We’re leaving the basement floor finished as concrete. After curing for a few months, we had the floor sanded to take the paint/stains/construction glue off. It did not really smooth the finish that much. However, we decided to add some warmth to the finish by acid-etching the concrete. This only works on clean concrete.

The materials and help came from StarPatch in Burnaby.

The first sample in a closet. Note the staining on the wall. This is a 1:1 concentration of copper first, with a full concentration of terra cotta on top. We decided it was too dark.

So I tried a full concentration of copper in another closet, and masked off the wall first. This was better.

After cleaning, all the walls were masked.

Copper is sprayed on, full strength.

Terra cotta is sprayed on along the grid lines. It is the acid yellow colour when it first goes on.

Drying/the acid reaction requires at least 4 hours. I left it overnight. Then, the chemistry is brought to neutral with the application of baking soda water. The floor is mopped and flooded about 10 times until the rinse water runs clear.

a view of the gridded floor

The bedroom just has copper, with a bit of terra cotta around the edge, no grid. After the staining is thoroughly cleaned/rinsed off and dried, water-based acrylic sealer is applied. It intensifies the colour.

After a week of waiting for trades to show up when they promised earlier in the week, they all showed up on Friday.

The upshot of the day’s labour is that we have LIGHTS,

These are temporary light fixtures while we do all the finishing activities that might break the permanent fixtures

we have HOT WATER, and we have a massive cabinet in the bedroom/bathroom.

The cabinet/furniture maker is Vincent Lang, who has a workshop near Sechelt. He has built the unit (and the kitchen cabinets) out of formaldehyde-free 3/4″ plywood. I was able to choose the alder veneer before it was laid up, and Vincent custom-mixed the stain, finishing the cover coat with a tough, green finish, as well as designed the doors to match a photograph of a cabinet I showed him from a magazine. Local trade, quality construction (included mortise and tenon drawers, soft-closing hardware, etc.) No particle board in our house if I can help it! I confess that a flood in our apartment convinced us that particle board cabinetry, such as the IKEA cabinets, falls apart when it gets wet. Not sustainable.

The bedroom side of the cabinet

A view of the bathroom side of the cabinet. Hardware is yet to be installed.

Plus, I filled in my spare time cleaning and cutting flooring to its useful length. Very satisfying progress.

On demand hot water heater

Let me tell you about the hot water heater. It’s a Navien CR180 on demand gas fixture, which claims 98% energy efficiency, “the highest in the industry.” And “best gallons per minute performance when comparing input BTU.” It has to be vented on an outside wall. We considered a re-circulating booster, which would deliver the hot water instantaneously, keeping all the pipes filled with hot water.  We decided against it because of course, it requires more fuel to keep it instantly ready. So now the question is: do we just let the initial (cold) water out of the faucet go down the drain? When we get the $ together to install a solar hot water booster, the water going into the tank will be hot on sunny days, but it still won’t deliver hot water until the pipes have been emptied of their room temperature water.

Reporting some green news! Extra, extra, read all about it!

D and I started the reclaimed fir flooring yesterday. Regular readers will recall that I have collected about 5 batches of beautiful used fir flooring that I found on Craigslist. I think it should be enough to finish the whole main floor (about 1200 sq. ft.), but if it isn’t, I’ll haunt CL for some more.

When we built our first house in 1980, we did learn that re-using old fixtures and building materials has its attendant problems. Our experiences with used building materials this time around confirms our past experience. For instance, even though this tongue & groove fir flooring is purported to be 3.25 inches wide and .75″ thick, it varies by 1/8″ in both dimensions. That means it’s challenging/impossible to produce a flat, crack-free surface.

Here’s our process:

Ends are trimmed clean, and broken edges cut off. I'm trying to organize the prepared pieces by length, but my boss didn't let me get very far ahead of him.

Most of the board tongues and grooves are covered with dirt/gunge/paint/insect husks, which will impede their ability to fit tightly together. I scrape the gunge off. To me, the wood smells like old churches. I don't know why.

How-to web sites recommend laying down building paper ("15 pound felt"). The purpose is to help prevent creaks and movement of dust through the layers. Makes sense to us.

D framed the heating vents with a fir box.

A long strip is temporarily nailed on to guide the first two strips to keep them parallel to the wall. A 1/2" expansion space is allowed next to the wall.

The first strip is face-nailed. Holes will be filled during re-finishing.

D then uses his fancy-schmancy floor nailer to shoot 2" L-shaped (heads) nails into the top of the tongue. He nails near every joist, but not on the joist, because he might hit the screws that hold the plywood onto the joists. If he hits a screw or nail, the nail gun could jam. Flooring must run at right angles to the joists, to prevent flex. Any joins in the flooring need to fall at a joist, for the same reason.

This is how much we got done in a day-and-a-half. You can see the dramatic variations in colour. Some of that will remain after refinishing, but much will sand off. The scuffs and gouges will be smoothed out some, but we appreciate the fact that it has been used, and think that it adds to the charm and warmth of the floor. What you can't see very well here are the variations in the strips' widths and thickness. And, in spite of our precautions and trimming, one board squeaks, likely because the bottom groove was missing, so there is flex. No board is perfect when you're using reclaimed flooring. We will screw this board from the top, and cover the screw head with a plug.

With the belt sander, I decided to see how easy it is to sand the edges (these will be partly covered by a huge cupboard unit tomorrow). You can more easily see the variations in thickness when the sanding highlights them. It was not too time-consuming to sand this much. The industrial sander should level out the floor better.

My feet are in a bucket of water. Just checking to see if you’re reading to the end!

There hasn’t been much progress in the “green” department. We’re just painting and cleaning forever, and D has installed the T&G bedroom ceiling.

But, this week, John the electrician has been wiring the studio building, which readers will recall has been formed with Logix insulated concrete forms. There are 3 inches of styrofoam on the outside and on the inside walls.

So, the usual installation methods don’t work. Rather, John has become a styrofoam sculptor, carving out the shapes of the fixtures, affixing the wires somehow, then covering up the work with new styrofoam.

100 amp panel just for the studio

carved styrofoam channel for wire

Single or double wires just sit there. More wires in a channel need to be affixed to wood.

Then a new styrofoam strip packs the cavity to keep the wires out of harm's way (wall finish)

We have one. Fay, it’s safe to camp out here now.

I was interested in a textured finish that looks like clay/adobe. Although the product American Clay looks amazing, it is quite challenging to apply, and the professionals have to take an extensive course before you hire them. Too expensive and easy to marr.

Home Hardware markets a line of wall finish called Flexrock. It is not called a paint, per se, but you roll it on like paint. It dries very quickly, so you can only do a 3×3 foot section at a time. Depending on the texture you want, it can look like “suede, parchment, lace, or linen.” It was necessary to order it in large pails, which took about a week to come. It’s manufactured in St. Jacob’s, Ontario, or at least distributed from there. I don’t think it has a very long history, because the support material/phone contact lack a bunch of answers to questions I had.

Although the colour isn't accurate here, the texture of the finish is visible.

First, I experimented on some spare drywall. It claims not to need undercoating, but when I applied a coat directly to un-primed drywall, it did not cover very well, and dried too fast to get the finish I was trying for. I think it has sand suspended in it. It is a water-based product, so very low VOCs.

I chose a creamy white for the base coat. Using very light finishes in our home will help to save energy, because we tend to turn on the lights later if the interior surfaces are reflecting a lot of light. I rolled it on with a 10 mm-thick roller, then with a dry roller, smoothed it out.

This is closer to the colour of the finish. You can also see our window trim here. We are planing pieces of fir flooring, reclaiming it and finishing it with water-based Varathane. If there are some nail holes evident, I think it's great - shows the character and origin of the old edge-grain fir that came out of Vancouver-area homes which were being demolished or renovated. One of the people who sold us some flooring were actually replacing this gorgeous stuff with laminate!

Because it’s so dry at this time of year, we lightly spritzed the wall with water.

A second colour, ever-so-slightly darker, is applied with the special roller covered with nailed-on suede fabric pieces.

Then, flattened out with a dry roller.

Immediately, it is “knocked down” with a plastic smoother.

It’s easy to apply, and is a very tough finish, hard to scratch, like plaster.

Also this week, Ron and I have been finishing the vaulted area in the living room before the scaffolding is removed and returned to the rental shop.

Here are before and after photos of the trim around the multi-lam beam and tongue-and-groove ceiling finish. Ron covered the beam with fir boards so it would look like the other big beams in the main living area.

"Before" trim

"After" trim

D and I were planning to do the painting ourselves, but I realized that it was a step that would hold up all the other steps/trades. In addition, it would monopolize all of D’s limited time at the house.

As a surprise for D, I made a rather impetuous decision to have the whole house primed and the ceilings double-coated in Benjamin Moore’s Aura (no VOCs).

After spraying, Chris rolls the finish smoother with an 18 or 20-inch roller. You can see my special finish in a cream colour behind Chris. I'll report on that later.

Are these professional guys fast! In two long days, with 25 gallons of paint, the job was done!

Our rinky-dink sprayer can't hold a candle to this spray apparatus.

Now we can install electrical fixtures and cabinets.

In the end, I was the one who was surprised when D first saw the house after two weeks away. He didn’t even notice that the painting was done!

A huge crew of nine good-looking young fellows arrived first thing yesterday to do the final pour/placement.

The torch-on sealing around a post and roof-downpipe

But, first, before my female readers or gay men get too excited, I’ll show you the preparation required to get to this pour.

Steve the roofer installed a layer of “glass-based nail-down” and a very waterproof layer of “torch-on” (basically a tar).

To protect the fancy copper-coloured flashing (matches the roof), a 2x2 is inserted between the 2x10 and the flashing.

Then the building crew installed the complicated form for the 2″ concrete deck. To make it as water-shedding as possible, the concrete extends over the flashing 1.5″.

triangular drain strip

Denis, the concrete contractor,  suggested a tiny triangular strip atop the 1.5″ strip, to ensure that, if any water manages to get into the concrete, it gets drained out this little space. Any dripping from the deck that occurs does not drain directly onto the cedar trim, but further out.

stripped v-groove deck detail

A layer of 6mm plastic covers the tar to protect it from gouging by rocks in the concrete mix.

Two decks, two doorsteps, one bathroom floor, the studio floor and pony wall to hide the kiln, and three miscellaneous pads. All this with only 10 cubic meters of fly-ash concrete, and in 2.5 hours!

Stripped deck

finished upper deck

And, now, the concrete hunks:

This is one of a series of reviews of our trades’ work. You can see them all here.

1) Action Spray Foam Review – Vancouver/Surrey

Action Spray Foam Insulation
7591 – 150A Street
Surrey, BC  V3S 6P2
Phone: 778-593-7115
Fax: 778-593-7116
Cell: 778-628-0123
Email: actionsprayfoam@yahoo.com

The company sprays 2-lb soy-based closed-cell foam insulation into walls and ceilings.

The short review: Action Spray Foam does good foam work, but failed to adequately clean up after themselves, nor did they complete the whole insulation job to make it inspection-ready, as promised. Internal problems in the company and a mistake in their quotation affected the crews’ work habits. They did not complete the job on the promised schedule. When I wrote them a follow-up letter, giving them an opportunity to respond, they did not, indicating that they don’t care about good customer relations or feedback.

A more detailed review, if the reader is interested:

I picked up a business card for Action Spray Foam from a home show, possibly the sustainability-focused home show in Vancouver.

When I called the name, Andrew, on the card, he said that he no longer worked there, and gave me owner Joe Pinder’s contact information. Joe referred me to his salesperson, Jeff.

When I called Jeff, he answered his phone with a simple “Hello,” rather than a business-like response such as “Action Spray Foam.” Throughout our continuing communication, he answered his phone this way.

I asked Jeff if Action Spray Foam was willing to work on the Sunshine Coast. He expressed considerable enthusiasm to break into the market here. I asked him for a job quote and told him the square footage of our home, and the size of the crawl space, and emailed him the house plans. He responded quite quickly with an estimate that was quite low, about 1/3 the cost of the only other quote I received for the product.

I asked him if he would prefer to come up to take measurements to help him prepare a more realistic quote. He did eventually come to measure, after missing two appointments.

Jeff then prepared a quote that was twice the cost of his first quote. This quote included a 10% “discount” which Jeff indicated was a marketing/goodwill effort – if they did a job here, perhaps it would lead to other jobs.

In part, Jeff’s email stated, “Note that Action has never failed an inspection, we show up on time and we take pride in our craftsmanship. We believe that your project is an example of a perfect showcase for our product and service. There is no greener and more efficient method of insulating, most prominently due to seasonal wind conditions in your area. We would really appreciate the job. Please let me know for scheduling.”

Jeff gave me contact info for 3 references. I followed up on these references, which were very positive. Some of the comments from these referees suggested that Action Spray Foam showed up when they promised, that they came back quickly when changes or incomplete work needed to be touched up (even taking 45 minutes to heat up the equipment for a job that lasted a few minutes), that they left the work site in very clean condition, and that the product was very effective in preventing heat loss, especially in high wind areas. Jeff also repeatedly mentioned how thorough the clean-up was, and how their jobs always passed inspections. I told him in an email:

“Your references check out beautifully. You’re hired! Please find out whether the ventilation in the roof above the insulation is required (vaulted spaces – we have metal roof.)”

We had several phone conversations about whether roof ventilation was required. Action asserted that none was required, and used a letter from their building envelope engineer to support this assertion. Eventually, I understand that Joe’s business partner, Jeremy, asked a building envelope engineer to make a site visit to confirm that no ventilation would be required. She provided her opinion at the site. This advice resulted in a full day’s labour by our framing crew of 3 people, at a cost of $800 to us, to insert plywood rafter ends at the soffits. Although the engineer was not retained by us, I agreed to pay the $600 billed for this site visit, after talking with Jeff while the crew was applying the foam. We would have to get an engineer’s inspection anyway for the Regional District.

The engineer observed the work that had been done already by the two crews. She said that the work was very good, and took several measurements. She and her associate poked holes into the foam in hundreds of spots (I wondered if those spot holes then allowed air leaks? They were never filled.)

Action’s two crews completed part of our job, then left to work on other jobs in the Vancouver area. They returned 3 days later than Jeremy promised. They “finished” their work here, and left in a hurry to catch a ferry. They took away approximately 9 large bags of foam popcorn and sawcut trimmings, plus 2 of our other styrofoam block-filled garbage bags. Although they cleaned up 2 outdoor vents that got a lot of spray on them, they did not do a thorough job of cleaning. Our metal roof, electrical boxes, pipes, and exterior walls have several areas with foam on them. Nor did they trim off anywhere near all the areas that required cleaning up.

We and our building crew ended up putting in 6 man-days of cutting/cleaning up the spray foam work for the drywallers and to pass the insulation inspection. The engineer would not provide the B1B2s to pass the inspection until we completed all the window and multiple stud and plate moisture barriers and insulation (“rod and caulk”). According to our SCRD inspector, some spray foam crews cover the whole wall/ceiling/windows with moisture barrier BEFORE spraying, then trim between the studs/rafters and seal it with the spray foam. That would have saved us a huge amount of effort and mess, plus protecting the windows from the foam and dust. Although Jeff boasted that Action’s jobs always pass inspections, we had to go over the whole house to fill holes and seal windows that most insulation businesses complete as part of their insulation jobs. Subsequent cutting off of the foam produced 6 more large garbage bags of foam, and required several cleaning sessions by me and by our crew, and even the drywallers.

When the engineer did a second site visit and eventually passed the insulation and provided the B1B2s, we were billed the second site visit. Engineers from the Sunshine

Coast area engineers  provide this service for about 1/2 the cost, because they don’t have to take 4 hours of travel time.

I feel we have not been well-served by Action Spray Foam. We were misled about the level of completion, the engineer’s inspection, and the cleanup.

I should have insisted on a clear and detailed quotation, rather than the simple listing of measurements and price. The best quotations indicate exactly what is provided. If they claim to provide a service that is inspection-ready, then they need to specify exactly what the standard of completion is.

According to the Action crews that were on site, Action’s salesperson seriously underestimated on their quote. Although the crews were unfailingly polite to me, it was clear that they were angry about the situation and in a hurry to get the job done. It was much bigger than they had been told, even though the quote included quite accurate measurements. They got sloppy and just left before the cleanup was completed.

2) Endless Rain Review – Victoria/New Westminster

Gord Szolnyanszky – Director Endless Rain

e: gord@endlessrain.ca

w: www.endlessrain.ca

p: 778 678-7246

Endless Rain is a relatively newly-formed company that installs rainwater collection systems, together with water features if the customer wishes.

Based on a very attractive web site and phone and email conversations with Gord, I engaged Endless Rain to install a 2000 gallon rainwater collection system with a 30’ long water feature. Gord’s partner Allan is the head installer. Allan worked with our excavator over 7 days, ordered materials (rock, sand, and gravel) locally, and ended up installing a longer stream than was quoted for. The final invoice was more than the quote by about 13%, because of very legitimate extra costs to build stone steps and a retaining wall to support the water feature. In fact, Allan showed me where we could trim costs, and was conscientious about providing value.

Allan is a genius designer, honest and a hard worker who pays attention to detail (e.g. the irregular stone steps are level and the height of the risers is consistent.) He posted photos of the progress on a daily basis, so that we could follow it while we were on holiday. Both partners are excellent communicators. Allan came back to the site to explain the system to me when we returned from holiday.

We are very pleased with the results, and have plumbed the house to use the rainwater for flushing toilets. I highly recommend Endless Rain.