started the day with a trip to casa depot. just when i’m starting to hate the place enough to write it off and never go there again (not possible), they come up with a $100 gift card rebate for every $300 you spend on fiberglass insulation. add to it a rebate from the oregon energy trust/pge (power company) as well, and the stuff will end up being pretty cheap.

20 bags of R19 fiberglass insulation came home with us.

the work truck loaded, and back home:

put 4 bags of R19 in the rav4… the rest was handled by the work horse (turbo volvo beater): 10 on the roof, 2 in the trunk, 3 in the back seat and 1 in the front seat. the volvo rocks.

20 bags tossed in the basement window:

placing the stuff between the floor joists:

no eye protection? nope. couldn’t find the glasses… not that i would have worn ‘em for much of it, anyway. really should be in the habit of wearing eye protection, but never really have. fiberglass isn’t too bad, anyway (ok, lame excuse).

i am wearing a 3M dust mask, though…
of course they don’t work so well when you’ve got a full beard.

anyway… some hours later, the floor above the crawl space is done, and roughly 2/3 of the the basement in it’s entirety. the rim joists and sills are caulked and/or filled with expanding foam. random holes are filled. once the rest is finished, it should help keep the main floor a little warmer.

kinda looks like cotton candy, doesn’t it?

warm and fuzzy… makes ya wanna roll up in it and be comfy! or itchy, one or the other. rolling around in the crawl space, dragging this stuff along with me and pushing it into place above and around wires, ducts, pipes and spiders, i got a great deal of fiberglass on me. a thermal, a long sleeve t-shirt and jeans… chones would have been a good idea. luckily the fiberglass doesn’t really make me itch… ’cause i was covered in it.

next in the basement is framing in the walls… then re-plumb, since whoever did it obviously had no clue what they were doing and no concern about such minor things as pressure, water hammering, longevity or clearly as shown in the photo below: aesthetics.

cpvc pipe, run all over the place… changing from 1/2″ to 3/8″ to 3/4″ in completely random fashion… taking a shower and somebody cracks the kitchen sink? pressure drops to where the water barely trickles. ~85PSI… can’t find a regulator anywhere, so assuming either the meter is self-regulated, or the pressure in this neighborhood sucks. 3/4″ pipe throughout the house would help that, a lot.
now i gotta see if the water company is responsible for the feed, or if we are. it’s too small… and starting to leak. yay, more fun.

ok, inside the basement. but the basement is part of the house, right???

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