How Do You Get The Sprinkler Pipe Into The Joists?

Posted on April 9, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Yesterday we stopped by the building to talk to the contractor. During the day I had realized something that was fairly serious… The plans call for the sprinklers to be recessed into the ceiling. But I couldn’t imagine how you’d get the sprinkler pipe threaded through the joists. Even if you could do it while the joists were being installed the sprinkler subcontractor hasn’t done the engineering yet to determine what size pipes go where.

So when I got to the job site one of my first questions to our contractor was “So how do you get the sprinkler pipe into the joists?” There was just a blank look on his on our contractor’s face (initially). First he suggested visible sprinkler pipes, but I said ‘no’ and that Dan would go ballistic if we had to do that. His foreman (vice-president) was standing there and suggested the sprinkler pipe be run along the side and hidden with crown moulding. I reminded him we weren’t putting in crown moulding. He said, well, I guess we’ll have to put it in. I just shook my head ‘no’. Crown moulding just doesn’t work with the aesthetic we’re trying to achieve.

The contractor then said that usually sprinkler pipe is run inside a “second ceiling” – in other words they hang wall studs below the joists and run the pipe in there. BUT that hadn’t been calculated into the floor-to-floor heights that we needed to achieve 8′ ceilings. Needless to say, I was really glad that a moment before he had told me that it looked like we’d get 8’2″ to 8’3″ of ceiling height on the basement level (the rental unit) – we might need that 2 to 3″ for sprinklers.

I then called the architect and he said one other option is to notch the bottom of the joists, put the pipe up into the joists and then patch the bottom of the joist so it regains it’s strength (something you can only do with metal joists). Doesn’t sound like an optimal solution, but at least we have another option.

So it looks like we have two options. One is to lower the ceiling a bit and run the pipes below the joists. The other is to cut into the joists and then patch the bottom of the joists. I’m just glad I thought of it when I did. I’d rather be having this conversation now – when there’s just 1 and a half floors in – than when all the floors are framed. It’s also good that it came up on a Friday. Now the contractor has the weekend to think about it and talk to his plumber. Perhaps the plumber has seen another solution that we haven’t though of yet.

It’ll be interesting to see how it gets resolved…

UPDATE:

After writing this I thought up one more solution I like better than the other two… Run the “trunks” for each floor in the western wall. Then run “branches” up and into the joists wherever a head is required. The only complication are heads opposite stairwells, but I think we can work solutions for each of those locations.

FINAL SOLUTION:

It’s now 5 months later and the sprinklers are being put in. The solution was to run short sections of sprinkler pipe through the joists. Here’s a picture showing what I’m talking about (click to see bigger version)…

However, our plumber only seems comfortable doing that with the smallest diameter pipe. He didn’t want to run any main lines through the joists. So instead of having one sprinkler riser going up through our plumbing wall we have two smaller ones – one for the back of the building and one for the front of the building. Then there are branch lines off of those that either run through the walls or run parallel with the joists. Using that strategy only thin (1″) pipe needs to be snaked through the joists.

The first floor…

Posted on April 7, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

We stopped by the house yesterday to check in with our contractor and the subfloor was being put down between the cellar and the basement. It felt weird to walk into the building on an actual floor – even if what I was walking on was just plywood thrown onto joists.

The first of the floors to go into the house

I’m standing about 1/3rd of the way into what will be the rental unit. The hole you see is where the stairs will go so the tenant can get down into the cellar – the tenant will have “accessory space” down there they can use as a workroom, a den, a media room, etc. The workers are sitting (to each lunch) in what will be a bedroom – more or less where the bed will be.

I need to check next time but I think the new joists make it so the back door can’t be opened since we’re raising the floor a few inches. Where the workers are sitting will be where the tenant will put his/her bed. The window in their bedroom (currently blocked up) is quite large – 3’9″ x 5’10”. It’s south facing so it (and the door next to it) will let in tons of light, though we will have a 4′ deep deck outside that will give them some shade.

The big hole between the door and the window is where a previous occupant cut a hole for an air conditioner. It’s only supported by the air conditioner sleeve that’s in there – so a bit precarious. Needless to say that’s high on the list to get fixed.

Our front door You can see where the upper part of the wall has been sealed. We went next door to meet the neighbor and saw saw that that they have what we used to have – a half wall on the bottom and exposed brick on top. The half wall is where electrical wires ran, etc. We’ll be having full (insulated) walls on the exterior walls and a completely exposed wall on the party wall.

Our contractor cut the lock on the front door, so we also saw our front door for the first time yesterday (right). It needs a paint job, but it’s pretty solid – though it does make you feel like you’re going into a fortress or something. Still, it’s way better than the crappy door that was there in the 1980 tax photo. We’ll be taking it out and putting in a door that more-or-less replicates the original french doors that were on the building.

Since we now have access to the front door, we can see what our parlor floor looks like…

The parlor floor of a Harlem brownstone shell - before renovation

As you can see by all the sagging, the joists are in poor quality here too…

There will be a kitchen to the right just inside the front door. Then a central staircase wrapping around a central core. Then the dining area and then the living room in the rear.

We’ll be making the window on the left into a door and there will be a small 4′ deep deck going across the house. The deck will have a pergola so we can have vines grow up that will give us some shade in the summer. There will also be stairs down from the porch into the garden. The window on the right is even bigger than the one in the basement – 3’9″ x 8′. That (and the door) will give us tons of light in our living room since that’s a southern exposure. The window will be a tilt-n-turn, so it can open up completely like a door (only it doesn’t go all the way to the ground). With the window and door open the living room will feel completely connected to the outdoors – which should be nice when the weather is mild.

Here are a couple other cool shots taken from the front door…

Fireplace openings in a brownstone shell in Harlem

Notice in the picture below that even the “good” joists have had things done to them that severely weaken them. You can see a notch out of the top of the joist – typically done to run wires. If you put a 2″ notch in a 10″ beam that makes it the same as an 8″ beam – severely weakening it. If you need to run something through a beam the hole should go in the center of the beam.

Inside of gutted townhouse shell in Harlem

Cool Under Construction Photo

Posted on April 5, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

This past Saturday we had architecture students from CityTech come see the house. Dan’s a (web design) professor at CityTech and one of the architecture professors (Ken Conzelmann) took the photo below. I think it’s pretty cool – with the light streaming through the joists it’s quite beautiful…

light streaming in a townhouse shell

I love the height of everything, but of course that will go away with the renovation since floors will go in.

The “hole” in the wall is an old fireplace. The previous owner (a developer/landlord) had pretty much ripped it out. We’ll fill the hole back in with brick to make the wall stronger.

You can also see that we’re raising the floor between the cellar and basement to give a full 8′ clearance in the cellar. The joists used to rest on top of the foundation – now they’re a few inches higher.

Changes in Northwest Mount Morris Park 2000-2010

Posted on April 4, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

The data from the 2010 Census has been released and I’m going to start doing posts of how different neighborhoods have changed over the past 10 years – starting with my own neighborhood – Census tract 222 which you could loosely call Mount Morris Park Northwest – going from 122nd Street to 126th Street and from Lenox Ave to Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

Map of census tracts in lower Harlem

The quick take aways are as follows:

The number of blacks / African Americans declined 18% – from 2,029 to 1,667
The percentage of blacks / African Americans went from 84.1% to 63.4%
The number of white residents increased 310% – from 129 to 529
The percentage of white residents went from 5.3% to 20%
The number of Latinos rose 49.7% – from 330 to 494
The percentage of Latinos rose from 13.7% to 17.4%.
The number of Asians rose 157% – from 30 to 77
The percentage of Asians rose from 1.2% to 2.9%
Overall the population in tract 222 rose 9.6% – from 2,412 to 2,644
The number of housing units went up (net) by 33 – from 1,429 to 1,462
The number of vacant housing units went up by 27 – from 324 to 351

[Latinos can be of any race – white, black, etc.]

Before seeing the data I wondered whether non-blacks were displacing blacks or whether the percentage of blacks was going down due to new housing coming on the market and being occupied by non-blacks. Well, clearly blacks are getting displaced. I can’t say what the mechanism is for that displacement but one way or another it’s happening.

What this means is the black hegemony in Harlem is quickly becoming a thing of the past. If trends continue (and I see nothing stopping the trends), in 10 years it’s possible that there could be more white people in our immediate neighborhood than black people. That’s a bit shocking, actually…

Personally, I like racially diverse neighborhoods. Currently Dan and I live in a neighborhood (Hudson Heights) that’s 76% white and I find it a bit dull. But I have to wonder what this is going to do to the psyche of Black Harlem. For so many decades Harlem has been “theirs”. All indications are that they’ll lose their dominance in Harlem in the next 10 years – and they’ll lose it to whites more than any other group.

WSJ Editor Moves In After Renovation

Posted on March 31, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

For those of you who are looking for what it really costs to renovate a townhouse – Julia Angwin, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, has been blogging the renovation of her brownstone that’s an avenue and a half from ours – just down 123rd Street, west of Manhattan Avenue. Well, she’s “done” and has moved in…

Her blog is one of the few that discusses cost. She and her husband bought the place for $800K in February of 2010 – just a month before we bought our place. Their townhouse is 16′ x 60′ x 4 stories – so 3,840 sq. ft. That means she paid $208/sq. ft. That may seem a little high, but theirs was not a shell – just a place in need of major renovation.

Their renovations were estimated to cost $350K, but wound up costing $420K ($109/sq. ft.) They went 20% over budget in part because they jumped right into renovations with very little planning. They hadn’t planned on replacing the roof (only patching it). They hadn’t planned for a back deck, etc.

Stairs in Julia Angwin's house before renovation So they say they spent $1.22M in total. Let’s call it $1.25M since I’m sure there were at least some costs that weren’t reported. That means their total investment was $325/sq. ft. which is very close to what I estimate our cost will be when we’re done – the difference is they’re moving in after 13 months and we’ll move in after 21 months (if things go smoothly).

One thing that should be noted is that they’re not really done yet. They still need to get a new C of O. Without a new C of O they can’t legally rent the basement apartment. Apparently, the process of getting a C of O can be a bit tortuous. I wish them the best, but there are things I don’t quite understand about what I see online concerning their renovations. For example, I’m a little confused about their sprinkler situation. Their Alt-1 filing says there were no sprinklers in the building, but I see them in the “before” pictures – so not sure what the story is with that. I think I see flush sprinkler heads in some of the after pictures – but I’m not 100% sure whether they’re there or not. The Alt-1 doesn’t mention sprinkler work. I’m guessing because they were spending less than half the value of the building on renovations they got in under more lenient rules. I just hope they don’t encounter major problems with their C of O inspection.

Anyway, here are some before and after pictures… I love the picture of the stairs (above and right)… I actually really love the blue wallpaper and how it combines with the maroon and green in the picture. Not sure I’d want to live with it, but it photographs beautifully. There were actually quite a few interesting colors in the house before renovation. On other blogs people have criticized her for stripping the soul out of the place. Personally, I think it just needs a little color – most everything is now white. Here’s an after shot of the stairs. Unfortunately (IMHO) they removed the wainscoting…

The stairs after renovation

Here’s some of the rooms before renovations… Some of them make me want to shoot an art film… The rooms are beautiful in some respects, though I wouldn’t want to live in them – just pretty in pictures…

Here’s the future kitchen before…

Green room before renovation

And the kitchen after…

Julia Angwin's kitchen

And another before shot…

Bedroom before renovation

Here’s what will be the ground floor rental (looking forward)…

Messy room before renovation

And the rental after renovation (looking back)…

Rental unit's kitchen

The fireplaces were something they took a lot of heat for in blog comments. They were concerned their kids would get lead poisoning from them, so they took all of them out and only left one in their master bedroom.

Fireplace after renovation

The master bath was another problem area. The glass hasn’t been installed around the shower so it looks a little bare right now, but the problem was the bathtub. The contractor didn’t leave enough space for the deep soaking tub they wanted, so they got a shallow tub which is useless – it’s not much good as a bathtub and they don’t need two showers in one bathroom.

Master bathroom with shallow tub

So that’s the type of renovation you can pull off in 13 months with a total investment of $1.25M. That gives you a 2,600 sq. ft., 4 bedroom owners triplex and an 870 sq. ft., 1(+) bedroom rental unit (minus space for stairs).

And as far as the payoff… CONSERVATIVELY her place is now worth $1.6M ($417/sq. ft.) so with $1.25M invested they just netted $350K (on paper), but it could very well be worth more – they’ve got an excellent location – very close to express trains and to Columbia University.