were at work. When we got home the kitchen table was soaked.  I thought, oh crap, I guess I knew this day was coming.  I sent an email out to alpha omega roofing and had them come look at the house.  They gave me what I thought I be a very reasonable estimate, so I also had them look at the garage.  Cacky and I decided to go with architectural shingles over standard ones because they look better, are supposed to last longer and aren't that much more money.

Roof on a truck

Half way done ripping off the roof in the back

Roof Complete

I was really excited that the roofers got done before the big storm that was about to come the following monday.  I cracked a few jokes about my kitchen table at least being dry before leaving work.  When I got home the kitchen table was soaked again....  Oh crap, I went and looked at the roof, it looked perfect.  Then I remember that there was a window above where it was leaking, and that I had opened that storm window a few weeks ago.  I looked closer at the window and there was no drain holes at all.  The water filled up the window sill like a fish tank untill it leaked through the wooden sill onto the table.  I cleaned it out and closed the storm window.  It hasn't leaked since.  I guess I will add that to the list of things that need to be done.

sanding, crack filling and painting

Still trying to get the blog up to date here.

A few weeks ago we started painting. I had the door sanded down and primed as one of the stipulations to get the house and now it was time to finaly paint it.

The original pictures of the house I can't find. I think they are on my desktop that is packed in a box somewhere. So I will just post what I have.

While we were painting the room we decided that the only place for the TV to go is above the mantal. The only problem with that is that I hate looking at tv's above the mantal when you have to look up at them. We decided that the best we to go would be to shorten the mantal. After we cut it we realized that the plater didn't come down far enough to meet the new mantal height. Dan came up with the plan to buy a massonary blade and put it in my new circular saw to cut a straight line in the wall. If there was a straight cut we could later shim out a piece of sheet rock so the wall would look perfect.

Here is the room primed with the mantal off.

That pretty much sums up the living room, while we were at it we changed all of the electrical outlets and the covers. We still have to hang the tv and run the wires for it.

You will notice random furniture all over the place, that is beacuse before we start working on a room we take everything out of it and place it in other rooms.

Invite Dan Allen over

Cacky says that I am not allowed to post in her blog, however it's becoming alot clearer that she really just isn't going to post anything anytime soon. I thought people might want to know where we are with the hosue. I also got yelled at for my spelling. I can't spell, I know that. This isn't a novel, it's a blog that I write when I get a few minutes.

I have found that if you want to get things done around the house you need the Allen/Casey clan to come over and attack it like an army.

The head of the army is no other then Cackys father Dan Allen. He pretty much lives with us a few nights a week now. He a cool guy and loves to do projects. That helps my motivation factor alot. I like working on things alot with other people. Cacky is a actauly a geat help, better then I ever expected. Dan is the one who is not afraid to start a big project. I am usualy a bit hesitant, but I am glad I have someone to push me through and do things that way I want them done.

I belive it was day one of officialy working on the house as owners, notcounting all of the work he helped with before it was ours. He was itching to tare something apart. The hallway to the bed rooms was very small due to a poor installation of Air conditioning duct work to upstairs. We had decided that we wanted to remove wall that covered the duct work and the duct work so that hallway would be bigger and then install a second AC unit upstairs so that we didn't need duct work to up there anyway. Dan decided that it was good time to start that project to he got a hammer and layed into it.

There were 2 ducts going to upstrairs, one to feed the air and one to return it. I got to attack the duct work. I dropped the old hockey shoulder and charged. I was a little rusty on the first hit, but then remember keep your feet moving toward the target. That worked well, good bye duct work.

While all this was going on we were removing baseboard shoe molding and the tac strips that were down for all of wall to wall carpeting that we cust most of out on move in day.

There was blue carpet padding that was stuck to the floor that we had to scrape off everywhere. Cacky scraped most of it. Isn't she a good helper?

I was able to find a grate for the floor that fit perfectly where the act vents were that went upstairs. I am not sure if this is perminant or not, but beats the heck out of a giant hole.

Air Conditioning

We have been super busy trying to get all of our stuff done and didn't make it on the computer last night. Since I am at work I figured I would predate the blog and write a little about the air conditioning system. As far as we know there was a Trane air conditioning system install in the house about 18 years ago. We knew that it had not been run in at least 5 years. I tried to turn it on, and only the blower fan turned on. So we had air coming out of the vents, but it was not cold. The unit outside made no indication that it was alive at all.

I had no idea what I was doing so I went to get some advice from my friend at work that does this for a living (thanks Shane). I figure I will start with the a very basic breakdown of a home AC system. There are 3 parts to it. First we have the unit in the basement that is where the evaporator is and the blower motor that blows air out of all of the vents in the house. Second we have the condencer unit that sits outside. That is the unit that buzzes all of the time and has a big fan in it. That is also the unit were the compressor lives. The Third part of the system is the thermostat that lives on a wall in the house that tells the unit what you want it to do. (where you set the temrature you want the house to be.

Since the unit outside showed no signed of life I was told to test the voltage at the unit. You do this will a multimeter. It's a little handheld device that tells you how much power you have at a certain point. I tested the big wires and it was 120 volts, right where it should be. So I then knew that the unit was getting power and that wasn't the problem.

Next, was the test to see if the wires that tell the outside unit to turn on were working. The unit expects to see 24 volts ac. On the unit outside there is an electromagnetic switch that closes when it gets 24 volts ac. That sounds very complicated but in reality it's just 2 magnets that have a little spring between them. When you give power to that magnets they become stronger and overpower the spring between them and touch each other. That alows power to pass between them.
I checked the wires going to the magnets however I did not have 24 volts ac. So either the wires are broken or the device sending the power is broken. I then gave a light tug on the wires and one came right through the side of the house. Well that explains that, the signal wire that tells the unit to turn on was cut/broken. Since it doesn't cary much voltage I used some 14 gauge wire and wire nuts to repair the break.

I then went inside and and flipped the switch and the unit outside turned on! The only problem was still no cold air. I had no idea what to do so I called Shane and he came to look at it. He told me it was old and that fixing it was at my own risk. I explained to him that I do everything the hard way and was going to attempet to fix it one way or another. I had him charge the system. In in the process of putting the last screw in we nicked a power wire and fireworks went off inside the power box in the unit. I thought to myself, that's not good. Oh wait, I said that outloud with a few other 4 letter words. We were able to fix the wire, just make sure they are out of the way when you put the screws back in.

When we went to test the unit the fan was spinning backwards ( still talking about the outside unit). Shane said that can't happen, but oh no... it was happening. He suggested getting a new start up capacitor for the fan as the one that was in there was all bubbled out. I took the old one out and went down to CC Dickson in charlotte and for 10$ I had a new capacitor 440 volt instead of 370 volt, but there was no problem with that. The new capacitor was about 1/3 the size of the old one, but seemed to work great. I plugged it in and the fan started up in the right direction and spun faster then ever! There was now cold air blowing out of the vents! I went back to work and came home at the end of the day to find no more cold air blowing.

The compressor was hardly running. It would start and then shut right off. I looked in the unit and saw another capacitor that was bubbled out and the wires went to the compressor. Great! I headed back to CC dickson with my compressor capacitor and for $11 I was on my way. I plugged that one in and the compressor then turned on and stayed running. Cold air again!!!
I came home from work that day expecting to find a cool house, but it was hot. I was not happy. This time there wasn't any air shooting out of any vents and the outside unit was off. I went out to the circuit breaker box and found that it had blown. Great, a short somewhere....

To make a long story short I found that there was a mini sump pump in the basement that was connected to the evaporator unit. It was full to the brim with water and was clearly not pumping water out like it should. I dumped out the water and let the unit drain on the ground. That water then flows into the main sump pump hole in the basement floor. We have not had a problem since. Speaking of which, I need to fix that....
The Prissy Girls Husband, Eamonn

Welcome to Our home improvement page!

Cacky has decided that she wanted to make a blog about doing home repair and improvment. I think she spent more time coming up with the title then trying to figure out how to create a blog, so I figured I would step in and start this off. I am Eamonn by the way.
Cacky and I were married on the wonderful day of June 19th. We purchaced this money pit on June 16th. We bought the house "as is". As is means the home inspector walked out within 5 minutes and said he wasn't going to do the inspection.
Oh well, we are in for one hell of a ride but with some help from friends and family we are going to make this place work. Well.... I guess I kind of have to make it work now.
We will get some pictures up shortly so you guys can see what we go through and more than likely feel better about the house that you live in!