Let the Rough Plumbing begin

Last week, Shawn began to work on the plumbing. Here's the first hole into the framing (this is looking from the basement up to the floor joists). This hole is for the pipe to vent radon gases from below the basement slab. It will go through the main floor, and up through the roof, on one of the pipes that Shawn installed before the roof was shingled.

Next, he worked on drilling a hole through the concrete wall between the mechanical room and the safe room so he can get to the septic pipe that we installed last fall. This hole seemed to go much better than the other one. It helped that it was smaller, and there weren't any steel rebars at that spot!

On Sunday, Shawn began to install the main drain line. This is what the piping looks like inside the safe room. You can't see it in the picture, but on the bottom left after the cleanout (the Y-looking fitting) is where the pipe exits the house and goes to the septic tank. Because of our house layout and design, there are some beams that support the floor joists right on all the wrong spots. So the drain pipe design is a bit tricky, and the tolerances are pretty tight. But Shawn is taking his time to make sure things are done neat, and that his slopes and angles are as accurate as he can get them. I'm very impressed by the look of his work.

This next picture is on the mechanical room side. Right after the pipe comes through the wall, you can see the fitting where the sewage ejector plumbing will tie. The drain lines for the basement plumbing are under the slab, and since the height of the septic tank is higher than them, the waste water has to go into a sewage ejection pit, where waste gets ground up and then a pump will lift it up to drain into the main house drain. This pit is in the mechanical room, and Shawn will install a 2" line from the pit up to that fitting you see here.

At the other end of the pipe you can see a Wye fitting. This is where the waste water line splits to serve both ends of the house main floor. On one side the master bath and upstairs bathroom drain; the other side will connect the kitchen and laundry room drain lines. I'm not sure what Shawn will be working on next. I think he plans on extending the drain lines back to where the next connection is on both sides. I think there is still a few details that need to be checked on the design for the bathroom drain lines, just to make sure we're using the appropriate fittings according to our plumbing code, which is the UPC (Universal Plumbing Code).

Evan, Bianca and I went out there on Sunday pm to check out what Shawn was doing. I took a picture of our water heater. Shawn is 6' and some inches tall (for comparison), and this is what an 105 gallon electric water heater looks like. This is a Marathon water heater, and is made of plastic, and guaranteed for the life of the house. Pretty neat, eh?

On the heating and cooling side, we got the first drawings back from the Radiant company out east, and a parts list for the distribution part of the radiant system (meaning the manifold stations that are placed where the pipes stick out of the concrete and where the hot water and returning cold water get hooked up to go back to the boiler.) The control design will be done sometime next week. The controls are things like boiler, pumps, zone valves, pressure relief valves, etc, that is the heart and brains of the radiant system. We'll get those drawings and the parts list, and we should be good to go on the radiant installation. Maybe this weekend we'll go shopping for the parts for the manifolds to compare the prices of getting them local vs. buying from the NE radiant company, though on the boiler alone they were half the price than getting the same boiler from a local company here, and that included shipping. We'll see.

We also went to the Home and Garden show over the weekend and talked to a few geothermal heating and cooling companies, and several other companies for things like insulation, countertops, etc. just to get some ideas. We're still gathering quotes for heating and cooling mainly for budgeting purposes.
But for now, we're proceeding as planned with getting the radiant heat in the basement and the plumbing done, and getting quotes for the electrician and drywall.

Until next week~