Day 4: Jan. 20, 2011

AM

I've got another handyman job this morning and school programs all day tomorrow, so won't have much time to spend on the house the rest of this week.

I intend to spend the time I do have in cleanup and looking for that elusive ductwork path to the second floor.

I looked up some history on the house, and something doesn't make sense. The design is almost certainly "Eclectic Craftsman," but the book I have lists that style as being built from 1905 to 1950. Angola was certainly behind the times, so it would take extra time for a new style to make its way here. That would put the earliest date of the house around the 1920's. But the paperwork we have on the house lists it as being built in 1900.

There's also physical evidence for a 1900 birth date being wrong. The woodwork style is too simple for a 101 year old house, and the basic structure is in too good of shape.

Do your papers have any clues to the date of the house?

PM

The house is a mess, but I'm making progress.

I opened the kitchen heat register, which had been hidden behind paneling. It still works. Same with the cold air return in the living room, which was hidden under carpeting. The only HVAC addition I plan on the ground floor is a cold air return along the west wall of the dining room. That will draw heat from the living room/dining room register, and from the kitchen.

I don't plan to put cold air returns in the kitchen or bathroom. An article on duct placement said you don't want kitchen or bathroom smells circulated throughout the house, which sounds like good advice to me.

There was one heat duct in the basement for which I couldn't find a register. I pulled up carpeting and pulled down paneling on the first floor, then did the same upstairs. Finally, while working on the bathroom floor, I looked up and there it was: a register in the bathroom wall. So there's heat in the upstairs after all!

My current plan is to add a cold air return in the upstairs hall. This will draw air up from the lower floor and out of the bedrooms and bath. I will use the chimney-to-nowhere to pump heat into the attic, where I will distribute it to the three bedrooms. (By the way, the chimney ends in that funny chase in the kitchen.) Then I'll put cold air returns in each bedroom or its closet.

I'm also considering putting the new furnace under the stairway in the west basement room. This will get it out of the way, make duct work more direct, and put the furnace next to an outdoor wall through which it can be vented. (If you remember, the current vent reaches halfway across the basement.) I can get everything hooked up and running before shutting off the old furnace and transferring the ducts.

It's snowing outside. If the school at which I'm scheduled to give programs has a delay, the programs will be postponed until Feb. 5, so I may have another day this week to work on the house.