The Home Improvement Thread

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Damn, thanks for all the tips! Keep 'em coming. I am literally making a list of ideas and things to consider, and asking as many people as possible... I'll respond to all these but let's start with this one.

Originally Posted by opendoor

This is on one of the Gulf Islands, right? If so, I'd definitely consider a heat pump for your HVAC. AC is becoming more of a necessity in the area, even if you're near the water. And it allows you to keep it partially heated when unoccupied for not a lot of money. Then have a wood or propane stove for backup when the power goes out (I assume natural gas isn't an option).

It's in Howe Sound, so same idea, yeah. I am 100% planning to go the heat pump route. I think one will end up by the fireplace but it's not totally set yet, it could also be in the kitchen, or both. There is a chimney as you see from the drawings so I would like to have a wood stove or a gas fireplace there for added heat, because we do lose power about 1-2 days per year during winter.

For a kitchen, IKEA is a great bang for your buck. And if you want something a bit nicer, IKEA boxes with custom fronts is a good value. And I wouldn't do pull out shelves, I'd just do full banks of drawers on any cabinet that can handle that.

I'll look at both in person and see what makes sense. The cabinet quote from the builder is like $25k so I will definitely look at options to try to do it myself.

For lighting, it looks like that's a sloped ceiling? If so, I'd probably do recessed for most of it and then have a few nice fixtures in strategic locations (i.e. above dining table, in living room, etc.).

It is, and definitely looking at recessed as the way to go. The ceiling will be wood tongue and groove, or at least that's what I have quoted at the moment. I may just do it all the same in terms of ceiling lighting so I'm not stuck with a situation where I HAVE to put the dining room table in a particular location... I like moving things around occasionally.

And then maybe the odd switched outlet for a lamp. Article and Crate and Barrel/CB2 tend to have some decent fixtures. Some are ugly and some are exorbitantly priced, but there are usually a few decent options that don't break the bank.

This has recently become a point of contention with my better half. Our tastes in floor lamps seem to vary wildly. But I am holding firm to my convictions. There will be none of this flaccid nonsense in my home.

For flooring, honestly if you're paying someone to install it, the price difference between something cheap and something nicer might not be all that great in the scheme of things. There are no dimensions there, but that looks like maybe 30' x 55', so 1,600-1,700 square feet? Once you take out the bathroom and entrance (which would presumably have tile), that leaves about 1,400-1,500 square feet. So even if something costs $4-5 more per square foot, it's about $7K total. Obviously that's still a chunk of money, but you may be able to squeeze somewhere less important to make that happen.

Very good point. You're close, it's 55'x30'8" with a total floor area of 1455 sq ft. I've basically instructed my builder that I'm heavily "bang for the buck" focused here, so not to cheap out necessarily but as little as I need to spend to get solid quality. It's not out of the question that I do the floors (other than the tile) myself - total quote for that non-tile labour is only about $4k though, so it's not crazy IMO.

In terms of general cost efficiency, I'd avoid getting talked into costly energy upgrades (i.e. excessive insulation, spray foam, extremely efficient windows/doors, etc.). In coastal BC's climate, if you use a heat pump there isn't a whole lot of payback for going above and beyond the building code.

The problem is it's step 3 where I am so just building to code already requires a bunch of this additional cost. So we'll just meet what we have to meet, basically... which in fairness, with all the windows and the openness of the house generally, extra insulation isn't bad to have. It's tough to keep our main house warm in the winter because the main floor is almost entirely just one big room.

[Fuzz]

Strong support for your no flaccid lamps stance.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

It's in Howe Sound, so same idea, yeah. I am 100% planning to go the heat pump route. I think one will end up by the fireplace but it's not totally set yet, it could also be in the kitchen, or both.

I don't know how remote or plentiful HVAC suppliers out where you're building, but as someone who just had a hell of a time having a heat pump installed in the Columbia Valley, I'd give some thoughts as to whether you go with one of these.

I estimated that a HP will save me 30% in electricity, but cost 30% more to install, and have a 30% short lifespan over a traditional electric furnace and AC unit. Don't forget that as a secondary home, you are ineligible for any government rebates. Economically, I think it's a wash.

Give some serious thought as to whether sufficient HVAC vendors exist for a brand of heat pump, and for which brand parts availablity is plentiful in your area. You kind of want the 2020 4Runner of HVAC - something tried, true and dependable in a remote setting that any jabronie can fix. Not some garage queen with hard to find parts.


Congrats though - the place looks great! A couple lessons learned from our setup of a vacation property:

- consider sufficiency of interior storage for day to day and "toys". Fun times usually need fun things.
- Assuming this is a secondary home - consider home automation / surveillance / broadband from the start. I'd run Cat 6 in addition to electrical to anywhere you would have an exterior fixture so you can have the option of PoE cameras and doorbells. Having a CAT6 to your roofline if you need Starlink will make your life easier if you go that route.
- If power is sketchy - consider battery backup and surge suppression from the start. Especially the latter if you go with an expensive heat pump.
- Do your Firesmart landscaping from the start.

[Sliver]

Dirt cheap mega-upgrade, Corsi: Sound proof insulation between interior walls (bedrooms, bathrooms...everything). I added that at drywall stage in a house I had built once and it was magic. Such an easy and inexpensive upgrade.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Dirt cheap mega-upgrade, Corsi: Sound proof insulation between interior walls (bedrooms, bathrooms...everything). I added that at drywall stage in a house I had built once and it was magic. Such an easy and inexpensive upgrade.

Good tip. Do you remember what you used? I can ask my builder if he has a price for it and whether it would significantly increase my cost at that stage.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Good tip. Do you remember what you used? I can ask my builder if he has a price for it and whether it would significantly increase my cost at that stage.

Don't remember. It was just random stuff from Home Depot. I had a bonus room in that house and surrounded it as well. I brought the insulation to the site and paid the drywallers a few hundred bucks cash to stuff it in as they went. Didn't go through my builder.

That would obviously be harder for you given that your build is far away.

[Barnes]

Probably Roxul Safe'nSound.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

I estimated that a HP will save me 30% in electricity, but cost 30% more to install, and have a 30% short lifespan over a traditional electric furnace and AC unit. Don't forget that as a secondary home, you are ineligible for any government rebates. Economically, I think it's a wash.

30% savings vs. electric means a seasonal average COP of 1.43. Even the junkiest heat pump from the '80s can do significantly better than that in a coastal climate. Mine averages about 3.25-3.5 over the year, which is a savings of about 70% over electric resistance heating.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

I don't know how remote or plentiful HVAC suppliers out where you're building, but as someone who just had a hell of a time having a heat pump installed in the Columbia Valley, I'd give some thoughts as to whether you go with one of these.

It's close enough to Vancouver that there's no real issue with remoteness or supply.

I estimated that a HP will save me 30% in electricity, but cost 30% more to install, and have a 30% short lifespan over a traditional electric furnace and AC unit. Don't forget that as a secondary home, you are ineligible for any government rebates. Economically, I think it's a wash.

So I'm not totally sure that's the case here. This is a detached secondary suite located on a lot with a primary residence owned and lived in by a relative, so from their perspective, it's not exactly a secondary home. Not sure how the rebates work in that circumstance.

Give some serious thought as to whether sufficient HVAC vendors exist for a brand of heat pump, and for which brand parts availablity is plentiful in your area. You kind of want the 2020 4Runner of HVAC - something tried, true and dependable in a remote setting that any jabronie can fix. Not some garage queen with hard to find parts.

100% agreed. I am trying to ensure that everything I use for pieces that can go out of commission or fail are either very easy to fix or easy and cheap to replace. Like I need my bathroom situation to be skookum because I don't have a 2nd bathroom to fall back on if the toilet isn't working (although I will have nearby houses I can go to that's still inconvenient).

- consider sufficiency of interior storage for day to day and "toys". Fun times usually need fun things.

I'll have the crawlspace under half the house (over 600 sq ft with a 5 foot ceiling) so there's a lot of room for storage there. There is a also a 3 car garage that's about 40 feet away, and of course the main house as well. I should be okay on storage overall.

Assuming this is a secondary home - consider home automation / surveillance / broadband from the start. I'd run Cat 6 in addition to electrical to anywhere you would have an exterior fixture so you can have the option of PoE cameras and doorbells. Having a CAT6 to your roofline if you need Starlink will make your life easier if you go that route.

There's no need for Starlink as we have a good wifi setup already to the property, and security isn't a problem either. Basically, no one besides my direct relatives have any reason to come within 500 yards of this place. EDIT: That being said I will be using Ring cameras and the like, just probably not a lot of exterior surveillance stuff.

- If power is sketchy - consider battery backup and surge suppression from the start. Especially the latter if you go with an expensive heat pump.

Excellent point. I think I'll just have to bite the bullet on these costs as it's just going to save me so much frustration.

Do your Firesmart landscaping from the start.

Basically already done.

[Sliver]

Electric outlet by the toilet for a bidet?

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Damn, thanks for all the tips! Keep 'em coming. I am literally making a list of ideas and things to consider, and asking as many people as possible... I'll respond to all these but let's start with this one.

It's in Howe Sound, so same idea, yeah. I am 100% planning to go the heat pump route. I think one will end up by the fireplace but it's not totally set yet, it could also be in the kitchen, or both. There is a chimney as you see from the drawings so I would like to have a wood stove or a gas fireplace there for added heat, because we do lose power about 1-2 days per year during winter.

One thing to avoid if you can, if you're going ductless, don't put a head in every single room. Some lazier HVAC contractors love doing that, but even the smallest units have heating/cooling capacities that are way beyond what smaller rooms need. So they just end up cycling on and off a bunch, which tends to hurt the efficiency (which is the main reason to get a heat pump). Ducted is best, but obviously it can cost more in a new build because of the ducting.

If you do go ductless, try to minimize the number of heads. Definitely one in the great room and one in the master, but you could probably just get away with baseboards everywhere else to cover what the heat pumps don't handle. Though maybe one in the 2nd bedroom if you think you'll need AC a fair bit. A decent contractor will know what's what, but some will just blindly throw a head in every room and the performance and comfort really isn't great with that method.

I'll look at both in person and see what makes sense. The cabinet quote from the builder is like $25k so I will definitely look at options to try to do it myself.

Yeah, IKEA's fronts aren't the most amazing or anything, but their boxes and hardware are fantastic for the price.

They're also totally standardized and modular. So if you did want a mid-term upgrade path that would allow you save money now, you could get cheaper fronts now and upgrade to custom ones down the road without much hassle. And the price is hard to beat. For mid-range fronts, you can get upper cabinets for about $100/linear ft and lower cabinets with drawers for about $175/linear ft. So if you had ~20ft of uppers, ~15' of lowers, and a 3' pantry cabinet, you're probably looking about $5K for the cabinets. Obviously installation and incidental stuff is on top of that, but it's pretty good value.

The problem is it's step 3 where I am so just building to code already requires a bunch of this additional cost. So we'll just meet what we have to meet, basically... which in fairness, with all the windows and the openness of the house generally, extra insulation isn't bad to have. It's tough to keep our main house warm in the winter because the main floor is almost entirely just one big room.

Yeah, I guess you'd be in Climate Zone 5 in Howe Sound? The requirements for that are a bit more stringent than in Greater Vancouver or Southern Vancouver which is zone 4. The good thing is that contractors are better at energy efficiency than they used to be, so the incremental labor cost for an improved building envelope isn't as great as it used to be because it's basically standard now.

[chedder]

On the topic of heat pumps. I'm building a detached garage (south of Calgary). I see some heat pump manufacturers say they're good to -30. Is this reality? All I need is to keep the space 5-10 degrees on the coldest winter days.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by opendoor

If you do go ductless, try to minimize the number of heads. Definitely one in the great room and one in the master, but you could probably just get away with baseboards everywhere else to cover what the heat pumps don't handle. Though maybe one in the 2nd bedroom if you think you'll need AC a fair bit. A decent contractor will know what's what, but some will just blindly throw a head in every room and the performance and comfort really isn't great with that method.

I was actually thinking of just trying to see if I could do one on each end of the greatroom and get the one on the side with the bedrooms to also do the job of heating and cooling the master, but I will talk to the builder about that. Maybe it makes most sense to have one in the greatroom at the west wall, one in the master on the east wall, and one in the den on the south wall.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I was actually thinking of just trying to see if I could do one on each end of the greatroom and get the one on the side with the bedrooms to also do the job of heating and cooling the master, but I will talk to the builder about that. Maybe it makes most sense to have one in the greatroom at the west wall, one in the master on the east wall, and one in the den on the south wall.

I think you'd be OK with just one in the great room; those units can distribute the heat relatively well within a room and the load should be well within the capabilities of even a mid-capacity wall unit. The main issue is getting enough heat into other rooms, particularly if doors are closed at night like with bedrooms. There's no great solution to that with ductless (other than throwing a unit in every room, which has its own set of significant drawbacks), which is why they'll often supplement those rooms with baseboard heaters. But obviously you need to consider cooling as well.

It might also be worth getting a quote on a ducted minisplit (sometimes called slim duct, or concealed duct). I've got 2 in my house, with one on each floor. The ducting is pretty minimal, so it probably wouldn't add too much to the cost, though I did my own ducting so I'm not 100% on that. Basically, you'd just have a small unit in your crawlspace with very short duct runs to each room.

They're not as common as ductless mini splits, so some contractors might bid high out of unfamiliarity, so it might not be a viable option. But you never know, and they are common enough that parts availability and servicing isn't an issue. I'm fortunate enough to have a good friend who's an HVAC Tech, so I was able to do 90% of the install myself and then have him handle the refrigerant and commissioning them.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Electric outlet by the toilet for a bidet?

Let's not pretend it's not more important for the laptop. I'd rather have a cold bidet than a dead laptop on the can.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by opendoor

I think you'd be OK with just one in the great room; those units can distribute the heat relatively well within a room and the load should be well within the capabilities of even a mid-capacity wall unit. The main issue is getting enough heat into other rooms, particularly if doors are closed at night like with bedrooms. There's no great solution to that with ductless (other than throwing a unit in every room, which has its own set of significant drawbacks), which is why they'll often supplement those rooms with baseboard heaters. But obviously you need to consider cooling as well.

Yeah 100%. Maybe the way to go is one in the master, one in the den and one at the far west side in the greatroom near the entrance from the mudroom. I'll talk it over with my builder but I wonder if it's even feasible to set it up so that it's partially ducted or something. I don't think I want to do a half measure baseboard heating setup unless it's going to save me huge money.

It might also be worth getting a quote on a ducted minisplit (sometimes called slim duct, or concealed duct). I've got 2 in my house, with one on each floor. The ducting is pretty minimal, so it probably wouldn't add too much to the cost, though I did my own ducting so I'm not 100% on that. Basically, you'd just have a small unit in your crawlspace with very short duct runs to each room.

Yeah this might be the best option - do that for the east side of the house where there is a crawlspace, and then just have a unit on the wall on the west side.

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Let's not pretend it's not more important for the laptop. I'd rather have a cold bidet than a dead laptop on the can.

Might just be me but I don't usually spend so much time on the can that I require charging...

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Might just be me but I don't usually spend so much time on the can that I require charging...

You must not have young kids.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah this might be the best option - do that for the east side of the house where there is a crawlspace, and then just have a unit on the wall on the west side.

Yeah, the ducting obviously gets tougher without a crawlspace under the whole building. In terms of capacity, a ducted one should be able to heat the whole place, but you need to be able to move the air.

Some units can be mounted vertically in a small closet (that's what I have on the 2nd floor) or sometimes people will have a dropped ceiling in a hallway, as the units are only about 8-10" tall. And in either case, you can use a dropped section of ceiling or a bulkhead to run ducts to feed the air to each room. Not the most aesthetically pleasing solution, particularly with a nice wood ceiling, but sometimes a lower ceiling in a hallway isn't too noticeable.

That said, I'm assuming you'll need an HRV by code, so to some extent you'll need to have somewhere for small ducts to go. It's possible that whatever strategy that uses might be able to be used for HVAC ducts too.

Like I said though, it might be tough to find an installer who won't try to rip you off on a ducted solution. In most of the world, minisplits are basically like high-end portable ACs. You can buy them at Costco or Walmart for $1K and someone will install them for a few hundred dollars. But in North America they're a racket. You can buy cheap units like Senvilles, which actually aren't too bad. But trying to find an HVAC tech who'll install a unit they didn't sell you can be like pulling teeth.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Anyone run into a Samsung washing machine that can't run a spin cycle? It runs though the wash and rinse cycles just fine, drum turns without issue and with no weird noises. But when it starts the spin cycle it just sits there making a droning sound for 15-20 minutes before it gives up and shuts down. Hoping there's some sort of easy fix since it doesn't appear to be a mechanical issue

[sa226]

The only piece of information I can offer is that some washers have weight sensors.

When we've tried to wash the kids fleece blankets, those things suck up a ton of water and become really heavy, resulting in the washer sensing the weight and not entering the spin cycle.

As I think about it may be more of a balance sensor than a weight sensor. If it's a big load it's fine, but of it's a single heavy item, then it cancels the spin cycle.

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