I guess they know it's safe

Nearly every day lately one can see a large flock of wild turkeys along State Road 54 just east of Bloomfield. The picture's detail isn't too good, but here they are.

Warm floors

It is getting cold and we're not quite ready to install the radiant floor heating system, but I thought I'd show how the system goes together. Our system is produced by The FloorHeat Company. Their web site explains the system in more detail. It is mostly a do-it-yourself process.

It starts with a thin sheet of foil that goes directly on the OSB floor panels. The foil is covered by 16-inch square plastic grids which snap together to cover the entire floor. Metal pieces are snapped into the grids. These will help transfer the heat from the plastic tubing which will be snapped into all of the grids to the panels which cover the grids. The panels are then covered by the laminate floor panels. The tubes are attached to a panel which contains a tankless water heater and a pump to move the heated water throughout the system.

Here is a grid, a metal piece, and how they fit together. Of course there are hundreds of them in the system.

When all the components are together it will look something like this:


You can see four of the laminate panels snapped together. Under them is a 3'X 5' cement board panel. Under that are the plastic grids. The foil is not shown because I don't want to put it down until we're ready to do the installation. Finally, the OSB panels can be seen.

Notice the piece of 2X4 next to the floor system. It is the same thickness as the system. This allows us to build a wooden grid in closets and under cabinets that will have the same laminate sheets on them but will not be heated.

I forgot to take a picture of the control panel. I'll do that after the plastic tubing (PEX) is installed and the system is ready to go.

Has it been that long?

Once again, time has flown and I haven't posted for over two weeks. I've got a few pictures to share. I'll start with a follow-up on the previous post.

Using a 1" X 4" strip of wood behind the top of the drywall sheets did the trick. The drywall is solidly supported at the top, just as if there had been a full nailer there. It turns out attaching the strip to the drywall before erecting it wasn't necessary. In fact, doing so made it harder to get the drywall in place. It worked a lot better to just slide the wood strip up behind the 2" X 10" board at the top of the wall. The pressure from the packed cellulose behind the tarp section kept it in place while the drywall was screwed to it.

Here's a picture of an installed drywall sheet showing a section of the wood strip to the left of it. You can see the 2" X 10" board that runs the length of the long walls. The white on the board is from raising the ceiling drywall and will wipe off. I plan to sand the board smooth and cover the nails which hold the boards to the barn's main posts.



All the drywall in the apartment has been installed except for a few wall sections that will have water tubes in them. These need not be finished right now, and getting heat in the building is a higher priority. The next post shows what we're doing for heat.