Water and Sewer in!

   This will probably be my update for the week since I might not get the chance to visit the house this weekend.  We had a meeting with Mike at the house to go review and preview some of the installers work and to sign the contract to send to the bank.  We passed the water and sewer inspections and all the pipes have been buried.  All that's left is for the house plumbing to be hooked up, the water meter to be installed, and the city to come and connect the water pipes to the valve.  All this work is usually something that's completed at the very beginning of the build but for some reason, Matt and Ken didn't do it so Mike picked up the reins and got the job done.  It involved much more than I was privy to, but there was a lot of back and forth with both the city and county offices with diplomatic and arm twisting involved at both levels.  Having the sewer tap installed in the ground helped us save some money for installation, but since it wasn't registered with the city or county, we had to pay inspection and permit fees anyways.  Since that saga is behind us, we can concentrate on the rest of the mechanical installs and re-establishing the loan with the bank.

   There was a little work done outside of the mechanicals.  Here's the solution for the front porch in front of the door.  There was very little room left to install a concrete slab and have the necessary sleepers for the deck installation on top of it, so Mike installed sleepers on the already poured concrete beams in the ICF on top of a water proof barrier.  Concrete will be poured between the sleepers to offer some level of water-proofness and support and the Azek decking can be screwed into the sleepers, hiding all the structure.  It looks like the sleepers are already installed at a slight slope away from the house, so it looks like the concrete can be screed to the wood and a water proof membrane will be installed between the Azek and this top so that any water that goes through the Azek boards will hit this and drain towards the front.

   Here's the water meter that will service the house forever, right?  The plumbers have to hook it up, then I think the city comes to connect the wire and sensor to it so they can read it from the outside of the house.  I'll be interested in seeing how they mount this since we're using the poly tubing rather than more rigid copper tubing.  I think it looks pretty standard for a water meter.

   As I mentioned earlier, all the water and sewer line trenches are covered from the street to the house.  They compacted the ground as best as they could with the heavy excavator, but the ground is still a little soft on the top couple inches.  Mike said he would like to bring in gravel for the driveway so workers wouldn't get stuck during the winter time when the constant driving will melt the snow and soak the ground.  Matt suggested we do this last winter (or was it the winter before) but it was never done.  I rarely drove up the drive during winter, opting to park on the street and walk in.  I think we'll have more traffic this winter than we've had in the past.

   This is the driveway looking towards the street.  Just off frame to the right is the excavator, but that's the overflow parking.  The drive looks flat and level, but there's just enough floating soft sand to make driving a little squirrely.  It's probably fine when dry, but even with a little rain or snow, it softens up quickly.  The overflow parking was leveled out, which is nice since it used to slope down a bit.

   Here's farther up the driveway looking at the street.  This area was an open pit for the inspector, which I didn't get a picture of, but the side of the drive was graded and cleaned up a bit.  I think they bored under the ground here to bypass the conservation area since there doesn't seem to be as much surface disruption.  Whatever they did, it was quick because I didn't get to see any of it.  There's supposed to be an electrical stub somewhere here for the front gate, but I couldn't find the wire.

   Here's a closer look at the sewer clean out pipe from above.  When the final grade is established, we can cut this down to height to conceal it.  The green wire is tracer line for the sewer pipes.  The cap is solid bronze and the collar isn't glued in yet so we can just pop it off, cut the pipe, and glue it on.

   Here's the termination point for the water supply.  It's waiting for the city to come in, locate or install the main valve, and hook up to.  After that, we'll have water at the house!  There might be some kind of temporary spigot before the final house water is hooked up, but the stone masons will need water to mix mortar when they come in.  Mike said they'll be in soon to prep the house for the stone, but I'm not sure if they'll wait to install until spring.

   Here's the state of the driveway entrance after all the water and sewer was installed.  They moved my chain gate up a bit which is fine, but less indicative of the actual location of the final driveway gate.  I'll have to take a closer look at the location of the clean out, but I think the right side driveway gate pillar will be pretty close to it.  Maybe just behind it, which is okay.

   So that's it for this short update.  The plumbers are in to keep working on completing their tasks.  I haven't seen much change in the HVAC if the last few visits, but there's still basement routing to do before they're completed.  Mike has some concern about the number of supplies going to the second floor so we might see some more go in there.  There also appears to be a lack of individual room balancing up there since it's all flex piping.  There's usually a dampener in the supply line so you can adjust the amount of air flow to a room for temperature balancing.  This usually needs to be done once in the summer and once in the winter and once set, you can just move the dampeners back and forth between the seasons.  The electrical installers will be starting next Monday, so that means I need to get Jonathon from the Sound Vision on board so they can coordinate installs for lighting control.  There will be a few walk-throughs of the electrical rough, but they'll start with the porch lighting first so Mike can get the porch closed in.  I should probably jump on ordering that kitchen hood remove blower too.  Lots of things coming up plus the holiday season makes for a very busy time.