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.

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!

No big blog post today

Never got around to getting the pictures that I wanted to take, so not much to update.

Shawn did get to work on the skid loader on Wednesday night. He broke up the slab from the old small garage that we tore down in May, and dumped the concrete in the ravine to help control erosion there. Then it rained. It rained all day thursday, and the rental company said that they couldn't let us keep the skid loader for the weekend, so Shawn worked in the rain to move the big concrete pile that was by the barn. He also moved the big ol roots he had dug with the excavator, and did a few miscellaneous things. Since it was an open cab, he got soaked. I don't know how he can stand working soaking wet in the cold, but he did it anyway.
The soil was too wet to try and do anything around the house on Friday evening. Saturday, Shawn spent the day with Evan while I went shopping with my mum. The Saturday evening, Evan had an invitation to a neighbors trick or treating party, so we had some fun.

Sunday, Shawn worked on taking the mowing deck off the lawn tractor, and get it ready for the snow blower. He wanted to do that now while it is still decent, instead of waiting until it's too cold.
The he took the lawn tractor around with the trailer and moved his "shop" for doing soffit work into the garage, though it was still pretty muddy and got the mower stuck somewhere out there.

This weekend, he will help his grandma move into a new apartment, so no construction progress will be made.

The electrician did say that if it stays dry, they will do the outside work this week, and finish installing the inside panel on Monday. We'll see what happens between now and next Wednesday.

Oh, by the way... maybe you wondered what the heck was wrong with me that I kept saying I didn't feel good sometimes to help Shawn around the house construction. Shawn and I are expecting a baby girl, and we hadn't said anything to friends and co-workers until about a month ago. So the cat's out of the bag now. We're due in January, and can't wait to meet the newest member of our family.

Lot's to update, since I missed a post last week

After my last blog entry, Shawn cut off the cleanout from the septic line that we had installed inside, and I helped him redo the pipe and put the cleanout outside. I didn't take any pictures of the new setup before we backfilled the trench, but I can get some of the inside of the house so I'll have to get those for next week.

Two weekends ago, my father-in-law, Derald, came to help Shawn on Saturday. They worked on finishing the soffit and fascia, and the corner box at the back of the house. With that finished, they moved onto the East side, and got as far as the kitchen window (the double window in the picture). They had to use ladders because they left the scaffolding in place so that Shawn can do a bit of siding and finish caulking the double sliding door.

Shawn worked a bit on Sunday to do more, and got as far as the laundry room window, as you can see. Also, my dad suggested to Shawn that to try to do fascia by himself, maybe he could put a nail in the middle of the fascia to hold it up temporarily since it is lightweight, then nail each end. Shawn tried it out, and that seemed to work all right.
Then the flu hit our household, and Shawn helped me care for our son, so not much work got done that week. He also went away on a biz trip overnight during the week.

On Wednesday, we decided to rent a skid loader for the weekend to get all of the trenches backfilled, the grading done, and the garage floor leveled out. So we ordered 3 truckloads of 3/8" rock for the garage and slab base. The skid loader arrived on friday, and we had decided to rent it for 40 hours instead of just 16 because it seemed like maybe it would not be enough time.
Then Friday, Shawn began to get some flu symptoms. Uh Oh. But he stocked up on sudafed and nasal spray, and went to work on the yard. Unfortunately, the controls for this skid loader are so much stiffer than the one we had before. So his shoulder started to bother him, and even though it was painful, he felt he had no choice but to work on the project. Lots of Tylenol was consumed. But that still meant that he had to take more breaks to let his arm settle down a bit, and with the cold symptoms (that thankfully only lasted two days) it wasn't ideal conditions. But despite all of that, Shawn accomplished an amazing amount of tasks and completely transformed the landscape around the house. He took Monday off work since weather stayed nice.

Here's a picture of the front as of Monday pm. All of the trenches were backfilled, then he worked on the garage (and had to do much shoveling becuase it was hard to get the skid loader to do fine detail work by the walls inside. Didn't help the shoulder either). Then he spread the rock inside the garage, outside in front for the parking area, and in front of the main entrance. And look, we can now park our cars inside the garage (though we still need to level the rock in there someday)

And since Tuesday turned out to be nice weather, we took vacation from work to do as much as we could, since it calls for rain the rest of the week, and we return the skid loader on Friday.

We worked on getting the area in front of the window wells graded, and I think it will turn out nice once we add some grass, rock, and cut the level of the window wells down. I am happy that I get more view out of those windows than previously. So use your imagination to picture the slopes on each side covered with rock, the window wells lower, and nice grass to finish it all off.

You can see the two wires sticking out of the ground between the window wells. Sometime the electrician will come out to hook up the electricity and install a main panel in the house. With rain for the rest of the week, I doubt it will happen until next week now. Unless they come out on Saturday.

On this next picture, you can see the grade on this part of the house. I think it turned out nice. And the chickens really appreciated all of that fresh dirt and all the worms they could find in there. If you look closely you can see a couple of my chooks checking out the new landscape.

Here is a picture of the progress we were making along the back. This was about 2 pm yesterday. Shawn went into the house to use the restroom and I was taking pictures when I heard a loud buzzing sort of grinding noise.

So I headed back to the old house, and asked Shawn what was making the noise, and he said it was the propane tank, and that my mother, who was in the house, thought she smelled propane in there (Shawn thought it smelled like sauerkraut, and thought it might be something my mum cooked). So I called the Co-op, and the guy on the phone said that regulators from time to time will buzz and you can hear it if you're standing next to the tank. I said I was about 200 ft. away and I could hear it, and mentioned that my mum thought it smelled like propane in the house, though when I went in, I thought maybe it was a faint smell, but not sure. That changed his tone of voice very quickly and told us to stay outside and sent a technician out to do a safety check. Ten minutes and the guy was at our property.

So for the next two hours I went around the house with the guy checking this and that, and Shawn continued to work on the grading. The tech guy put a pressure valve and pressurized the system and watched the gauge drop in pressure. Yeap, there must be a leak somewhere.
He had a nice little sniffer, and he checked the stove. No leaks there. So then he went to our old heater, and the sniffer did detect a small leak, though it was minuscule and not something he would worry about. He closed the valve to the heater, and we were still losing pressure. So he went to the water heater, and the shut off valve leaks, but it really shouldn't be dropping that much pressure. So he shut that valve off, and still we lost pressure. So the guy now is puzzled, and thinks there's a leak in the pipe somewhere in the house. Nope, not there. So he takes off the regulators at the house and at the tank. Nope, those work fine. So he tested the line between tank and house. "Holy cow! You guys have an underground leak in your line somewhere."

My lightbulb goes on, and I mention that I suspected the electric coop hit our gas line last year when they installed the power to the pole and ran a trencher through the area, though they said that no, they hadn't. So the guy goes and pokes some holes in the ground where the electric trench was dug last year, and stuck the sniffer thingy in there.

He was so excited, the little sniffer thingy was new and he'd never used it to check propane levels on the ground. So he got the manual out to check for underground leaks. So he pokes some holes in the dirt, then dropped a sensor in the hole and checked. He said he'd better check the manual, because his reading couldn't be right. So he did it again, following instructions step by step. His readings were right. Our soil is 20% propane between house and tank. He said that if the house wasn't there, he would have liked to start the soil on fire to see it burn. So yeah, we've been leaking propane into the dirt for some time.

Really Nice. Since last October we've been pumping money into the ground. We did think our propane bills were outrageous last winter, but it was so cold, and with the old house (and Evan cranking the heater to it's maximum setting when we weren't looking) we really didn't look much into it. They guy said that with our propane use, we should have been at 60% full on our tank at this point after our last fill, so the leak would explain why we're at 20% instead.

So the easy fix was to rent a rubber hose from the co-op to put between tank and the old house that will go above ground, since we don't plan on living in the old house and hope to move soon. We had to move the tank closer to the house, so Shawn did that with the skid loader, while the guy went to get a rubber hose. He said that if after the underground leak was fixed, and we still had leaks at the heater and water heater, he couldn't let us hook up again until we got those two things fixed. Thank God that after he put the rubber hose on the tank, the pressure gauge held even after 20 minutes of chit-chatting while we waited. He then went around again to do the sniffing thing safety check, and he said we're ok. The water heater shut off does leak, but what he said was that would only be a problem if the pilot light ever goes out. So keep an eye on the water heater, since, reasonably, he didn't expect us to buy a new one for the old house.
At least we won't be wasting any more money pumping propane into the soil.

So, back to grading. Here's a nice shot from the SW angle of the house. Shawn worked until about 9 pm to get it all done. I'll have more pictures of the back and East side for next week since it was too dark by then.

Today it supposedly rained a bit, so we'll see how the ground is when we get home tonight. Maybe Shawn can mess around with the skid loader to move some concrete chunks that are by the barn, and touch up any areas of that house grading that might need it. Otherwise, he might just give his shoulder a break. If he can't work tonight, tomorrow I'll call the rental place and see if they would let us keep the skid loader until Monday, since we've only used about 22 hrs of the 40. We'll see what they say. After this is done, I suppose is back to soffit and fascia for Shawn. Siding... we might be done for the year, since I think the boards get stiff with the cold and the nails might blow out the back of the siding boards. We'll just take it a week at a time and see what we can do.

Slow week

Between rainy days and a friend's wedding on the weekend, not much happened at the construction site.

I did get a hold of the county Sanitation engineer, and luckily they decided we didn't need a permit to dig up the septic line, even though it is an alteration to it. The county engineer did want us to let him know when the pipe was laid so they can come out and survey it. This way it will be on record where the pipe goes if in the future we ever sell the house. So he was supposed to come out this morning. We'll see if we don't find some sort of notice saying we're violating something or other.

Shawn's brother, Brian, and his wife, Cari, came down with Blair on Friday night and stayed with us since it was a mutual friend who got married on Saturday. It was nice to visit and see Blair. Evan had a good time with her, and it was good to see them.

Shawn worked on breaking through the wall a little bit on Saturday am, and again on Sunday after his brother and family left. He used the bigger drill bit and his air-hammer chisel. After some sore shoulders and numb wrists, he finally broke through! He did encounter a piece of horizontal rebar that he had to cut through with his sawzall.

With the hole ready, he put in his 8 in PVC coupler that he's using as a sleeve, and foamed it all up with expanding foam to secure it to the wall and seal between the sleeve and concrete.

Then he hooked up the rest of the pipe through the sleeve, then sealed it all up. He then went inside the house and installed a sweep elbow and a cleanout so that if we ever need to get to the pipe, we don't have to dig it all out. Here you can see him filling it up with foam. That should be it for plumbing until later this winter when we start working on the inside plumbing.

Monday, he was out of commission with a Migraine, and last night he was going to try to do some soffit and fascia, but the scaffolding was too slippery and it was very windy. Wisely, he chose not to do anything. Not to mention that the fascia is a two person job. One to hold it up, while the other nails it up. So we'll see if on Saturday I can help him out with that.

If we get the fascia up where he's done the soffit on the SE corner of the back, then he has to move the scaffolding over so he can finish up building that end piece triangle and finish the soffit to it, and to finish caulking the door. It seems like the weather will not improve much, so we may end up not finishing the siding and fascia this falls as we'd planned. If it doesn't warm up again, we may be done caulking for this year too. We'll see.

We still have to backfill the trenches and do some grading, but we're waiting on the electrical. We have two more quotes to receive, and we hope to have a decision by next week, so they can come and install that wire.

Speaking of the county engineer, guess who just called? Everything looked fine except that code requires we put a cleanout on the pipe before it enters the house. I said we put it inside, and he said that it needs to be outside right before going through the wall. Nice.
So, Shawn has to now cut off the pipe, put a cleanout and redo the pipe going into the wall. Basically that sweep and cleanout that he put inside are wasted. The other thing is that the cleanout has to come all the way up to the grade level so they don't have to dig down to the pipe if it ever needs to be cleaned out. Ah, the joys of surprises.

So Shawn will probably work on the plumbing some more. We should also lay down that blue foam in the trench for the water line under the concrete. Then we'll see what else Shawn can work on. Maybe soffit and fascia around the garage and work his way back to the back? Or maybe start doing something to the window wells? Maybe put plastic in the front porch to seal it up, since we most likely will not do soffit in there until we get to siding the front? (Also to keep a cat out that keeps going into the house through the roof in the front porch).
Oh, we need to install some truss hangers that the framer didn't install last winter, because the garage floor is not level and they couldn't get to it without slipping in the snow in there.
Shawn could start working on designing the plumbing for the basement, since that's what we want to work on this winter. I'm sure there's plenty that can be done between now and skid loader time.

Until next week.

Continuing yesterday's post

Shawn got the window well area excavated and the trench line dug to the pit where the septic line is. Our electric line will cross under the sewer line, but as long as we keep at least a foot of space between the two, we should be ok. (Or so the electricians say)

Shawn went around and started digging from the septic hole back to the utility pole where our meter panel is. This is the part I was most nervous about. And no matter how many times Shawn kept saying that the high power line coming from the street is buried like 6 ft, I still was grumpy about him digging right over it. So here he is, right next to the pole, and he is still alive after that.

Once I was finally sure he wasn't electrocuted, I left with Evan to go to Lowe's to buy the fittings for the water line and one coupling we needed to repair the sewer on Sunday evening.

In the meantime, Shawn went behind the new house and used the exacavator to bring up piles of dirt that had been placed there during excavation last year, but had been out of reach with the skid loader. We need that dirt to properly do the grading on the East side of the house where we were short of some dirt. And since we had gone over the 8hrs anyway on the machine, he decided to go around the yard and pull up some stumps that he's been cursing for the last few years every time he mowed. Serves them right for breaking our mower deck.

When I got back, it was late evening, and Shawn finally fixed the septic line. Yes, we could shower again and use the toilet.

On Monday, Shawn was really bothered by that one elbow connection in the new sewer line that didn't go in all the way. So he decided the time to fix it was now, or he'd kick himself later if it ever failed and we had to dig it back up. So he cut the elbow out, and installed a new one. He asked for my help to make sure that pipe went into the fitting all the way in.
So with that fixed, he hooked up the water line to the rural line. We're not going to turn the water at this point because there will be no heat in the house this winter, and we don't want that water line to freeze. But we're thinking maybe we should to test the pipe, then shut if back off. We might do that if we can figure out how to drain that line so no water remains in it. I suppose we could add the food grade antifreeze to it (not the toxic car stuff) to be safe. We'll see.

On Tuesday night, we re-checked the slope of the new septic pipe as we began to add some sand under it for support and for a bit of protection.

Here I am, working on stuffing some sand under that pipe, and checking slope, while Shawn shoveled in some sand from the sand piles. He only hit me once with a shovelfull of sand. So not too bad.

Last night Shawn marked the location where the septic line will enter the house. We really should be renting a core drill for this part, but that is expensive. So Shawn thought he'd try first to drill a circle with his hammer drill and a bit for cement, then maybe whack the cement in the middle in one big chunk. We forgot we have 4000 psi cement in the wall. So after drilling all of the circles with a 1/2" bit, he tried to bust through the concrete. That ain't happening. Normal concrete you can crack and hack at it. The stuff in our wall? Maybe a chip the size of a marble falls off with each blow.
So he thought maybe he could drill a small pie section and try to whack that. Nope. Concrete is not budging. After Evan went to bed I came out and wisely held a steel wedge for him positioned over the holes he drilled (which are spaced about 1/4" apart) while he hit the wedge with the sledge hammer. You'd think that with those holes so close together the concrete would give way in between. You'd think. After about twenty minutes, and no smashed fingers, we were able to chip away 1.5" inches in that small pie section. Yay, progress.

So today I'm going to price core drills and see what they really cost. Before we do rent it, Shawn is going to try to upgrade to a 3/4" or 1" bit that we have and re-drill the holes. Ideally this would drill the concrete between the 1/2" holes and we should be able to push a plug of concrete out.
Our luck? There will be a horizontal and vertical rebar crossing at 90º angles right in the center of the circle, and that chunk of concrete is not going out, unless Shawn can figure out how to get a sawsall in there to cut the steel. We'll see what happens.

Also, we met with another electrician on Tuesday for another quote. Hopefully we can finalize something with that. Though the first quote we got knocked our socks off. Electrical is not cheap, specially when that outside feeder wire is about $2 a foot and we have 260 ft of it to buy. Ouch.

Oh, and guess what? I think we were supposed to pull a permit for the new septic line. Ooops. I'll have to call the county to double check. Hopefully we're not in trouble.

Until next week. I'll leave you with Evan and his nice birthday cake he made.