Merry Christmas

Hello Everyone, just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and give you a quick update.

First of all the second garage door is now in. This seals up the basement area and makes it about 2 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. Of course those of you who are living here in the PNW know that its been rather cold the last week so it really doesn't make a lot of difference when its 25 degrees out. However it does stop the wind from blowing through the house. I can usually get about an hours work done in before having to stand in front of the fire to warm up. Thank God the fireplace is working. I'm really pushing to get the wiring done and wrap up the other little projects because then I can insulate, yea!

Here is a picture of the house with all the snow on it. Kind of looks like it belongs in the mountains near a ski area, maybe that's where I'll build the next one!

You can see from this picture that we have about a foot here.

My friend Eric keeps saying I should put Christmas light up on it. I have thought about it but I just don't want to spent the time to do that, I'd rather get the lights inside wired up, then do Christmas lights next year. Of course it will be fun to see how big of a tree I can get inside, my great room ceiling is 24' to the peak! Anyway, instead of putting lights up I just turned on all my work lights and took a picture at night.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I'll be spending most of my days off working on the house. Its OK though, I have my hat to keep me warm.

Handsome Shrek

Still Building

Well, by now I was hoping to have my combination inspection done but things are just taking longer than expected. I also keep getting sidetracked on other projects that could wait but also need to be done.

I've continued on with the wiring. So far I've got the upstairs bedrooms and about 95% of the main floor done. I've started pulling wire into the basement living area. While there is a lot getting done it just isn't too exciting for pictures.

See what I mean.

One of the jobs I keep getting sidetracked with is putting up siding. I find it hard to work inside when its a nice day out. When I started the siding over the garage I realize I was going to have to rent some scaffolding again. Once again Craig's List to the rescue. I found a company getting rid of a bunch of their scaffolding. For about 3 months rent I was able to buy enough to go 3 frames high (18 feet) and 20 feet in length. Its super heavy duty shoring frames (designed to hold up buildings) but works great for me. When I'm done if anybody needs to borrow it let me know.

I also spent one evening putting the bathroom deck door in. I ordered it from Home Depot only to have it show up at the store put together the wrong way. It swung out to the right, not left, and they used interior hinges on it, and it was damaged. After waiting 2 more weeks it came in again, this time with the correct swing but still with the wrong hinges. Its an exterior swinging door so the hinges are on the outside and need to have non-removable pins. This time I took the door and am putting my own hinges on it instead of wait for another 2 weeks (and I figure another screw up). Now that corner of the house is locked up. At night it always seemed a little creepy with that door open and the coyotes howling. Now nothing can get in.

I also have started to install the garage doors. They came in a couple of days before the second back door. I should finish up getting the one in tonight and have the other in by the weekend if I don't freeze first. Now all I need is the jam for the front door and I'll be able to lock the place up.

Hopefully over the Christmas holidays I'll get the wiring fished. Then its inspections time and if all goes well and I pass, time for insulation. Which would be great because its flippen' cold out there.

I got Decked

Things continue to move forward. A little over a week ago the Fire Prevention department came out and inspected the sprinkler system. That passed with no issues. I was a little concerned that there might be a problem because I hardwired lights in the attic space. Apparently that makes it "usable" and they require sprinklers in any usable storage space. However, I didn't put a floor down so you really can't call it storage space if there is no place to store stuff. The dumb thing is I was required to have lights because there is equipment (fans) that may need to be "serviced" therefore you need switched lighting in there. Of course there is no floor to walk on making it rather difficult to get to the fans. But if I put a floor down then I might be able to store stuff..... Is this beginning to make sense to you? Good because it doesn't to me either!

Just after my last post we had several days of great weather. I figured that I ought to work on the outside as much as I can while the weather is good. So I spent a weekend on the roof, reaching over the side and staining all the trim and barge boards. Those tie-off I mounted on the roof sure came in handy. And after all that weird bending over so did my Chiropractor.

I also spent a bunch of time hooking up the radiant manifolds in the basement and on the second floor. For the basement I used 1" copper while the upstairs I used 1" PEX (copper would have cost too much).

A couple of weeks ago I was doing my daily scan of Craig's List when I came across a add for decking. Replying to the add I found out it was the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Olympia. A company donated a full truckload of Timber Tech composition decking to them. I made a quick run down to check it out and liked what I saw. A week later I was back with the trailer in tow. Unfortunately they had stacked a bunch of stuff in front of the material I wanted. They were a little short handed that day so I spent about an hour helping them move all of it. I then spent another hour + loading the trailer up by myself. What did all my hard work get me (besides another visit to the chiropractor)? Well, he discounted the decking for me from $1.50/ft to $1.00/ft. This stuff sells new for over $3.50/ft. So I now have all my decking for less that $1500. It is a little scuffed but I figure its gonna get that way a the first party so what the heck.

Of course now that I have it I had to put some down so I could see how it looks. I had been siding the dining room deck area so it was ready for some decking anyway. I think its looking pretty good. Now I have someplace to enjoy a beer after a hard day working (just in time for winter of course).

Falling behind again

Wow, has it been that long since I posted?? Well, I'm not that surprised as I'm way behind where I thought I'd be at this point. So let me get you all up to date there is lots to tell.

In August I thought I should spend some time outside and dig a few ditches. I started with digging one for the water supply going into the house. I dug a little using the backhoe and then had to dig about 8 feet by hand. To make matters more fun it was all under the front deck. This meant I was working in a 3+ foot trench under the deck which is about 1-1/2' over the ground. Yea, I hit my head a few times. With the trench dug I then hired a core drilling company to put a 3" hole in the foundation wall. It took him 10 minutes to set up and about 3 minutes to drill the hole. Definitely worth the $250 bill as it would have taken me a week to get that hole.

Next I went down and got my electrical permit. Yep, more money to the govenment. I now have to live in my house for at least a year because I'm doing the work myself and not hiring a licensed electrician. I guess they figure if I screw up and burn the place down I'm out a house and contents not somebody else. Once I got all the paperwork in order I then spent about 3 hours on the backhoe digging 90 feet of ditch for the electrical service. This runs from the SSB (utility box) to the house. I then spent about 16 hours digging the 12 feet or so that I could not do with the backhoe. That was 2 feet on each end and the 8 feet in the middle where I couldn't park the backhoe on the hillside. Of course this was the deepest part of the trench (4+ feet). I think I lost a couple of pound that week (yea, I gained 'em back)! All the digging is also keeping my chiropractor in business. Then it was laying in and gluing up a 2-1/2" conduit and 3 - 1" conduits. The big one I pulled the service lines through and the others are for phone, cable, data. I then called for the inspection and as usual was nervous as to whether I did everything correctly or not. I passed with flying colors and even had the inspector say I do nice work. After that I backfilled the trench.

I did take a little over a week off in the middle of August for my annual trip to Seaside for the volleyball tourneyment. Once again the Organized Chaos crowd took over the Cannon beach campground and had a heck of a party. The Handsome Shrek Sports Bar grew to 2 - 20' long canopy tents. This year I had blacklight pool, foos ball, darts, and new for this year, air hockey. Even with the rain that kept falling it was a great weekend, the volleyball was even fun! Sorry the pictures are so small. I forgot my camera and they are the only ones I could get.

Next I started the interior electrical work. I'm using a lot of recessed can lighting in the house. Each upstairs bedrooms has 3 cans. My master has a total of 7 can lights plus a ceiling fan box. A little over kill but what the heck. Besides I've got a lot of wall art to light. 5 of the cans in the master bedroom are 3" and are set up for wall washing. Each deck also has 3 recessed cans as well as switched recepticals up in eves for Christmas lights.

I'm also doing something a little different with the bathroom fans. All the bathrooms except the master I am using ultra quite high tech fans. The have built in timers so they will continue to run for a set time after you turn them off. They also never completely shut off but will continue to pull about 30 cfm 24 hours a day. I went this way because with the radiant floor heat there is no air exchange happening like you have with a forced air furnace. The master bath fans are remote fans. They sit about 8' away in the attic. This means there should be no fan noise at all and the grills are only about 7" in diameter. I will be putting these on digital timers as well.

I then moved on to the kitchen. Of course the hard part here is that you have to know exactly where your cabinets and what type of appliances you're using so the light and outlets can be place in the correct spots. I'm doing a bit of guessing because I haven't picked some of these things out yet. I do know what sink I'm using though. A couple of years ago I went to an auction and found a large farmhouse style stainless steel sink, brand new in the box. I liked it and thought that if it went for a $100 or so I'd buy it and use it for a laundry sink. I did get it for somewhere around the price I wanted. Well the other day I was looking at it and realized it was really nice and heavy (turns out it weights over 50 lbs). I looked it up on line and found out its worth $2700.00!! No, I didn't put the decimal in the wrong spot, its really that much. Of course the downside is I'll have to spend a small forture on a faucett to do it justice.

I did take another break on the weekend of Sept 13th to do my annual trip to the Reno Air Races. It was some of the best racing I've seen in the 6 years that I've been going. In my group this year there were 6 of us, 3 of whom had never been before. We had a great time looking at airplanes flying very fast (485 mph) very low (50 feet) and stuffing ourselves at too many buffets (you had how many plates)!!! Here is John and Eric getting a little too into it (how many drinks did you guys have).

After comming back I jumped back on the electrical for a bit and then went back to the plumbing. Now that I've mounted the radiant panel I know where I'll be putting the boiler and so I could also place my water heater and run all the piping for that. By the way, my water heater is an "indirect" heater. This means that its basically a big heat exchanger using the 180 degree boiler water to heat the domestic water. Its capacity is only 40 gallons, 34 of which is domestic, the rest is the boiler water. But because it recovers so fast and the way I'm hooking it up (using a mixing valve) I've been told it should act like a 90 gallon electric tank. Lets hope so because it cost about 4 times what an electric tank cost.

Last but not least, last week and this week my sprinkler contractor came in. That's fire sprinklers not yard sprinkler. Because I'm so far from the water main and fire hydrant the Fire Marshal is requiring sprinklers in my house. While I think its a great idea and will save me money on my insurance it is an additional upfront expense. Of course it looks like starting in 2012 all new homes are going to be required to have sprinklers so I'm just ahead of the curve.

So that brings you all up to date. I've got another day or two of plumbing work for the domestic water then I'm jumping back onto electrical. Some where in there I've got to get some more siding up. If anyone wants to come over and check it out let me know, but beware I may give you a roller and brush and put you to work staining siding!!!

"Little" jobs

First off, my heat distribution panel made it back, this time with no damage, yea! With the help of Eric, Mark, and Joe, (it weighs in at 300+ lbs) we got it out of the back of the truck and into the house. It is now leaning up against the wall I'll be mounting it on in the mechanical room. By the way, to give you a idea of size that is a 4'x8' sheet of plywood. It consists of a controller (square box), 7 pumps, an expansion tank (tank looking thing on upper right :) and a bunch of ball valves, mixing valves, 1" copper tubing, pressure gauges and misc other parts.

Next to it I've mounted the load center (breaker panel). This officially is the start of the electrical work. Or maybe thats unofficially sense I didn't have the electrical permit when I put it in! I went up during lunch and took care of that little issue. Of course I'm still finishing up some last little details on the plumbing. I've still got to get one bathtub installed, the master shower finished, and the water heater installed. All of that has to be done after the distribution panel is installed. It also has to wait until I get the water line into the house which means hiring a core drilling company to come in and put a hole in the foundation.

Upstairs I'm finished installing the radiant tubes. It was a pain to pull all the tubes through the joist holes and then pound them into the tracks. I then hooked them into the manifold which is mounted in the attic space. I still have to home run the manifold back to the distribution panel.

The other "little" projects I've been working on is washing all of my cedar siding (every board), setting it out to dry, blocking the sill plates on the main floor, and putting the fire breaks in the chimney. Of course its these small jobs that take all the time.

Getting Hot

The last few weeks I've been working on heating. Unfortunately part of that heating was me with a fever as I've been sick the last couple of weekends. That has slowed down my progress somewhat. The other problem I had was with my heating distribution panel. This panel takes the hot water from the boiler and sends it out to the radiant heat manifolds as well as the domestic hot water tank. The above picture shows what it is suppose to look like. Yep, its a bunch of copper tubes, pumps, and valves. Unfortunately the trucking company cannot read and tried to stack another pallet on top of it. The result is below. It actually pressed the plywood top down and over one of the tubes, thus bending several of them (you can see one of the tubes poking through right in the middle of the top). I refused the shipment and it went back to the factory where they have repaired it and are sending it back out. This took a couple of weeks, its a good thing I'm not in a hurry for it!

While waiting for it to be returned I've been working on putting up the heat transfer panels for the upstairs bedrooms. Instead of pouring the radiant tubes in concrete like the basement and the main floor (yet to be done) I am using aluminum transfer panel that screw up to the underside of the sub floor. The tubes then snap into the tracks. I thought this would be a easier and less expensive way to do the upper floor, however if I were to do it over again I think I would go with the poured floor. Tonight I will start pulling the tubing.

The other thing I have been working on is siding on the outside, specifically the great room wall. To do the windows I rented some scaffolding (see previous posts/pictures). Instead of returning it and then renting it again and going through the hassle of setting it up I decide to keep it for a while and side that part of the house. I've now finished it and returned the scaffolding. I've had a lot of people ask why I'm going with cedar and not Hardie Plank siding. Part of it was price, due to getting such a great deal on the cedar. Another reason is cedar, if maintained, will last a lifetime. But the main reason was the look. I want the stained cedar look and you just can't get that from cement siding. Now that one wall is sided, you can get a idea of the look I wanted. Personally, I think it looks awesome!

OK, OK, I'll post agian!

Wow, its been 2 months since my last post, where does the time go. No wonder people keep asking me what is going on. So what have I been doing all that time? Plumbing. Ok, there was some time off to get ready for our big family Easter party, and a couple of play days in there, but for most evenings and weekends my world has revolved around plastic pipe. The DWV piping is pretty much done, with the exception of hooking up one upstairs bathtub and the master shower. I also have to plug a couple of drains and pressure test the system but that is pretty quick to do. It took me a lot longer than I though it would to get the DWV done, hopefully its all done right!

A couple of weeks ago I moved onto the supply piping. This moved much faster as I'm using PEX which is flexible. This means I can bend it around corners and don't have to spend lots of extra time making sure all the holes through joists line up perfectly. I also went with red and blue PEX so all my piping is color coded. The stuff is great to work with, when I need a fitting or tee I just use a special tool to expand the pipe, slide the fitting into the pipe, and then use another tool to slide a clamp sleeve over to lock everything together. Here is the master bath dual sinks.

On the master bedroom side of the house I'm using a manifold system for the hot and cold water. The water flows into the manifold and then a separate line goes out to each fixture (its also know as a home run system). This keeps the pressure higher to all the fixtures by cutting down the on the number of fitting the water has to pass through. You will also notice the open port on the hot water manifold, this is for the return loop. The return loop line goes to a pump and then back into the hot water tank. This circulates the hot water so I don't have to wait forever for hot water to get to the shower.

Speaking of the master shower, I've gone a little bit overboard. Its amazing how much money you can spend on a shower. Originally I was just going to have a shower head on each wall but when I started looking around I found all these neat things you could have. So now I have 3/4" lines feeding into a thermostatic valve that controls temperature (that's the big hunk of brass in the picture). Out of that valve the line splits into three lines each with their own control valve that turns on and off the water. Those will feed a shower head on each wall and a "rainfall" head that will be mounted in the ceiling. If I paid retail for all the parts it would have cost me half my plumbing budget just for the shower (good thing I'm a good shopper).

The supply plumbing is about 90 percent complete. I'll finish it off once I've got the hot water tank installed. Of course that doen't get intalled until the radiant heat distribution panel is in. That is currently on order and should be here in a couple weeks. In the mean time I'll be working on the upstairs radiant heating coils, outside trim & siding and electical. Me busy, nah, not at all!

Windows Done!

Well, mostly done. I left one window upstairs out to make it easier to get onto the roof. Its a lot easier to climb over the framing than over the window sill. Milgard also came out and glazed the sliding doors. Every thing went smooth except they didn't have enough material to finish the job so they had to come back a few days later. The house is getting much quieter and less drafty! Now I just have to get some doors so I can seal it up.

The great room windows were a bit of work. I did the first row of windows myself. The second row my neighbor Paul and his son Chris came over and helped out. The next day I had Paul, Steve, Anne and Matt helping out. Its a good thing as the center two windows are rather tall and heavy. With all the help we were able to pass the windows up the scaffolding from level to level. Yes, its quite a ways up, 24 feet to the upper level of scaffold. That means I'm looking down from 30', good thing heights don't bother me (falling does).

Besides the above mentioned people, several of the other neighbors stopped by for the first time on Sunday. Norma, (Paul's mom and Chris's grandma) came down for a look. I got to thinking it must be interesting for her to have seen 3 generations of my family building their own homes next door! Her family has lived on the hill longer than mine.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I drove out to Montesano. For those of you who don't know where that is its just East of Aberdeen. At work I deal with a cedar mill located there. When I was talking to my contact there a year ago he told me he could give me a great deal on my siding. A few weeks back I gave him a call and he got me a deal I couldn't refuse. Apparently some of their siding got wet back when we had the big floods. Because of this he cannot sell it as new so he was told to sell it cheap. The end result, I paid half of wholesale or about a third of what retail would be. YEA!! Its all in great shape but some of the boards have some silt on them that seem to wash off fine. He also gave me about 400 feet more that what I should need so I should be able to recoup a little extra $$$. Its not the biggest load I've had on the trailer but there is definitely a little weight there. For some perspective the lower board are 20 feet long and the upper 2 stacks are 16 footers.

FIRE!!!

...in the fireplace. Yep, the fireplace is now hooked up and working. The outside air kit (draws air for the fireplace from outside the house instead of taking the nice warm air from inside) still needs to be ducted but for now it doesn't make a difference. Its going to be a little tricky to run the duct so for now I'm putting it off. It has to go down through the floor into the garage, along an inside wall, drop down out of the joist space, turn ninety degrees run for another 10 feet before going out the wall under the deck. I figure the ducting is just going to get in the way for now so I'm waiting till later to finish it.

I also got 3 of the upstairs bedroom windows in. I'm leaving 1 out to make it easy to get onto the roof.

Last Friday I went out and rented scaffolding. I then spent Saturday putting it up (and taking it down) on the garage end of the house and putting up the house wrap. I was also going to put in the 3 small windows the dining room. Unfortunately when I held the window up I realize that they had switched the dimensions and I had tall narrow widows (1'x2') for long short holes (2'x1'). For those of you that don't know anything about windows, they come with weep holes on the bottom edge to let any moisture out from inside. If I had used them they would have had weep holes on the side. I went down yesterday and they are replacing them for free sense it was their mistake. I'm keeping the wrong ones and going to use them in the garage which has no windows in it.

Sunday I had a few friends over to help me sort through the scrap pile the framers left. It had everything in it, plywood, OSB, dimensional lumber, garbage, etc. With the help of Steve, Mike J, Mike W, and Tammy (thanks guys!) we got it all sorted into piles and away from the house. Now I can easily get around the house instead of tripping over a pile of boards with nails sticking out. We also installed the last of the sliding doors. Now I just have to wait for Milgard to come out and glaze them (put the glass in).

This weeks mission is to get the great room windows in, the back side of the house wrapped, and install the two windows in the master bedroom. Then I can jump back to plumbing..

Roof over my head

The roofer finally finished the roofing last week. It looks great. I had him install a bunch of tie offs on the peaks so I can clip my safety line on when I have to get up there. Climbing up consists of getting onto the lower roof, either with a ladder or through one of the upstairs bedrooms, then putting a ladder from the lower peak to the higher peak. I had the tie offs installed so I can tie the ladder down to the roof and then clip my safety line on the upper roof before getting off the ladder.

I've taken a break from the plumbing to start installing windows. It should be a lot more pleasant to do plumbing without the wind blowing through the house. I started with the smallest one in the master bath, then moved onto the entry and powder room windows, and then onto the basement. The hardest part is putting the building wrap on as it seems to be windy every day. Steve came over on Sunday and helped me put the dining room slider in. Because its such a large door Milgard has to come out and put the glass in once all the sliders are in place.

Today (Monday) the fireplace company called to let me know that they would be out to install the fireplace. Before I could get back to the house the sales person called back to ask if I was going to be there. It seems they only sent 1 installer out. As the fireplace weighs in at 350 lbs he was going to need a little help getting in. I went home and we used the loader to lift it up onto the deck, then wheeled into the house. Having lived most my life with a large fireplace in the living room this one seems tiny by comparison (it only takes 20" logs). Unfortunately, due to Washington enviromental standards I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. The nice thing is that it meets all the highest standards so I can use it pretty much anytime (read: no more burn ban BS). He didn't have all the parts yet, and has to have the chimney cover custom made so its not ready to use yet. But in about a week I should be able to get a little heat in the place and have window in so the heat stays in. Yea!!!!