Insulation

The windows are now done and we started/finished the insulation work. It took far less time than we anticipated. We insulated the garage (ceiling and walls) as well as all the bedrooms for noise in addition to the whole exterior of the house. The attic has R-50 (yeah baby). The upstairs walls have R-29 All of the upstairs have blown in insulation. The basement walls have R19 for the exterior walls due to the concrete sills and the workshop has R-14 (2x4 studs instead of 2x6s). Very cozy!

"Flatwork"

The concrete was poured today. Actually half of it was poured. It looks great. The circle "medalion" is stamped and stained (we'll get a better picture in a week). The driveway was poured in a checkerboard pattern. It looks great also and has a lot more texture than plain concrete. The guy who did the work is trying to get our contractor to use hom some more so he gussied up our stuff in as a "showcase". Aren't we lucky?

Electrical spaghetti

There are miles of wire in the house. Both regular voltage and low voltage. The low voltage wires are for the alarm system, central vacuum, doorbell, garage doors and 20 speakers throughout the house.

Driveway prep

The driveway will be poured in a couple of days, depending on the weather and temperatures.

Fireplace comes together

Electrical trenching

The electrical line is now in and the driveway will be poured over the line. All of the concrete "flatwork" was supposed to be complete today but rain and hail delayed it until next week. We are going to pour the concrete now so that it won't be "frozen" by any winter weather but we will have to protect it from the construction mess with plastic and wood.

Back of the house

Plumbing

It only took three days but the rough pluming is complete. Not much to see expect for this photo. This is the main water mainfold and it is made entirely out of plastic. The red lines are for hot water and blue for cold. Each line goes directly to a faucet without any copper or soldering. The lines are also much stronger than copper -- copper joints break at less than 100PSI and this stuff holds to almost 1000 PSI.

Great views in October

Jack checking out the new digs

Misc

Front view, with windows

HVAC

The HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) units have been installed. It went surprisingly quick. The entire job, including all the duct work in the house will take the sub contractor only one week to complete. The basement will only have a heater since an A/C isn't necessary in a Utah basement. It is a standard 80% efficiency model.

The upstairs will have a 95% efficient heater AND air conditioner. It will also be a new variable speed unit, which means that it will run all the time. Most of the time it will run at 10-20% of normal power. Only in extreme weather conditions will it need to run above 70% which saves a ton of money. It also allows us to filter the air more effectively. We have a 3 stage filter including a scrubber and an infra red purifier -- all rated at over 99% effective in filtering out not only dust but also pollen. We also added an additional feature which allows us to suck in outside air on summer evenings (temperature drops to the high 50's), run it through the filter, then cool the house. This means that the actual compressor will only need to run for about 8 hours a day in the summer.

Posts are complete

Each outside post is an 8X8 or larger, depending on the support necessary. All the posts are then built up in a tapered look. Later during the construction each post will be clad in dry stacked stone from the ground up. The taper is fairly aggressive. For example the rear deck posts are 14' tall. They start at 8X8 but with the additional taper the top is 10X10. The taper is 1" for each vertical foot so the bottom is 14" larger than the top (on each side. The base of the large posts will therefore be 38" X 38"

Windows get installed

Windows arrive

Deck Framing complete