Groovy Sputum

Steppin’ Up

For a few hundred bucks, Scott and I got enough treated lumber to build the three landing stoops and steps for the outside doors at the house. We completed the main door landing last night. I was very pleased with how sturdy the steps turned out. The nice part about it is that they are not cemented into the ground which means they will be easy to rip out in a few years when phase 2 begins. Also, I didn’t have to pay any extra permit fees. Bonus!

Liberty Lawn Care was able to prep and seed my lawn a few weeks ago, too, and we have been blessed with an unusually warm autumn which has resulted I a green Thanksgiving. That’s what I was hoping for!

Meter Me

My electric service entrance passed inspection this week which means we should have power on at the house sometime next week, just in time for our annual bonfire! Ken came by and showed Scott and me how to wire up lights and we have the living room and dining room about ready to turn on. The switches are a bit tricky since I have some lights that are controlled by multiple switches and some that have dimmers, but we should have then finished up by the end of next week.

Failure

I optimistically called the building department last week to inspect my underground electric line and meter base. I stopped in after work to look at the permit and I am officially 50 bucks in the hole: re-inspection fee. So, I went in to talk things over with the inspector and I think I know what he wants. Actually, I am not too far off: just a grounding wire between a few boxes and a bonding screw. Scott and I can get that work done on Monday which means I can have the inspection on Tuesday and put a call in to the electric co. on Wednesday. We may have power by next weekend! How cool would that be!

Grading

After three failed attempts to dig a trench myself, I have officially hired my Uncle Jim to get my electric line in. He is also putting in my underground drainage for my downspouts, cleaning up my drive, and pushing a bunch of dirt around so I can plant grass. I am always amazed by how quickly a pro with the right tools can get a job done. If I can get some seed laid down soon, I may yet have a lush, green lawn to frolic in next summer!

Not Zapped Yet

Well, Scott and I put all the electrical boxes in yesterday. We debated over where to put them, but in the end we went with my obsessive, symetry driven way of doing things. We put in more outlets than I am required, but I would rather have too many then not enough. Our home in Waldo had a total of two outlets in the entire upstairs that served three rooms. There are 22 in the three bedrooms of our new house. That should do.

Well, Well, Well

New job, second honeymoon with Valerie, building a house. Yeah, life has been busy. Here is a summary of what we have been able to get done on the house the last few months: we dug the well in April and could be pumping water today if we had power to the house, the rough plumbing is in the floor and all we need to do is punch a 4 inch hole through the basement block to hook it up to the septic system, and the main electric line and panels are hooked up both outside and inside. I still need to dig a trench out to the utility pole and have the electric install their transformer, but after that, we should have power to the house. Scott and Ken have been a HUGE help the last few weeks, motivating me and showing me how to do all this stuff that I have never done before. Next week we will be starting to run the electrical circuits and hooking up the breaker boxes (I have two…a main and a genrerator backup panel). I get excited when I see good progress being made. Water lines and a set of stairs and we are about ready for the big inspection!

A Different Kind Of Spring Break Wasted

This week was spring break for me and I had planned to work, work, work on the house, but alas, my plans failed to produce the outcome I desired. I worked Monday night with Ken installing the guest shower stall and was planning to spend Tuesday and Wednesday plumbing bathrooms. I thought I would finish the week off trenching in my main underground electric service on Thursday and Friday. I ended up spending most of Tuesday and Wednesday trying to hook up a trailer hitch on my van (to no avail) so I could pull a trenching machine on Thursday, so I didn’t get my plumbing done that I wanted. Then, I had this machine lined up from Home Depot for $180 and thought I could use it to both trench and back fill my electric line project. Needless to say, that thing was worthless. It was lucky to trench 20 inches deep (it claimed to do 36), it leaked hydraulic fluid, and it got stuck every 2 minutes. I took it back once I realized I had been had and they were good enough not to charge me anything for my trouble. Ohio Edison did come out to set poles on Thursday, but I had to call and cancel their line installation today because I didn’t have my trenching done. So, I was able to do some plumbing today, but not a whole lot.

Wired

I have spent considerable amounts of time planning the electrical system of our new home and have decided to go with 2 breaker boxes for my circuits. The first will be a 200 amp panel that will feed the majority of circuits and the second will be a 100 amp panel with essential circuits housed within. My furnace, lights, well, sump pump, and septic aerator are all on this smaller, essential panel. I purchased a back feed safety switch that will allow me to use my generator to run this smaller panel when we have a power outage. The switch will only allow one power source to be active at a time. Either I am drawing from the grid or I am drawing from my generator. The switch won’t allow both. I know the linemen at Ohio Edison will appreciate that!

The other wiring that I have been pondering is the communication, data, and media wiring. Initially, I had thought about running a bunch of Cat6 network cable and RG-6 coax to every room, but as I have considered things more, I am leaning toward not installing any of this. One of the things that Valerie and I look forward to with our new home is a return to a simpler, less complicated life. We also have every intention of having our home be a haven for our children. I am not sure we can accomplish these things if we have tv & internet at the house. Let’s face it, the things of this world are invading every aspect of our culture (one need only try to take your children through the checkout line at Meijer to see what I mean) and I fear for the spiritual and moral development of my children if my own home has evil available at gigabyte speed.

One nice thing about not having media on demand is that hopefully we will be more judicious about choosing what we want to watch rather than having it chosen for us (I am referring to commercials and channel surfing). Nightly tv is already a common activity at the Burton home, but rarely do we watch live broadcasts (the Superbowl this year pretty much set me over the edge in terms of allowing my children to watch commercials anymore). We normally will pop in a DVD of The Waltons or Andy Griffith and enjoy an episode or two. I know it is old fashioned, but it is enjoyable nonetheless.

There are obvious things that will need to be sacrificed, however, if we are not to be a thoughtfully modern wired family. Email, news, research, and blogging will need to be done elsewhere, which obviously will be a bit of an inconvenience. Valerie and I had a short conversation about that, though, and we both agree that a short trip to a wi-fi hot spot (there are several withing a few miles of our home) would allow us to import our email and blog feeds to be read at home and email responses and updates to our personal blogs can be composed offline and simply sent/posted live the next time a connection is made. I know Valerie would probably enjoy her daily trip (read: time alone) to a coffee shop to sip an exotic tea and get her internet fix. It would probably help with time management as well if we had specific times that we were online. As it is now, we are free to surf anytime and many times that turns into all the time. Not good.

Hang On Loopy!

We are one step closer to having a heated/cooled house! We buried 1200 feet of polyethylene tubing in the back yard on Friday, fused them together, and stuck them through the basement wall. It was a perfect day and we started digging around 9:30 and were done by 1:00. We dug a header trench out from the house and then two side trenches for the main geothermal coils. We are using a horizontal loop and it is sized for about a 2 1/2 ton HVAC unit. That should be plenty for our 1344 square foot ranch, although we are heating the basement, too. We decided to wait on the ground loops for the other house until we see exactly what size we will need. I put some pictures on the photo page or you can start to go through them where the geo pictures start.

Basement Floor & Framing

I haven’t had a ton of time to work on the house the last few months due to the extra teaching at night I have been doing and the arctic like weather we had this winter. I managed to finish the under slab plumbing, pass another inspection, and pour the basement floor before the new year and since then I have been able to purchase most of the materials needed for the rough electrical & plumbing. I am trying to take my time to plan and install this stuff properly, but it is slow going.

At this point, the framing is done upstairs and I am aiming on having my rough-in finished by the end of May. Then, I can insulate & have the drywall installed in June. That leaves me with July to hang cabinets, install fixtures, and cover the floors. I know, its a lot, but I just think back to how much I got done last July. The house went from this to this in a little over 30 days so I am dreaming big again for this summer.

I put a few photos of the floor pour in the gallery. There are also pictures of how the upstairs looks at this point, too. If you want to see all the construction photos, you can view the thumbnails here.