This Old House

Kevin

Today on "This Old House"... Ahh. That's it. Holy mackerel!

What a difference!

Richard

And new technology means we'll install two condensers instead of six on our project.

Kevin

Means we could have eight zones coming off of this single unit right here.

Richard

Yeah. That's right.

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!

Richard

It's five bathrooms, it's a kitchen, it's a full new mechanical. It's -- It's gonna be a biggie.

Kevin

It sounds like you guys have a plan.

Molly

I think we do.

Laughs

The money's in the detail. Kevin

That is beautiful.

Kevin

Hi there. I'm Kevin O'Connor. And welcome back to "This Old House" and our shingle-style home here on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Pete, how are you?

So, there's not a lot going on the outside of this house, but a ton going on inside and particularly upstairs. Fellas. So, this is the second floor. You can see that we're gonna be saving this balustrade system right here, but other than that, a lot goes away.

This was originally the master bedroom, and it's gonna remain a master bedroom with a closet and a bathroom back over here. The house was built in the 1890s or so.

Hey. Man

Hey, Kevin.

Kevin

There'll be a second bedroom right here with closet and bathroom against that wall... and then a partition wall probably right about here for a third bedroom back in this space. Original fireplace. That's gonna be staying.

That's pretty sweet. And the closet and bathroom for this bedroom, well, they're gonna go in this space right here. And then on the back side of this will be another bathroom that will serve as the entire back corner of this second floor. So a lot of work down here and a lot of work on the third floor, too...

which used to be two bedrooms and a bathroom, and the homeowners have asked us to turn it into essentially bonus space, maybe a playroom for the kids. Hey. Tommy, Charlie. How are you guys?

Tom

Good. How you doing?

Kevin

All right. So, the plan was always to take the walls, to gut this space, and at the last minute, the homeowners said, "Oh, man, could you guys pop the ceiling up?" Right?

Tom

Yeah, well, once you saw the open space, you could actually see how big and how high the ceiling is there, the roof.

Kevin

Yeah. So what's involved with that?

Tom

Well, there's quite a bit involved, actually. We've got to -- See, if you look up here, these are boards that run from the side of the rafter on each side, and they're called collar ties.

Right. Tom

All right? Now, if you look at this one right here and the boards that run up to the side of the rafters, and there's one of these on every other rafter all the way in. Because these boards are here and the size of these are a little bit different, that turns the collar tie, this, into a truss built on-site.

Got you. Okay. Tom

So if we take those trusses or those ties out, this will come out like that, but the roof will want to come down like that.

Kevin

Well, they are coming out, so what are we gonna do?

Tom

Yeah, so we have to support the ridge with a structural beam, and then we have to support posts down to hold the ridge up.

Kevin

Got you. Okay. So, Charlie, there was already gonna be a lot of work done up here. This is a little bit of a change order.

How big of a deal is that?

Charlie

Wasn't that bad since we already had it gutted. It's probably four days, two guys, and under $1,000

of material. Kevin

Okay. And they've already gotten started. You got some temporary bracing, I presume?

Charlie

Yeah, so, each rafter had to be supported with a temporary wall system under it, and then we took some 2x4s and joined the two, and that'll be our work platform to do the work.

Very nice. Tom

So we can safely

get up there and do it. Kevin

It's gonna be fun! Let's get to it. When do we start?

Charlie

Now.

Tom

I want to start right up the ridge and start and cut.

Whirring

Tom

All right. Now, let me show you what we have here. First of all, the ridge beam right here is a 2x10, okay? It's rough-sawn.

We're gonna remove this 2x10, and we're gonna replace it with three places of LVL.

Kevin

Okay.

Tom

Engineered lumber. 18 inches high.

Kevin

So we got to make some room for all that, right?

Tom

So we have to make some room, so that means we have to cut the ends of the rafters off to create a pocket to slide it in. Okay, so, what I did is, I cut a slot right in here where the ridge meets the rafter, cut the nails, and the idea of it is, if I can get the blade through there, which I did, there's no strain or stress on the ridge.

So we're good to go. Tom

We're good to go.

Kevin

All right.

Tom

So, that ridge is really up there, and all the boards, roof boards are coming down on it, so it's nailed into there like a wedge, so what I'm gonna try to do is pull it down with this lag bolt, and hopefully you'll be able to use the bar up top and pull it down with that.

Whirring

Tom

Can you get the bar in there?

Kevin

Perfect.

There you go. Kevin

Nice.

Tom

All right. So then we'll slide it outside. We can get it past this brace and then bring it down, bring it back in. All of our rafters are cut.

We've got a brace right across here to set it on on that end and another one down there, so we're gonna bring it in standing up.

Kevin

All right! You got it!

Tom

All right. Easy. Easy. Easy.

Easy. Up.

There you go. Kevin

Nice. Nice.

Tom

All right. Gonna get another one?

Kevin

All right. Well, that really gives you a sense of just how big this beam is gonna be.

Tom

Right. And I'd rather have the beam oversized than just right. All right. Now, this is gonna be a tricky one because we got to get it into that little space.

That's it! Keep coming! Beautiful! All right.

The LVLs are in. It's even on the bottom, and now we'll just screw the three of them together before we push it up.

Charlie

No more?

Tom

No. You're tight.

Charlie

All right. Give me your tape. We can get a length on the post. All set?

Tom

Yeah. All right. So I got 153.

153. Tom

All right. We've got our post up on the other end in the center of the building, but now we need to jack up the gable end, see if we can take some of that crown or pitch out of the roof. So I made up a header, a double 2x6, to follow the pitch of the roof in the back, and I'm gonna slide that in under the beam. You're gonna place the jack down the bottom,

and we're gonna jack it up. Kevin

Looks good.

Tom

All right. Tighten up the jack. Now you're gonna go in nice and easy. We want to bring the top of this beam so it hits the underside of the roof sheathing.

Kevin

How am I on the left there, Tommy? She's starting to tilt a little bit.

Tom

That's all right. It'll straighten itself out. All right. The beam is up.

It's posted on both ends. Now what we need to do is put all these angle brackets right here to tie the rafters into the ridge. Once that's in place, we can remove all of our bracing, and we'll have a cathedral ceiling.

Kevin

Great. I got it. All right. That's down.

Holy mackerel! What a difference!

Tom

Yeah. It's amazing how one beam can change the look of an entire space.

Charlie

We went from 8 feet to 13.

Kevin

That is incredible. Nice job, guys. This used to be our kitchen with a center island right here and the appliances around the perimeter. You may recall there was a spiral staircase right here.

But now the space is going to become the family room. Now, getting the heat in here, well, it's easy. It's gonna be radiant through the floor, and then we're gonna have the air-conditioning, and the ductwork is gonna go underneath this existing floor, up and over the ledge that this house was built on. You'll notice that there's been an opening cut right through here.

That goes to a new mudroom as well as a two-car garage, and the mudroom is going to be conditioned space with a little bathroom. Getting the heat over there, well, that's pretty easy, but the air-conditioning, that's a tougher problem, and so the thought is, is that we would take the ductwork, and we would bust through the existing stone foundation, and that's a job for Mark McCullough. Hey,

Mark. Mark

Hey, Kevin.

Kevin

So, what are we looking at here?

Mark

So, we are looking at some beautiful Cape Ann granite.

Chuckles

Kevin

Cape Ann Granite. All just sort of random blocks laid up here, mortared now. Was it mortared originally?

Mark

So, randomly laid, probably mortared after the fact. You can see below grade you don't get as much mortar.

Yeah. Mark

And that's where I'm gonna start my attack.

Kevin

So, what is your attack? You got to bust through this. How are you gonna handle that?

Mark

So, what I'm gonna try to do -- Because it is a foundation, I don't want to go crazy with an electric jackhammer or anything like that, so I'm actually gonna use my hand tools. I'm gonna try to break the mortar. I'm gonna take out as much mortar as I can, try to loosen the stones, and then just one by one, I'm either gonna use a crowbar, I'm gonna use a pick, I'm gonna use my sledgehammer, whatever I have to use to kind of get one out at a time.

Kevin

And then once they're out, I mean, this is old. You're gonna have to shore this up, rebuild it? What are you gonna do?

Mark

So, as I said, I'm gonna go one at a time, so I'll decide as I'm going if I need to shore it. I don't think so because our hole isn't gonna be that big. I think Charlie needs about a foot this way to make his hole,

so... Kevin

Okay. All right. Well, let's see you work your magic.

Mark

All right. Let's go. All right. So, I'm finding just what I wanted to with the soft mortar, so once I get as much out as I can, I'm gonna end up finding this rock is gonna be lose, and that's where I'm gonna start to take it all out.

Kevin

Oh, something's moving. Yep. There's half of it. All right.

Mark

So, Kevin, get rid of this. All right. I think this rock is holding this guy down, so if you can get that out. Yeah.

Kevin

All right.

Mark

So, we want to undermine this big stone. This guy's got to come for us.

Here we go. Kevin

Oh, yeah.

Mark

So that's the key right there. Now, everything else, we're gonna want to drop down, and then by the time we get to the top, it should fall for us.

Oh. There. Kevin

Nice one.

Mark

Okay. All right. I'm going this way. Just pull it, okay?

Just pull it. I got it.

Kevin

You through?

Mark

Yeah.

Kevin

You gonna pull out this guy?

Mark

Oh. Nice.

Kevin

Won't go in. Ahh. That's it.

Mark

Watch your feet. That was your leverage.

Kevin

Okay. This one out.

Mark

All right! What do you think of that size hole? All right. So...

Big enough, I'm sure, for Charlie, but he'll have to come back to make sure he doesn't want to shore it up, but other than that, we're good.

Okay. Love it. Mark

All right.

Nice job. Thank you. Mark

You too, Kevin.

Kevin

This is our Idea House here in New Canaan, Connecticut, and it's a place for us to try out new technologies and products, and today we're working on a way to bring natural light into otherwise dark spaces within the house.

Hey. Gordon. Gordon

Hey, Kevin.

Good to see you. Kevin

Same. Oh, man. You got a busy jobsite out there.

Gordon

Yeah, we've come a long way since the last time I saw you.

Kevin

A lot of progress, including right here, and we're in the master suite.

Gordon

We're in the master suite right here, and we have a problem here. We have two closets, one darker than the other, and we wanted to introduce more natural light.

Kevin

All right. So obviously we can blast some lights in there, but if you want natural light, interior spaces

are always tough. Gordon

Correct.

Kevin

Although, a window in this closet is nice and rare.

You don't always have that. Gordon

Correct. But we still wanted to introduce more natural light.

Kevin

So what are you thinking?

Gordon

Well, the old way, we would have put a skylight in, but now that we have such high ceilings with an attic...

Kevin

Yeah.

Gordon

...and then the high-pitch roof, we're gonna introduce something which is called a sun tunnel, which we love to use. It's a little cleaner look.

Yeah. Gordon

It's spacious. It just fits better in a room this tight with the sizing.

Kevin

If you had done a skylight in, say, this room and in that closet right there, I mean, given the fact we've got an attic above us, how are you handling that?

Gordon

Well, we wouldn't have been able to put a skylight in this room, but in this one, we could, but we would have had to frame a chase, and it would have been off-balance in the room. And how do you finish one side to the other with this chase?

Kevin

Sure. All right. So sun tunnel it is.

Gordon

Sun tunnel it is. Here it is.

Kevin

Walk me through what a sun tunnel is.

Gordon

Well, the sun tunnel is just -- On the outside of the roof, we have a housing that is put onto the roof, and then it's all sealed in, and then the roofing goes over it. What you do is, you attach these.

Kevin

Oh, yeah. Okay. That is shiny. Wow.

Look at that, huh? That is crazy. So that is gonna be all the reflective.

Gordon

Correct. So that's it.

Kevin

So that's creating our tunnel right there.

That's the tunnel. Kevin

What do we do with this?

Gordon

Well, let me show you upstairs. And here we are. We're coming into a mechanical room on the third floor.

Kevin

Yeah, a lot of stuff going on in here.

Gordon

Yeah. Very tight in here.

Kevin

Okay. Oh,

two of them. Gordon

Two of them.

Kevin

That was expected, right?

Gordon

Yeah. This is one sun tunnel for the darker closet downstairs, and this is for the tunnel that we're using in the room we're working in now.

Kevin

You can already see the light streaming in. It comes right between the rafter bay right there.

Gordon

Yeah, so, what we chose is a 14-inch skylight that is designed to go in between 16 on center framing, which is a normal framing practice.

Kevin

"Chose" it, so they've got other sizes, big or smaller?

Correct. Kevin

Okay. And so there's the roof angle, 45 degrees... and then we've got to come down to the flat

ceiling of the closet. Gordon

Correct.

Kevin

We've got to make that turn. And you can see the bend that he's built into it. It's like ductwork.

Gordon

Exactly. So what we have here is we have a piece that we can -- You know, we can adjust the angles...

Kevin

As you spin this, it'll go...

Gordon

...as we spin it around, yep. And then we put a piece of straight, and then we take that angle, and we put it right down a second angle down into the ceiling.

Kevin

And so do we have to worry about the number of angles or the length of the run? What do they say?

Gordon

Now, what's good here is, we have a short run. They say anywhere from 20 to 25 feet is the max...

Kevin

That's max. Okay.

Gordon

...you know, with a couple angles. Anything other than that, you start to lose light.

Kevin

Got you. So shorter run, straighter run, more light.

Absolutely. Kevin

This is gonna be perfect.

Gordon

This is what we're looking for.

Kevin

All right. Well, let's make that connection. Let's get this light into the closet.

Gordon

So, let's go see the finished product.

Okay. Gordon

So, here we are. I think before we are going to install the final lens, we're gonna put in what is a solar night-light.

Kevin

Solar night-light, huh? Oh. Look at that. LED diodes.

Rechargeable batteries. And I guess that's the solar panel?

That's the solar panel. Kevin

And where does that go?

Gordon

Well, that will hang inside our tubing.

Kevin

All right. So that's essentially charging all day long when the sun is out?

Gordon

When the sun is out, that is getting as much energies to those batteries, and it will -- Nice, ambient light until the battery is done.

Kevin

So as soon the sun goes down, those LEDs come on.

Kick on. Kevin

Oh. That's very clever. And, so, let's take a look at the lens.

Gordon

And here is the lens.

Kevin

Almost like a little diffuser.

Yep. Kevin

No problem. And that clips right in?

Gordon

There you go, Oleg.

Kevin

Ah. Look at all that light right there.

Gordon

Oh, yeah.

Kevin

Not just any light, though, too, right?

Real sunlight. Gordon

Real sunlight.

Kevin

Love it. You can see the light pouring down on Oli's face. Gordon, always a pleasure working with you.

Gordon

Always a pleasure. Nice seeing you again.

Thanks for showing us. Gordon

Take care.

Kevin

Most of the demolition is complete, and rough framing is starting. It allows to sort of define the rooms. There was a big chimney right here that went away, connecting this kitchen space to the old living room in the front, which will also be connected to this side of the house, which is the new dining room. It runs the length of the house, Richard, ends up where you are with a little bit of a breakfast nook, and this is the time for you to get involved 'cause everything is wide-open.

Richard

Right. Everything's wide-open. It's now time to think about the heating and the cooling. So, a decision was made this weekend.

The homeowners have decided they want to have radiant on every floor

in the entire building. Kevin

Wow.

Richard

They must have lived with it before. I know.

Kevin

But once you have it, you can't go back.

Richard

So, with radiant, we're gonna put a system like this on most of the floors that has the plywood, aluminum on the back. The tubing goes in, and it'll just go back and forth, back and forth this way, and this allows us to zone this building infinitely. We could have a little warm fire over here and another one here, and so every single floor can have multiple zones

that we can really fine-tune. Kevin

Nice.

Richard

All right? From a cooling standpoint, we have -- Hey, guys. So, on the cooling standpoint, we're gonna have a separate ducted cooling system, so the first floor is -- Again, it's wide-open down below, so we can go conventional ductwork. We don't have to go with our regular small duct that we often have to use.

Kevin

This goes into the basement and comes up through the first floor?

Richard

That's right. Through the first floor. And we'll have an air handler, something like this, and I think we'll break this first floor up into two zones, so we'll come up with cool air into the ductwork, and then there'll be a motorized damper on both sides so the air can go to one half of the building or to the other. So that's pretty straightforward on the first floor, but as you go up in this building, it's a big building, and there's a lot of different levels.

Let me show you. All right. So, up here on the second floor on this side of the house is the kids' bedrooms right here -- one here, one here. And that is generally a separate zone typically.

And this is the master suite right here. So, I mean, you could do it with a single air handler with zone dampers, but sadly only about 4% of American homes have zone dampers. Conventional is to have a separate air handler with a condenser, another air handler with a condenser, so...

Kevin

Had we done it that way, we'd be up to three air handlers, three condensers at this point.

Richard

Right, but there's one more room on this second floor, the study, which is in this weird place where it wouldn't even invite ductwork to go to it, so that's now another potential zone.

Kevin

Potential four.

Richard

And we've still got the third floor. All right. So, up here on the third floor is another bedroom here, and then this they call the bonus room, and this really feels like it should be two zones, as well.

The top of the building. Kevin

Yep.

Richard

As we go higher in the building, there's less and less space for ductwork, you know? We got some space up there. We could do it. So it's suggested we might look at some of these ductless or low amount of ducted air handlers.

So, this is a pancake air handler. Now, this could sit -- We could take two of these and put them right up here, one for this room, one for that room. We could take another two, put them down in the closets of the master bed and the kids' bedroom, right And so hardly any ductwork, and you'd have microzones inside the building. We also can think about this.

You know that office that's in the back corner that's...? This is a picture-frame unit, and that could sit on the wall, provide all the cooling we needed. You could change the picture to put anything you want in it.

Love it. Richard

And there was one other exercise area I don't think you've even seen, we haven't shown you -- is down this way, and this could be perfect to go right on the wall to provide cooling and then cool air for the exercise room.

Kevin

So we've got a lot of different options inside of how we can solve this problem.

Richard

Correct. So, historically, any time you had an indoor air handler, it always was connected to a dedicated condenser outside, so it was a one-to-one. It was called unitary -- So one indoor, one outdoor. So that meant if we attack this building on all these levels, it would be, what, maybe four, five or even six condensers outside?

There's a better way. So, conventional condensers also have a limitation of about 50 feet from the inside unit, so it's why they always get nestled right near the building, so imagine there's five or six condensers right there making that noise near the building.

Not ideal. Richard

So I want you to meet an inverter heat pump condenser out here. So, here's this one unit that will precisely change the refrigerant flow to the building, but what happens is, in this case, we take two lines right here with refrigerant, and we run it to this box. Now, this box will be inside the building.

If you look inside here... Kevin

Oh, wow.

Richard

And we can have more than one box. We have two off this unit, so you can see right here a pair of refrigerant lines to each of the zones. This is up to four zones off this box.

Kevin

So two of them means we could have eight zones coming off of this single unit right here?

Yeah. That's right. Kevin

And so can this -- Does this have to sit near 50 feet towards the house?

Richard

This could be up to 150 feet, so it changes everything 'cause it's also quiet. You can put it anywhere you want and make it go away.

Kevin

And eight zones is terrific.

Richard

Right. So think about it. Good zoning, in the old days, the cooling would have been -- Hey, we would have been happy with one on each floor.

Yeah. That'd be great. Richard

Right, but now we can microzone a building, and that's really the important concept, to sort of have individual smaller zones within a building, so now on the top floor, we could have one on the sunny side, another one on the non-sunny side, okay? And middle floor, we might end up with three. We might have three on the base-- down the lower level, including that exercise room. So now you put the perfect temperature all the time through here, perfect refrigerant temperature.

It has the digital thermometers everywhere. Modulates this thing down, saves electricity.

Kevin

So, you've got more zones inside, fewer pieces of equipment outside, and we're gonna save a buck in the process?

Richard

Less operating costs for sure.

Kevin

So next steps for you?

Richard

We want to get the size of all the inside units exactly right. We do a load so we know exactly how big to put those units. You don't want to oversize. You want them to be just right.

Once we do that, put them in, run the line sets, run the wire,

and fire it up. Kevin

All right. Well, we will start getting to that next time, And Mark McCullough is gonna be putting a granite veneer on a new foundation using material found right here on-site. So, until then, I'm Kevin O'Connor...

Richard

I'm Richard Trethewey.

Kevin

...for "This Old House" here on Cape Ann.

Richard

All right. Help me muscle this?

Kevin

Yeah, I'm the brains of the operation.

Laughs

Richard

You're not the brains!

Kevin

Next time on "This Old House"... With our floor plan now open and our interior framing nearly complete, it's time for our homeowners to finalize some decisions on their kitchen, so we've come to our Idea House here in New Canaan, Connecticut. It's an 1840s Greek revival that has been beautifully restored, and it's also an opportunity for us to try out new ideas and new products, so it's the perfect place for Molly and her designer to get some inspiration.