Under the Back Deck

June to December 2005

When the back deck was replaced, it was also enlarged. The deck is level to the house. Since the ground slopes from the front of the house to the back (from North to South), the deck is 2 feet or so above the ground at the house to some 4 feet at the farthest point from the house. The builder had cleared off the area under the deck, put down landscape cloth and put pebbles on top of it. This keeps things from growing under the deck.

Since the new deck extends out further from the house, something needs to be done under the new part of the deck. One approach would be to just throw some landscape cloth over it and put more pebbles on it, but much of this area was a mixture of dirt and rock.




Rather than just cover it up, I decided to dig it all out, down to bed rock (which is just another two to three feet down. This took months, and involved both removing the dirt and rock, carefully, to avoid disturbing the supports for the deck, and then replacing the deck supports. When the deck was extended, they just dug down a little, poured a concrete pad, and put the deck support on that concrete pad. The result was that the deck support was on a concrete pad which was generally on dirt and rock. Dirt and rock that I was removing.




To keep the deck in place, I used a number of steel pipe jacks to hold the deck on both sides of a support while the rock and dirt under the support was removed and a new concrete support pour which went all the way down to bedrock.



Otherwise, the process was mainly just the work of digging out all the dirt and rock under the back deck.



Once all the dirt and rock was removed, I went in and built a retaining wall under the edge of the back deck to bring it back up to ground level. Behind the retaining wall, we put down landscape cloth and pebbles, to match what the builder had done under the original deck.



Now we wanted something that was beyond my amateur capabilities. We wanted to brick up the space under the back deck and create planters. The smaller planter would be for my irises, and the larger, two level planter for Linda's herbs.



Notice the area under the deck near Linda's herb planters. When we were excavating this area, it went quite deep, almost deep enough to stand up in. Rather than just filling that in, we put up a stone wall to hold back the pebbles further in (from the original builder), and left it an open space -- what we call "the dungeon".

To do this work, we called someone who had done stone work for Linda before, Guadalupe Zarate. He found someone to do the work for $4400, mostly using the rocks that we dug out from under the deck. They did an excellent job.

Hot Water Heater

March 2004

The hot water heaters that were installed when the house was built were getting old. We were beginning to experience not enough hot water for showers after Lauren took her shower and then Linda and then me. So the idea was to stay ahead of an actual problem and change out the hot water heaters to avoid a problem later. There are two hot water heaters -- one in the garage for the kitchen, washer/dryer and garage and one in the hallway for the bathrooms.

There are a couple of steps to this:

1. Find a new hot water heater.
2. Switch out the old one with the new one.
3. Haul off the old ones.

There aren't that many different hot water heaters. I found six or so to consider. I'm looking for two 50-gallon gas hot water heaters. I can check locally at stores and on-line.

I checked locally at Lowes, Home Depot, Sears. Online at State, Rheem, and Maytag. Looking at warranty (8 to 12 year), BTUs (40K), Energy Factor (.58 to .64), recovery (40.4 to 44.9 gals/hour). The best of the bunch seemed to me to be the GE unit from Home Depot. It was slightly more expensive than the Whirlpool unit at Lowe's, but had a higher Energy Factor (.62).

The next problem was step 2 -- how to actually do the switch. Looking at the way the old units were installed, it became clear to me that I couldn't do this myself. I can so some plumbing, but I don't sweat pipes; I just don't have any experience or training in doing so. So I would need to get a plumber. That changed the whole problem of getting the hot water heaters.

Most plumbers wanted to do the whole thing -- provide the hot water heaters and do the work. Buying the hot water heaters from Home Depot would be about 400 each, or 800 total. Plumbers wanted much more for the hot water heaters and then the installation too. Sears wanted $1700 for the two. Custom Plumbing quoted $1275 (each) for the hot water heaters. And almost all of them were for the State brand of gas water heater, but not the better version (Premier) but for the Standard.

Eventually, I went with Fox Service Company. They would do just the installation.

So, on 18 March 2004, I rented a truck from Home Depot ($20.90) and bought two 50-gallon GE Hot Water Heaters ($904.13) and brought them home. On the 19th, Fox came out and installed them ($765.00). There was one "minor" problem -- we apparently had two 40-gallon heaters before, so it was a bit of a tight fit, but they got it done just fine.

 

Or it seemed that it was fine. There was one minor problem that didn't show up for another 7 months. In October, I opened the heating closet and found that the hot water heater was sitting in a pool of water. There is a pan under the hot water heater, so that if it leaks, the leak is contained. The pan then needs to drain, and Fox had connected the drain for the water heater to the drain for the air conditioner, so it didn't overflow.

Of course the unit was still under warranty, so I spent the next couple of days on the phone trying to get this hot water tank replaced. This was not easy. I notice the problem at 12:30 AM Friday 8 October and called at 7:30 AM to report it. I was told that "Someone will respond within one business day", but by 5:30 no one had responded. For days, I got the run-around. Since it was the weekend, everything was time and a half. By Monday, I was told "We are really backed up on our warranty work; maybe Thursday. Maybe."

With lots of calls, I was able to get Sully to come out on Tuesday 12 October. I had previously gone to Home Depot, rented a truck and got a replacement (40-gallon) hot water heater. In two hours, the work was done. ($170.00). Then I had to rent another truck and take the leaking hot water heater back to Home Depot to get credit for the replacement unit I bought.

In retrospect, it would have been much easier if either (a) I learned how to install the hot water heater myself, so that I could do the whole job, or (b) I had the plumber do the whole job. Even with a warranty for the unit, we were without hot water for 3 or 4 days, and it took a lot of coordination to get it done.

And it probably wasn't necessary. While there was water all around the hot water tank, in the pan, and the rust suggested the hot water heater had been sitting in water for a long time, there was the suggestion that the water came not from the hot water heater, but from the A/C system. Remember how Fox had tied the hot water heater pan drain into the A/C drain? The suggestion was made that the water from the A/C system was going down its drain and then into the hot water heater pan. To prevent that, the last plumber cut the connection and sealed it, so the hot water heater has no drain. I got some battery operated alarms that are supposed to warn of water in the pan.

Update (28 Dec 2018):  While we were resting after dinner, there came a shrill noise to the kitchen.  We tracked it down to the hall way, and then to the hot water heater.  It was the battery operated alarm that I had put in the pan.  And there was water in the pan!

There is a pressure/temperature relief valve at the top of the hot water heater (on the side), and it was leaking around that.  I've known that these things will/can fail, and this one apparently was on the verge of doing so.  I called a plumber, Wilson Plumbers, and they sent two guys out to fix it.  They had two replacement valves, but one was too short and the other too long (it prevented the door from closing), so they had to go get the right size, but they did, and installed it.  The whole thing took about 2 hours.  (They said our water pressure, which they measured at 100 pounds, is too high, but also that the springs in these valves just give out eventually.)

A couple of days after the plumbers had been out, I opened the door to the hot water heater, and there was water -- inches! -- in the pan.  The drain/flush valve, at the bottom of the tank was dripping, quickly!  So I turned off the water to
the hot water heater, drained the tank, and removed the top of the drain valve.  Looks like it needs a new washer.  I found 00 Flat washers at Home Depot (1/2" outside diameter) as being almost the right size -- a tad too big, but they can be squished to fit.  Then a new screw -- #6-32 brass, about 1/2 long at most.  Put that all back together, and fill it up again.  Seems to be working with no drips.

Remodelling the Back Bathroom

Lauren wants to move into the back bedroom, and Linda took an interest in remodelling the bathroom and bedroom before she does. Linda worked with some people at Materials Marketing which sells lots of different types of stone tile and pieces. They laid out a design for using their stone work to tile the sink counter top, the floor, and the bathtub/shower areas of the bath. 

The material for all this was $1983.08. We then contracted with Fox Tile to take out the old tile and install all the new stone tile. This was $2000. 

The installation was not as good as I would have preferred. The tile was supposed to go all the way to the ceiling, but they stopped about 8 inches from the top. 

And once the tile was in place, we replaced all the fixtures in the room. 

The toilet was replaced by an American Standard Champion. This is a higher toilet than normal (they call it "Right Height"), an elongated bowl, in a "Linen" color. $477.38 from Home Depot. 

The tub/shower fixtures were American Standard 8630 in Nickel Satin finish $415.50 from Home Depot. I needed help from Fox Services to install the tub/shower fixtures. $85.00 

The sink fixtures were "Iris", again in a Nickel Satin finish $402.00 from Home Depot. 

 The light fixture was from Texas Light, $162.55. 

The towel rods were from Restoration Hardware, their Chatham line, again in Satin Nickel. $132.07. 

The builder had installed a ceiling heater, but no vent fan, so I took out the ceiling heater and put in a Broan Model 683C Deluxe Fan. This required installing a vent in the exterior gable wall and running a vent duct thru the attic. 

And finally, we painted the walls and ceiling. The ceiling is a Premium Plus Interior Eggshell paint, a pastel base with "Restful" (400F-4) tint. The walls are a green Behr paint. 

And once the bathroom was done, we repainted the back bedroom. We removed the original "popcorn" ceiling, and textured it to match the walls. $550.00. Then I sanded the wood floors and put a coat of polyurethane on them.

A New Roof

It was time to get a new roof. We had one leak which we patched, but now we had another leak, this time in the garage. We could have patched that one too, but at some point we would just need to put on a new roof. 

We got four estimates. Each estimate involved talking to a roofing company. They would come out and look over the roof, and give options on what kind of new roofing material to put on. The original roof, from when the house was built, has a 50 year warranty. Now, 18 years later, it needed to be replaced. And, of course neither the original installer (the builder) nor the company that produced the shingles were still around. But if we could get another 20 years out of this roof, we probably would not be here to need to re-roof again. 

Each estimate covered the same basic job. Take off the old roof and putting down new felt underneath it, new flashing, and the new roof. 30-year warranty shingles. We also asked about a metal roof. A metal roof should be long lasting. 

Company A bid 7278 for the shingle roof, but didn't do metal roofs. 

Company B bid 7696 for the shingle, and 21,687 for a metal roof. 

Company C bid 8912 for the shingle, and 18,900 for a metal roof. 

Company D bid 7292 for the shingle, and 24,292 for a metal roof. 

We liked the idea of a metal roof, but for the price difference, it just didn't make sense. We could re-roof with regular asphalt shingles 3 times for the price of one metal roof. Even supposing that it would last 3 times (or more) longer, we don't expect to be in the house that long. 

So we went with Company D -- Aztec Roofing and Siding. Once that was decided, there were various details to contend with. We went with a 30-year GAF Timberline Cedar Blend shingle.

 

(We ended up getting a new roof in 2013, so only 9 years later. By then it cost $16,265)

They knew that we had a ridge vent along the top of the house, and would have to consider that.  At the same time, however, they took out the wind turbine vents and covered those holes. I had been reading that the wind turbines are both not helpful and can be problematic. They may be better than nothing, but a ridge vent combined with soffit openings will provide a smooth flow of air from the soffit openings to the ridge vent. The wind turbines cause turbulence in that flow, and reduce the cooling effect. 

At the same time, there were a couple of panels of plywood roof decking under the shingles that needed to be replaced -- these were in the location of the leak. I asked them to use a replacement plywood with a radiant barrier attached to the underside. Radiant barriers are supposed to help keep the heat down in the attic and thus prevent the heat from building up and being transmitted into the house. So we have a patchwork of roof decking -- most is normal plywood, but we have 4 sheets of radiant barrier. 

The result was a total cost of $7390.42. 

 The company did a good job. They tore off the old roof and dropped it into the back of a truck parked on the driveway. Then they replaced the roof decking that needed it, put down the new felt, and then the new shingles. It took all day -- they were cleaning up by flashlight after sundown, but they got it all done in one day. Since they were working so late, they missed some of the clean up items -- I found a number of shingles and nails the next day in the light. But it was adequate. 

In fact, it suggested an additional income possibility for them. They probably did the standard "magnet" sweep of the yard. They have a strong magnet on a pole and push it or wave it around to pick up nails. Only works on iron and steel nails, of course, and only if you cover the entire area close enough to the ground for the magnet to work. If you really wanted to do a good job, you probably would want to use one of those metal detectors that some people use at the beach to find coins and watches and such. If you could rent one for a day, and use it you might get a much better clean-up job. For more time, of course, and so it would be an extra-charge item -- the cost of renting the detector and the time of the person that operated it.

Replacing the Back Deck

November, 2003

When the house was built, a deck was put along the back. The deck was a simple rectangle. The deck faces South; half of it is covered by the roof, half is exposed to the sun. There were stairs down along the house at both ends -- next to the dining room and next to the guest room. It basically consisted of 2x6 lumber, probably treated fir.

Over time, the deck aged, and we noticed one or more boards that were beginning to show more "give" than we felt comfortable with. So we started to consider replacing the deck with a newer deck.

Rather than just replacing it, we felt free to consider changing the design, and talked to a couple of companies, read some books, and so on. Eventually, we contracted with Legacy Custom Decks to take off the existing deck and do a new one in ipe (also called iron wood). We were told that the ipe was sustainably grown in Brazil.



The quote for this work was $10,656. We signed the contract on 18 Nov 2003 and the work was done by 11 Dec 2003.

The first step was to remove the old deck. I removed all the plantings around it. It had been overgrown with a rose bush, as well as having various bushes around it, and some monkey grass. I moved the monkey grass around to the side of the house, by the garage.



The supports underneath the old deck were generally still in good shape, so they were reused. The old deck and railing was removed.



Once the old deck was removed, they put the new deck on. The wood is so hard, that they drilled and screwed, instead of nailing.





After the deck was finished, it needed to be power-washed and sealed. Legacy suggested Deck Masters of Austin. On 16 Dec 2003, they power-washed and sealed at a cost of $655.50.

We refinished the deck in June 2005, and again in October 2010, when we did it ourselves. Since we already had a power washer, the only cost was for the deck stain/sealer. We used Australian Timber Oil Penetrating Finish. We needed 2.5 gallons, plus some lambs wool pads. Lowes carried both ($91.26). It took three days -- one to power wash, and two to recoat. We should have sanded between the power wash and the refinish.

Moving the Monkey Grass

November 2003

To replace and expand the deck, we needed to clear out the space where the deck was being expanded. It had been landscaped with Japanese Boxwood and edged with monkey grass (or Mondo grass). The boxwood was not something we needed to keep, but the monkey grass seemed like it would be a waste to not reuse.

So we decided to move it to the side of the house by the kitchen and the garage. But of course, to do that we first needed to excavate this area, both to provide a good environment for the monkey grass, and because we would not be able to excavate after the monkey grass was planted.



We took a couple of weeks, and dug down to bedrock. We got about 3 feet down, pulling out rock and construction debris. We had to be careful of the main irrigation water supply line. Then we were able to fill it in with much better dirt and replant the monkey grass.

This has done fairly well. The main problems are (a) the dirt in the back, near the house has settled more than the rest, so there is a depression towards the house, and (b) the section under the garage roof overhang gets very little water.

The French Drain, Part 1

December 2002 to December 2003 

When the house was built, there was no fence. When we put the fence in, it only went between us and our neighbors, so it was still open to the front of the house. To keep the dog in the back yard, we needed to close it off, so we contracted for a guy to put in the section of the fence with gates on both the left and right side of the house. 

Before I did that, I wanted to make sure that there was enough dirt to put the fence posts in. When I dug down on the left (the East side), I got dry sandy dirt. On the right (the West side), I got water. The whole West side of the house was saturated with water. This was causing problems with the foundation of the house -- the outermost layer of the foundation was spalling off. 

and after it rained, the whole lawn was standing water. 

The problem was that there had been a swale that drained this part of the yard onto the empty lot next store, and then back and down the hill. But the empty lot had been built on and the builder filled in the swale, blocking the water from our front lawn which flowed down the yard, around the house and then just stopped. 

The solution was to dig a French drain to take all this water back down the hill. I dug a trench, about a foot wide down 2 to 3 feet. We then filled this with gravel and a couple of 4 inch PVC drainage pipes. This allows the water to filter thru the gravel and down the trench, past the slight raise that was keeping it in place. 

At the front of the house, the downspout from the gutters for the front of the house was tied directly into one of the drainage pipes in the French drain.

  

In addition, the other two drainage pipes just ran straight out to the lowest spot in the front yard. 

The trench, gravel, and drain pipes ran back under the fence and then turned left to run along side the fence to the back of the left side of the house.

At the end of the fence, we turn and continued until the back yard fell off enough that the yard was lower than the end of the drain pipe, so any water coming down it would drain off down the hill. 

This process took a year or so to dig out. I needed to be careful around the trees. Plus, as with much of the yard, the dirt is not very deep before I hit rock. These rocks had to be dug out to get down as far as possible -- generally down to bedrock about two to three feet down. Whenever a rock was encountered, a decision had to be made if it could be pulled out completely, or if it was too big to handle, and would have to be broken into pieces and removed. There were two sections where the bedrock itself was not level, but bulged up to stop the flow of water. I used a jackhammer to break thru these bulges to get a clear path for water entering the trench at the front yard to flow by gravity to the end of the trench. 

The actual installation of the pipe and rock, which is surrounded by a weed barrier form of landscape cloth, to allow water to flow in, but keep the dirt and roots away from the drainage pipes, was done by Drainage Specialist, for $2000 ($500 down, $1500 on completion). 

 This solved the drainage problem. It left us with a hole in the backyard with the three drainage pipes sticking in them, but we had other problems that needed to be worked on, and we weren't sure how to finish it off, so we just left it for later.

Third Mortgage Re-finance

With interest rates continuing to drop, it makes sense to refinance once more, for the sole purpose of decreasing our interest rate.  Since Chase has been doing a good job with the current mortgage, we approached them and asked if we could refinance to a lower rate.  They agreed.

We again refinanced with Chase Manhattan Mortgage, getting a 15-year fixed rate mortgage for $125,800 at 5.75%.  This paid the balance of the third mortgage of $125,823.32 plus closing costs.  Closing costs included title insurance ($768.20), but since the previous re-finance was so recent, we were able to skip the appraisal.

Painting the House

September 2002.  The house needed to be repainted. This time it was Steve Lindberg, $3260. This painted all the outside trim, the garage doors, and the exterior door to the back bedroom. 

First, there was a pwoer wash with bleach and soap.

Then all broken caulk areas were re-caulked, with Kelly Moore 45 year caulk.

Finally everything was painted.

 The outside trim is Sherwin-Williams Cuprinol SW 3507 Riverwood.

 

New A/C System

On 9 May 2002, I had the A/C system checked out to make sure that it would work for the upcoming summer. While it is working correctly, the technician said that it is "running high amps" and will fail under load. 

Since we should hardly need the A/C system in May, but will definitely need it in July thru September. So it seems like a good time to look for a new A/C system before it fails. I checked with 3 different companies. It seems that a good system would be a Trane XL1800, 16 SEER, 5 ton unit. We want to replace our existing system, both heating and cooling. The Trane XL1800 is common, and we can get comparative quotes. 

From 3 different suppliers we got: $8970, $9177, and $7624. An alternative was presented by Strand Brothers. They quoted a Lennox system which was SEER 14.5 for $6187. Instead of Freon, it uses 410A as a refrigerant. Plus it runs at variable speed, trying to minimize how much it has to do to reach a target temperature. 

 

But before we do that, we check with the City and they suggest we have our ducts checked. The duct work for our heating and A/C system run thru the attic. We've had all the ducts replaced once before, in April 1996, but the City believes that a lot of conditioned air is lost due to leaky ducts, so they are supporting a duct leakage analysis. We had our ducts tested on 3 June 2002. The duct leakage analysis showed that we both had duct leakage, but possibly more important, not enough air flow to properly cool most of the rooms. So we need the ducts sealed, but also modified to get the right amount of air, at the right temperature to all the rooms in the house. 

We contracted with Strand for both pieces of work. First, replace the existing heating and cooling system with a new Lennox system (both a gas furnace and A/C system), and second, modify the duct work to adjust the air flow and seal them. The contract, 8 June 2002, was $6187 for the replacement system and $2625 for the ductwork, for a total of $8712. 

I suffer from allergies, and so I would like the air conditioning system to also do the best it can to clean and filter the air. So we added onto this total $650 for a Honeywell Electronic Air Filter, and $395 for an ultra-violet light. The UV light goes anywhere in the air flow from the return air chamber to the top of the system where it branches for the various parts of the house and is supposed to help kill viruses and bacteria. 

We put $5000 down on 20 June 2002. The heating and A/C system was installed promptly and with little problem. The main issue was that the electronic air filter, installed just above the return air chamber raised the fan, furnace and evaporator coil. This makes it difficult to put the evaporator coil in place, and so it had to be turned 90 degrees from what was expected. 

But the duct work was more difficult; much more difficult. The ducts themselves were replaced and rebuilt according to plan, but they did not work as designed. The objective was to increase air flow to each of the rooms to be plus or minus 10% of what would be desired for that size of room. There were 18 registers. 

 

A spreadsheet was used to identify each register, the desired airflow, and the measured airflow. 

My idea was to have a concrete, objective criteria that defined if the work was "good enough". This seemed to cause significant problems. Strand expected to measure the current situation in order to establish that I needed work done, then design a solution to fix the situation, do the work, and declare it done. They did not normally go back and re-measure things to see if things actually improved. When we did, we found that some registers had improved, but others had not; some actually got worse. Before the work was done, we had 69% of the desired airflow; afterwards we were at 85%.  Better, but not what they promised.

The reduced air flow resulted in some additional changes to the duct work, and a larger evaporator coil, but still did not meet the goal. This got management involved, with different air filters and different measuring devices. The result seemed to be that first, the measuring devices were not very accurate and second, the measuring devices were not even repeatable. 

The measuring devices fit over a register and measured the amount of air coming out of it. Different instances of the measuring device gave different numbers. The same device would also give different results. Part of the problem was the Lennox system itself. It has a variable speed fan, and is reluctant to "blow at full speed". The result of this is that it is difficult to get the fan to run at full speed, or even a constant speed. Lennox apparently did not build into its controls a "test" mode which would just turn the fan on, full speed. 

Eventually, we got things done as well as they were going to be, but it was not easy. We never got the ultraviolet light, and the reusable electrostatic filters were deemed too restrictive to air flow, so we use disposable HEPA filters instead. 

One of the better features of this system turns out to be the warranty. The warranty is for 10 years parts and labor. 

 

This has turned out to be critical:

• 23 May 2005 -- the system doesn't seem to be cooling. I have an A/C pocket thermometer, and it shows the air coming out of the closest register to be just barely cooler than the air going in to the return air closet. Turns out there is no coolant; the 410A coolant has leaked out. They put in more, but come back a couple days later and find a leak in the coil, so they replace the coil and recharge the system. This takes about 2 weeks altogether.
• 1 July 2006 -- the compressor will not run. A bad "Dual Run Capacitor" is replaced.
• 10 July 2008 -- internal electronics short out. The module controlling the blower motor is replaced.

Each time, Strand came out, found and fixed the problem. No charge. This should continue until 27 June 2012.

But Strand was none too happy about it.  They sent a letter in October 2008 saying that the system was no longer under warranty.  I sent back a copy of the original warranty, showing that it was still in effect until 2012. 

But the arguing ended up being unnecessary.  At this point, the system stopped breaking and just kept running for the next 10 to 12 years, when it was replaced by a Trane.