Wall Furnace

I had to splice the yellow Power Pile wire with 12 gauge wire because the correct crimp fitting had been changed for some reason to a male fitting when it actually GOES to a male fitting. So, that didn't work and it was too short to snip and put a new terminal on that wire, so I spliced two Female terminals on there.

 This mess is the wiring for the cozy wall furnace valve. This is older so it is basic. I'm not saying how I wired it is right, but it works. I had some trouble because I removed the critical overheat wire from the TH-PP terminal and misjudged where I got it from so I put it back in the TH terminal with the thermostat wire. My older notes did suggest this is how it was wired but it didn't work. This led to the pilot light working but the thermostat would not engage the burner. I battled it and you can see that the diagram in the manual sort of blurs where the hell the connections are for the power pile is. In fact, you can't even see where the power pile is in the diagram but it's in the lower left corner...it has a yellow wire coming from the center of a threaded unit in one photo where I had to identify what it is. That wire doesn't wander off to the left. No, it is terminated like in the unit on the right with the red wire that goes to the TH-PP terminal. That's the Power Pile.

So, the TH-PP terminal gets a wire from the Power Pile, AND a wire from the Pilot Generator, which is sometimes called a thermocouple which actually generates 500 millivolts from the heat of the pilot light. Pretty clever! And that terminal gets an overheat/blocked flue wire too. Now, if they called that terminal the TH-PP-OH (for OverHeat) then I wouldn't have been confused. But they didn't and I messed up when I put it all back together.

The TH terminal gets exactly one THermostat wire. This makes sense but also makes me wonder what the TH stands for in the TH-PP terminal that does NOT get a thermostat wire. I guess that TH means THermocouple, but am I the only one who thinks two different TH terminals that mean two different words is a mistake? Thermostat and Thermocouple...how am I supposed to know the top TH means Thermocouple? Especially when their own diagram calls it a Pilot Generator. Call it PG-PP. Right? Pilot Generator + Power Pile. Does that make too much sense? And the manual itself is not clear either. So, the terminal ID and the diagram are both crap. They figure only an experienced HVAC tech would wire this, but then they provide horrible diagrams? why bother? To tempt me into thinking I can do this myself. Like crimping lugs on wires is so hard?

The PP terminal gets exactly one pilot generator wire. Maybe the PP means Pilot Power? Maybe Pile Power.

That will still leave you with one Overheat/Blocked Flue wire and also one wire from the Thermostat. These two wires are connected with either a male/female crimp fitting, or just a wire nut.

As near as I can tell the overheat sensor is a normally closed circuit that will OPEN when it gets too hot. The Thermostat is a normally Open circuit that closes when the mercury blob (in my case) completes the circuit between the two wires.

The mini-split heater does generate heat and it keeps the room around 70 degrees, but I'm sitting here with blankets because a super dry 20% humidity and 70 degrees is not super comfortable. I'd prefer more like 75 and I'm not sure the split unit can get to 75 degrees. And even if it does, it will use electricity and wear down the unit, which is best saved for cooling in the summer. See? I had to decide if the wall furnace was going or staying and I decided it would stay. The minisplit also blows warm air out that kind of creates a draft I don't like. The furnace simply produces hot hot air that drifts through the room. It's superior heat.

So I sawed through the wall, connected new B style gas vent and then put the wall furnace back together since a wall exhaust exit with B vent is not so easy unless you cut a huge hole ,which I did not. I cut the minimal hole and there was no way to get the adjustable elbows through it and then back down onto the heat diverter where the gases exhaust from the furnace. So, I had to take the combustion chamber out with the heat diverter and then get the vent all situated and then put the combustion chamber and heat diverter UP INTO the stationary duct. It was a pain.

But it's all for the purpose of optimal heat in the house, using what I have, gas is cheap and the furnace worked all winter last year and I expect it to last this winter too. I could replace the valve but I treat the furnace like a temporary unit that I shut on and off each time I use it. I even turn the gas valve off, which I don't have to do since the valve on the furnace works, but the automatic shut off stopped working so I don't fully trust it. This means the pilot light comes on without having to depress the knob. Gas immediately goes to the pilot light when I turn the knob. I can tell no gas comes out when it's off, but is it such a big step to turn the hose valve off too? No, it's better to keep all the valves off, and when I want heat I turn both valves on, light the pilot light, turn the thermostat up, etc.

If this is confusing imagine how confused I was when I was looking at these wires.

Metal Roof

 This metal roof project took only 6 days to install, but it took 12 months to finally get a company to cooperate and do business with me. Jeez!

I have some comments about the metal roof. The critical part is definitely the measurements of the panels themselves.  On the alley slope I was 1/2'' off from totally perfect. The other side was actually perfect except for the width, which was not square and forced me to make a weird rip. It is a roof, but I didn't know to check the width in divisions of 16'' or I would've seen the last full panel was going to land in a spot that would make a terrible final ripped panel. I think the only way to start would be to rip the first panel or buy a 12'' panel to start with and make the last full panel end in a good spot.

But it's behind me. 6 days of work was agony on my old knees. The mind is willing but the body is wanting.

I will summarize this project at another time. If the measurements of the panels are right and even with a roof that is not square and has weird bulges and humps, it's still possible to push forward and get everything looking ok. A wise man said, "A roof is a rain deflection system." It's not waterproof. It deflects rain off the house. Something to ponder.

quirks

 what a battle trying to figure out what size furnace duct I have. turns out I have a 4'' exhaust that measures 5'' x 1''. That fits into a rectangular duct that is 5'' long but is called a 4'' duct since it has the same circumference as a 4'' round...then an adapter to accommodate a round vent pipe...which I plan to send through the wall.

the other important project was trying to stabilize the plaster. I go back and forth thinking the original plaster was flawed or got damaged but lately I think it's simply 90 year old plaster that no one ever tried to maintain or repair or clean or anything. Of course it crumbled. My plan is to stabilize it and finish it and let nature take its course. I'm not covering it with drywall ever. And I embedded rocks in it because that's what made sense.

Electrical goofs

 Just when I think I have a grip on how to wire residential outlets and lights I do something that makes me think again.

I think of electrical as a big loop. There is Hot...which is always hot because it's coming from the panel and is searching for a path to ground...which is supplied by an appliance or lightbulb that completes the circuit. I think of Neutral as only carrying current when the circuit is completed by an appliance. If a light is off or an appliance is not plugged in then I tend to think of the Neutral wire as carrying no potential current. This is contradicted by the nature of alternating current as a back-and-forth loop, but I ignore that to make the physical installation easier to visualize. The loop begins at the hot leg of the circuit panel where the breaker is. The neutral bar also leads back to the transmission wires so it's also a source of current, but I like to think of the hot wire as the 'start' of the power.

Plaster Wall

  My goal was to expose the electrical wires so I could replace them and it ended up as a project to rebuild a lime plaster wall. what a drag.

I'm juggling a few projects right now but I have to focus on the electrical wires. The walls are cosmetic at this point. The ungrounded aluminum wires are more important. Then the metal roof will arrive and I will get into that. But for the next week I have a chance to completely replace the old knob and tube wires with modern grounded Romex. It involved cutting several holes in the ceiling drywall but there isn't an easier solution. It's only a problem because I'm living in the house and cutting holes in the ceiling creates awful drywall dust and also lets the dust of 100 years into the room.

I think this house is closer to something I would call "Cob" and not true adobe brick. It's more like a dirt layer and then covered with lime mortar on the inside and stucco on the outside. I don't see adobe shaped bricks. This is amusing because I went to a village of cob houses and thought they were quite earthy. But the shape of this house is like an adobe house, but it's closer to cob or rammed earth or mud.

This is all relevant because with an earth house the walls need to be able to dry out as fast as the earth so cement interior walls would cause problems by trapping moisture. My goal is to repair the wall surface with something similar to the original so it will not only keep the dirt from falling out but will breathe.

Lime Plaster

There's definitely an argument for leaving everything alone, like this wall that I know is drywall framed over a plaster wall because someone decided to hide problems rather than deal with them.

But the electrical wires are back there, and the drywall had been wet once before, and it's easy to replace but the drywall is currently in the way of my project, so I had to get rid of it.

Time to tear down this drywall

what a mess. 40 years of neglect just falls from the wall.  If I wasn't careful I would've dug a hole right onto the alley.

Although that looks like modern Romex wire, it's actually 12/2 WITH NO GROUND WIRE. I don't know why they manufactured residential Romex without a ground, but I guess they wanted to make sure it was useless to me.

The big question is what is this made of? I determined the wall is 

adobe or compressed mud, covered with a basic lime/sand mortar. It's not modern plaster and the moisture caused the mortar to crumble. The dirt wall is basically in good shape.
 

Do, I buy Type S Lime and some sand...

Mix up a paste of lime...then add sand until I get something like plaster consistency.

This is not easy to do neatly, and I'm not very neat when it comes to plaster in the first place. I'm dealing with a dirt house on an alley and as long as the mortar stays in place and dries up and keeps the dirt inside the wall, I really don't care if there are variations in the surface. So far, it's working. The lime/sand mortar hardens and adheres. I plan to tint some limewash to paint the surface and let net nature take its course.   

The main priority is replacing the wiring with modern Romex. I was recently able to replace all the exterior wiring to the first outlet or junction box inside the house...so all the circuits are independent for the first time in a year. Previously, someone ran 3 white wires from the panel for the hot wires, and a single white wire for the neutral wire. And then at the last junction box before a split of the three circuits they simply spliced into the single neutral with 3 wires to create the neutral path from the circuits. This means that when I shut off one circuit breaker I still have an active neutral from each of the other two circuits that is connected to the circuit that I shut off. Perfect! I did test the circuit and found no current but I didn't totally trust that a spliced neutral would not accidentally choose my fingers as the shortest path to ground rather than go back to the breaker box.

So, now I have modern wires from the breaker, in conduit, the correct color and independent for each circuit, AND there are no frivolous splices in junction boxes where I know I will never need a splice again. Previously, I had a splice in 3 different junction boxes for no reason. It was just splicing two short sections of wire, which is something I can't live with. And it was stranded 12 gauge wire, which I'm not sure is even correct for interior residential.

In the rafters is Classic knob and tube 10 gauge aluminum wire from the 40s or 50s. And I'm in a town with the biggest copper mine in America, and they used Aluminum wire. Some bitter irony right there but I think it was WWII that caused a shortage of copper wire so they used Aluminum before they realized this mismatch of aluminum and copper was a bad idea.

 I have to cut a hole next to each light and then pray I can fish or pull new wire from each switch leg back to a new junction box and then to the light. I think the worst that needs to happen is I cut into the ceiling drywall to facilitate pulling the wire. I'm not a fan of destroying drywall while I'm living in a house. I don't believe in sanding drywall mud when I repair it due to the dust it creates, so the best thing is to avoid using drywall mud by avoiding cutting any drywall. Irregular surfaces on obvious drywall joints is not a detail I care about now or ever. The trick is to make the joints so obvious it looks like it was on purpose. Or just cover them with some trim so it looks fancy.

Random Pandemic Projects

Like most people I'm troubled by current events. There's a saying that if you don't study history then you are doomed to repeat it. Well, I'm seeing a lot of repeated history by people who have studied history. So, isn't it fair to say that if you study history you are guaranteed to repeat it? Maybe merely studying history is not the way to avoid repeating history. Maybe we should study wisdom, not history. 

To replace punditry I've got some serious house projects that I'll describe the photos below.

I completed the insulation of the ceiling. I ended up with R70 in some places. A layer of R13, then perforated radiant barrier, then two layers of R30 and then 3/4'' insulated foam board custom cut to fit between battens where the metal tile ceiling is going to go. Installing fiberglass insulation in an occupied house is horrible. I am waiting to install the metal tiles in case the roof leaks and I need to find the leak, and also because this ceiling isn't that bad to look at. I think a light cream colored tin ceiling tile will be my choice.

The last remaining exterior wall with this crappy cardboard siding was looming but it involved working from my neighbor's yard since this adobe house was built exactly on the property line in the tradition of Sonoran Row Houses.  The decision to build on the property line is made all over mexico. the lawn is always in the interior of the property and never on the perimeter. The only way to accomplish that is by building the home on the perimeter, which isn't permitted in most cities that require a buffer between houses.

Zero insulation, zero house wrap, zero flashing around windows. It's just a shed attached to the house.

 My goal was to insulate it, replace any rotting wood (I found two board that were water rotten because the siding leaked near the window corners, and replace the windows with double glaze variety.

It only took about 4 days to replace the windows and insulate the cavities and then get new smartsiding. I was going to have a seam in the siding no matter what I did since the roof slopes above 8' long, so I decided to split the seam below the window. The strategy worked to allow me to lift the pieces since they were manageable even though I'm too old to be doing this kind of work in the heat.

The only debate was whether to nail the trim around the window and then cut the siding around the trim...OR to cut the siding around the window and then cover the seam with the trim. I've seen this done both ways but the strategy behind cutting the siding around the trim means you only need to remove the trim to remove the window. That makes sense except how often are windows replaced? It's like opening up a big area to leaks just for the convenience of being able to remove 4 boards of trim to take the window out. The strategy that I used was to cut the siding around the window, pretty tight, then fill the little gap with caulking...then cover the gap with the trim. This leaves very little room for water to get behind the siding, where it will run down the tar paper I used as house wrap. And that little sliver opening is covered with trim. But if the window ever needs to be replaced the whole piece of siding will have to be removed. See? But I cut the siding to be a single piece around each window so it will probably be easier to destroy that piece and replace it with a new one. Like I said, replacing windows is not routine maintenance so why would I make it easy at the risk of letting water get behind the siding? Debates like this take at least a month for me to resolve. Window installation is easy to get wrong.

 

In preparation for the metal roof I wanted to relocate all the vents so they exit the gable side and not the roof. This particular vent is for the gas wall furnace that may or may not be useful now that I have 2 heat pumps. But I knew it was going to either be eliminated or at least moved.

In hindsight I should've just cut an area around that metal boot and torn it all up since the boot would not lay flat no matter how hard I hit it with a hammer. And I thought I was going to use purlins for the metal roof but now I'm leaning toward bubble insulation and this is going to be a little hump in the roof that will cause problems. So, I expect I will be tearing the patch out and making it flat so the metal panel will lay flat.

During all this there was an unexpected plumbing problem. Water from the kitchen and bathroom sink was backing up into the bathtub. I suspect it is an abandoned drain for the bath sink that had concrete and caulking inside the drain and that debris worked its way to the intersection with the tub and kitchen...and blocked the drain so the easiest path was back up through the bathtub drain. And when I went to investigate I found the Ptrap was actually buried in dirt and resting on a rock that had broken through the material. Miraculously, this didn't leak the whole time I was using it. I don't know why. Maybe it was perfectly sealed by the dirt. So, I went from blasting water with a nozzle jet through the drain and also whipping an auger around in there so it drained completely and easily (god knows what kind of debris I blasted down the drain)...to replacing most of the ptrap plumbing and the Tee and then learning about a bath tub shoe that goes under the tub. I replaced all that and for the first time the shower does not back up even a little when I take a shower. It drains faster than the water flows.

This was taken before I replaced the ridiculously old bathtub shoe part.
It's legitimately a 1-3/8'' size from 90 years ago that required a custom cut compression gasket for the mismatch connection...There are 1-1/4'' to 1-1/2'' gasket adapters and someone had taken one of those and snipped off a sliver of the 1-1/4'' side to accommodate the 1-3/8'' bath shoe. I thought this was clever since there is no such gasket made and it did allow the two sizes to effectively match and not leak. But I didn't like that solution so I bought a 1-1/2'' tub shoe and made a proper connection to the new 1-1/2'' tee. super exciting stuff. 

The water heater vent was always wrong, from day 1 it was wrong. There aren't supposed to be bends below 1' from the vent hood. There shouldn't be any tape. And the duct is supposed to be Type B gas vent that is double walled. So, the original attempt was wrong in every way except that it didn't actually vent carbon monoxide back into the kitchen and kill me. Since I was moving the vent exit from the roof to the gable I knew this was the time to replace the wrong vent pipe and why not cut a new hole in the ceiling so it only needed a straight piece to get out of the kitchen?

New Hole cut...debris fell into my cereal boxes

Temporarily cover the area with drywall since all that crappy cellulose ceiling tile is destined for the dumpster but I don't want to get into it right now because my hands are full and it will require covering everything with plastic tarp since the cellulose is awful stuff and should be treated as bad as asbestos. I hosed the area down with water when I was moving the two tiles to mitigate dust. There were 5 staples on the downhill side and 4 staples on the inside edge. That's all that is holding those tiles up since the other edges are tongue and groove.

This vent project was actually quite aggravating because assembling the correct double wall pipe in the correct lengths required trips to three different home repair stores and they all had different brands of pipe that was not compatible. There is Amerivent, Metalbestos, and some other brand. none of the connections really work together. So, I had to make it all work and in the process I purchased some flexible vent that I thought was going to work but it turned out that it was not supposed to go in attics or through walls or through ceilings. You might wonder where flexible vent duct CAN be used, and it's basically only suitable for inside a basement from one section to another section. That's it. Of course I snipped a hole in it when I was removing it so I can't return it. The lesson is to keep it simple and use pure double wall vent pipe...3''...Don't get fancy or use any gimmicks like flexible pipe. It'll cost about $80 to get all the right pieces and you should buy them from a single supplier so the brand is identical, but this stuff will last forever.

But I did successfully reroute the vent directly up from the water heater, then a 45 degree bend toward the gable, cut a new hole in the siding and then another 45 degree up, where I ran out of vent pipe and now the cap is like an inch above the roof. But it's 3 feet from a window, which is what the rule requires so, it's fine. 

 

This is the area between the two roofs. The new water heater vent now goes through the gable side of the fake attic. Doing this work in the heat of Arizona summer was tough. There's not much room in there to work and I had to cut a hole and connect it all. But I did feel that the gable vents are doing their job venting the attic area of hot air and vapor to the point that cutting a ridge vent would really be a bigger risk than I need. It was hot, but not hotter than my vented garage. So, the juice isn't worth the squeeze in that dept. The attic vents adequately. I'll add radiant barrier foil to the attic surface. So, I'm not venting the ridge.

I have this old pig leather jacket that could only be saved with an AZ state flag painting. For what it's worth, the colors are Buttercup Yellow, Sapphire Blue, Fire Red and Metallic Copper. There are 13 rays to represent the original colonies, the red and yellow represent the desert colors, the copper star represents the copper mines and the blue represents the vast oceanic shore Arizona is famous for.

I added two awnings made from asphalt roofing material. I wanted more shade but only had enough roofing to just barely fit over the window, which kind of exposed the bracket that I now suspect won't last very long. It's wood sandwiched to a perforated metal flat bar. The metal will last and the roofing will last, but I think the wood that I used to screw the roofing down will all rot away. Who knows? I had to angle the awning down because I only have about 4 inches of my property before it reaches the fence and a longer awning with a more flat angle would've crossed into my neighbor's yard and I didn't want to cause problems. The foliage in the foreground turned out to be a Buckhorn Cholla cactus and a spiky plum tree that cut me more times than I can count.

Most recently we had significant rain for the first time in months and a few holes in the roof leaked down to the original roof and then ran down to the eave where it leaked into the house. This required going back into the attic to find the holes and then go back on the roof to find the areas and cover them with more asphalt patch. I just want to buy some time until I get the metal roof. You can see the single nail hole leaked rain onto that 4x4 beam. Luckily this is the desert because that kind of leak could destroy that beam over time. It only sees rain 2 times a year.

The water heater vent is barely legal. I plan to add a 1 foot piece to get the cap above the ridgeline but that requires a trip into town and spending more money, which is in short supply these days. The bathroom window area needs work, but again, I am focused on the roof for now. No more spending money.

I think it's a drip scree that I made from a door sweep to kick the water off the door and off the threshold. It worked, but rain still creeps in under the threshold, which I will fix with more concrete to act as a dam.

Obviously not my house but a good example of my end goal.

 Desert Chic is the effect I am aiming for.

Well, that about catches y'all up. The next and last project I want to do is the metal roof. I an confident the install will take a week but the process of buying the package is taking weeks. No one wants to sell it to me because they aren't sure they can deliver it to this area and I can't find a rental truck big enough to fit a crate full of long roofing panels. It's dragging on.

On an unrelated note, I found myself updating a fan page for taco bell burritos. See, Taco Bell took 7 layer burritos off their menu. Fine, that's their prerogative. But I looked at their menu and they have bean and cheese burritos...to which a customer who loves fine dining like myself can add, lettuce, sour cream, tomatoes, seasoned rice and guacamole. See? You can add the exact ingredients to the bean burrito that were in the 7 layer burrito, thus making a 7 layer burrito. There's a connection here to home improvement but it's too complicated to explain. The joke is that Taco Bell removed the 7 layer burrito from the menu, but left a loophole in the menu that still lets you simply build a 7 layer burrito with add-ons. So, why didn't they simply have a pre-programmed button on the register that creates a seven layer burrito? Like a heritage button. Instead of having to say, "I want a bean and cheese burrito, no onions, add lettuce and sour cream and tomatoes and seasoned rice and guacamole." 

the cashier will say, "You mean a 7 layer burrito?" 

"yes. just give me the item that was on the menu for 30 years but they removed it and now I have to manually create it."

It would be hilarious if McDonalds removed hamburgers from their menu but left meat patties, cheese, and hamburger buns on the menu. 

So a customer has to say, "Give me a hamburger bun, one meat patty and a slice of cheese, pickles, no onions."

That sounds like a stand-up comedy bit. But the real joke is that my big accomplishment for the day is that I accessed the official fan site of Taco Bell and in the "history" of the 7 layer burrito, I added "This item was removed from the menu but the ingredients can still be added to a bean and cheese burrito to create the exact same item."

That was my accomplishment for the day. Somehow, I wanted to set the record straight. Someone might read the fan page and think, "Damn, it's gone forever. Life is so tragic." But then they read what I wrote and realize it's simply a semantic removal. The item is still available but they made it a little more difficult to buy because you have to add ingredients verbally to the order of a bean and cheese burrito. very odd, but interesting in a pop-first-world-problem sense. 

Mini Split Air Conditioning

My experience with the air conditioner unit install was mostly positive. I researched the many brands/options and decided the best location would be the middle of the ceiling in the living room and lower on the wall in the back bedroom. Every building will be different so there is no way to give a rule of thumb. Most units I've seen are simply high on the wall and lead directly outside to the condenser, but I have a flat roof and short walls with wide windows that actually have no space for the higher wall unit. Those are around 34 inches long and I only had around 26 inches of wall space higher toward the ceiling. That's a problem because any higher wall installation would leave the inside unit hanging over the window. 

Then I considered putting the copper lines through the roof behind the board and batten siding and then straight down through the original flat hot mopped asphalt into the ceiling. But, the ceiling units don't have line sets entering from the TOP, the line sets enter from one side. So I would have to cut a hole like two feet from the unit and bend the lines in a 90 degree so they would enter the ceiling and then connect to the unit. This ultimately seemed insane since it would mean cutting a hole in the absolute hottest part of the property, the roof/attic, in order to COOL my house. That makes no sense. I want to insulate the shit out of the attic, not cut a hole in it to let the hot air pour into my bedroom. Not to mention the high likelihood of a rain leak one day that would leak directly into the holes I cut into the asphalt attic cavity into my bedroom. Man, that made no sense. 

Air Conditioning

I plan to write a description of how I assembled this dual zone mini split unit from Pioneer. It has a lot of basic steps that all have to come together...I compared it to reentering the atmosphere, or hitting 88 MPH the instant the lightning hits the clock tower.

I studied my options and in the end decided I should learn the hard way, pay for my own education in HVAC, rather than pay for someone to learn to do their job. I knew I would install all the units in their final resting spot but I thought I might hire an HVAC tech to pressure test the line with nitrogen, vacuum the line and then release the refrigerant. But I decided the cost of paying someone to do that would be the same as the cost to buy the tools and do it myself. The minimum tools required, if you are curious, are as follows:

Adjustable Torque Wrench: $150

2 or 3 stage vacuum pump $300

Manifold Gauge and vacuum hose $100

Schrader valve core remover tool $60

Micron Gauge $150

So, about $800 worth of tools plus hours of experimenting in your garage to learn how to do it all. I guess, I wanted to learn and I have more time than money, but I don't want to get into the HVAC business because it's basically going to a hoarder's house and moving boxes of old Life magazines out of the way so you can reach an air conditioner that has rat shit on it and then be offered iced tea with cockroaches floating in it. All so you can braze some copper lines together that were dented when a pile of dusty mannequins fell against it. I did house calls as a furniture assembly man in Los Angeles and the stories I could tell would fill a volume...gun shots, destitution, slavery, slums, broken furniture, broken bicycles. I want to be the HVAC technician of a single unit and that is possible. 

12K BTU outdoor condenser unit. Cooling and heat pump.

12k BTU indoor floor unit

12k BTU ceiling cassette unit. Yes, the in the rafters insulation is held up by perforated radiant barrier sheets.

I'm not ready to really dive into the essay but I just wanted to keep my loyal readers informed that this pandemic has not found me totally bed ridden. I think I've avoided the plague so far and found time to build an outdoor shower area and lay some patio pavers...and replace the siding along with adding insulation to three of the 4 walls of the living room. And this project with the air conditioner was not something I planned on doing because I didn't expect to be here this summer. But when the pandemic shut the national parks down my job at Yosemite was taken away. I had offers in Utah and Nevada too but they all vanished so I stayed on the dole. Then I had a 99 degree day that was hard to tolerate so I researched the shit out of mini-split units and determined I needed a ceiling unit for the living room and a wall unit for the bedroom since there are several doors between the two locations and I couldn't expect the cold air to migrate magically from one room to the other and the extra expense for a 2 zone unit that also heated was justifiable. But the combination of a 2 zone unit plus a ceiling cassette and a floor unit is not a combination that is easily purchased. I looked at many different brands such as Blueridge and Mr. Cool and Ecomfort and Pioneer and Trane and I lost count of the combinations that I had studied. Finally Pioneer had the combination at the price I could live with. I knew there would be some issues that I caused and I suspected there would be some issues the product caused. And there were some issues caused by a combination of myself and the product.

Tomorrow is independence day and I will be declaring independence from the insane desert heat when I start it all up. I had the 240V line from a 20A breaker to a pull-out non-fused disconnect...which provides power to the outdoor unit. From there, the two indoor units are controlled by low voltage control wires...RED, Black, White. 1,2,3 respectively....and correspond to their terminals is the indoor unit control panel that looks like the space shuttle.
The ceiling cassette has a mini condensate pump that requires plumbing to drain it outside on my tiki inspired window awning. The floor unit simply drains via gravity through my 14 inch adobe wall.

I had double and triple checked my lines to the point that I have taken photos of the marks that I made to show I have opened both sets of hoses, released the refrigerant through the service port and opened all of the valves. Pressure tested to 240PSI the 25 ft line and off the chart for the 16 foot line.

I think I have all the details checked and will be powering the unit on soon, testing it for cooling and heating, prior to giving a review.

I would recommend this install for someone curious about the process. I definitely recommend a homeowner installing the indoor units and the outdoor units themselves because of the time and the destruction one will probably cause. A single 240V breaker is within the abilities of a homeowner and an A/C Spa disconnect is pretty basic too. It's just a matter of getting the right size conduit and wire. I used some spare #6AWG through 3/4'' conduit because it only involves 2 wires and the smaller ground. I wish I could justify owning a conduit bender but I had to get creative with a telephone pole. Otherwise you will probably have a gap between the conduit and the wall because of where the knock out is on the circuit panel.

The tools are harder to justify to buy, You could very well get a quote of $500 to commission your unit of a two zone. Being the summer and only one HVAC company in town that I wasn't very impressed with, I didn't even bother asking what it would cost to commission these units. I knew I would buy the tools myself. The trouble with buying the tools is how cheaply made the cheap tools are and how expensive the expensive tools are. I'm not sure the expensive tools are better made since the reviews are often as bad as with the cheap tools. You buy a $100 vacuum pump that works fine, and a $300 pump that dies the first day. Or your $100 pump never pulls a good vacuum and the $300 pump gets lost in the mail. When you live in the remote edge of the world you end up buying things without ever seeing it or talking to a sales rep. The days of salesmanship are so far gone that even stores don't need to exist. They simply tell you what you need to know about a product and let you make the decision. There is no "sales".. .only shipping.

For that reason, the tool debate is extremely time consuming. But during a pandemic I have way more time than money so I dove into the debate and came out deciding to buy cheap and learn how adequate it is. If it fails then I will increase my spending budget on the theory that more expensive is more effective.

The vacuum pump is probably the most specialized of all the tools I bought. Its use is limited outside the HVAC and auto AC realm. Spending $500 on a good vacuum pump is actually getting to the point of owning the best vacuum pump in town. I could rent it out. This is the danger of moving to a worn out ghost town but wanting modern air conditioning. No one can service them so I have to learn how to do it.

I'll follow this up in a few days when I have more info on the operation of the units.

P.S. Swamp coolers are a useful device in the desert and I built one from the components and a box fan. Allegedly they only work in dry hot temps, and we had 99 degrees with 9 % humidity the other day which is actually optimal for a swamp cooler. But it still works in 40 or 50% humidity and 85. Just not optimally. It will add humidity regardless but the air flow isn't as cold.

A fountain pump in a  plastic planter box using a float valve and poly line from a nearby faucet to saturate the blue swamp cooler filter fastened to the security bars with zip ties in such a way that it blocks all air flow being sucked by the box fan  except through the saturated filter. I'm sure it could be improved on by building a better air sealant inside and out, but the basic design works to reduce the temp inside and also added humidity to stop my tongue from drying out during the night. That's a bonus.

Space capsule

 This was my solution to 30 inch rafter bays. I used radiant barrier to hold the insulation up.

Patio

The heat generated from burning 2 million years worth of compressed and liquefied bacteria known as oil has led the southwest to become an inferno. The answer is obviously to stop burning oil but that can't be accomplished without some wisdom and forethought so the second best answer is an outdoor patio with misting hoses from a hardware store. This required running water from the other side of the house though the attic and a hole in the porch roof but I was cutting holes in the porch anyway.

Lots of sloppy pavers, a couple chairs and a misting hose zip tied overhead. every castle needs this. 10 bags of sand to level one area. The rest will be wobbly and uneven because I'm not going to spend a fortune to level a lawn.

Board Batten

Found in the wall cavity along with a t-shirt

The truth is that everything that isn't adobe/stucco on this house was, originally, board and batten. The years passed since this roof was built along with the enclosed porch, maybe on Feb 19th 1955, and eventually someone just didn't want to spend any money to replace the rotting battens. So they tore off the battens and covered it all with the cardboard siding. I wondered what I would find when I went to replace the cardboard siding with truwood siding. And I found the boards are in OK shape. Just needed a few spilts glued back together and new battens from the mixed-width material I had laying around. I can always replace the siding if this leaks but I think it is as weatherproof as the cardboard was.

Cardboard siding...I knew I wanted to replace it but decided that the original hidden boards were good enough to keep.

You can see the orange original color and the original roof line covered by the boards...along with the unpainted area that was under the original battens.

The current status. Not pictured is the insulated wall cavity of the porch around the door. If I'm going to put an A/C unit then there must be insulation in the walls and the ceiling. The gable is going to look unfinished until I can figure out a solution for the left end. See, originally the whole porch on the left was sided with board and batten, so the upper fake gable that is the second roof blended with the siding of the porch. But since I replaced the siding of the porch with truwood instead of board and batten, it looks mis-matched. 

I'm not looking to do anything radical to this house. New siding. New paint. New windows. New Roof. New electrical. I want it to be functional. I'm not changing the profile. I want no leaks.

So, I have moved to the south side where there is new Truwood siding that was also screwed to the original boards after the battens were removed. The south side wood is in worse condition but after 65 years it's all very serviceable considering it is an uninsulated porch that wasn't maintained. I plan to remove all the siding, all the boards, and insulate it, replace what electrical wiring is exposed...cover it with tar paper...and then flip the boards around and put the boards back to either act as sheathing or, depending on their condition, put the battens back and paint it. 

I replaced some board and batten in the last national park I worked in and the boards tend to curl and if they are hung too close to the dirt then they rot. I wasn't in love with the functionality of it but I don't have a better solution.

My neighbor shared this photo of this house in perhaps 1955. This is before the fake roof was built over the original adobe part but after the porch was enclosed and roofed. I'd say it's no more than a year or two old. 

I like the look of 3x3 double hung windows but the view from the inside actually makes sense to leave them single slider windows with exterior screens. My neighbor likes to weed eat her lawn in such a ways as to cast pebbles into my window and break them so fancy windows are not logical.

I think because the roof was built over the original roof it will be very hard to make this look like an authentic adobe house. The porch isn't authentic and the double roof isn't authentic. Even if I stucco the porch it will look odd with big windows. The plan is to insulate and replace the board and batten.