The House We Live In: A Series on Building the Sustainable Home in Tucson, Arizona
Tis week I’ve been in the midst of construction. Not of my new house, but on the rental I’m currently living in. The previous landlord sold it to a new family, and in the process, they agreed to replace all the plumbing. All the plumbing.
At first it was just giant trenches in the back yard. But eventually, they had to do the part inside my house, which involves cutting giant holes in the walls and ceiling so they can install the new piping in various rooms around the house, including the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom closets. It took them two days to do this; it will take them two more days to come in and drywall over the holes and finish everything.
I won’t dwell on the massive inconvenience of moving my things out of corners and closets and the dust and dirt. That won’t be such a big deal with this project, because I won’t be living there while the work happens. The fun part of this is that I’ve gotten to see the inside of the walls and ceiling. I can see the different kinds of (old) insulation in different places. In some places I can see to the exterior brick–red on the inside, although the outside is painted white. I can see the old pipes, and the new, colorful ones. It is giving me a glimpse both of the mild chaos involved in construction and of the fun part–the guts of a building.
It’s surely very different from what I will have. For one thing it’s old–things are crumbling a bit, and the materials are those that were popular in the 1940s, when this house was built. And it was not designed for efficiency–even garden variety, money-saving efficiency, let alone carefully engineered optimum efficiency. But seeing it laid bare like this, I already understand it better. I can see, to some extent, what’s wrong with this old way of doing things, and how Matthew’s plans for the walls will be so beneficial.
We also had a little mishap, during the transfer of ownership, with the gas company. The property has two separate gas accounts, one for the main house and one for my house, the pool house (which has hot water), and the dryer. The new owners transferred the main house account to their names, not realizing that there was a second account–so mine was shut off, and the gas company had to come and check all the connections and start it back up.
I’ve discussed before how I’m not going to use gas in my new house–no combustion will make the energy profile significantly different and reduce the ventilation needs. And this experience made me feel good about that choice; gas is complicated. It’s an additional external resource to worry about. And it’s just plan scary at times; the technician who came out warned that the dryer was vented toward an operable window, meaning that if I had my kitchen window open when the dryer was running, I would be getting the used, gas-heated air inside my house. That’s not something I’ll worry about with an electric dryer and an induction range.
Do I wish this whole chaotic interlude hadn’t happened? Sure. It’s no fun. But (knock on wood) it should be all wrapped up tomorrow. And at least it’s given me a new inlet to thinking about and understanding buildings, and why I’m building my house the way I am.
