At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Yesterday I did some more grading in order to be ready for the occupancy permit inspection. The front porch cannot be higher than 30" above grade without railing. Ours was 31" so I added more dirt. Now it is 29" above grade. I removed more dirt in the back yard so that it slopes away from the house. If you remember, the last time I worked in this area I almost lost the tractor down the gulley. I was much more careful this time dumping the dirt on the down slope. In fact, I was actually nervous for the first few loads I dumped.

 

[Obed]

My wife tried to slide a lever that controls the ductwork dampers for our fireplace but the lever would not move completely over. The fireplace ships with a piece of aluminum is supposed to be removed during installation if the fireplace uses the options that we are using. The installed had not removed the aluminum piece so we had to take the front plate off the fireplace in order to access the aluminum piece. The stone around the fireplace is so tight, we almost didn't get the front plate off. However, after some cajoling, we finally got the front plate off and were able to remove the aluminum piece. We would have been in a real pickle if we weren't able to get the front plate off.

While the front plate was off, my wife applied some mortar between the hearth stone and the fireplace and wall in order to fill in the gap. We wanted to prevent hot embers that escape the fireplace from finding their way down the gap and burning down our house.

My wife asked me the question, "Who does this kind of stuff?" She was referring to the normal construction process when you have a general contractor. Filling in this gap was a tedious detail type of procedure. My wife concluded that this part might get skipped in some house builds.

 

[Obed]

Lots of changes in codes these days . . .Graywater codes allow most all but toilets and kitchen sink to go to a branched graywater drainage system that waters the yard. Arizona has the most liberal graywater code but others are not far behind. Google branched graywater system to see lots of info.

Our house in Arizona (when we get it built) will have a redundant system that allows graywater to go to the gardens or the septic with the turn of a (few) valve.

James,
If I had it to do over, I might run our kitchen sink and dishwasher drains down the greywater drain instead of to the septic. That would prevent the majority of household grease from getting into the septic system and clogging the drain field lines. I think we have access to a greywater vent stack in the basement so I might be able to retrofit them later if so desired.
Obed

 

[WBWI]

Obed, you're going to enjoy your Quadra-fire once you get it started. We put the same unit in our house and it really heats the main living space. We have an open floorplan so those areas are toasty. The master bedroom and bath do get cold because the furnace does not run as often.

 

[bdeboer]

I'm right there with you on this one. It amazes me the things my wife has destroyed. I bought her a top end vaccume one year and she managed to destroyed it in about 9 months.:confused2: After that I got frustrated and bought her a shop vac. It's still alive 4 years later.:laughing: She gets frustrated at the kids for not picking up their toys and will just vaccume them up instead of taking the time to pick them up. That's how she usually destroys a vaccume. The shop vac is built for that type of vaccuming.:laughing:

I have also witnessed motivational vacuuming at my house.

 

[Obed]

Snowed In
The snow arrived. The paved road up the steep hill on which we live was impassable for vehicles without 4WD. We cannot see the street from our house. My wife drove our tractor down the street to check the condition of the street. The tractor in 4WD did fine.

Today we were scheduled to have the H&A, electrical, and tile workers here to do work. The electricians did not show. The H&A guy returned my wife's call. He needs to bring his work trailer with him; we told him not to try the hill while pulling his trailer so he didn't come. The tile guy did not make it either. So not much progress happened today.

The hardwood floor sub was supposed to start sanding the floors tomorrow but he called and had to reschedule until Thursday. It was really nice having a sub call to discuss scheduling instead of just not showing up. As a rule, the majority of the subs just don't show and don't let you know.

 

[Obed]

My wife has been trying to decide on mirrors for the master bath. What mirrors she chooses determines the height of the vanity lights and the medicine cabinet shown between the mirrors. She bought several mirrors and propped them up along with propping up the medicine cabinet to see what she likes. She finally picked a mirror today. Yay! She's going with the mirror on the left shown in the picture.

The crown moulding on the top of the medicine cabinet is smaller than the original crown moulding. My wife had the cabinet maker put smaller moulding on the cabinet.

 

[Obed]

I'm anticipating a battle with the H&A guy. We have two auxilliary H&A return ducts in the ceiling, one in the master bedroom and one in the hallway. The primary return is at the other end of the hallway in the wall down near the floor. The H&A guy did not think about how to a return filter grill for the returns in the ceiling. His worker just terminated a duct in the ceiling. The framing around the ducts in the ceiling do not accommodate a return filter grill.

When we asked him about putting filters in the ceiling, he said it can't be done now. So he installed some sort of inline filter at the end of the auxilliary return where it meets the primary return. He does not intend on providing us a return filter grill where the far end of the returns terminate through the ceiling.

The picture shows a temporary filter my wife cut to size and stuffed in the duct in the ceiling to prevent construction dust from entering our HVAC ducts. I don't think I'm going to accept not being able to put a filter in the ceiling. You can see the amount of dust that collected in just a few weeks, albeit during construction. I don't want years of dust collecting in the ductwork of the auxilliary return. I'm expecting the H&A guy to refuse to change the ceiling grills. Keep in mind that the framing in the area above the ceiling can be accessed from the attic by unscrewing one or two pieces of OSB.

Remember, this is the same guy who has been very inflexible and hard to work with. For example, he ran the bathroom shower vent ducts so that condensate drained toward the inside of the house instead of the outside of the house even though I asked him before he started to do otherwise. He didn't forget; he was just obstinate. We had to change the ductwork ourselves after he left. That's just one of many examples of his inflexibility. He is also someone who has been bad about no-showing and not returning calls.

We'll see how the ceiling return filter grill issue turns out. I plan to have him finish all his other work before I re-adress the grills with him.

 

[Obed]

Furnace and Water Heater Exhaust Vent Question

The PVC pipes sticking through the brick wall are the exhaust vents running from the gas furnace and gas water heater. It sounds like the H&A guy plans on cutting off the pipes and putting 45 or 90 degree PVC elbows turned downward at the ends of the pipes. While that seems like it will work, I envision the result to look hideously ugly. Is there a solution that is more visually attractive?

I may just have the H&A guy leave the PVC pipes the same length they are and place the elbows on the end without glueing them until I can figure out another option.

Thanks,
Obed

 

[Obed]

Do you have heat strips in the air handler?
We have a 20KW heat strip.. and I think our house is about the same size as yours.

...

Let us know how you make out!

J

J,
I'm not sure but I we might not have heat strips for the heat pump. We have a combination gas furnace/heat pump. The gas furnace kicks in when the heat pump can't handle the load so there doesn't seem to be a need for the heat strips once we get the gas hooked up to the furnace.

I got down to 17 degrees last night. The house thermostat was set a 58 degrees and we think the heat pump kept up but are not sure because we didn't check the house temperature until later in the day. I put a pan of water in a cold spot in the basement last night to see if would freeze. This morning the water was not frozen. Tonight it is forest to get down to 13 degrees F. We'll have to see if the water pan in the basement will freeze. I'm just wanting to know if we will have any pipe freezing issues in the basement. So far so good. My biggest concern regarding freezing are the pipes running down the framed basement walls that feed the two hose bibs. I expect that the piping that runs under the main floor through the trusses will stay above freezing.

Obed