[Greenbuilding] laziness, mass, lumpy floors

[Alan Abrams]

Stitching together (or desperately stretching) elements from some recent
threads:

<With less mass, you might save more heating energy.>
<I am incredibly lazy, especially with a boring chore like laundry.>

I too am inherently lazy, which is why the following detail from the
recently discussed net zero house in Edmonton caught my attention: 

"Off cuts from the dry walling process will be placed in the partition walls
to add an estimated 600 kg to the home's thermal mass."

see http://www.riverdalenetzero.ca/report.html#TechnicalSummary

but some recent comments made in reply to my position on lumpy floors bears
some elaboration, lest others assume that that position was --solely-- a
slothful one.

as might be recalled, the owner of a not-so-old house in the pacific
northwest has an uneven floor, annoying to the point of generating the
conversation in which I took the minority position; that one might
ameliorate the unevenness by overlaying the subfloor with a carefully
installed, high quality tongue-and-groove hardwood floor.  Several other
experts with long, carefully considered experience, recommended a more
aggressive course, even resorting to jacking and racking the building into a
more planar condition.

Of course it is foolish of me to make categorical declarations without
actually observing the conditions.  But here's what was behind my
intuition--first, do no harm.  

Maybe it goes back to a fine craftsman era house in the People's Republic of
Takoma Park, MD, with that marvelous narrow and thin strip oak, quarter
sawn, something like 1 5/8" wide by less than 1/2" thick.  Sanded so many
times, the upper groove was paper thin.  Irreplaceable stuff on its last
legs...

anyway, the floor had settled drastically at the bearings for the 6' wide
opening between hall and living room--as was common in that day, there was
only the most casual (if any) consideration for the alignment of bearing
walls, continuous loading paths, and other gravity related issues.  Joists
were robust, but loads are loads, and creep they must.  So I strung a line
from wall to wall and set up jacks in the basement.  I put a helper to
observe the space between the line and the floor at the deepest point of the
sag, and went down to work the jacks.

I would crank a bit, and holler to my man, are we getting close?  Keep
cranking!  Crank, holler, crank, holler, crank.

It was a while before I realized that the joists had lifted the outside wall
off the mud sill, without relieving their deflection.  By the time it was
set back down, half the finish floor was loose.

The point of all this is, consider all the consequences of applying great
force to large objects.  Will it stealthily crack the key of ancient
horsehair plaster to spruce lathe?  Will it rupture paper thin walls of
internally corroded galvanized steel water pipes, or loosen hardened pipe
dope on a gas line?  Most terrifying of all, will it disturb petrified
rubber and fabric insulation on an electric cable in some overcrowded
junction box?

Good judgment should always prevail.  But when laziness and prudence
coincide, the course to me is compelling.

-AA