Game Changer Heat & A/C In the Shop

[ebinmaine 77,102]

18 minutes ago, WHX?? said:

Yeah I guess I forget that. In the plow fields we turn over very large rocks that used to be 10 ft down and now at the surface. 

 

Back in 2016 (?) Trina and I traveled to the Midwest to visit an old friend of hers. 

We flew to Minn/St. Paul and she drove to Mandan ND. 

Having both been born n raised in New England we were FLABBERGASTED by the lack of rocks out there. 

Every several hundred feet there would be a pile. Some that would fit in a pickup truck. Most a little larger. 

The biggest pile we saw was about half the size of our ranch style house. And that was HUGE to them.  

 

 

 

 

[Handy Don 15,768]

2 hours ago, ebinmaine said:

born n raised in New England we were FLABBERGASTED by the lack of rocks out there. 

If only we could find a way to profitably export rocks! 

[lynnmor 8,577]

7 minutes ago, Handy Don said:

If only we could find a way to profitably export rocks! 

But Maine would disappear under the sea. 

[Handy Don 15,768]

2 minutes ago, lynnmor said:

But Maine would disappear under the sea. 

Valid point, sir.

[ebinmaine 77,102]

14 minutes ago, lynnmor said:

But Maine would disappear under the sea. 

 

11 minutes ago, Handy Don said:

Valid point, sir.

That's the exact phrase I was about to answer

[Blue Chips 658]

7 hours ago, ebinmaine said:

Remember the mountain. I don't live on flat ground like most of you do. I literally live on top of a pile of Boulders and they are CONSTANTLY MOVING.

 

 

7 hours ago, ebinmaine said:

In my area you cannot dig into the land for the installation.

 

Likewise, where we are, it wouldn't be easy to dig very far into the ground, as ledge is protruding from many places in our back yard. 

 

Relating to the thread topic, the type of subsurface under a shop/garage/home can have an effect on one's heating and cooling costs. We've pulled some big boulders out here and there, but for the most part, our land is solid ledge, with areas of shallow soil and clay. Our current house was built directly on solid ledge, and the floor of the basement is the ledge itself. Even though the basement is not heated, and there is an open vent to the outside (our rather old boiler draws its air from the basement, which draws outside air into the basement), the ledge acts as a massive, high-density heat sink that helps keep the basement much cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than if the floor was just typical concrete over gravel and deep soil. If/when we replace the boiler with a more efficient one that uses outside air for combustion, the basement will be even cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than it is now.

 

Likewise, the foundation of our new garage was poured directly on ledge, which made it a challenge to fit the forms to the rock. As an aside (pardon any interruption), I made a custom scribing tool to mark the forms accurately. Here are a few photos of the forms for the footings that went under the foundation walls of the new garage.

 

 

Examples of footing forms scribed to fit the convolutions in the rock:

 

 

 

Here's the garage foundation after pouring the foundation walls on top of the concrete footings, installing interior and exterior perimeter drains, backfilling, insulating the inside of the foundation walls, and filling with compacted crushed stone:

 

 

Ledge/bedrock extends all the way down to our shore on the river (photo taken about mid-tide).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 07:40 PM by Blue Chips

[ebinmaine 77,102]

7 minutes ago, Blue Chips said:

the foundation of our new garage was poured directly on ledge, which made it a challenge to fit the forms to the rock. As an aside (pardon any interruption), 

 

 

Not to get too far off topic but just out of curiosity. Were you required to have the bottom of your concrete a certain amount of inches below the surface?

 

We were told before we started the barn project that the final ground surface would need to be a minimum 36 inches above the bottom of any concrete.

Bed ledge or not.

 

 

 

[Blue Chips 658]

14 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

Not to get too far off topic but just out of curiosity. Were you required to have the bottom of your concrete a certain amount of inches below the surface?

We were told before we started the barn project that the final ground surface would need to be a minimum 36 inches above the bottom of any concrete.

Bed ledge or not.

 

If you're talking about the garage foundation, if I recall, since 100% of the footing was poured directly on solid ledge, the freeze depth requirements didn't apply, and I cleared it with the building inspector prior to pouring. He was happy with the whole project. 

 

BTW, @ebinmaine, I don't know what he would have said if it was only partially on ledge and partially on soil.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 07:11 PM by Blue Chips

[Handy Don 15,768]

Friends thought I was wasting money to fully seal and insulate our below-grade basement--walls and most of the floor--at the time of construction. It has made it much more livable in the play area and in my shop.

Switching to sealed combustion for heat/hot water also made a big difference. 

Edited Tuesday at 10:41 PM by Handy Don

[adsm08 4,156]

10 hours ago, F. Marra 17 said:

The data centers I have built and worked on all have 100k - 200k gallons of fuel oil underground storage tanks piped into massive generators to power them.

 

Microsoft is literally rebuilding/reopening Three Mile Island just for a data center.

[Racinbob 12,703]

There's a place about 5 miles from here called Baileys Discount Center. It's like a Big Lots on steroids and ya never know what you will find. Sometimes a great deal, sometimes a so-so deal and sometimes you wonder where the heck did they find that brand. Once in a while it's fun just to walk the isles to see what's there. I did just that this morning and wasn't really looking for anything. It was kinda ironic that, after this thread, they had these stacked on pallets. 4800, 7500 and 10000 watts at a very fair price. I had been thinking about one but never pulled the trigger but then they go and shove them in my face. I opted for the 7500w. I'll go ahead and hardwire it into the panel. The 3 milkhouse heaters were getting the job done but it was a pain making sure they were sitting in a safe spot (and on separate circuits). Gotta get right on it because the boss has me doing a pretty major facelift to the front entry/deck as soon as the weather breaks.

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:16 PM by Racinbob

[JCM 10,688]

Keeping my promise Jim @WHX?? you wanted pictures of the 2 in 1 vent for the Modine heater with concentric on the outlet side.  I used black aluminum screening with good ole aluminum tape. I had to make 2 vertical cuts on the storm collar to make it fit between the Battens on either side.  Cheers

Edited 18 hours ago by JCM

[WHX?? 54,595]

10 minutes ago, JCM said:

pictures of the 2 in 1 vent

Interesting Plunge. Yep I could see mud daubers going in there in the off season just like a camper. Lady bugs in the fall ...

Some control boards cycle  the exhaust blower on every few days without firing the burners to roust them out and it really does work. 

Nice the way you cut that storm collar in between the R B & B for trim. A true pro &  we are definitely cut of of the same cloth! 

[WHX?? 54,595]

On 2/11/2026 at 12:16 PM, Racinbob said:

3 milkhouse heaters

Well glad to see your getting rid of those Bob. Them things burned down more milk houses than I care to count. It wasn't the heater but the plug was questionable. Bad connection in a bad duplex = heat = . 

Edited 18 hours ago by WHX??

[WHX?? 54,595]

On 2/10/2026 at 8:07 AM, ebinmaine said:

New England we were FLABBERGASTED by the lack of rocks out there. 

I don't know Unit  ... @Sparky s neck of the woods there are many old stone fences ... many dating back to colonial days. 

 

On 2/10/2026 at 1:14 PM, Handy Don said:

insulate our below-grade basement--walls

Plunge's code required here on a new build. Floor no tho. 

 

On 2/10/2026 at 12:57 PM, ebinmaine said:

We were told before we started the barn project

Things really sound messed up there ... as much as I would enjoy living in the woods of Maine I would be mowing a lot in the dark & The @Pullstart would be on speed dial. .. 

Edited 17 hours ago by WHX??

[ebinmaine 77,102]

41 minutes ago, WHX?? said:

On 2/10/2026 at 9:07 AM, ebinmaine said:

New England we were FLABBERGASTED by the lack of rocks out there. 

I don't know Unit  ... @Sparky s neck of the woods there are many old stone fences ... many dating back to colonial days. 

 

Exactly my point. 

I mean the lack of rocks in the Midwest compared to here....

[Racinbob 12,703]

8 hours ago, WHX?? said:

Well glad to see your getting rid of those Bob. Them things burned down more milk houses than I care to count. It wasn't the heater but the plug was questionable. Bad connection in a bad duplex = heat = . 

 

Not an issue here. I've seen enough non-electrician homeowner wired houses to know that it's a good idea to go through every connection in the house. In this case he even had a couple dozen+ junction boxes in the attic. There were several potential problems with a few that I would call serious. Still, it wasn't the worse I've seen. All the receps and switches have been checked or replaced to get rid of the back stabbed nonsense and verify solid connections. Heavily used receps have been upgraded to 5362's. My main concern was that the often changing landscape in the garage made it a bit of a challenge to make sure one of them wasn't near something combustible. 

[WHX?? 54,595]

12 hours ago, ebinmaine said:

lack of rocks in the Midwest

Some areas there are. The glaciers did some pretty cool things here. Got a trail at the cabin looks like your mountain. I call it rocky road & huge bolders & rocks. A very cool trail on the SxS. 

[Blue Chips 658]

1 hour ago, WHX?? said:

Some areas there are. The glaciers did some pretty cool things here. Got a trail at the cabin looks like your mountain. I call it rocky road & huge bolders & rocks. A very cool trail on the SxS. 

 

I lived in Minnesota for six years and did some work in Appleton, WI on and off for a couple of years, and while not as rocky overall as Maine, there are definitely a number of very scenic rocky areas, such as the Baraboo Range in WI and the rocky coast and cliffs along the North Shore of Lake Superior in MN, to name just a couple.

 

As to the use of local rocks here in Maine, the basement of the antique Federal Period house that we restored and sold a couple of years ago had some pretty hefty stones in its foundation, and these weren't the largest ones. Unlike our current residence, which was built directly on bedrock/ledge, the antique house was built on sandy glacial till, and these stones would have been hauled in from some distance away. "Power equipment" in those days would have been a team of oxen.

 

 

We didn't want to cover up the beautiful stonework in the foundation, especially after going to so much work to clean, grout, and re-point it all, so we insulated the outside of the foundation walls below grade instead of the inside, which also provided an opportunity to install a perimeter drain system. Unlike many basements in old Maine houses, this one is now dry.

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Blue Chips

[Handy Don 15,768]

1 hour ago, Blue Chips said:

install a perimeter drain system.

So little incremental cost on a new build, but very dear as a retrofit, sooo valuable.

The ONLY time we’ve had a water incursion was when the pump failed and we didn’t notice. Duh. Shoulda had an alarm in the first place!

[Blue Chips 658]

1 minute ago, Handy Don said:

So little incremental cost on a new build, but very dear as a retrofit, sooo valuable.

The ONLY time we’ve had a water incursion was when the pump failed and we didn’t notice. Duh. Shoulda had an alarm in the first place!

 

Yes, very much worthwhile. I already had to excavate around the entire foundation of the house for doing the extensive foundation repair work, so the only extra excavation that was needed for the perimeter drain system was a long (and deep) trench that led to a daylight exit on the side of a slope maybe 200 feet from the house, so the system drained by gravity...no pump needed. I have a loader/backhoe, so I did all of the excavation and backfill work myself, which saved thousands.

 

 

[Handy Don 15,768]

5 minutes ago, Blue Chips said:

so the system drained by gravity...no pump needed.

Good for you! A daylight option for mine meant a similar distance but across my downhill neighbor’s lawn and driveway and then under the village-owned sidewalk to the gutter. 

Nope. Not happening,

Thankfully, the water table rises to “pumping” level only for short periods in late winter and spring. We consider it a small price to pay for having a full 8’ ceiling basement--a rarity in this rocky hillside village. 

[WHX?? 54,595]

Holy cow Chips... I've seen quite a few old 2 foot stone foundations ... somewhat common here... but never one with boulders like that. Most guys would spray foam it but that would be a shame.