OHW

How about cold storage! There may have been a pulley system mounted above the hole. A cage for storing perishables would be lowers into the cold space. The other side had the counter weights to make lifting easier. Being that deep it would remain cold all year long. Just load up your ham and cheese...

Look at it this way. Its' a damp basement, do you want steel or wood in a damp location. AS long as wood isn't exposed ot direct water it will last hundreds of years in humid locations. Steel in humid location will need to be repainted 30 years to prevent it from rusting. Where I work we have some c...

The flow rate is just 0.2 GPM. so all in all, it's a steady flow, but ultimately a smaller leak that could easily be missed. A even jsut a leaky toilet flush valve could cause this. I agree with the previous (real post) that isolating all faucets and using a thermmmeter or even just feeling with you...

SO the box extends into the basement, or into the ground? Is it concrete on the floor 11' below? If i have 1 guess, I'd say it used to be part of a dumb waiter that could lift clothes or trays of food form the 1st to 2nd floor. 2nd guess is that it was part of a chimney for a boiler (there is't a ch...

Wow... you foudn a structural engineer with old home expereince and common sense. 1/2 the ones I met would freak out at seeing your hosue and want ot repalce hte whole foundation and put in steel posts. The plaster would cracks everywhere and the water issues would get worse. I 110% agree. The found...

FOr $8900... how can you go wrong. :) Maybe the bank will take $7900 just to get it off the books. Obviously you probably can't get a loan against it until you put in maybe $10-20k plus some sweat equity to make it minimally liveable. After that, it depends on the market as to what it would appraise...

You insulation isn't zero. You have the airgap of the interior furring strips, the hollow core of the block. Air leaks should be minimal on this type of construction. Th total wall assembly is probably about an R6. I like your plan. The biggest advantage is that it moves the thermal mass of the bloc...

So the wife isn't sold on this, and the up front costs are looking pretty daunting. I'm thinking this might be a future project when/if we remodel the kitchen and go with radiant floor heat. For what I would spend on piping, pump, boiler, I can put towards a really nice zone control system that will...

One downside of LOTS fo valves, is that it adds resistance in the piping. BUT, no more than pex fittings. I can overcome that by oversizing the piping header.... or rather using more 1" instead of 3/4. The reverse return will help balancing. But your right, lots of isolation is great if you have a l...

So I took a step back and rethoguht what I was trying to accomplish. One beauty of radaitors is using TRV's for zone control. So I priced out some new wall panel radiators for the 2 rooms and center hall without a radiator. So I dumped all the zone controls, hydronic coil, forced air zoning and home...