When we last left off on our HRV installation adventure, we were staring at the underside of a piece of cardboard blocking up a hole in my ceiling that was a bit too large for the vent that was about to go into it.
Since this will be another long one, click through to continue reading.
As much as I do love doing drywall work (I do not), tackling that right off the bat isn't quite the right order of operations, since I have some some painting to do on some duct pieces, and I'd really like to give the paint some time to cure before roughing it up during installation. So that puts it first in line.
Since it's galvanized steel, some self-etching primer seems like the right thing to start with, and it goes on pretty smoothly.
I'm following that up with some black for the register boxes, so that they'll disappear behind the grilles.
I just happened to have this high gloss stuff left over from a project I did a few years ago, so this is a great opportunity to use up some more of it.
The super high gloss isn't really ideal for the whole "make it disappear" effect, though, so I'll matte it up with some matte top coat.
Which is also left over from a previous project.
It's maybe not exceptionally matte but it's good enough to get the job done. In the meantime let's have a look at putting some house paint on the fresh air intake vent.
The primer colour isn't that far off the paint colour, but no paint ever goes on in just one coat.
But it's a small piece and easy to blast with a heat gun, so the two coats went on pretty nicely.
Now that we're waiting around for the paint to cure, we have some time to fill with doing the drywall patch, but before we get there let's take a little tree removal crane break to refresh ourselves.
Hmm, that wasn't quite as refreshing as I was expecting, but never mind, it's onto the drywall work and the first step is to secure the drywall to the framing a bit better with some...
Oh right, this is 60 year old drywall, in a bathroom. Well, at least some of the screws didn't completely blow through even if these three are a lost cause.
Speaking of screws, I added some to the exposed framing so that the mud would have a little more something to grab onto when I slop it on.
And of course I cut away any loose pieces of drywall while I was at it.
So that just leaves the mud, and once again the 20-minute quickset is called into action.
The key to getting mud to fill in a big void like this is to get lots of surface area in contact so that the mud has something to hold onto. Then right as the mud starts to firm up as it begins setting, you can really pile it on and build it up to fill out the corners and so on. If this were air-dry mud you'd have to put on thin coats, wait for them to dry, put on more thin coats, etc and it'd take a month to get something like this patched up.
I deliberately mixed up a pretty big batch for this round as I was expecting to throw a bunch up there, but I may have overestimated a bit.
But thankfully this stuff is pretty cheap.
Anyway, because it's quick-set I can jump right in with the tape coat.
Then embed the tape with a top coat.
For the texture coat I decided to skip the drywall flavoured spray cheese and try dabbing the quickset on with a chip brush.
Which seemed to go not entirely poorly.
And then when it started to firm up I hit it with the knife to knock down the high spots.
This gave me a reasonably textured finish, but to be honest it didn't really end up blending too well with the sprayed-on knockdown texture that the rest of the ceiling has. It has some larger flat areas from the knockdown and a bit of a lacy pattern in between. It's not a bad look, it's just not what the rest of the ceiling quite looks like. But let's wait for the paint before passing final judgement, and take a little radar cube break while we're at it.
Ok, that was more refreshing this time. Anyway, while we're waiting for the mud to dry, the fresh air vent needs to be installed up here under the soffit.
It's a bit hard to see, but there's a drill bit sticking out of the stucco in the shadow next to the existing gable vent, which I used to double-check the positioning.
Then with a bit of rotary hammer magic I chipped out a perfectly round 5 inch hole.
Which is also hiding in the shadows, so I took a closer pic of it.
Then I squidged some construction adhesive on the flange of the fresh air vent and (after clipping out the chicken wire) squished it into the hole.
And in case you're wondering, this is what inspired me to buy the electric caulking gun which I discussed in a previous blog entry. It would have saved me quite a forearm workout.
From the inside, we can see that there's just one short segment of duct to install and the intake side will be complete.
But the drywall patch is dry, so let's see how it looks with some paint on it.
And honestly? it's passable. I'll take it. So in goes the duct boot.
The black really does make it look like a depthless void.
Right, that's one bathroom ready for ducting, let's see about the other one.
Ah yes, that much-easier-to-remove bathroom fan, which just happens to be drywalled into place. Because of course, why wouldn't it be?
Well, it wasn't too bad to buzz around it with the oscillating tool so I guess it could have been a lot worse.
Mmm, another cavernous void, let's fill it with something that only looks like a cavernous void.
For the record, I'm sealing these into place with some caulking so that the attic grime stays in the attic and doesn't come raining down into my bathrooms.
Speaking of attic grime, let's go roll around in it for a while to install the remainder of the ducts.
Or at least most of the remainder of the ducts because it turns out that 50 feet isn't quite enough and I ended up just a wee bit short, which meant I had to patch into way more of the existing 4 inch aluminum duct than I was initially planning on.
But fear not, I ordered a third box of duct to splice onto this, so once it arrives I'll be able to get rid of basically all of the 4 inch duct save for possibly a small piece at the end by the wall because I don't really feel like replacing the 4 inch exhaust vent with a 5 inch exhaust vent.
This does, however, mean that all the ducting is technically functional, and so I can finally turn the system on, which is pretty nifty. But being technically functional is far from being done, so let's button up some things down below.
Such as the vent covers. Both of them.
And because I no longer have the lights that were built into the old exhaust fans, I'll be replacing them with some separate fixtures, so it's electrical time.
I'm really happy to be getting rid of this switch in particular, as it had degraded to the point where trying to turn on the light would only yield a light switch rave.
And annoyingly it's designed to control the fan wirelessly, so there's only a single run of 12-2 romex that goes from the switch box here to the ceiling, and I'll need two circuits: one for the new light, which I can reuse this romex for, and one for a timer switch to kick the HRV into high gear when I'm having a shower (or when it's Taco Tuesday, if you know what I mean).
So I guess I'll just have to run an extra romex into here, which is always a pain having to fish it through the wall, except hold up a second...
Why is there a disconnected mystery wire here, with a piece of romex jacket on it that just says "HOT"? I mean there's 4 romex that come down from the attic: two for the existing lights, one for the fan, and one to bring in power? Except no, the power for this box actually comes in from below, and so the extra disconnected romex must...
Huh. Well, I'm not sure if I can explain it, but I'll take it. This piece just happens to be long enough to reach the spot where I'm planning to install the relay box, and as far as I can tell it's never been used for anything.
Well anyway, learning from the little register box mishap from last week, I'll pre-drill a hole from the attic to locate where I want the new light to go.
Then follow up from below with the drywall hole-poker.
I specifically lined up this hole to land partly on a ceiling joist.
So that I could use these pancake boxes that I have left over from a project that I never actually got around to doing.
And of course I'm sealing up the boxes and using airtight wire grommets.
Then the pancake box gets screwed into the joist and the new light fixture goes up.
Easy-peasy, and reconfiguring the switches went quite smoothly.
Then it's just rinse and repeat in the other bathroom with a new fixture there.
And some reconfigured switches.
Now I'm sure you're looking at this picture and asking "why is it decorated with washi tape?" Well, that's a great question and I'm glad you asked.
Anyway, moving right along, I still do need to splice in that last piece of insulated duct, but unfortunately we're in the middle of a peculiar late-February heat wave and the attic is temporarily a sauna, so I'll be putting that off for a minute until things mellow out again which should proabably happen next week. I'll also be installing the relay box so that these 120v timer switches can control the 24v control lines for the HRV, and taking care of any other little odds and ends that I'm forgetting about right now.
The good news is that the HRV is up and running and bringing in fresh air, and I can already tell the difference it's making. It was 100% worth the effort to install.
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