Eichler Re-Mod

Squidoo lens on Eichler

Larry recently started a Squidoo lens on Eichler… what does that mean? Well, check it out for yourself!

Removing the siding and re-insulating

As the electricians and roofers were busy on the roof and inside the house, I was outside, tearing off the old wood siding with my father. The initial plan was to simply replace the sheets in poor shape, but… we ended removing everything (this is about to become a tradition in this house). It was in fairly poor shape overall, and this gave us an opportunity to re-insulate the entire house. It tooks about six full hours to remove the old siding (2 people).

While removing old insulation is not a very fun thing (make sure to cover your whole body to avoid contact of insulation dust with your skin), it is not hard either. And putting in the new one is a breeze. New insulation makes a huge difference, in winter as well as in summer - modern insulation (RG-13) is much more efficient than what they were using in the seventies. I’d never thought that new insulation on the roof and in the walls could make such a dramatic difference… the house is now cool inside (it’s July, scorching hot and the house was a bit stuffy until these changes) - who needs air conditioning?

Ah, the new siding is on order from Eichler Siding which is the only source of this groovy siding (we have the thinline type)…

First phase of electrical upgrade completed!

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).

If you open your walls…

If you open your walls, try to think about what you will be hanging on them later on. I know - you already have a lot on your mind and decoration is the least of your worries. But an open wall is an opportunity not to be missed. You could save yourself quite some grief down the road, and even open new possibilities.

Think:

shelves: where do you want them? do you have enough studs?
flat-screen TV: while LCD screens are quite light, plasma screens are very heavy (around 65lbs for a 42″). Having double studs for hanging one on the wall might be a good insurance.

At a minimum:

take pictures of the open walls for later reference (easy and cheap with digital cameras!)
add metal plates wherever needed to protect wires

Don’t assume a stud finder is enough. They can get really confused at times depending on wall materials and wires inside the walls. You’ll feel much more comfortable drilling through a wall close to your service panel if you have one of these pictures in your hand…

A house, not a Swiss cheese

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!

Structured Cabling

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.

Blog remodel

Finally completed the re-design of this blog. The new cleaner and simpler style should be more inline with the Eichler design principles - at least this was the intent.

Now I just need to go back to work and blog about this remodeling story!

Exposing the roof

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!

Get yourself a banking card with some kind of cash rewards

… I could beat myself up for not having done so earlier. Considering the amount of money that flew out of my bank account during this remodeling, I would probably have qualified for some decent rewards by now! Yet another obvious thing that I contemplated but was eventually too busy (or lazy?) to do.

Status of the work (mid-July 2004)

Quick status of where we stand now: