This is a new scam for me. I belong to an art group (club, collaborative, collective, etc) and I received an email that looks like it could have come from the director of the club. I have changed the identity of the club name and director for their privacy. This is the message I received:
Hello Ellen,
Are you available for assistance? I’m out of the state now, I have absolute confidence in you to handle this. The [Nameless Art Club] need electronic gift cards to make donations to Veterans in Hospice and Palliative care units to buy coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prevention items. I’m responsible for the reimbursement. Would you like further information?
Peggy Sue [Nameless Art Club Director]
At first glance, I thought this was legit because I was/am a member of the art club listed here and the chair’s name, Peggy Sue (not their real name for privacy), was signed at the bottom. Additionally, Peggy Sue was also listed as the name on the email.
Then I felt a little embarrassed that I didn’t understand the ask here and I fed the message into my AI chatbot. AI told me it was a scammer. That’s when I looked at the email and discovered it was not a message from Peggy (and not tied to Peggy’s usual email). It came from here: cj516137@gmail.com
I don’t know who’s email that was and that’s when I realized a scammer at the other end of that email used the Art Club member’s list to send messages like this one, with hopes that they’ll catch someone off guard.
Next steps:
Usually I ignore these and send them to spam. However since this scammer was using the name of someone I actually know and have met, and using the Art Club that I was personally a member of as a basis for their scam, I alerted Peggy (at her real email) right away so that she could warn everyone else in the Club.
I hope you find this helpful, and have a great week!
I run a native garden coaching website. Recently I received a message that, at first glance, seemed sweet. A volunteer helping a Girl Scout earn her Trees Badge wanted to thank me and share a resource. But something felt off. After looking at the website they wanted me to link to (a commercial flower delivery shop), I realized this was a scam designed to manipulate me into giving them a free backlink.
I’m posting this to help other website owners recognize these tactics. Because they’re getting sophisticated, and I strongly suspect AI is involved.
How To Tell It’s A Scam
Before I break down the manipulation tactics, here are the red flags of a scam:
The link doesn’t match the story. They claim “Harper” is researching dendrology and trees for a Girl Scout badge. The link they want you to add? A commercial flower delivery website. These have nothing to do with each other.
No specific details about your own content. They say my page was “very helpful and informative” but never mention a single thing from it. A real person who actually used your resource would say something like, “Your ecoregion finder recommendations were exactly what we needed.” Generic praise is a red flag.
They found you through a resource page. Scammers specifically target pages with resource lists because those pages already link out to other sites. Adding one more link seems harmless on the surface.
The email domain doesn’t check out. The email came from linprice@starfallarts(dot)com, so I looked up the website and it has ‘AI-Bot’ written all over it. More on what I found below.
They’re asking you to do something for them. Legitimate thank-you messages don’t come with requests. If someone genuinely appreciated your content, they’ll just say ‘thank you’ and leave it at that.
The Actual Message I Received
Here’s the email I received:
Name: Linda Price Email: linprice@starfallarts(dot)com Comment or Message:
Hi, I hope you’re having a lovely day! I’m a volunteer at my local Girl Scout Troop and just wanted to write a thank you note on behalf of a young lady I’ve been helping out with research. Her name is Harper and she’s a Cadette Scout working towards earning her Trees Badge. While looking into the dendrology, we came across your page, http://www.fridaygarden.com/native-plant-resources/ and found it to be very helpful and informative. Thank you so much!!
Harper also really wanted to share a cool and hopefully helpful find with you! It’s http://www(dot)avasflowers(dot)net/tree-classification-guide-and-glossary-of-plant-terms and it’s a tree classification guide and a glossary of terms. She learned a ton from this, so she hoped it could do the same for others using your page.
Do you think it might be possible to include Harper’s recommendation on your page if it’s not too much of a hassle? We’ll be meeting again later in December and I’d absolutely love to show that her suggestion was up and running to help others learn about trees. I believe it could encourage her to continue reaching out, with the hope of making a positive impact, even if it’s just a little one.
We hope to hear back from you soon!
Happiest of Holidays and thanks so much again, Harper L. & Linda Price
The Emotional Manipulation Playbook
A closer look at how this message is engineered to make you feel guilty about saying no:
Exploiting a child. “Harper” is a young Girl Scout earning a badge. Who wants to disappoint a kid working toward a goal?
The volunteer/mentor angle. “Linda” isn’t just any adult. She’s a volunteer helping a child succeed. Extra guilt.
Flattery first. Praising your page as “helpful and informative” softens you up before the ask.
Minimizing the request. “If it’s not too much of a hassle” makes refusing seem petty and mean.
Time pressure with emotional stakes. “We’ll be meeting again later in December and I’d absolutely love to show her” implies you’d be disappointing a child if you don’t act quickly.
Future impact framing. Suggesting this will “encourage her to continue reaching out” and help her make “a positive impact, even if it’s just a little one.” If you add it, you’ll be shaping a young person’s character and confidence. How special.
This is what disgusting textbook manipulation looks like.
Why I Think This Is AI-Generated
I can’t prove it, but this message has all the hallmarks of AI-generated content:
Perfect grammar but emotionally hollow. It reads smoothly and hits every manipulation tactic, but feels formulaic rather than genuine.
Generic specificity. Details like “Cadette Scout” and “Trees Badge” are real things and easy to Google, but the story itself is completely unverifiable.
Generic Sender Domain. Starfallarts(dot)com goes to an unrelated and generic-looking ‘cover’ operation without any links or contact info (see note below).
Unnatural phrasing. “Happiest of Holidays”? “Making a positive impact, even if it’s just a little one”? This sounds like AI pretending to be a warm and compassionate human.
Scalable template structure. This email works by swapping in any website URL and any semi-related commercial link. It’s designed to send thousands of personalized variations.
The mismatch no human would make. Why would a real Girl Scout researching trees for a badge recommend a commercial flower delivery website? A real kid would share an actual resource about trees.
AI has made it trivially easy to generate thousands of these emotionally manipulative messages, each customized to the target website.
About That Suspicious Sender Website
I looked up starfallarts(dot)com (the domain from “Linda’s” email). It’s total ‘sus’ (translates to “suspect” according to my kid). The website has literally no links anywhere, no contact page, and no physical location mentioned in any of the generalized descriptions. Just this note at the bottom of their “about” page:
Note: Presently, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are not offering any in-person programs. But we are doing several online projects. Please check back to see when we will be able to resume our normal programing.
To top it off, the whole site reads like it could have been written by AI too. It looks like what us gen X-ers refer to as a ‘cover operation’. Like a fake laundry or car wash service used as a cover to hide a drug dealing operation (see TV show: “Breaking Bad” for examples).
So Who Would Do This?
The link they wanted me to add points to avasflowers(dot)net, which appears to be an actual flower delivery business. This raises some possibilities:
The company hired an unethical SEO firm that uses these tactics without telling them what they’re actually doing.
They know exactly what’s happening and don’t care (getting backlinks by any means necessary).
Someone is using their URL without authorization (Less likely, given how targeted this is).
Whatever it is, legitimate businesses getting backlinks through manufactured sob stories about fictional children is disgustingly unethical.
In addition, when you link to a site you don’t control, you’re essentially legitimizing it to your visitors. Not only does it not reflect your business, that site could later be compromised or redirect to malicious content.
Are Native Gardeners Being Targeted?
I’ve given this some thought and now suspect this scam was not random. Native plant enthusiasts are growing in numbers as outreach continues to ‘bloom’ (pun intended). This also fuels a growing list of websites about native gardening. Within these sites and communities:
Resource pages are common. Native gardeners love sharing helpful links. We build resource pages because we want others to learn. That’s exactly what scammers look for.
The community is kind and helpful by nature. People who spend their time nurturing ecosystems and educating others about native plants tend to be generous, community-minded folks. Exactly the type who’d feel bad saying no to a kid earning a badge.
The “Trees Badge” story is perfectly tailored. A Girl Scout learning about dendrology? That touches a nerve for people who are passionate about sharing native gardening information to the next generation.
The flower site is “close enough.” Flowers are adjacent to plants, so it doesn’t seem completely random at first glance (even though native plant education and commercial flower delivery have nothing to do with each other).
Smaller, passion-driven websites. Many native gardening sites are run by individuals or small organizations, not big companies with spam filters and legal departments that can filter out these scammers.
What To Do?
If you receive a message like this:
Don’t respond. These campaigns send hundreds or thousands of emails. They’re counting on a small percentage of people feeling too guilty to say no.
Check the link they want you to add. Does it actually match the story they’re telling? In this case, a flower delivery site has nothing to do with Girl Scout dendrology research or native plants. I actually went to the site to see what the page was about and that is when I made this discovery.
Look for generic praise. Did they mention anything specific about your content? If not, they didn’t actually read it.
Trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is.
Mark as spam and move on.
The internet is full of people trying to exploit your kindness. Hope this is helpful to those still wondering and thanks for reading!
If you’re an artist who sells your work on the internet, people will try to steal it and sell it as if it was their own work. What I didn’t expect is that AI would be trained on my artwork, and then modified versions of my work would then be sold and passed off as someone else’s. I wouldn’t even have expected this to happen to me had I not made an unrelated social media post advising AI users to do an inverse image search so they’re not accidentally violating someone else’s intellectual property (IP) rights.
After making my post, I received pushback from people defending the “originality” of AI. Random people on the internet were *shocked* that AI could possibly be used as a tool to facilitate an intellectual property crime. I was pretty shocked that so many people don’t realize this. I just assumed everyone knows that AI is trained on other people’s artwork, and IP violations are a well-documented thing.
Then I remembered an instance of IP violation of my own work where a company decided to steal my work, modify it, and use it on all of their products. I will use a made-up name to refer to the infringing company as “Bogus Wonder” (I don’t want shame them by using their real name as I’m sure they didn’t knowingly violate my intellectual property rights). I initially thought Bogus Wonder got an armature artist to remove the head from my Honey Badger illustration and replace it with a cartoon head. But, upon closer inspection, I have reason to believe that Bogus Wonder decided to completely forgo hiring an artist and just use AI without doing an inverse image search.
The first image you see is my image. This is my “Honey Badger on a Bicycle” illustration. I have not given anyone permission to modify, use, or sell this image:
This second image below is the one I discovered Bogus Wonder using as their logo and on all of their merch and website:
How do I know this image was created using AI? Well, I can’t 100% say for sure. But I did notice the odd AI thing that you’ll commonly find. I pointed it out with the red arrow in the above image. Any self-respecting artist would know how to draw a ‘partial head turn’ of a cartoon character’s face. AI wouldn’t understand where to place the ear, so it would likely attach it to the face (as presented in the poorly drawn cartoon head modification of my work).
Seven days after I sent Bogus Wonder a cease-and-desist letter, they updated their merch labels and some images on their Facebook page. They still have yet to take down all of my images and pay me what they owe for using my image.
I created and began selling my Honey Badger illustration on my Zazzle site in 2018. Dall-E wasn’t released until 2021, and I didn’t start incorporating AI into my workflow until sometime 2024.
That means I hand-drew this Honey Badger on a Cintiq and put in a lot of time crafting all of the individual tufts and texture in her fur. I also spent a lot of time designing her delicate fingers and in getting the proportions of her body, arms legs and tail just right. If someone wants to turn a profit from my hard work, they would first need to reach out to get written permission to use my work.
In spite of all this, I do find AI to be a useful tool. However, it never gives me exactly what I want, and I usually end up spending a lot of time correcting and modifying what AI produces for me. I’m not too concerned yet that AI will replace actual artists (yet). Most of what it produces is amateurish or concepts that need modification and the professionalism of work and style is random.
After hours of frantically googling things like, “bleed rejected KDP graphic novel panels outside of margins”, I finally figured out the problem (with a little help from customer service). It took me a while to figure out what the problem was, what exactly to ask customer service, and so I continued to be rejected by the final KDP review process for days. In case anyone out there is having similar issues, I’m making this post for you.
It all started when I went to “edit paper content”, got everything set up and then hit “launch reviewer”. There were a number of errors telling me my content was outside the margin. This was annoying because I selected “bleed (PDF only)”, formatted my manuscript in Affinity with full bleed, and (I thought) should have passed the reviewer. I thought, well maybe if I flatten the whole document and rasterize all the text, the bots will accept it. It appeared to work, at first. With everything rasterized into a PDF, it passed the initial review stage. I was happy and excited for the moment. I ordered PROOF copies and waited just a few days for them to arrive. They arrived sooner than expected and looked absolutely beautiful (minus the cover watermark, but that’s a whole ‘nother blogpost). Then I selected the price and hit the “publish” button!
The next day, I got this message:
We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP:
Add 0.125″ (3.2 mm) to your book’s page width and 0.25″ (6.4 mm) to the page height to ensure that the images in your manuscript extend beyond the edge of the page. Once you have added the size, extend any images or backgrounds that you want to reach all the way to the edge of the page 0.125” (3.2 mm) beyond the trim line. This prevents manufacturing issues when the file is trimmed to size. See examples PDF page(s) 62 – 64, 124. Watch our video, which explains trim size, margins, and bleed.
Increase your outside margins so that content isn’t trimmed when your book is printed. The outside, top, and bottom margin requirements are 0.25″ (6.35mm) for books without bleed and 0.375″ (9.52mm) for books with bleed. See examples on PDF page(s) 1 – 3, 61 – 63, 123 – 125. Watch our video, which explains trim size, margins, and bleedLearn how to calculate margins
This was a very confusing message and could have been worded more clearly for dyslexic people like me. Did they want me to add .125″ to the page size or the image size?
I decided to try it again by not rasterizing the text, but shifting it slightly so it stays within the margins like below. Note that this also included placing those ugly page numbers within my panels, so I made them really tiny and mostly inconspicuous:
You can see the word “mommeeeeee!” had to be pulled in a little so it would fit within the margins and this included any other word balloon that I placed just outside of the panels for a stylized effect. Not a huge deal, but I was a little sad I couldn’t just let my word balloons hang out like that and put my page numbers where I wanted them on the pages. It did pass the “launch reviewer” bots, so I went ahead and hit the “publish” button.
The next day I got another rejection letter. This time, however, I had fixed the “increase your margins” bullet point and was left with this one:
We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP: Interior
Add 0.125″ (3.2 mm) to your book’s page width and 0.25″ (6.4 mm) to the page height to ensure that the images in your manuscript extend beyond the edge of the page. Once you have added the size, extend any images or backgrounds that you want to reach all the way to the edge of the page 0.125” (3.2 mm) beyond the trim line. This prevents manufacturing issues when the file is trimmed to size. See examples PDF page(s) 62 – 64, 123 – 124. Watch our video, which explains trim size, margins, and bleed.
This was the point where I started banging my head on my keyboard. I can only assume a bot looks at your work and it either passes or fails. The proof copy looked great, but the bots don’t care.
I bit the bullet and added .125″ to the page size and increased the entire book size from 9×6″ to 6.14″ x 9.21″. I thought this would surely increase the margins, but I felt defeated since this would raise the price of author copies by 3 dollars per book, and also significantly increase the customer price. I hit “publish” but continued to feel worse and worse about having to increase the size of my entire book.
Luckily, the larger scale book didn’t pass the review bots either, and I was determined to figure it out.
Unfortunately, I struggled to find resources for this specific problem in the KDP community forum. I began to suspect, however, that maybe it was just a bleed issue. I reached out to KDP customer service and was finally told by the marvelous ‘Sebastian’ from customer service: “The image must be either within the margins or extended to the edge”. Part of the issue was I was using rasterized jpegs with full panels. I wasn’t sure if it was the white space maybe triggering some kind of “bleed-bot” so I cropped all that whitespace out in Affinity, carefully double checked to be sure all of my panels were within my set margins, and pulled all the word-balloons into the margins as well. Tedious process, but doable. See below entire word balloons were pulled within the bounds of the margins.
Also, for some reason, my standard margins in my publishing software was slightly more narrow than the publishing margins in KDP – probably something I did wrong, but, oh well, it looks fine in review and gave me some opportunity to hang the balloons outside of the panels near the spine area. I think my next book, I’ll have them hanging on the outsides of the panels.
I hit publish and it worked! Yay! See below to purchase:
This is just the hardback – I’m actually waiting on a paperback PROOF to test out the difference between the “standard color interior” and “premium color interior”. Maybe I’ll check back soon with results – or probably just publish it and move on to my next book!
Just here to expose more job interview scams. Instead of creating a new post, I’ll be updating this post with new interview scams as I receive them with hopes that they’ll pop up in our ever-changing search engines, and hopefully help someone who just isn’t sure.
I am Claire Edison, Sr. Human Resources Coordinator at Abercrombie & Fitch Co. Your profile has been reviewed through coroflot.com. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is seeking for a remote (full-time/freelance) illustrator to create high-quality artwork for our digital and print media publications. As an illustrator, you are required to work closely with our clients and marketing team to develop inspiring artwork that will attract our target audience.
I want to invite you to interview via Skype to learn more about the position and get to know you better. At Abercrombie & Fitch Co., we constantly seek to grow our teams with creative and talented people and achieve great things together.
Are you available? If so, I’d happily coordinate via Skype (live:.cid.b946c5acd269cf62) work Hours or Shift: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am – 5:30 pm. Salary: $120-150/Hr. Availability: Full-Time, Part-Time, Freelance.
I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely
Claire Edison. Sr. Human Resources Coordinator at Abercrombie & Fitch Co.
The grammar and spelling seemed okay, so I couldn’t go by that.
Next, I’ll look at where this email is delivered from. In this case, it’s “info@abercrombiefitchs.store” – also in the title attached to the email, now you’ll see an error. It spelled “fitchs”. If you go to the website, all of Abercrombie & fitch emails do not contain an “s” after the name, and note they are all (dot)coms. They don’t contain “(dot)store”. Also, they don’t seem to use “fitch” in their domain extension at all. Here’s the Abercrombie & Fitch official contact-us page: https://corporate.abercrombie.com/contact-us/ – note what the HR email actually looks like.
Then I looked at the sender’s name, and this person has two first names (a red flag for scams explained in my slightly embarrassing post about having a 2 hour interview with a scammer).
I also looked at where they found me – coroflot.com? I haven’t used that website in ages and only have one or two images up. I didn’t even list any of my experiences there. Actually, I forgot I had that account until now.
Best thing to do would be to mark as spam and ignore it.
Update 1/30/26
Received this email from “Marta Lajoso” at:
artist-care@singulartmailsecure.com
Header: “Collectors interested in your work
“Hi Ellen,
I’m Marta Lajoso from Singulart’s Artist Relations team, the leading online art gallery for collectors globally. Over the past few days, I noticed that a couple of collectors have been captivated by your artworks.
Are any of your artworks currently available for purchase?
Best regards, Marta Lajoso Artist Relations Manager, Singulart 25 Rue du Petit Musc, 75004 Paris, France”
Yes this is a scam, and sadly, “Marta Lajoso” may actually be a real person.
You’re poking around on Deviantart (for example) and you get an email from some rando named “mokalilat” and they say something like:
“Dear, [Your DeviantArt Username]! Your artwork received high praise from our team. Kаbаm Games invites you to a new project. Open positions:Junior/Middle/Senior 2D Artist;Junior/Middle/Senior 3D Artist;Senior/Middle Concept Artist;Art Director;Lead Artist;Senior/Middle UI Artist. I request you to examine the file containing examples of our company’s work. This will assist us in comprehending your capabilities and how they align with our company’s projects. Download: ragtedaburgay.gq/wpMLuIAAY Please note that the attached file is confidential and can only be opened on a computer. Reply here for to apply.”
At first you’re like, ‘heck yeah!’ But then you’re like, ‘wait a minute’, and you’re suddenly not sure about what to do or how to respond.
Here’s my recommendation – go straight to the company website: and check out their “careers” page. This is what you’ll find:
“Beware of phishing! We take your online safety seriously. We do not initiate contact with individuals for job offers or to solicit personal information through 3rd party sites. Please exercise caution and verify the authenticity of any unsolicited communication.”
https://kabam.com/careers/
Right there they state that they won’t contact you via a 3rd party messaging system (Deviant Art, Redbubble, Zazzle, etc.) And there is your answer – that message is safe to report as phishing/spam and without need to worry about missing some once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Below are some of the scammer “tells” as described in a previous (and moderately embarrassing blog post I did after wasting 2 hours of my life on a fake/phishing job interview):
Scammer has two first names.
Scammer can’t spell or use proper grammar (when message is written in English).
Scammer may use trusted sources like Indeed, Upwork, or Monster
Scammer wants you to send or receive money in unusual ways
Scammer has email from a general domain like “@gmail.com” or “@yahoo.com”
Don’t let your desire for success cloud your judgement in your path moving forward.
Figuring out how I’m supposed to separate keywords with spaces when you go to create your products in Zazzle took more time than I care to admit.
I finally found an answer by opening the “Edit product details” panel (for an existing product), going down to the “Tags” tab and clicking on the highlighted link “View tags above as text” link. That allowed me to copy/paste the tags in text format. I re-pasted it into the “Add Tag” space to see if that worked, and it did. The question was why?
After some insignificant trail and error, I finally realized you need to put a COMMA at the end of your separate words for it to appear as separated words in your tag. Like this: “biking badger,” – if you just put the words “biking badger” without a comma at the end, it will separate the words into two separate keywords “biking” and “badger”. So, simply put that comma there and press enter or “Add Tag” button. See example below:
Who knows if they’ll change this to make it more dyslexic-friendly in the future, but hopefully this saves someone out there some time.
Oh, lastly, welcome to visit my product page for this blog post (I receive a decent percentage of all sales):
I’ve launched my marketing campaign for my latest book “The Yard Next Door” (working title), and I hit a small bump in the road and thought I’d blog about it. It took me about half a day to set up my Facebook business page (specifically for the book). I did a few things to initiate the process of making it look welcoming and to begin the engagement process:
cover art
profile picture
description
liked a bunch of pages that are relevant to my project (and also actually entertaining for me to follow, because if you don’t like what you follow, what’s the point, right?)
The next day I had a pleasant and unexpected surprise since I had not yet shared my page with anyone on my personal Facebook account. I had one organic follower (and then I told my husband, and he followed me too after doing a quick search for my book title). So, I have 2 followers and 50+ impressions, and I thought it would be great to see what my audience will eventually look like (and also, I might want to follow them back) – unfortunately, I discovered this information was unavailable. I can see the number of followers, but from the admin side it said, “You haven’t been followed by anyone yet”, and on the public view it said, “title” … “list of followers is unavailable.” See below for examples:
Admin view of the pagePublic view of the page
So, I’m thinking, ‘what the heck’ and I start Googling this issue like heck. All the suggestions out there were about changing the privacy settings, but it wasn’t very helpful – my privacy settings didn’t seem to be a problem here. The other suggestions included deleting the Facebook app and reinstalling it. I don’t use the app, so that didn’t help.
After additional searching, I found the “meta insights” area. It didn’t give me much info either except it left me with the impression that maybe, just maybe followers don’t show up until you get 100 of them (like with the “age and gender” section).
After a 3rd person followed my page, that’s when I realized that the two initial followers had their privacy settings turned on such that I wouldn’t be able to see who they are (except for my husband because I already know he’s ‘anonymously’ following me – nothing weird).
Anyway, I hope this is helpful for anyone having the same issue.
Hi all, I’m about to embark on an adventure in ERV (Energy Recovery System) installation! Since we had our siding updated, our home ‘envelope’ is now much tighter and more energy efficient. That means indoor air quality has been noticeably going downhill for us, and we need to do something about it soon.
First things first – some requirements:
120v outlet (yes, check)
2 feet of space between the first bend and the planned location of the ERV (check)
Hanging chain? (be back in a minute)
Choosing the right unit was really, really hard because there is very little info out there for the DIY person. I got the Panasonic intelli-ballance because Matt Risinger (home improvement internet personality) recommended it, but it would have been nice to see more reviews of units out there.
And now I wait, and I wait for the unit to arrive on 8/2/23. I’m going to draw some pictures while I wait.
Update 8/3/23
The unit arrived. Here it is sitting under where I plan to hang it in the utility room of our basement.
There are two ways to install this unit. First is by fixing it to studs in a wall which would be ideal from a usage standpoint (with the chain mounted method, you need to crouch under the device to access controls and change filters). Unfortunately, there are no walls with studs where I want to put it, and I don’t trust screwing this heavy device into my cinderblock basement walls, so chains it is. See below:
Mounted, tested and functioning A-Okay
I plan to initially have this unit act as a “stand-alone” device and not tie it into the existing ductwork because A) I won’t have time to do that for at least the next several weeks, and B) I want to see how well this setup functions as a standalone. I’m not sure we really need anything more at this time, but this will be a test period to find out, and I figure, if it works fine as a stand-alone, why fix it?
The exhaust ports will be installed through the window. I won’t have the second out-port until tomorrow as I ordered a size that won’t work with my setup. I went with two of these:
They’re primarily used for dryer and air conditioner window adapters but should work just fine for a starter ERV setup. You might be wondering why I didn’t just bore holes in the wall. I don’t really have time to do that either, and I don’t want to mess up the new siding. Also, if I wanted to move this device to another part of the basement when I have more time to spend on this, I’d then have to move the holes too. This seemed the best option, and I’ll be winter-proofing as well.
The unit is tested and we are now waiting for the other window vent to arrive (one for exhaust and one for intake). I also forgot to pick up some vent insulation in addition to metal tape (the stuff that goes on vent connections).
I’m excited to check back in tomorrow with updates on this project!
Update 8/4/23:
The second window vent adapter arrived. I had to cut them so they would fit into the window, but it works really well.
I switched it on. It’s quiet and seems to work okay. There is a ‘new unit’ smell to it, but that might also be the smell of the pipe glue (exterior intake pipe). Crossing fingers and hoping this will do the trick.
It was a 4-year process that began back in 2017 when we bought this cute little house.
Quick sketch of our cute little house
One of the first things we did after buying the house was to get rid of the old hot water tank. At that time, we weren’t thinking that far ahead – we just needed a new water tank in a hurry and on a budget we were already stretching to make the house into a more livable condition, so we got ourselves a gas powered “Fatboy” hot water tank. We eventually replaced it with an electric one in conjunction with the upgrade of our heating/cooling system a few years later. Our HVAC people re-homed the young-ish Fatboy.
Craptastic hot water tank wrapped in some silvery junk to the left, and our old blue boiler prior to upgrade. We upgraded to a gas “fatboy” hot water tank prior to upgrading again to the electric one. I didn’t take a pic of our fatboyNew electric hot water tank
The “kitchen” was originally located in what is now our living room. What is now our kitchen was originally an empty bedroom with wall-to-wall carpeting that had seen many years of frat parties. The process of building the kitchen from scratch is important because we started off with zero working appliances and took that opportunity to purchase all electric ones.
Pocket Bathroom we demoed to make room for the fridge and pantryAnother photo of the empty room that eventually became our kitchen. Here you can see radiator pipes that were re-directed to the back porch.Pocket Bathroom After Demo^^^ Kitchen before pictures ^^^
At that time, I don’t think we were planning on moving the entire house to electric, but it was cheaper and simpler to throw wires into that room than it would have been to extend the gas-line for all the appliances. I had a sketch, and our electrician hooked up the island and other appliances in accordance with my drawings.
Old cabinets left in the basement and came with the house. Underneath the layers of paint, I discovered they were solid oak so I refurbished them.More ‘found’ cabinetscabinet finish drying in basementKitchen in progress. You can see electric induction stovetop and convection oven in place.Wire octopi everywhereBefore wall cabinets went upafter wall cabinets went upBefore Behind sink backsplashafter behind sink backsplash made with reclaimed woodStove hood in progressMe installing hoodKitchen complete^^^ Kitchen “after” pictures ^^^
We also updated our breaker boxes. This really needed to happen before dedicating spaces for our new heat pumps. Before and after photos below. You can see how previous owners tried to split this house up into 4 apartments with one main box for the landlord. In the “after” photo we now have two main boxes. One services the majority of our house things including the downstairs heat pump. The other box has our car charger and upstairs heat pump.
BeforeAfter
Shortly after the kitchen was completed, we installed electric washer/dryer. For the first year we had been taking our laundry to the laundromat (we didn’t bother trying the old gas units as they looked in a bad way).
Old unitsSlop sink also demoed to make room for the new unitsEmpty space after demoNew electric washer/dryer
New HVAC system was installed without needing to open up any of the walls. Our 2 story house has a full basement and full attic. By throwing the ductwork into those unfinished spaces, we were able to save our walls (though, there isn’t anything special about our walls, it would have been super messy and more expensive). The rough sketch below details how we did it, and the only demo required was to make a closet larger to accommodate the 2nd floor handler. I initially wanted all the ductwork to also be installed within the conditioned “envelope” of the second floor and have it all run along the ceiling. However, my much taller husband disapproved of that idea, so we went with the plan below.
basement air handler2 heat pump units behind trash cansdemo closet face to make room for air handler on 2nd floorair handler installed and new closet builtcloset door closed
After the new HVAC systems were installed and functional, it was time to demo the old boiler, radiators and radiator pipes. Initially, I had planned to call the plumber and throw some money at them to disconnect all of the radiators so the junk haulers can move them out. As I was pondering the logistics and timing of this task, I noticed the HVAC people had already disconnected a couple of the radiators, and I thought to myself, ‘how hard could this possibly be?’ I purchased a 24″ heavy steel wrench and a slightly smaller hand plier for quick removal of loose bolts. Total cost was about $100 + a couple hours of work disconnecting all 15 radiators.
The haulers arrived the next day and were able to remove the 1’st floor radiators without issue. The 2nd floor radiators were an entirely different story as they would have had a nearly impossible time getting them safely down a flight of turning stairs. Luckily, back when I had been toying with the idea of doing all the heavy lifting myself, I watched a YouTube video on how to dismantle a radiator. I grabbed my 3-foot wrecking bar and went right to work, first unscrewing the long bolts that held each radiator slot together like a long sandwich, then splitting the sections into more manageable pieces with the wrecking bar. It wasn’t actually too hard to divide 7 radiators on the 2nd floor. The haulers were super thankful and happy to wait around while I split them up. The only challenge was containing the black sludge left at the bottom of the radiators. We went through all of our towels and a bunch of drop-cloths.
Mess of pipes to old boiler/radiator system with bonus ‘mystery’ tank at top right of pictureBetter shot of the “mystery” tankBetter pic of the old boiler – this was taken after much of the radiator piping was removed.Radiators were not ornamental and we do not miss themHappiness is a 2 foot wrenchgoodbye forever to corrosion leaks!Head-banging main radiator pipes in basement rec-roomBasement rec-room after overhead pipe demo
During the process of radiator removal, we also needed to have our gas line cut. When we bought the house, we had 3 gas meters and 3 accounts. I didn’t get any good photos of the unused 2 meters, but you can see where they had been in the photo below. Apparently, this setup held 5 meters at some point in the house’s history.
A little backstory on those meters: the process of removing the 2 unused meters was a nightmare experience. The gas company has 3 departments that you can reach by phone (sales, raising, and customer advocate). I know they have 3 departments because they kept transferring me to the next one where I had to explain the entire story all over again to a new person. It took weeks to get someone to come out and take the meters. A tech finally showed up, looked at the meters and said “wait a minute, this isn’t what I expected, I can’t do anything with this” then told me he might need to file for a new application and send someone else. He said he was expecting to remove 5 meters. There are only 3 meters and I told him we want to keep one of them. He said he or someone would come back that day, but nobody came back, and I received a phone call the next day telling me I needed to reschedule.
After more weeks and lots of hours on hold with multiple agents, we finally got those two extra meters removed. We were down to the one meter which we used for several years until we finally went all electric.
When it was time to remove that final meter and cut the gas to the house, I was a little nervous about working with them because of my previous experience.
Gas removal (for this area, at least) is called “abandonment”. I needed to reach out to their abandonment department which doesn’t have a phone number, so I had to do it all via email. Since they so rarely get jobs that require removal without a complete demo, they kept asking me when we’ll be “abandoning” the building, and when the demo will occur. If you do this to your house, be prepared to explain to everyone that you will not be abandoning and demoing your home. Apparently, this is something that is so rarely done, it causes great confusion at the gas company.
The steps involved for abandonment included:
Scheduling a tech to take the final meter
Cutting the gas at the street (and cutting the “riser pipe” to the house)
Getting the gas company and their contractors to take the remainder of the pipe
We are still on step 3 because the contractors were confused about what to do when they came to get the remainder of pipe. But luckily, having them come out and take the meter, then cap the line at the street was a relatively easy process. I even learned something new when a contractor showed up to mark the line. He told me we were smart for doing this because he’d seen all kinds of horrors with the condition and botched installations of residential/commercial gas lines. Go us!
Step 1: after they took the meterRiser pipe they needed to cut when they capped the line at the streetStep 2: Riser pipe is gone after they cut the gas at street levelAlso Removed 2 ugly yellow pipes that “protected” the exterior riser from cars.
For the final step, I was instructed to call a 3rd party contractor that works with Washington Gas, and they would come out to remove the extra “parts” left behind. I called the number and spoke with someone who requested pictures of the parts to be removed. I sent pictures in email and a removal date was scheduled. When the Contractor showed up, he said he was expecting to take a meter but couldn’t do anything with the long pipe on the wall or the exterior regulator. He said they would just scrap it anyway, so I asked him if I could dismantle the thing myself instead of having to wait for someone (yet again) to come out. He said that would be fine if I was comfortable doing that work. I grabbed my sawzall, and went to work. The entire demo took me only about 30 minutes.
Come get your exterior regulator, Washington Gas!Long pipe on wall came down easy with a little help from my trusty sawzall
… And this concludes the story of how we converted our house from gas to electric.
