May 19, 2009: Electrical Rough ins Done, Heating / Cooling Begin

We didn't make it out to the site on Monday, but did on Tuesday. Some more work had been done on the shingles, plumbing, heating / air, and the electrical rough-ins are now "finished".

View of the house from the tree on the north east corner. Most of the shingling is done now.

View of the shingles on the back of the great room.

Electrical rough-ins on the outside were also completed. This one is next to the garage door.

Preethi inspects some of the cans for recessed lighting in the great room. More cans have been hung in the back.

Cans for recessed lights in the kitchen. There's two over the sink, two over the range, and two over the kitchen desk. (You can only see two in this photo).

Stair light rough-ins. Effectively night lights so you don't fall down the steps.

The huge set of wires that will go into the electrical panels in the basement.

Pipes for water for a bath/shower. Hot and cold are mixed and sent up the single pipe.

View in the shower/bath. Still need to add some fixtures (faucet, shower head).

A different view of a shower where you can see the water pipe extending above the the top of the surround for the shower head.

Underneath a shower rough-in.

Tubes that will eventually be filled with freon to connect a compressor with an air handler (we're dual-zone).

Cold-air intake on the main floor situated on the side of the pantry closest to the dining room (for the lower zone).

Cold air-intake at the top of the stairs (for hte upper zone).

3 vents in the master bedroom. On the top floor, the vents will be in the ceiling as the air handler will be in the attic.

WIth the vents, plumbing, and electrical rough-ins in, it's starting to crowded in a few places.

View of the registers in another upstairs bedroom from a closet. You can also see a wire hanging down that will eventually power a fluorescent light.

On the main level, the vents are currently on the floor. However, we wanted them off the floor to cut down on the amount of dog hair that falls into the ducts.

View of the main level vents from the basement,

More of the freon-filled (eventually) tubing that connect air handlers and compressors. One of the air handlers will be in the basement.

Fritz checked out the basement on his own.

Silver verified that the silt fence had been fixed after last week's storms.

Probably close enough to merit cutting down, but it's leaning away and it's a real nice looking tree.

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May 16, 2009: Rain, wiring, and plumbing

We didn't make it out on Friday, but did on Saturday with Bruno and April (current neighbors). Friday it rained in the afternoon and a lot in the evening, so not quite as much happened.

Electrical rough-ins in the garage.

Bruno and Preethi look at the Great Room. Wiring for the recessed lights is above. We're not quite certain if that's in the right place as we want the lights to be further up on the ceiling than where the wire is, but the large loops may indicate that the electrician is planning on it being higher than it is.

Rough ins in the great room with Cable / Phone lines running. The fireplace will be about (slightly to the right) of where you see those two higher boxes.

The wire for the great room fan is hanging down here.

The doorbell wire at the entrance.

A couple more pipes were added for hot and cold water to the washer in the laundry room (on the left).

Preethi, April, and Bruno look out the great room bumpout.

Wires (orange / black) running up for what I assume is the upstairs air handler (sits in the attic).

Coils of wire awaiting the final run out to the air handlers.

One of the master bath vaniy rough-ins. If you're really attentive, you can tell that the rough-in for the electrical and the plumbing moved to the right by about 8 inches.

Looking down from the stairwell into the greatroom. Mostly, this is to show the blue box on the ledge that will be used for track lighting in the great room to illuminate some paintings.

Plumbing vent up through the roof. It may have already been there, but I just noticed it.

Because the gap between supports for the door and windows in the Great Room was so small, the electrician had to get creative attaching the electrical boxes (in this case for a switch). Here, screws had to be sunk into the side of the box rather than nailed as is typical.

Here's what an electrical box is normally attached - simply by nailing the in on the top and/or bottom (with depth set to match the dry wall).

Another example of what had to be done to work around the tight framing around the windows / doors in the great room. Here an angled hole that cuts through some of the supports was made to get access to exterior wall between the french doors and the window.

View of the south side of the great room. If you look closely, you can see the roughed-in wires for the lights that will go over / next to the door on the deck.

Some of the wires for the lights that will go outside of the basement entrance. In theory, this is supposed to mimic the appearance of the French doors opening onto the (eventual) deck above.

We got 3 inches of rain overnight, which was more than our poor little silt fence could bear.

The rain also washed out the driveway some with gravel distributed down the culvert. According to forecasts, this week will be dry.

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March 30 - Concrete and Silt Fence

On Monday, the concrete for the basement walls was poured in the forms and the silt fence went up. Plus the amended permit was reposted (amended to clear up a confusion on the lien agent).

View near the main entrance. You can see a little bit of the rebar sticking up through the top.

Looking out over the dining room (closest) entrance (square in middle-right) and great room (farthest away).

To handle the slope of the land, the garage will be a couple feet lower than the rest of the main level.

View from the driveway over the forms.

My shadow extends onto some interior supports which were also poured on Monday.

View of the silt fence (southwest) from just outside of the soutwest corner of the basement.

Silt fence wrapping around the eventual drain field.

View from silt fence back towards the house and Preethi. The silt fence is actually set back quite a bit from the house (large drain field).

The permit as amended on 3/8/8 (click to enlarge I'm pretty certain that's an error, but it amuses me, so I posted it). The no trespassing sign (and others) was put up to discourage hunting after we found a pair of deer carcasses. Turns out its a neighbor kid who's been known to shoot deer in other neighbor's yards as well. Wouldn't have bothered us if he hadn't left the carcasses. There's a valuable insight there for dynamic spectrum access somewhere in there.

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