Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[pacerron]

Peter,
Aren't the majority of trees remaining around your mom's house long needled pine?
You spoke at length back aways about the contractor providing some type of gutter guard to try and mimic
the back of a T top on a drip edge by shoving it back under the bottom shingles.

It would seem to me that you will primarily have two things trying to get in your gutters, grit off your roofing shingles and pine needles.
You want the grit to collect in the gutters rather than running over the front of them or behind them.
If you use an expanded metal type of gutter guard the pine needles will likely settle and pack on top of it causing the water to overflow the gutters
and dig a trench along the house.
If you use the type of gutter guard that is primarily closed metal on top with a profile bend that has holes in it near the front of the gutter the pine needles will probably be swept off to collect
on the ground under the spouting.
With no gutter guard and only a screen or basket strainer over the downspout holes you run the risk of snow and ice build up back under the shingles as well as accumulation of roof grit and
pine needles in the gutters that will clog any screen at the downspout holes.
There is no real great solution for your mom's house or anybody else's, just alternatives that might slow the requirement for getting on a ladder and cleaning out the gutters by hand once in a while.

As far as the entry to your underground pipe they have already screwed it up so either some lengthening of it, again, or the downspout pipe with an adapter from rectangular to round will have to be fitted.
You might want to consider putting an easily removable screen trap down in the area right above the cutoff ground pipe. Once debris gets down into the elbow and beyond of your underground pipe it is a bear to unclog, particularly pine needles that will wrap up like a bird nest.
Our metal barn roofs are too high for old folks like us to be climbing around on anymore. I used to lift my wife up there in the loader but she doesn't feel secure anymore. We have broad leaf trees hardwood trees all around so I tried making an extended bent pipe to fit on a hose to reach the gutters from the ground. That works but of course accumulates a lot of the leaves at the downspout hole. So I rigged the downspout so it is easy to remove from a ladder on the ground. In addition I made a cone to put in the top of the ground pipe to hold an expanded metal screen which I can check and remove easily if it is clogged. We are talking gutter runs of 60 feet in one case and 84 feet in the other and they are more like 6" gutters 14 feet off the ground. So far, this alternative has worked very well for us but it is still not ideal, if you want a system that requires no human intervention from time to time.
Ron

 

[pacerron]

Peter,
Since you brought up the grey color in the grand entry being wrong..... how about the wall on the left?
IMO since this leads to the great room they should all be the same color.
Ron

 

[pclausen]

Ron,

I spoke to mom about the grand entry color, and it should actually be gray on both sides, extending on both sides to just past the kitchen doorway, where it then changes to green. On the left side, once you get around the corner, the color will be orange.

The trim and interior doors showed up today. While the doors have a smooth surface as requested, they are all cheap hollow core, so they are all going back. Actually, they are going to go ahead and hang them tomorrow, and then just replace the door panes themselves with solid code ones. Builder wasn't sure where to source them. They probably have to get just slaps and then fit the hardware to them and stain them.

We're dropping all the remaining pines on the property, at least anything within 500 feet of the house, so about 300 more trees or so. So pine needles should not be a problem with the gutters. They already installed gutter guards. I'll see if I can get a pick of those. Looks like all the ladders have left the site, so I'll have to bring one over, or zoom in from a high spot.

They got the main sewage line daylighted

And the basement floor drain

 

[pacerron]

Ok,
I already had it green with fireplace so here are both.
Time to sit on the porch.
Ron

 

[mjncad]

This is what I recommended to Obed to help clean-out any debris that might get caught in the drains. I would turn the wye to be parallel with the house though.

I did something very similar to what you did; but I added a dirt boot that I can shove a small bore shop-vac hose in the cleanout to suck out debris.

 

[pclausen]

Thanks Ron. That rendering with the grey walls is great. I'll print out in color and hand to the painter.

mjncad, that looks really good! Where did you get those clamps/straps you used to tie the drains to the foundation?

 

[pacerron]

The rule to keep in mind in any waste or gravity flow piping is to keep the curves/bends to a minimum and as gentle as possible.
There are elbows known as "Lazy Els" that make a 90 degree turn but over a larger radius with less tendency to clog and easier to clear if they ever do.
Using 2- 45 degree or half els with a straight piece in between accomplishes the same thing, just like the way a downspout leaves the gutter. Had a 90 been used up there and another back at the house you would create certain clogging.

If you don't glue the rectangular to round transition piece to the top of your soil pipe it is very easy to unscrew the downspout screws from the hangers and remove the downspout for a more direct access to the elbow in the ground below it without any visible Y stub sticking out from, or against the wall at ground level. The 3 tight elbows under the Y fitting shown in the picture of, I think Obed's house, is just designing in a big clog area. All those sharp corners could have been eliminated by using two 45 degree joints with a piece of straight between them, making the Y clean out superfluous and the natural flow a lot better. When the final grade fill is done a lot less pipe is exposed than having a Y sticking up above the soil. On a one story house all the downspout holding screws are usually reachable from a step ladder. If the ones at the gutter hole stub are hard to reach you can just leave them out as the diagonal run of the downspout will hold it in place.
Ron

 

[pacerron]

The clamp straps mjncad show in his pictures are for electrical conduit.
They can be adapted for many purposes and have a variety of mounting accessories.
Ron

 

[pacerron]

Thanks Ron. That rendering with the grey walls is great. I'll print out in color and hand to the painter.

mjncad, that looks really good! Where did you get those clamps/straps you used to tie the drains to the foundation?

Peter,
Glad you got some use from the quasi-render.
Your mom may not be troubled by the changing of paint colors at no physical transition point, but....
You may want to consider designing some simple break point that gives a transition between colors on the same wall.

In the breakfast room you might want to have your custom cabinet maker supply you with a piece of trim stained and finished
the same color as your cabinets that would run floor to ceiling just to the left of the sliding door or that becomes part of the left side trim piece of the door but runs to the ceiling since the door appears to be right on the line between rooms. Your window, baseboard, and door trim in the kitchen, I would think, will be the same color stain as the cabinets. The strip at the sliding door or a dark post against the wall going from floor to ceiling gives a reason to transition the color of the rooms and perhaps the baseboards and other trim.
I don't know what you have in mind for the baseboard, door and window trim in the other parts of the house, but maybe light color stain since your sloped ceiling will be light and the room paint colors are dark.

The grey to green in the living room needs something similar, not big and bold, just a transition.
The orange wall, if it is the entire wall, adjacent to the guest bathroom can stand on it's own, if it is all the same orange, as an accent wall.
Just my:2cents:
Ron

 

[tractchores]

If you don't glue the rectangular to round transition piece to the top of your soil pipe it is very easy to unscrew the downspout screws from the hangers and remove the downspout for a more direct access to the elbow in the ground...
Ron

I do this on mine. The adapters are not glued to the underground pipe, there's no pressure so they don't leak or come undone. When it's time to clean them I just pop the adapter off and can easily stick in a hose or snake. It is a cleaner look than the 'Y'. As a preventive measure I stick a hose down each one every spring, I've got gutter guards though and barely ever get anything inside the gutter or pipes.