Downshift

After a week of frenetic work on the house, we are returning to our regular pace of weekend and evening renovation. Dad returned home on Friday, and today the boiler contractors will pack up their tools, and I’m headed back to work myself.

We have a backlog of blog-posting to do – so many projects completed and not enough time to write them up. Here’s the short list of what got done last week:

• Back porch demo’d and framed in as kitchen space
• Back door varnished and installed, with hardware
• Subfloor patched on 1st floor
• First floor bath plumbed
• Old forced-air vents patched shut
• Front porch bead-board ceiling temporarily removed
• Paint stripping progress on old kitchen window and bead-board
• Joist-Trak panels installed with 3000+ screws
• Pex tubing installed in Joist-Trak
• Distribution manifolds built and installed
• Distribution plumbing from boiler to manifolds installed
• 1st section of Quik-Trak panels installed in living room
• Boiler installed and operating for DHW
• Refrigerator moved into its destined position (not a small feat – it weighs 600lbs)

All in all I’m very pleased. We have a minor amount of plumbing to complete (the hot water re-circ line is one item, the upstairs bath is another), and we need to get the remaining Quik Trak panels down on the 1st floor so we can begin framing.

Many thanks to Paul Pollets, Kelly, and Dennis from Advanced Radiant Technology. They were here all last week installing our boiler and tank, and were beyond professional. Paul and Kelly went above and beyond to school us in what we needed to know to complete the distribution-side of the radiant system, a task most homeowners leave to the pro’s. They even loaned us some of their tools over the weekend so we could complete the work. I highly recommend Paul and his crew.

And, here’s a picture of the beast itself - a Vitodens 200 wall-hung boiler: