Rich Trethewey talks energy efficient mechanical rooms on the set of a This Old House project house.
Rich Trethewey talks energy efficient mechanical rooms on the set of a This Old House project house.Rich has been part of the This Old House team since the home improvement show’s debut in 1979. He is part of Ask This Old House and an author. He is a licensed master and journeyman plumber and his family’s business, Trethewey Bros. Inc., has been in business since 1902.
Mark: You are back inside MyFixitUpLife with my wife Theresa.
Theresa: And my husband Mark.
Rich: You two.
Mark: Lets just get closer together on this couch.
Theresa: We sitting so close together on the couch.
Rich: I am going to blush.
Mark: And the person we’re making uncomfortable, no sit back down on the chair, sit back down and Rich Trethewey, master plumber for This Old House.
Rich: Nice to see you guys again.
Theresa: Well it is very nice to see you and see you in your element too.
Rich: What a very comfortable basement.
Theresa: Yeah, a very comfortable basement.
Rich: I’m always in the basement.
Theresa: And Mark has been excited about seeing everything in the basement too.
Rich: Yeah
Theresa: Because that’s where everything really happens down here.
Rich: What’s amazing is how little you spend. There is an air handler right in this closet. So its beautifully detailed and nobody can even find it, yet Tommy left beautiful access panels for people in the future to come back in this. So its all hidden away, we have just a little, small two inch round outlets to put the heating and cooling in here. Its like good children, you don’t see them and you don’t hear them. Sorry kids.
Theresa: They’re very well behaved now.
Mark: Yeah, but I really love you. I love you but there would be no interruptions.
Rich: That’s right.
Theresa: Well I have a question for you.
Rich: OK.
Mark: When did Rich win father of the year award?
Theresa: No, speaking of children, families and everything, one question we get asked all the time is, you know the quick holiday fix ups around the house and the whole thing, do you guys do anything when you’re having company over?
Mark: In your real life?
Theresa: In your real life?
Rich: You always just duct tape everything up and…
Theresa: I figured you’d have an answer like that.
Rich: It only has to be good for that day.
Theresa: Yeah, OK. A little glue, a little duct tape.
Rich: All of us contractors, we always keep our house in perfect repair, there is no punch list.
Mark: Yeah, that’s true.
Theresa: That is true.
Rich: Hello, is this on?
Theresa: That is.
Mark: That is one hundred percent true in all cases.
Rich: Then there’s always the big threat, my wife says, “Should I call somebody?” I’m like, “No honey, I’ll do it.” You know the big threat, call your biggest competitor to come in.
Theresa: Well what’s the thing on the list right now, that’s she dying for you to do?
Rich: Well, it just happened the fences came down, in our most recent noreastern, so we had to scramble and get a little work done. Dig some post holes and get the fence put back on. Otherwise the house is pretty good.
Mark: Oh, that’s good.
Theresa: That sounds really good.
Mark: And this house is pretty awesome.
Theresa: Oh my goodness.
Mark: We were able to, the work that we’ve seen so far is your work and that mechanical room is a work of art.
Theresa: It’s beautiful it literally is beautiful in there.
Rich: Yeah, we had a fabulous mechanic to work with us and we a wall hung condensing boiler. It used to be this big old cast iron boiler and the chimney used to go right up here. In show number one we came in and said, its all got to go because we need this room and we just moved everything to the back. It a beautiful highly efficient boiler. We’ve got a tank to make hot water and then we’ve got radiant floor heating everywhere one the first floor. So all that, really the money space, that beautiful, you haven’t seen that yet, the kitchen that just falls right through from kitchen to dining room to family room. They’ll have floor warming under the floor. So it will never be hot enough to make them to warm but it’ll just be to chase the chill off and then we’ll be able to have heating and cooling from the secondary small outlets.
Mark: Wow.
Rich: And then the bathroom upstairs. There is two beautiful bathrooms, we did radiant in the walls and in the floors of the showers. All the cold surfaces, which are usually a terrible liability, become this great asset because you’re comfortable when you’re going into those big tile spaces.
Mark: Is it hydronic?
Rich: Yeah, hydronic.
Mark: So you’ve got tubes in the floor.
Rich: Yeah, we’ve got miles and miles of tubing. Uponor was the radiant floor heating company that helped us with all this stuff and…
Mark: There is no radiator, no…
Rich: No, there was big radiators here and personally I like big radiators and it gives off a great heat but there was no chance that big radiators were going to fit in Scandinavian modern.
Mark: Right.
Theresa: Yeah, that would be a hard sell.
Rich: So we needed to make them.
Theresa: It would definitely be a very hard sell.
Mark: Now if somehow has an old house and their furnace is coming to the end of it’s service life…
Theresa: Oh its like us.
Mark: Sort of like us, OK segue into…
Theresa: He’s asking a question about us.
Mark: I’m not, I’m not. In this house you said had a chimney randomly in the middle of this room, can someone affordably or what should someone think about if they want to reclaim that space and move their service somewhere else?
Rich: Well, if you buy any new modern gas fired equipment particularly, it is so efficient that it can’t go into a chimney. It is has to do air vent because there is nothing left in the exhaust except a little bit of temperature and a little bit of water. Typically with a chimney mounted boilers, the flu gas is so hot that it would create a draft going up that chimney all the time and tons of the heat going out this way. With the modern ones it comes on and it does just what it needs to do and it vents to outside. So you can’t, you need to get rid of your chimney. Any modern furnace, any modern boiler will be generally taking air from outside and then venting to outside.
Mark: And direct vent means you’ve just got a fitting on the wall on the exterior. Nothing going all the way to the roof.
Rich: Actually I like to have the exhaust pipes, it needs to be plastic of some sort. I like to have them go out through the roof because nothing beats putting it up an away where people can’t see it. If you direct vent through the side of the building just like a dryer vent, you always worry about moister and moister laden air coming back and going against the windows or against the side of the building on the north.
Mark: Oh so you evacuate it.
Rich: I love to put the pipe right up through the roof.
Mark: Do you hide…
Rich: Try to.
Mark: Do you hide the PVC like in a gutter down spout or…
Rich: Yeah, I think some of these buildings look terrible with these PVC exhaust pipes on the side of them. They just look terrible.
Mark: How do you hide it?
Rich: You just go up and make it look like a plumbing vent going through the roof.
Mark: Oh you keep it inside the framing then.
Rich: Oh sure, inside the building.
Mark: Oh, inside the house.
Rich: Inside the building, during a renovation.
Mark: What I would as you mentioned earlier is just duct tape a bunch of PVC on the house.
Theresa: Duct tape works.
Rich: That’s right.
Theresa: Yeah.
Mark: And hope some air goes through. I don’t connect them.
Theresa: Well we have to go to break babe.
Mark: We’ll be back with more of MyFixitUpLife. See you in a bit.
Check out more advice from This Old House’s Rich Trethewey on his Twitter feed.
[…] our spouse or a prospective homebuyer. As Ask This Old House master plumber Rich Trethewey says, make an appointment with yourself to check out your house with a fresh set of eyes. And think clean. Are the kids’ bikes organized […]