I have a bunch of updates from our weekly meeting with the architect and the builder.
First, I will go through recent progress. Inside the house, the electrical team continues to work. The electrical work is very complex for our new house and it is taking a long time (and costing a lot). Currently we are hoping that the electrical work will be done and connected to live power by the second week in March. At which point, we will turn on the system and our EMF consultant will fly in (from New York) and measure the radiation levels in the house. If everything looks good (or at least if there are no major problems), then the builder can move forward with doing the interior finishing.
Here is the current back wall of the electrical utility room in the basement.
Just to be clear, this is only 2 of the five sub panels we will have in the house. (Last week we were planning on four, but the electrician decided to add another one in the utility room with all the HVAC equipment.)
Because we want to have real load on the electrical system for testing, we are finishing up the HVAC system so we can also turn it on for the testing in March. As of now, they have put in the connections for the external condensers, which run through tubes under the deck. We will install the condensers themselves (two of them) in a few weeks.
Inside the garage, they have also put the connections in place for the air handling unit that will heat and cool the garage. This will keep the garage from getting too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.
Yes, the garage will be insulated and plastered. And speaking of the garage, we discovered that code requires us to provide access to the area above the garage ceiling because it is a large enough space. So they have framed an opening, although we will not have drop down stairs (I do not need the storage space).
Outside the house, I am sorry to report that final siding installation is delayed again. Really. The siding company shipped us the wrong hardware, so we still do not have enough mounting hardware to put the siding on the porch. The team will continue to do as much as they can in the meantime. This will not delay anything (the electrician is doing a fine job at that on his own).
Last week I posted a picture of the ceiling of the porch. Here is a picture of the ceiling of the breezeway.
Inside the house, the construction crew has finished installing all the remaining frames for the pocket doors. We will have six pocket doors in the house, two at the top of the stairs (second floor landing), shown here.
Two small ones for the master closet, shown here:
One for the laundry room, for which I posted a picture last week. And one between the pantry and the front hall (no picture).
The construction crew and ventilation team have also rerouted the duct work in the upstairs bathroom and framed an opening that will eventually be a cubbyhole next to the toilet.
The builder had the water tested (it’s Concord municipal water from town wells), and it came back as being quite hard (11 grains per gallon). So we will be getting a whole house water softener. On the plus side, this should extend the life of the hot water tank. We will have one filtered tap for drinking water in the kitchen that bypasses the water softener.
Tomorrow they will install three of the four exterior doors. Hopefully, I will have pictures this weekend. We are holding off installing the pantry door, which will continue to be used by the construction crew to get in and out of the house. The front door will not be used any more during construction.
This weekend, Daphne and I will look at two different samples of granite for the front stoop. You can see those samples here, to the left and right of the entrance. We be using blue mist granite tiles for the front walk. Then there will be one large granite slab, a 7″ step up from the ground, and then another 7″ step to get to the door jam. Right now, in this picture, the ground is lower than it will be when the project is finished.
We decided to add one more plug in the basement where we will put a work bench. The outlet will allow us to run small power tools. The workbench will be near, but not under the windows in the basement.
Also in the basement, we will be plastering the inside of the stairs from the first floor into the basement, but the outside of those walls will just have plywood (after all, none of the basement is finished). We will also just have plywood on the outside walls of the two utility rooms. In 30 years, after we die and our heirs sell the house, the new owners can always finish the basement if they really want.
Meanwhile, we are trying to keep the basement safe for flooding by having nothing that will get damaged if we get rising water. We have two sump pump wells in the foundation, and power near both of them, but we have not decided on whether we want a sump pump or not.
I double checked with the builder, and there has been no change in the estimated end date, but 7 days have passed so…
Estimated days until completion: 132 days (late June)
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