Covering the Line Set and Installing all the Vents Part 1

Last weekend we got the line set routed, but it wasn't fastened to the trailer underneath, and it definitely wasn't protected from anything that may jump up at it when going down the road. So this week we had to take care of that. Drew gleaned inspiration from this video on YouTube and decided that he could bend some thin galvanized steel to form a cover and something that held the line set up at the same time.

Below is the back corner piece being bent to fit into place. This piece was the only piece that was cut first and then bent.

The rest of the pieces were straight runs and it was easier to bend them and then cut them with the electric sheet metal shear that Drew's dad left when we worked on the metal roof. Below is what the piece looked like right as it was ready to be cut.

In the next picture, Drew had already worked his way up from the back of the trailer (working back to front so the overlap is favorable to the direction we will be going down the road) to in between the axles. The picture attempts to show how the metal is bent and installed. To the right of the white insulated line set in the picture is a 6 inch steel beam and above it are 4 inch beams with a sheet metal bottom. This makes roughly a 2 inch corner (since the beams are flush on the top of the trailer) that we used to hide the line set in, and only needed to bend the sheet metal to create the other two sides instead of three.

Some action shots of Drew putting in the last piece (photographs courtesy of Abbie).

There is a break in the sheet metal covering where the scissor jack juts out. That's why the corner piece was the last piece.

The finished product!

Now onto some vents! First up was the LUNOS e2. If you look at the linked brochure you'll notice that they come as pairs. So we had two ~6 1/4 inch diameter tubes that needed to be placed. One in the living room and the other in the sleeping loft. We made a frame inside the wall for each LUNOS e2 unit and transferred the center of the frame on the outside using a drill through the wall. Then used a jigsaw to cut the hole for the tube.

The outside of the LUNOS is supposed to be flush with the outside of the siding, so we used a sample piece of the cedar lap and gap to measure how far the tube needed to come out and then sealed it up in place.

Below is the finished product from the outside after it has been properly flashed and sealed.

And here is what it looks like from the inside. We will just put finish trim up around the part of the tube that protrudes inside the house.

Next up was the vent for the composting toilet. We are using a Nature's Head composting toilet and it has a fan that runs 24/7 to expel the smells from the toilet. So it needed a way to vent to the outside. The easiest way to do that was with 1 1/4 inch PVC pipe that the hose, supplied with the toilet, can connect to and that will vent to the back of the house. So we used a hole saw to make the correct sized hole for the PVC pipe and then used some 2x4s to hold it in place.

This is what the toilet vent looks like from the outside once it was sealed up.

Next up is plumbing, more vents, and exterior electrical boxes!

Electrical Boxes, the Line Set, and Joist Cleaning

If you've been following our blog, you might remember a post that mentioned a battle of the light switches... Well we finally came to a compromise and it was time to start putting up the electrical boxes. Abbie took the initiative and started hanging the boxes. Some of them were in trickier locations than others, but Abbie got them done! She did say that her wrists were hurting the next few days because of the weird angles she had to use the hammer in. It is a tiny house after all, but her tennis two-handed backhand sure came in handy!

While Abbie was hanging the electrical boxes, Drew was working on routing the line set (refrigerant lines) for the mini split (laymen terms: the AC/heating unit). The evaporator half of the mini split is going to be up high on the wall between the two lofts and the condenser is mounted on the back side of the trailer. So the lines needed to make their way between the two.

Here are a few options we considered for routing the lines:

• Straight down inside the wall, through the trailer, and along the bottom of the trailer
• Through the studs in the wall all the way to the back of the trailer
• Up through the rafters all the way to the back of the trailer and then down the inside of the wall
• The normal method on a house, which is through the wall and then along the outside of the house all the way to the back of the trailer

After much thought, we decided the best option for us was to route the lines down the inside of the wall, through the trailer and along the bottom of the trailer. It was going to be the easiest (routing copper lines is not fun) while still looking good (not having a channel running along the outside of the house).

So Drew took a 1 1/2 inch hole saw to make three holes in the bottom plate and subfloor.

A 3 inch hole saw to the bottom of the trailer, and cut out the insulation that was in between.

Pro tip: don't cut a hole in metal from below while wearing a fleece jacket... it was not fun picking the metal shards out of it.

Then we had to route the line set from the outside to the inside up the wall, and finagle it over the axles and to the back of the trailer.

Before she went back to college, Grace, Abbie's sister, helped us out with putting a second coat of paint on some sample interior paneling. We wanted to see what it looked like up on the wall and with several pieces of the tongue and groove together.

We still are a little worried that it may make the house look a little busy with the close lines, but we can't really afford the weight of the thicker shiplap. It would add about 600 lbs to the overall weight?!

Now onto cleaning the Douglas fir joists before they get stained, and it was quite the task... The cleaning process involved clean rags, a scrub brush and some good ol' denatured alcohol. Abbie jumped on this task and did an awesome job, even though she hated every minute of it. She was ready to call it quits several times and just paint the joists. We persevered and while the joists aren't perfect (just don't look too closely if you come visit us), they look much better and are ready to be stained!

Next up is installing all the vents on Rosey Leigh and covering up the line set on the bottom side of the trailer to protect it.

Spray Foam Murder Scene

Before we started on the spray foam, we noticed that our windows had taken on a little bit of water. It had rained pretty hard in Granbury during the week, and it gave us an opportunity to test the windows. Nothing came into the house, but there was some water in the bottom of the slider channels of a few windows that appeared to have experienced some wind driven rain. After a little bit of research it seemed like with slider windows it is normal to have a little water in the slider channel after a hard rain. There are drainage holes in the window that are designed to get that water out, and the next day all of the water was gone. The drainage holes worked!

Now as you may have guessed with the title of this post, we went a little crazy on the expanding foam insulation (Great Stuff). And by we, we mean Drew. While the rough openings for the windows and door were very close to a perfect fit, due to many precise measurements along the way, there were some gaps that needed to be filled.

Please raise your hands if you love a drafty house?! See, no one. For this reasons, Drew spent Saturday going a little overboard with the Great Stuff around every window, the door and even in the headers. Foaming the headers were mainly just to add a little insulation in them to raise their R-value slightly by getting rid of the air gap.

Be warned, you will have to clean up this mess once it dries. Abbie spent Sunday with a knife carefully cutting off all of the extra goop. Carefully, because you want to avoid cutting the window, house wrap, and flashing tape underneath. Below is what a window looks like when it is cleaned up a little bit. The trim we are going to put up around the window will cover the rest of the spray foam once it is installed.

After finishing up with the window and door gaps. We also needed to tape the house wrap to the top of the top plate. This finishes off the top of the house wrap and gets us ready for installing the fascia vents and the rafter baffles which together will vent the roof (you'll hear about this in more detail in a later post).

In the first picture below you can see the house wrap between the subfascia (2x4 in the top of the picture) and the top plate (2x4 in the bottom of the picture). It's not really attached to anything at this point and it just flaps in the wind. So we had to cut the house wrap at each rafter, fold it over of the top plate, and tape it down with Tyvek tape.

The picture below shows the finished product.

Next up will be installing the line set (refrigerant lines) for the mini split and setting the electrical boxes!