Two weeks. Lots to tell.

Amazing how quickly the season has changed. There’s the nip in the air, but more than that, the light is so different than just a few weeks ago.  Jennifer undertook to photograph our views through the dirty windows. Normally that’s not the best thing to show, but these give  a feel  that I wanted to share. Something about being in a structure looking out... contrasts with how it was last year at this time!

The week of Sept 21 was the week for finishing up all the in-wall systems. One big part of that was electrical. For that I had and electrician, thank goodness. Maybe you remember this from a long ago post:  Those are the tubes of conduit that I ran over the kitchen/dining ceiling – which is exposed beams and cannot hold wiring like a normal ceiling.  These were supposed to provide us with maximum flexibility to position fixtures in one of a number of places where we might ultimately want them. Well.... somehow we came up with a plan that didn’t quite match my ideas back then.

It was one of those 3am realizations – I’ve had quite a few of them over this project – that there was no way to get where we wanted to go.  

I couldn’t believe that after all the care that has gone into the flawless ceiling, I’d have to have a big plate or patch in it. UNACCEPTABLE. A suggestion from the electrician,  plus one sleepless night figuring it all out,  then a few hours of uncomfortable over the head work, and the problem was under control,  but ugly:

Awful right? No worries.  First real carpenter I ever knew used to tell me all the time -- sign of a good carpenter isn't not making mistakes.  It's how well you fix em.... Once we got the wires in, it’s back to this:  

 This fix worked out pretty well.   

Apart from the electrical were a zillion other unphotogenic details. Insulating pipes, running thermostat wires, speaker wires, computer and phone lines, duct work... etc etc.   I’ve hired a slow-at-his-day-job sheetrock taper to hang and tape the sheetrock on the ceilings and on the internal walls. (The block walls will be plastered – more on this later.)  First the beastly heavy material had to be delivered.  Oy: Watch the roof.... PLEASE!It’s a messy business and it also turns my beloved little work site into a noisy and chaotic mess.... In other words it’s like most construction sites are 100% of the time. Hard on me, though.  Here is a series of pictures over the past week. As you can see, the spaces are getting defined.  

The start of the work -- ceilings only, early in the week.  

Jennifer contemplates living room avec "lid" as they call it.  Today that room has its walls covered too.  Below is the entry to the  main bedroom. 

And the main hall downstairs (still with the temporary stair.) 

Upstairs stair landing.

With the exception of some small detail pieces, the drywall is up now. Next week is for taping and mudding. It will look a lot better when all those seams and screws and corners are cleaned up! For about the first half of the week last week I was running out ahead of the drywallers, realizing details that had not been fully prepared. There’s a lot to making sure you end up with the details that you need around doorways and transition spots. Once that was over I finally could get to having Sebastian back to dig and sift some of the clay  so that we can use it for the first coat of plaster on the interior of the block walls.   We took this clay from just beneath the topsoil at an area very near the driveway.  Here it is soaking,  after having been sifted:   I have read quite a bit about the whole earthen plaster possibility. We ran some tests & I think we’ve figured out the mix of sand and fiber that our clay here requires to work as a first coat.

My reading also taught me that fresh cow dung is an excellent additive for clay plaster. The enzymes in it apparently cattle-ize ;-) the clay’s own adhesive and elastic properties. We want lots of those.  At the end of our driveway there literally are 2000 acres dedicated to grazing cows, so I could see no reason not to try this. (I hope that when it’s all over we will  smell no reason either....)   So, this very morning, off I went (with my neighbor’s permission, of course) to collect fresh cow pies. You can read all you want, there are always more questions. For instance, the book says that you want “fresh” manure. Well... walking the field I thought I could identify the fresher drops. Then I came to wonder whether wetter was necessarily fresher.... or was I just in pursuit of one sick animal’s leavings? Later came the matter of heaving the bucket through the slats in the gate. Let’s just say, it was a messy proposition. I should have taken pictures, but alas I was alone . Jennifer out of town for sister’s wedding.  I didn’t dare handle the camera . Here is a  pic of the load I brought home: and of the  process of mixing these all important enzymes into the clay slip: 

Well..... we got a lot of s--- done this week,  like I said!  

Week of Sept 14th

Fairly productive week.  My confidence is never high when there's plumbing involved,  but I moved into doing the parts of the plumbing -- namely the supply system-- that I will do on my own.  The electrician also came at the end of the week,  so that part of what will soon be hidden is coming along.  

Not to sound like a broken record,  but it doesn't lend itself to photos.  Really little of what's going on now does,  but here are a few pics of highlights.  These guys are checking out the roof for the solar hot water unit that they would later bring up to the roof.  

Better them than me is all I can say.  I'd like as few additional trips up onto the now slick roof as possible, for the rest of my life!  

The solar panel feeds a tank in the basement.   It has only one electrical element,  up top.  If the solar is bringing the water fully to temperature,  the element doesn't kick in.  In the rare  =;- 0  instance that skys are cloudy , the element does its work to bring the temp up.  I like the name -- very kinky:  

(It says "Solar Servant") . Installation of the tank (in the basement)  and the pipes that go through the roof and down to the tank was all part of the contract with Solar Assist. How lovely to have them just get the whole thing done!  

As scheduled,  I got the radiant floor control panels all connected,  and after a full weekend under test they are holding 70 PSI of air pressure steady without any loss,  so I'd say we are leak free! Very exciting.   Here's a picture of the panel and the mini boiler to the left.   It's all we'll need to heat the water that will go through the floors.  I didn't build that control board -- a company in Maine that designed my system built it and shipped it to me.  I just had to bring all the red and orange pipes from the various loops in the floor into the panel and connect them in proper sequence.  And that was enough.

With any luck,  all the rest of the in-th-wall (& ceiling) work will be finished next week and I'll we awaiting the sheetrockers -- another part of the job that I am happy NOT to take care of myself.

Summer's over

OK,  I didn't finish  catching up before the vacation break,  so I'll try and get you up to date tonight.   Systems,  systems, systems.  There you have it in a word.  I'm blogging if you're interested,  but it ain't pitcha-esk,  if you folla .   

Before the interior walls and ceilings  can get closed in,  there are lots of things that need to get threaded through the walls and ceilings.  

Above are some heat tubes in the basement ceiling (to feed the first floor's system) and electrical wiring too. 

Then there are light fixtures.  They seem and look simple,  but deciding where they go and spacing them in light of other immovable objects,  like trusses and joists and such takes some head scratching.  Soon the electrician will wire these up.

Even though the radiant heat tubes are in the floor  they  pass  to the second floor through the first floor's ceiling,  and the manifolds and thermostats and controls and such are all in the walls.  So that system also needs to get finished before I can close the walls. 

Getting those aluminum plates down and the tubes threaded into their channels was the pre-vacation goal,  and we did finish it.  In fact,  I don't have too many pictures since time was short and we got protective covering down over those tubes right away (to prevent -- I hope -- any chance of a puncture before the finish floor goes down over them).    THe plates look like this,  if you can see through the chaos.    

And when the tubes go in,  it looks something like this. 

The tubes  are ornery to thread around,  and it is critical not to kink them,  so again there's more to it than one expects.   (See the bathtub in the back,  that's in now too, along with plumbing for the sink in there.) 

 At first they are a confusing mess.  

But this past week I began to tame them into their neat manifolds.

 Plumbing is really my least favorite thing to do,  and I fake it really poorly compared to the rest of the trades,  but I am muddling through the heat parts.  The waste plumbing is another story.  I had a real live licenced plumber put these pipes in.  

Then there is ventilation.  Because this house should end up being pretty tight -- meaning that it is highly insulated and also well sealed,  so there should not be a lot of air infiltration -- we need to bring in fresh air through a small and simple system -- but it is a central one.  

Here you see the exhaust unit that's now hanging in the basement: 

And the trunk line that leads to various smaller ducts that go upstairs into the kitchen, bathrooms, etc. 

There are smaller ducts that will get built into chases etc in the near future,  such as this one in the guest bathroom: 

Last but not at all least,  the drainwater heat recovery unit arrived and has been installed.  I'm very excited about this.  It's going to be connected the master bathroom's shower and essentially it uses the heat from the water going down the shower drain to preheat the water that is coming into the shower valve,  so that you use less of the (solar heated) hot water to get a hot shower.  Here's a picture of the unit pre- installation.    You see the copper pipe snaking all around?  It makes contact with the copper of the drain pipe, and the thing is engineered  so that the outflowing hot drain water films the wall of the drain pipe (rather than dropping down the middle) and thus heats the water tha is passing up through that snaking pipe.  Pretty hot huh! 

Below is a picture of the unit installed in it's present rats nest of a plumbing chase.  

So,  the coming week will be more plumbing,  computer wires,  phone wires,  thermostat wires,  and who knows what else.  I'll let you know!  

 

Catch up post, part 1

It’s been a busy few weeks, keeping me off the wagon in terms of returning to regular Sunday posts.

 Last weekend we had a visit from cousins Lydia and Robert. They are the same pair that helped us early in the project, cleaning up my design and helping tremendously with decisions about how to situate the house on the land.  

Time has come to assess the site again, in order to establish some plan for how we will restore the contours of the land around the house . Although a lot of this is “landscaping,” there are connections to systems work that needs to be done fairly soon – like bringing a water line into the house from the well.  

 

Again it was time to use the compass and transit/level to establish the levels of the surrounding terrain.  And once again we're lucky to have Lydia and Robert helping us with this challenging but important part of the project!   

As you’ve surely gathered from the pictures throughout, we have quite a bit of slope. Still,  its always surprising  HOW MUCH the drop is (that's the well under the plastic bag and inuslation)

The house  pic will look like all the others,  but if you can see them,  there are gutters now, in anticipation of you know what in the fall! 

There's been a lot going on inside and I haven't had the patience to take inside pictures,  but I will try to do so tomorrow and then post .  THen it's a shor work week and VACATION until labor day. 

Back to the slog and the blog

Hard to believe that I've missed over four weeks of posts,  but so it is.  There are a number of reasons -- not to say "excuses," as you'll read.  

First,  I guess the completion of the exterior and the need to move to a completely different part of the project brought on a kind of retrospective exhaustion,  or even mild panic.  It's kind of typical of me not to fear at the point that most intelligent people would be completely overwhelmed,  and then to have a bout of paralysis about the enormity of what I've bitten off when the scariest part of it is behind me.  

So it went for a bit,  while I postponed taking time off until the date of a planned visit by my dear mother.  

She can be seen here studying a proposed color sample for the stucco part of the house.  

I took advantage of her visit to stop work and chill a little for about a week.  Really that's the wrong term as the unusually hot weather arrived about then.  

Of course, we did visit some local hot spots together -- like the scrap steel yard,  where I unloaded about 250 lbs of metal waste and collected a whopping $13.  More valuable was the clear conscience I got.  I literally pick up broken screw, waste staple,  strapping etc and salvage it from the trash so it can be recycled.  This is how we've kept the landfill waste on this project to very near zero. 

Before the break (about middle of July) my new helper became my ex-helper by injuring his knee quite badly -- on the stairs in his own home,  I hasten to add.  My first day unexpectedly alone was the day we received delivery of the wood flooring that is to cover most of our floor.  Getting it off the truck and stacked properly for acclimation to humidity levels in our space was a big job.    

Unfortunately,  there are problems with the wood and it will all need to go back and be replaced.... a lot more labor.  That's all I'll say about it here,  but I'm sure you can imagine the agony,  hassle and anxiety that went into arriving at this decision and getting the supplier on board.   We can only hope that the replacement material will arrive here to standard.   

Shortly after Ilse's visit came one from Jenks and Sukie (Jennifer's father and his companion).   That was when the relentless heat was here, and the mobile home is a pretty hot tin can in such conditions,   so we had our first sit down meal in the house -- complete with table cloth thrown over plywood on saw horses.  

The visits provided me with a much needed excuse for a break and a chance to let percolate my thoughts about how to organize myself from here forward.  In addition,  though,  I got recharged by all the thoughtful support the visitors offered.  My mother wandered up the lumpy hill often -- sometimes all on her own -- and took her time getting the feel for the place.   Obviously it gave me great pleasure when she proclaimed that her feel for and appreciation of the place grew with familarity.   Sukie and Jenks  -- who say they follow the blog faithfully-- also agreed with what I always say:  pictures don't capture the magic of the spot or the whole of the spyhow project.   

OK,  on to business because I need to get to work this morning.   It's not like NOTHING got done since I wrote last:  

We (for as long as I had a helper) have been laying the pieces that will make up the highly efficient underfloor radiant sandwich:  What you see here are the snaking channels that will have aluminum plates and tubing for hot water dropped in just befoer the final wood floor is nailed on top.  

On the second floor I've gone to the trouble of adding a layer of cork underneath -- I think you can see it in these pics -- to dull the sound of upstairs footfalls in the downstairs space. 

Framing is hard to photograph,  but in addition to putting up the few wals that there are in the first floor plan,  there were a considerable number of details that took some work and planning  -- like the details around the concrete headers and over open doorways.  Lots of things you take for granted once you're in a space,  but they need to be figured and done here!

I also took what I hope will be one of my last trips up onto the scary and now slippery metal roof,  to cut the hole for the  tube thatwill light the master  closet when the walls cut of f most of its access to window light. 

I'm working now on window jambs and trim (interior) which I'm making from cherry wood that was once a tree in someone's yard...  So far it's gorgeous.  

As I keep saying,  interior work is hard to portray... but I'll try to return to regular posts now that I see the light at the end of the (master closet light)tunnel: