At Home In The Woods

   / At Home In The Woods #981  
I resolved that issue by building a "man garage" and a "woman garage". Cars are not parked in the man garage.

If I remember correctly, the main floor garage is hers for bringing in groceries. His should be down stairs.
 
   / At Home In The Woods #982  
Obed, you're welcome.
BTW, I noticed your bucket on the Deere is not too big, (width wise) and only has two teeth. If you plan on doing more trench digs I might look into a wider bucket and more teeth. An 18," if it would fit, would do 1/2 again what you have for capacity, if yours is a 12" currently. And hiring a pro to do the elect/gas/water lines trenching is well worth the expense. You won't believe how fast a pro who does ditches can get them done!:thumbsup:
That way you can focus on getting all the things your former cm screwed up fixed to your satisfaction. Once and done is my goal on any big expensive project. If the hired workers can't meet that need then its adios for them. Building is too expensive doing it once- doing things twice is an unfortunate consequence of lack of the proper skills or the correct attitude or a little of both on the worker's part. Don't tolerate it.
Keep up the good progress.

Also, It appears your house wrap is not taped at the seams. You should buy whatever the product's tape is and do ALL seams- horizontal and vertical throughout the entire exterior. Do not use duct tape- you need to use what the manufacturer sells or just use the Tyvek tape sold at most home center's. It's not cheap, but neither is letting water or cold air through the seams, which will cause problems.
 
   / At Home In The Woods #983  
"I dug a trench between the transformer and where the electrical pedestal will go in preparation for the electrician's conduit".

The trench needs to go to the opposite end of the transformer, you went to the rear. The door opens on the front where the secondary connections and the primary right angles are. You can probably extend your trench up side of the trans where the tempo is and come in under the side with a sweep. Be careful digging, that primary is very unforgiving.
 
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#984  
The roof is on!

attachment.php

The roof on the back side of the house still needs some step flashing around the chimney and sidewalls of the back dormer.

A section on the back of the house only has felt on it because the porch and deck on the back side of the garage and house has not yet been built. They will be built after the brick has been laid.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3560.JPG
    IMG_3560.JPG
    188.5 KB · Views: 885
  • IMG_3545.JPG
    IMG_3545.JPG
    177.2 KB · Views: 143
  • IMG_3565.JPG
    IMG_3565.JPG
    115.6 KB · Views: 162
  • IMG_3566.JPG
    IMG_3566.JPG
    134.1 KB · Views: 160
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#986  
Any word yet on what to do to fix the truss problem?
Cyril,
The wife worked out a solution with the truss designer. A total of 3 floor trusses will be moved in order to accommodate the fireplaces and chimney flue. Two floor trusses below the attic floor and one truss below the main floor will be moved. The 2 attic trusses have cheap OSB subflooring screwed to them (but not glued) that can be unscrewed, making the trusses not very hard to move. The truss below the main floor will be tougher to move because it is under 3/4" Advantech tongue and groove subflooring that is glued and screwed to the trusses.

In addition, we will have to shrink the master bath by 3". If we didn't shrink the master bath, we would have to move two additional main floor trusses (for a total of 3 main floor trusses instead of one). We chose to shrink the master bath in order to minimize the damage done by moving two extra trusses that are glued to the subflooring.

Obed
 
   / At Home In The Woods #987  
Sounds like it didn't come out too bad. Could have been a lot worse. Is the new contractor still working out well? It's good to see that you have most of the roof on and protecting the house. At least that will keep the snow outside where it belongs.:thumbsup: No more having to shovel snow out of the living room. LOL

What came about with bringing out the inspector and you living in the trailer? Hopefully, no cans of worms opened? You guys have been through enough for several families already. Also, how are the wife and baby doing? Give them our warmest regards.
 
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#988  
Windows installations began today.

attachment.php

This is the living room window on the back side of the house. It is made of four 3' wide windows that the factory joined together. I took Eddie's suggestion and made sure we have the good window tape. The wife and I verified the windows are square by measuring diagonally across the window from corner to corner to make sure both measurements are equal (within 1/8"). I saw the installers reading the Anderson Window installation guide as they were installing the windows. That made me happy.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3594.JPG
    IMG_3594.JPG
    103.4 KB · Views: 786
  • IMG_3598.JPG
    IMG_3598.JPG
    128.6 KB · Views: 199
Last edited:
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#989  
Dilemma

attachment.php


From the street to this point is about 900 ft. The natural gas line and phone line have been run in the same trench. The problem is the phone line (black) shown in the front of the picture comes out of the ground at a different place than the natural gas line (yellow). Ignore the grey conduit; it is empty and will not be used. I don't know why our road contractor brought the phone line out of the ground at a different place than the gas line. The gas company will dig the trench between the yellow gas line in the picture and the house in order to connect the gas to the house. But I don't want the phone line (which is also our internet line) to get cut.

So I started digging along the phone line by hand to find where it meets the gas line. But this is taking forever because I'm afraid of cutting the phone line and I can only remove a handful of dirt at a time.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to find where the phone line runs between where the gas line comes out of the ground and where the phone exits the ground? This distance is approximately 10 feet.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3597.JPG
    IMG_3597.JPG
    188.7 KB · Views: 827
Last edited:
   / At Home In The Woods #990  
Does anyone have a suggestion on how to find where the phone line runs between where the gas line comes out of the ground and where the phone exits the ground? This distance is approximately 10 feet.

This is a job for what is called a "line locator".

It is two devices. One puts an RF signal on any of the wires in the phone cable, even an unused one, and the other is a receiver which allows the operator to trace the cable.

Both the phone company and the electric company have them and skilled operators. Try calling the phone company and see if they will trace the underground cable for you.
 
 
Top