Mike and Jeff's New House

Jeff's brother was here a couple of weeks ago...He put in the door from the house into the garage and measured for the other interior doors....Including all the closet doors we somehow have 31 doors...They will be one of the last items to install...

The boxes shown below are now mounted on our garage walls. One is an inverter that processes the DC power that our photovoltaic modules generate. (The small box is a disconnect switch.) The direct current generated by the sun goes through this box and is converted into alternating current that can be used in our house or fed back into the grid and sold to our electric utility... What's that? You want more info about solar electricity and how it really works? Have no fear my child, click here: http://www.fronius.com/solar.electronics/focus.pv/pv_pv.htm#ig

The sheetrock in our house has been taped, two coats of compound have been applied, MANY days of drying have taken place and today the guys were over there sanding the rough edges down....We should be ready to start painting in a few days...now, if we could only find a painter... This shot is from near the front door and looks across the dining room and into the kitchen..

The second coat of stucco is drying nicely....If the rain lets up this week they will start the third and final coat of color on Thursday.... What color you might be wondering? Check out an approximation here: http://www.lahabrastucco.com/color_chips.htm The color we are aiming for is `Southern Moss'.

For the first time in memory, we do not have a Christmas tree set up in our house. The view below will give you an idea of why.....We're up to our teeth in boxes of stuff for the new house....We know it will all be worth it, hopefully within a few weeks we will be able to start moving these boxes next door and start installing things.

Jeff has installed the solar screens on the exterior of the skylights. These geo-fabric modules roll up into a box at the top of the window and are controlled via a hand held remote control. They will be deployed on extra hot days to minimize solar heat gain on the third floor.

We are now making electricity on our roof..The entire south facing roof is covered with panels like the one shown below...The photovoltaic modules were installed two weeks ago....Although they are not yet hooked up to the grid, we hope to get our electricity hooked up within a week or two.

After 4 weekends of pulling wire to all edges of the house, it is finally done. The wires coming out of the left orange box are the speakers and volume control wires. The wires coming out of the right orange box are the security system wires. The Wires in the steel box are the telecommunications (Coaxial and Cat5E) wires.)

Here is what the guest bath looks like now that the sheetrock is done. At the last minute we decided to add under tile heating to the 3 bathrooms on the upper two floors. (The 1rst floor bathroom has radiant heat in the concrete.)

The sheet rockers started on Monday of this week, they finished on Friday....The guys below are finishing up the very last piece.

The aluminum struts for the solar panels are now installed. They will put the P. V. panels in place once our electricity is hooked up and the disconnect switch is in place.

We put in insulated steel doors in garage this week...All the entrances to the house are now secured....The interior doors were ordered this week as well...Including the closet doors we have 30 interior doors.....They won't go in until the very end....

We found some beautiful cast stone sill pieces at Napa Valley Cast Stone in Napa. We also found a gifted mason to install them...They look great....

This pic shows all three of the steps in applying cellulose insulation. The guy on the right is blowing it into the walls, the guy on the left has a large vacumn hose and he is sucking up the material that did not stick, the guy in the middle is running the trimming machine that runs along the top of the studs and trims off all the excess material..

Here is the answer to the question `What do they DO with recycled newspapers?'

We passed our Framing Inspection this past week...It's the big one and we're glad to have it over. Our roofers were back this week (twice) to fix some issues with roof flashing..... Our electrician was here to finish up some final issues before sheet rocking... Our stucco guys have been wrapping the house in wire this week.....We hope they finish up on Monday so we can get a lath inspection before Thanksgiving. Speaking of Thanksgiving, take your turkeys out of the freezer on Monday and start defrosting!

This picture shows all 3 types of insulation in our house. The ceilings are a plastic-like expanding foam. The walls are cellulose (recycled paper) that is treated with Borate to help keep termites away and to help retard fires. The windows (and doors) are all surrounded by a tight layer of `Good Stuff' brand window and door sealant, it worked great. We tried to use a similar product by DAP, it was not so good and would barely come out of the can.

We had Five Star Insulation put in our ceiling and wall insulation. They did an EXCELLENT job and we highly recommend them. How can you not like a company that puts pictures of soybeans on their trailers. (The insulation in our ceiling has some soybean oil in it. It's probably less than 5%, but it feels good to think it has lots.) Five Star also installed the cellulose insulation in the walls...It was SO quiet in the house after they were done. The difference is striking. Cellulose is so dense that it stops the flow of air and sound.

This is the newly installed grate in our 2nd to 3rd floor stair landing. The grates will let natural light into the 1rst to 2nd floor staircase. Thanks to Steve Davis at Affordable Welding for making the mounting brackets...

The end of the tunnel is within sight....We hope to start sheet rocking on Tuesday of this week...It was a very productive and busy weekend...Doing what?? Well, to give you a taste, this was Sunday's punch list.... Sunday - Nov 20th Punch List Jeff 1. Bathroom Wiring Adjustments 2. Vacumn Cleaner Wiring Loop 3. Thermostat Wiring 4. Blocking in all 4 Bathrooms for towel bars 5. Attach the control panel frame to the wall. 6. Blocking in Living Room for Drapes 7. Blocking in Bathrooms for shower curtains 8. Blocking in Kitchen for hood 9. Install Dryer Vent 10. Install low voltage wire in Kitchen and Laundry 11. Pipe Insulation on 3rd Floor 12. Run 2 conductor wire from hot water solar panel to garage. Mike 1. Run speaker wires to Mike's Office 2. Run volume control to Mike's Office 3. Confirm all smoke detector and motion detector wires are in. 4. Install 3 sets of speaker Rings 5. install Sirius Sat. wire run to attic 6. Install smurf tube to attic for Satellite wire runs 7.

Our subcontractors had a slow couple of days this past week but we managed to make a lot of progress on Saturday and Sunday... The big news is that the shingles are on the roof.... On Saturday, Jeff's brother Scott finished installing the door frames and the sliding door into the master bathoom. The final 2 soffits have been installed.... The light grate on the 3 floor stair landing has been installed..... The power and control lines to the skylights have been pulled.... The power line to the window solar screens have been installed.... The house is approximately 80% covered with white foam, stucco wire will start late this week... The piping to the solar water heater is almost done...the plumber has had a few problems with his soldering welds.... We drove to IKEA in Emeryville on Sunday night to pick up more of the cabinets and closet units for the new house....Most of it will be shipped direct from their warehouse.. The insulation starts on Monday this week and should be done by

Here is Mike's hand holding some of the wire he has pulled....Coax and Cat5E to every large room, alarm contacts for the doors, smoke detectors, front door camera, 8 speaker zones, 8 speaker volume controls, Sirius satellite radio antenna to roof, Satellite TV to roof (future proofing) SureWest Cable will be running fiber optic cable to our control room and we will be sending out internet, phone, and television signals over Cat5. Jeff built a frame for the structured wire box on Sunday evening. More pictures next weekend.

On Saturday the stucco guys showed up and started covering the house with 1.5 inch thick foam that will act as an additional layer of thermal barrier under our stucco..... It has taken a great deal longer to install this than they expected......Hopefully they will be able to get the wire started this week....

This is what the house looked like from Tuesday till Saturday AM.. This felted paper is typically applied right under the `chicken wire' that the stucco clings to. Here is an incredibly detailed description of what the paper does: http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/publications/articles/housewraps_feltpaper_weather_penetration_barriers.html

After countless delays we finally have shingles on the house...Unfortunately, despite designing the system, the roofing company didn't deliver enough ridge vent to finish the installation of the custom vent flashing system for the interface between the living room roof and the 3rd floor exterior wall...And since Home Depot does not stock this item, they could not finish the flashing and top row of shingles. ..That also means that the stucco guys can't put foam on up there till the roofers come back.... Lesson of the week: Details matter....

We hired two guys to put the 2 skylights in place last weekend, this weekend Jeff ran the control wire over to them. Although they both have infrared remote controls, we are running a wire to have a wall control plate just in case...The guys that we used to set the windows were from Harlan Smith Skylights in Rancho Cordova and they were really helpful..... The windows are made by Velux...Check em out here: http://www.veluxusa.com/

The past ten days have been amazingly productive...We had our first attempt at framing inspection on Monday, Oct 31. We have 12 items to address, none are significant...We plan to go for our second attempt this week, probably on Thursday.. Other notable items.... -We found a welder who fabricated the frames for the `eyebrows' that will go over our front door and dining room patio....He lives in Midtown Sacramento and does EXCELLENT work. The mounting hardware for these eyebrows has now been attached to the house. -The `thimble' for the stove has been mounted in the living room wall. This is where the stove vent will exit the house. -The garage vents have been installed, did you know that the building code mandates two vents in every garage? -The door frames have all been installed thanks to Jeff's brother Scott. He is a finish carpenter that specializes in doors, he does incredible work. -The solar electric panels will attach to jacks that were put in place this week. -Th

This photo shows Roland and Tommy finishing the installation of the gutter on the south side of the house. In addition to that one will notice that the house now looks black due to the felt paper that goes under the foam and stucco. One will also notice the two skylights on the roof and the phalanx of roof jacks that the solar electric and solar hot water panels will be attached to. GREAT news from our electric company this week. We have been approved for a rebate!! Our Kynar coated, 22 gauge steel gutters were fabricated at Spectrum Sheetmetal in Sacramento. Ken and Steve were great to work with and we highly recommend them. If it can be made out of rolled metal, their shop can probably make it. http://www.spectrumsheetmetal.com/

The pic below shows Jeff's brother Scott finishing up the framing of a door, every door opening was custom made as we have pivot hinge doors that will not be hinged on the side of the frame but on the top and bottom. In the background is Adam on a ladder doing soldering of the copper pipe that will go from the solar hot water collector down to the garage where the hot water tank will be located.

Below is a close up of the Fast Jacks that Premier Power installed on Friday. The photovoltaic panels will attach to these jacks. Premier Power has been GREAT to work with and we highly recommend them. http://www.premierpower.com/ Our hot water solar system will be provided by Heliodyne in Richmond, CA. The water is their systems gets up to around 200 degrees so we could not run the plastic PEX tubing for this application, it had to be copper. http://www.heliodyne.com/

A good friend of ours used to be in the pest control business. She strongly recommended that we treat the wood in our house with a borate product called Bora-Care. http://www.nisuscorp.com/boracare.html After doing some research, we agreed. The place we found the product locally was the Pest Control Center on Madison. http://pestcontrolcenter.com/ On the first floor we sprayed the Bora-Care solution from the concrete slab up to a mark 4 feet high on the wall. In addition to that we sprayed the interior walls of all 4 bathrooms to help keep dry rot fungus at bay.

The guys that put up the scaffolding system two weeks ago are finally getting to use it. They have totally wrapped the house in black felt paper, over the top of this they will be installing a 1.5 inch layer of styrofoam and wire lathing that the 3 coat stucco system will be attached to.

Today (Monday, October 31st) we had a framing inspection. This is the big one....It is the inspection where the look at the HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical systems to make sure that they are all up to code....We had two pages of corrections to make, but none of them were unexpected or will present much of a challenge. It was a good day.... Gutters are being fabricated this week.... The skylights need to go in soon...Hopefully we'll have gutters up by Friday so that the roofers can start...They are going to help us get the skylights in...

Today we had our 4th and final shear inspection from the City of Sacramento Inspectors. We have passed..What can I say? ....I'm verklempt.... Shear?? No, it has nothing to do with sheep.....Houses must have stuctural integrity such that they are strong enough to endure the effects of wind and seismic events....... Here's an article that talks about it in a short easy to understand fashion... http://www.atcouncil.org/pdfs/jobaid1.pdf

Here is the view of the doors on the north (freeway) side of the house. The lower windows look into the dining room. On the other side of the room are matching doors that look out on our current house.....The upper set of doors are to the master bedroom suite....The upper set of windows will have a very small French balcony.

Here is the current view of the front of the house now that the door and transom window have been installed.

Do you know how some people just have a sense for color? We feel very fortunate that our friends Julie and Bret, two of Jeff's coworkers at Chong Partners Architecture, have a great sense for color. They helped us to sort through the endless choices when it came time to pick tiles for our bathroom and kitchen and colors for our walls..... The pic below shows what most of the interior finishes will look like... The floor on the first floor is going to be a dark grey/black, highly polished concrete. The second and third floor will be natural cork. The bathrooms will have travertine tile on the floor. The multi-color tile mix in the middle of this pic will be in our kitchen...The very hard to see light green and cream glass tiles will be in our bathrooms..... The walls will be painted one of the 5 colors that are fanned out under the multi-color tile. The cabinets in the house will be Eucalyptus and the paralams and tounge-in-groove ceiling in the living room will be sanded and lef

Today(Sunday, Oct 16) we finally pulled the first of our low voltage wire. We have three primary systems. We have a wireless network now and will install one in the new house, so why are we pulling structured wire that will give us dual cat5 and dual coax in 7 locations around the house? Read here: http://www.hometech.com/acrobat/structured.pdf We are also installing an alarm system. An alarm company is installing the control unit, we are pulling the wire and setting the contacts for them. The final system is our whole house audio . We are installing a multi-zone, multi-input system that will allow us to listen to music from different sources in various parts of the house at the same time. I (Mike) took a class last week at the Home Tech store in Cupertino, They are an EXCELLENT resource. Want to learn more, just click here: http://www.hometech.com/learn/audio.html#intro Here are 5 of the 6 or 7 different gauge wires we are using for this project.

Jeff installed the central vacumn system piping a couple of weekends ago.... We'll have a couple of outlets on each floor.......I suppose that means we'll have no excuse for dirty floors. The wall that is pictured below is the north side wall in the dining room that will have French doors installed shortly. Note the white vac tubing....We have passed the in-wall electrical and hold-down inspection and can now install insulation and go for the shear inspection on the lower floor walls that are the shear walls. Several of you have asked about this shear thing... Let me assure you, it has nothing to do with cutting hair...It's all about resisting the forces of wind and the movement of the earth. Want to know more? You know what to do: http://www.mcvicker.com/vwall/page001.htm#A1

At long last the insulation and roof sheathing has been installed over the living room. We signed the contract on Wed of last week. We are picking out shingles this week, the color will depend on the color of the stucco and whether we can get integral color in the sage green color we like.

Our 12 foot long sections of sheet rock have been loaded into the house. Each and every one of these sheets was dragged up the stairs by two of the hardest working guys we've ever met....They are natives of the Mexican State of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. They'll be back in a couple of weeks to install the rock and to apply the stucco. You will note that the casement windows in the 3rd floor office have been installed...We did lots of research and chose Lincoln Windows from Merrill, Wisconsin. These windows have special glass that is supposed to help keep transmission of heat/cold to a minimum..We also upgraded them to have glass panes of two different thicknesses installed. Our research found that this was the best way to minimize the transmission of sound. (Laminated glass is the best solution for sound abatement, but the level of improvement did not justify the price.) http://www.lincolnwindows.com/ NOTE: We discovered after the windows were installed that the

Here is Robbie doing his thing in the electrical sub-panel in the garage. They have just a few very small details to finish up on Monday...

We are really happy with the front windows....The French Door Store team will be back on Friday to install the doors..

The house has taken on an entirely new look with windows installed... We've decided to replace the roof on our current house and garage(pictured below) as they are 15 years old and these 2nd floor windows will have a prime view of lots of shingles...Reroofing our current home will hopefully begin by the end of October.

In order to safely install the windows and gutters, we had to install the scaffold system a couple of weeks early. The primary reason for the scaffold is to apply the stucco.

Jeff's brother Scott is a finish carpenter and he has been hired to help us install the doors and to do a couple of miscellaneous things like build the bench in the shower and put in the blocking so that the hot mop can be applied. Scott's work is hidden below under about a half inch of black tar.....The hot mop process is smelly and sticky and incredibly important as it is the water proofing layer that will hopefully prevent any leaks from occuring if the tile develops a crack.

Here is a picture of Dan from Airsmiths installing the fresh air intake up on the 3rd floor of the house. Airsmiths has been great to work with and we have been very, very pleased with their service. http://www.airsmiths.net/

This week we finalized the contracts for Stucco, Wallboard and Insulation after two months of wheeling and dealing.....Hurricane Katrina has caused the price of wallboard to go up quickly...Our price on wallboard went up $1,000 in a week....... The doors and windows are slated to be installed on October 10th and 11th... Scaffolding should start going up next week so the roofers can start and so that the gutters can be hung.... Momentum......It's a GOOD THING....

We are going to be doing the installation for a central vacumn cleaning system and have found a couple of really good websites for info....We bought the pipes and fittings last week and have started to drill holes for the outlets, there will be a total of four hose outlets, one on each floor plus one in the garage. Yes, we'll be dragging our hose from floor to floor..... Check out the vacs here: http://builtinvacuum.com/products_home.html http://www.centralvacuumstores.com/ We are also pulling structured wiring throughout the house. The bedrooms and offices and Living Room and Kitchen will all have 2+2 outlets. (2 Cat5e and 2 Coaxial wires are bundled together and pulled together.) Check out this excellent website for more info: http://www.hometech.com/ Since we'll have 3 stories to navigate when the door bell rings, we have decided to install a camera/intercom to monitor front door visitors. The company we are using has a deep line of products, we found one that will be flush

About 10 years ago Jeff was up on our roof cleaning the wood shakes and gutters....He slipped and then fell off and broke his hip....When Jeff told me that he was going to save a little money and install the rigid foam insulation on the portion of the roof over the living room, I felt suddenly nervous....Luckily our friend David teaches rock climbing and just happened to have his climbing belt handy. Yosemite is now beckoning......Hopefully we won't have to install insulation on Half Dome.. http://www.nps.gov/yose/wilderness/climbing.htm

Jeff was concerned about what the house would look like if it was ringed by 3 story high drainpipes, so he decided to hide them in the walls like they do in commercial construction. He spent Saturday drilling holes in neatly aligned runs from floor to floor.. There are 6 runs, 3 on each side. We'll run PVC drain pipe through the holes and drain water from the gutters through these internal drainpipes.....

If cleanliness is next to godliness,the master bath in our new house will be a center for spiritual cleansing...It will feature dual showerheads, a separate hand-held shower plus a built in bench for relaxing while enjoying the effects of the steam generator. http://www.plumbingsupply.com/steam.html On Oct. 3rd the hot mop guys are coming by to put in the goop that will keep our showers leak free....Speaking of hot mopping....Did you know that this service is listed in the yellow pages under `Waterproofing' ? We found a great website to help with estimating and answering questions about the process: http://www.sacshowerpans.com/

Those of you familiar with the show `Little Shop of Horrors' will understand why we have named our air exchanger `Seymour'.... It just keeps growing and changing every day.... Actually it is a rather sophisticated system developed at the Davis Energy Group. Check it out here: http://www.davisenergy.com/nb_page.htm The coolest feature will be a large fan that is activated by indoor/outdoor thermostats. During the summer, when the temp outside drops to 5 degrees lower than indoors, a large vent will open and the system will automatically start to send cool air throughout the house.

We'll have a thermostat on each floor, if one floor is calling for heat or cold but the other two zones are OK, the variable speed fan on the blower will only need to run at one third the normal speed. There are dampers in all 6 of the ducts that leave the blower (2 per floor). The system will shut the dampers on the ducts that go to floors that are not calling for hot or cold air.... This system costs more to install but should cost a lot less to operate on an annual basis.

Robbie the electrician showed up a couple of days last week....He's pulled all the wire for the third floor and most of the second floor.....Light cans and switch and outlet plates are installed throughout....By the end of this week we expect to see this bank of switches bulging with wire...

For anyone who has built a house before, the picture below is not a big deal. It shows the ceiling in our kitchen just above the island. Visible on this picture are air ducts, kitchen fan ducts, water pipes, thermostat wires, electrical wires, drain pipes and gas pipes. For a first time home-builder, it has been really cool to watch how our subcontractors are able to fit numerous wires, tubes, ducts, and pipes through the spaces behind the walls and ceilings.... We will have a total of 3 remote fans to pull air from the house. One will pull air through the kitchen vent shown below. The other two will pull air from the 4 bathrooms. All of the motors will be up on the third floor in the attic space so that one will not have to hear the roar of fans when using the bathroom or kitchen... Learn more here: http://www.fantech.net/exhaust.htm

One of the cool things about the house is that when taking a shower in the 3rd floor bathroom, ones head will be in the skylight dome....Do they issue tickets for flashing a helicopter? You can also see that the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) guys started last week. They started to pull duct work up to the air exchanger and fan on the 3rd floor.... All 4 of the toilets in the house are wall mounted Geberit low flow toilets with dual flush mode. You can see the `carrier' for the toilet in the middle of this pic. The tank for the toilet is hidden in the wall cavity. We bought almost all of our plumbing fixtures online. The sinks and toilets were purchased from Ira Wood & Sons in Kentucky. They have an excellent website for comparing products: http://store.yahoo.com/irawoodinc/tewamotosy.html

Our electrician has started to pull wire to outlets and switches... Do you know how you sometimes wish that you had a few more outlets in your home? That should not be a problem with this house....Those of you who have seen the 7 gang switch in our current kitchen will recall that we like to have lots of control over our lighting......The new house will have lots of shiny switches and other fun techno doo-dads.... Our electrician will be very busy for a few more days...