Mike and Jeff's New House

Long time readers of the blog will recall that we chose to use a 3 coat stucco system that uses integral pigment in the 3rd and final `color coat'...It allows one to avoid the need for exterior paint, at least for a few years. What did we learn? 1) The color is very subjective and in our case, the colors are not even close to the colors on the samples.....We even doubled the pigment to mix ratio! 2) As the stucco mix and pigment are mixed on site, one mixer-load at a time, each load produces a slightly different tone or hue. Harlequin patterns look good on clowns, but not on houses..... After two weeks of drama with trying to match colors, we have finally reached peace with where it is at. The color is not as dark as we had hoped, it is less `sage' and more like `overcooked celery', in a few years we'll have to paint it. No big whoop.... P.S. Notice that ADORABLE 1928 bungalow next door? We'll be putting it on the market in about two months after we move into the

The guest bathroom is coming along nicely....We are very very pleased with our tile setters....

This is the master bathroom. The shower and rear wall are covered in German limestone. The 2x2 green glass tiles are mounted on the wall that will hold the sinks. The orange mat is for sub-tile heating, it is hooked to a thermometer that will also be under the tile and to a thermostat on the wall.....We'll be able to program the system to automatically have the bathroom floors warm in the AM. Home Depot did not have a good selection of these mats, luckily Lowes did... The tile guy will be putting down tile setting compound on top of the electrical mat and then setting limestone into it. Grouting should be completed by next Sunday.

The AC Disconnect, the final piece of the solar electrical system was installed last week...Alas, they discovered that they wired something wrong in the attic and now they have to come back this week to fix it....Hopefully we'll be spinning the electrical meter backward by the end of the week..... We have a grid tied system, that means that when the power goes out during a storm, our power will go out as well....It would take thousands of dollars of batteries (and lots of space to store them) to have a system independent of the electrical grid...

Jeff's brother Scott is a finish carpenter that specializes in doors.....Last week he finished installing the frames for our interior doors. The look is very non-traditional.....Jeff wanted something that looked minimalist.......We are looking forward to the painted look..

The parallams and tongue and groove planking in the living room have been sanded and sealed with a clear finish. It looks better than we had hoped...

The order on our windows specified that the west, north, and east sides of the house were to have one pane of 1/4 inch glass and one pane of 1/8 inch glass. These 3 sides have the most freeway noise exposure and that combination of glass thicknesses is almost as good as laminated glass at minimizing the transmission of sound.....Sadly our order was messed up and despite being invoiced for the upgrade, the windows were done in the standard 1/8 inch and 1/8 inch configuration. After a 10 week wait, the new windows arrived and the French Door Store guys came out and put them in. It is noticeably more quiet...

At long last the concrete bench is poured....there are radiant heat coils embedded in this 4 inch thick bench........It looks great and we were VERY happy with the work that Paul with Voodoo Rock did for us. Need a custom concrete guy? give him a call...

This pic shows the ever growing series of pipes that will control the flow of water from our NTI hydronic water heater to both the domestic hot water system and to the radiant heat system. We will soon be hooking up the 80 gallon water tank that will act as a a reservoir for the hot water coming from the hot water solar collector. The goal is that the hot water from the hot water solar collector will minimize our need to use very much natural gas in the water heater. Hydronic systems are cool...read more about them here: http://www.nythermal.com/Home/index.htm

The radiant heat in the first floor concrete is managed via this manifold system...Hot water comes out of the hot water heater/solar hot water collector and circulates through the floor via this manifold.

Working with SMUD (our electrical utility) was interesting.....That's all I'm going to say.... LONG story short, we have electricity hooked up to the house.

And now you know what a water meter looks like.

Did you know that Sacramento was the last large city in California to not have mandatory water meters? It's all over now, during the next 20 years the City will be putting water meters into all existing residential water lines.....We don't have to worry about it as all new construction must put them in...The pic above shows the City Utilities guy `tapping' the water line in the alley.... The sewer `tap' was rather easy as they had a large manhole in the alley that they were able to get to easily.

Our gas comes in from a mainline that was buried 48 inches deep......The PG&E team was by far the easiest and most responsive utility to work with.......We're hooked up, now we just need a gas appliance hooked up so they can charge the system and install the gas meter...

This past week we had several important things happen. Our natural gas was hooked up by PG&E (excellent service) , our water and our sewer connections were hooked up by the City of Sacramento (It was truly amazing to see how many trucks and men they send to do this) and most importantly, after failing our temporary electrical panel inspection THREE times, on the fourth time we finally passed it and were able to call SMUD to ask them to pull the electical service to our panel. They told us it would take 10-13 days, it actually took 4.....Who knew that calling them 5 times and crying on the phone would be so effective..... Other progress: HVAC - The boiler is mounted in the garage and there is copper piping going all over out there. The air handler up in the 3rd floor is starting to be reconnected, several of the ducts had to be cut during the installation of the insulation and wallboard. This system should be done by the end of the week, of course, they have said that each of the