This Old House

Kevin

Today on "This Old House"...

Richard

How does a modern heat pump work? I'll take one apart and show you.

Mark

I'll show you the right way to install stone veneer.

Tom

So, Don, what do you got going here today?

Don

Tommy, this is a console that we're building for the powder room.

Tom

Nice. I think it's gonna look great.

Kevin

What happened to all this plumbing here?

Richard

I've never seen anything like this before.

Roger

There's already rot going on in that trunk.

Kevin

So what have you found up here?

Tom

Well, a bit of a surprise.

Richard

It's really the classic plumber's lament.

Kevin

Nice!

Man

See this main roof form? We're just gonna pull that forward so it's even where this existing deck is.

Kevin

Definitely says mid-century modern.

Tom

The money's in the detail.

Richard

That is beautiful.

Kevin

Hi, there. I'm Kevin O'Connor. And welcome back to "This Old House." Our project is in Jamestown, Rhode Island, but today I'm just a few miles north in Providence for a meeting with our homeowners. Our homeowner, Don Powers, is also our architect, and with the help of his wife, Dana, they are the first homeowners to not only live in the house, but also to design it, as well, and a lot of those creative decisions are happening today right here in Don's office. Hey, Don. Hey,

Dana. Don

Hey, Kevin.

Good to see you guys. Don

Good to see you.

Kevin

Nice offices you have here, busy place.

Thanks. Yeah. Kevin

Lot of folks back there. So we are right about the wallboard stage, which means when that's done, we get to the finishes and the trim and all that, so a lot of decisions for you guys that need to be made.

We're ready. Kevin

Where do you start? I mean, how do you get started in figuring out everything in the house?

Dana

I think, for us, we wanted to continue the simplicity of the architecture and bring that into the interiors, and the first thing that we kept coming back to was a lighter wood Scandinavian-finish flooring. And so that became the starting point with white walls.

Kevin

So when you say, "Lighter wood," the oak, obviously, but no color to this?

Don

Well, we're gonna have a light white stain put into the polyurethane that'll help make it a little brighter, little cooler, little more cottage-y.

Kevin

Nice. Okay. Makes it sort of that beach-house feel. And this goes all throughout the open floor plan?

Don

Yeah, so this, you know, it's basically an open floor plan. I'm circling around the kitchen and down the two stairs into the living room, so all of that would be the same flooring.

Kevin

This sort of ties that open floor plan together.

Dana

Right, and that is gonna tie in with the kitchen cabinets that we selected, because, again, from that space, you can see into the kitchen, and we wanted to bring that element into the living room by wrapping the fireplace in a shiplap.

Kevin

Oh, interesting.

Don

So this volume right here that's sort of the fireplace mantel, and that's mirrored on the other side of the room by this bump-out, this what I call feature wall that's also gonna have the oak shiplap so those two --

Kevin

So just two little accent walls?

Don

Yes.

Kevin

So this obviously isn't shiplap, but it is the oak. Do you have the paint color chosen?

Dana

Right here, so the rest of those walls will be in a warm white.

Kevin

Right, and this is the contrast you'll see when you have those accent walls. Well, that's gonna be pretty cool to see.

Dana

So light and neutral with a lot of texture and the natural wood.

Kevin

And this is for upper and lower cabinets?

Don

Those are the lowers. The uppers are in this finish right here.

Kevin

So got that combination going right there all throughout. Okay. I'm looking at a lot of fabrics here. What is all of this?

Dana

We had to incorporate some existing pieces that we had, and so that was also important in guiding the other decisions for the room, so this is a big sofa, and we've got some chairs in this fabric, and so we needed to find something that tied it all together, and that's what guided the decision about this area rug that we'll use in that space.

Kevin

Okay, and on top of that, I see other fabric swatches. Are those staying for other pieces of furniture that you're adding?

Dana

They do, so we have another sofa in this kind of warm white that'll look, I think, pretty nice against that white wall color, and the window treatments are gonna be in this texture, kind of natural woven shade and couple of accents of leather here.

Kevin

Beautiful. I do see a dark pop of color right here. Is this in the plan, or is this --

Don

Well, see, you can see the open floor plan right here, but in this one room right here, which is the den or the TV room, and because that's separate and sort of a retreat, it's a chance to do a really strong contrast and make a very dark space in this Triton Blue.

Kevin

And as you say, it's not really part of that open floor plan, so it's that retreat from the open floor plan.

Don

Yes.

Kevin

That's gonna be pretty cool, as well. So there's one more material that I see here. These are white, but they're actually metal. What is this material?

Don

Those are the appliances, and what I love about that is, it's a kind of nod to appliances from 30 or 50 years ago when they were white enameled, and we're returning to that sort of traditional finish, but it's gonna not look like your grandmother's refrigerator.

Kevin

Yeah, that is very cool. All right. Well, you guys seem to have your act together. I love it. You're ahead of the game. So we thank you for that, and if you have any problems with your designers, just let us know. All right,

guys. Thank you. Don

Thanks, Kevin.

Dana

Thanks, Kevin.

Richard

Wall-hung toilets have become much more popular in this country on new bathroom installations. For years, we've seen them in Europe, and they're trending locally for a couple of reasons. One is they leave a little bit more space in the bathroom, and they're also more hygienic, easier to clean and to keep clean underneath, but the installation is a little bit different. Josh Jordon is helping us with our plumbing today. What's the layout here, my friend?

Josh

The layout is, we have a vanity that's gonna go right here, a custom tile shower going there, freestanding tub going here.

Richard

Okay. Good.

Josh

And normally we would be putting a regular conventional toilet in, which would get roughed in. Normally, you would rough in a toilet 12 inches off the wall through the floor directly down.

Richard

But this is a wall-hung toilet, so we have to have a way to carry the weight of the toilet, so they make this premade carrier. It's all made out of steel, and what happens is, this carrier is designed to be secured to the wall, and now this carrier can carry the weight of the toilet and a person on it, and then all of the working parts -- This is the water tank right here built right into the wall. All the service parts and the flush mechanism will be right here, always available for service, and this will be completely built into the wall, so you won't see anything except the toilet sitting off the side. All right, we're ready to drill our hole through the plate. Okay, so let's secure that in. Let's just double-check it for plumb. Perfect. Go for it. Yeah, go for it. All right. So now the carrier is secured. We just need to run our water supply from right here inside the wall down here, and then this rough is complete. They'll just put the walls in, and you'll be back after that, right? Thank you,

Josh. Nicely done. Josh

No problem.

Mark

This is our Idea House in Narragansett, Rhode Island. It's where we like to test out our new products and ideas. Today, we're looking at some stone veneer for the living room. Our mason is Buck. Hi,

Buck. Buck

How you doing?

Mark

Good. So what is this?

Buck

It's a manufactured thin stone veneer.

Mark

Actually looks pretty good. The molds that they make this manufactured stone with have just come a long way. I mean, that looks like real stone to me, and the other thing I like about this, Buck, is it's very easy to lay, correct?

Buck

Yes.

Mark

So we have our backer board, which is a cement material. It's already in place. Where we gonna start our work?

Buck

Gonna start in the corner.

Mark

All right. Great. So right now, Buck, you're using a modified mortar, I can see.

Buck

Yes, it's a thinset fiber-reinforced mortar.

Mark

All right, and just perfect for our application.

Buck

Yep, has great adhesion.

Mark

And you're coming out of the corner why, Buck?

Buck

Just a good place to start.

Mark

Just a good place to start. We make our run left to right. Always use a notch trowel. When we place the stone in, the mortar kind of spreads out, and we get that good grip that we always look for.

Yes. Mark

All right, great. You gonna put some what we call butter on the back of the stone, right?

Yep. Mark

Nice. Nice. So, Buck, that's why -- you can see why we butter the back of that stone, just gets that extra grip. All right, so, Buck, you throw that one in nice and tight to the corner piece, then we're gonna work our way back to this corner, put that piece in, and then I think we have a cut in the middle. Is that correct?

Buck

Yes.

Mark

Yeah, okay. Okay, so, Buck, as you bring that in, what we have here is, we have a stop built by the carpenters. This is just gonna mimic our bookshelf, so that way, we don't overlap it.

Yep. Mark

Great. That looks good. Ooh, little too much. Nice. All right. So, Buck, all we do is, we come back to this corner that we started, flip our corner piece over. We're gonna put it in place. That's gonna keep our running bond going, which is basically brick over brick over brick. All right, so this is looking great, Buck. So what do you think, another two, three days to finish this up?

Buck

Yeah,

two days. Mark

Okay. It's really looking great. Can't wait to see it when it's done.

Me too. Mark

All right, Buck.

Kevin

We're hoping that energy from the sun is gonna be the only power for our Net-Zero House, and then we're gonna take that electricity and turn it into heating and cooling using a heat pump. Now, we've talked about heat pumps a lot, but how do they actually work? Well, our HVAC professor is back at the barn ready to show us. Richard, for years, you have told us with a heat pump that you're installing a lot of these days that it has the ability to find heat

even on the coldest of days. Richard

That's right.

Kevin

That's a hard thing to get your head around.

Richard

In order to understand it, though, we got to start with a basic understanding of air-conditioning, okay? So this is a little mock-up of how every air-conditioning system around the planet works.

Mm-hmm. Richard

All right? It works on the most important principle, to me, in thermodynamics, which is heat always goes to cold.

Kevin

No matter what.

Richard

So imagine this is the inside unit, the inside -- the part that's inside your building. It has a fan going across it.

Kevin

This is the coil --

Richard

Right, and that's filled with refrigerant. If I can get that really cold, the air -- the heat that is in the air on a hot summer day passes by this coil, and the pipes inside this are really cold. The heat has no choice but to be absorbed into the refrigerant.

Kevin

Make something cold, put it here, heat comes to it.

Richard

Right, and simply put, now that heat that's now trapped inside that refrigerant moves through the piping, through a compressor to outside, and now this coil is hotter now, and now what happens? The same law happens. If this is really hot inside the refridge piping now and even though the air outside is warm or slightly warm, it's still gonna be -- This heat is gonna go to the cooler air.

Kevin

So it's 90 degrees outside. So long as this is more than 90 degrees -- let's call it 120 -- it now thinks that 90 is cold.

It has no choice. Kevin

It's gonna go to that.

Richard

Heat goes to cold, so now that dumps out. Now this gets a little bit cooler coming back, and now we just have to make that refrigerant really cold, cold, cold again.

Kevin

Okay, so cold here attracts the heat.

Hot here dumps the heat. Richard

That's right.

Kevin

This is the part that doesn't make any sense. How can you have something that is both colder than the warm inside air but then hotter than the hot outside air? The same thing is both things.

Richard

Well, if I can compress a refrigerant, it has no choice but to get hot, okay? Now, any gas will get hotter if you compress it. This is a perfect example here. This is a little sample unit. Now, this is just filled with air, and you can see there's a little piece of cotton right here.

Kevin

Whoa, whoa, air, so not even refrigerant, just air?

Richard

It's a gas.

Kevin

So air works the same way?

Richard

What'll happen is, we'll compress that air and get it so hot, we'll get to the flash point that'll light it up.

I don't believe this. Richard

Watch this. See it? Do you see it? Okay?

Kevin

You just lit that on fire with compressed air.

Richard

It was for a nanosecond, but it was -- It helps you understand that if we compress a gas -- And it's directly proportional to the change in pressure, too. It'll get hotter as I compress it more.

Kevin

So that's what this is doing?

Richard

That's right. Okay? And this has one speed.

Kevin

So that little bit of gas that picked up heat from inside, you make it super hot.

Richard

Now I could get up to 150 out here. I can get really hot, right?

Kevin

Yeah.

Richard

But now I dump the heat to outside. Now, how do I get it cold again? Well, just like when we compress a gas, it gets hot, if we release a gas and get it to a lower pressure...

Just the opposite. Richard

...it'll get cold, so every single air-conditioning system has a valve like this called an expansion valve, so here is the high-pressure refrigerant right here.

Hot. Richard

Right. And now it goes to a little, tiny needle valve, so the best way to understand that -- This is a can of compressed air, but it's actually in a liquid state inside the can.

Kevin

'Cause it's so compressed?

Richard

Right, and this needle right here is very similar to the expansion valve, so you can see right here I have a digital thermometer.

82 degrees. Richard

Okay, so now...

Kevin

Oh, look at her drop. Wow!

We've already lost 20 degrees. Richard

Mm-hmm.

Kevin

And that's just air.

That's just air. Kevin

Holy mackerel.

Richard

In the 40s. Feel the can.

Kevin

That is -- Oh, yeah. It's like a block of ice.

Richard

So with this type of refrigerant, we could get as low as minus-37 degrees, okay?

Kevin

And so that's what's going on where?

Richard

Right, so the same process. That expansion valve, when it releases, it lets it go into a larger space and just drops that and makes that coil really, really cold. We pick up the heat inside the building, move the heat through the compressor, dump it to outside. The cycle repeats. It just continues billions and billions of times every hour of the day worldwide in every basic air-conditioning system.

Kevin

That's sort of how I make a hot day comfortable. How do I make a really cold day comfortable?

Richard

We want to just reverse everything that we got here. Right here, we've got a cold coil here and hot outside. We want it just to be the opposite. We want it to be cold, and we want it to be really cold.

Kevin

So just like you said, even if it's hot outside, so long as this is hotter, the heat's gonna move. Now you're saying that so long as -- If it's cold outside, as long as this is colder, the heat will move again.

Richard

If that refrigerant got down to minus-37 and there was zero-degree air around it...

Kevin

There's 37 degrees of temperature.

Richard

...heat would go to cold. It'd go into that cold refrigerant, okay? So you pick up heat. The compressor pumps it up, gets it hotter. That coil is now hotter. The cold air that's in the room goes across that coil that's hotter. Heat goes to cold, goes into the building. Now what do you got to do? You got to go back through a different expansion valve because now we got to get that outside coil again cold.

Kevin

So valve is there, just pointed in the opposite direction.

Richard

It's a different valve, but it has to go in the opposite direction, all right? So you could have two separate systems, a heating system moving this way and a cooling system going this way. The way that we use the same equipment to do both functions is an ingenious device called a reversing valve. This sits right here, and the compressor always puts out the hottest refrigerant, so if I look here, it normally would come right here, and it goes right -- in air-conditioning mode, goes right to the outside coil. Remember, we want it to be hotter outside. Now, if I switch the thermostat and I say, "Let's now go to heating of the building, here's the hot refrigerant going right inside the building, right?

Kevin

Just a simple little gate that's gonna let it go --

Richard

Absolutely, just moving back and forth between air conditioning and heating, okay?

Kevin

Man, doesn't look like magic.

That's right. Kevin

But it is.

Richard

It's just absolutely brilliant. This technology is pretty basic, you know, and what the complaint was with heat pumps, you get down to 30, 35 degrees outside, and you often had to have electric strip heat or backup heat. And it really was the nature of this level of technology. The compressor was just on at 100 miles an hour and then off, and these fans were on, and they were off, and that expansion valve just opened and closed, and so what happens is, it would gather a little bit of heat, and then it would rest, and it wouldn't be able to keep up.

Kevin

Because every time it rested, the heat would leave the house.

Richard

Right, so all the modern systems, the inverter-style heat pumps, what happens is, it has -- Take the compressor, for example. This compressor now, instead of being on at full blast, this thing has 150 different speeds, so it's constantly changing the pressure of the refrigerant, which means it's changing the temperature.

Kevin

So if I didn't want really, really hot and I wanted, say, 87 1/2 degrees, could I get 87 1/2 degrees?

Richard

Absolutely, precisely that, absolutely.

Wow. Richard

All right? So now that's on the heating side. We change the compressor speed and spin, okay? The expansion valve -- Remember the expansion valve. That just was a simple open-close device. This thing is a modern expansion valve, and this thing will open and close at 400 different positions in 3/8

inch of travel. Kevin

What?

Richard

So now you're matching the perfect amount of pressure for the heating side. On the cooling side, you're just changing it just right.

Kevin

So if I didn't want 30 degrees, really cold, I wanted, say, 47 1/2 degrees, I could get just that?

Absolutely. Kevin

Wow.

Richard

And then also, these fans -- Now, the fans are all ECM fans, which means they're gonna spin in concert with the expansion valve and the compressor, so all the fans will also change their speed.

Kevin

ECM is what? Electronically --

Richard

Electronically commutated motor. So here, if you look here, the regular fan was always on, right? But this would be like adding a dimmer to it, so now as you need less, it would just change it.

Kevin

So an ECM motor gives you that control,

that variable speed. Richard

Right. Here's our reversing valve we talked about. Remember? Here's the expansion valve right here. Here is the compressor and then two lines right here that are gonna either send heat into the building or send heat out of the building, and wherever that heat is, it's gonna go to cold.

Kevin

You have demystified a very complicated subject. Thank you. If there's a fifth or sixth law of thermodynamics, we'd name it after you.

Nobody could spell it. Kevin

Nice job.

Tom

We love it when the homeowner gets involved with their renovation. On this project, Don is not only the architect, he wants to get involved with the build. So, Don, what do you got going here today?

Don

Tommy, this is a console that we're building for the powder room. I wanted to do something that was like the rest of the house, this mix of old and new, so we've got this console I had designed

and welded up over here. Tom

Steel frame, yeah.

Steel frame. Tom

Okay.

Don

And then we're gonna top it with this 100-year-old oak top.

Tom

Red oak? Yeah, it looks like you resawed that out of a couple of joists. I can see the tenons on the ends there.

Don

Yeah, I think it was a doorjamb in a barn, and what we did is, we sawed it down the middle, laid it out, surfaced both things to make them the same thickness, and then joined it together with dowels.

Tom

Great. All right. And this is the sink you want to use.

This is the sink. Tom

All right. So that sink is gonna sit on this table.

This is pretty narrow. Don

Yeah. The sink will sit a little bit out from the edge.

Tom

Okay, so it's gonna be proud here.

Right. Tom

All right.

Don

And the reason for that is, the powder room is so narrow that we need room for that door to swing.

Tom

Oh, there's a door that swings right here. Oh, that's a good idea. All right, so I see you've got some of this laid out. So looks like this is the width of the countertop right here.

Don

That's right.

Tom

I see you've got a couple of different layout lines here. You just trying some different things?

Don

Yeah, I was just playing with what was the right amount of overhang for this beam relative to the sink right here.

Tom

Okay, so have you decided which one you're gonna do?

Don

It's the second one in.

Tom

So we're gonna cut this line across here. Then you're gonna go straight over and then cut the length.

Don

Right, and then we're gonna need to cut a 4-inch hole for this bowl to sit down and a hole for the faucet that sits up and over the...

Tom

All right, so now we're gonna cut the straight line that goes here where it meets this arch here. You're gonna do this line right here, right?

Don

Mm-hmm.

Tom

And then we're gonna stop it here and run another straight line. What I want to do is I want to drill a hole right here to actually relief right here to soften that inside corner so it's not a real sharp corner, and to do that, we're gonna drill a hole with a plunge-cutting router and use a spiral up-cutting bit to pull the sawdust out. Okay, so we've made our two straight cuts in, and now we're gonna cut this radius cut right here. To do that, we're gonna use this adjustable compass.

Don

Mm-hmm.

Tom

What we're gonna do now is, we're gonna take the saw, lock it in, turn the saw on, and just slowly cut your way around it, and that should make the radius that you need. All right. Let's try it on the frame. Grab the sink. Put that on there, and I'll get the faucet, see how that looks. The pipe's down in the hole. Okay. Good. I'll have to hold this 'cause I don't want it to fall over. Nice. I think it's gonna look great.

Don

I think so, too. Thanks, Tommy.

Tom

All right. Let's take this apart.

Kevin

Next time on "This Old House"...

Richard

This is the IYRS School of Technology & Trades, a school designed to teach the skills of boat building to the next generation.

Man

So turns out boats are a great metaphor for building almost anything.

Tom

What's better, drywall or plaster? We'll show you the difference.

Richard

And here comes the sun or, better yet, our solar plan.

Man

When the sun comes down and beams on this, it's gonna excite the electrons, produce about 300 watts of DC power.

Richard

So 300 watts, what can that do for us in a typical house like this?