Sewer and water trenched in

      There wasn't much progress on the plumbing and HVAC front this week, but the long Thanksgiving weekend didn't seem to stop the sewer and water installer from moving dirt and getting the long pipes from up most of the driveway.  I think the plan is to open a 7 foot deep pit to connect to the existing sewer tap, then to horizontal bore under the conservation culvert that crosses the driveway, which will then hook up to the pipes that were just laid this weekend.  They'll have the pit open on Monday so the inspector can take a look and green tag the connection, then they can cover it up so we can still access the build site.  Soon, the house will have functioning sewer and water, even if nothing in the house is connected to them.

   I saw these pipes as I approached the driveway and drive my way up to the house, but was stopped short by a 5 foot deep trench running up the right side of the driveway with the spoils denying access on the rest of the path.  I had to back out and park on the street to make my way to the house on foot through the woods.  These two lines, blue for water and black for sewer, are long enough to make it to the street side of the horizontal bore at the culvert, and they look more than long enough to reach all the necessary taps.  The water tap is in this area near the street with the sewer tap farther up the driveway.

   Here's the start of the trench, probably 175 feet from the house.  It's well past the ground transformer, which is the maximum 100 feet from the house and you can barely make out the structure from this distance.  The trench is 5 feet deep, about a foot below frost.  Most of the material coming out of the trench is sand or sandy loam.  There didn't appear to be much large root disturbance, so I don't think the health of the near by trees are in jeopardy.  With this trench, both sides of the driveway are flanked with utilities.  I'm not sure if they'll scrape away material for the driveway installation, or just build up and grade the low right side.  I'm hoping for the latter so we can get the driveway up out of the dips a bit.

   The installers got there at 6 am that morning, so they already had the entire trench opened up and the pipes laid by the time I got there.  They were just starting to fill it in and compact it down by repeatedly driving over it.  There will still be a good number of trucks driving up this way so it will naturally get compacted back down.  Getting this trenched before the winter will also help since the winter time will solidify the ground and help it compact before spring.  That's why we're also looking to get the construction grade fill in front of the house as soon as possible.

   Here's where the two pipes start near the house.  They're still about 30 feet from the house itself, so I'm guessing there will be some kind of connection here that hooks up to the runs that go to the house.  The sewer will connect to the grinder pump and the water will hook directly to the line that penetrates the house.  They were working with some kind of fusing tool in the basement but I didn't get to see them fuse the pipes together here.  I have a picture of the fusing tools down below.

   Here's where they had the ground opened up last week to connect the existing sewer penetration to the grinder pump tank.  You can see the tank on the left, and they have it at an expected finished grade.  They determined the finish grade off the basement walkout and accounted for some drainage slope away from the house.  I was eyeballing the tank location and it looks like it will modify the path that leads from the landscaping stone stairs to around the house.  As it sits, I think it's really close to the path, which is an obvious eyesore so we'll have to either shoot closer to the house or go wider, which would increase the depth of the planting beds near the house.  I think the latter might be the better way to go since we're also expecting to cram a back up generator in this area.  A deep landscaping bed will better conceal both these items.

   I got a picture of the markings on the tank before they're lost to the ground.  There's a stamped metal plate on the top cover which duplicates most of this information.  By the serial number, I can confirm that the tank is 24 inches across and 84 inches deep, which is sized appropriately for a house our size.  It only comes with one pump, but it has redundant float valves and a warning system to alert when the system isn't functioning properly.  My sister has a grinder pump and for the few years they've been living there, they haven't had to service it yet.  I'm sure a preventative maintenance schedule is prudent, but judging by the demo videos online, I don't think we'll have much to worry about.

   Here's the water penetration into the house all closed up again.  I'm not sure if they replaced the foam before they re-poured the concrete but I don't think it will be an issue if they didn't.  The foam under the rest of the slab will keep the basement warmer and this small patch won't affect the temperature very much, especially since it's inside the mechanical room.  The water meter will be hooked up to this pipe but I'm not sure if it will be bolted to the wall.  In our current house, a copper pipe penetrates the slab and is connected to copper pipe through the rest of the house.  With semi flexible poly pipe coming in and flexible PEX connecting the house, I would think the meter would need to be mechanically secured.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

   Here are the tools they were using to fuse the polypropylene pipes.  From what I can gather, the black sewer pipe has some kind of fuseable gray connector.  I found some videos online about the operation and it looks like the two collars in the farthest machine are supposed to each hold pipes to be fused together.  The lower right tool is placed between the two and turned.  A cutting blade will square up the faces of the pipes to be joined.  The lower left tool is a heating plate, which is placed between the pipes to get them to melting temperature and removed.  The collars are then used to press the near melted ends together, fusing them and essentially making them one piece.  How it's arranged now, I think he's fusing on a fitting that will connect to the grinder pump and he'll fuse that pipe to the one buried in the ground for a seamless run.

   Here's the Omnivore grinder pump that came with the tank.  Despite the demonstration videos, I'm sure there are still some limitations on what we can put down the drain.  Most of it is probably common sense or similar to standard sewage disposal, no grease, paint, harsh chemicals, kitty litter etc.  I think we'll be fine with the normal minor plate scrapings and we don't put down "flushable" wipes anyways.  I'm hoping I won't be looking back at this post years from now, cursing the fact that we have a grinder pump.

   Here they are filling the trench after all the contents are laid.  You can see there's one section that has standing water, and that's just from ground seepage.  Eyeballing the ground, it looks like the ground water in that area is about three feet below grade. This area doesn't look particularly low, so I'm surprised there's so much water here.  It's well away from the house, and even past the point where I would want to put a workshop.  The driveway will be much higher than the water table, even with the base layers so as long as they compact the base properly, we shouldn't need to worry about driveway integrity.

   In addition to the sewer and water pipe, they also placed a below ground wire (UF-B) that will power the gate.   I didn't get a good look at it, but it looks like 12 gauge.  We'll need a 20 amp sub panel installed at the gate so 12 gauges should be fine with the 250 foot run.

   Here's the trench complete with sewer, water, gate electrical, and tracer wires.  It was nice getting a good look at the soil strata when they had the trench open.  It looks like we have about a foot of top soil, a couple feet of clean sand, with a sandy loam below it.  Some of the top might be scraped away, and maybe we can use it for final grade around the house, rather than trucking it away.  If the driveway is built up, then the top soil can be placed to the side to build up the grade on the low side of the driveway.

   The sewer tap should be connected early next week but I'm not sure when the water will be connected.  It doesn't look like the stone masons can get on the job until spring but water will be waiting for them when they arrive.  At least the plumbing can be hooked up and pressure tested.  We should be done with the water and sewer connections in a week and the plumbing and HVAC should be finishing up soon too.  We'll pause for a bit on the electrical install until the bank documents clear then it's full steam ahead over the winter time.  The holiday season is coming up, so there will probably be a little slow down on progress, but that slow down is still way faster than the progress we saw before Mike came on the job.

Plumbing almost done, sewer hook up starting

   Winter is starting to rear it's cold, ugly head in our neck of the world now as temperature are staying in the 40's.  Although there hasn't been any major accumulation of snow yet, it should be on its way so we're pushing to get the water and sewer installed in the ground before it freezes up.  We got the chance to visit on the weekend as the sewer installers were working on getting the grinder pump installed in the ground.  They had some difficulty finding a good spot for it due to a higher than expected water table.  Initially, they wanted to install it right next to the house so they could have short hook up to the house sewer pipe, but once they dug down, they discovered that there's too much ground water in the area.  I know that when the basement was initially dug, Matt found the high water mark of the pond, then went a couple feet above that for the slab, so that information is about in line with the findings of the sewer installers.  They had to end up burying the grinder pump tank about 20 feet from the house, which might modify the landscaping plans a bit, but there's nothing that can be done about that.  I don't think it's in the way of the the proposed path, so that puts it in the flower bed, which is fine with me.  I'm sure we can find a creative way to obscure it.
   Plumbing installation continued with all the drains and many of the supplies installed.  There are a few places where we can't avoid drain pipes coming below the height of the ceiling on the first floor, so we'll have to find a creative way to box those in.  I'm just glad we only have those few considering the complexity of the house and spread distribution of the bathrooms.

   I didn't get a chance to see the tank in this condition, but this is a picture of the tank that Mike sent me before it was put in the ground.  I think this one is 84" tall and the top is a couple of feet across.  The tank is made of fiberglass and the grinder pump sits inside the tank.  I'll try to get more pictures of the inside, but they were working on installing the tank so I didn't get the chance this time.

   Here's what the grinder pump tank looks like partially buried.  I think there's about a foot or so under ground right now, and they started burying it when we were still there.  The only part that will be visible is the large access hatch on top.  There's an alarm system to warn of failures, and a redundant, back up pump with multiple check valves.  I'm not sure what the maintenance schedule is for this, but I'm expecting every year if not ever other year.  You can't be too careful when you're talking about 250 feet of sewage.

   This is where the line to the tank connects to the line into the house.  You can see the thickness of the footing and the yellow gas line going into the house.  They removed the foam on the footing, which I think needs to be replaced since that's part of the "frost free" component of the construction technique.  The vertical pipe is for methane venting to atmosphere and it sits well above the level of the basement bathroom drains so we shouldn't have to worry about back-ups overflowing here.  The black tape is holding on metallic tracer wire, which runs the length of the pipe to the tank and will run up the driveway along with the sewer and water pipes.  It there so can locate the pipes with a detector in the future if we ever need to dig in the area.

   Here's how the line connects to the tank.  It's all at a slight slope down towards the tank.  The lines going over the pipe are for electrical to the transformer and the plywood is there just to hold back the earth so they could work in there.  They used up most of the gravel pile from last week in this installation so it looks like they removed more sand than necessary, and back filled around everything with the gravel.  It didn't rain recently, so the water in the hole is just ground water, which makes sense since we're right on the lake.  Ideally, we would be sitting higher, but the ground is all sand, so I'm not worried about drainage.  I guess if the water table rises significantly in our lifetime, it could cause some trouble.  The installers commented about the compaction of the gravel base under the basement slab.  He was wondering how they passed the compaction inspection, but didn't give any specifics about why they thought it was off.  All I know is that the basement prep passed inspection before the slab was poured, so I'm not sure what to make of that comment.  There hasn't been any cracks in the basement slab in two years, so I'm not too concerned about it.

   Since it was super cold outside, we checked out the inside to try to get some shelter.  The construction heater was on, but without insulation on the roof, it was only a few degrees warming than outside.  This is the first thing I saw when I came in, and it's pretty unfortunate.  Here's the drain plumbing for the turret bathroom on the second floor.  Unfortnately, there's no way to get these up higher, and since the foyer opens into the rotunda, there's no wall in line with the concrete beams to run the plumbing down, so they have to cross under the beams into the closest wall.  You can see, from left to right, the drain for the toilet, sink, and bathtub with the hot and cold PEX coming through.  This bathroom will also have a hot water circulation loop, but they handle it in the wall, as shown in another picture.  It's really unfortunate that these pipes had to come down below the ceiling, right in the front entry way, and we'll have to find an elegant way to hide them.  Unfortunately, that just means finding a good way to hide the box that needs to be built around the pipes.

   Here's the shared wall on the first floor, between the study and the guest bathroom.  From left to right is the main plumbing drain stack for the toilet and sink on the second floor, the tub drain, and the water supply for that upstairs bathroom.  This is how they do the hot water circulation loop for this bathroom, and I assume the turret bathroom.  You can see the two hot water lines are connected 3/4 of the way up the wall so there will only be 8-10 feet of pipe that needs to be cleared until the hot water flows out the tap.  Not a big difference considering that this bathroom sits two stories above the hot water heater, but it's still a nice feature to have.

   Here's that same guest room bathroom and the second location we'll need to box down to hide pipes.  There's probably a reason why they didn't go the other direction with the pipes and avoid going under the beam, but I don't know what it is.  So we'll have to box in the area in the shower which is kind of ugly, but at least we have nine foot ceilings so the shower won't feel that much smaller.  You can tell they did their best to cram all the pipes in the joist cavity by all the 45 degree elbows in place.  They really needed to route the pipes around each other to make it to that wall.  From left to right, you can see the stub for the upstairs tub, toilet, then sink, with the cold water supply going to the toilet then sink, followed by the hot to the sink.  I think that cold water line should have been taken above the height of the ceiling, and it's only nailed to one of the wood nailers, so I'll have them move it so we don't have to worry about the ceiling in that area.

   Here's the drain and toilet stub in that guest room bathroom.  This is supposed to be a zero threshold shower, or as close as we can get to it, but considering the height of the drain, I'm guessing it will be like the master bathroom and have a slight lip.  I can't tell where the shower head will be in this shower, and we've had some discussion on it but I'm not sure we decided how it will go.  If it's on the exterior wall, you have to get in the shower to turn it on, getting blasted by cold water in the process.  If it's on the interior wall, you can reach the controls easily enough, but the shower head will be in the shower entry, which might be odd.  I'm leaning towards the latter idea, especially if we can pull off a zero threshold entry.  It makes more sense to have the water shooting away from the entrance.

   Here's the last place we'll need to hide drain pipes in the ceiling, which isn't too bad.  This is the mudroom closet, and the pipes are for the master shower drain.  The closet ceiling height can easily be brought down and you would never notice the difference.  Now that I think about it, the drain for the master tub hasn't been penetrated yet, and I might have some concern about the routing of those pipes.  They should be able to run the drain over to the kitchen wall so we don't have any issues with the ceiling in the mudroom, but I won't know that until they penetrate the floor.  We have specs on the tub we want, so they should be able to approximate the drain location.  One issue is that there's a beam in this ceiling that the pipe needs to run under so something creative will have to happen in this location.  I'll have to look when I'm on site, but maybe they can run it forward to the mudroom bathroom interior wall.

   Here's the cold water supply box for the fridge.  It's a nice little implementation that is often overlooked so the homeowner ends up drilling through the floor and saddle tapping a pipe in the basement for the fridge water supply.  Our fridge and freezer are going to be separate units and don't have through-the-door dispensing, but the freezer has an icemaker, and the fridge has an internal filtered water source so this line will need to be split between the two.  It looks like there's a little water hammer arrester on the top of the valve, which is nice so you won't hear the water pipes hammering when the ice maker fills.

   Here's the curved shower wall and the new penetrations for the water supplies.  There are going to be  two shower heads and a hand shower, each with thier own controls and mixers, so each needs their own sets of water supplies.  At least that what I think is going on. I'm not sure if a single PEX tube can supply three water fixtures full blast, simultaneously.  This curved wall will be tricky to attach the shower fixtures to, so I'll probably be posting a lot more of this as it progresses.

   Here's the tub location of the second bedroom upstairs and the odd implementation for the drain. I'm not sure about the reasoning behind this, but the stub for the drain here is already part of the drain stack shown in the guest room bathroom picture above.  For some reason they penetrated through the floor, and trenched to the HVAC chase.  The only thing I can think of is that there will be a vent stack here that goes up the HVAC chase, which will be the vent for the entire drain stack.  I don't recall seeing another vent stack in the area, so I'll have to keep an eye out next time I'm there.

   This is on the first floor in the chase made by the foyer alcove.  I'm not sure what these will be used for, but I'm guessing it will be for the turret bathroom drains since it sits above.  They haven't penetrated the floor above this, and the turret bathroom tub has a hole for the drain so I'm not sure what's going on here.  Depending on how the walls are placed above, it could be a great place for a basement to attic conduit run for electrical.

   Moving to the basement, here's the water supply pipe as it enters the basement slab.  They already back filled it with gravel and they were prepping the concrete to patch the floor as we were there.  This is where the water meter will sit so near by should be where all the PEX connects.  This location is right under a window and the water heaters should be to the right so hopefully we can utilize the wall space on the left for a nice water manifold/junction.

   Not much HVAC work was done this week, but the furnace was connected and is sitting in it's final place forever (I hope).  It's connected to the supply side and the return side will be connected to where these enormous filters are.  I couldn't figure out how to slide these filters out since it looks like the metal flange surrounds the filters on all sides.  My guess is that I'll have to open the cabinet to change the filters, and it looks like I'll be buying them in pairs from now on.  Since clearance is needed on all sides of the furnace for maintenance, we'll need to push the wall for the future bathroom out a bit.  I'm hoping that doesn't mess with the drain locations we already stubbed into the slab.

   Here's the furnace from the mechanical room side.  The two connection ports on the lower right side are for the geothermal loop and the upper connectors are for the hot water assist or desuperheater.  The blower is in the top portion of the cabinet and all the electronics are stored in the bottom.

   This might not look like much, but it means a lot.  This is the marker for where the already installed sewer tap is, which is located well onto our property!  That means no removal of our neighbors grass or trees since it's well away from all that stuff.  No need to worry about threading the sewer line around landscaping.  One of the biggest headaches just got a little smaller.  Even though the builder for my neighbor installed this tap, it wasn't on the city or county records, so they want us to pay for the tap permit on something we didn't install.  Mike is trying to fight it but they government wants its money, so we'll be lucky if we don't have to pay.
   That's if for this week.  I think the sewer and water installation will take a couple weekends to finish, and we'll see how long the HVAC and plumbing takes.  We're going into the holiday and hunting seasons, so I think progress will slow a bit, which is good so we have time to iron out the bank details for the build.

Plumbing, HVAC, and Paint

   Days are staying cooler now as we approach winter, but work still progresses on the house.  This week, we see changes to both the exterior and interior as the painters came in to prime all the exposed trim boards so the winter doesn't damage anything.  Inside, HVAC continued to install the main supply and return trunks and the plumbers are installing supplies and drains all over the house.

   We lucked out and visited the house on a cold but sunny day after an exporatory shopping trip to a plumbing supplier and a leaded glass creator.  We still need to nail down specifics on the plumbing fixtures, and it's proving to be more difficult than expected because there's so much selection out there.  Every time we visit a supplier, it seems like we find something new that we like.  We went to a local leaded glass craftsman to look into getting a piece made for the new transom above the sliding door in the kitchen.  There were some patterns that we like, so we'll probably be revisiting him to get it created.  

   Here's what the house looks like now.  You can see the grayish primer is on the trim and there was some work done to the turret windows.  The carpenters haven't returned yet to finish up the rest of the trim but that can wait until we have a battle plan in place with the bank.

   All the existing trim was shot with a primer after caulking the seams.  The primer will help protect the wood over the winter time, until we can get the finishing paint up there.  They taped off the copper, but didn't care about overspray on the ICF, which is fine since it will all be covered with shingle.  Having the primer up there makes a big difference in the appearance of the trim.  Since the seams were caulked, then painted, all the seams in the overhang and window trims disappear and everything looks much more uniform.  There's more trim to be installed, but it might take a back seat to getting the exterior up, which is fine since it's more of a finishing thing.

   You can see some overspray on the ICF, but some of the trim was hand painted with a brush.  They sprayed the cladding above the garage door even though this will be behind the shingle.  It doesn't hurt to have this wood protected and adds another layer of rot protection behind the shingle.  We landed on a design for the brackets that will flank each door, but it has yet to be installed.  The top of the arch is actually Azek, but when it's painted, you can't really distinguish it from rough-sawn ceder.

   Here, you can see a seam in the overhang that was caulked and painted.  The seams aren't really visible and I'm sure once you get the white paint up there, it will all but disappear.  The overhang vents were indiscriminately shot with primer too since they'll just end up being painted white anyways.  Some of the tape they used to mask the copper drip edges is still on the house, but I have no doubt they'll remove it eventually.  The overspray is only about an inch and it's very even; a mark of an experienced painter.  There's no other way to hit the bottom of the trim without spraying the house.  In future repaints when the shingle and trims need to be repainted, they'll probably shoot the trim first, then mask it to shoot the shingle.

   Lots of plumbing work this week as the plumbers have almost completed the pass-throughs for all plumbing locations.  I think the only place left is the powder room, which could be tricky due to the small size and concrete beam placement.  While all the supplies haven't been run, we saw most of the drains for the second floor and some of the supplies run.  Drains for the first floor are cut, but not connected into the basement.
   Here's the toilet location in the mudroom bathroom.  You can see some of the second floor drain stacks in the walls.  It looks like they had some really creative solutions for running some of the pipes.  I'm impressed they didn't have to build down any bulkheads yet, and I'm hoping the trend continues.  The left vertical pipe is the drain/vent for the sink and the vertical pipe on the right is the drain for the master bathroom and laundry room upstairs.

   Here's another look at the two pipes in the wall of the mudroom/storage area, and how it ties into the system.  The left pipe is pretty straight forward, the T near the floor will accept the drain for the sink in the bathroom.  The pipe continues to extend upward to the attic space to act as the vent for both the sink and the toilet (see wet venting). The pipe on the right goes up through the wall and through the floor above (if I recall correctly) and serves as the main drain for the laundry room, which includes the washing machine and sink basin.  The horizontal pipe is in the extra storage space so it's one of the only pipes that drops down below the level of the ceiling so far.

   That horizontal pipe is shown here, and isn't tied into anything going down into the basement right now, so I'm not sure where it will connect.  We have a drain installed in the floor of the laundry room, right under where the washing machine will be and this is the pipe for that drain.  You can see the plumbing for the trap up in the ICF floor that goes over the storage room wall to hook up to the horizontal pipe.  Should there be a catastrophic event with the washing machine, this drain will catch all the water before it can become a problem.  I highly recommend having something like this in place regardless of which floor your washing machine is on.  Could also be used as a drain for mopping the floor, but since it's placed under the machine itself, not perfect for washing down floor soap suds.  At least you have the security of a fail safe without having a drain in the middle of the floor.
   Also seen pulled through the floor is the first PEX supply tubes run so far.  You might be wondering why there are two hot lines and one cold line. These lines supply both the laundry room and master bathroom but that's not why there are two hot lines.  There are two hot lines because we're installing a hot water circulation loop.  Since all the bathrooms on the second floor are so far away from the water heater in the basement, without this loop, you would have to turn on the hot water tap and wait for the hot water to make its way up through all the plumbing before you get hot water.  That's a lot of wasted water that goes down the drain.  With this loop, there will be a pump installed inline that can circulate the cold water already present in the pipes, and push it back to the water heater to be heated, rather than going down the drain.  The pump will run until it detects the hot water then shut off, so all you have to do is clear the last few feet of cold water from the pipes before you get hot water out of the tap.  I'm expecting this type of installation on both the first and second floor. The pump can be run on demand or on a timer and clears the cold trapped water much faster than the flow rate out of a tap so if you manually start the circulation, you would wait less for hot water than if you just had to turn on the tap.  At the expense of a little electricity, you're saving water and time.

   Another look at that horizontal drain pipe in the storage room. You can see where the laundry room floor drain ties in, and you can see the big drain for the laundry room as well as the vent for the mudroom above the horizontal drain.  The storage room itself is passively conditioned, meaning it's inside the envelope of the house but doesn't have a supply or return of its own.  This is fine for drains since we don't have to worry about them freezing in cold conditions.  Even though the room isn't directly heated, it will never get below freezing.

   Here's the supply and drain in the butlers pantry, nothing too exciting yet, but the existence of holes means that they have a plan for the runs and that they didn't have any issues with the concrete beams in this area.  It's a positive for the other mechanicals that follow.  The HVAC installers were the preliminary scouts for all the pass throughs, but don't have as many as the plumbers.  The electricians will be happy to know where they can penetrate because they can see everywhere the plumbers came through.  Makes their job a little easier since they have the most penetrations to run.

   We found this in the guest room on the first floor.  It's a plumbing penetration through the wall to the porch and happens to be a miscommunication that we'll be keeping.  I sent blueprints for hose bib locations before the plumbers came through, but my notes on the elevation locations got lost in translation.  This was supposed to be on the basement level so we could use it on the side of the house where the landscaping is.  It would be to the left of the side basement walk out rather than on the wrap around porch, as it's shown here.  There's a correctly placed hose bib on the front of the house and we initially figured we could just run a hose around the side of the house if there's a need for water on the porch.  Now that it's in place, we'll just keep it, and request another down below.

   Here's the guest room bathroom on the first floor.  The drain pipe in the wall is for the second floor shower if I recall correctly.  There's a larger drain hole in the wall to the left of this pipe, which I believe will be the toilet/sink drain for the bathroom above.  A lot of ICF was removed along the wall for the sink drain and supply, as well as the toilet but no pipes have been installed yet.

   Here's what the area under the turret bathroom looks like after the pass throughs are done, but before the plumbing is installed.  The 90 degree elbow you see is the drain for the sink.  I think the hole in the ICF to the right of it is where the supply water will pass through the floor.  The large hole on the left of the frame, hidden up near the nailing wood is for the toilet.  This area is a little different because the plumbing fixtures are running perpendicular to the direction of the beams.  While all the foam is removable, it's only two inches thick, so I'm not sure how they're planning on running this plumbing without a bulkhead.  The closest interior walls are to the left and right with no interior walls in line, parallel to the concrete beams.

   On the second floor, this is how they stub out the connections that transition from PEX to copper.  I think all the water supplies will end up like this since valves are required to be connected to the plumbing fixtures.  The PEX is clamped somehow to these copper stubs and the rest of it can be soldered as traditionally done.  This is the hot and cold supply to the turret bathroom, with the drain pass through next to it.

   The copper stub is also used for the toilet water supplies, as shown here next to the toilet drain in the turret bathroom.  A PVC collar is used to secure the toilet to the floor.  Usually they're just connected with wood screws, so I guess they'll have to use cement taping screw to secure the PVC.

   Here's the vent stack that comes up from the guestroom bathroom, through the wall and into the attic.  This vent will be connected to others and penetrate the roof.  They serve two purposes, to vent sewer gases out to the atmosphere and to provide an air source for water draining down the pipe.  Without the air source, you would have sinks and tubs trying to suck air to overcome the vacuum created from draining water.

   Here's the start of the exciting part of the plumbing and a taste of things to come.  This is the drain and water supplies for the master vanity.  It's slightly incorrect in that the water supplies are currently placed for a through-counter installtion while we're doing a wall mounted faucet.  These are tied into the PEX penetrations shown in a previous picture and are installed along with both sink drains and the vent going up to the attic space.  It's really nice they're not directly tied to the drains for the laundry room even though they're close by.  Sound from the draining washing machine won't mitigate as badly though the pipes.

   Here's where the water to the vanity meets up with with the penetrations through the floor.  The two lines coming in on the right are supplies to the master vanity.  The higher two supply lines in the 2x6 stud wall is for the laundry room sink basin and the lower two, smaller diameter lines are for the washing machine.  You can see the three penetrations through the floor, two red and one blue.  If you follow the two red, you can see one just branches off the other, so this is the hot circulation loop.  I'm guessing hot water will come up the middle penetration and go back the left one.  Every place the PEX passes through the metal studs requires a tubing insulator to prevent damage to the pipe.  It's just a plastic collar the PEX pipe can rub against since expansion and contraction, while minimal, does still happen.
   The drain stack for the laundry room is to the left of the PEX, the upper one is for the sink basin and the lower is for the washing machine.  Again, these have their own vent stack.

   Here's the laundry machine location with all the connection boxes in place.  You can see the sink basin supplies and drains on the left of the frame.  The washing machine supply box is in the middle with the water and drain already connected.  Copper stubs are in place ready to accept the valves that will eventually connect to the washing machine.  The drain comes out the bottom of the box and the trap is visible and internal to the wall.  This wall is shared with the master closet, so I'm not too concerned about noise propagation here.  Closets are traditionally quieter because of the sound dampening properties of all the hanging cloth.  There's one more port on the top of the box that will be unused.  Porter and Heckman installed the dryer vent box, but I'll have to double check the height.  We're installing pedestals under each machine so I though this vent box should be installed taller to eliminate u-bends.  There will have to be one 90 degree bend coming out the back of the machine, but if it doesn't have to go down, then up again, it would be better.  The gas will also be supplied through this box.
  You can also see the floor drain which looks properly spaced for finishing tile material.  When the tile is installed in this room, they might need to mud with a slope towards the drain.

   A little work was performed on the exterior of the house that solved an implementation problem.  We were trying to figure out how the cedar shingle will install against the turret windows since they didn't sit very proud of the exterior wall. The elegant solution, shown here, is to install white aluminum flashing over the window nailer and bottom sill so the shingle has a good surface to butt up against.  This adds a bit of bulk to the windows, which looks great, and adds a heavier sill to the bottom, also looks great.  I'm really happy with this solution.

   Here's a close up of the work, which is very professional and clean.  All joints are caulked with white sealant and the flashing will extend behind the wood shingle.  The flashing is also caulked up against the window frame so these windows are basically double flashed.

   Here's a closer look at how the painters taped up the copper before shooting it with primer.  We'll have to be sure to get the name of the painters so we can hire them when we need repainting, but I'm hoping this will last at least 10-15 years.

   Here's a close up of what the caulked seams in the wood looks like.  After it's painted, it really makes the seams in the wood disappear, and it's more apparent on the window trims.  Not only does it make a big aesthetic difference, but it also protects the end grain of the wood, which is more prone to water intrusion.  Not as important on the overhangs as it is on the window trims.

   Another step forward is the installation of the flashing on the wrap around porch.  Since the decking ledger board is connected directly to the house and will be interrupting the stone work up to the brick ledge, this flashing was needed so water couldn't penetrate behind the stone.  There will be stone above and below the deck so any water that made it's way on the deck and against the house would threaten to run down the house, behind the wood of the deck, and behind the stone.  Enough of this would decay the mortar and threaten it's attachment to the stone.  This flashing will mitigate that by allowing the water to run off in front of the mortar, over the face of the stone.
   Also shown in this picture is the hose bib for the front of the house.  Since this is an odd corner, we'll probably have a wall mounted hose reel here that we can use for washing the cars or watering the plants.

   Here's what the side of the wrap around porch looks like with all the flashing installed.  The flashing is just a thick HDPE and goes behind the stone above it, so there's very little chance of water intrusion.  Coupled with the fact that this is under an eight foot porch, I'm pretty confident in this solution.

   Even the trim in the gazebo was primed, but there's no reason to prime the porch roof structure.  After electrical comes through here, we'll have wood bead board on the ceiling that will need to be primed and painted, but that will probably wait until next spring since it's starting to get too cold to paint.

   On to things HVAC.  They've started up again installing the main supply and return trunks in the basement and connecting to the first floor as they go along.  The second floor is basically finished so it's all about running the first floor trunks and connecting them to the first floor penetrations.  One nice surprise is that our final furnace is on site, ready to be installed.  It's a WaterFurnace Series 7 that sports a variable speed compressor and blower.  Normal forced air furnaces might have a two speed blower so you can either pump heating or cooling at a gentle quieter speed, or a faster or louder speed.  This has an ECM blower capable of 12 speeds so the temperature of the room will always be comfortable and you won't get the ebb and flow temperature a standard single stage furnace provides.

   This is the zone controller for the HVAC system.  Basically, this is the controller that will control the zones for the house so you can different temperatures in different areas.  This one controls up to six zones, but we're going to have it set up for three, one for each floor.  This means that there will be a thermostat for each floor so if the upstairs is warmer during the summer, more cool air can be pushed upstairs, which can make its way down to the first floor.  We tried to find a use for the other three zones, and may be able to in the future, but as of now, because of the way the house is laid out, really couldn't find a use.

   As I mentioned, HVAC work on the main trunks continues to progress.  Here's what's going on with the main trunks that will supply and return the front of the house.  If you'll recall, we split the front and back of the house to dodge any runs that will need to go under the central beams, allowing for more basement ceiling height.  I would have liked these two duct runs to be closer together, and I don't know why they couldn't be right next to each other but now we'll have to find a creative way to box all this stuff in when we finish the basement.  They only drop down about a foot, so we still have nine feet under the ducts but it still makes it difficult to manage the ceiling heights.  There might be a silver lining here, because now we have a ton of room between the ducts for other mechanicals.

   Here they are, looking towards the back yard.  The front of the house is on the right and the greatroom is on the left.  They're making good use of the cavities in the ICF to run supply runs and the returns look like they connect right up to the main return duct so there are minimal duct lines in the ceiling.  This will help with light placement since you can't install recessed lighting where there are duct runs.  It looks like they have to go a little farther then they'll terminate the trunks.

   The plumbers also removed a section of the slab in the mechanical room in the basement so they could dig under the foundation to bring the water in.  Mike was going to see if they could split the sewer and water trench off in the driveway and bring the water in through the front of the house so we didn't have to disturb the slab, but I guess that didn't go through.  The water meter is usually inside the house with just a reader that runs to the outside, so I'm not sure why that was rejected.  The slab will be re-poured when the installation is done, so I'm not worried about the location.  It doesn't look like there's anything down there right now, so I think they were just targeting a depth to get under the footing.

   Another point of progress is that we're slowly wading through the beauracracy of getting the water and sewer pulled into the house.  The sewer installers confirmed that there is a tap from the sewer line on the other side of my neighbors driveway, and that it runs under the driveway to our property, so that's a good thing.  The odd thing is that it's not marked on any city or county records, so it looks like the builder of my neighbors house had it installed, but not inspected.  Mike has been battling with the city to get approval on the tap and just succeeded so we have the paperwork to go to the county to get approval on the tap.  Once we get the county approval, we can install the lines and be done with it.
   In expectation of the approval, the installers have stashed the water and sewer lines, ready to be laid and installed.  There's also some larger diameter PVC, which I think is for connecting to the sewer line.  Getting these lines installed should have been one of the first things done on the house build, and it will be a big accomplishment.

   The black pipes are for the sewer run and they're 2" diameter.  Because of the lower elevation of the house in relation to the sewer at the street, we'll need to use a grinder pump, which has two pumps, one redundant, to chew up the "soilds of the house" and push it the 250 feet through the 2" line to the sewer tap.  That's a pretty beefy pump.  We're not too far down below the sewer level, but 250 feet of 2 inch pipe creates a lot of static head pressure to overcome.  The grinder pump is one part of the house that I wished we could do without and it's the one mechanical system I'm most nervous about.  Having a redundant pump is nice, but we'll have to be a little more careful with what we put down the drain.

   The blue pipe is 1.5" diameter and supplies water to the house.  This is a pretty large diameter pipe for the water main supply and I suspect it's that size to mitigate the pressure drop due to the run length.  A standard house supply water pipe is 1" and supplies 16 gallons per minute for a fifty foot run.  While the extra .5" diameter might not seem like a lot, a 1.5" diameter pipe will supply 25 gallons per minute for a 50' run.  Considering we have a 250' run, the size is probably appropriate to maintain pressure and I'm happy it's sized this large.

A large pile of AA stone was also left at the house and I think it's for the water and sewer installation since it's right next to the pipes.  I think they lay down the stone around the pipe to demarcate to future diggers that something important is there.  The pile is large, but it's not so large to be used as fill for the entire trench and I don't recall DTE using gravel when they laid the electrical lines.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see what this is for.

   All the utilities are flagged at the street and running up to the house in preparation for digging the water and sewer trenches.  These two white stakes were marked by the sewer installer and mark where they need to bore because of the designated wetland culvert that goes under the driveway.  It's interesting because the electrical, gas, and telco lines start on the right side of the driveway and bore through here to the left at 36" deep.  Now, the sewer and water will start on the left side of the driveway and bore to the right at 48" or deeper (below frost).  It will be fun to see how they install the base for the driveway when the time comes.  The sides of the driveway is higher on the left and lower on the right, so I think some sand will need to be scraped away to get to the proper depth for the base.  Too bad we can't use that sand to fill the near the house.

   Here's my neighbors driveway and the path where the sewer line runs.  That manhole cover on the other side is for the sewer access and the white paint marks where the end of the tap is on our side.  We're lucky someone had the foresight to install this, otherwise we would have had to trench up the driveway a bit and repair it in the spring.  The water tap is already on our side of the driveway and should be easy to access.

   Every time we go out there, we're reminded why we're putting ourselves through all this difficult process.  The road has been really long so far, and there still a long way to go, but at least we're getting some hope for the end.  This is just the view off the back part of the wrap around porch.  With view like this, it will definitely be worth all the trouble we're going through.