Is a 1880s Basement Worth Making a Livable Space? | 1880s Farm House EP4

welcome to my nightmare it's kind of like buying a car as is right there's no way you can safety and where's the box of explosives i'm gonna learn a lot about what's going on with the water in this episode that is crazy yeah it's nasty so structurally the house is a nightmare there's just so much to fix and we're just gonna basically try to modernize everything that's a big road renovator one bathroom nothing here's the secret weapon better to learn how to do this yourself look at the water damage there this is where it gets interesting oh yeah that is crazy look at this that is fantastic this is not even four feet wide [Music] so so welcome to my modern rustic farmhouse remodel emphasis on the rustic we have got a lot of things in this basement project that we have got to redo so we're talking structure plumbing mechanical electrical every aspect of how this house is built needs to be redone before we can build upstairs so if you're like me you bought a house something like this because a it was a financial necessity or you are just a diy you can't wait to get your hands dirty and get down and start something from scratch my god this house needs just about everything done to it one quick look and you realize there's been a lot of different people over a long time having a little bit of their hand involved in this mess just trying to keep this house afloat but in this project we are going to start from the beginning which is our foundation and we're going to restore this house back to something that we can be comfortable saying it's going to be around for another 100 years now this is not a basement renovation project we're not trying to make this a livable space what we're trying to do is make sure that the house stops moving around everything's supported properly all the mechanical is up to date and functional and we're going to try to do it on a really good practical budget because there are approaches to how to handle something like this that can put you into bankruptcy we have collapsing walls we've got boeing structure we've got no supports everything that you can imagine we're going to go through all of the situation and we'll walk through all the things that you can find and over the next few weeks we're going to show you how to fix all this mess up so here we are and you start to get an idea of what's going on in this crazy house when we came and did our first walk through with our home inspector before we bought this place he basically came down the stairs and said okay so it's kind of like buying a car as is right there's no way you can safety it everything here is wrong but if you want the house you can accept it in the condition that it's at and i'm like great this is perfect for me so we're going to go through the list real quick first we've got structure okay so we have a staircase we have interior walls upstairs on each side of the staircase they go right to the roof so all of the load of the house comes to these walls next to the stairs and in this situation it's actually right here you know where this piece of laminate here is holding the house together somebody at some point cut through the whole floor from three feet over there almost 20 feet the other direction and cut the entire support structure out because what this is is you have trees you have these subfloor tongue or groove these are inch and a half i mean they're actually inch and a quarter but you know how that works and then all of those all the framing for the rest of the house is set on top of that it's balloon construction so they actually toenail into the subfloor but they cut that all out and so now it's dropped in and then went whoops so they're putting in posts and posts and posts to help hold the house together what a disaster so structurally the house is a nightmare these trees don't have enough support they're going clear span side to side they've got a few posts now which is great but there's a need for a whole lot more support to help level everything out so before we can go with the structure we gotta kind of lift up the main body of the house i'm going to need a structural engineer in here just so that i can get this job done knowing that it's not going to have a problem down the road and help create a strategy because we even have the exterior walls buckling in certain places because it's carrying so much load and the water is coming through the wall it's eroding the mortar there's a lot going on okay so that's the structure issues we have plumbing issues cottage plumbing i mean you got to love a house that's a mix of copper and rubber hose no one's ever really taken the time to make an upgrade just an adjustment so my guess is originally this house was the cottage there's black hoses coming from the pump in the far corner over the hot water tank and then over here and then certain areas that converts a lot of different conversion systems so that you can see over here the hot water tank i mean just just the amount of leaking that's happening and corrosion this hot water tank is from 2013 it's not even six years old yet and and i think i'm going to have to buy one next week and replace it i don't even really want to use electric heat here long term but i'm afraid this thing's going to fail so better get that switched out all the drain system and the pipes the strange thing about all of the plumbing in this house is there is no vent stack in the roof so anybody who understands plumbing knows that if you have water rushing you have to have air coming in behind it or it creates a vacuum in this house we don't really have a vacuum so i'm expecting to find vent stack in the attic maybe sitting in the soffit i'm not sure but we'll need to locate that and get that fixed when it comes to the electrical we have a lot of different wiring going on i think most of the wire in this house is copper which is good it looks like most of this has been tacked in and so wrapping around every one of these posts uh for the most part it doesn't look dangerous there's a lot of little things that are wrong with the electrical work in this house a lot of handyman special i mean there's light fixtures they don't have grommets they just got loose wire rubbing up against the metal boxes that kind of stuff is wrong but in the grand scheme of this project it's pretty minor so the hvac we have a combination we have a relatively newer furnace it's only about 15 or 20 years old which is good um we have two massive cold air returns on the main floor one on each side of the stairs which is strange so i'm not sure who designed the system or if they're just picking up what was there from the last one but this system ties into some really old ducting and all the heat runs going upstairs go through the outside wall so there is no heat run going through the interior walls of this house everything goes through the outside wall which means in the winter time all the heat that's traveling up to the bedrooms is being cooled off before it gets there because it's on the outside wall there's no insulation in it brilliant so that explains the heating bill last winter three thousand dollars to heat this place insane so we are going to have to basically remove all of this fix the structure reinstate all of it and my joy is that i live here now so i have to also make sure it's functional at the end of every day great welcome to my nightmare bottom line is if you're renovating a house like this this is exactly the situation you're living in so we're going to show you all of our tips and tricks for how to put in brand new systems while you're still making sure the house is functional and living in it and we're going to show you how to save something like this and and don't be afraid to just treat it like it's a seller right let's just make sure all the mechanical and the structure is functional try to keep it as dry as you can so that we can manage any kind of mold growth or anything like that and if you want storage for god's sake build a shed watch our video on that so jeff let's talk about the issues that we've had in the basement yeah okay so we got this house we were aware that things were not ideal downstairs um i think the second year we were here is the first time it got really cold yes that was a brutal the wind was blowing from the east that year a lot and so a lot of the plumbing for upstairs goes up an exterior wall apparently it's not insulated well so no pipes all froze of course so we lost the use of our bathroom hashtag go to the gym um we did have a membership at the time yeah it was it was it was about six weeks before that thing finally thought out yeah oh man we got lucky because they were all copper lines and they didn't blow up yes that's a good thing and i did rip the interior of the house apart to get heat to the pipes but it ended up backing up through the sump pump downstairs well that was a different event that was a different event we had some guys and so then one spring when all the snow was melting the sun pump failed and we ended up with six inches of water in the basement yeah that was awful that was exciting and and that has led us to the we needed a new hot water tank we needed a new furnace that was great love that event and then twice since we've been here we've had the pipe going to our sept tank fro solid yeah that's was that when we were in like vacationing somewhere well the first time it was just because it was super cold like we had we had a few weeks in the winter time where it dropped to like minus 40 and the frost level got so deep the pipe froze solid yeah and i had the plumber come out and he rescued us that's crazy and it was expensive oh yes that's specialized equipment and brought in all of this special equipment and we wanted to keep the the exterior doors open almost two thousand dollars to fix that running his equipment straight through the kitchen which was such a hassle it was a disaster and then the second time we went on holidays and we came up we came back and our house was frozen i guess the furnace had failed at some point um we better share problems our air exhaust and intake is on a wall that if the wind blows the right way it just shuts the furnace off yeah so we have to move that obviously but the furnace failed we came back from holidays after a week in florida and the house was frozen solid including all of the pipes and so i just put you in a hotel with our dog yes and i spent a weekend in the basement i cut the pipes off the wall i got a big steel pipe and i sat there chipping away at the poop ice oh lord um for about eight hours until i finally dug through the other it was like the great escape it was disgusting it was like it was like it was like tunneling out through the outhouse you know at a prisoner war camp it was ridiculous i was covered in it the basement was covered in it but there was no way in hell i was spending another eighteen hundred dollars on that same problem because oh my gosh yeah cause we already went through it once and so yeah the things you do you're the hands-on guy so of course you but of course now i appreciate why i spent 1800 bucks the first time yeah you watched i'm sure you watched him like like hawk i was just gonna say hawkeye the difference is i used a garden hose to melt all the ice yeah i know that was your took a while that was your idea it took a while oh well hey so we're here in our old farmhouse 1880s with trees as structure but it doesn't really matter what kind of house you have if you're watching this video it's because something has happened in your home and you've got to be creative with repairing your structure a lot of times people don't understand that just because you have structure doesn't mean it's good structure if you have a span that's more than 16 feet you need a support post going down to carry the load what we have here is a really old house and they made these trees go clear across the whole 25 feet of the house and so what you'll see in a lot of old houses is the roof will actually start to cave in because the whole house is literally falling in the middle in this situation we bought a house that needs a lot of work and the perimeter of the house is you know it's held up pretty good they've got a lot of posts on the beams on the outside of the wall but down through the middle of the house they've got an old cistern here they've got the odd two by four slapped in this one isn't supported at all and so it's actually starting to crack and it's showing a lot of signs of wear so before we get our structural engineer in this project to tell us how to fix this up we want to get some temporary support in here and shore this up so that it doesn't fall apart in the meantime so the way we do this is actually pretty forward if you have a car jack i would highly recommend buying one if you don't messing around with this kind of stuff without the proper tools is actually kind of dangerous what we have here is a three ton jack and it's for basically automotive purposes but we use this on structure all the time and it is an absolute lifesaver so be careful here this is you know necessary to be sober and we give this a lift can you hear that listen for the house it's going to be making some moaning and groaning noises there we go now we know we have movement so this particular tree is on a post on either end of the 20-foot span and if i'm just lifting the middle i run the risk of taking all the load on the whole beam and lifting this beam up and then the other two posts will be disengaged so this is why this process takes some time okay and this is where the pins go okay this is correct and set it down a little bit this is incorrect i don't know how many times i've seen this almost everywhere i go i see this one sheer pin anybody who's ever owned a snow blower you know there's a sheer pin on each side they don't just rely on one pin if if if i do it this way i'm relying on the shear strength of one pin to hold up my house lift this up a little bit we line this up properly i'm relying on two shear pins and it's from the different sides of the call double the strength that'll be your fun right this is how you want to do this now this drops in you can see it actually sits in the cradle right there so that nothing's sliding around [Music] okay [Music] what i'm going to do here real quick is just use my ram set compress and then pull the trigger there you go that's directly in the concrete and it's not going to be going anywhere okay on the top you wanted to throw in a coupler i'm using structural screws because i got a great shear strength and i'm just putting one on each side in the corners again so this can't be knocked out of position and you can do this over and over again throughout your whole basement since we're dealing with trees not dimensional lumber every one of these is different so if you put a level on it this one's also at seven and five eighths so i have to add that one seven five eight seven i gotta add five eighths turns out they're almost level now isn't that amazing okay because remember we're measuring from the floor so when you're putting in your structural posts remember basic rules temporary structure put in your post secure it use two pins give yourself lots of room up here because what we're going to want to do next week i'm going to come down here and i'm going to do one turn now just to demonstrate this just a pair of pliers okay it doesn't take a whole lot of strength and just come in here do a half turn half turn a week over the course of a couple of months you can have this raised up two inches if necessary so we're going to put in another post here this particular tree is carrying a lot of load the structure of the house is actually on this line with this post and this i don't know six by six here that mess next to this one's just carrying the tree that's just a sub flooring issue so we're gonna remove it there's been a lot of events with moisture in this basement and i don't mean like humidity i mean like flooding um we'll deal with that in another video but this one's uh rusting out i'm noticing right away it's not attached to the top plate bottom plate doesn't have any attachments the pin for the shear here is actually installed upside down and backwards and i would just feel a whole lot better removing it and getting a new one in and what you're going to do is just lift this up until we can get this one taken out there you go it's moving a little bit [Music] more [Music] [Applause] [Music] almost i'm getting really hard to pull now dad [Music] there we go okay rusty crap now can you go outside mom it makes me a lot happier relax it's not damaged this is maybe the rest of them but because there's a lot of different heights down here and i can actually take the grinder and cut this off and make it a short post for one of the outside walls or over on this cistern so we're not going to throw it in the garbage we're just not going to rely on it let's go try it around find something here that's the best we can do in this situation without grinding out the base okay [Music] so you can see this modern post has twice twice as much sear pin on it which is what i love okay [Music] yeah actually great fantastic okay patient twist and then insert and then they expand like this and that should do the job and where's the box of explosives 22 calories for this one we'll go with two okay just so that you can sleep at night i'm not sleeping here so i'm good let's do while she's on the stairs yeah here we go run mom perfect every time my card's on the table there there you go all right right yeah that's how it's done yeah it didn't go nowhere so what are your plans for the basement not much well i know because you've seen it right i mean we really don't have a lot of options we can't finish it exactly so maybe just share about that sure i mean our basement if you've seen the videos it's uh it's a little shallow um head clearance underneath the trees that are down there is about five and a half feet so if you're really short you're fine but to turn that into a living space requires a whole lot of work like we're out in the country our house is on one acre lot which is nice and if we need more living space our best plan is actually do an addition it's cheaper to add on the building than to fix a basement up now if this house was in the middle of the city and the housing values would support renovating the basement maybe underpinning getting more head clearance restructuring waterproofing excavating the foundation restoring wow yeah the amount of work there i could spend if i wanted to if i don't know if i want to make that basement livable yeah i uh and contracted out to put it on terms i would i'd be spending six figures plus maybe 150 000. as a diyer i'd still be investing 40 and uh about a year and a half as a diyer i can add an addition of this house in 90 days yeah that just doesn't make any sense okay right yep but yeah it can be done but sometimes you got to just what did kenny kenny roger said you got to know when to hold them no one to fold them yeah okay so part of my challenge as a homeowner is the fact that i've got enough experience with doing uh structural work that i my mind gets ahead of myself from your perspective what's more important um interior structure or the exterior walls like what would say wow you got to deal with this first it's if i had to choose if i had a financial restriction i had to choose what would you do first show up the outside wall or shore up the middle of the house it is i would say it's a case-by-case basis uh depending on i love that what's going on you're a politician now that's awesome but so i mean it's it's whatever needs it most okay so if if your floor is sagging if you feel vibration when you walk up top yeah i literally live in a sponge cake yeah it's probably more important to take care of the inside okay good if you're if out from outside you see bowing in the wall you have cracking going on yep water coming in uh it may be an issue that needs to be addressed first so it is definitely a case-by-case basis how to go about that but the biggest concern would be houses are more prone to collapse from the inside than from the outside generally i would say so okay all right so the idea here is if we renovate the inside of this house i want to get these trees in the middle lift it up into position and get them permanently supported for two reasons one having the permanent support in the middle of the house enables me to put in temporary support a couple feet from the exterior wall at a later date so i can fix my foundation for sure right and it allows me to complete the renovations inside the house so that i can increase the value of the home and put me in a position where i can get an estimate done on the value of the home so i can then afford to do the work on the exterior of the house makes sense which is another issue okay what kind of scenario is most ideal for dealing with trees what do you do with this every one of these is a different dimension so it's it's not the easiest thing to work with and right nowadays they don't teach you anything like that in school okay because it's they don't use it in any new construction exactly and you're not even going to see it in old construction unless it's very old well there's a lot of houses i've been in uh late 1800s early 1900s and they're they're they're all floor joists packaged right like even here this house has got floor joists everywhere else except the basement and everything in this house is clear spam one side of the next so i'm not sure what they were thinking like did someone invent the band saw the day after they put this foundation in it's hard to explain and normally when i come on on any site and i come down into the basement first it's normally where the most structure is visible i'm going to assume that it's the same it's built the same all the way up right so whenever they do different things it's it always seems to throw me off so i'm kind of thinking like these trees were in their way when they built the house they cut them down dug a hole put up the walls and then pulled the trees back across to get started that's kind of how i'm feeling about this because the lumber was already there and it was free yeah it was it wasn't an uncommon technique back then i mean you see sometimes the sizes are vastly different here at least they they look it's normal yeah you know it's like it is relatively the same yeah okay so we want to do the idea of we need basically two structural loads on each side of the staircase because the house is cut in half by the stairs right you know i came in here with a preconceived notion of the idea of putting in a point load over here underneath here going right across over top of the foundation wall and cantilevering the load coming from the second floor onto that is is that is that wishful thinking or is that is that reasonable with today's technology it can definitely be be done um so again depending on what sort of weight we have coming down on the cantilevered section yep that will limit our design okay for a beam down here because i know you know almost anything is possible with a big piece of steel that's right but as a diy er i'm trying my best on this channel to show people how to do things themselves so if if you can come at it from the approach of laminating lumber and steel together as components once they're in the basement that would be more ideal i would rather have a piece of steel with pre-drilled holes according to an engineer drawing that i can put on the wood template drill the holes come back the other side install it in place jack it all up you know just meet with one helper that makes a lot more sense for the the system that i'm going with here well yeah it's not easy to slide a big continuous heavy steel beam in through especially with all these posts everywhere yeah like i don't have a lot of play room and and i've been in companies where we call out the crews and you know 14 guys would show up we'd all carry a beam in that's not happening on this job so we'd try to try to keep things under a couple hundred pounds per unit would be great yeah and install them one at a time so if we can come up with a design plan for picking that up on both sides this wall over here has a limitation of about 10 inches that side is doesn't it's a much bigger size i have like 13 inches over there okay so if that makes any difference it definitely makes a difference the depth of the beam is really what's governing its strength so you can go wider but it's really not giving you a whole lot of extra strength compared to increasing its depth really yeah would it make sense then on this side if i was to remove part of the foundation wall in order to let the beam go all the way out to do a little bit of a pocket yeah depending on the design for sure that could really sw i mean it could be the difference between a steel beam or that laminated lvl okay so if that's necessary to go to the laminator go that direction yeah okay sure fabulous [Music] hey matt you want to come here for a second buddy let me show you something okay so um you know how we're fixing all the foundation down here we're gonna run on the mechanical yeah you know you saw here how they cut these trees off and they did the structure and they had the stairs they didn't cut a hole in the wall to run all the mechanical this was actually the old window it's pretty cool you don't usually see this in most cases like these top plates are put on just to carry the structure that comes across right this is original structure beam that was all the way across they've got this all cut out that's absolutely amazing it must have been pretty short so here's this is the access to the crawl space i never had the last time i was down there so this is awesome so what i want to do i'm going to get you to remove the garbage and try to get some of this dirt out of the way so that you can crawl in there and finish insulating right up into the front corner that's part of an old license plate back when they were made out of metal and that is not staged look at that i wonder if there's any other trophies in here wow this is cool why is there a brick here there's not a single brick in this entire structure there's a break down here wow freaked me out all right oh what is that this is turning from a diy channel though what can we find under our house type of channel yeah oh no but take it in smell that that's that's what 140 years old smells like so listen as soon as you get this cleaned up um we're gonna get this finished up the installation yep and then we'll reintroduce all of our duck lines we got three lines one upstairs one by the front door and then one to heat the crawl space we'll get all that reintroduced and then we can rebuild our stairs oh wow welcome to my cellar kind of looks like something out of a horror movie i got a big freezer over there i'm not sure whose body isn't it um so we are really doing a massive transformation and everything down here because this is the mechanical this is the this is the nuts and bolts of your house right hot water soft water the pump the furnace the 800 posts that are the structure we're we're doing it all over putting in new structural loads new beams new water purification systems and so we're going to probably go with all brand new ducting there's just so much to fix and we're just going to basically try to modernize everything so we need new water lines and new drain lines uh we're putting in a macerator to bring all the plumbing to one location then pumped out to the tank help reduce the amount of pipes lining the walls then we gotta insulate all over again so nothing but work to be done in here so we'll go through the whole process so that when we're done we've got a nice clean dry space that we can actually maybe use because right now it's it's unusable it's unlivable and it's hard to walk in too this is there's crap everywhere oh well we'll start with a hot water tank first because i i want to be able to use my tub again yeah it's nasty get all them little critters there man holy cow so switching out your hot water tank is not a very difficult process but it is a little involved because you're dealing with two systems in your house your water and your electrics so what i'm going to suggest is that you turn off the electricity to the heater maybe an hour or so before you want to get started buy yourself one of these testers and this will tell you just by touching the wire so that's live power it goes green when there's no power being sensed beeps it makes a red when there is you can turn those breakers out for me there's two breakers they're both labeled 20s so it's number two number three on the top right right there we go this time the panel is actually labeled correctly it's the only thing in the house and you can double check it might accidentally go off just by contact all right be patient there we go we're good to go now the power's off the next thing you want to do is turn off the water to the house now in our case we may or may not get any water coming out i think it's because this thing is totally full of sediment i don't think it's even working so this is why this is only a few years old and it's already done and i think we're just gonna cut the water supply lines and then move on by the way we're gonna cut this bad boy in half the end of the video just to take a look inside i'm really curious to see how much sediment and what kind of condition this is because this is from 2013. it's not that old in the world of hot water tanks i'm going to learn a lot about what's going on with the water in this house okay so here's our electrics disengage that the heating elements are right here there's one here and there's one in the bottom and these things actually have the ability to take them off and replace them pull it through and set this aside for now so luckily for me i'm planning on changing all the plumbing down here because i mean i don't know the rubber hoses and old leaky uh just this time i've had enough of this we're going to upgrade the whole system over here so we're going to deal with changing the hot water tank today but we'll talk about upgrading the entire system to the new one if when you go to open up the relief valve for the water in the hot water tank in step number one and it doesn't work that's okay there's also a top relief valve okay a lot of times it'll come with a hose this one does not so this is gonna be hot water and we're gonna take the pressure out of the tank by opening this valve [Music] and whoa here it comes now there's no real pressure and water pressure here because we've got the taps all open but there are a lot of lines in the ceiling here that are laying horizontal and they're going to be full of water so now we're kind of draining all of that back out through the top of the this is the lowest thing in the room really oh it's nice and brown too that's sexy yeah oh very nice okay you know yeah [Music] ah smells amazing all right we're not using that again so let's say over here if it's pex you can use a pipe cutter we even have some some galvanized steel connections here this is lovely very diy look at that here we go look at this joint here man wow looks like it's been leaking for a while okay and so this is basically a giant rock nice yeah nice no let me stand here rock it off a little bit come on oldie yeah okay here we go i got it yeah okay you want to roll it to the side is that your idea so what's the plan roll it roll it where not where it's standing so it's going to lay flat roll it that way stand that bad boy up yummy yummy yummy i didn't know this is what we were doing today isn't that fun [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] oh yeah these rods matt they're threaded okay and they're threaded in from the top this sits in the tank of water now in the city you get magnesium in the country you want to put in aluminum because we have hard water a lot of iron and what this is is it's a sacrificial lamb here basically what happens is the water that's coming into here is um it's got properties in the water that wants to corrode the tank okay and so you put in these rods intentionally and this attracts all the attention okay from anything that's dangerous in your water trying to destroy the tank which is why if you change this every few years you can maintain the health of your tank all right and these are about 40 and if you put one of these in every seven eight years then you'll be able to keep your tank for like 40 or 50 instead of 10 to 12. so why didn't you do that then with the other one that one okay in normal conditions then this basement's been wet flooded four times since 2013 a few times four times twice was me sewer backups oh okay right yeah and uh nice yeah no it was really cold up here everything about those houses backwards so we had to fix it all anyway so i kind of just settled the fact that i was just going to throw it out and get another one yeah and said it's a great time to make a video so what we're going to do is we're going to remove the old one the reason they call it a breaking bar is because it's going to break you in half is that right no it's breaking because there's a the joint has been factory sealed to be under pressure [Music] done okay [Music] that's good now [Music] ta-da now this uh is going to take a couple hours to heat up not a big deal we're going to just continue working on some of the other work here in a few minutes but before we do that we want to cut the old tank in half see what the heck happened there we're going to drill some holes in this thing and find out if there's any water in it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] wow [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] nasty right so on the bottom left of the screen that's the plastic pipe that brings the water supply wow and then that big corroded looking thing is the heating element and if you take a good look in the background there's a black thin rod going from left to right on a slight degree of downward that's the original aluminum anode rod almost completely eaten away after only six years wow folks change your anode rods every five years that is crazy wow well i knew it was gonna be nasty i had no idea it was gonna be that corroded like i knew the elements were going to be gone the anode rod was only like four years old that's insane it's almost completely in the way solid shaft of aluminum and the bottom of this is totally filled with all kinds of debris and sediment my goodness oh wow so finally it has arrived today we are installing our saniflow macerator unit in the basement it has two macerator units and the reason i got the one with two is because if i'm going to put the whole house on this system if one of these macerator units fails i need to have the system opera operating while i'm getting maintenance done i'm going to place an order for service or for parts i need to have it operating still so in the book they've got this great chart and it shows the unit and the vertical capability up to 30 feet all right so if you want to make a bunker in your cellar and be a prepper you can use one of these it also at 30 feet high it'll also go 32 feet horizontally but at six feet high it goes 360 feet horizontally which is crazy so i mean that is that is really awesome [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there we go [Music] perfect there we go [Music] [Applause] okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] and switch so we're going to leave ourselves a little bit of flexibility here [Music] okay so we got it all back together again today i am going to be installing a brand new water softening system [Music] i've got a lot of creative things going on but the goal here is to ultimately get everything down to a shark bite fitting it's a bit of a process but you need to make sure that you can disconnect so that's why using something like sharkbite is so perfect so when it comes time to do that you just release this pop the tank off and off you go this particular inlet it needs a one inch male npt thread so i've got that in copper and that is going to fit just fine we're going to use a little bit of threaded sealer then i've got a reducer that goes inside of that and that needs to be torched on and then i've got copper pipe that goes inside of the reducer and that gives me my three-quarter inch line which is the same size as my sharkbite fitting three-quarters it flux inside of there we'll add this pipe okay and then we're going to hold it push the button and it keeps it on we will show you the alternative the shark bite and the funny thing is no matter what you use you're still going to use sharkbite eventually but if you can't find fittings that fit in your area doing this will definitely work now just got to do another one [Music] um here we go [Music] you know a few basic tools and a couple of skills that anybody can solder how awesome is that eh here we go [Music] same thing we're going to go backwards [Music] ah did you catch that on the camera right there that's perfect now it's time to go forward that's what i'm talking about you can feel it sometimes you can even hear it this is crucial with a metal thread there we go because with metal threads when you tighten that on you're going to want to use a wrench and you can cross thread this using a wrench and you won't even notice maybe like a hot knife through butter now we take our wrench and we're going to bury this as much as we can this is a little bit ridiculous with the straps on but the beautiful part about installing like this is because we're using the shark bites we have the ability to actually release this again when we want to but if we notice anything is dripping after we install you can always take the wrench and tighten because shark bites can move freely on the pipe after installation so this gives you the ability to tighten things up if you develop a drip okay so now we are ready to put in the canister the other thing it comes with is this awesome little o-ring now i'm going to take advantage of my silicone here and i'm going to lubricate this gasket before i install it this will keep it from buckling during install it's also really nice on the hands for installation we're just going to put this up here and really pull that into position now it's just plug and play i mean this is really gets about as easy as it gets except my hands are greasy now that i i've used that cream on them i can't even hold the pipe i'm going to have to call my son down here to do this for me be right back you got a twist and you do it right you're right about that silicone yeah we even got it on the pipe now i can't pipe the pipe cutters all right there we go so here we go okay that goes from here into here so i'm going to use this i can't even i can't do anything with these hands now in case this is you i need you to do this i can't should i cut it or no i gotta squeeze this on i want you to squeeze this on and wrap it in yeah you got it now you wrap the pipe there you go now this is a special yeah so this is a special pipe bracket that keeps it allows you to bend the pipe without causing a kink just watch you don't pinch your hands okay snap that in place greasy stuff everywhere don't i i should stop touching things gosh i can't do anything okay hold on hold that pipe still man [Music] it works great with the half inch works great with dry hands too holy crap here we go oh okay okay [Music] that's definitely crushed yeah it's tricky there you go uh-huh yeah you got it well done [Music] all right and here's the lead going to the rest of the house in the hot water [Music] boom it's plumbing for you and here's my water supply from my well and pressure tank that's done all right so while matt is cleaning up the tanks with the polish let's make sure that we go upstairs and try our brand new drinking water so before we can really try the water we have to let it run a few minutes and we're almost there now i'm just trying to wait until i can i don't smell that i don't smell that wall water smell anymore all right [Music] hey nice oh springwell you've done me proud that's amazing what a difference [Music] yeah it's a nest [Music] this is kind of a crazy day you know it's funny we booked the hydro guys come in we're changing out the service from a 100 to a 200 amp and our area code requires that if you're going to have a hot tub and that's what we're putting in this property now so hydro booked a date and a time and the weather it is the hottest day of the year today big surprise humidity is off the charts it's going to have thunderstorms in a couple of hours so we got the high one crew down the street they're changing transformers and supply lines bringing everything up to here because we're putting a new power supply line to the house into the basement changing over the panel oh before we can do all that though we got to skin off the old house and get it prepped for the new mast to go on so we can run our power up and then they're gonna take the old panel off downstairs we're gonna put in a new panel down there insulate the exterior wall seal the vapor barrier up there's a lot of a dance going on the good news is everybody's here all the materials here we're all on time things are going well hopefully in the next couple hours we can finish the dance outside and then they can rain all it likes because we can get the hydro back on finish the panel downstairs it's going to be a long hot muggy day but at the end of the day everything in this house is going to be upgraded service so the entire basement is going to be brand new new pump new heater new hot water new electrical new water purification new macerator the list goes on and on new installation vapor barrier new framing new jack post this is the way to do it right start with your foundation have a really good plan to get everything updated and then the rest of the house holds value let's get back to work the goal here is just get the lights to the main floor a few of the major circuits to the kitchen the furnace ac working again outside of that um the rest of the finishing is can be tied into my homework permit on all the rooms so we don't have a panic here to make sure that all 40 of these wires go back in give me the basics on the new wires and we'll call it a day robertson screws see this is why i got to get rid of this thing because it's so tight into the corner here i can't possibly insulate properly all right so the plan is to get rid of this nail nailing surface here this board i want to remove it bring my insulation blanket up to the corner bring the plastic over the top get mineral insulation on the sill tie them together tape it together hang a brand new board that's about five feet long four feet tall that way they can hang their panel and bring wires from both sides and staple it in according to code but it gives me the ability to bring that insulation wrap and then tie together in this corner and continue that around the whole basement so now what i've got to do the old foundation you'll see is mineral the idea there is we want to insulate and if it gets wet because the edge of the home it'll dry we're going to use that same mineral on top of this between the two stone walls because there's one interior and one exterior interior walls carry the frame and the floor the exterior carries the shell of the house here we go here's the ground wire and we're not looking for the world's greatest thermal brick we're just trying to get something in the way of like an r eight and behind the panel this is the r12 insulation it's a little compromised with all the activity here but when you're in a cellar and you're on a stack stone wall there's only so much you can do so this is really your best option okay important considerations here one the hydro service that's getting updated or upgraded on the street and where i live in ontario it's the it's the province's responsibility to manage and supply and maintain the power grid they're the ones that dictate i need a 200 amp service for the what i want to add here so they're actually taking care of the cost of the new transformer changing the power supply all the way down the street to the pole and then i cover the cost of the wire from the pole to my house that's the only part of the cost that i got to cover which is amazing so my electrician is telling me it's about 5000 to remove and reinstall a new panel a new mast and the cost of that wire which really is quite reasonable now he's only going to be putting in half the circuits just everything that's completed and functioning currently i'm going to take care of adding all the rest of the circuits as a part of the homeowner permit so in another video on the other channel we'll have a how-to video where we show you how to wire your panel which will be awesome but for now realize about 5000 bucks i get everything upgraded it's all brand new it's all insulated i couldn't be happier [Music] spiders everywhere today we're all looking forward to a big catch [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] all right good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] now we're just going to kick into all the before and afters of the transformation in this basement [Music] all right guys welcome to my finished basement not designed to be a living space but we can function down here finally it's clean we've painted the ceiling it's a primer sealer oil paint it'll help extend the life of this floor joist action we've also got our chest freezer down here we've got our macerator to make the bathroom work we've got a new hot water tank we've got a brand new electrical panel 200 amp service so we can add a hot tub we've got our new water softening system now listen it's not the one that we did the video on that one was working okay but the old softener failed and then we had to get a new one and the water test showed us that the system that we had in place here just wasn't going to get us the quality we wanted and the reality is that in this area the housing market has been booming lately figure that i guess everybody wants to move here now so the valuation of this house has gone up a little bit and has allowed us a little bit of flexibility to push the budget so we had a brand new kinetico system installed it's a multi-stage system and it's got all the bells and whistles so now my water is purer than melted glaciers and i'm loving it all right we'll have other videos on that later but for now let's just go we added a new furnace upgraded that added air conditioning right now we've got air conditioning lines in here all the waste and drain all brand new electrical we've got smoke detectors on every level tied together now wow this has been a massive undertaking and it doesn't look like much down here as far as the change but it's clean the air is different the humidity isn't as bad it's just brighter and it's not so daunting to come down here right we also tied in all of the thermal and vapor barrier from upstairs right around our stone walls with this insulation blanket and that is making a world of difference it means that the floors on the main floor are going to be warm in the winter time now instead of freezing cold and i think this is the perfect blend of good science good building practice and practicality based on the condition of the home and the age of the home and the real estate market that i'm living in i maybe if i hold onto this house till springtime next year before i sell it might be able to upgrade the hot water tank to a gas on demand hot water system which will be a really nice feature but we're going to let our real estate agent do some comparables in the amber hood find out if there's enough value to support that move and if there is we'll be able to knock that video off and bring that to you as well because there are lots of places where that makes great sense and there are lots of places where it doesn't it all depends where you live and what the age and value of your home is so this is basically it for now we've got it clean we've got a structural sound we've got a thermally taken care of we've got everything updated all our mechanicals brand new there's just no reason to not fall in love with this house anymore and i'm glad i'm finally out of the basement hey and don't forget if you like the information in these kind of videos then give us a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the channel we've got new videos coming out every three weeks we're trying to keep you updated on the progress of this massive farmhouse renovation and if you're just new to the channel then click the link up here you can start from the very beginning and see all the episodes as we're on our journey come and join us it's a lot of fun we'll see you soon

Channel: REALITY RENOVISION

Views: 167,090

Keywords: jeff thorman, home renovision, home renovision diy, renovation reality show, remodel reality show, renovation show, home reno, home remodel

Id: 61DaR7ps-Cg

Length: 60min 32sec (3632 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020