The 1915 Central Vacuum

Central vacuum systems in residences. You'd think they were invented probably sometime in the 50's or 60's right? Think again, dear reader.

When we moved to our house last Fall, I discovered some sort of contraption in the basement, hidden in a dark corner. It looked like some sort of generator or something. It evoked mental images of Thomas A. Edison. What was it? I found my flashlight and brushed a little dust off of the thing. The picture here is what I saw. "Arco Wand Vacuum Cleaner".

What the heck? A central vacuum system in a 1915 house? "No, surely it can't be original to the house," I thought.

I looked a little closer at the gizmo. On the motor, there was a data plate. What?!? The patent listed on the motor (made by the Wagner Electric Manufacturing Co., St. Louis, U.S.A.) had several dates, starting back as far as Sept. 11, '88. We're talking EIGHTEEN eighty-eight!

I looked around a little more and found a separate data plate for the vacuum itself. Check out that patent date: March 9, 1907. So this vacuum was as old as the house itself. I was amazed.

I was not about to even try to fire the thing up. It had several VERY scary electrical wires connected to it that looked quite original. NoThankYouVeryMuch, I did not need to see this thing in action. We'd just bought the house and I had no intention of blowing it up or burning it down. Or electrocuting myself.

As I studied the system, it finally dawned on me what those odd disks were on the baseboard of the main and second story hallways. They were the connection points where a vacuum hose could be attached. The hose attachment was nowhere to be found (tossed into the garbage many years ago, I would imagine), although there is a tiny little "closet" in the dining room that must have been built especially to store the hose. An old wire rack was hanging in the closet, which is probably what the hose would have been coiled around when it was put away.

Some History
I got online to see what I could find out about the Arco Wand, plus I looked around the house and figured out a few things:

• The American Radiator Company (“ARCO”) manufactured the radiators and Arco Wand central vacuum system that were installed in this home when it was built in 1915. American Radiator also manufactured Ideal boilers, which likely was the brand of the boiler that was originally installed in the house. By the time we purchased the house in 2009, the original coal-fired boiler had long since been replace by a H.B. Smith natural gas boiler (probably some time in the early 1980’s). If boilers are "your thing", be sure to read the previous post entitled Bye-bye, Boiler.
• The American Radiator Company eventually merged with Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company in 1929 to become what is now known as American Standard -- the company that makes sinks, toilets, bath tubs, and all sorts of plumbing fixtures.
• Although there is actually still an Arco Wand company in existence today, it is mainly a commercial high-capacity vacuum company. It was likely sold off sometime after the American Standard company was formed.

So what do you do with a 95 year old vacuum?
In order to get things out of the way in the basement so we could have the central HVAC installed, I disconnected the vacuum and moved it to the garage. Perhaps I should say I fought the thing all the way to the garage. I'm guessing it weighs about 300 lbs. With the help of my petite-but-mighty wife, we wriggled it up onto a four-wheel furniture dolly and rolled it out to the garage. There it sat for a number of weeks while we tried to figure out what to do with the thing. If we couldn't come up with another home for it, we knew we'd have to take it to the scrap yard. It was just too big to keep around as a conversation piece.

Knowing that I am a Lover Of All Things Old, my wife started doing some online searches and making some phone calls to see if we could find a museum that would take it. After all, we're talking about a piece of history here. There weren't that many houses in 1915 that had a central vacuum (or perhaps even indoor plumbing, for that matter), and even fewer that still have such a thing in original condition. After a few dead-end contacts, she finally got ahold of a guy at the Vacuum Cleaner Museum in St. James, Missouri, which is a little over two hours from where we live. The phone conversation went something like this:

She: I have a central vacuum machine that I'd like to donate to your museum.
He: What can you tell me about it?
She: Well I don't really know much about it, but my husband does.
He: Do you know what brand it is? Do you know if it is a such-and-such brand or maybe an Arco Wand?
She: Yes! That's it -- it is an Arco Wand.
He: (quite excited) You have an Arco Wand?!? Oh my goodness! I've been looking for one of those for fifteen years!
She: That's great. We'd like to donate it, but we would need you to send someone to pick it up. It's very heavy.
He: Hmm, we don't get up to that way very often.
She: Well, if you really want it, you need to come pick it up within the next three weeks. Otherwise, we're going to have to take it to the scrap yard. It is out in our garage, and we need to get it out of the way.
He: (a little panicked) Wait! No! Don't scrap it! We'll come get it! You can't take it to the scrap yard -- you've got the Mona Lisa! No, please don't scrap it! We'll figure out some way to get a truck over to pick it up!

So a couple of weeks ago, they sent a truck to pick up the vacuum. The driver even called once she made it back to the museum to let me know the vacuum had arrived safely, and to thank us again for donating it. They tell us that they will restore it back to "like new" condition, so once they are finished, my wife and I plan to make a trip to St. James to check it out. It will be fun to see the vacuum looking all new and shiny again.

Geothermal Is Here

Our new geothermal HVAC system is officially installed. Mostly anyway. The radiant floor heat is still in the works, but all of the forced air systems are up and running. What a glorious thing!

The whole thing started with a drilling rig pulling up to destroy our front yard. I had initially hoped that we could have the wells dug in the back yard, but there really wasn't any way of getting a 42,000 pound truck into the back yard without crushing our very old, shallow sewer line. Oh well, we had planned to re-landscape at some point, so why not now?

The area where our house is located -- from a geological standpoint -- is pretty much solid limestone. There are a few feet of clay and loose rock under the top soil, but then it is solid limestone for at least a couple hundred feet down. When I initially talked to the HVAC contractor, I asked what would happen if they hit rock while they were drilling. He told me that the drillers actually like to hit rock because the wells don't cave in on themselves, so it makes it easy to get the tubing down in to the well.

A drilling rig is really nothing more than a giant hammer-drill. A LOUD giant hammer-drill. I happened to be home sick with a cold the second day that they were drilling. Needless to say, I didn't really get to nap too much, but it was interesting to watch the drilling process from the bedroom window.
 

The wells are spaced about 10 feet apart. What you see in the picture below are the first four wells. The light grey sludge that you see isn't concrete. It is actually pulverized limestone dust mixed with water. The drillers would pump water into the the well to keep the bit cool, and the result was a slurry of limestone that would make its way to the surface. Once a well was drilled, the drillers would insert a loop of plastic tubing all the way to the bottom, then use a squeegee to scrape the slurry back into the hole to fill in around the tubing.

 

If you aren't familiar with geothermal systems, they work on a very simple premise: circulate water through the tubing in the wells to pull coolness out of the ground when it is hot outside, and pull warmth out of the ground when it is cold outside. If you want the more scientific explanation of how geothermal works, check out this link: http://www.geocomfort.com/geothermal-technology

Our system is the "vertical loop" type, so it required several wells to be dug. The number of wells required depends on the system size needed. Our HVAC contractor determined that our house needs 8 tons of heating and cooling, so that meant that 1200 feet of underground water loop would be required. The wells they dug in our yard are a little under 200 feet deep, so that meant that we ended up with seven wells.

The layout inside our house doesn't provide much space for running ducts from the basement to the second story, so we opted for a split system. This means that we have a separate system that heats and cools the upstairs level, while a unit in the basement takes care of the main level and basement. The upstairs unit is rated at 3 tons, and the unit for the main level and basement is 5 tons since it has more area to heat and cool.

Enough about the system -- back to the front yard.

A couple of days after the wells had been dug, another crew showed up to further destroy the yard. Uh, I mean, to join all the tubing into one continuous loop. If the yard looked bad after the wells were dug, it looked ten times worse after the loop work was over. In order to join the tubing for all of the wells together, they had to dig a pit that encompassed all of the wells, about four feet deep. So for half a day, we had a pit four feet deep by twenty feet wide by forty feet long in the front yard. Once all the wells were connected to each other, they filled the pit in. Since our soil is very rocky, the resulting pile of dirt in the front yard looks a bit like those pictures of the Mars landscape. I would love to show you a picture of the dirt pile, but I'm having trouble uploading any more pictures to the blog at the moment. For those who are just dying to see the dirt pile, you can send a self-addressed stamped envelope (plus $2.95 for handling). Other large cash donations are accepted as well.

The most exciting thing about having the new geothermal system installed is that it is the first thing we've actually put into the house. Everything else to this point has pretty much been removing or demolishing things in order to prepare for remodeling. So we've hit a milestone -- the remodeling is officially underway!

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program To Bring You A Potty Bulletin...

I had intended for this next post to be about our new geothermal HVAC system. It is long past due, and I know all three of you out there in Reader Land have been anxiously awaiting details about the new system. All in good time, dear reader. We must interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you a Potty Bulletin.

It was a normal Friday. I came home after work and decided to do something about the two cups of coffee I'd drunk at work that afternoon. The most convenient place to "do something" is the small half bath just off the landing that leads downstairs, so I stopped there before heading upstairs to change into some grubbies. After I "did something", I flushed the commode only to see the bowl fill to the top with water. "Strange", I thought. After all, we're talking liquid only here, folks.

Now, my wife and I have been complaining about this commode since we moved into the house. It is WAY underpowered, if you know what I mean. After all, it's one of those water-saver type potties. I won't go into my usual tirade about water-saver toilets, but if you are interested in a particularly hilarious commentary on how they are tested, check out this column from Dave Barry. I clipped this very article from the newspaper several years ago and still keep it handy. I almost have it memorized, much like the Preamble of the Constitution: http://www.jokelibrary.net/xOtherAtoM/bathroom_no_two.html

Now where was I? Ah yes, the fateful flush last Friday afternoon. When the bowl filled with water, I reached for the plunger. (We keep it handy since this wimpy potty often needs a little boost.) Plunge, plunge, plunge. No change in conditions. Plunge, plunge, plunge. Still no significant progress, but now I could hear a faint splashing sound on the basement floor below. Hmm. This was not good. Not good at all.

When I got down to the basement, I could see that the water was coming from a joint in the waste line just below the floor of the bathroom above. This could mean only one thing -- the waste line was plugged all the way from the commode down to where it joined the main waste stack. We're talking 22 feet of 4-inch waste line, filled with all sorts of unpleasantness. Egad.

This waste line had been added back sometime in the 1970's, as best we understand from the family that sold us the house. We're talking REAL 100% American waste line -- the heavy black cast-iron type with lead-packed joints. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer "Exhibit A" for your viewing pleasure.

After breaking a hole in the line (note the bucket cleverly positioned beneath the hole for purposes of catching "the contents"), I drained several buckets of, well, you know. This is not a task for the faint of heart. The intensity of the aroma was impressive, to say the least. I rigged up several fans to keep the air moving through and out of the basement. My wife was delighted by the whole ordeal, as you might have guessed.

There are many more details of the removal process that I am sure you would be pleased to know, but for the sake of time, I'll keep this little story moving along.

After removing all the old cast-iron line, I headed to Home Depot to get all the stuff to install a new line. A couple of hours and a hundred-and-something dollars later, I had everything I needed to get started. Thank heavens for the simplicity of PVC. I can't imagine how long it must have taken to install the old cast-iron line with all its lead-sealed joints. After a few evenings of work, I had a new bright white waste line installed, complete with the prescribed 1/4-inch drop per lineal foot of pipe. We're on our way to clog-free living, people!

It took several attempts to get the potty re-installed, for a variety of reasons. It felt a bit like repeatedly doing a plumbing scene on This Old House. "Potty Install Scene, Take 17....... lights, camera, ACTION!". After a couple more trips to the local Ace Hardware store, I was able to achieve a victorious and leak-free flush.

Although I've yet to put the toilet to "the test", it seems to be flushing much more robustly than before. There is happiness in our home again.