Mike and Jeff's New House

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.