managed to go to home depot before it started raining. unfortunately it was coming down pretty well by the time i was ready to load up and head home.
pulled some more OSB and some 2×4 studs (which are dropping in price like they’re going out of style), upstairs with help from rebecca… she’s good at tugging on the rope, which isn’t easy at all… 2 sheets of OSB is a bit heavy.

ahh… that would be the extent of work done to the house, today. since this blog is a bit of a motivational tool for me, posting that i’ve not done much of a thing might help me get up and do more things : )

some subfloor and temporary bracing is going in, tomorrow. need to pull the front knee wall out, which is structural… so i’ll shore it up, pull it out and put subfloor in. once the 2×6 or 8 (can’t decide which) rafters go in, the kneewall can be rebuilt. finally… framing!

with all the research i’ve been doing on fireplaces, wood stoves, masonry heaters and the like, i’ve become a bit disappointed with our fireplace: not all that efficient, well designed or effective.

still, this inefficient thing is easily keeping the living room in the 70s when it’s in the mid 30s outside, without aid of the furnace (which has been off for a couple hours). sitting here next to a roaring fire and feeling like stripping down because jeans and a t-shirt are too damned warm, and the crackling is putting me to sleep; can’t complain much.

not a big day for the house. i cleaned the gutters while it was raining pretty good (what better time to do it?). pulled a few handfuls of leaves out, and water was once again gushing down the downspout. i stood there on the ladder for a minute, watching just how much water comes off the roof. just a sheer guess, but i’d imagine it wouldn’t take long to fill a 55 gallon drum.
now, given that we have no landscaping to water (”mud” doesn’t count as landscaping, does it?), i’m not exactly sure what we’d do with the captured rain water… but it seems like such a waste to let it all go into the sewer. it was about that time that i noticed just how much rain was going through my jacket…

my quick backwoods engineered lift crane came in handy, today.

wasn’t a boyscout, but i can tie a bunch of different knots…

hauled the OSB subfloor up to start covering the floor joists… it’s gone beyond sheer luck that we’ve not stepped off a joist and put a foot through the plaster below.

when the biodiesel furnace fires we get a strong rise in temperature, reasonably well balanced throughout the house. when the temperature of the thermostat has been reached, the burner ceases, but the warm air continues for a few minutes (using every bit of heat in the exchanger). that part is great…
10 minutes later when your toes start to feel the chill that’s falling across your body, though… not great.

as of this evening, there are no bare areas of floor in the attic that are uninsulated. with some hope and apprehension, not to mention desperation, we’ll see how it goes tonight. 5 gallons of biodiesel hasn’t been lasting 24 hours, lately. the lows are just below freezing, tons of wind and the high today was 39f. every bit of insulation is bound to help.

now, the image above might lead one to ask “but dan, the vapor barrier is facing upward, what’s with that?” if prodded, i have an answer… although i don’t much care for being prodded, so the answer would be something along the lines of “well champ, if you’d paid attention to earlier posts and could piece simple things together, you’d know.” but if i’m being nice… which is somewhat often i suppose, the answer would probably be much more helpful (and actually give an answer).

while the vapor barrier is supposed to face the primary conditioned area, what happens if both areas are conditioned? one conditioned more than another? one only conditioned part time? ok… that’s not an answer, that’s actually more questions.
here we go: the ceiling directly below the insulation is wood lath and plaster. the flooring directly above the insulation (will be) OSB and douglas fir tongue and grove, bathrooms to be OSB/durock/ceramic tile. i have no concern with heat flowing through the plaster and meeting cool enough area to produce condensation, nor any concern with heat going the other way. in fact, an unfaced insulation would have worked fine. the problem with that: can’t seem to buy it locally, and this stuff was a damned good deal. therefore, the faced stuff will work fine in our situation. we’ll have potential for more heat upstairs, so that’s where we decided to face the… well… facing. that and it’s easier to install facing up.

the rear bedroom protrudes past the foundation of the home, and has a couple feet of it’s own roof, perpendicular to the main roof, and just below it. can’t for the life of me remember what this is called… and i’m not about to go outside to take a picture as it’s 35 degrees and drizzling. my poor description will have to do. anyway, this little side roof was packed with cellulose on friday. as i was only doing a small area, renting a cellulose blower wasn’t cost effective; so i rigged set up the 5hp shop vac to blow cellulose. this worked surprisingly well, actually… not very adjustable, but did a fine job of dense packing the cellulose in the nearly impossible to reach area. surely sealed any air intrusions, as well as the fate of any spiders that were inhabiting the space.

the lowest ceiling temperature is 59f, tonight… up from 51f of a few days ago, with the same outside and inside temperatures. guess we’re making progress…
but my feet are cold again…

time to make one of these:

after much experimentation, and some good advise found online… the picture above shows the best way to burn scrap lumber (for our fireplace, anyway). burns hot, pretty slow, lots of radiant heat, no visible smoke from the chimney, and there’s little ash after the burn is complete.
the only problem… i don’t seem to remember to cut the wood before it’s nearly freezing outside…

accessing the areas of this house that need attention (all of them), we decided on the order in which they’d be attended to. along the way, there was the occasional re-ordering of this list… and an emergency triage or two, to boot.

i suppose “restoration” isn’t entirely correct. there is some updating involved… say, electrical and insulation. the two things that lead me to this entry…

updating the electrical in a house is a pretty high priority, if it’s in poor condition. the really bad stuff was replaced very early after the purchase of the home. gradually, we worked up until there was nothing left to replace, save for the main floor lighting circuits. really, the only reason they’re being replaced is to insulate, as we’d have insurance issues from insulating over knob & tube. when did we start rewiring the lighting circuits? at the time of the year when it gets dark before 5pm. had we done it in the summer, we’d not have to cook by crappy under-cabinet lighting that would fail in output compared to a candle. not even something cool like a roman candle (because really, anything that shoots gobs of sparks and flame while making noise and nearly burning everything in it’s reach is just plain cool). no, these lights aren’t as bright as a birthday candle. the cheap 43 cent/box ones.

insulating the house has been another reason to look back at some of the earlier projects. it seems that adding insulation is always a good idea… except for that part where a great deal of demo has to happen for the wiring and the insulation, due to the fact that we’re adding living space to the upper floor. demo = huge areas of openness where precious heat is whisked away. therefore, doing this demo and subsequent wiring and insulation while we’re in the coldest days of the year thus far… not one of the better ideas.

in short, trying to prepare food in a combined situation as above has only the benefit of being too damned cold inside to feel the pain of slicing your finger off because the kitchen is too dark to see what you’re doing, while trying to make something to eat.

it’s a good thing, then, that we enjoy eating out : )

i wonder how many homes are catching on fire this evening, due to turkey deep fryer mishaps? being vegetarians (or vegetarian-ish, in my case… i eat some meats on occasion), we are not partaking in the ghetto tradition of deep frying a turkey in a propane fired pot of questionable construction quality… which could likely lead to either a spill, causing flesh to fry… or a fire, causing the house to fry. either way, probably not the best way to spend a holiday, really.

ok, so no deep fried turkey, today… we still did the whole traditional thanksgiving dinner, just not at home. eating out is a fine tradition, i feel. i also feel that it’s a pain in the ass to do anything in the kitchen when there’s no lights to speak of. another good reason to eat out. we’ve got some crappy under-cabinet lights that partially work, and a 20w stove hood lamp… but that’s it for now. have to finish that part of the house’s lighting wiring…

for the parts of the house that do have the wiring finished, we spent the day cleaning 94 years of ick away, then laid insulation. roughly 1/3 of the attic/upstairs has R19 in between the floor joists, now. only R19, because the upstairs won’t be a non-conditioned space for much longer… and what’s covered in R19 will only be separating living areas. we’ll go much higher (or at least as high as practical/possible) separating off the side attics and roof.

the infrared thermometer measures a solid 5 degree difference in main floor ceiling surface temperatures between areas that have insulation, and areas that do not. i’d call that a pretty strong difference. we burned through 4 gallons of biodiesel in about 24 hours… so the more insulation we get in here, the better (and the sooner the better, as well).
we also filled almost 3.5 square feet of open space where rafter meets the top plate… and tons of ice cold air blow in directly over the (previously uninsulated) ceiling of the rear bedroom. that could partially explain why that room is always so damned cold…

as for the rest of the insulation:  once we get the subfloor in place, there will be room to move the various piles of stuff  off the rest of the flooring that has yet to be removed (because of those piles of stuff).  the “stuff” is mostly fir flooring that’s been removed… kinda shifting everything around like a puzzle.  a puzzle that i trip on and then jack my shin up, while trying to not fall through the plaster ceiling below.  fun.

the roof needs the new rafters put in… then we can insulate it.  decide where the windows are going, and we can insulate the exterior walls.
think i’ve prettymuch decided against a prior decision on radiant insulation. it would still leave thermal and acoustic bridge issues.  i like this idea, better… i’ve never done it, but it doesn’t appear difficult by any means:  the “mooney wall,” (which i suppose it’s now called) is cheap, apparently works well, and saves precious space compared to some other methods.  the exterior walls upstairs would be around R23, total (if my math is right). not just the insulation- the entire wall, minus windows.  guess that’ll do. better than just fiberglass mat- R16, total.  if we did the ceiling the same way (don’t see why we couldn’t), it would be something along the lines of R32 (didn’t bother with the math… just a guess).

my grandpa used to say that a lot. i was shocked a few times as a kid. mostly from “experimenting”, like that time i experimented with the butter knife and the electrical outlet… or the time with the fork and the electrical socket… or the screwdriver… paper clip… chewing gum wrapper…
when asked the reason for using an outlet was “to see if it conducted.” that was the day i got my first multi-meter. not nearly as exciting as probing into outlets… but safer, i suppose. my days of outlet experiments taught me that a couple outlets in the house were reversed, which i told my grandpa about. that was actually what led up to him asking why i was sticking stuff into the outlets in the first place… but at least it was somewhat helpful.

right out of high school, i took a construction job. digging ditches was literally what i was initially doing. it’ll humble you real good… but a good base for learning. not sure what exactly i was learning by digging… but something, i’m sure. ended up doing carpentry, which was worlds better than swinging a pic and driving a shovel. they wouldn’t let me operate the heavy equipment (and at the time, that was probably a good decision on their part)… so carpentry was a refreshing change… plus it let me actually think… and put a real-world daily use to algebra and geometry, two things i actually quite liked in school.

back to the title topic. the first electrician i worked for said the same thing to me… 110 barks, 22o bites. i started working for him when a commercial building project i was on, was complete. he worked on the project, too, and was looking to hire. he was an old timer… started his electrician career with knob & tube. marvin black, at least 70 years old at the time. he assured me i’d be shocked by 220 volts again, and likely while working for him. he was right, because not but 30 seconds later, i got shocked. didn’t know his statement would be followed by him swiping my leg with a 220v line. sadistic bastard i thought at first… but he had a point. the sharp contracting of my calf muscle hurt. he told me that it would hurt my heart just as much… so never let a circuit close across my chest. oh, the guy was still a sadistic bastard for shocking me in the first place… and likely broke some laws at the same time… but he did have a good point, if even a pretty f’ed up way of teaching it. i learned to work with only my right hand when doing much of anything with 220v… that way there was much less of a chance of anything happening. the first 440 volt job we were doing, i asked “if 110 barks and 220 bites, what does 440 do?” he looked at me with a straight face and said “it’ll straight make your pecker fall off if you whiz on it.” i didn’t ask further, the visual was enough. (far too much, actually).

i only worked for the guy for about 8 months, but did learn a lot. he retired and offered to refer his clients to me once i had a contractor’s license. i gave him my gratitude, but wasn’t planning on being a contractor.

while working for him, i enrolled in a welding class at the local community college. professor jack compton, at college of the canyons in santa clarita, ca. great professor, great class. my first month there, i got a job at a welding shop… worked out great, as it was also the last day i had worked for the ol’ electrician. 4 years later, i had a contractors license due to necessity with the chosen trade at the time (metal fabrication/welding… same shop i got that first job in)… guess i should have had more forethought and just accepted his quite gracious offer. that whole “hind sight” thing at work, again…

after 4 or so years working in that first welding shop, i left to go out on my own. that had been (and still is) the longest i’d ever worked at one place, and it was time to move on. i had a handful of clients, some good studio contacts, a very low cost of living and the ability to survive on bottom ramen if need be. bottom ramen is kinda like top ramen, but cheaper and not as nutritious. this might sound bad as top ramen likely has no nutritious value to start with, but when you’re young, dumb and have a dream… it’ll do fine.

despite wanting to do only metal fabrication, i’d take the odd wiring job and got to the point where i was doing electrical once or twice a month in the slow season, to supplement my income. i even rewired a blacksmith’s house in trade for some quasi-apprenticeship time, which turned out to be absolutely priceless. got to spend 2 months living with him and his amazing cook of a wife out in the mountians, and working/learning 7 days per week in the shop. another old timer, in his late 70s with tons of experience he was only too happy to share… his kids, he remarked, never had much of even a passing interest in the stuff. didn’t know what they were missing.

working on my own, about 1/2 the jobs i took were construction, many as a general contractor. when doing construction, i’d sub out a lot of stuff, but always ended up doing the electrical myself: electrician sub contractors cost too damned much, and it would kill my profit.

construction worked out great, because it gives quite a bit of free/flexible time. i had been going to community college, despite “never wanting to go to college” when i got out of high school. prerequisites out of the way, a (required) meeting with the career counsoler at the school said i should apply to a university. sounded good, as i’d often thought of becoming a mechanical engineer. a few months later, i found myself at cal state northridge. school full time, squeeze some construction in to pay the bills (ok, bill… only had 1 at the time) and pay for food.

a quick bit of side-story, here. while going to school, i found that most people sucked on the computer. it had been a hobby of mine since my first commodore vic 20 sometime in the early 80s… but never had much of a serious thought about ‘em, other than some fun times in highschool and a complete lack of sleep for a few years because i was spending all night in front of the screen. computers were easy… programming wasn’t a problem, and i was writing programs as i needed for some time. a friend called me up one night and asked me to come work for his company… a dot com. the money sucked, the hours were horrendous, but there were these “stock option” things. figured i’d take a semester off and try it. after that semester, i’d come back to school, back to construction and back to my life…

i never found my way back to school. i worked for one dot com after another, as a programmer or developer. the dot com boom was a wild ride… addictive and fun. before i knew it, i had been away from school and construction for 5 or 6 years. hell, maybe 7. time went by, the whole thing had consumed my life… then the dot com bubble burst. everyone i knew was suddenly unemployed. everyone i knew worked for dot coms, because that was my life now. i ran around thinking that the sky was falling, no idea what i would do… looked for work for months. got a sweet job as a VP of technology, then the company flopped 2 months later. again, the sky was falling. got a sweet job that would bring me to switzerland… then that ended before i could get packed to leave. i had so many stock options in failed companies… if even 25% had made it, i’d have a clean half million, at the very least. but they didn’t. they all failed.

then the weirdest thing happened. someone tracked me down through my mom. i’d done a remodel on their kitchen, and now they wanted to restore/remodel a few rooms. it had been at least 6 years since doing any work for them, but i was the person they wanted. this was too cool… and perfect timing, as even bottom ramen was getting to be outside of my available budget. picked up my hammer and went to work. i was sore, obviously out of shape, and even a bit rusty… but it was good honest work.

slowly, one job led to another. then another. most 0f my dot com friends were still out of work, but i was pounding away. another friend had fallen back to his previous trade: plumbing. we all went out to dinner one night. everyone was making fun of the plumber… how he’s gotta plunge shitty toilets, how he’s gotta mop up messes, etc. he was cool about it, never fighting… admitted that a lot of the work was indeed shitty. there were laughs to be had, and overall a good time.

about 6 months later, a lot of us got back together for dinner and drinks. the job market was definitely better, as most of the programmers were working again, albeit not at the previous inflated salaries. i was still doing construction at this point, vowing to never go back to working for someone else. there were about a dozen of us out… and as the drinks flowed, the plumber was again the but of the jokes. he was cool about the whole thing again, laughing along with everyone. when the night was over, the laughs ended when the valet pulled up with his car. some of the guys were driving new(ish) cars… i’m driving a cool ‘55 plymouth… but the plumber… the plumber was driving a porsche. a nice porsche. not a cheap porsche like the boxter… no, a ‘96 911 turbo. ok, it wasn’t brand new… but it was an easy $80k car, before the upgrades… and there were a lot of ‘em. the plumber had a porsche. a porsche that he paid cash for. the bbq at his house the following month was great, too… the house he owned.

a tech career can be a good thing… but don’t scoff at a trade. last i talked to the plumber, he had a couple other houses and one of the very few porsche GT2s sitting in his garage. he sub contracted for me on a couple jobs, at $90/hour. not bad, when you consider he was usually double booked (and usually charging both).

somehow i got suckered back into programming… and stayed with it until today. today, i’m an unemployed software engineer, going through the drawn out interview process for a programming consultant contract, blasting out resumes and fishing for a new gig. i’m greatly comforted by the fact that i have multiple trades in which to “fall back” upon… and couldn’t for a moment imagine otherwise. the only thing that i can’t imagine is how i keep end up doing software again and again??? maybe i can do software for a construction company… or construction for a software company… mix it up a bit : )

again, back to the title topic. without the trades i’ve learned and hold dear… even define myself with, to a point… whether it’s my source of income or not, the skill helps daily. restoring this house would be so insanely cost prohibitive if paying someone else to do the work, that we’d not be able to do much of anything to it. the electrical i’m doing right now would have been around $1600 including materials, if bringing an electrician in to do the work (just the wiring, to a bare structure). the rest of the upstairs renovation? forgetaboutit (yes, that’s actually one word)… an easy $50k - $75k. then it would be a real moneypit house.

no idea what the point of this post was, i just felt like and enjoy writing.

along with the wiring in the attic/upstairs, the knob & tube to the wall switches needs to be changed out. although (apparently) knob & tube can legally be joined to romex circuits (given that the circuit is limited to at most 15 amps), the junction boxes to join them would be inaccessible as they’d be under insulation, subfloor and finished flooring. unless “guessing where the junction box is and busting through the plaster from below” counts as access? probably not. because of this, i’ve spent too many hours today fishing through the walls.

the bathroom was particularly tricky because there was no clear path down the wall. first there’s a triple top plate… no idea why, but triple. easy enough to drill a 3/8″ hole to drop the fish tape in, and pull the romex back through, right? would be, but there was something else about a foot below that. ok, drilled through the mystery piece with an extension. fished through that… and again, something about a foot below that drilled through… and damn it, again, something below that. my extension is 3′, so there was no drilling through that last piece with what i had on hand… so i decided to go beside the next stud over. but still, not so cool. that was much more successful. carefully cut out the plaster with a couple swings of the hammer, to fit the new switch box, pulled the wire up and tied it in. the old switch was plastered into the wall… one of the screws was touching the hot wire… so with a wet enough hand, there could have been a nice little zap. it wouldn’t have felt much worse than a really strong static shock… ok, pretty cool if it’s someone else getting shocked…

all the knob & tube has been cut off in the attic (and the corresponding breakers disconnected), so anything that’s not new at the moment doesn’t work. that leaves us with no ceiling lights in the back bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, breakfast room, dining room, living room, front porch or basement. basement? yeah… for some reason the basements lights were connected in the attic. no clue why. their hot runs up to the switch by the kitchen, then keeps going up and 15 feet over to a hot above the living room. weird. guess i’ll run a new circuit for the basement.

we do have lights in the front bedroom (as shown in the pic… love that fixture!)… but that’s about it; the only part of that circuit which is connected. a floor lamp, desk lamp, some under-cabinet lights and a flashlight… that about covers the rest of what’s working in the house. a few more connections tomorrow and we’ll have light in half the house again. then we’ll lay insulation and OSB subfloor over that half… so the stuff stacked up on the other half can be moved and that part of the flooring removed (yeah, i’m lost too). then the wiring can be finished… insulate and subfloor that side…

once insulated, we’ll be able to keep the heat produced by the furnace… such a novel idea! we went from around 1 gallon/day to 2.5 gallons/day of biodiesel, recently. a great deal of that has to do with the whole “complete lack of insulation or weatherization in the upper half of the house” thing. i like the cold weather… but don’t the cold weather in the friggin’ living room.

i’m pretty torn on what to do for heat upstairs. i’m pretty set on the solar-assisted hot water heating… but keep going between using old radiators, or subfloor hydronic (tubing run in a pattern under the floor) . old radiators look cool, are relatively cheap, have pretty good thermal storage ability and are quick(ish) to install. subfloor would make the area more evenly heated and is more efficient; even 100f water will warm the floors, 120f will make the room reallywarm. the radiators start feeling good around 140f. using a large (500+ gallon) storage tank and solar heat collectors, we could easily get to at least 150f in the tank… giving us 10f of room. the lower temperatures required for subfloor hydronic probably make it the best choice as we’d have lots more room with the temperature (thus likely requiring less assistance by another fuel source)… but the installation wouldn’t be as straight-forward. bah… i dunno…

now that the temperature is dipping into the mid 30s at night… and the forecast calls for high 20s by week’s end… we’re happy that the biodiesel furnace is able to heat the house up quickly. unfortunately it’ll cost a fortune…

… as the house was built before insulation was a requirement, or really even much of a passing thought… we don’t have any (save for a bunch of 30s newspapers laid about here and there). further, the attic/upstairs has a window completely removed, no wall or ceiling covering, and 1/2 of the flooring is removed. at least when the flooring was in, there was somewhat of a buffer between the main floor’s plaster ceiling and the frigid air wafting through the attic. all of this means that while the house comes up to temperature very quickly, all that precious warmth is taken by a main floor ceiling that won’t break above 58f. we need to install all the insulation that’s so conveniently sitting in it’s nice bundles, in the basement.

(more…)

man, do i love me some research. i find great joy in learning everything i can about a subject. it’s easy to spend hour after hour (many of which could be used for sleeping) learning something new.

it must have started when i was a kid, with cars. oh, i loved cars (still do). i’d read everything i could get my hands on, that had anything to do with cars. i found that while i couldn’t make it through a novel or story book… i could easily read a technical manual from cover to cover. i’d get into a subject, and learn everything i could.

(more…)

on the plus side the crackling fire is relaxing. the radiant warmth feels great. it’s fun to feed the fire, warming the room for “free” (scrap wood we didn’t pay for) makes me happy.
now, on the negative side… an open fireplace like this has roughly 10% efficiency. for the 1000+ degrees of the glowing embers, 3 feet away from the hearth we get about 120f. that kinda sucks. it also (literally) sucks… about 600 cubic feet of air per minute, if my calculations are right, when the fire is really roaring. thats 600cfm of air from inside the house… the replacement air comes from leaky windows, doors, vents, etc.

don’t get me wrong- the fire feels great! and it does seem to maintain the heat in at least part of the house (the part used during the evening). it actually raised the temperature in the living room to 77f. but for that 1000f in the fire, it would be nice to see more output that wasn’t just going out the chimney.

we’ve got a few options:

• one, we can leave the fireplace as it is… enjoy it for what it is.
  • the good: there is no additional cost involved (other than firewood), and it’s already here.
  • the bad: we could be getting so much more heat.

• two, i could build a well sealing fireplace front/insert, heavy on the wrought and cast iron, passive heat exchanger, pull combustion air from outside the home through an adjustable damper. could likely raise the efficiency (and temperature) quite a bit. all the math in the world won’t give an exact number (testing in real world conditions would), but my best guess is it would raise the efficiency to around 40 to 50%.
  • the good: i’d build it (i’ve built ‘em before, and contracted to one of the larger oven companies as a fabricator) keeping the cost reasonably low, we’d easily get it into the 80s in the living room.
  • the bad: i’ve got a lot of projects, already. it probably wouldn’t be done before summer, when it would be pointless (for this year, anyway).

• three, we could get a modern fireplace insert stove. they have large heat exchangers, can run on mostly outside combustion air, radiate heat for quite a while after the fire has burnt down, and are between 60 and 70% efficient.
  • the good: quite efficient giving us a lot of heat for the wood burnt, could possibly be used as the primary heat source.
  • the bad: pretty pricey, at over $1500… gotta take that into account with the efficiency.

• four, we could get a soapstone wood stove.
  • the good: tons of heat… enough to heat the main floor of the house by itself, can be used constantly throughout the heating season as the primary heat source, upwards of 80% efficiency, roughly 1/3 the cost to operate compared to the biodiesel furnace (at today’s cord of firewood : biodiesel costs)
  • the bad: they’re friggin’ expensive at well over $3k, the upper outside surface can reach temperatures in excess of 450f… doesn’t seem safe with a toddler in the house.

any opinions? post em in the comments!

~

for upstairs, we’re thinking of radiators. yup, the old-school cast iron weigh a friggin’ ton radiators. $5/fin, locally… so incredibly cheap. i’ve repaired them many times, so not worried about that part. hot water, rather than using a boiler or steam… meaning the plumbing would be a lot easier (PEX), no getting scalded from a super hot radiator, and quiet. heat the water using a combination of solar (heating a large water tank heat sink/thermo-storage container) and another source (many options, many possibilities… but gotta use something, ’cause there’s too many gloomy days here to rely solely on solar).
with good insulation in the house, the moderately warm (120f) radiators should keep the inside temperatures nice… ’specially since it’s radiant heat, warming objects in the room.
add to it a few radiant sub floor heating areas, and we’d be doing well…

so… that’d make the house heated with a combination of biodiesel forced air furnace, wood fireplace (or insert) and solar assisted radiant. the solar assisted part would be nice, because it would likely be able to provide nearly all of our domestic hot water needs during the summer as well… meaning it’d be useful year-round.

ok, now i’ve got a job interview in a few hours… so we can continue to afford this house!