We completed the first major milestone today. The first phase of the electrical upgrade: addition of circuits and service panel upgrade is done! We doubled (or quadrupled? I don’t remember…) the electrical capacity. We added dedicated circuits to the bathrooms (left the existing one; added one for the new space heater and one for the outlets), 3 or 4 in the kitchen (see left picture) and spread a few others throughout the house. All rooms have ceiling lights (original Eichlers had very few of these). And all outlets throughout the house are now grounded!

The roofers have already started installing the insulation - you can see it on the right picture. Some rigid insulation, on top of which they will lay the Duro-Last, a single-ply membrane, also called “pool liner” (because that was the first usage for that material).

As Eichler do not have crawl space or attic, owners who needed to add phone and TV capacity had only one choice: to run the wires along the outside walls. After 30-40 years you can imagine why most Eichlers look like a Swiss cheese entangled in a web of cables…

One of the immediate reward of using structured cabling is that you don’t need anymore all these ugly cables that were running along the house. I took great pleasure in tearing them!

It makes a huge difference aesthetically (check out most Eichler homes - they are plagued with this mess of wires running outside), but it also closes the door to the hordes of ants, spiders and termites that were using these convenient access into your home. Granted, they will find other access but there is no reason to make it too easy on them!

Re-wiring a house is a time consuming (and therefore muy expensive) task. If you go down that path, you should seriously consider adding some extra capacity and giving yourself some leg room for the future. The International Engineering Consortium says it better than me:

typical costs for building operation and alterations over a 40-year life cycle far exceed the initial construction costs. Proper systems-integration planning to optimize the construction process can reduce these ongoing life cycle costs.

The best way to do this? Structured wiring (also called at times “smart wiring” by some, especially realtors…).

The electricians will run combination cable (2x cat5e + 2x RG6) from the garage to each room. I plan on using one cat5e for the phone (up to 4 lines), one cat5e for data (up to Gigabit Ethernet) and the two coax for video distribution (in and out). Note that the cat5e could also be used for audio distribution or security systems, so this bundle gives you quite some flexibility. Wiring the complete house (about 10 terminations) requires a 500-ft spool - that’s around $350 in this configuration.

I will be taking care of the distribution panel, terminations and faceplates (a time-consuming but not so complex process) and will be posting the details later on.

In addition, I’ve asked the crew to drop in a few extra audio cables in the living room, going from one side of the room to the other - this is for the future 5:1 surround sound home theather!

If you would like to read more about structured cabling, Leviton has a great “Wiring Strategies Installation Guide” available for download.

Enter the professionals! The first team of contractors (the roofers) just started on the house: they are removing the old roof to prepare the terrain for the second team of contractors (the electricians) who are about to start laying out the new wiring.

I do not have much to say on that phase of the work. My input wasn’t really required at any point - it’s only demolition work after all. It took the crew (two persons) about 3 days to complete the job (removing the foam was fairly easy but some of the tar on the garage gave them a little resistance).

Oh yes, we found some intriguing duct pipes under the foam, connecting the living room to the kitchen. Their purpose seems to elude everyone. My theory is that it was an attempt at facilitating circulation of cold air from the AC unit in the kitchen to the rest of the house. But that would be a very inefficient way of doing it. Anyhow, if still unanswered, the mystery is now gone: ducts have been removed and holes patched!

Thankfully, the wood that has been exposed is in very good shape overall, except for one plank above the entrance that had to be replaced.

The race against the clock is starting for the electricians: they need to complete their job ASAP. They have one week. The weather is perfect right now, but we cannot afford to get some rain on this exposed roof. It would just go right through the ceiling and damp everything. Tarps are on hand but we’d rather not have to use them!

I don’t seem to have any picture of the roof before, but here are some of the exposed wood. The metal channels contain the original electrical wiring - as you can see there aren’t many of them: we had ceiling lights in only half of the rooms (typical in Eichlers I believe). This is about to dramatically change!

Demolition is going on. After the kitchen, I turned to the first bathroom, the one at the end of the hallway.

I’m still full of enthusiasm (if only I knew…) and getting rid of this old stuff is quite liberating. I have respirator, goggles and gloves on - what you find under an old bathroom is not exactly pretty and probably not very healthy neither! This drywall seems to be the original one (circa 1964), and wow, I don’t think I want to breathe too much of it - I’ll keep the respirator, thank you.

Everything was in very poor shape and came off quite easily.

Well, everything but the bath tub. It felt fairly heavy and sturdy, and I was hoping this would be one of these cast iron tubs that you can just break with a hammer. Not so lucky - it was just cheap iron. You cannot break these, nor cut them (like you would cut an acrylic bathtub); you need to remove it in one piece. The first problem was an unexpected one: I couldn’t remove the old rusty drain basket… come on, how hard can this be? I don’t even have to be careful about the tub… no, cannot even get a grip on that thing… losing my calm and getting the hammer out doesn’t help much neither… Problem will be solved a few days later with the help of a contractor I was discussing a bid with: “oh you know, there’s a special wrench for this. I can lend you mine”. Thank you Steve!

Since then, I’ve found a web page describing another method to accomplish this. Obviously quite a common problem

Now, the second challenge is to lift and get this tub out of the house. It’s very heavy and it sits tight between the two opposite walls. This is impossible alone (yes, I tried and wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re looking at crushing your back and fingers). There again, problem was solved a few days later, with the help of my father. Three people wouldn’t have been too many, especially as you have to twist this heavy tub in some inimaginable ways to get through all the door frames!

Overall, it probably took me two full days to get through that demolition and clean-up.

I don’t think I had ever enjoyed a shower as much as I did enjoy the one I would take at the end of each day during that demolition exercise (back at the house we were renting, in a bathroom that was still in one piece)!

When I started all this I swore to myself I would stay away from plumbing. I’m comfortable around electrons and wires. But water and pipes?! Well, it turned out that my first rebuilding task in the house would be plumbing.

The laundry area as it was when we bought the house. It’s located in the hallway that leads to the bathroom.

The laundry area in the house is in the hallway between the dining and the bathroom. We really wanted it to be in the garage, but there’s no drain there and the list of work is long enough as it is. So we decided to simply clean up the existing laundry area for now:

• put up some new greenboard
• tile the floor
• stack up the appliances (instead of leaving them side-by-side)
• put up new shelves
• close the area with folding doors

Since I was about to put up new greenboard in this area, I figured out I might as well clean-up the plumbing by installing a tidy valve box.

Only thing: the valves were directly soldered to the pipes. Hiring a plumber for such a small job? How much would it cost me?

Oh well. The Depot had a sale on a soldering kit. Not even half the price of what I would have to pay a plumber to visit me. I might as well get my feet wet!

So here I was, with my propane torch and a book teaching sweat soldering 101. Luckily I wasn’t under time pressure… it took me literally hours and 2 attempts to get that stuff right! Be kind - don’t laugh at me.

Tip: Empty your pipes as well as possible. Any remaining water will make your task very difficult. In my case, the pipes were vertical and full of water. Shutting down the main valve and leaving the taps in the house open was not enough. Modern constructions usually have a purge valve, located very low - of course, this house doesn’t have one. Second best is to locate the lowest tap in the system, often an outside bib, and leave it open. If that is still not enough (remember that everything is pretty much level in an Eichler, a one-story house resting on a concrete slab…) you will need to be creative. One thing that worked for me: blow some air through another pipe from the same system (cold or hot) and force the trapped water out… believe me, that works, even from one room to another. Copper is not really tasty, but it isn’t that bad neither!

One year later - was a propane torch the right tool to buy?

Not really. I wish I hadn’t been cheap on that one. The MAPP gas torch was only about $10 more expensive than the Propane one. And the time and frustration you might spare yourself with a MAPP torch are well worth the extra cost. MAPP allows you to heat the copper much faster. This is very convenient when you deal with pipes that you cannot empty properly. In one instance I had to repair a leaky manifold still full of water by brazing small leaves of copper to it - this was literally impossible with the Propane torch. So go for it.