No really, both of us, just completely exhausted. I know a lot of people say it a lot, but we're running on fumes.

Lately work has been absolutely crazy for both Wendy and me. I'm talking 80-100 hour weeks crazy. Couple that with the extremely stressful endeavor of trying to oversee a major overhaul to our plumbing and HVAC at our house that we're not able to live at (because it has no functional plumbing or HVAC), and you've got a great recipe for periodic neurotic meltdowns, mild adult temper tantrums, and copious amounts of wine and ice cream.

Let me start by saying, as much as this may sound like complaining, I'm not complaining at all. Work may be crazy for us, but it's also very challenging (in a good way), and we're both doing something we enjoy quite a bit. Really, you can't beat that with a stick. And the repair process to our house? Well, we keep reminding ourselves that this whole effort is manic and stressful, but it's temporary and will leave us in a much better position for the future. Before we know it we'll be enjoying our house and looking back on these first months in our house where we had to make it work.

All that being said, we've not had nearly the time we need to write blog posts to keep you all updated on our progress. Sorry for the slow updates on our projects. There's so much happening that I want so badly to write all about, but there are not enough hours in the day, and that makes me a sad panda.

But enough about the craziness. I want to get you all caught up on the progress of it all. While I wish we had tons of time for blog posts to break down every little detail of the work, let's face it, that would be boring for almost everyone. Instead we'll give you a quick overall progress breakdown between the tears we're wiping away and wine we're pounding.

While we can't stay at the house for several day long periods, we have been going as often as we can for short stints. We work on projects, demolition, and prep work, and we try to enjoy the beautiful view, relaxing setting, and osprey calling to each other all day (in the 15 minute or so breaks we take to eat).

Typically we'll pack up a bunch of tools, several bottles of water, and snacks or meals for the day. Then we'll all pile into the family truckster and head down to see what sort of progress the contractors have been making, and what sort of stuff we can get done.

Lately they progress has been fast and furious on both the HVAC and plumbing. We kicked things off a few weeks ago by preparing the utility room for all of the new equipment. The old equipment was large and honking, and it took up the entire back wall of the room.

What's worse is that the water header and boiler items had leaked periodically over the years, and during our freeze, which had damaged the sub floor. 

So we spent a whole bunch of time taking up parts of the old floor to make repairs. As much as I really, REALLY wanted to keep the old flooring and make the utility room look amazing, due to the softness of the floor and anticipated weight of the new equipment I had to acquiesce and put a new layer of sub floor down to stiffen everything up.

Once the floor was prepared we decided to do what we could to quickly freshen up the dingy room that had been largely masked by the old utilities. A quick and easy coat of primer and white paint later and the multiple colors, dirty walls, and water stains were a thing of the past. It was far from perfect, but it was certainly better, especially given how little time we had to get it done.

(After two coats of primer)

Since this project is not without its ongoing difficulties, that same day we were painting there was a huge thunderstorm in the area that included a tornado warning and nearby tornado on the ground. It was pretty intense, and lightening even struck our neighbor's house. I've never been so close to a lightening strike and it literally made the hair on my arms and legs stand up. Luckily the neighbor's house was okay. Without a basement or an interior closet to speak of, we ended up taking shelter under the stairs and watching Twitter for updates. I think we might want to get a lightening rod installed on our chimney.

That photo was taken during the day. That's how dark it was outside.

Okay, back to the work. After we had the room prepared we worked to build a partial partition wall next to the chimney. While the old boiler was large, geothermal equipment is much larger. And since we're doing a ducted system, the duct work extends away from the unit, taking up even more space.

In short, the geothermal units will take up a ton of room, and our plumber needed somewhere to mount the distribution manifold. So this wall is simply a partial wall covered with a sheet of plywood where the plumber will be able to mount all of his stuff. Without it he wouldn't have anywhere to put everything.

Once our utility room shell was set, we sort of took a back seat to our great HVAC guys doing the whole install. It was great to arrive at the house and see a giant pile of duct waiting on the porch.

Every time we went back to the house a little more work was done. Some things went smoothly and as expected, like the air return we're going to tuck under the stairs. It made me a little sad to lose space under the stairs, but we have a great idea to work it in so it looks like it's always been this way. (We'll get a photo of this up here soon.)

And sometimes things didn't go quite as smoothly. 

Like the need to place the main large geothermal unit in the middle of the room due to the floor joist location, where the duct needed to run, our electrical panel's location, and the location of the large cement and cinderblock pad that was put below the old oil boiler.

The moral of the story is a well known fact. No matter your plans, when you're working in a house that's over 100 years old (or really any "older" home), even the best laid plans often need minor changes.

While the HVAC team was working to run duct through the whole house, the plumber was working to re-plumb everything. I had a lot of internal debate about the best way method to re-plumb. Specifically the best material to use. The options I was considering were copper vs PEX. Several people recommended CPVC, but I personally don't prefer it, so I tend to not use it in my projects. After all of the debate and quotes, we opted to hire someone to do all of the work in 100% PEX with home runs to a single distribution manifold.

I know the copper vs PEX is a topic many people feel very passionately about. For us the decision didn't come down to cost, but rather to flexibility of the system, how it could be run in a minimally invasive manner, and ease of future change/expansion.

We also purchased a new very high efficiency Marathon electric water heater since the old one we had was near the end of its life. This will be combined with a geothermal storage tank to help our hot water efficiency ever more. I'll write more about this in a later post.

I worked closely with our plumber to come up with a pretty cool plan. With our planned approach we will have all of the toilets in the house run off of a single supply line that is not shared, in the event we want to install a gray water system in the future. We'll also have multiple shutoff valves at various locations. This way we can shut the water to the house while we're gone, but will leave the hose bib/outside water functional in the event we want an automatic watering solution if we do a garden in the future.

In order to get the plumbing up to the second floor we came up with a plan to run all of the PEX in a bundle in the corner of the kitchen. This will allow us to hide it in the future, and will also take care of all of the old pipes that were run on the outside of walls in every room. However, this meant we needed to do some demo to the ceiling of the kitchen to allow the plumber to run the PEX where it needed to go.

That little strip of ceiling and a one foot by two foot hole in the living room's ceiling was all we needed on the first floor to get the plumbing up and into the bathrooms. Minimally invasive all thanks to PEX.

As of today the plumbing work is nearly complete, as is the HVAC. The house is slowly starting to feel more like it may once again, some day, be a house. We have a TON of work ahead of us, but hiring really good people to help us get to where we are now has been a great start. It's been a very long process to get to this point, and we never thought we'd still be getting HVAC and plumbing repaired over five months since the major freeze, but we're moving along and that's what's important.

At the very least, Lulu loves going out into the water every time we take her. She bounces out to the pier, runs right in, finds a stick, and then just lays there to cool herself off.

Can't wait to update you on more as more things are finished up and we can once again think, speak, and write coherently.

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While HVAC or plumbing might not be the thing that jumps to your mind when I mention excitement, when you've been without either for a few months even baby steps are exciting.

The fact is, this is our toilet situation.

Yes, it may be installed, but it requires us to fill a bucket in the other room and come into this room to fill the tank before flushing it. Baby steps, but we've got a flushing terlet!

As you likely already know, a few months ago we had a freeze disaster at our water house that has left our house without functional heat or plumbing. It all started on February 19th when we discovered the boiler had quit and our house was hovering at about 20 degrees. This caused the pipes to freeze and burst throughout the house, and has necessitated an insurance claim and a major plan to rectify the situation.

A few weeks ago we mentioned that we're taking this opportunity to not just repair the damaged components and piping, but instead to replace the whole HVAC system and put a better solution in place that would help prevent this from occurring in the future, and better serve the house's HVAC needs.

But the main thing about this whole process, we're learning that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon...and we feel like we're running it without any training...and we're sort of slow and out of shape.

Since that fateful day in February we've been working to obtain quotes from various contractors and develop system plans that will meet our needs. Through our various conversations with six different contractors, one of which that wrote us back and said "this is over our capabilities and would like to withdraw our quote," I think we've finally come to an agreement on the type of system we're going to go with.

And The Winner Is...

GEOTHERMAL!

You have no idea how happy I am that we are making the jump to geo.

When we were first considering all of our possibilities we hadn't really thought of geothermal as an option. We figured it would be way too expensive and way too difficult to find someone who could do the work. Instead we looked at an electric heat pump, a new oil boiler, a propane boiler, electric heat pump with propane backup, an oil fired forced air furnace, and just about any combination of all of these items, but never really considered geo.

Through all of these options and the various contractors, we ended up talking to two that were fine doing one of the various options we were discussing, but also had a specialty in geothermal installs. The more we researched our options, the more it looked like a possibility.

If you're not familiar with geothermal, the oversimplified explanation is that it uses liquid filled pipes that are buried and run through the rather consistent temperature of the earth that sits just a few feet below the surface to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. It's extremely energy efficient, only requires electricity, can perform both heating and cooling, and is very quiet. 

The complicated explanation has to do with the boiling point of the liquid in the buried pipes, heat exchangers, horizontal vs vertical loops, loop lengths, heat loss calculations, desuperheaters, and a whole slew of other items that make your head spin when you're researching.

The good news is that we've waded through the research, have some sound information, and a good guide in the process. Second of all, and most importantly, we look to have enough yard space to do a traditional horizontal loop install, which is usually the big obstacle to overcome in geo. And since we're removing all of the old boiler and copper radiator piping, we should have a good amount of room in the utility room where we can put the indoor items.

But for us, the biggest obstacle regardless of what approach we were taking was figuring out how we could convert from a radiant system to forced air without adding unsightly duct work throughout the house. We are getting rid of the baseboard radiators and didn't want to just end up replacing them with big boxed in duct chases running between floors. The house is over 100 years old, and we want it to keep looking that way.  

Through lots of brain storming and several very in depth discussions we came up with a pretty solid plan. We're going to split the system into two, placing a geo heat pump and handler downstairs and running duct work below the house to heat and cool the first floor from below. Next we'll put a second air handler and split unit in the attic. This attic unit would heat and cool the second and third floor from the ceiling down. We'll only need to run the geo line set into the attic and won't need to box duct work in anywhere beyond the return locations. Win win.

With a plan in place for our system we were starting to feel good so we went ahead and started to take out some of the old baseboard and standing radiators. In the living room we removed the baseboard radiator and discovered what many years of massive heat variations will do to paint on original moulding. 

Don't worry, we tested, and we got lucky. It's not lead paint.

Besides, we won't be stripping or standing the way we've done in our house in Old Town. I'm done with stripping every bit of paint from moulding. We're going to remove the worst paint with steam and get it in shape to be painted again. Any lumps or bumps we're calling character and leaving it at that. Do you blame us? I don't.

Removing the larger radiators has been an extremely fulfilling experience. I've always felt like these guys were sort of out of place and didn't belong in the house. They feel like radiators you'd find in a school built in the 1940s. 

After being tortured by these damn things and their rupture, it feels pretty great to take them to their final resting place. In each case I start with the little tubing cutter and make my initial cut.

Once the tubing was cut taking the whole thing out couldn't be more straight forward. Removing a few screws or nails from the radiator surround and just popping the whole mess out is as easy as pie.

The coolest part of the whole project, whether I was taking out baseboard or the large radiators, was finding out what was hiding behind each of them. In the case of the larger radiator, I can see that the wall and moulding were both painted a rather bright color.

One thing is for sure, there's going to be a whole lot of old radiator covers and pieces that come out of this effort. I'm wondering if they're trash or if they're worth taking to Community Forklift. I'll have to contact them to see if they have a need for "really old and pretty ugly baseboard radiator covers." I wouldn't see why not.

All told we're moving in the right direction, even if we're moving at a snail's pace. Having a decision made on HVAC is a tremendous load off my shoulders, and knowing that the solution will be energy efficient and unobtrusive in the house is pretty awesome. I can't wait to share all of the detail steps with you as we go through this geothermal install. I'll try to be detailed in the event you're considering it for you house. And when we're all said and done we'll do a post project analysis to give you all of the important details.

My guess is that we still have a few months until our whole HVAC and plumbing project is wrapped up, so we'll keep running ahead in this marathon and hope we don't hit the wall. We hope you'll run along with us and enjoy the race.

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Us, well, now that the weather is a little nicer we've been shuttling back and forth between Old Town and our new house in an attempt to both get a handle on our heating and plumbing system woes, and also to move some of our little projects forward a bit.

I'm not sure what it is, perhaps it's the fact that the house has no functional heat or plumbing, but Wendy and I are somewhat to very overwhelmed by the whole situation at any given time. That being said, it's a pretty overwhelming situation, so I'm going to go ahead and give us a pass on feeling the way we do.

So the $64,000 question (oh man, hope it's not actually that expensive), what's the plan for the plumbing and heating situation?

Well, the short of it, we're not quite sure yet, but we're doing a TON of research.

We've actually met with five contractors to get quotes and ideas about our system. On one hand we could do a straight repair of the system with a new boiler and new baseboard radiators throughout the house, but it essentially needs to be a completely new system. Every old solder joint is suspect and every radiator has some damage, so we're pretty much starting from scratch since it was all so heavily damaged.

But rather than just starting over with what we had, we're taking a hard look at all of our options to figure out what we should have.

I think we're also going to take this opportunity to throw some additional money into the project to add central air to the house while planning things out. It just feels like the right time to tackle this project, in spite of just adding more complexity onto our plate.

So at this point we need to make some planning decisions with whichever contractor we choose to work with. We'll have to choose fuel/energy, deciding between oil, propane, or electric. We'll need to choose heat source type, deciding between boiler with radiant, traditional forced air, high velocity forced air, mini-splits (okay, likely not mini-splits), or some combination of approaches. And we'll need to plan for any future items we may be interested in doing and how it could impact the new system, either in the short or long term, like grey water recovery, geothermal heat source, or eventual solar. It's a TON to think about. But I'm excited to start making decisions and sharing them, and our justification for making them here on the blog. Maybe our thought process might help someone else in planning their system.

In other news we've been making little updates here and there in the house. Wendy has been beautifying where possible, which included giving our house numbers a little refresh. I know it's a tired trend, but we're now doing a little spray painting with oil rubbed bronze. (I promise we won't do it all over our house!)

She also painted the front door Benjamin Moore's Wythe Blue, and we're just thrilled with the results. It's more of a sea glass color, so the green undertones work well with the green roof on the house. 

Wendy has also spent several days completing the unglamorous job of priming five unfinished adirondack chairs. We'll also paint these Wythe Blue and can't wait to try them out around the fire pit or on the porch until we have a more permanent seating solution out there. Regardless, it will sure beat moving the folding dining chairs outside every time we want to enjoy the view and a meal.

We've learned that a tree that's struggling a little bit is actually a very nice cherry blossom. We'll need to figure out how to prune it up some and take care of a disease that appears to be on its limbs, but it still made for a rather lovely look.

Taming the gardens has been high on our list while our indoor work is at a standstill. This included the trimming back of some massive round of sea grass next to our porch.

We've also been completely enthralled with Ben and Sally, our newest neighbors. (We've named them.)

They're the new Osprey that have taken up residence in their nests and they are just interesting neighbors. They're extremely vocal and love to call to each other. And they also love to fish, which is amazing to watch.

They swoop down into the chop of the water with their outstretched talons and pluck huge fish right out of the water. I hope to get a good photo of that activity before too long.

And finally, we're taking every low tide opportunity to clean up our neighbor's abandoned beach of debris that has collected over the years. There's a lot of crap out there. It looks like someone drove a car into the water about 50 years ago, and there's a fair amount of things that haven't completely rusted away.

Well, that's what we've been up to, you know, besides worrying about work, life in general, and all the other boring stuff everyone can more or less commiserate on.

So I have a question and we'd love some of your input. If you were planning out a new HVAC system in your 100+ year old house in our neck of the woods with moderate insulation, what would your approach be? Heat pump? Boiler? High-velocity? Electric? Oil? Propane? Solar? Geothermal? Nuclear Cold Fusion?

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After a long Friday we arrived at the new house around 9:00 pm on Friday night. We got a late start because we wanted to let traffic die down a bit, and I wanted to check in on one of my listings to ensure the heat was on and my clients' (who have moved out of state) pipes hadn't frozen over the previous very cold days. After seeing all was working as it should at their home, we were on our way out of town, making the drive to the new house.

As we drove further from Alexandria, we noticed temperatures dropping steadily, and the car's thermometer read a mere 5 degrees when we pulled in the driveway at the new house. We remarked on the frigid temperatures, and took a moment in the chilly night air to pause and admire how bright and plentiful the stars were. As we unpacked the car we briefly talked about how great it will be to sit around the fire pit this spring with friends, and take in the view of the night sky away from all the city lights. 

When walking in the side door of the house near the newly refreshed bathroom, our common entry point to the home, my first thought upon entering was how darn cold it was in the house. Not just an I'm-cold-because-I-just-came-inside cold, but instead the I-can-see-my-breath-inside kind of cold. As Alex walked in behind me, I said to him, "Should we be worried that I don't hear the boiler running?" He wasn't immediately concerned, but went into the utility room to investigate. 

Much to our horror, we quickly realized that we were dealing with a serious situation. The boiler was not only not running, but the temperature gauge was pegged at zero instead of it's normal 170-180 degrees. Alex flicked the switch once or twice to see if he could get it to reset, but then his eyes fell on something terrible. Just below a shutoff valve was a large split in the copper and a trickle of ice.

Over the next 10, 20, maybe 30 seconds that felt like hours, Alex and I noticed one problem after another. Several sweat joint connections had been pushed off, the copper lines had burst or showed evidence of rupture, and we had icicles coming out of the boiler. We scanned the room, and saw several other burst or broken pipes and Lulu was playing with chunks of ice on the linoleum floor. 

We knew the heat was dead, and I felt the acid starting to churn in my stomach. Trying to remain calm because I could see Alex was coping even less successfully with the situation, I tried to focus on a solution. Before we realized the extent of the problems I called my go-to plumber that I've been working with on client projects, and he answered after just a few rings. (On a Friday night at 9:30, I might add!). Miguel suggested getting as many space heaters as we could, warming up the house in order to get the water shut off valve turned off (it was currently frozen in the on position), and he would be out at 7:30 am the next morning to fix the pipes. 

Alex and I raced out, because the closest home improvement stores are 20 minutes away. We arrived at Lowe's at 9:52, and were told they were all sold out of space heaters. Alex then ran into the nearby Home Depot, gaining entrance at 9:59 by going through the exit because the main doors were already locked, only to find out they too were sold out. Walmart was next. Again, no go beyond an office desk sized individual unit that couldn't melt a popsicle. Finally, a trip to Target yielded marginally better success. I was personally escorted around the store by the nicest and most helpful employee after explaining my situation. 

They had small desk sized space heaters for $29 each (the weird photo above is what I texted to Alex, using my hand as reference to show how small the space heaters were), but I knew they wouldn't be sufficient either. Instead, I bought a mop and two buckets, which seemed as practical at this juncture of utter defeat.

We arrived back at the house around 11:00pm, and continued our inspection. Much to our horror, we quickly realized that the burst pipes in the utility room were just the tip of the iceberg. (Pardon the pun.) Everywhere we looked the copper pipes for either plumbing or heating had ruptured in multiple places. The baseboard radiators in each and EVERY ROOM had at least one burst, leaving frozen puddles behind that looked like miniature penguin skating rinks. 

It was shocking seeing what the freezing water could do to the copper pipes. They were literally ripped apart from inside.

Plumbing connections and valves in the bathrooms were also blown apart with compression fittings popped straight off of the supply lines. The claw foot tub is no longer connected to the plumbing lines, and under our bathroom sink there's a good few inches between the connections.

Even the kitchen faucet suffered. Interior faucet parts were thrust outward, frozen into the sad stream of icicle beneath it. In fact, every faucet suffered in some way.

We knew that without space heaters, no water, and no heat, there was simply no way we could stay the night in what was probably 10 degree temperatures inside. We did what we could, placing towels underneath each of the damaged areas, and said farewell to the house for the night, packing back up and heading home just after midnight. It was a feeling of complete and utter defeat. 

In our 12 years of homeownership, Alex and I have never filed a homeowners' insurance claim. Being handy and having a heathy fear of our rates going up, we've always opted to tackle situations ourselves or simply pay out of pocket. But on the ride back to Alexandria, we steadily came to the conclusion that we'd have to contact our insurance company in the morning. The situation isn't limited to just a few broken pipes and connections, but instead a likely replacement of most of the home's plumbing. We still can't wrap our heads around that. How in four days since our last trip to the house, had we gone from having a beautiful and functional home to one that has no water, no heat, and destroyed plumbing??

The next morning we got in touch with Miguel to postpone his appointment knowing that there was little he could do while the house was still below freezing, and we started the claim process with our homeowners insurance. Alex spoke to an on-call insurance adjuster on the phone to understand what we need to do immediately, such as getting several estimates for repair, and also learned more about the process and how we'd need to show that we were actively heating the home while we weren't there. I was also able to reach our local contractor who took out the living room wall, and set up an appointment for Monday so his team could inspect the damage. It may not have been a furious rescue from teams of people, but at least we felt like we were making progress. 

We spent all of the snowy Saturday collecting space heaters from friends after posting a plea for any spares on Facebook, and ultimately amassed a collection of eight electric space heaters of various size. Sunday was spent back at the house on clean up patrol. Temperatures that day crept back into the mid 40s, and we needed to sop up as much of the melting water from the pipes, so they didn't cause further damage to the floors and house.

We ended up rigging up several creative solutions to direct the thawing water where we wanted it to go. It's amazing what you can do with a little tape and plastic bags. I felt like MacGyver...or maybe MacGruber.

All in all, we feel completely and totally dejected. The repair work is completely overwhelming to even begin to think about, and we have no sense of how this will derail our current projects, timeline, and budget even with insurance hopefully covering the bulk of the costs after our $2,500 deductible. This isn't just a case where we need to fix a few burst pipes. Each and every connection in our entire plumbing and heating system is suspect at this point. And our boiler, it may be damaged beyond repair as ice had pushed its way out of the manifold and has destroyed the gasket.

I keep reminding us though that it could be so much worse. Our family of four is safe. The house didn't burn down, it didn't flood (by some stroke of luck, the ice formed solidly enough before the pipes burst to keep the water from flooding the house), and we didn't even have any substantial damage to personal property. We're at the very beginning stages of renovation, so even with invasive repairs this event won't be undoing months or years of hard work. And we can't forget to acknowledge that we're lucky enough that this isn't our primary residence, so we're not going to be relocated to a hotel while we get this sorted out. In the grand scheme of things, this is just another step in our renovation journey. Even though I really feel like this.

We keep replaying what if scenarios in our heads. What if the heat had gone out, but the temperatures had still been in the 30s, more normal ranges for our area and not record lows. Then we'd just be fixing the boiler. What if we had installed a camera on the boiler's pressure gauge, so we could have been able to remotely monitor the gauge for pressure drops? What if we had a wifi enabled thermostat that could have alerted us to the drop in temperature? What if the heat had just broken four days earlier or a day or two later? We would have been there to address the situation immediately. While we can't help but play the what if game, that sadly won't change the situation.

To finish the whole weekend off, on the way home we were driving along and talking about our next steps and what we should focus on. At that point the slowest and clumsiest skunk decided to cross the street right in front of our car. Alex tried his best to give this careless skunk a chance, but a close following SUV and oncoming traffic in the other lane made it nearly impossible and our right rear made contact with the poor skunk. The poor little guy ended up spraying our car and leaving us smelling pretty much how we felt. Let's just say that we're now calling our car The Skunkmobile. Effing fantastic.

We're just going to have to take it one step at a time, try not to freak out, and keep it all in perspective. Wish us luck. I think we're going to need it.

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While the picture may look quite a bit like a set prop piece from a dream sequence in A Nightmare on Elm Street, it was actually the deteriorated metal flue ducting that had long served its purpose of directing the exhausted gasses from our water heater up and out of the chimney. Though it had done its job for years, its structure rusted away to the point where it was becoming a potential hazard.

I was quite relieved to remove the whole vent duct when we replaced the water heater (new heater is direct vent with PVC), but this left a hole in the brick where the old vent entered the flue.

To resolve this issue I mixed up a little mortar we have leftover from the repointing project last year and used a half brick to patch the area up.

But while I was patching up the hole, like any normal person, I decided to use the opportunity to stick my phone in the flue to snap a few photos and just to see what I see. What I saw was even more shocking than the old vent duct. The other vent pipe for the furnace had been nearly completely eaten away by rust, leaving a half collapsed shell of itself.

The level of deterioration was so severe that it got me thinking and worrying about the possible danger this vent might be putting our family in. Rather than sit idly by and potentially asphyxiate during the first cold days of the year, I figured I could remedy this situation on my own by replacing the pipe with a new one.

First off, allow me to point out that this is a single wall stainless steel rigid vent duct. This means that the replacement of this item is actually pretty straight forward, and also very inexpensive. But this is only because the vent duct is not within 18" of any combustible surfaces between the furnace and the flue. If it were within 18" of anything, like a framing member, drywall, or a giant hoard of paper bags Wendy happened to be hiding in the basement, we'd need to be using one of the double walled vent ducts that's made for such situations since the exhaust from the furnace heats this pipe up so significantly.

I picked up all of the parts I'd need at Lowe's using off the shelf straight 3" duct lengths and elbows. I also bought a roll of foil tape since I apparently can't be trusted with half used rolls of tape and have misplaced all of my four rolls of half used foil tape in various places throughout our house.

I started the task by disassembling the existing vent duct. It was being held in place with a single screw into the furnace vent outlet and removing that screw allowed me to free the whole assembly.

When it came time to remove the duct from the furnace, most importantly I wanted to ensure nothing from inside the duct fell down into the furnace when I jostled things. I knew there might be a lot of junk that had accumulated in the vent duct, and the last thing I wanted was that junk making its way into the furnace exhaust blower and playing the role of Tasmanian Devil with the innards of our already aged furnace. To prevent this potentially catastrophic event, as I carefully lifted the vent duct I slid a piece of metal between the duct mouth and the exhaust outlet. The piece I used was the side piece from a nearby computer that's just laying around in the basement (you know, cause everyone has laying around computers).

After successfully removing the duct without dumping disgusting stuff into the furnace, removal of the rest of the pipe was super easy. Just a quick cut of the tape around the point where the pipe met the flue, and the whole thing slid right out.

I was careful to keep the whole thing intact so that I could measure each length of replacement duct to mimic the lengths and curves of the original. I also didn't want to do anything to dump any of the accumulated junk all over the basement floor.

If you're every working with duct elbows that you need to get the angle just right on, and you want it to stay in place when they're set, there's a very easy trick to accomplish this. Using a small length of foil tape, once the angle is set, run the tape lengthwise across all of the elbow's seams. This essentially pins the whole thing in place. Then just cover the whole elbow in tape to seal up any gaps left by the joints.

After making up the new vent duct, I sealed up all of the seams and joints with foil tape and fit it in place on the furnace and into the flue.

Feeling good that I was being proactive in protecting our family from CO poisoning, I decided to open up the old length of duct to see what sort of shape it was actually in. Who knows, it could have been just fine and I went to this length without cause. However, upon breaking it open (it was so decayed that is broke in my hands) my suspicions were confirmed. The interior of the vent duct was almost completely filled with rust, dirt, and hard debris that must have slowly fallen into the duct over the years.

There is no way the duct was able to successfully vent the furnace as it was intended, there was easily 75% or more blockage in some places. I'm so very happy to have taken care of this issue now rather than when it became a real problem.

For good measure I also installed a new Nest Protect CO/Smoke detector in the basement just to be sure we're alerted if there's ever an issue.

This is one of those nagging maintenance items that it's very important to stay on top of. Too often the utility items in a home are "out of sight, out of mind" until you have a problem. But a little preventive maintenance saved us a much bigger problem down the road. It saved our furnace, it reduced the risk of a fire, and it helped protect the health of everyone living in the house.

Okay, so who's going to go check their furnace and water heater now? Maybe just for peace of mind?

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