At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

You might look into a finer mesh to keep the wasps out? I live in blind happiness in a mobile home with no attic access. I could have 40 nest in my attic.

Kyle,
One of my regrets regarding building our house was how the ridge vents at the top of our roof were installed. Wasps can get through/around the ridge vents and get into the attic. If I could do it over I would have the installers put down screen material along the ridge of the roof before installing the ridge vents. It would be very easy to do and would help to keep wasps and hornets out of the attic. But there were so many things going on at that time, that's a detail I missed. Now I'll kick myself every spring and summer while I go around knocking down wasp nests. As long as I don't let the nests get big, it's not that hard to do. I spent about 45 minutes yesterday looking for nests and knocking them down. I assume springtime will be the worst time while the queens are looking for a place to make a home. I hope that new nests will taper off as the summer progresses. I'm also hoping that the queens will give up trying to build in our attic and go somewhere else when their nests keep getting knocked down.
Obed

 

[Obed]

Yesterday I said that I would take today off. However, there was a tree that had fallen across a 4 wheeler path where I would like the excavator to dump extra dirt. So I made three cuts on the tree and moved it out of the way. It sure is handy having a chainsaw.

 

[dstig1]

Unusual for ridge vents to not be screened well enough to stop insects - that's a key design parameter for them. Not sure which style you have - but if you use discrete vents, they have screen in them from the factory, and the continuous vent style is typically too small to allow insects access (especially larger ones like hornets/wasps).

I am sure it can be fixed if you can get a roofer up there to pull the vents and screen them properly. Might be worth it in the long run as you will fight this problem every year, forever. If you have leftover shingles, that will help a lot as those architectural shingle sure like to stick tight once they are down and see some sun.

 

[DAY]

Unless you use the attic intensively, or fear anaphylactic shock, wasps/hornets are usually a benign presence, and just one of many country critters (skunks, voles, deer, etc) it is best to develop a respect for, and tolerance of. Life is too short to fight battles neither side can win!

 

[Obed]

Excavation work has been happening slowly because of all the rain we've been having. We are taking down more trees. Some were too close to the house and some were just in the way.

We are going to rent a chipper for one day and chip as much of the trees as we can in that day. The chipper costs $500/day and will chip trees up to 12" in diameter. The trees have been partially cut and stacked in preparation for chipping them up. What we don't get chipped will get burned. The leftover logs will get stacked on our log pile. I'll eventually cut up the log pile for firewood or burn what I don't cut up.

The subcontractor didn't get the roots for these two trees near the house when he pushed them over with his high-lift. It doesn't look like he dug up the roots before he pushed the trees over. The trees just splintered and have left a mess. He had instructions to remove the trees roots and all for all the trees except for handful of exceptions. I suspect we will ask him to dig up the stumps at his cost. This are is where my wife intends to plant an herb garden beside the house. She likes to go out and get some fresh herbs when she is cooking so the herb garden needs to be close to the kitchen.

We are making a driveway to the basement. A new culvert has been installed where the driveway will go. My wife doesn't think she will like the looks of gravel on the basement driveway as it goes through the trees to the house. The contrasting silver color of the gravel really shows up through the trees. Seems like I have seen recycled shingles used for driveway materials and am wondering if we might want to try using recycled shingles on the basement driveway. The darker color of shingles them might look better than the bright gravel.

We removed a tree that was located near the end of the retaining wall on the uphill side. The tree was preventing us from being able to shape the dirt correctly to make rainwater drain away from the retaining wall.

We used to have a monster dirt pile at the end of the back porch and deck. Now we can see out into the woods instead of stare at a pile of red clay. I can't tell you how much difference removing the dirt pile has improved the view from the back porch. We used to not be able to see the house from the spot where this picture was taken because of the large dirt pile.

 

[Obed]

Unless you use the attic intensively, or fear anaphylactic shock, wasps/hornets are usually a benign presence, and just one of many country critters (skunks, voles, deer, etc) it is best to develop a respect for, and tolerance of. Life is too short to fight battles neither side can win!

Our attic is really more of an unfinished upstairs than what you typically think of an attic. Since we moved in, we have stuff stored up there and regularly go up there.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Unusual for ridge vents to not be screened well enough to stop insects - that's a key design parameter for them. Not sure which style you have - but if you use discrete vents, they have screen in them from the factory, and the continuous vent style is typically too small to allow insects access (especially larger ones like hornets/wasps).

I am sure it can be fixed if you can get a roofer up there to pull the vents and screen them properly. Might be worth it in the long run as you will fight this problem every year, forever. If you have leftover shingles, that will help a lot as those architectural shingle sure like to stick tight once they are down and see some sun.

Dave,

My wife seems to think that a wasp is too big to get through the slots in our roof vents. I'm not so sure. However, I'm sure that the installation of the roof vents was not done meticulously enough to prevent bugs from getting around them, even if they can't get through them. I'm going to wager that at the ends of the roof vents, the workers just cut the ends of the vents off to size and left the ends open. I was not very impressed with the roofer. I caught the workers trying to install a valley without ice and water shield because they had run out and didn't want to stop working. I made them stop and come back the next day when additional materials would be available.

I hadn't considered removing the vents, putting screens under them, and then re-installing. That's a pretty good suggestion. I had only thought about putting screens between the rafters from the inside but wasn't thrilled about doing that much work. The picture shows one of the dormers. If you look at the appex of the roof, you can see a dark area that is the bottom of a ridge vent. Putting screens between each rafter from the inside would be a monumental task; I would say we have about 150 feet of roof vents.

I guess I'll just see how much effort it takes me to knock down wasp nests. If I get really sick of doing it, I may have the roof vents removed and screened like you suggested. That's a great idea!

Obed

 

[DAY]

That looks like living space for future kids!
Is the roof insulated- can't tell from the photos. As someone said, screen the vents to keep out wasps. Probably the paper variety, mud daubers prefer cooler spots. If that's a six foot ladder, there's a lot of space up there.

 

[Obed]

That looks like living space for future kids!
Is the roof insulated- can't tell from the photos. As someone said, screen the vents to keep out wasps. Probably the paper variety, mud daubers prefer cooler spots. If that's a six foot ladder, there's a lot of space up there.

DAY,
The roof is not insulated. We blew insulation in the floor trusses below the upstairs subfloor in order to insulate the ma. It gets warm in the attic.

The upstairs would have 8 ft ceilings if finished. You're right, there is a lot of space in the upstairs. We went to some expense making the upstairs potential living space. The finished space in our house is currently 2100 SF, all on the first floor. However, our property is 30 acres. 2100 SF on a 30 acre lot here would be smaller than most new houses you would find on a large tract. If we ever needed to sell the house, we would finish the upstairs to add square footage and make the house more marketable. However, for just my wife, daughter, and me, 2100 SF is plenty. Keep in mind that our last house was 1040 SF and that we lived in a camper for 13+ years.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Today some of the drain lines for our gutter downspouts and foundation drain tiles got laid. The cost for the excavator to dig and lay the pipes was well worth it to me to have the subcontractor do them. We have about 8 trenches to dig. I believe the cost to dig each trench was $50. It would have taken me about 3 hours to dig each trench, probably more. About half of the drain lines were completed today.

At the back of the house, I ran the first section of thedrain pipes beside the HVAC unit on Labor Day last fall.

Today the workers had to hand dig to find the end of my drain pipes that I had covered with dirt. Those underground pipes were not being used. I just needed to complete that section of drain pipes before we installed the outside HVAC unit.

We used solid adapters to connect the downspouts to the drain piping. The disadvantage to this approach is I will have to get on the roof to run a snake if I need to clean out the drain pipe. If I find these pipes clog much, I might have to install cleanouts on the two downspouts for the 2 store gutters. I can reach the tops of the other 5 downspouts easily enough with a ladder.

I'm not certain what at the daylight end of the drain pipes. I can install grills on the ends of them to keep critters out of them. However, I'm afraid that the grills might prevent leaves and junk from leaving the pipes and cause the pipes to fill up with junk. Anybody have any experience here?