Winter is still in full force here but it's still not stopping our build progress both inside and out. With HVAC rough inspection passed, the plumbing is currently being pressure tested and the rough electrical is nearing completion in the basement. Gas pipe is being installed to the cook top in the kitchen, gas fireplaces, and clothes dryer in the laundry room. On the outside, the carpenter is working on the arch fascias on the porch beams and the stone masons have tented in the side of the house and to keep working on the cobblestone siding.
The carpenter boxed in porch beams in the round section under the turret. Figuring this out was always a pain in the butt, but I think that given the non-equal spacing of the posts, Mike figured out a good way to normalize the distances in the header. They buffed out the beam on shallow areas to normalize the distance to the porch roof fascia and covered it with cedar plywood, which will be painted to match all the trim.
The electrician finished the rough install for the garage exterior lighting and most of the garage electrical receptacles. They still need to run the large gauge wire for the 100A circuit that will supply power to the dedicated car charger and NEMA 14-50 socket next to it. The exterior garage light boxes were installed in the bracket mount about 11" down from the bracket to allow for the shepherds hook style carriage light that will be flanking the garage doors.
The masons tented under the entire side porch to create a warm space for installing the cobblestone siding. They have two large bullet heaters inside to keep the space warm enough to work in and prevent the mortar from freezing during the drying/curing process. There's a little gap to get inside near the rear basement walkout, but we went down the ladder into the basement to gain access to the workspace. The top of the deck is covered in plywood so the heat retention is pretty good in there.
Although the tenting stops at the porch deck on the side of the house, on the great room, they tented all the way up to the stone ledge so this will be the first part of the house to have the full exterior cladding applied. I can't wait to see this completed because I think it's the most striking feature of the house; a three story facing with tons of windows. The tenting material is some kind of fiber reinforced polyethylene sheet and seems more durable than a standard tarp. It's transparent enough to let daylight in so they don't need supplemental lighting in there.
Under the tent, progress is moving quickly. This is the back of the house at the rear basement walkout. The electricians have installed and wired sconce locations on each of the sliding doors as well as exterior electrical receptacles. It's good they got them installed because the masons have to work around these penetrations. They'll work this wall all the way up to where the stone ledge will be installed, and down below grade to the footing. The gap below the window is for a stone ledge sill that will be installed when the rest of the stone ledge is installed.
Here's the inside corner between the side of the workout room under the great room and the rest of the basement. They had just started this area last weekend, so this, in addition to other parts, is the progress of a week. I confirmed that the box base of the post will be scored to the exterior house wall and later be clad in cobble stone. It looks like they're working in different areas of the wall so there's either multiple people working on putting up the stone, or they're picking and choosing which pieces of stone to put where. There are some smaller pieces of chipped stone to fill smaller gaps. At first, they look jagged and out of place, but once the mortar joints are filled, they blend right into the rest of the stone field.
Here's the side walk out, showing how low below grade they install the stone; all the way down to the footing. This stone will be covered up by landscaping, or in this case, a stone patio, but it's nice to know they take it all the way down. I don't know if there's a technical reason for it, or if it's just aesthetic, but it's a nice touch either way. It looks like stone was placed under the sliding door, and was removed for some reason. I don't think there will be a stone sill here too.
There's a large section of the side wall that is completely finished, including mortar joints and joint finishing. The mortar joints really flatten out the wall and helps to further secure the stones to the wall. The surface of the mortar has a sanded finish, so I think they use a stiff bristle brush to smooth out the joints. It looks fantastic when finished.
Here's the corner of the house where Great Oaks pulled the stones away from to correct the slight cant in the wall, and so the masons could get the corner stones on the house. There's a little bit of wire mesh at the grade, but no parging yet, so I'm not sure how far over they'll take the stone. The landscaping stone will sit flush against this corner, and I'm guessing will need to be reshaped to back in. Mike talked about trying to get some waterproofing material on this wall, but that would require digging out the location by hand. I would appreciate the installation, but considering the labor involved, I could understand skipping it. You can see the condition of the double thick polyethylene sheeting the previous crew installed, insisting it was sufficient. Doesn't look like it held up even after only two years.
Here's another straight on shot of the finished wall section. Much of the dust has been cleared away from the stone so we can get a better representation of what the finished wall will look like. It won't be sealed and I don't know sealing it is even an option so the color will never be wet vibrant. I looks like it's mostly tan, blue, and gray with some slight reds mixed in. I think it will be a good match to the rest of the house.
Here's a close look at the difference between the mortared stones and un-mortared. It looks like there's either some squeeze out of the back buttered mortar or they come through and add some mortar to lock the stone one before the joints are filled. There's also a color and textural difference between the joint mortar and the stone adhesion mortar. I'm guessing there's a bigger sand percentage in the joint mortar since the adhesion mortar is much smoother.
Some tools of the trade. These are the big pastry bags they use to squeeze the finishing mortar into the stone joints. I didn't see any finishing brushes around, but there has to be some kind of tool to smooth out the joints after the mortar is squeezed in. Since our water hasn't been turned on yet, the masons have been bringing their own water but we should be getting water service turned on this week.
Since the wrong information was provided to the electricians before Mike came on the job, the electrical meter boxes were spaced for a brick installation instead of a stone. Here's the elegant solution Mike came up with to provide a good mounting point for the meter boxes while preserving the spacing. They'll be painted, but I haven't decided if we'll paint them white to match the trim of the house, or gray to match the mortar and electrical boxes. They're constructed of rough-sawn cedar so they'll take paint well and should last forever considering they're very sheltered from the elements. They provide a nice line for the stones to be installed against. Also, all the exterior construction electrical receptacles have been removed and moved inside. No more running extension cords up through the window!
Here's where the power enters the house. The copper line is a grounding wire that's hooked up to the house circuits through the breaker box. This is often tied into the main water pipe coming into the house since that goes underground, but since ours is a nonconducting pipe, that's not possible. This just grounds into the ground with a large conduction spike. This hole will probably be filled with a flexible insulating material.
Here's a closer look at the gap left for the stone sill. The red line denotes the border between the stone and sill. I'm not sure how they'll mortar the gaps without the sill in place, so maybe it will be installed sooner rather than later. This was a detail that I didn't think about, but obviously someone was. The stone might have been able to go right up to the bottom of the window, but the sill is a nice finishing touch. It will also help prevent water infiltration behind the stone when it's caulked to the window.
Here's where the penetration for the make up air will be. Because our kitchen exhaust fan ejects so much air, and the house is so tight, by code, we need to have a same diameter pipe to allow in fresh air to prevent combustion back draft from other appliances. The duct will be 10" in diameter and be run through the kitchen floor under the base cabinet where the cooktop resides. There will be an electronic damper installed inline that will open when the fan is set above a certain CFM. We're still working out the details of electric heat to temper the air, and a filter box to filter out fine particles.
All the angle iron has been installed on the back porch to accept the cinder block in preparation for the granite cobble installation. This is a huge cost addition that could have been prevented by proper planning or better communication. Of course, Mike picked up the issue and dealt with it best he could but I wish he had been around when this was built years ago so we would't have this trouble. In the end, the fix will be invisible and the final product will be much better off because of it.
The carpenter is working hard to install all the arched porch beam fascias and has completed much of the side of the house. Unfortunately, the spacing of the posts isn't the same all around the porch, so there are a few different lengths he needs to make, thus the creation of this jig in the basement. These arches will also be installed on the outside of the beam. It's a little detail that adds a lot of character to the house.
Inside, the plumbers have prepped the supply and drain systems for rough inspection. A shower pan was installed in the shower locations so the drains could be leak tested. Water will fill the pan to test the integrity of the fittings and ensure no leaks through the floor. I don't know if the tubs will need to be tested as well, but the master shower will needed to be tested when more of it is installed. It's such a large space that the inspector is allowing us to proceed before a waterproof test, and he'll revisit it when there's more installed.
In the basement, the water supply system has been sealed at all the junction drops and pressurized to test the integrity. The fittings here are temporary and only meant to test the system on the first and second floor. The system is pressurized higher than operating pressure and the gauge is monitored. If there's any pressure loss, then there's a leak in the system somewhere that needs to be fixed.
The Sound Vision is completing their work in the basement and have also installed these two speakers in the kitchen so we can gauge the alignment with all the other light fixtures in the room. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't something that looks like this. The entire unit fits up in the ceiling cavity and is completely contained and sealed. There are two units in the kitchen that will provide sound to it and the eating area near by.
I think the units are
James Loudspeaker 63SA-7HO with an opening of 3". They each have a 3/4 tweeter, 2" mid range speaker, and a 6.5" sub woofer with a recommended amplifier range of 25W-125W. All of Jonathon's hardware selections have been perfect so I have full confidence these will provide more than what we need for sound.
The boxes have been installed for power and data to the TV in the great room. There will be a lowering TV mount so we can swivel the TV down to a more comfortable watching height when we want to, but I'm not sure what the wall behind the TV will look like. We're applying a stone to the fireplace so I'm not sure if it will just be a drywalled area behind the TV or if the mount will be furred out to clear the stone. I think the latter would be a more elegant solution but it might be one of those things that we still need to work out when the time comes.
The Sound Vision also installed the lighting control panels in the basement and laundry room. Here's the basement installation. It's much bigger than I thought it would be but it has to house one controller for each circuit we want controlled. I think the cut out will allow us to see the status of the controller without opening the cabinet. I can see my self hanging out down here just to watch the blinking lights. It will be amazing to see what this room looks like when the water manifolds and geothermal equipment is installed. I wouldn't mind drywalling this room one day and the boxes allow enough space for a flush installation.
Here's the laundry room lighting control panel. It's the same size as the one in the basement but this one will be situated behind hanging drying racks. The front panel screws to the box so there's no concern about an access door impinging upon any drying rods we have installed here. The box will be flush mounted to the drywall and mostly sit in the 2x4 wall cavity. It's a good thing we have the 2x6 wall in build out in the master bathroom otherwise we would have water pipe routing issues here.
The electricians have installed all three electrical panels in the basement. From left to right they're used for EV car charging, Geothermal, and house. There are three breakers currently installed in the house panel, which supply a few receptacles around the house. You can see the socket adjacent to the panel is hot and in use for the installers in the basement. You can also see the common ground wire linking all the panels together.
Here's a close up of the first powered socket in the house! I'll have to double check to see if there's one near the sump pump area since that should be on its own circuit. Speaking of which, we also need to figure out where the pump will eject and make the appropriate wall penetrations for that.
Here's where one of the mechanical chases will be installed when we complete the basement. Unfortunately, it's flanked wide by the HVAC trunks, but it does allow ample space for the AV/data lines on the left, gas pipe down the middle, and electrical on the right. It's a clean enough installation and I hope that level of organization will continue when they go into the breaker boxes. Most of the time the installers just bundle the cables together in a thick mass and that's acceptable. It does offer an insight into the level of craftsman ship and personal pride so we'll see what happens here. Not to nit pick too much, but notice how the A/V/Data lines installed by The Sound Design are placed up in the nailers while the electrical is all below. Granted, there's much more work with installing all the electrical lines up there, but it does make a difference.
Here's a closer look at the electrical runs. There's no code citing how many NM lines can be contained by one staple, but there are usually manufacture suggestions on the staples themselves, which is usually two or less. It looks like the installers are adhering to manufactures suggestions and installing a maximum of two per staple so I'm happy.
Here's a closer look at the data side. Each bundle goes through a nailer and the corresponding foam is cut away. Nice installation. The orange line is actually an electrical supply for the elevator equipment. White is 14 AWG, yellow is 12 AWG, and orange is 10 AWG. There also still needs to be a black 5 or 6 AWG for the charger in the garage that has yet to be installed.
The orange wire runs a clean path around the elevator shaft to where we plan on putting the equipment. The yellow line is a data line for the required hard phone line connected to the elevator. I think the white 14 AWG line is there for electrical code. We're still undecided on if we're going to install the elevator before c.o.p. but we're heavily leaning towards it.
Porter and Heckman have also been pretty busy down here, connecting HVAC duct lines to floor penetrations. Here's how the workout room will be heated and you can also see the ducts going to the great room. All the supply ducts have the expansion damper installed so when all the ducts are installed, all those lines will have to be connected to a controller somewhere. That's how the basement and first floor zones are being controlled. I haven't seen any bladder dampers installed in the second floor ducts yet, so it's still a little mystery how those will be zoned off. Lights have also been installed in this room. It wasn't in the original plan, but we'll probably need to cover all the foam with drywall for fire hazard code, so we're installing as much as we can right now.
Electrical receptacles have been installed and wired in the future theater, to code. This is a long term project with no start date yet since we want to get all the landscaping installed first. We'll probably bring The Sound Design back in to perform the equipment install so they've submitted a budget proposal for wiring the basement for A/V/D distribution. I'm not sure who will perform the actual theater installation.
The water meter has been installed and terminated but as I said before, the water hasn't been turned on at the street. Mike says that should happen this week and we'll have a temporary spigot somewhere so the masons and drywallers have a water source to use. I'm not sure when it will be connected to the rest of the house since we still have to install actual valve bodies and finishing trim kits. Water should have been one of the first things installed in the house, but it was another one of those things that flew under the radar with the previous builder and his crew.
This is the lowest the water meter will ever read. It's funny that even though the water isn't on, the meter has turned a little bit. Probably for some kind of factory test or something. These meters usually have some kind of exterior data port connected to them so that's another wall penetration needed somewhere.
Throughout the house, nailing plates have been installed on studs to protect the water lines from accidental puncture. These are 10 gauge steel plates that will sit behind the drywall so if someone is looking for a stud to nail or screw into, they won't easily be able to penetrate the water line. I've seen thinner plates used, so it's nice to have such a thick gauge plate protecting my lines. These are probably needed to pass rough inspection.
While we were visiting the house, the gas pipe installer was hard at work in the basement and the excavator showed up to remove the fill sand in the under deck storage location. Mike wants this area cleared so we can cut open the ICF and access the area under the back deck to run the gas pipe to the barbecue area. We'll also need to get a door installed in the newly cut doorway. We haven't seen the inside of this in over a year, so it will be fun to see what was left in there. At least there's nice pea gravel on the inside.
Here's the gas penetration in the kitchen for the cook top. They still need to run to the two gas fireplaces and figure out how to run up to the laundry room for the clothes dryer. Of course there's an issue with the laundry room location. The wall between the master closet and laundry room happens to sit right on a concrete beam so we can penetrate right up through the floor. The plumbing installers came up in the side wall and ran through the wall to get to the washer location. I think that area is too full to run the gas, but Mike is working it out so I'm not worried.
So that's it for this week. We have a meeting with Margaret this week to revisit tile selection and try to go over our lighting selections. We still need to figure out much of the pluming trims in all the secondary bathrooms and haven't even touched door hardware yet. Besides paint color selection, those are the last big decision to make. Hopefully we'll get the electrical inspection passed and we can start drywalling!
No comments:
Post a Comment