Duct, Duct, Go

With most of the plumbing now out of the way, it was time to tackle something different. Not any cleaner, but at least different.

The downstairs/restaurant kitchen isn't heated. Presumably, it stayed warm enough when they were cooking all day, or they just stayed out of the kitchen on off days. At any rate, there aren't any heat registers in that part of the house and it gets a bit cold in the winter. We keep the door to the kitchen closed, and we blocked off the waiter pass-through. Even though there are two bathrooms (and a storage room) in there, we rarely use them when it's cold. For the most part, we've treated the downstairs kitchen as, um, cold storage.

No more. Since we're pulling up the floor in the kitchen anyway (more on that later), this seemed like a good time to add a heat register in that corner of the house. Another trip to the hardware store! I got me all the bits and pieces I needed, including insulation, ductwork, fittings, fasteners, and so on. A new adventure awaited.

Cutting the hole in the floor was easy, especially since there was already a hole nearby. That allowed me to reach through the first hole with one hand while placing the duct and the register with the other. The plan was to tee the new duct off of another nearby duct about 6 feet away. Over at Home Depot, I got me a 6-foot length of aluminum duct and a similar length of fiberglass insulation. But over on the next shelf, they had a 25-foot length of already-insulated ductwork for the same price. Hmmm. Four times more than I need, but hey, free ductwork!

The weird thing was, the 25-foot length came in a 3-foot box. How does that work?

The answer: Stand back when you open the box. Sproing!!!! Massive jack-in-the-box, complete with fiberglass overcoat. Swell. Now I get to drag this big snake around with me as I crawl under the house to splice in the new ductwork. Flashlight in one hand, hacksaw in the other, screwdrivers, knives, duct tape, and whatnot stuffed into pockets, it's time to inch along the crawlspace. Naturally, the new duct goes right where the clearance is most narrow and congested, so I'm working on my back with gas lines, water pipes, and our spanking new drain maze all right in my face. I got to spend some quality time with the dark underside of an old house.

Now I've got about 19 feet of excess ductwork that I can't fit back into the box. Anybody need an extra heater vent?