Broken Joist

While doing all the wiring I've done the past few days, I discovered a broken, cracked joist. The wood inside the crack looks new so it probably happened last New Years! At our New Years Eve party last year, we had quite a few people jumping and dancing right over that joist.

To fix it I first filled the crack with a flooring adhesive. Then I took a 2 x 6 smeared with the same adhesive and straddled the crack with the 2 x 6. I put the same board on the other side of the joist. I would have like to put a 2 x 6 the length of that board all the way from the foundation to the main support beam. There was too much venting in the way to do that.

New electric and lights for the basement

Holy cow! I untangled an absolute mess in the basement, something that has bothered me for years. The previous owner buried so much electric behind walls and in the ceiling. In some places, the wires actually started fires. In other places, the guy put wires together with duct tape! Open splices just pushed towards the ceiling in the basement.

Before Christmas I started by removing the wires, rerunning new wires and making connections inside new electric boxes (see the picture). On the morning of Christmas Eve I thought I would spend a few minutes laying out the new can lights. After I got them up, I wanted to hook them up. Five hours later I had to stop to get to a holiday party. The entire upstairs was without power, for two days!

Today, I was able to do a few things. I used about four hours to run two lines directly to the panel. I hooked up all the can lights to their own circuit. There will be quite a few of them in the basement hooked together so I wanted to dedicate a line just for that. Removing the lights from the circuit that the refrigerator was also a goal I had. Every light in the basement was hooked to the same line that feed the refrigerator. The second circuit I added took the entire upstairs off that same refrigerator/basement circuit. Now the upstairs to the old part of the house has their own 20 amp breaker.

Figured I saved just a boat load of money doing this work myself. I priced out this job to the electrician who wired our new service panel in the addition portion--$3000. I spent around a hundred, mostly on wire that would have been cheaper if China wasn't demanding so much.

Another basement wall ready for insulation!

This weekend I really wanted to button up the wall in the basement- block out the cold before the real winter hits is. The cold air just pouring into the basement all these years is just insane.

The bulk of the work was clearing the debris from the demolition. About thirty trips got it outside. Jackson really helped me get this part done. We then scrapped and vacuumed the old paint from the wall. About an hour to Dryloc the wall. Another hour for the foam board. The fun part was putting up the framing for the new wall. Pressure treated boards as sill plates that I drove into the concrete with an actuated gun and nails with washers. So much easier than tap screws!

The next steps. I'm going to run tubing and connect into the central vac system I installed in the rest of the house. I will also run electric through this wall for some outlets. Insulation will be done this winter, soon, and drywall in the spring.

The pictures below show the new wall. Another shows a board I pulled out from the old framing. An actual burned board! The electric in this old house is another replacement I have planned for this winter. The previous owners just spliced wires together behind walls. The last picture shows the small wall I insulated a few weeks ago. I drywalled it so it was't that much of an eye sore during the holidays.

Brick up an old window opening

For whatever reason, the family who lived in our house covered a old window opening with spray foam and plywood. I discovered this mess a few weeks ago while removing the insulation and drywall from the poorly finished basement walls. Cold air from under our porch has been pouring into our house.

To be honest, I also discovered why the previous owner didn't use cement block to close this opening. With most of the work behind the gas meter, the lack of space made it really difficult to maneuver the concrete bricks. At one point I didn't stagger the joints just so I could block more of the opening behind the meter. I'm no mason at all. Cold air pouring in your house is all I wanted to stop.

The pics below show the before and after.