3 posts tagged “attic fan”
Because I think I bought the wrong size. Or it doesn't match the rest of my decor.
This is me after a day spent in the attic. Yes, I'm wearing a bandanna, goggles, dust mask, and a head lamp. It's fricking dark up there. And eerily quiet. And full of moon dust-like insulation. And pixies. But I wasn't supposed to tell anybody about the pixies.
Oh, right, what was I doing up there? Installing ceiling fan braces. There are few home features I hate more than wobbly or rattly ceiling fans, so I believe in attaching them to serious braces fastened to the studs with heavy deck screws. Also, I love ceiling fans. I'm installing them in the bedroom, the office, the living room, and the kitchen. I'd install one in the dining room, but that just seems like overkill.
To prepare for this adventure, I loaded up my backpack with all the tools I thought I might possibly need for the adventure, including my newly purchased cordless drill. I don't own 200 feet of extension cord, so I figured that would come in handy. I should have taken snacks.
The kitchen was easy. I had to enlarge the hole in the ceiling a bit to accommodate a 4-inch electrical box, which is standard for ceiling fan braces, but the brace went in easily. From there, I crawled to the pantry, where I installed a new electrical box, and ran the wiring to the light switch. Then I schlepped over to the office, dragging all my supplies and my plywood platform with me. (Because squatting on joists for hours at a time is unpleasant, it's better to have somewhere to sit.) Once again, the hole in the ceiling had to be enlarged via drill and hand saw. Then I had to shim one end of the brace to make it level, but it went in easily enough.
After that I slithered over to the bathroom to repair a hole in the ceiling and install a new electrical box. Seeing a trend? Yes, most of the light fixtures in the house had been attached directly to the ceiling without the benefit of a box. While doing that, I realized I'd forgotten a box to install in the hallway. And it was getting dark. And the dining room light fixture opening was in the wrong place. I wasn't going to be able to get it all done in a day.
Still, I was dead-set on getting all the ceiling fan braces installed, so I persevered. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. I crept toward the bedroom, but as I felt about with my foot, digging through layers of blown insulation looking for the next ceiling joist, I found ... nothing. No joist. Not where it should have been anyway. In most modern houses, joists and studs are installed at 18-inch intervals, or sometimes 24-inch intervals. Things are slightly less predictable in old houses. I once lived in a house with 21-inch center studs and joists. How I discovered that, it's a long story.
This house, though, this house ... it mostly has 24-inch centers, except where it doesn't, namely in the bedroom and living room. There, the ceiling joists are 36 inches apart. Too far to install a ceiling fan brace. So I get to plan another day in the attic and this one will be a doozy. I'll have to drag a bunch of lumber up there and sister in some more joists, close enough together to support ceiling fans, and to provide a bit more stability in those ceilings.
Am I starting to regret buying this project house? Oddly enough, no. I'm kind of looking forward to the project. As sick as that is.
There I was last night, lying in bed, all alone, except for the cats. I was just about to drift off to sleep when I suddenly heard a psycho killer stomping around in my attic. Thump thump thump thump. Or maybe it was a monster. Or some lingering un-laid ghost from a bloody Civil War massacre. I hate it when that happens.
Because you know what I had to do. I got out of bed and stood under the attic door in my pajamas, cursing Hubbicula for always being gone when creepy shit happens. When the vampires came around in Tampa, scratching on the windows, where was he? In Classifiedistan, being shot at by jihadis. Lucky bastard.
So, I spent a good ten minutes debating with myself about what to do. There was no way I could go to sleep with that steady, metronome-like thumping. It was snowing outside, so I couldn't exactly go out and look up at the roof and try to figure out what was going on. Finally, I concluded: the odds of a psycho killer were pretty small and the odds of a monster or the ghost of one of Quantrill's Raiders were even smaller. As for the prospect of a skwerl or a raccoon, the thumping was just too rhythmic. It's a well known fact that except for chipmunks, critters don't have a very good sense of rhythm.
It must be the attic fan. It's made strange noises before, creaking, rattling, squealing, but the thumping was just too loud to sleep through. So, I got a coat and shoes and a flashlight, locked the cats in the bathroom, and pulled down the attic stairs. I kept the flashlight up, as a weapon and a guide, and crept up the stairs until I could hit the light switch. No raccoon, no skwerl, no psycho, no monster, and no ghost. Just a stupid attic fan.
In the end, I couldn't figure out why it made a thumping sound every time it rotated, so I did what any half-sane do-it-yourselfer would. I got some twine and tied the fan blades to its support strut to keep it from rotating. Of course, now the fan isn't doing its job, but at least I didn't have to dream about killers walking around in my attic all night.
There are some home repair projects that I enjoy. I like painting, for instance. It doesn't take a lot of brain wattage and the results are immediate. I don't enjoy home repair projects that require me to go into dirty places where spiders congregate, like crawl spaces and attics. The worst projects, however, are the ones that make you feel stupid before it's all over.
This weekend was a combo repair job: bad and stupid.
As with many old houses, our house's attic is ventilated by a fan and by two open dormers. To keep birds and skwerls out of the attic, the dormers have wooden slats and screening fastened inside the attic. This is all fine and has been a successful technique for hundreds of years. The only problem that develops is when you don't check on the dormers and a skwerl or bird gets through the screen. Next thing you know, you've got the bird equivalent of the Sears tower in your attic. I've noticed since we moved in that sparrows occasionally sit on the wooden slats at our north dormer, and it didn't worry me until a few weeks ago, when I was brushing my teeth one morning. That was when I heard not just birdies sitting outside chirping, but what I thought was the sound of a bird flying overhead, followed by chirping overhead. It made me nervous.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You know why? Turns out, it's really hard to nail a piece of screen up over some wooden slats and make it sparrow and skwerl proof. Really hard. Whoever installed the old screen was a master. I am a rank amateur and my screen shows it. It looks like ass, and it doesn't look anywhere near as sturdy as the old one. In fact, the new screening itself is some shoddy crap that doesn't look like it could withstand a full frontal skwerl assault. It looked so flimsy, we ended up nailing the old screening back up over the new screen.
Lessons learned:
Newer is not always better. (And I thought I knew that lesson up and down.)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If you can hear the birds on your roof through your ceiling, you need more insulation in the attic.
