Pierre had to leave to work on his own kitchen that afternoon, so Dan and I began putting together 5″ rounds for the supply runs to each of the first floor rooms. On the first floor, there are 7 5″ supplies and 2 6″ supplies as well as a split 6″ supply to the kitchen, which I have yet to be run.

On Sunday, Stephanie and the boys helped out with some insulating of the rounds. We did get some main trunk put together as well.

I also took off Tuesday and Thursday because the driller was originally supposed to show up Tuesday, but ended up re-scheduling for Thursday. So, on Tuesday, I got most of the vent holes cut on the first floor. I also had 4 of the 7 5″ supplies connected up to the register boots. I wanted to get that out of the way so that life could go on as usual on the first floor.

On Thursday, they also delivered the WaterFurnace unit. I ended up spending most of the morning sorting things out with the driller, George, and the Achieve delivery guys, Rob and Ryan. We dug up the septic system d-box (distribution box) because the wells have to be at least 25′ away from any septic components. That took some time because the plan o the title 5 was not very complete and in fact was off by several feet on the d-box location. I called the guy up to find out about septic field dimensions, and he tells me that the as-built plans on file at the town hall has that. I call up the town and there are no as-built plans on file. The board of health lady was sympathetic. It appears the inspector just made it up when he checked off the reference to as-built plans on the title 5. Looks like lazy work to me, but Stephanie like the term forgery.

There are a few pictures of the delivery guys bringing the unit into the basement. It weighs a lot. For the rest of the afternoon, I ran the other half of the 1st floor supply lines, 2 6″ lines, 1 5″, and two vent holes for 5″ lines in the school room. The two I didn’t run lines for are short runs that I will run after the supply plenum is in place.

Thursday afternoon, George the driller called back. He spoke with the town board of health and conservation commission. Apparently I’m the first and only homeowner in Easton who’s installing a geothermal system. The board of health guy, Rob, was very excited about the project and wanted to be there for the drill as much as I do. He also wanted to look at the d-box personally to ensure that it does what the title 5 says it does. The conservation commission also wants to look at the site since we’re on the outer edge of conservation land. In Easton, that is pretty much every house in town since there is so much of it everywhere. There are a couple of acres that sit in the middle of the block that our house sits on. And we have a bit of a pond that is half on our lot and half on the conservation land – our back yard.

Thursday evening, I wrote up a list of a couple more things I needed for duct components and sent that off to my hvac supplier, ControlAir Systems in Revere. Al Lavargna, the VP, is great (they’re expensive, but worth every penny) – he called be back in the morning, asked if I was working on this over the weekend (I said yes, of course), and he had his guys make the components that day and delivered them that afternoon (Friday).

That brings me to this past weekend. Pierre came over again for the morning and together, we got the supply plenum up into position. He also made a good dent in the cutout under the bathroom vanity for a supply into the 1st floor bathroom. I spent the day working on the larger half of the 1st floor supply trunk. We lined it up, took measurements for the holes to the supply runs, and insulated it. After he left, I was able to get that part connected and fastened to the joists.

On Sunday, I worked on the 2nd half of the 1st floor supply trunk. Since it was so long (almost the full width of the house and about 30′ of trunk), I had to break it into 2 halves. I also need to do that so I could get the pieces up and over the PEX tubing we ran last weekend. Using rope and a lot of cursing, I was able to hoist the second half up and into place last night. The hard part of this one was the top take-offs for the supply runs. There are hot and cold water supply lines that are on this half of the basement and they are in the way of everything. I really didn’t want to re-run the whole house’s plumbing, so I worked around them. There is just enough space to put some of the take-offs in, but I had to use starter-collars and elbows for a couple of spots since the take-offs are too long to fit between the pipes. The elbows, when straight and vertical, do fit. once they’re up, they can be turned and twisted into an elbow.

I also spent some time going through all of the duct that Al delivered two Thursdays ago. I think there are quite a few extra pieces of trunk and some things I can’t figure out what they are for. Kind of like those some-assembly-required projects with a few extra nuts and bolts that don’t seem to have a home. Except these nuts and bolts are 4′ tall 12″x16″ trunk segments.

This week, I’m avidly awaiting word on when the driller will be back out. I so want to be there for the drill.

Some links for reference:

Achieve Renewable Energy
ControlAir Systems
WaterFurnace
SMACNA Manual is available as chapter PDF downloads.

Pictures!

As a side note, you can see from these pictures that the paint is in tough shape. That’s another project Stephanie and I have been talking about. I’ll probably start re-siding parts of the house with cedar shingles and ditch the old clapboards. I’ll leave it natural as well – we both like that look a lot better than painted shingles. It should go without saying that I’ll replace all the facia boards with new and we’ll be choosing a nicer color that will go with the cedar. This is a piece-meal project, however, and I won’t be starting that until the spring/summer.

I quickly learned that geothermal was probably the most efficient and least expensive to maintain. The installation, however, is very expensive. I ended up getting three quotes from some well qualified installers, Coneco, Southcoast Greenlight, and Achieve Renewable Energy. I also spoke with Ultra Geothermal, but they’re a bit too far away to take on a project here in Easton.

I ended up selecting Achieve and a closed loop vertical well system. I chose the vertical well because I was hesitant about using a large area to trench out a horizontal system. While that approach would end up replacing our back yard with something nicer, it would also restrict us from doing any sort of addition off the back in case that need ever arises. The closed loop vertical system also offers a 55 year leak-free warranty and is more efficient than a horizontal system. Achieve and Coneco offered vertical well proposals, but I chose Achieve for a couple of reasons. They have more experience overall since they are one of the largest installers in New England and they focus on individual client (home-owners) projects as opposed large project-based installers.

Since these systems work best with force-hot-air systems, we would need a ducting system installed to replace our hot-water baseboard. Another alternative would be to run radiant heat throughout the floor, but that would mean tearing up all of the existing floor. That is a much bigger project that I’m not willing to take on at the moment. Running duct-work, however, is something I’m more capable of. To that end, I did some calling and got a reference for Des Crowley, an HVAC design guy. He’ll draw up the plans and I’ll do the work. That should save me about eight or nine thousand – the two geo-thermal proposals estimated duct-work to run between ten and twelve thousand.

One more thing I’ll need is to have the electrical service updated. We have 100 amp service now, so we’ll need to upgrade that to 200 amp and have a separate sub-panel installed. Good thing my father-in-law is a master electrician! He’ll get the service set up so we can run a dedicated line to the new units and clean up the existing panel a bit.

So, my plan in a nutshell is:

• Run the duct work
• Upgrade electrical service
• Have Achieve install the geothermal
• Remove the old boiler and oil tank
• Remove the old baseboard water lines

The nice thing is that the work I have to do is all up-front. I do have my brother to help out and I’m sure I can pull in a few others if I need to. Once I see the plans, I’ll be in a better place to estimate the time it will take. And, as always, there’ll be lots to learn. I’ve never run duct-work before so it’s all OJT for me.

In the meantime, I continue in my efforts to migrate from the Java web-app paradigm to the mac desktop/mobile app way of doing things. I think my biggest conceptual hurdle is navigating the bindings in Interface Builder. I much prefer the old-fashioned way of coding … using text. Using a new-window-happy application to manage object bindings just makes my head hurt when trying to find the right triangle to click, the right checkbox or option to select, or trying to determine why something isn’t connected the way I think it is.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

It’s a good read, and thoughtfully done. Here is a list of other editorials that I have kept over time. I stopped collecting them some time around the summer when the volume became too much to keep track of.

• My favorite, a 30 year vet in interrogation: Two problems with torture
• A prominent Catholic viewpoint: Be Not Afraid II
• Tom Rick’s, another Army intel vet
• Malcom Nance, a SERE instructor who teaches the technique, is pretty adamant about the subject.
• Here is the unequivocal view of a Commandant of the Marine Corps and Commander of US Central Command.
• The story of Yukio Asano, sentenced to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding (among other torture techniques) American soldiers during WWII.
• A Natiional Guard JAG discusses the criminality of waterboarding
• And the now-famous CIA officer Kiriakou who admits that it is torture, but equivocates on the necessity of it.
• Some helpful sourcing of the phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung“, i.e. enhanced interrogation, and how some of the practices of convicted WWII war criminals are precursors to what has happened at the hands of US interrogators.
• Lieutenant General John (“Jeff”) Kimmons, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, explaining that: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that.”
• 5 myths about torture and truth. Darius Rejali, a political science professor, has studied the issue in a clinical manner and gets to the heart of some details. Bottom line: it doesn’t work. Here’s a key quote from a WWII era Japanese field manual: “the clumsiest possible method of gathering intelligence.”

“Santa spit it in the pot”

when the lyrics are actually:

“Keep it cookin in the pot”

Well, it’s hard not to stop laughing at this one.