17 August 2001

This Old House

Tonight I began the duct insulation project.

Or I should say, I did the preliminary work, which involved pulling down the idiot handyman's insulation (talk about a soaked MESS), then the REALLY soaked and moldy original insulation (no vapor barrier!) from the duct work. But first I had to remove even more sheetrock from the ceiling to get at the full run of ductwork.

So, the first assessment still holds. It's a big damn mess. I don't know WHAT the duct installers were thinking, but they didn't even bother to seal the duct joints, so they're leaking air bigtime. I need to seal those up, then do the insulation work as planned -- with a little extra work due to some of the strange twists in the ductwork.

If I actually owned this place, I would likely pull down the existing crappy duct work and replace them with flex-duct. But that's more work than I want to do, even if it is going to be deducted from the rent.

Tomorrow I have a little more insulation to pull, and then I can actually insulate. That will probably be the extent of the effort tomorrow, with drywall replacement Sunday.

The assessment and work on the problem has actually been very satisfying. It's one thing to read vocariously and write like mad, but it's another thing entirely to apply knowledge to actual construction problems. Not that I want to spend all of my time doing it (messy and yucky!), but every once in a while is not bad.

[Posted @ 10:49 PM CST]