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Post date: Aug 7, 2015 12:51:36 AM
Soy cansada. I’m tired. The plasterers left about 3pm, but the insulators, who arrived around 11am, left about 4:30, and I helped from about 6:30am.
So the whole house (well, except for part of one wall of the mechanical room, where the heating guy has not installed the exhaust vent louvers) has at least one coat of plaster, and in places two. It looks very nice around the vigas and the lintels — the two places where the edges really matter visually. The outer walls have two new layers of R-13 fiberglass insulation (in addition to the 1 1/2” of foam board outside the sheathing). The mechanical room has R-13 walls, because the workers could not weave the insulation through the staggered studs. Why? Because the staples used to fasten the wire mesh lath to the outside of the sheathing project into the room. The ends of the staples snag the insulation and cut the workers’ hands. But the roof of the mechanical room has two layers of R-13 fiberglass batts plus 2” isocyanurate foam above the roof deck. The heat may go out, but it won’t go up!
And the floor of the mechanical room, which is the ceiling of the laundry area, got a layer of R-13 fiberglass. All the walls took about 3 hours for three workers installing (mostly) two layers of fiberglass batts.
The ceiling has another R-42 of blown-in cellulose (in addition to the 2” of foam above the roof deck). This was an interesting process. A guy on stilts stapled up scrim with a pneumatic stapler that ran through staples at a prodigious rate, putting them in about an inch apart on every truss and edge block. He was followed by another guy with a 4” diameter tube that blows the fiber insulation through a hole that he cuts in the scrim. Dust everywhere, and a fair amount — well, one trash bag full for the entire house — of lost insulation on the floor.
Ugh. We found three leaks when the plasterers wet the walls. Actually, the plasterers flood the walls. The east wall will probably never be flooded by nature, and that is where we found the smallest leak.
However, the south patio doors all leak under — at least the water comes out under the doors inside. And the south window of the study leaks in the east corner — enough to flood that corner of the house about 1/2” deep. Yes, they do flood the walls to cure the cement plaster. So Monday (when Eli returns) we will have to remove some of the plaster and try to find where the thick waterproof tape has a rather large hole under the corner of two windows.
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