Last week's post and this week's post in one

If you've forgotten, click on the pictures to see bigger and better details!

Didn't get around to posting last week, so I'm trying to catch up.

So we'll start off with more soffit and fascia update. Shawn finished the East side of the house










Then he went around the north side of the garage...










And made it all the way around to the front... You can see in this picture that the soffit stops at garage wall and the porch is without soffit, yet the fascia goes all the way to the end. That last part of fascia without soffit is going to be temporary. We had some scraps from some damaged fascia, and we decided to put it up to protect that wood sub-fascia board since most likely the porch won't be done until next year sometime, and there will be rain and snow between now and then. :)


Here is a nice shot of the excellent work that Shawn has done. Everything looks great, and those corners look like a pro did them.








Then after this was done, he moved onto starting on the west side of the house and work his way to the front. Here he is working on the soffit on the Master Bath NW wall.



He made it around the corner with the soffit and fascia as you can see here before he ran out of soffit. Need to make a run to the store sometime to get some more, but with the holiday this weekend, he won't get to work on it. I am trying to push him to get that soffit around the next corner all the way to that wall, but I think he's tired of soffit work. Maybe if we get a nice weather weekend he might be interested in continuing.

But Shawn has now switched his gears into plumbing mode, and has been working on the design of drain-waste-vent lines for the main floor.

He's got a rough idea of what he wants, and has most of it drawn. Now we're poring over the internet and code books to figure out exact details about venting requirements, code, etc. etc.

This past weekend he worked on testing the plumbing that was buried under the slab last year. We were worried that some water got into the pipes after we had a few inches of ice last winter right after the slab was poured. Then it melted and froze before he had sucked the pipes dry with the wet vac. We did add antifreeze, but one day when we checked, there was a crust of ice in the drain. So our concern was that water froze somewhere and cracked a pipe. This, of course, would be terrible because it's under concrete, and any repair would mean tearing into concrete. And we have radiant heat pipes in there too. Not to mention that we'd have to find where the pipe was cracked to fix it.

Anyway, Shawn opened up the sewage pit where the sewage ejector pump will go, and plugged the drain line. (That's the red plug you see in the picture)

Then he brought in the hose and filled up the pipes with water. Then he inserted a stick into the toilet drain and marked the water level. As you can see, he's got a mark at the starting point. An hour later the water level had dropped 3/8" then at the 3 hr mark it had dropped 5/8."
we figured there would be some settling time for the water to get level in all of the pipes (at least we hoped that's why the water went down). Then he checked at 4 hrs, and 6 hrs, and the water level stayed at 5/8". He let the water sit overnight and checked again on Sunday, and the level remained at 5/8" below the starting point.

I was concerned that it could possibly mean there is a crack in the pipe, water drained out through the crack, then once below the crack the water level remains the same. So Shawn did a little investigating. For the bathtub rough in, the plumber put a small black box to make a nice compartment when the concrete was poured. So Shawn pressed on the plastic box and he could hear water in there. So he cut the box open, and what he found inside was that the water had filled all the way up to the concrete level. Then as water leaked out of the box, if got below the bathtub drain line, and that's where it remained. So the good news is, our basement plumbing is leak free!

After he figured that out, he hooked up an old sump pump that his dad gave to us earlier this year to use in case water ever got in the house. The old sump pump worked great, and Shawn drained the water out of the pipes and got them all dry, so we should be good to go this winter.
And, we won't have the 2" of ice on our basement slab this year like we did last year during construction since we now have a roof and windows.

If we get the plumbing design finalized, maybe Shawn will start on the plumbing installation. Or if I can convince him, he can work on some more soffit to get the west side done, leaving only the gable on the back, the front gable, and the porch to finish next year.

Oh, and we have yet to hear back from the electrician, so we're not sure if the State inspector has been out there or not. Though I do believe he will leave some sort of tag saying it has been inspected. If I don't hear anything by next week, I'll give the electrician a call.

Have a great holiday everyone, and if you're traveling, we pray for safe travel for everyone!

We have Electricity

I'll start off by showing some overdue pictures.

I didn't get a picture of the septic cleanout we installed before it was backfilled. But this here is the PVC pipe that is hooked up to it. Someday, when we pour the sidewalk area in front of the porch here, that pipe will be trimmed to the right height and capped for future access to the cleanout.

This next picture shows what we did inside. The one on the left shows the cleanout as it was when it was installed inside. Then we cut it off and moved it to the outside. It turned out better this way, since now the drain pipe inside the house can installed a lot closer to the wall as you can see on the right.


Here are some more pictures of the grading of the front.












The next one is a composite picture of the east side.











And now, to the next milestone reached in our project. We actually now have electricity in the house. Two outlets! And on their own breakers!

The electricians came out on Monday of last week to get started. But due to an emergency, the master electrician had to go to another project, so it was just the crew working on it.

On Tuesday, they finished the installation, and I happened to be home with a flu bug. So I came out to take a look at their work. Because we are doing electric heat, the Co-op has a special electric rate during the winter, as long as you meter it separate from the house electricity. So we have basically two services going into the house and need two meters, two lines, two disconnect panels, and two breaker panels in the house. For now, we only had the electrician install one panel, as you can see in this picture. It is a huge panel, and should be able to accommodate all of our electric needs. You can see the double outlet right under the panel, too.

This picture shows our meter panels on the pole. One is for the house, one is for the HVAC equipment. When I came to look at them after the electrician was done, I noticed that one panel was hooked up, the other one wasn't. I asked the electrician if he happend to hook up both service lines to one meter, and he said yes. Uhm, well, it was supposed to be one service hooked up to each meter individually. Ooops.
Also, that double outlet in the utility room was supposed to be ground-fault circuit interrupter type (GFCI). Those are the ones you will see nowadays in bathrooms (and unfinished locations) that have the buttons to reset them. They didn't install GFCI outlets. I also asked if they had the ground rods in, and he had not installed those either.

So they left and said they would come back Thursday to fix it.

Here is a picture of the disconnect panels that are supposedly required by code. I think this is just the way the inspector is interpreting the code, and we actually don't need them. It would have saved us $800 to not put those in, but unfortunately the code says that ultimately the Authority Having Jurisdiction has the last word. And the AHJ said they want them, we can't say no. To us, this is really stupid because there is a disconnect at the meter already. Shut that off, and there's no electricity going to the house, and these two are useless basically. Their argument was for safety so the fire department ever needed to disconnect the power. My friend knows the local fire chief in town, and he says that they don't have time to bother looking for disconnects, and simply pull the meter off the socket. No meter, no power, no problem. I better stop now before I get an apoplexy here.

So I guess the electrician helper got into trouble for not doing the job right, and had to come back and fix it all, and will not get paid for that extra time to fix the work. We felt sorry for the guy. Our setup is not typical, so easy to make mistakes. But as long as it doesn't cost us anything to fix it right. Anyway, he came back and got the meter panels hooked up right, put in GFCI outlets in the house, and installed a ground rod. Only one? Well, my understanding was that it needs to be 2 ground rods (I asked the state inspector). Well, he would talk to the master electrician because he told him only to put one. So I called the state inspector, and he said we need two. So I called the electrician and told him call the state inspector because he says we need two. Haven't heard back from them what the final word is.

Despite the mistakes, I'm impressed with the quality of the work. Everything was neat, clean, and looks very nice and professional, and they didn't leave a mess. And now that things are fixed (except the ground rod issue), it looks right. We'll see what the electrical inspector says once he comes out to approve the work.

Then on the weekend, my in-laws came out to help us yet again. Shawn and his dad worked on finishing the caulking on that double door on the back, and finishing the siding up to the soffit.
Once done, they tore the scaffolding down and put it away for the winter. You can see in this picture the siding and the electrical mount block.
That gable will have to wait until next year to do siding and soffit. At least the soffit is not really open on the gable, so that should help to not let snow in during the winter.

After they got the scaffolding down, the guys decided to work inside the garage to level the rock. This was definitely a two person job, so Shawn wanted to take advantage of his dad's help. This picture shows a before look inside the garage. Shawn had previously marked on the wall the level of the rock, so the guys started at the back and worked they way around. They would scoop out gravel to get it roughly level and spread it around with a rake, then with a 2x4 and a level, they would drag that around while on their knees to get it nice and smooth. And they also used a hand tamper to tamp it down a bit.
Here's a picture after they were done.

It looks really nice in the garage now, and we should be able to store a few things in there and park the cars in the winter as well.

My mother-in-law, Pam, helped me do a few things in the old house, and watched Evan for a bit, while I tried to sort through baby stuff stored upstairs from Evan so I can re-use it with the new baby. In the afternoon, she came out to help the guys, and Shawn put her on the lawn tractor dragging a home-made version of a grader. So she dragged that around the yard all afternoon to smooth out the grading. Here's a picture of her, hard at work.

We really should get some grass seed down so that next spring the weeds won't take over again. Also, to help keep the ground from eroding as well since we don't have gutters yet.

After the guys were done with the garage, they worked on making a small roof to cap the chimney (with shingles and all). It was too dark by the time they got done with it. They did haul it up the ladder onto the roof, since it was time for Derald and Pam to go, and there's no way Shawn would have been able to take up there by himself.

So, on Sunday afternoon, with that nice wind, Shawn put the little roof cap on the chimney to replace the piece of plywood that was there. Hopefully this will do a better job of keeping snow and water from getting in there, since it will be a while before a fireplace is installed. Shawn added some more tyvek paper to seal it better.

So it's back to soffit and fascia for Shawn until the weather keeps him from working outside. He did do a lot of soffit last week, and the whole East side of the house is pretty much covered in soffit (except for one little piece in the corner where the garage joins the house). You can see where he needs to finish up the the fascia, and that side should be done all the way to the north side of the garage! Here's a picture of the north side of the garage.

If possible, he will then move onto the west side of the house. The goal is for him to do the whole west side and make it to the front on that side and do the front of the garage. Leaving only the porch and front bedroom gable for next year, since that's going to be a bit more complicated.

Then it's inside to work on plumbing. Shawn's been designing the pipe routes, and looking into plumbing layout already. Also, we heard from the coop that the electric water heaters are going to go up in price after the first of the year. They sell the Marathon electric water heater. It is made of polymer, and contains no steel parts. It is warranted as long as we own the house, and it is the highest efficiency electric water heater out there. Right now the coop has the heaters for sale for about 20% of the retail price for the larger model. So we'll be purchasing a water heater probably next week, and have to go pick it up at the Boone warehouse.

I also learned from the coop that they are coming up with a bunch of rebates for next year for things like insulation, energy star appliances, and drain water heat recovery units. If you don't know what they are, check this website for some info http://www.renewability.com/video.html

I'd like to install one of these, and the payback can be as little as 3 years for putting one of these on the main drain line of the house. Basically, it recovers the heat from the water that goes down the drain from showering, laundry, baths, etc. The cold water supply goes through a pipe that is wrapped around the drain pipe exchanging the heat and warming up the incoming cold water. You pipe that to your water heater, and it will save you some energy. Now the water heater doesn't have to work so hard to warm up cool water. A Canadian study showed that incoming street water at 50º can be heated up to 75º during a 15 minute shower. That can turn into a lot of savings. But they are not cheap, so depending on the rebate from the coop, it might be worth the investment.

Until next week!