Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Energy Audit, Scrap Metal, and Trees

This was quite a busy week at the Money Pit. Throughout the week, we worked on the den (soon-to-be-TV-room). The drywall is installed, mudded, and primed (of course I forgot to take a post-primed picture). We even went as far as to put some OSB on the outside of the wall in the sunroom. Now that we don’t have a leaky door and a 4 sq. ft. hole in the wall, it’s much easier to keep the room the same temperature as the rest of the house.


Earlier this summer we got an email from the county about a lottery for a free energy audit. We entered the lottery and fortunately we were selected. The audit company came out on Friday and took a bunch of measurements. We’re still waiting for the final report but we have a pretty good idea now what it will tell us.

The most exciting part of the whole process was the “building envelope sealing” measurement. They put a giant frame in the front door with a fan and suck out air. The goal is to measure how much air volume comes into the house. We knew that we had some issues in the basement with the rim joist areas but overall our number was pretty decent for a house as old and big as ours.


For the three day weekend we decided to take care of some things that have been annoying us. One was the big pile of metal we had hanging out in the garage. This was a combination of old (broken) storm doors, aluminum window frames from the “mudrooms”, busted copper tubing, and some wire. We loaded it up in the truck and took it to a recycling company.



As we waited to unload, we guessed how much money we were going to make from the scrap – I said $30, Chris’ guess was $60. So of course we were pleasantly surprised when we made over $300!


One of the other big tasks we accomplished was removing the leaning tree in our backyard. The tree has been hindering Chris’ grass cutting for awhile so we just cut it down. It was only a matter of time before it was uprooted anyway. Now it’s all cut up and the bundles are on their way to become mulch or compost at the dump.






Chris also used the chainsaw to cut down the two clothesline posts – thank goodness they’re gone!



Hopefully this week we’ll be able to finally finish the den and turn it into a true “TV” room!

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