Getting Ready For Drywall!

Since my last post, Shawn got the Manabloc manifold mounted on the wall in the mechanical room. Also, my in-laws returned during a Saturday to help us out some more. With Derald's help, Shawn got some framing drilled and mounted next to the water manifold to route that mess of pipes that were our supply lines. Not messy any more! Check this out: That black thing you see in the middle is the water manifold. Our water system is called home-run in which basically every single fixture in the house gets its own pipe.

Shawn also hooked up two separate smaller copper manifolds, as you can see here, that handle the pipes to the toilets, outdoor hose bibs and drinking water faucets. All of these lines get supplied with hard water before the water supply goes through the water softener. The drinking ones will eventually be filetered/treated before they leave for the bar and kitchen. Once water goes through the softener, it is then routed to the manabloc into the bottom where it goes through all of the cold water ports then it leaves at the top to go to the water heater. The hot returns to a different port at the top again from the water heater and leaves for the fixtures through the hot water ports.

But now Shawn has made all of the connections to it. It looks very sharp. And the best part? Water is turned on and no leaks! Makes me think of a heart, with the red arteries and blue veins.





This picture here shows the connections for the water heater.
Once he was done with the water supply, Shawn ran a permanent soft water line to the radiant system.

Another great thing to happen is that we filled the radiant pipes with water, and we are leak free! So we are ready to get the floor fired up. We were waiting on the electrical inspection, and we got word last Friday that we passed the electrical inspection! So with that part behind us, it was time to order the rim joist spray foam. We got two quotes, and one came in half as much as the other one and $100 less than our budget! So praise the Lord for that because we were thinking that we'd only have enough to do the rim joist and not the basement windows.

Here is a picture of the contractor as he worked on filling the rim joist with foam. This is good insulation, since most heat load calculations do show that an obscene amount of heat is lost through this area. But the main point is to stop air infiltration leaks. Keep cold air from coming in, and warm air from getting out.
I meant to take more pictures, but by the time I got done with Bianca and her bottle and got her to nap, they guys were done.
They did the whole perimeter of the house in about 2 hrs on a Sunday afternoon.

This picture here shows a little bit of both parts of the work. The rim joist above, and the perimeter around the windows below.



After the spray foam guys left, we began working on our punch list to get the drywall done. We had gone to Menards on Friday and bought all of the drywall as well as the tubs of mud and tape that we need. Then the next thing we tackled was access panels and caulking. Shawn built the framing the we need for the access panels to the remote manifolds for the radiant system as well as for the bathtub plumbing and the back hose bib that are in the walls. Because of budget, we're only going to drywall the walls now, and also since the main floor is not going to be finished for a couple of years, the electrician will still need access to the ceiling in the basement. So the ceiling access panels for some of the plumbing up there will be done then. But this picture shows two of the four access panels. The top is for behind the tub, and the one below is to reach the remote manifold located within the fireplace. We'll still not sure how we will finish these, but for now, the drywaller will butt his drywall to the 1/2" plywood, and we'll dress them up with some trim later.

While Shawn worked on that, I started caulking the joint between the slab and the exterior walls. This is mainly for radon mitigation to make sure that the pipe we have that uses the stack effect takes the radon out. Also, because of HVAC equipment, sometimes the inside of the house can get depressurized. (It's the reason why sometimes when you go to some office buildings, you can barely open the door and when you do, a whoosh of air follows you). If the negative pressure inside the house is strong enough, it can actually suck radon into the basement through cracks. Which it is why it's important that if you ever notice cracks in your basement slab (or slab on grade), you seal them. Or if you have a crawl space, the EPA recomends somehow sealing the the dirt to keep radon from entering the home. But this isn't a radon mitigation site, so I'll get off my soapbox. Though as a final note, if you don't think radon is worth the trouble, just look up it's health effects, and that it doesn't take much to reach the "acceptable" levels in the home.

Anyway, I got as much caulking as I could, then when the kids woke up, Shawn took over. So this picture shows what he's up to.
We spoke with the drywall contractor last week, and told him that the materials were ordered and we were waiting to have them delivered. He informed us that he had taken a job out in South Dakota, and it would take him two weeks, so we agreed for him to come on Saturday October 9th to begin. This was good because our to-do list to be drywall ready kept getting bigger every day. There are a lot of things we need to have done right. Once behind drywall, it's won't be easy to fix!

Shawn began working on the framing to mount the range hood and the kitchen vent pipe, and of course, the range hood we buy takes a 7" pipe, not the standard 6", so no one has the wall cap we need for the outside. So we had to wait for it to arrive. We stumbled upon DrillSpot.com, and bought the cap from them since they were cheaper than ordering through lowes, plus free shipping. We placed the order on Thursday afternoon, and it was here by Friday! And did I mention that was with free shipping? That made us really happy since we did not have to wait long to keep working. This picture shows the end product of that.

While Shawn did that, I began to scrape foam off the window framing, and filling up the electrical chases in the exterior wall with foam and miscellaneous things.

But Shawn had looked into the ten day forecast, and the 9th there might be a chance of rain. Well, drywall and rain don't mix, so we called Jose and asked if he would be around this Saturday to deliver the drywall. He said no, he was still in SD, so we said OK. If it rains, we'll just deliver it some other day. This was Thursday. Friday evening Jose calls and says he wants to start this Saturday, so can we deliver the drywall? Well, with the chance of rain for next weekend and the fact that we're into October already, we decided to go for it. Since he wasn't supposed to work until next week, we thought we had plenty of time to work through our to-do list since we're stressed out enough as it is. Not to mention that if you have seen the background on some of our pictures, we had piles of tools, parts, materials, etc. etc. all over the place that we needed to move so there was room to store the drywall, and for the crew to work. We now had less than 24 hrs to get the house ready for drywall!

And the four of us went to work. Evan helped Shawn take all of the lumber, siding, scaffolding, and such and load it onto the trailer, and haul it to the barn. We also had to take all the toys and baby items back to the old house. We had to empty the storm shelter and take out the piles of insulation that we had in there, and find a place for the windows screens that we've been storing there. I helped moving tools around since I had Bianca on a carrier. We had to tell Jose that we probably wouldn't be ready to have the whole basement drywalled, but that we'd try to get as much as we could. And Menards wouldn't deliver until noon or so.

This morning it was an early rise for us so we could do what we hadn't been able to finish last night, since what we managed to do was clear up the house and move stuff around and out of the basement. Plus, Shawn needed to go to Lowe's to buy the insulation that we needed for the bathroom and mechanical room. We weren't able to finish everything, but we have all rooms ready for drywall with the exception of the family room, kitchen/bar and lounge/dining room done.

Shawn got some layers of blue foam under the stairs for insulation, since we plan on closing the stairwell off, and on the upper side of the stairs, the Iowa winter will be looking for a way in. He also got our data wiring coming into the closet under the stairs tidied up a bit. The second pipe you see if for future wires needed for the upstairs someday.

Menards truck didn't show up until about two, and by the time the four man crew got done moving the drywall inside the house, Jose had to leave for another job. Also, Menards did not deliver all of the items we ordered since they were short at the store, so Shawn went back to Lowe's to get them because he thought Jose would need them.
Supposedly Jose will work tomorrow, and he claims he will have all of the drywall with the exception of the family room, lounge, bar area hung!
Can't wait! I can also really not believe that we're actually going to have drywall on our walls! That will really change the look of the whole place!

I'll leave you with some pictures of the basement after today.

This one here shows where all of the stuff from the other rooms ended up for lack of time. We'll work on this tomorrow (Sunday), and we'll see how far we get because if Jose comes, we really don't want to be in his way. We did agree that if we're not ready in these rooms for him to work, then he can come back next weekend to finish hanging. But I hope we can get done that few things we still have left. Basically we need to do the kitchen vent, scrape the foam flush with the face of the walls, run some speaker wires for the family room, and do some plywood backing for the display cubbies in the fireplace. We probably will also start clearing out the garage and moving tools out to the garage and barn, since I'm sure things will get messy when they texture. Plus it's good Feng Shui, no?

This next picture shows the family room, where we are storing all of the drywall.

And look, even our storm shelter is ready to go!

I'll try to get another post on Friday. Hopefully by then we'll all be seeing white everywhere!

Until next time, God Bless...