On the landing of the stairs heading to and from the kids bedrooms on the top floor is a vent. It looks like this.
It used to be connected the forced air furnace and it would blow warm air up the staircase. I suppose because there was no cold air return and the air already up there had no easy way to get down, the heat never seemed to reach the bedrooms.
We have pondered what to do with it. Could it be a laundry chute, a ventilation duct, or a cat passage?
Well, it turns out that because we are making the basement walls so thick, it can’t really be used to access the basement.
What about the cupboard under the stairs? Could it be a storage hatch?
No, the cupboard under the landing must be destroyed to make way for greater headroom as people use the staircase below.
It’s a little sad to destroy a hand-made piece of history, but the BC Building code gives us no choice.
The duct is boxed in through the cupboard to reach the basement ceiling. You can see where the spray foam insulation bust through from the outer wall. That’s why they used half-pound insulation instead of 2-pound insulation (which is what is going into our roof this week!); the denser foam would have busted these old walls apart.
There was no way to remove the duct intact, so I broke it out.
From the basement looking up at the ceiling, it looks like this:
Now we have a square hole in the landing that leads nowhere. What should we do with it?
We haven’t decided yet, but knowing me, it will probably have something to do with insulation!