It looks like winter is officially here with a snow storm that dumped 7"-10" in our region. Luckily, I had the chance to make it to the property before the really bad snow hit. There should be enough work vehicles making their way up and down the driveway to clear the snow this winter, but if a really bad storm hits, I'm not sure how the driveway will be cleared. Can't really plow it since it's still only a gravel/sand mix. If we have an excavator on site, maybe heavy snow can be cleared down to a drive-able depth. This time last year, we were just pouring the second floor so I think the excavator was on site to help with the snow removal.
There was a bit of progress this week with the HVAC installation and electrical starting up. The city hasn't been out to connect the water up to the valve and I'm not sure when that will happen, but I think it will be soon. As before, the sewer is hooked up from the basement to the street so all that remains is to hook up each plumbing fixture to the main stacks and that system will be completed. The water meter remains unconnected as does each supply fixture, but there's still rough work to be completed before that can happen. We received the dragon weather vane that will be mounted on the turret, but since the skytrac is gone, we won't be able to mount it until the spring. In all, good progress for the week and we're ever moving forward.
The electricians starting working on their portion on the house with the installation of the recessed lights on the porches. Mike stated that this will be the first area so that he can get the bead board ceiling installation completed before finishing up the exterior trim work. The cans are non-insulation contact, 6" Halo fixtures that we'll probably retrofit LED bulbs into. Using standard light fixtures with LED bulbs gives us the lowest cost and most flexibility with our lighting plans. LED specific recessed cans exist, but are more expensive and can only fit specific LED bulbs. As LED technology progresses, I can't imagine a day when manufacturers won't make retrofit form factors available to the public.
Most of the front porch has the cans installed, but wire hasn't been run yet. We're also planning on installing a few duplex power receptacles in the porch ceiling so we can easily light either the overhang or the railing with Christmas lights. The side of the house is probably long enough where stringing a single chain of lights would exceed the recommended amount so we're looking at three receptacles on that side. We'll probably only need two on the front, and three around the back porch. It will also be handy to have them if we ever need to plug in an extension cord for a yard tool or something. I'm not sure if there's code for receptacles on the exterior of the house, but we still might want some at ground level so we don't need to get out a ladder every time we need power. These are the tree light cans to the left of the door, under the turret.
There are only two cans installed on the side of the house, but they will be installed all the way up the side here. We opted for lights in the porch ceiling only and not in the overhang on the second floor because we didn't want too much light pollution and the lights on the second floor is more for aesthetics. We haven't discussed dimmer options on the porch lighting and I'm not sure it would be necessary. It might be nice to be able to have a lower light level and it would be a simple thing to implement. I'm also not sure if the porch lights will be on the lighting control system or just a simple switch. I think it will be a simple switch since the lighting control will only be for specific interior rooms.
These are the cans that are going in the porch. Halo 6" new construction recessed lights. These are also IC (insulation contact) rated and air tight even though they don't need to be in the porch. They'll be good for the second floor since that's up against attic insulation. The first floor might need the IC rating since it might touch the ICF. These 6" cans should provide a big enough light pool to light up the porch.
There are a couple wires going through the wall in the kitchen going out to the back porch. The nice thing about removing the 2x8 nailers is that it gives a perfect chase for wires to run through if you're going parallel with the concrete beams. if you need to transverse the beam, you can just cut out some of the 2" foam that sits under the beam, so running electrical wires shouldn't be difficult at all. These wires are supplying the power to the back porch lights and since they're already in place, it looks like this is where they started.
All the cans are in place and connected with wire. There will probably be a switch just to the right of the sliding door in the kitchen that will control these lights, which is why the wire is running down there. Again, these are the same 6" cans as on the front porch and these will provide all the lighting back here.
Four lights in the gazebo should provide enough lighting. There are two wires at the kitchen sliding door which would imply two switches, one for the porch and one for the gazebo. But wait, what about the mudroom entrance? That would require a three way switch so you can turn on the lights from either the kitchen sliding door or from the mudroom exit since they both go to the back porch. That means a three-strand line that has a common to share between the two switches. Enter the lighting control. With our lighting control setup, we can just use two-strand wire to connect to one switch which will communicate with the lighting control computer. Now any wall switch can be programmed to control the porch lights. Or all the porch lights. It's going to be awesome.
You can also see the shallow box for the ceiling fan that will be up there. It's always nice to have a fan in the gazebo, if not for breeze, then to keep the bugs off you. If we feel like we need more lighting, we can get a light with a fan. If we feel like we don't need a fan because of the near constant breeze, we can get a nice light.
Here's the mudroom side of the back porch with all three lights installed. It's probably just the way they spaced it, but I appreciate that there aren't any lights directly above the kitchen window. A light there might cast a glare on the window glass and make it difficult to see out of at night. I think we're also planning on having a wall sconce at the mudroom door, but overhead lighting will be good too.
This is the first time I'm looking at the greatroom without the construction scaffolding. That scaffolding was up this time last year to aid in the construction of the second floor ICF and it remained up throughout the construction of the window bucks. Now it's just a pile of lumber in the middle of the room. Removing it really opens the room up and brings it in line with our final vision. The room still doesn't feel super deep but it's really wide and I'm sure there's more than enough room to get whatever seating requirements we want in there. The room feels so open now and it's great to just walk around and look out the windows, especially now that there's snow falling.
Here's the view from the other corner compared to one of my earliest renders of the room. Pretty close match I'd say. We're still not set on any furniture arrangement, but I think it would be prudent to get some floor sockets in some areas so we can have lamps on tables without running cords to the walls since it's almost certain that we'll need walking around space on all three exterior walls. The railing in the render is a placeholder too since we didn't know what we wanted, but we've since landed on a nice design for the stairs and balcony landings. The fireplace material will be a textured 3 dimensional stacked stone running all the way up to the ceiling. I also don't have coffers in this render, so I'll have to go back and update it.
Another angle of the room compared to my first render. This is how we decided on what window shapes we wanted and I think it worked out perfectly. This also made up our mind on what windows should be clear and which should have divided panes. It's kind of uncanny that I got the photo and render angles almost perfectly lined up. This will probably be really helpful in the near future for finishing material and paint colors. Maybe I'll make a post dedicated to all my room renders so I can compare it when the house if finally complete.
Here's the view of the room from the second floor, left balcony. We won't be able to get up close to those second floor windows anymore unless we get a ladder. I'm not sure how dirty they'll get on the inside of the house, but for the outside, I have a squeegee on an extension pole that should work well. I have some worry about TV noise making it's way up to the second floor, especially since the surround sound speakers are up in the ceiling. They're mostly directional, but with so many hard surfaces, we'll have to consider reverb and reflection. The balcony spaces are small enough where much of the sound will be blocked, but if anyone is sleeping up stairs, we won't be able to watch loud movies here. Guess we'll have to push to get the basement theater finished quickly.
There was a spool of 14-3 wire sitting up stairs in the master bedroom, but I'm not sure where it's going to be used. 14-3 means that it's 14 gauge wire, rated for 15A, which implies light circuits. There are 3 wires, common, neutral, and hot, plus a ground. Usually these are used for three way lighting switches and smoke alarms. Sometimes they're used to have a switched hot (lights) and a constant hot (electrical outlet). I guess we'll have to wait to find out where this wire is going to be used.
I found more 6" cans stacked in the garage. I think they're a 6 pack, so that means there are thirty more here? Probably for use in the rest of the house. I think we're getting 6" in the great room since it's a really high ceiling, but these would be too big anywhere else. It's amazing to think that we'll have wires running all over the house soon. This is the part I love, seeing all the mechanicals go in and trying to figure out all use cases for the future.
Other things I found in the garage are all the roughs for the exterior door openings from Hardwood Door and Bevel (wooddoorandbevel.com). We went in a few weeks ago to confirm the design of all the exterior doors and Craig said he would deliver the door roughs so the exterior can be installed. Here's the rough for the master bedroom balcony french door. I guess these can replace the plywood covering the doors right now, although once they're in place, you can't get through them.
There are three door roughs here, mudroom, greatroom, and rear garage exit. The garage entry doors will be fire-rated steel doors and we'll obtain them through Mike's supplier. The exterior doors are all arched top mahogany doors, each with a different glass panel design, but all with the same door design. The greatroom has a single thermopane of glass for the entire door. The garage and mudroom doors are both five panel doors, but the mudroom will have a glass thermopane instead of the top wood panel.
Some more HVAC work was completed this week in the basement. The supply run for the back of the house was completed and the beginning of the greatroom supply ducts were installed. They pass above the steel beam, with some of them supplying the future work out room, and four of them going up to the great room. One question was answered from last week. The inflatable bladder dampers are installed in the round ducts. So here's my guess. We're installing three zones, one on each floor. Since there isn't a main damper going to the second floor supply (yet) I'm guessing that these bladders will be control by the zone control hardware, which takes inputs from the thermostats to each floor. So if calls are made to warm the second floor, but not the first, the first floor dampers will inflate and shut the ducts. Pretty crazy implementation if I'm correct, and it has interesting implications. If I decided to later implement a "per room" zone control, the inflation bladders are already present, so I could just shut off the great room HVAC, provided I have enough outputs from a controller. This could offer a great future upgrade-ability. I could just ask, Porter and Heckman, but speculation and discovery is more fun.
Here's a close up of the thing polyethylene tube that goes to the inflation bladder for the great room. I imagine the hole will be sealed when it's completed. Each tube needs to run back to a pump, which is in turn controlled by the zone controller. The bladder is capable of partial blockage to balance the house. It will be super interesting to see how this is implemented in the zone controller. Maybe there are procedures to balance then house, then set it as the baseline all the rest of the zone control will operate around this balance. It's all feasible, I'm just not sure what the actual implementation is. Sorry for geeking out.
One huge bummer that I was hoping to avoid is the waste of ceiling space in certain basement areas. This is the HVAC supply for the kitchen and mudroom. Unfortunately, the straight shot paths pretty far away from the wall in the theater room so we'll have to hide it in a soffit. Second bummer is that it's on the expected movie screen wall, so that takes a bit off the total height of the screen. Since the basement is ten feet deep, we could still have a huge 9 foot tall screen, so it's still not too bad. We can use this space above to either hide a retractable screen, lights, or front speakers. Not too bad, but not the cleanest look. I know Tanja won't be happy about it, but I think we could figure out a way to make it look nice. Most home theater pictures I've seen online have some kind of tray ceiling so this could be used to hide the ducts.
Here's the supply duct from above and the two round ducts that will run to the kitchen and mudroom. At least they're putting it up the ICF floor so we don't have to worry about boxing in parallel to the beams. The right most one will stop short of the plumbing, but there will still need to be a drain pipe that comes down to hook up to the drain rough in the basement floor. This can be concealed in the theater by a decorative "column", so no big issue there.
A little more progress on at the heat exchanger itself with the addition of this bend that will connect to the return duct. We've upgraded the filter to a powered electrostatic filter and added an HRV to provide fresh air to the house, so we'll have to see where it fits in here. The HRV should just be a duct that connects to the return duct. The upgraded filter is a bit bigger than the existing one so I hope they don't have to change much to accommodate it.
The driveway coming in has been leveled and some gravel was laid, but the ground is now rock hard due to the cold, so there's no issue with driving on it. All the major ruts have been smoothed out and the gravel will help with the heavy trucks we're expecting this winter. If the driveway doesn't freeze up with compacted snow, the gravel will also help with traction. The area in front of the house was also leveled as well as all the parking spaces, so we should be able to accommodate lots of vehicles.
We got the weather vane in from
West Coast Weathervanes and we couldn't be happier. The thing is almost three feet across the directional arrow and taller if you count the directional arrows. It's handcrafted from copper with brass wings and rocks, and gold gilding on the chest and spikes. The cardinal directions are made from solid brass and not picture are two copper balls that sit above and below the directions.
The cardinal directions come in two pieces to be assembled on the weather vane spike. When it's installed, you need to take a magnetic compass up there to orient the direction properly. Unfortunately, the Sky Trac isn't on the property anymore so we'll have to wait until the next time it's here to get the dragon up there.
The detail on this thing is amazing, and will probably be somewhat lost from the ground. The eye is a single green glass marble that allows light to shine through. The tongue, teeth, and horns are also gold gilding. In time, the copper and brass will patina out, but the gold will remain shiny.
While the dragon isn't flat, it's not exactly three dimensional. I'd call it a thick bas-relief without the background. The wings are spread about 8 inches apart and have support structure in between them. We took a trip across the lake to the other neighborhood and had no trouble spotting the copper roof on the turret. I'm sure this dragon will stand out that much more from above the tree tops.
That's about it for this week. We should see some more progress on the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical this week. The HOA hired plows dumped a lot of the pushed snow in our driveway so I contacted the HOA to get it removed. To their credit, they were quick to respond and remedy the situation, so it shouldn't happen again. Maybe I'll get those orange sticks everyone has to demarcate the edges of the driveway. Porch electrical shouldn't take long and I know the carpenters are itching to get back in there to finish off the porch. We should see some nice updates next week.
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