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Uncommon abode

Saturday, December 31, 2016 An advertising feature of The Topeka Capital-Journal

Couple builds earthbag house in Osage County

page 4 n Keeping holiday plants fresh, page 2 n Clearing lint from dryer vents, page 3 n Growing your own Christmas tree, page 5

home.cjonline.com Jan biles/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

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Thermocouple may be culprit when gas log fireplace won’t light But first check to see if propane supply tank is empty

By C. Dwight Barnett Tribune News Service

Q: My gas log fireplace worked just fine last winter, but I couldn’t light the pilot light this fall. There’s no brand name on the log, so I don’t know where or who to call for instructions.

Can you help?

A: There are different types of gas logs, and it would have helped to know which type you have.

There are vented gas logs and unvented or “vent-free” logs. Both types of logs may or may not have a remote control feature.

Usually, either type of log can be fueled by nat-

‘‘

Some thermocouples can be easily replaced; just make sure to purchase the correct length and fitting of the replacement thermocouple.”

C. Dwight Barnett

ural or propane gas (depending on the gas valve that is installed). Your problem may be as simple as having an empty propane supply tank.

If you have a chimney or flue for the fireplace, it’s more likely you have a vented gas log, although a vent-free gas log can be used as long as the damper is fully closed.

Due to health concerns, possible carbon monoxide poisoning and fire hazards, don’t install a vented

gas log in a non-venting fireplace or other enclosure.

There are many in the industry who even resist using the vent-free gas logs in any enclosed space.

All of the by-products of combustion of the natural or propane gas will be trapped in the room with the vent-free gas logs. Some people complain of the odors, while others complain of headaches and other health

Holiday plants will last with TLC Water poinsettias when the soil feels dry

By Debbie Arrington The Sacramento Bee

Did someone get a gift plant? You can keep it merry and bright a little longer with these tips. n Prolong the life of potted poinsettias with a little TLC. They love a cool window with half-day sun or filtered light. Water when the soil feels dry to the touch, but don’t let them get soggy. Punch holes in that pretty foil wrapping to allow drainage. Avoid heat or drafts, too. n Cyclamen, another popular gift plant, can be kept blooming inside through March. As each flower fades, remove the entire flower stalk — a sharp little tuck usually works.

That prompts new flowers to emerge from its tuber.

Cyclamens like a cool room

dreamstime

Some care will keep plants fresh-looking for awhile.

— 50 to 55 degrees at night, 60 to 68 degrees during the day — with bright light and good air circulation.

They’re great in drafty old houses.

The tuber, which is halfburied in the soil, may rot if watered directly. Instead, place the plant in a saucer of water and let it soak up the moisture. Feed every other week with half-strength houseplant fertilizer.

Cyclamen will go dormant in late spring as the leaves die back. Place the potted tuber in a shady place in the garden, then bring it back inside in September or October. The change of surroundings — and warmer indoor temperatures — usually prompts a new cycle of cyclamen blooms. n Moth or phalaenopsis orchids have become very popular gift plants, too.

These easy-care orchids like indirect bright light, a spot out of drafts or direct heat, and temperatures in the low 70s, just like your kitchen. Water them sparingly.

Try this trick: Place two or three ice cubes on the growing medium, not leaves or roots, once a week. As the ice melts, that’s all the water they need. They’ll keep blooming six to eight weeks.

problems.

However, vent-free gas logs tend to be more efficient.

If you have a remote control, first make sure the batteries have been replaced in the control units.

Next, make sure the gas is turned on to the log.

There should be a shutoff valve near the fireplace.

I have found the shutoff valves inside the fireplace, under the fireplace or in a cabinet next to the

fireplace.

With the gas on, push in and hold the pilot valve while igniting the pilot light. Once the pilot is lit, hold the pilot valve in for 60 seconds. This allows the pilot flame to heat the thermocouple attached to the log.

After 60 seconds, release the pilot valve and turn the log’s operating valve “on,” making sure you are clear of the log. If the pilot doesn’t stay on, you may have a defective thermocouple.

Some thermocouples can be easily replaced; just make sure to purchase the correct length and fitting of the replacement thermocouple.

If the pilot light flickers and then goes out, the gas pressure may be low.

Have a plumber check the

gas pressure to your home or even at the gas log. You also can try cleaning the pilot tube using a can of compressed air used for dusting.

Note: You must make sure the gas is off and there are no flames present prior to using an aerosol duster. Spray air around and into the end of the pilot tube opening and at the small air intake on the side of the pilot tube. If the pilot still fails, contact a qualified service technician to repair the gas log.

C. Dwight Barnett is a certified master inspector with the American Society of Home Inspectors. Write to him with home improvement questions at C. Dwight Barnett, Evansville Courier & Press, P.O. Box 268, Evansville, Ind. 47702 or e-mail d.Barnett@insightbb.com.

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Remove lint buildup in dryer vent to prevent fires Probably best to hire a pro to clean vent

By Brent Glasgow Angie’s List

Some of the biggest threats and money sieves in your home are things you can’t see, like your clothes dryer vent.

The easily neglected piping, which in larger homes can exceed 40 feet, often goes ignored for years, sometimes decades. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, that inattention causes over 15,000 fires annually.

“A lot of people don’t understand how bad the problem can be,” said Scott Smedstad, owner of Arizona Air Duct Cleaning in suburban Phoenix. “A lot have never had it done.”

Glen Mayfield, owner of highly rated Dryer Vent Wizard of Central Indiana,

says if your dryer takes more than 40 minutes for a load, feels hot to the touch while running or collects large amounts of lint during operation, you’re probably ready for a cleaning.

Should you do the cleaning yourself or hire a pro?

If you want to clean your dryer vent on your own, there’s equipment available, including brush kits that cost anywhere from $15 to more than $50 based on length and quality.

Both Smedstad and Mayfield say results vary.

“Many do it successfully, but (the brushes) can break or disengage, so you have to be careful to make sure it works properly and it doesn’t get stuck,” Mayfield said. “I’ve retrieved a lot of them.”

The longer the ventila-

tion pipe, and the more bends and buildup it has, the more difficult the job.

Professionals like Smedstad and Mayfield use a sturdy snake or power brush to release clogs, along with a strong vacuum to remove impediments.

Along with substandard brushes, Mayfield and Smedstad shudder at another do-it-yourself tactic: using a leaf blower to clear the vent from the inside.

“You can do that if it’s thoroughly cleaned first, but most people blow it and plug it up 10 times worse,” Smedstad said. “Sometimes, it’s packed in so bad people have to cut the ceiling out to take the pipe apart. It isn’t a real good idea.”

Mayfield agrees.

“Lint is moist, and a blower can’t clean it out,” he said.

“It’s like a snowball, and the more it rolls, the bigger it gets.”

Lint isn’t the only enemy; birds are a common infiltrator. Entering from the outside, they love building nests in the closed, warm space.

“They’re a huge problem,” Mayfield said. “Sometimes, they’ll peck the vent cover until they can get it open, and they can get in even if it’s in good shape.

We’ve found them 6 and 8 feet deep into the vent.”

How much does dryer vent cleaning cost?

Smedstad’s average dryer vent cleaning costs around $95, while Mayfield charges $125 to $175, depending on the job.

The service saves customers money both in the short and long term. Mayfield cites industry studies that say clogged vents can add $18 to $25 to your monthly energy bill. Also, because

eldon lindsay

Lint can become trapped in your dryer vent and cause your energy bill to increase and your clothes to take longer to be dried. clogged vents render dryers ineffective, it isn’t uncommon for a homeowner to scrap a unit because they think it’s shot.

“They’ll go out and buy

a new one, have the same problem and then call us,” Mayfield said. “Then they’ll say, ‘Oh my gosh, I got a new one and didn’t even need it.’”

4 | Saturday, December 31, 2016 | The Topeka Capital-Journal | homes.cjonline.com

Osage County pair builds earthbag home Construction began two years ago, will cost about $100,000

By Jan Biles

jan.biles@cjonline.com

RURAL OSAGE COUNTY — When Keith Fouts was a child and visited his grandparents near Lake Pomona, he would play on their stretch of property and dream of one day owning it.

In 2010, he purchased the land as part of a 7 ½-acre tract, and now he and his wife, Lily, are building an earthbag home there for his parents, Lee and Ann Fouts.

“I developed an interest in taking care of the environment and solar and renewable energy programs, but for this project, my parents were retiring and needing a smaller house.

They had a big house in Ot-

FOLLOW ALONG

To learn more about the earthbag house and get updates on its construction, check out Lily Fouts’ blog at lilyannfouts.com/earthbag/. tawa … and they needed to lower their utility costs for their retirement income,” said Keith, a journeyman/ master electrician with a degree in aeronautical science from Florida Institute of Technology who works on commercial and industrial projects.

Two years ago, the Foutses began building the earthbag home, while researching online, reading “Earth Guide Building” and attending the 2014 National Building Extravaganza in North Carolina to get ideas and hone their skills.

The earthbag house

is constructed mostly of tarp-like, tie-string sandbags filled with clay harvested from the property’s pond, which is mixed and screened to remove rocks and roots on-site by the Foutses. The bags are stacked to form the structure; insulated with papercrete, made mainly of newspaper and cement with borax to discourage insects and prevent mold and mildew; strengthened and stabilized by galvanized barbed wire; and covered with lime plaster.

The couple stacked about 4,000 100-pound sandbags

to form the 21-inch-thick walls of the structure. The bottom row sits on a layer of gravel, which keeps the other bags dry by preventing moisture from moving upward.

“We do a row of bags at a time, and then tamp down the whole row,” Keith said.

The earthbag home features a mudroom with washer and dryer; kitchen; dining room; living room with cathedral ceiling; master bedroom and bath; guest bedroom; bedroom/ office; earthen floor with radiant heating; screenedin porch; multiple southfacing windows; thresholds and doorway made of concrete; and separate utility

EARTHBAG continues on 5

Photographs by Jan Biles/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Top: Family member Frank Verschelden works on the soffits of the earthbag house in mid-November. Bottom: A section of one of the walls can be removed to reveal the bags of clay mixture, papercrete and galvanized barbed wire that are used to construct the walls.

Lee Fouts, father of Keith Fouts and the future resident of the new home, helps cut lumber for the interior walls of the earthbag structure.

homes.cjonline.com | The Topeka Capital-Journal | Saturday, December 31, 2016 | 5

Growing a Christmas tree is long-term project

By Lee Reich The Associated Press

Even during this holiday season, with winter upon us, you might find some gardening to do. Growing a Christmas tree from seed, for example.

That’s no short-term proposition. But the long wait is offset by the wide selection of trees from which to choose, their negligible cost and — best of all — the satisfaction you get from growing your own tree. You’re sure to eye your own, seed-grown Christmas tree with more affection than you’ve ever felt toward a tree loaded onto the roof of your car from a sales lot.

Aside from patience, all you need to get started are a plastic bag, a pen, a couple of handfuls of potting soil and the seeds.

Procuring seeds

It’s late in the season, but you could collect seed yourself if you know of some nice-looking, mature trees of species suitable for decorating and

keeping through the holidays indoors.

The most popular trees for this purpose include Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris), white pine (Pinus strobus), Norway spruce (Picea abies), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), balsam fir (Abies balsamea) and white fir (Abies concolor).

Then again, your choices need not be limited to those popular species.

Maybe your taste runs toward a tree with the long, languid needles of a Himalayan pine (Pinus Wallichiana) or the stubby, bluish needles of a Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens).

Most conifers ripen their seeds in late summer or early fall, the cones’ scales spreading to disperse their seeds in the weeks or months that follow.

If you lay hands on some intact, mature cones, put them in a paper or burlap bag so their seeds won’t be lost when the cones open, a process that can be speeded up by keeping them warm or even heat-

ing them a bit.

The other option, of course, is to buy the seeds.

For small quantities, go to J.L. Hudson, Star Route 2, Box 337, La Honda, Calif.

94020, jlhudsonseeds.net, or Tree Seeds, treeseeds. com; larger amounts can be purchased from such sources as Sheffield’s Seed Co., (315) 497-1058, sheffields.com, and F. W. Schumacher, treeshrubseeds.com.

Artificial winter

Many conifer seeds will sprout quite readily if sown fresh out of their cones, although sprouting is often erratic. Once stored though, they usually need some treatment before they’ll come to life.

Start that treatment — essentially an artificial winter — by soaking the seed for 24 hours; that’s “autumn rain.”

Then rinse the seeds well to wash away any germination inhibitors, drain and put them into a plastic bag along with moist pot-

TREE continues on 6

Lee reich/via THE associated press

A pine seedling sprouts in a small container. Growing a Christmas tree from seed takes a long time but is very satisfying.

Earthbag: Electrician’s schedule allows duo time to build house Continued from 4

Jan biles/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Keith and Lily Fouts stand in front of the earthbag house they are building for Keith’s parents, Ann and Lee Fouts, near Lake Pomona in Osage County. The home features 21inch walls, a 3,000-gallon cistern and an earthen floor with radiant heating.

room with a 3,000-gallon rainwater cistern and an elaborate filtering system.

“It’s 1,060 square feet of living space,” Lily said.

“The utility room (where the cistern is) is approximately 250 additional square feet. Measured from the exterior, the house is 1,550 square feet, but a lot of that square footage is taken up by the thick earthbag walls.”

The Foutses subcontracted some of the work for the home, which brought its price tag up to $100,000.

“So, $50,000 to $60,000 if you do all the work yourself,” Keith said, estimating in mid-November that the time spent on construction was 7,500 hours.

The couple lives in a motor home and travels to wherever Keith is working on a project, which has included Ecuador, Haiti, Antarctica and states from

Florida to Wyoming. Lily said they are able to spend so much time on building the earthbag house because of Keith’s work schedule.

“He works 6-8 months per year on jobs where he works 60, 70, 80 or more hours per week, and we save up all the money he makes on the overtime hours,” she wrote in an email. “Then we spend 4-6 months per year traveling or, in this case, building a house for his parents.”

6 | Saturday, December 31, 2016 | The Topeka Capital-Journal | homes.cjonline.com

Tree: Plan on 10 years until harvest, depending on growth Continued from 5 ting soil.

Seal the bag shut and put it in your refrigerator. The seeds need to sit in the moist coolness of the refrigerator for one to three months, after which they’ll be convinced that winter is over and it’s safe to sprout.

This treatment might be advisable even for freshly harvested seeds to improve or make less erratic their germination. Now, anyway, isn’t the best time of year for seeds to be sprouting.

Nursery care

Leave that plastic bag tucked away in the back of your refrigerator until spring. Check it occasionally because once some seeds think winter is over, they are so eager to get started that they’ll actually sprout in the refrigerator.

Conifer seedlings grow slowly and offer little competition to weeds, so when you do plant them, do so either in containers or in a carefully tended garden row.

Seedlings in containers need more watering

care; seedlings out in the garden need only occasional watering, but close guarding against weed encroachment.

Neither the containers nor the garden row will be the plants’ permanent home, just nursery areas.

After a couple of seasons in the nursery, transplant the trees, which will still be quite small, to more permanent locations where they can grow until ready for cutting.

Plan on about 10 years until harvest, depending on growing conditions and the kind of tree.

Plastic wrap wrangling

Tired of struggling to pull plastic wrap out of its box? Here are some helpful tips. n Most brands designed their boxes to help alleviate this problem — just punch in the flaps on the side of the box where it says “secure roll.” These cardboard flaps are designed to hold the roll in place as you tug it and prevent it from becoming a tangled mess. n Storing the plastic wrap, which contains a substance similar to gelatin, in the freezer or refrigerator can prevent it from sticking together after it’s pulled from its box. n Help the plastic wrap cling to a bowl by wetting a finger with water and running it across the surface or rim of the bowl. Lay the wrap on top and press down. The water paired with the gelatin-like ingredient makes it stick. www.goodhousekeeping.com

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