February 17, 2007
We have one room in the house that seemingly does not keep up with the rest of the house. Set the heat on 70 and this room will sustain above 60, but probably more like 62-64ish. Go 30 years wishing it were better, or fix it now? I'm going to add a second floor vent in that room and here's how it goes.
First thing. If you have a pickup that would easily haul all this stuff, sell it and get a prius. It makes it more interesting.
The guy at Home Depot was about to load up some stuff for someone else. While he was waiting for that guy to pull around, he asked me:
Is that one of them lectric cars?
Yeah.
How does it handle with all that weight?
Um... Not that great. I really take it easy when it's loaded down like that.
I guess this is about 500 pounds of stuff this time. The little men in the engineering room across the ocean didn't figure on this.
And, on with the show. That's where the current heating vent is, let's put the new one in the next space to the left.
Might as well take one last picture before you screw up the carpet.
Measure over 16 inches in all aspects and we should land in the right spot underneith.
Anytime you take a utility knife to the carpet, there is this thing in the back of your head about what a colossal failure this will be if it doesn't work in the end.
For perspective sake, looks like the right size.
Drill in 3 corners.
Jigsaw is your friend here.
Another point of clarity. I sure hope this works!!
From below, push this piece up into the hole. If you're close enough, it will hold itself. Otherwise, someone might have to hold it while you come up to put the nails in.
Nailed in place..
The pretty part fits... that's good...
And, now to hook it up from down here.
We have serious roadblocks if we follow the current joist space to the heater, we need to go over a couple.
After thinking it through, I can build this whole piece down here before I get up into the tighter space.
Hook it on, support it.
Start the long run home.
I needed to go over the gas line, but under some pvc plumbing... so.. we have this correction here.
Overall, this is about 45 feet of pipe to get to the heat source. That's why the original vent doesn't keep up on it's own. By the time the hot air gets through the pipe, the furnace shuts off.
Over the conduit grand central station. I know that conduit all looks professional, but no.. I did it. LOL.. I was the lowest bid we could find.
At the end of our long run, it's time to do one last turn out of the joist space to the heat source.
This is another one of those.... "If I cut this, I could ruin the whole house" moments. By the way, if you ever do something like this, make sure you tap into the 'heat' side of your furnace. There is another rectangular box right next to this which does not give you hot air.
This is the thing that mates up to the rectangular box.
Both installed, one piece to go between them.
My level of detail with the pictures went down as 11pm drew close.
All hooked up, turn the furnace back on.... Yay, air... hot air... this air run has the same problem as the original. It's so long, it doesn't bring a lot of hot air real fast when the furnace starts. By itself, it would be equally as useless in this room. Added to the existing one, I'm hoping for good results.
That's how balmy it was in there as I turned on the furnace with the double ducting. In about an hour, that room was at 70 with the rest of the house. Yay!