Down in the gutter

Quick trip up to the cottage this weekend, arrived late Friday night and left early evening Saturday night, but none-the-less, still productive. I finished up the wall insulation, doorway cripples, and bathroom fan duct termination to the roof soffits. The big accomplishment this weekend was getting the gutters installed. Tom (from Tom Begala Construction) was great - quick, high-quality and fantastic price. He installed seemless gutters and two downspouts in two hours.

Latest photo of the cottage, gutters done, and water tank in place (far left) 

 Front gutter and downspout

 Back gutter and downspout

Pex manifold - done!

All supply lines labeled, ready and waiting for water

Bathroom fan vent duct terminated into soffit - please read on...

The photo above of the bathroom fan duct work needs some explanation. Although, looking at the photo is super boring, this was a nice little piece of work I was able to put together. Keep in mind that the time frame to complete was about 3-4 weeks due to the wrong material, returning stuff and getting new stuff to and from the island.

Without further ado... typically you would use 4 inch galvanized pipe for your bathroom fan vents. However, due to the size of the space between the ceiling and sub-floor in the attic, I had to use 3 inch. My attempt to hand bend flat 3 inch galvanized steel into the needed 3 inch tubes was completely unsuccessful. The balance between forcing the seem to lock without leaving permanent bends and bumps was impossible. After much frustration, it was time to put down and place in the Home Depot return category. I researched other options online (as usual) and found that you could use beloved pvc. OK now the pvc fits well, but how do you connect to the outside? using the existing soffit vents? I bought some soffit caps from Home Depot (wrong parts) and then tried eBay for a specific under soffit adapter. You can't tell from the photo, but there is absolutely no room to attach any type of 90 deg adapter to the pvc vent due to the pitch of the roof. Spoke to a plumbing guy at Home Depot who said you don't need to install any adapter but just terminate right into the soffit cavity. Done. The last trick was to seal the cavity around the vent pipe so bathroom humidity and exhaust would not get back into the attic. My idea was to use the silver HVAC cardboard (actually called joist panning) I've seen used for cold air returns, funny because Home Depot does not carry this product. I found the stuff at Menard's and used some left over foil tape to complete the job!

OK, so you are asking, "who friggin' cares"? I just wanted to use this as an example to illustrate the type of crap you have to put up with when building a cottage on an island by yourself.