Looking at space heaters. Since I took the radiators off the wall in the section I'm working on and the temperature dropped from 90 to 55 faster than if it saw a traffic cop, I'm thinking I need something to keep the chill off pending getting the rest of the work done and the radiators put back on. It's not horrible over there - somewhat chilly but holding mid-50s or higher - but I don't want pipes freezing when it gets properly cold. I'm actually quite surprised how little heat transfers from one part of the house to the other. The section we use is usually mid-60s and a 10-degree difference is more than I'd expect.
Anyone can dance. Here......I’ve attached an instructional video for all non-dancers (which includes me).
Now watching a bodacious snow-storm roll over the mountains, heading my way. Snow possibility down to 5,000 ft which means flurries during the night.
The band rehearsed for the first time in about 6 months last night. We've added new songs to our catalog during that time, but we usually added time in one at a time, worked on them on our own, and practiced them during sound check and arranged them at that time. But we're doing 4 new additions on Friday so we figured we'd better work on them beforehand. It's funny that the two most hard rock/prog metal guys in the band (me and the guitar player) are the ones bringing songs like California Love (Tupac), Get Lucky (Daft Punk), Hot In Herre (Nelly) and the like to the table. lol Whatever gets people dancing.
Prepping for Halloween night. Might nail up the 95 theses on the local Roman Catholic Church as well.
More breaking of the house project underway. I needed to pull down some beams that made up a suspended ceiling. They were lengths of 2x4 about 12 feet long, nailed in at each end. The trouble was they were about 8 feet off the ground and I only have one suitable ladder. Pulling the nails from one end would cause it to twist and probably fall straight to the ground, and I didn't really want that happening (especially if I was likely to be in the way). The weight of a 12-foot 2x4 is enough that you just can't support it if you've only got the end to hold. After much pondering I figured a solution. I cut a nock into the end of an 8-foot 2x4 and gave it to my wife. I could then climb the ladder, pull the nails from one end and lower the beam into the nock. My wife could then steady the 2x4 to support the beam while I went to the other end and pulled the rest of the nails. That process took about an hour but we got all the beams down. I think there were 10 of them. The next step was for me to take down the beams that were nailed around the outside walls. I could do those unaided because they were nailed in so many places I could work from both ends towards the middle, at which point I just had to be able to carry the weight of the beam down the ladder. The first one was the same length as the others, and was easy enough. The second one was more like 16 feet long and didn't want to give up its grip on the wall. I ended up using the three-foot wrecking bar to pry it off, and of course it weighs a third more than the shorter beams. Once that was down I could pull down the last parts of the lath-and-plaster and drywall that was behind it and - surprise, surprise - there were more gaps in the wall. Some of them were pretty ugly. I went though about 8 pounds of cement mix filling as many as I could reach, stuffed fiberglass into a couple I couldn't reach to fill with cement and then decided to call it a day. The temperature over there was 52 degrees when I started and 55 when I finished. There's no heat there since I drained that part of the heating circuit. I've got a couple more gaps I need to fill but I'll probably need to get at them from above, which means mixing cement in my study, which I'm reluctant to do because my laptop etc don't play nicely with fine dust. And I need to pull down a section of the wall in one of my closets, which is a real drag because that closet has become something of a dumping ground for all sorts of random stuff. And for good measure I also need to find some electric space heaters to stop everything getting too cold, pending getting the walls rebuilt and the radiators back in place. My study was 52 degrees this morning. Not fun.
I went over to the work area to check the temperature. Yesterday it was in the low 40s outside and 52 degrees inside. Today it's 25 degrees outside but inside is holding steady at 54. So I think the work has made quite a difference already, and there are still a couple more gaps to fill that I know of.
Making holes and filling them in again. Sounds fun, right? It is amazing fun. Finding small cracks in the mortar in the area I recently exposed, using my masonry chisel to open them up so I can clean everything out and stuff fresh cement in. A couple of places I couldn't get at easily got filled with building foam. More sealant applied to more windows. Fiberglass stuffed into a gap I hadn't realised I'd left between the makeshift wall and the ceiling. Earlier today I left an upstairs room at 59 degrees (thanks to a new heater I bought) and within half an hour it was down to 54. Since I plugged a bunch of holes and gaps I heated the room up again (it's a small room, so not all that expensive to do) it feels less drafty in there so I'm hoping that means it holds its temperature. And since that particular room is above my main work area it potentially means the whole of my work area will hold its heat better. It will be nice if the drafts are fixed, the upstairs room is the room I'm using as a study and it gets really tedious trying to do useful work (not construction work!) when it constantly feels like there's a cold draft blowing across my shoulders but I can't quite figure where it's coming from.