At Home In The Woods

[Diamondpilot]

Obed

You should strongly think of two a/c units, one for say the bedrooms, and one for the rest of the house....I say this from the experience of having the one break on a very hot day, and the repair not being able to be done for a couple of days....Well worth the peace of mind... and further the savings by not cooling the entire house at night .Tony

I had this happen also with a pregnant wife. $90 at Lowes fixed the problem in the form of a window air conditioner for our master bed room. I took it out as soon as the AC unit was fixed. it now lives in my shop for the very hot summer days. This thing was bought 10 years ago but came in real handy 2 summers ago when we had 98 deg weather and a tornado. It took out our power for 5 days and 4 nights. My genny will not run the main house unit but easily ran the window unit plus all our other stuff. We just blocked off 2 rooms upstairs and threw it in the window and were comfortable.

Chris

 

[Diamondpilot]

I believe we are going to have a combination gas furnace/heat pump.

The H&A guy said to use a 4'x4' pad. That just seemed very large to me. Do you have any idea how much these things weigh? How would I get it to where I want it installed? I was considering forming and pouring the pad myself.

Obed

Gas/Heat pump is the way to go. As described before we loose our power quite often. I lost my power for 9 days once in January with a 3 month old baby. If it were not for my gas we would have froze in a Norther Indiana winter. Me and my neighbors had to cut our way out to the main road that alone took a day with all the down poles and trees from the major ice storm we had.

I simply turn off the breaker to the heat pump outside unit and it will run on gas. Actually propane in my case. My water heater is also propane. I now keep 100 gallons of gas on hand for my genny, that is 10 days worth, for such events. Last time we had a major outage I had to drive 2 hours to get 50 gallons of fuel. Never again. I just run it though my boat in the spring and get fresh fuel to replace it.

As for the pad mine is plastic, about 3x3 or maybe 4x4. It has stayed put for all the years I have been here.

Chris

 

[srs]

Hey Obed what do you think about pouring a concrete pad in that entire corner? You then won't have to worry about cutting the grass in there or pulling weeds, trimming, etc. If you do pour the entire area I suggest putting plastic up against the brick to protect it from splashing concrete and also place rebar into the brick to keep the pad from settling. I know this is additional work you hadn't planned on but this is what I did when I built my house. Both a/c units sit on them. The concrete is sloped away from the house so water does not settle there. Just a thought!!!!

 

[tommu56]

Hey Obed what do you think about pouring a concrete pad in that entire corner? You then won't have to worry about cutting the grass in there or pulling weeds, trimming, etc. If you do pour the entire area I suggest putting plastic up against the brick to protect it from splashing concrete and also place rebar into the brick to keep the pad from settling. I know this is additional work you hadn't planned on but this is what I did when I built my house. Both a/c units sit on them. The concrete is sloped away from the house so water does not settle there. Just a thought!!!!

I second the motion
and pitch it out a good couple inches to keep the water from wicking down the wall

tom

 

[jcims]

I second the motion
and pitch it out a good couple inches to keep the water from wicking down the wall

tom

I third the motion, lol. Whether you go with a 4'x4' prefab or pour a good sized pad yourself, you'll want to go 'big' to avoid having to dance around the thing with your trimmer every weekend. Especially when it's running, you get grass and crud built up in the vanes, big flat spots from flying hard stuff and it looks like crap. Mine looks terrible because i haven't taken the time to deal with it yet. Hoping to score some pallet forks so i can just pick the hog up and pour a pad right underneath it. They aren't easy to move after the fact.

 

[Obed]

The ceiling insulation got blown yesterday. You can see where we had removed half of the attic OSB sheets. My wife stayed with the insulation guys the entire time to make sure they didn't miss any hard to reach areas. The ceilings are R-38 in the house, R-30 in the garage. The walls are R-19 in the house and R-13 in the garage.

Today, we had a laborer clean up the attic and screw down the OSB that we had removed. The screws in the OSB we re-attached are no longer countersunk and should be easier to find if I need to remove them again for ceiling access. There are advantages to hiring your own workers and paying them by the hour. You can get things done the way you want them without a bunch of arguments. When we renovated our last house, we hired a handyman and paid him by the hour. That worked out very well for us. I wish we knew someone like that here. The laborer we've been hiring is not equipped to do lots of skilled tasks. We've been using him for simple framing tasks and cleanup work.

 

[Obed]

Hey Obed what do you think about pouring a concrete pad in that entire corner? You then won't have to worry about cutting the grass in there or pulling weeds, trimming, etc. If you do pour the entire area I suggest putting plastic up against the brick to protect it from splashing concrete and also place rebar into the brick to keep the pad from settling. I know this is additional work you hadn't planned on but this is what I did when I built my house. Both a/c units sit on them. The concrete is sloped away from the house so water does not settle there. Just a thought!!!!

Stanley,
I mentioned concreting the whole area to my wife a while back and the boss shot that idea down. She said it would be ugly. There are lots of things I can argue about but when she thinks something is ugly, all my arguments fall on deaf ears.

Tomorrow my wife and I will finalize where to put the outside compressor unit. We also need to plan where to put a future heat pump when we finish the basement.

Obed

 

[Obed]

I third the motion, lol. Whether you go with a 4'x4' prefab or pour a good sized pad yourself, you'll want to go 'big' to avoid having to dance around the thing with your trimmer every weekend. Especially when it's running, you get grass and crud built up in the vanes, big flat spots from flying hard stuff and it looks like crap. Mine looks terrible because i haven't taken the time to deal with it yet.

jcims,
I hadn't considered that. That's the first good reason I've heard for making the pad bigger than the unit.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed - You should take into consideration the location - N<W>E<S. East side would be best. Less exposure to sun and heat of the day in summer and winter weather. By the pics I am not sure what the overhang is across from the retaining wall. I would be ideal to provide overhead coverage. Like it was stated 2' or 3' from any wall and don't plant shrubs within 3' if you plan on trying to hide unit from view.
PAGUY

PAGUY,
The outside unit will be on the north side of the house and west of the retaining wall. This area is shaded much of the day during the summer. We didn't plan it that way; that's just where it ended up.

Where were you planning to install evaporator? It usually goes in the attic or basement.

The HVAC system for the main floor will have the gas furnace in the basement and the heat pump outside. I'm not sure where the evaporator is in this system. I don't think it is a separate piece but will either be part of the furnace unit inside the basement or will be part of the heat pump unit outside. Maybe somebody who understands HVAC better can comment on the evaporator.

Obed

 

[dstig1]

Stanley,
I mentioned concreting the whole area to my wife a while back and the boss shot that idea down. She said it would be ugly. There are lots of things I can argue about but when she thinks something is ugly, all my arguments fall on deaf ears.

Tomorrow my wife and I will finalize where to put the outside compressor unit. We also need to plan where to put a future heat pump when we finish the basement.

Obed

Really? Ugly like this?

Exposed aggregate is easy to do and looks really nice. This was a solution to a similar problem on a friend's house. You could also go with stained, pigmented, stamped concrete to make it look nicer. You really are going to hate mowing a spot of poorly growing grass back in that corner. No light = dirt patch.