Two weeks worth of work

Last week I had to go to town on Wednesday, so no chance for blogging. Maybe I should make this an every other week blog. I'll keep trying to do it every Wednesday, since I hope we're busy this year getting moved into that basement.

The great news is that I went out to the house last night while it was raining, and no leaks in our roof. So, I guess it's a good thing that we're building this thing at a snail's pace since having the main floor unfinished allowed us to learn what happens when we have continuous snow all winter. Much better than having found the roof leaking into insulation and ruining drywall. So from now on we'll just know that if snow is staying on those valleys too long, we better take a trip into the attic or sweep that off before ice dams form.

Onto plumbing. Shawn worked to finish the kitchen and laundry room plumbing. Last post he had the drain lines all done, and part of the venting lines done. This first picture is the drain for the washing machine. The pipe on the left is the standpipe where the drain hose from the washer will empty. Shawn left it taller than it needs to be, so he'll cut it to the correct size when we add the hot and cold water lines, and the little box on the wall that holds the valves and stuff.
Then you see the p-trap and it goes over to the drain line. The water will drain down, and the pipe going up is the vent for that line. And if you're into plumbing codes and that stuff, you will have noticed that the stud that has a hole in it has been doubled up. That's because you can't have a 2" hole in 2x6 wall that is load bearing, unless you double up the stud. And since this is an exterior load bearing wall, we had to double up. So now you know.

This next picture shows the drain/vent for the laundry utility sink.
You can see the little stub-out where after the wall is drywalled, and we have some sort of cabinet and sink, Shawn will hook up the p-trap to that. Again, the vertical pipe going up is the vent line for this drain.

It's hard to see unless you look, but you can see the studs on this wall are doubled up. That's because according to code you can't have a 2" hole in 2x4 wall. So Shawn put in 2x6's and sistered them to the 2x4. He had to furr out the bottom and top plates as well. So now we're in compliance with the code. But this was such a PITA that we decided for the walls like bathroom sinks we'll plumb them with 1.5" lines. We were going oversized since 1.5" is minimum. But you're allowed a 1.5" hole in 2x4 walls as long as they are not load bearing walls. Thankfully none of the interior walls in our main floor are load bearing, so we're fine.

This picture was taken from the kitchen looking towards the laundry room. On the bottom, from left to right we have the washing drain stand pipe, then the vent line from the washing machine, then the vent line from the utility sink, and on the right going up along the wall is the vent line that vents the kitchen plumbing and the bar plumbing from downstairs.

If you follow that kitchen vent up and over to the left, you can see where the vent is coming from the laundry room through the trusses, and both lines hook up to the 4" pipe that goes up through the roof. You may wonder why a 4" pipe, but that has to do with how many fixtures are vented on one line, as well as something to do with preventing moisture from accumulating at the end and freezing in winter. A smaller diameter pipe would have more of a chance of clogging up due to ice build up.
And that my friends, is the conclusion of all of Shawn's hard work on the kitchen/laundry drain plumbing.

So then Shawn moved on to continue the main drain line to the other side of the house. Here's we're back in the mechanical room. On the right, as you all know by now, is the drain line heading towards the finished kitchen/laundry area. Yay!

The left branch is now on its way to its happy destination under the master bath. But if you're like me, instead of saying to Shawn: "OMG, that looks awesome," when he proudly shows you the picture; the first thing that comes out of your mouth is: "OMG! is that pipe going over that electrical panel going to pass inspection? Do you know what the electrical code says about that?"
And when you see your DH roll his eyes, you promptly remember to lavish him with praise. And you let him know that is actually because you'd hate to have the inspector make him redo all of that work that you focus on the code. :)

I am happy to report that yes indeed we are well within code. Should I bore you with the details? Yes! Of course, you say. I'll try to be brief so you won't fall asleep. But you never know when this might be handy in some weird code trivia game.
The electrical code basically says get a box the size of a refrigerator, (actually, I think that's how they teach this rule in electrician class) that's about 30" wide, 3 ft deep and 6.5 ft tall and plunk it in front of that electrical panel so that the 30" side is against the panel. This is now restricted space. Nothing can be inside that box, not even temporary storage on a cart, or a sock laying on the floor (lest the persons needing to work on that panel trip on it, fall into the panel and electrocute themselves). You got two panels side by side like we are going to have? No problem, go buy a second fridge and get the box and put the two boxes side by side. Now this is your restricted space. Mark that perimeter on the floor with some tape, and put up a sign that says "keep your stuff off this space." It would be handy to leave those two boxes there, but then you're violating code, so give the boxes to your children to play.

I'm going to have to cut this post short. Bianca is awake and needs my assistance. I'll try to finish it tonight, but if not, I'll try to have it done by Friday.

Ciao.

More plumbing and some bad news

I had a dr. appt last wednesday, so I missed a post last week.

Since the last post, Shawn continued to install the drain plumbing. He’s out of the mechanical room and into the hallway as you can see here. Now he is heading NE with the plumbing towards the kitchen and the laundry room.

He has been working on the plumbing every night, and worked on it also all day Saturday and Sunday this past weekend, while I went up north with the kids to visit Shawn’s parents.

They watched Evan on Saturday so I could take Bianca to meet her great grandpa George and great uncle Dave. So while we had a leisure weekend, Shawn slaved away at the house.

This picture here was taken standing in the family room. To the right, the pipe is coming from the mechanical room and goes across the hallway to the bedroom wall where it turns, then it rides against that wall and the support beam (that orange gluelam beam you can see on the left behind the pipe) and on this next picture he had the main drain line to the point where the laundry room plumbing will tie into this main line (that’s the combo wye you see sticking up).

Per code, and using common sense, all fittings need to be installed so that the water will flow one way. They also have to slope so that gravity does the work of carrying waste water and solids out to the septic. It’s hard to see, but that pipe is sloping about 1” per every 4 foot of pipe run. You can also see those white J hooks supporting the pipe. Per code, the pipe needs to be supported every 3 to 4 ft, and you used to be able to use metal strapping, but now that’s not allowed since it can cut into the pipe as the pipe vibrates over time. Those j-hooks are a bit spendy, but they are probably just a little less labor than having to notch a 2x4 for every support and getting special strapping. These still take a lot of time since, as you can see, Shawn still needed to provide wood blocking to hang the j-hooks.

On that last picture you can see that Shawn has only dry fitted the pipe. That means that he measures, cuts, and assembles the pipe, and puts his supports to make sure he’s got the right slope. The he takes it apart and glues it all. You can see the purple primer at the joints after the pipe has been glued.

By Sunday, he had it all installed under the floor all the way through to the main floor. You can see here where the laundry room drain is connecting to the main line. And the main line goes to the end of the wood beam and to the concrete wall and turns up to go to the kitchen.

Here we are looking at the laundry room drain as it goes towards the laundry room. The pipe going straight all the way to the concrete wall is for the washer. The small segment of pipe going to the right and up is for the laundry room sink. You can also see all of the work that it takes to support that pipe running between the floor joists.

On the other side of the beam is the bar/kitchenette area. The drains for all of the basement plumbing were installed before the slab was poured, and only a pipe sticking up was left to hook up the bar sink. In this picture you can see that Shawn installed a T-fitting where the sink drain will hook up. Then he installed more pipe going up into the main floor. This section of pipe is called the vent. In plumbing, you can’t have drains without vents. The reason is that to keep sewer gases from entering the home, a p-trap is kept full of water. When water is drained, if there is not vent, the water running down the pipe can create a vacuum and would suck the water out of the p-trap. The vents are run all the way to the outside through the roof, so as water drains down the pipe it pulls air from the vents breaking that vacuum and thus leaving the water in the p-trap to do it’s job. This pipe will run straight up through the main floor wall all the way into the attic. In the kitchen, the vent line for the kitchen sink and dishwasher drain will tie into this vent.

And here is the kitchen drain plumbing. The pipe on the left is coming up from the drain line below. And you see where the pipe will stub out through the wall into the kitchen. Now, because the window was in the way to run its own vent line straight up, we had to go at a 45º angle and we tied the kitchen vent into the vent pipe coming up from the bar sink below. And you can see where it goes up through the double top plate into the attic.

Here is where the clothes washer drain pipe will come up. It will have a T-fitting that will have the p-trap for the laundry standpipe drain and it will go all the way up into the attic for venting.

On the next picture you can see the drain piping for the laundry room sink.

So Shawn accomplished a lot of work in the past two weeks, though he feels it is going slow.

The only bad thing that happened to dampen our mood was that as Shawn was finishing cleaning up on Sunday, he heard a dreaded drip. After hunting it down, he saw a trickle of water on one of the trusses. Talk about a bummer. This thing is a year old and it already leaks. It was hard not to get depressed despite all of the great progress Shawn is making because we really, really, really liked our roofing contractor, and he had done such a great job that we were happy we had at least one contractor that hadn’t goofed something up.

Good thing we don’t have anything done upstairs, or who knows how long it would have gone before knowing there was a problem. The leak is in a valley that is piled high with snow, so we’re worried that this will be a yearly occurrence.

So on Monday, Shawn called the roofer, and to his credit he was really concerned that his reputation was on the line. So he came out last night, and it was sort of funny how offended he was that we dared to doubt his work! He climbed on the roof and shoveled all of the snow off, broke the ice on the roof and shoveled that off too.

He is from Bosnia, and we find his attitude amusing sometimes. He said “if shingles are bad, is my fault. This here… see? This is God, this is ice dams, not my fault. I can’t help the snow. And this year, everybody has ice dams. Too much snow, never melted. Now melting, freezing, and too much snow, so now ice dam. I clean ice for you now. Watch on Saturday and Monday when it rains. If it leaks in the rain, I come back and fix it. I do good work. If no leak in the rain, is ice dam, not my fault.”

So we’ll wait for the rain and see what happens. In the meantime, Shawn will keep going on the plumbing. On Monday he did a bit more work, but didn’t take pictures, so not sure how far along he is. Last night he didn’t do any plumbing as he was with the roofer. He also has a cold, so I told him to rest.

I have been mostly working on the phone, calling contractors and setting up appointments. We’re getting a quote from the electrician to do the wiring. We’ve gotten one quote for drywalling the basement, and waiting for another one. We also keep quoting the heating and cooling. And I’ve requested some quotes for sprayfoam insulation for the main floor and the attic.

On the radiant for the basement, the designer has been working on the controls for the system, and I expect to get some plans this week to review. If everything looks good, we’ll be placing the order for the parts.

When Shawn gets done with the kitchen/laundry drain piping, he’ll work from the mechanical room towards the other end of the house to drain the Master Bath upstairs, and the second bath upstairs. When that is done, he’ll work on the plumbing in the basement bath, running the vent lines up.

Depending on how much time all of that takes, the plan is that after the drain plumbing is done, we’ll jump into running the water supply lines. Or if the radiant heating system parts are in, we’ll tackle that. We’ll see.

Until next time.

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~

We ordered the radiant!

(This is last weeks post that I forgot to publish)

Here are a few pictures that should have been posted weeks ago.

The first one if of Shawn installing those truss hangers in the garage.

This other one if of the main floor with all of the insulation. We didn't get heat in the basement like we wanted since it took all winter to get quotes. We do think that insulation helped to keep the temperatures in the basement higher than the outdoors. On sunny days, the slab absorbs the heat from the sun, and when it was below freezing outside, it was probably just to the freezing point inside. There is a bucket of water in there that had a thin film of ice on the top, but the water didn't freeze.
I think that speaks volume about the insulation of the ICF walls. We're hoping this will in turn mean lower utility bills, since the heating equipment won't have to do much to keep the basement warm.

Speaking of HVAC, the quotes for the HVAC part of the house building process have been a lot higher than we were expecting.
Our new goal is to be living in the basement by Thanksgiving of this year, so to make that happen, we've realized that we won't be putting any of the HVAC components for upstairs. This means that we'll be without A/C in the basement.

What we did figure out is that the ductwork layout that we wanted will work, so we can now move ahead knowing what will need to go where in the future. I'm still hopeful that by the time we do have to do something upstairs, we can still go with a radiant floor and just regular A/C upstairs. But this option is definitely a luxury.

What we really need in the basement is heat, electricy, plumbing and drywall (besides doors and cabinets, etc, etc.) So we hired a company from the East coast called Northeast Radiant Technology to design the radian heat components in the basement. We will have to install the system ourselves. This will cost us half of what we could hire someone here to hookup the radiant for us.
Again, we're stuck in that trade-off of paying less and saving money, but doing a lot of the labor ourselves. And as last year proved with siding, it will take us a lot longer to do it than someone hired to do it. And the siding, soffit and fascia still needs to be finished.

At least we have finally made a decision. Our goal is to have geothermal installed when the time comes to do heating and cooling for the upstairs. For now, the basement will be heated by a small boiler and we'll handle humidity with a small dehumidifier. A/C we can live without. We've lived in the old house without A/C for five years now, and if we can handle the humidity, the basement is actually very cool in the summer.

Now, we're back on plumbing, and we have half of the upstairs plumbing designed. This weekend we're going to my in-laws for a visit, but perhaps next weekend we'll buy some supplies and start working on that. That is, if Shawn gets done cleaning the basement and organizing his tools. But it is going to be his birthday that weekend, so maybe I won't expect him to spend it in the house working.

We'll also be requesting a quote from the electrician to do the wiring so we can plan the budget for that, and hopefully that can be done this summer. Then, we'll be able to dry-wall.
I'm thinking that come what will come, we're going to be in that basement, even if we have to rough it out.

I'm also itching to do some work. It was really hard not being able to help Shawn because of my pregnancy, so I'm really looking forward to doing some work. Now it will be a matter of figuring out what to do with the kids.

See you next week.

Meet Bianca

This is our daughter, Bianca. She was born on January 13th, and needless to say, we've been spending our time with her, and not much has happened with the house.

We are supposed to get the final quote for HVAC today. So next week we're hoping to have some decisions made, and then it's time to put it into gear. So check back next week and see if there's any progress on the house.

Until then...

Still another "not much to see" post

Shawn did get those two hip roof truss hangers in the garage installed. Then he went in the house to check on the other hip roof truss hangers of the same kind. Of course, the framer, who is a professional in his field, only put 4 nails out of 20 that are needed to meet the minimum load capacity of those things. So Shawn pounded in the rest of the nails and got things to their proper order.
It still makes us upset that you pay so much money to a guy to do a job, and you still end up fixing things like that. Also, if you look at our truss design documents, a lot of those trusses need a truss-to-top-plate-of-the-wall connectors because the standard toe-nails do not meet the minimum load. Of course, none of those were installed. Maybe because I'm an engineer I care about those things, but roof trusses are typically designed to meet a minimum snow, wind, up-lift, shear, and other loads based on your location. But I'll get off my soap box now. Those little connectors are on my "to-do" list before the main floor and ceiling get dry-walled. So we've got two or three years to get that done.

We've met with 2 contractors so far on the heating and cooling side of things. The first one pretty much didn't really want to listen to what options we wanted to look into, and all he could talk about was geothermal system, so that's the quote we got. And for that amount of money, we can finish the basement and move in, I think. A geothermal system uses the heat from the ground to do heating and cooling, so it is super efficient, and heating bills could be as low as $60/mo. But the initial cash investment is the issue.

I think in the future when we can, we will probably add a geothermal to our house, but right now we're not sure we can make that pan. Though there are some tax incentives that could make that cost competitive with a non-geothermals system. So we'll see once we get all of the quotes in.

The second contractor priced us a system using an air-to-air heat pump for forced air heating and cooling for the main floor, and there was a bit of a mis-communication since they didn't do anything for quoting the radiant part of the basement. He's working on it now, so I'm thinking by the 19th of January or so we'll get some final numbers from him.

The third guy said he'd have some numbers "early" this week. I'll give him 'till tomorrow before I call. The fourth one hasn't returned e-mails or phone calls, and he keeps this up, I won't bother to call again. The fifth one I didn't talk to him until last week, so I'll give him 'till next week before I start getting impatient with him. I wish this quoting process was faster, but according to the two guys we've met, the worse the weather is, the more furnaces and things go bad, and lots of emergency calls to deal with at this time of year.

The other big news is we bought a dishwasher! Yay! Now my hubby has to install it for me. I'm hoping that by Saturday that thing will be all hooked up and running. Unless, of course, the newest member of our family decides to come this week.

I've got 8 days to go, and they get longer and slower by the day. I'm sure there will not be a post next week, unless I'm feeling like blogging from the hospital.

Until next time!

Nothing to report

With holidays and me being two weeks away from my due date, there hasn't been much done on the house since Shawn is practically doing everything because I can barely walk, I'm so huge. I also forgot to upload pictures, so no real update.

We do have about four or five contractors working on quotes for heating and cooling, and we expect to start getting them in next week.

We have yet to hear from the electrician or see a bill, so not really sure what's going on there. But, as I've said before, if he's not in a hurry to get paid, I don't mind that money sitting in the bank making the whopping 1.5%/year.

Other than that, two of the truss plate hangers proved to be a challenge. We need to use 3-1/2" long nails hammered by hand, and those dumb things are like trying to nail noodles through steel.
So we've bought several different kinds (galvanized, plated, plain) to try. I think next on the list are regular 16D nails, so we'll see if those go in. Maybe Shawn will work on that this weekend, but I think the temps are supposed to be unpleasant. Or we may be at the hospital. Who knows?

We'll see what happens for next week.

Happy New Year to you all!

Passed the test, sort of...

After 12 inches of snow with 40 mile per hour wind, we went out to the new house to check how the soffits did.

The great news is that snow did not blow in through the vented aluminum soffit, and if the weather last week was not enough of a test, I don't know what is. The areas that didn't have soffit installed and that Shawn sealed off with cardboard did ok for being slapped up there with some gaps between cardboard and framing. A little bit of a dusting of snow did sneak in through some places here and there, but nothing significant.

What we didn't seal up was above the wall between garage and house. And since there are no garage doors, snow did get in to the house through there. Also, the porch area where Shawn had used a tarp to cover the area had a gap large enough that snow came through that.

Over the weekend, Shawn took down the tarp and cardboard from above the porch, and re-did the tarp. This picture shows a much better seal for that area.

He also took the tarp and sealed up the area in the attic above the wall between the garage and the house. This picture is looking from the garage side. He went all the way to the roof peak, as you can see here.

The he rolled out the rest of the insulation, so the whole main floor is now covered. The pictures turned out too dark, so we'll have to get some more if we get a nice sunny day to show what it looks like in there now.

We have been meeting with Heating and Cooling contractors to price some options on what to do for heat. If we can afford it, my goal would be a whole house radiant in-floor heat system, with a mini-duct high velocity A/C option, and not have any forced air at all. But this option is the Cadillac of HVAC in terms of price. The two people that we've talked to about radiant floor say that once you experience the warmth coming from the floors, you'll never think about forced air again. Personally, I'm sold on the idea. I hate cold floors, and I know that if my feet are cold, it doesn't matter how warm the room is, I'm still cold.

Also, being from a warm climate originally, I really notice the drafts during the winter season, and I hate it how you set the thermostat for the whole house to one temperature, yet rooms at the extremes of the house are cooler than the main areas, even with the registers fully open. Also, I suffered from asthma as a child, and now have allergies, and I think of forced air systems as dust particles recirculators. Looking at HVAC websites they all recommend that ductwork be cleaned once a year so they do not become mold and bacteria heavens. But I've never met anyone that actually has their duct work cleaned. So to me, a forced-air free house would be perfect.

Besides cost, the problem with radiant heat only is what to do about A/C. To do traditional forced air A/C, you still have the ductwork, so why not might as well have forced air heat for the upstairs since the ductwork is in?

So we're investigating every option available to us. there's the whole house radiant heat, with a separate A/C system (traditional or high velocity or even mini-split ductless systems). Or tadiant heat in the basement, with forced air heat/A/C for the main floor. Use a heat-pump with back up electric coils? A boiler with a heat exchanger for the forced air? It's mind boggling trying to decide what to do.

Of course, a lot of it will depend on cost and budget. So we're waiting to see what the contractors come up with. We have one quote for the whole house radiant design and components from a company out in the east coast, with all of the labor being done by Shawn (and eventually I'll help since the little one is due here in a month). The price tag is hefty, and we'd still need to figure out how to cool and ventilate the house. So we'll compare that to the other options from the local contractors to have them do the work, and we'll go from there.

Besides that, the other thing Shawn has been doing is trying to install some truss hangers for the garage trusses. Last winter when they framed the house, the garage floor was too uneven and full of snow for the framer to safely install those things. He left them up to us to do, and we've procrastinated long enough. Now that winter is here, we can potentially have some significant snow loads on the roof. And since the garage floor is now nice and level, we thought it might be a good idea to get those trusses secured besides the two toe nails that the framer put in.

Here's a picture of the trusses without the truss hangers. The problem is that you can only use nails, and the size needed for those truss hangers are not sold in the local stores. So we're hunting for the right nails, and hopefully Shawn will have those up this weekend.

The other thing that I'm trying to force my DH to do, is to install me a dishwasher in the old house.
Naturally, we don't really want to put money into that old thing, and this will require a bit of an upgrade to the plumbing in the old house. That plumbing was definitely not done by a plumber or someone who knew what they were doing. It is a miracle the toilet flushes fine, but our kitchen sink takes about 10 minutes to drain. So Shawn is balking at the idea of trying to do anything to that plumbing. I don't really see how we can survive the additional dishes created by all that bottle washing now that we have a toddler too. And neither he nor I like to do dishes by hand, so I see real benefit to adding a dishwasher.
The problem is that, of course, I can't do anything to help much. And Shawn is probably feeling overwhelmed with all of the things that need to be done before baby arrives, not to mention we are crazy enough to be building a house doing as much labor as we can. And this past year is has pretty much all been up to Shawn. We have been very lucky that his parents have helped us out so much!

The good news is that I found an appliance place that sells refurbished dishwashers for a very reasonable price. Now I just have to convince the husband to put it in.

So on to another week of excitement. I still have not heard back from the electrician on the work that he did, or if the inspector ever came out to look at it. But we still haven't seen a bill either, and if he's not in a hurry to get paid, and the electricity works in the house, I'm not going to bother to keep calling him.



I'll leave you with some nice pictures of the winter wonderland in our yard. Evan had fun helping daddy snowblow those huge drifts, and we got out the old tobogan and the boys had some fun. I mainly watched since I didn't think it would be prudent to go sledding in my condition.

Until next week.

To heat or not to heat

Last week Shawn went to the local coop warehouse to pick up our water heater. We'll have to get some pictures to show. It is a Marathon water heater, which is electric, and it is made out of plastic, so it will never rust. It's guaranteed to last as long we own the house. The thing is ginormous. It's about 6 ft tall, and 2.5 ft wide. Pretty impressive.

We also looked into heating and cooling arrangements, thinking about layouts for the ductwork, and how to do plumbing around that. So we started getting bids for HVAC so we can work on the budget for next year. Of course, this one contractor has to say that we're running such a huge risk with leaving the house without heat through the winter, because if it frost heaves, there goes our foundation walls and our nice slab. And he pulls out the horror stories from two projects in Ames, with beacoup de $ in repairs because of winter damage.

We're not sure what to think. On the one hand, the house was built in the fall of last year, and the slab was poured in November, and the roof didn't go on until February. We didn't heat it last year, and we had no problem with frost heave. On the other hand, maybe water got into the trenches that we dug for utilities, and for some reason it's still there, and might just freeze if it's a really cold winter, and we end up with soil expansion, and a ruined basement wall.
I did do some research on frost protected footing designs for buildings designed to be unheated. The main thing is insulation under the slab (check), at least 6" of drainage gravel under the slab (check), drain tiles at the footing (check), insulation on the exterior of the buried basement walls (check), plus depth of basement walls to go below frost depth (check). Technically, we should be ok, since we meet the design requirements for frost protection of unheated buildings.

But, we decided to give getting heat into the basement a shot, and put off plumbing for later. If we can get heat in there, then it will be nice to work inside since it doesn't warm up until about may anyway.

The plan? Seal off the main floor staircase, and buy part of the attic insulation now and cover the first floor with that insulation. Hopefully, that insulation can be reused and moved up into the attic later. Then somehow get some heat in the basement, and the insulation will keep it from just going away. Since it is insulated concrete form in the basement, the insulation is already on the walls down there.

First step, buy insulation. God, in his perfect timing answered my prayer and guided us to Menards where they were having such a great deal on insulation, the clerk though maybe someone made a mistake and mislabeled the add. Good for us. So we went Friday night to get the first load of insulation, since we could only fit half of the amount we needed on the trailer.

On Saturday am, Shawn and Evan went back to Menards to get the second load of insulation.
We figured it will take 72 rolls of the itchy stuff to cover the whole floor.

We had about an 1/8" to 1/4" layer of dust and left over sawdust from framing on the floor. And since the eaves were open during most of the siding installation, we surely had some nice fiber cement dust on the floor too. Not to mention the tons of flies and lady bugs that got in the house through the eaves but never figured out how to get out. They all died at the windows. Check out this cool shot.

We also decided that it was probably a good idea to get that dust out and hopefully keep it from getting into the rolls of fiberglass. If nothing else, we'd start with a clean floor.

While the boys were gone shopping for some more insulation, I put a HEPA filter on the shop vac and worked on vacuuming the whole main floor up.

Here's a before and after type of picture. You can see the OSB color again, since it had all turned a dull gray from the layer of dust.







And here I am hard at work with the shop vac.
By the time my boys came back from Menards, I had half of the main floor done.

While Evan took his nap, I finished vacuuming the house. Shawn unloaded the bales of insulation, then proceeded to seal up the eaves that we didn't get around to close up with soffit.
He used the cardboard box that the water heater came in.
Here he is, slapping those babies up.













On Sunday, Shawn went out to seal up the stairwell. This is what it looks like after he got it all enclosed.











Then, he went to work on the itchy stuff. I bought him a pair of Tyvek coveralls, and had him buy some new goggles and face masks. I'm not sure that he was too happy to wear the coveralls. But I didn't want him getting that fiberglass on his clothes and skin, then bringing it in the house, the mixing it with the laundry and getting it in our washing machine.

So here he is suited up and ready to work.








He got about half of the house floor covered with insulation. Doesn't that look like an attic?

Since today and tomorrow we're getting a little bit of snow around here, we're going to see how bad it blows in the house through the vented soffits. If it does blow in, then we'll have to cardboard up the entire perimeter to keep the snow from piling over our insulation through the winter. With 12 inches of snow forevasted and 40 MPH wind, we figure this will be a good test.

If it passes the test, Shawn will lay out the rest of the insulation. If not, we'll have to work on the cardboard sealing job before he finishes getting the rest of the floor covered.
Then onto what to do for heat.

We'll see what we're up to next week!

No Blog this week!

With the holiday, we didn't do any work this past weekend. So no real updates for this week.