Last week I said that we thought that there would only be one more weekend of pulling invasive plants this year, but I was wrong. After three hours of work this weekend, we have decided that there is still more to do.
Here is a current view of the yard, wetlands and river. In the foreground you can see that we have cleared out a lot of the plants that should not be there. Near the river, you may be able to tell that the water is up a few inches from its previous low. And, of course, colors are starting to change.
The trench was filled with concrete and I have a video of that work. This has been slowed down a lot because the whole process was only around 20 minutes. There was nothing else of interest on the construction camera all week. The trench will be filled in with dirt on Monday.
Here is a picture of the telephone pole where some of the conduits terminate. I do not know what will happen if this pole ever needs to be replaced.
Inside the house we have two crews working, the electricians and the HVAC installers. The electricians are installing the panels in the basement (first picture) and inside the garage.
For the HVAC, I noticed a new pipe. This black pipe contains the connection that will go to the external heat exchangers. Here you can see it coming up through the closet wall on the second floor.
And here is the crawl space above the front bedroom. You can see where the black tubes come out as well as some of the duct work. These will connect to the air handling unit for the second floor.
It seems like all of the openings for air vents have been cut, and many of them have the end of the ducts installed. The first picture shows the returns in the game room. The second picture shows the duct ends in the basement under the living room (the blue water pipe runs to the exterior faucet).
Here is the work list for the upcoming week:
Back fill the trench on Monday
Siding being delivered Wednesday
Complete deck framing and deck stairs
Then prime deck frame, hopefully this week
Install gutter sample
Continue HVAC duct work
Continue electrical wiring
The construction camera was not moved so it will capture the backfilling. Then I will reposition it for the siding work (which will be the week after next).
As the HVAC installers work on adding the ducts for heating/cooling, they discover that the original plans did not workout as expected and some ducts need to be relocated to work around framing, beams, water pipes, etc. With the latest changes, we had to relocate some of the ducts into the area between the basement door (which leads out to the river) and the bottom of the basement stairs, which is probably the only stretch of the basement where we will regularly be walking.
This matters only because we want to have a high ceiling in the basement wherever possible, but the ducts run up against the base of the first floor so they reduce the ceiling height wherever they are located. Now the basement will be unfinished, so we are not talking about ceiling tiles. We only mean that when we have basketball players visit us, they may need to be careful if they go out to the river through the basement.
In general, the basement ceiling height will be 8 feet (actually 7′ 11.5″ to be precise). But anywhere there is a duct, the height drops by approximately a foot. In particular, the ceiling height in the middle of the area between the bottom of the stairs and the backdoor will now be 6′ 11″ (although it will be taller right at the base of the stairs).
Since the architect sent me an updated drawing for my approval, I am sharing that with you. This is the current basement ceiling plan. I asked them to add a plywood facing on the side of the duct where it faces the stairs so if you do bump into it (for example, carrying a ladder or furniture down the stairs) you will hit the plywood and not damage the duct itself.
The yellow areas are all a fraction under 8 feet tall. The white areas are all approximately a foot shorter. The utility room is a little different since it will have a drop ceiling (which is part of our EMF shielding plan).
In 30 or 40 years when we are no longer living in the house and it gets sold, the new owners may want to add a room or two in the basement, and then the lower ceilings will be their problem (as will the lack of heating capacity). For us, not as much.
Today features light drizzle, and the same was predicted for the rest of the week. This means that filling in the trench has been delayed until Monday (unless the forecast for Friday changes). Meanwhile, I did go around to the north side of the garage to see where all the conduits come up, as shown below.
Meanwhile, the electricians have moved into the basement where they are installing the main panels. Here is a picture of them working in the area just above all the conduits.
There was also some work on the outside stairs down from the deck, although that work is not finished yet. As soon as it is finished, they will add the fireproofing coating to the deck framing.
At our Wednesday meeting we had the tile installer come by to measure the bathrooms so we know how much tile to order. We (meaning Daphne) picked the color we will use for the lattice work under the deck and under the porch. Friday we go to the showroom where we will select our counter top and given them a deposit before they raise their prices by 15% on October 1st.
Siding has been delayed a week so it will not start next week, but rather the week after. Meanwhile, the HVAC installers are still putting in ducts. I suspect they will be working for another week or two. The duct work has caused us to relocate some of the ducts in the basement reducing the ceiling height in a section near the basement door by a foot (it will still be over seven feet).
As you have seen in earlier posts, we have conduits running from the basement (utility room) to the street and the garage. These are buried 4 feet under ground and then covered in concrete and then dirt (and eventually asphalt driveway and paving stones). The purpose of the concrete is to provide some measure of EMF shielding between the wires and any humans walking across the driveway and front walk.
Today the concrete is bring poured over the conduits and the builder sent me this action shot.
Today we went for a hike along the Fairhaven Trail in Concord, which is on the other side of the river from our new house. There is a place where the trail has a path down to the water, where you land a boat. Here are two pictures of our new house from that small beach.
Once again, we returned to the backyard to pull invasives. I am pleased to announce that we are almost done for the year. Perhaps an hour or two more and then we will have pulled everything we can until more sprout next spring.
Here is a view, looking North, of the backyard post invasive removal. There is only one buckthorn remaining (can you find it?). It was too big and inconveniently placed to remove so we just girdled it and it should die in a year or two.
As far as construction goes, there is steady progress on deck framing and on duct work for the heating system. The most visible changes were in the trench where they are putting conduits between the road (telephone pole), garage and basement. Here are some pictures showing the progress. First looking at the front of the garage, then from the side.
And here is the current conduit ends in the basement.
I can not read all of the labels on the conduits, but here are the ones I can read:
spare
alarm to garage
spare to street
spare to garage
fiber to street
cable to street
cat 6 to garage
switch to garage
power to garage
water meter
I was hoping to have a good construction video showing the conduit work, but the electricians are camera shy as you can tell by the end of the video (I have another day and a half of that same view).
This will be a longish post, so I apologize in advance.
We had not been to the house for over a week and when we got there for our Wednesday meeting, the driveway and yard in front of the garage was all torn up. This was expected, since they are laying conduits between the road, the house and the garage.
Here is the view from the street. The ladder is leaning on the utility pole. Power and internet cables will be buried after coming off the pole.
And here is the view from the front yard.
They will continue adding conduits for a few more days, and then next week, after an inspection, they will bury the conduits in concrete and backfill the sand. But for now, there is no easy access into the garage or even onto the deck from the front.
Speaking of the deck, last week they worked on framing of the deck. Here is a side view of the deck. Notice that the corner is not square, because if it was square then we would be over the 50 foot wetlands setback. Also, the stairs are not in place yet.
This past week, the construction camera was positioned to show the work on the deck. Here is the work (I removed most of the boring parts).
Now that the deck framing is in place, you can see that the passage to the basement door goes under the deck without a lot of headroom. Daphne is used for scale.
Now that you have watched the video, go back and look at what happens just after the 1:00 mark. You should see them finally mount the french door from the living room onto the deck (and a little later, in the background, the french door onto the porch).
Here is the view of the living room french door. Its clouded because there is still a protective film on the door.
And here is the french door in the game room that leads out to the porch.
If you scroll up and look at the deck side-view picture, you may (but probably not) notice something missing in the foreground. (Go ahead and look, I will wait).
Its turns out that we had a rain storm over the weekend and without gutters, we got a lot of water undercutting the concrete pad that was poured for the heat exchangers. The crew had to remove the pad, build a packed gravel foundation, and then they will re-pour the pad next week. Here is a brief construction video of the work.
That takes us to the interior of the house. This past week has all been about putting in the duct work.
As part of placing the ducts, the installers had to make some small changes, mostly to work around the joists and in one case the plumbing. Here is a layout of the first floor showing the changes that we had to approve (in red and yellow).
For example, we would review changes like this (which is from the east wall of game room).
Or adjustments like this, which is the corner of the game room. On the other side of that wall (to the left) we also adjusted the vent, but in the case we moved it from being closer to the bathroom, to actually being in the wall facing the hall.
The air return vent in the front hall (outline shown below), which was planned on being under a shelf, was increased in size. Because of that we made a more drastic change. Instead of having a floor vent under a floating shelf, we decided to actually have a cabinet that goes down to the floor and to have the vent come out in the front of the cabinet (so that it turns 90 degrees inside an otherwise empty cabinet.
With this proposed change, we then noticed a cosmetic problem. The laundry room door opening (left side in the picture) and the closet door opening did not align, which would be more apparent with a cabinet. So we decided to shrink the closet door to align the openings. Does this quality as “moving a wall”? You decide.
None of the other changes were problematic for us. We did move the vent near my computer a few inches closer to my desk, which hopefully will not be a problem for my rolling chair. And we made the vent in the master bedroom wider, so we had to quickly measure the bedside tables to make sure everything still fit.
I will also leave you with this picture. This is the attic area above the second floor front bedroom and family room. This space will be filled with air handling units soon.
For the rest of this week and first half of next week, they will be working on the trench and conduits. I have moved the construction camera to pick up the action.
Once the trench is filled in, and we can access the garage again, we will store the siding in the garage and the week after next the siding will be installed, starting in the back (river side). I will move the construction camera again in a week and a half to catch that action.
Inside, duct work continues and once the conduits are done, electrical work will start.
Days since we moved a wall: 57, unless you count shrinking the closet door opening, then 0.
No house visit this past weekend because we went camping at Wellfleet Hollow Campground on Cape Cod. The weekend consisted of hiking, reading and playing games. Here are a few pictures from our hikes.
The next post will be back to our regularly scheduled house construction update.
Another Saturday, another invasive pulling session. But you do not want to hear about that, you want to know what’s going on with the house. Well, in the previous post I had a picture of the garage and basement floors. Here is a video of the pouring of the garage floor.
A few days later they they started work on the framing for the deck. Here is a picture of the current state of the deck. The concrete pad will be for the heat exchangers.
The camera was not well positioned to capture the deck action, but I have a short cropped movie of some of the work.
Since there is not much else to show you, I thought I would add this picture of the front of the house.
The camera has been repositioned for a better angle on the deck framing. I also expect the french doors to be installed early next week and I assume duct work will continue. We are still a couple of weeks away from the siding installation.
I just came back from our Wednesday update meeting. Things continue to move forward. In fact, the builder thinks we are ahead of his original schedule, but we are not celebrating just yet.
The biggest change since last weekend is that we now have a floor in the garage and in the basement. The following two pictures show the garage floor and the basement floor. The lines, which were just cut, are for expansion to reduce the likelihood of cracks, although some are still expected.
Also this week, the landscape company put the gravel in the area which will be covered by deck. They will start framing the deck soon, and then put down plywood so we can walk on the deck. The final deck surface will not be added until near the end of the build process (to prevent damage). You can also see that they added a small pad behind the garage for the heat exchangers.
Inside the house, plumbing is mostly done except for a few drains, and hooking up to the (not yet built) septic system. This picture is the master bathroom’s shower with controls and pipes for the shower head and the separate wand.
Speaking of plumbing, look at what appeared in the foundation a few days ago. This is the only exterior faucet that needs to go through the foundation. The other three will all go though the siding. This faucet is next to the basement door and is where we will wash our feet when we come in from the river. Its also what we need to water the plants in the backyard.
Meanwhile, on the second floor. work continues on the ducts for heating/cooling. Here is ceiling of the family room next to the stairs. You can see the ductwork and a ceiling vent (this one is an air return).
The french doors come in on Thursday and should be installed by the weekend. Next week or maybe the week after, they will dig the trenches and put in the pipes between the utility room and the garage and the street. In a few weeks the siding will start and I hope to catch that on the construction camera.
