NOT a fun weekend

This weekend we had to clear the air vents in the attic. The furnace was under the house before, but it was over 50 years old and not working when we bought the house. We got a new efficient furnace and installed it in the attic where presumably it will be easier to work on. Strangely enough, there were only two heat vents in the entire house and they were right next to each other. I can't imagine how it heated the whole house. This past week, we had the furnace inspected and the inspector felt that there wasn't enough air for proper combustion. He suggested we clear the air vents. We had noticed that the attic gets unbelievably hot (like a sauna - really!) so it makes sense when he pointed out the air vents are blocked. It's like an airtight space with heat rising from the house and sun beating down. No wonder it gets hot!

This job rivals the countertops as unfun! Anyone who thinks remodeling is fun needs to spend a few hours doing this job and see how fun they think it is. As with many things in the house, the previous owners did things that make no sense. In this case, it was "insulation is good, so twice as much as you need must be better." There was just so much insulation in the attic. Some of it was over a foot thick, and the joists are only 6", so you can imagine the sheer volume of it. There were piles of insulation everywhere, and it was stuffed down into the crack where the roof meets the walls to block the vents. Nice. Smart.

Well, I discovered I most definitely do not have claustrophobia. Being the smaller and more heat-tolerant of the two of us, it was my job to do the crawling in the attic. Crawling is a generous term however. Even at 5'3", I cannot fully stand at the highest point in the attic so you can imagine how small the space is. Add to that the jungle of heat ducts, electrical conduits and the heater itself and it was a real maze. I also had to move only on the floor joists, so most of my moving around was done by moving like an inchworm along the joists. I had to be really careful to stay on the joists, or I would have found a limb sticking out through the ceiling of the room below. When I was laying along the lengthwise along the joists and had to move sideways, I had to balance on a forearm and two toes and move one limb at a time. I did lay on a board when space allowed, but that required some balancing to move around as well. Try suporting your weight in a variety of odd positions as well as lifting and pulling and you'll see it is REALLY strenuous. Add to that heat of about 120 degrees and no air, and you can tell I was dying. I was so out of breath I had to keep resting wherever I was. We did wear masks, but I had glass splinters all over my body. There was also debris from the roof that had fallen between the cracks when the roofers tore off the old layers. Nothing crawling over a bed of gravel to rough up your skin.

We did a few hours on Saturday and then had to quit. It was just too hot and I was too wiped out. We resumed on Sunday (we considered waiting till next weekend, but this job is so miserable that we wanted it done). The worst came when I had to do the last few windows. I managed to do some strange yoga-ish move to get over a heat duct and behind the heater. I had to squeeze through a triangular opening that was about 2' wide, and about 18" tall on one side and 0" tall on the other. This small opening was about 2 feet long, so I had to inchworm through it. I was concerned because beyond the opening was a huge pile of insulation, and I wasn't sure if I could clear room to turn around and I didn't think I could inchworm backwards. Well, I went for it, managed to hand the huge pile of insulation out piece by piece and get back out. We were so glad to be done.

The floor guy came to put the last coat of polyurethane on the bathfloor today so were were unable to use the bathroom for 7 hours. It wasn't so bad because I was out in the evening. They didn't sweep or clean the floor though, and ended up painting over a lot of debris so now they have to sand and repaint it. Duh.

Here I am moving into the depths of the attic. This was one of the more accessable spots.


Here is just a fraction of the insulation we removed. What were they thinking?