As mentioned before, Albert and I debated the trade-offs in pulling up the floors. We decided on pulling them up because it would not only allow us to evaluate the condition of the flooring materials, but also allow better access to the foundation and let us to lay down a solid sub-floor, with all the advantages mentioned before.
The beautiful wood floors that are in many New Orleans houses have but one drawback: They were installed directly onto the floor joists, and all the seams between these boards are air and vapor gaps. Building wisdom used to be to let the house "breathe," but now, houses are tighter and need to have mechanical components to ventilate and regulate airflow...kind of like a cyborg. Utilities are now beginning to offer "smart" meters that turn off unnecessary appliance operations when peak power rates are in effect in order to reduce utility costs. One wonders if this is when Skynet becomes self aware...
The new sub-floor became our new canvas to work on, but it also offers potential future benefits beneath it. I plan on using spray foam to insulate the house, but before doing the floor joists, I want to install something in order to plan for the future: Radiant Tubing.
Currently, due to the usage patterns we can foresee for the house for the next couple years, an on-demand tankless gas water heater makes the most financial sense. I install solar hot water systems, and want to do one here, but for the foreseeable future, we'd just be solar heating water that wouldn't go to use. So for now, the water will be heated when it's needed. The tubing will be for when the house is occupied for longer terms. When appropriate, we can hook up the radiant tubing to a solar storage tank, and possibly a solar evaporative cooler, to provide radiant heating and cooling in the floor system.
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