Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[MacLawn]

Whew, pc, tough skin to put with all our comments. Looking pretty good to me, and I think it's going to come out good - finish work ain't building fine furniture. We can judge pretty good from our computers all over the world. Hey, I'll come there tomorrow and check it out for you. Whip them boys if they aren't doing it right. unch:

 

[pclausen]

Day 98

Despite the rain yesterday and this morning, the health department came out and approved the septic system with flying colors, and the machine operator was able to get it all covered back up. I noticed he left the lid to the distribution tank partially uncovered, I guess to do the final tuning of each drain line once the system is "loaded".

Since the track hoe will be gone tomorrow, the stone guy had him dig the footers for the driveway gate just before getting ready to load it onto the trailer.

Inside, the stone guy got the wall by the fireplace ready to rock tomorrow. In this shot, I also added lines showing the bow in the ceiling. I bet very few people except Ron would actually catch that. I am going to let the builder know. Maybe he'll offer a discount at final settlement.

Looking the other way.

The only other thing that took place today was that all the hollow core doors and sliders were replaced with solid core ones, and the metal door from the garage to the mud room was installed.

I met with the super this afternoon and discussed sanding of the T&G. He said the painters would take care of that, leaving the trim in place. Something about a guard on the belt sander they will use that will prevent damage to the trim pieces?

He also agreed that several of the walls will need more work before the next coat of paint.

As for the overall timeline, he finally signed the paperwork for the cabinets, which means they will not show up until the week of 5/13. As soon as they are installed, the granite guy will come out and make his templates, and get the counter tops installed within 5 days of that. So the latter part of the week of 5/20 is likely when everything will be done. Movers have already been scheduled for that week. It is going to be close.

Tiles will be in tomorrow or Wednesday. They will start on those as soon as the rock guy is done. The bathrooms are also being completed this week, as are the missing downspouts and remaining excavating (downspout drains, retaining wall for expanded parking area, trench for low voltage wire for driveway gates).

Unfortunately I won't be around tomorrow as I got an appointment to have Rim Guard (beat juice) added to my rears. The closest place is about 80 miles away (Ashland just outside Richmond), so we are going to make it a family outing and drop the tractor off at the facility in Ashland and then go to the Richmond Zoo with the girls. It takes about 4 hours to load that stuff in the size tires I got. I hope that will really help with my stability issues on slopes! I have had some very close calls where I had to lower the FEL very quickly to keep from getting into real trouble!

I'm all loaded up and ready to head out at first light!

 

[FairfaxStu]

Peter:

How much of that bow is real and how much can you attribute to your camera? We have already been through the fisheye distortion posts. To be honest, I would not have noticed unless you pointed it out. That would cost the builder and you huge amounts of time to correct.
-Stu

 

[pclausen]

I didn't bring a string or laser level with me today, but I'll do that on Wednesday to see how bad it really is, if at all. Might be all fisheye distortion, but if so, how come the other lines are tracking?

 

[FairfaxStu]

I am sure Ron will correct me if I am wrong, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fstop setting that your camera uses. The smaller your aperature is will result in better depth of field and less fisheye. That basically means, if you put a whole lot of light on the subject, the better and more accurate your pictures will be. Your DSLR will automatically select the proper balance of fstop and shutter speed to get the light levels right. If you shoot in low light, it will open the aperature more so that the shutter speed will be reasonable so as to eleminate blur of somebody shooting the shot without a tripod. If you want to shoot in low light conditions, I recommend the use of a tripod and manual settings for best results.
-Stu

 

[J F]

Peter:

How much of that bow is real and how much can you attribute to your camera? We have already been through the fisheye distortion posts.
-Stu

That's what I've been wondering as well. Cameras can do some goofy stuff (technical term) to reality.

 

[MossflowerWoods]

...Unfortunately I won't be around tomorrow as I got an appointment to have Rim Guard (beat juice) added to my rears. The closest place is about 80 miles away (Ashland just outside Richmond), so we are going to make it a family outing and drop the tractor off at the facility in Ashland and then go to the Richmond Zoo with the girls. It takes about 4 hours to load that stuff in the size tires I got. I hope that will really help with my stability issues on slopes! I have had some very close calls where I had to lower the FEL very quickly to keep from getting into real trouble!

I'm all loaded up and ready to head out at first light!

Pete,

My dealer (J.A. LaVoie) is in Ashland. He uses RV antifreeze... Which place in Ashland are you headed to if I might ask?

David

 

[pacerron]

I am sure Ron will correct me if I am wrong, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fstop setting that your camera uses. The smaller your aperature is will result in better depth of field and less fisheye. That basically means, if you put a whole lot of light on the subject, the better and more accurate your pictures will be. Your DSLR will automatically select the proper balance of fstop and shutter speed to get the light levels right. If you shoot in low light, it will open the aperature more so that the shutter speed will be reasonable so as to eleminate blur of somebody shooting the shot without a tripod. If you want to shoot in low light conditions, I recommend the use of a tripod and manual settings for best results.
-Stu

The f stop controls the amount of light through the lens in one respect. The bigger the number the smaller the hole. The smaller the hole the longer the range of in focus subject matter.
The other control for the amount of light is the shutter speed. The longer the shutter (not rely a shutter on digital ) is open the more light. So you can get the same ratio
( exposure) by a combination of settings. The light meter does not see color just a range of tones from black to white. It averages all these tones to a medium grey and sets the exposure from that so it can be easily fooled if there is an excess of light or dark area in the shot. On automatic, it has no idea of whether you are trying to have things in focus for a long distance, depth of field, or a short distance. So the depth of focus is effected by the f stop as well as how far you are from the subject you, or the camera thinks you want to be focused on. Todays cameras have various ways to focus, overall, spot, center weighted, etc. but you have to tell it what you want. Cameras are dumb, they can't read your mind, so they just take average pictures unless they are given a little "command and control"
Most folks can hold a camera steady down to 1/60th of a second or less if they stand still, hold the camera properly and don't breath hard, so unless the subject is moving across the field of view, side to side, it is much better to use the "AV" setting. That lets you control the hole size and depth of field and the meter will choose the shutter speed to give an average exposure.
"AV" is the most used setting in photography because it puts you in control to give the focus depth you want.
The shutter speed is always shown in the viewfinder so if it is too slow you just open up the f stop a little. If you measured the amount of light for each f stop it will double each time you go down from f22 to f16 to f11 to f8 etc.
Most cameras and lenses, especially Zoom lenses have a "sweet spot" meaning they take the best pictures at a certain zoom range and a certain f stop. The rest are not as good going either way.
Most wide angle and zoom lenses set to wide angle do have distortion, usually barrel distortion. Very wide angle lenses have a distortion known as fisheye.
Some of the newer high end ultra small cameras that have fantastic features have terrible lens distortion, so much so that unless you use the software that comes with them
the pictures are terrible. Even Photoshop has not been updated to fix the distortion very well.
So that's the short answer to your question
I could go on for months as photography has been one of my main hobbies since I was a kid and developed and printed pictures in the basement.

Peters camera does have some barrel distortion at wide angle settings but like he said in the picture of the ceiling only one side is bowed and it is not in the center of view.
It could be light reflection giving the look of a bowed ceiling but the only way to know is with measurements, strings, levels, lasers, etc. The bottom of the sloped trusses wouldn't have to be off much to change the height.
If they missed lining up the ridge tips on the trusses a little you wouldn't see it because of the ridge vent. The roof might have a hump on one side and a depression on the other, but that would be very hard to see without stretching a very tight string across the roof at various levels front and back.
Once the room is furnished and dolled up folks aren't going to be staring at the ceiling anyway, so it is a moot point, except for a possible discount in house value.

I have lost track on the 16" of cellulose insulation above the ceiling. Has it been blown in yet?
Ron

 

[pclausen]

My dealer (J.A. LaVoie) is in Ashland. He uses RV antifreeze... Which place in Ashland are you headed to if I might ask?

The James River John Deere dealership on leadbetter road. I was going to go to Wolfe Tractor in Covington (about the same distance, but a more pleasant drive away from any metropolitan area), but alas, his tank is too low to fill a pair of 420/85R34 tires. My understanding is that beat juice weigh more per gallon than antifreeze, but both are much gentler on rims than calcium chloride.

 

[pclausen]

I have lost track on the 16" of cellulose insulation above the ceiling. Has it been blown in yet?

They are invoicing us for it on the last draft (not yet paid), so I'll climb up there and have a look. I did not think it had been done yet. There are quite a few surprises (a net of + $17k!) on the last draw schedule that I need to get clarification on from the builder, and then discuss with mom.