Finally A Front Door And Heat Is On The Way!!!

It has been a snowy couple of weeks!!!!!!

So between clearing snow and continuing to put together the radiant floor system, not a lot of change has taken place. Our start up date for the radiant floor system is right after Christmas.

I have been making some adjustments on the radiant floor system; and after pressurizing it with air having to deal with a few leaks in the system. Of all things, all leaks have been on the threaded connections. All of what must be nearly 50+ solder joints have had no leaks. This weekend has been spent tying into the house with the solar tank which will feed the house with domestic hot water.

Hot water obviously is not needed in the house yet but the tank needs to be filled to offer buoyancy for the heating coils from the flash hot water heater and also the coils that will eventually be fed by the solar panels.

This past week rough-in plumbing was, for the most part, completed. The only thing that remains is to tie into the septic tank, pressurize the system and call for inspection.

Most of the wiring has been completed for the radiant floor system system. The sensor and relay for the solar tank has to be hooked up yet, and wiring from the thermostat for the main zone of the house needs to be completed.

Amongst other things, last weekend's project was to finally get the front door installed. We have been waiting for two months for the door to arrive. The other two service doors also arrived. They will be located in the kitchen area and in the master bedroom. Those will, at a minimum, have a sealer of some sort applied to them before being installed.

And lastly, this weekend has also been spent finishing up the upstairs floor joist system. We had taken this as far as was needed so the plumbers could get started plumbing at the time. We now need to get it finished up so that we can get started wiring. Our plan is to, at some point during the week after Christmas, get wiring under way. A great deal of wiring has taken place due to the nature of the SIP panels being used and the open ceiling. So most of the great room and dining room have been wired already, and with the floor joist system upstairs wiring should be made relatively easy to get the longer runs of wire in.

This past week I met with a sound system company to get some ideas on what is all needed to get the house wired for music throughout the house. They were very helpful to get me started on how the system will be set up, what types of wire to run right now, and boxes that need to be mounted for room by room control of the sound system.

And finally, to all of our friends, family and readers of this blog, Have A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

We Have Water In The House!!!!!

It has been a while since I have had time to update the blog, due to being very busy trying to keep all the things that have been going on with the house straight and moving ahead. One of the main things was to settle on the way we were going to get water from the water tanks to the house.

Originally, we were going to locate the pressure tank and pumps in the house. I liked this idea due to the fact that it would not require any type of a pump house and also any threat of freezing would not be a concern.

I called David Stevens who was recommended to us by the plumber. His recommendation was to locate the pumps in the tanks and have the pressure tanks inside the house. This would satisfy all of the things listed above, plus we would not have the noise of the pumps in the house. Even though the pumps would have been located in the mechanical room, the noise probably would have still been a factor.

So we decided to take David's recommendation and go with locating the pumps inside the tanks. There were a few problems with this whole scenario. One required running conduit out to the tanks for electrical for the pumps. As far as that goes, not a huge deal because of all of the sleeves I have stubbed out under the footing of the house. Plus, I had existing trench to dig in so the digging would not be that hard. Problem two: again a lot of digging!!! The water lines would have to be located where they tap into the tanks and be re-routed so that they would be located closer to where the pump line exited the tank.

I can honestly say I will not lift another shovel full of dirt at least the rest of the year. The digging was easy because the soil had just been backfilled over the tanks just this past summer. But the problem was that just under the soil, cinder was used to initially shade the tanks. With recent rains the topsoil was damp and the cinder was still dry and not compacted. I must have dug a total of 60 feet of trench 30" deep three times due to the trench caving in!!

Anyway, junction boxes were set for the electrical, water lines were re-routed, wire was pulled in, and the pumps hooked up. So, by mid-day yesterday, the water was running in the house!!!!

Along with the water, the rough-in plumbing has just about been completed. This is one of the few things I contracted out. Plumbing is really not my bag, although I am still getting my fill of it working on the radiant floor heating system; but more on that in a bit. The plumber had a crew of about five guys come out and within a little more than two days they had about completed all of the rough-in and are ready for inspection.

Prior to getting the plumber out, we needed to get the upstairs walls framed for the bathroom so that lines could be run for it.

Due to the high ceilings and time constraints, I framed the initial wall at 10 feet and will take the remaining wall up to the ceiling as time allows.

The radiant floor has been on our to-do list for quite some time, however it seems that there is always a pressing issue that takes priority and other projects keep jumping ahead of it. We were expecting the doors this past Friday, and the front door would have been installed over the weekend, but we were told they could not be delivered due to the weather; we were having an all day rain! However, come to find out, apparently someone failed to make sure there was enough oil in the company's panel truck and blew the engine up in it. Not sure when they will be delivered now!

So Saturday was spent getting the rough opening ready for the front door, which is really the only opening in the house. The other two doors have yet to be cut in. So when they finally do get delivered it should only be about an hour or two and the front door will be installed.

Although all of these other things have been jumping in front of the radiant floor, I have managed to put some time in here and there on it. All equipment has been mounted on the wall and I have gotten most of the pipe cut and some of it soldered together.

The flash hot water heater just needs to have the wire hooked up in it, as do the circulating pumps.

At this point, it is almost a given that the solar portion will have to wait until spring. It would have been nice to have that component in place but time just did not allow for it.

Lastly, this past week marks a year since we raised our frame. We still remember it as if it were yesterday. What a fun week that was. I will admit I thought we would be much further along than we are right now, but I also look back and see how far we have come and cannot believe how much we have accomplished!