Groovy Sputum

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.

The List

Valerie and I celebrated our 10th anniversary on January 2, 2009, with very little fanfare. We did go out to eat, but that was about it. We tossed around the idea of going on a big trip together to a warm place for a week, but we decided not to in light of the fact that we would rather put the money toward finishing the house and getting moved in sooner. We did manage to get away, though, over Valentine’s Day weekend and had a combo celebration for our anniversary & my birthday.

We decided to try out the Mohican State Park Lodge and headed out on Sunday afternoon. On the way, we picked up a $5 bottle of wine & the movie Fireproof at a Wal-Mart. How could we not have a truly romantic getaway with those in tow?

One of the things I decided to do special for Valerie for this weekend was make a list of the first 99 things that popped in my head that I love about Valerie. Hey, it was an anniversary celebration. While I am not going to share all of the things on the list, I will tell you a few:

#25. That you can read a 1385 page novel in 3 ½ hours
#55. That you understand me when I talk about the non-linear relationship between pendulum arm length and oscillation period and could graph this relationship and find its derivatives
#57. That you can spell chrysanthemum and onomatopoeia
#74. That you can make a gourmet meal with Aldi ingredients
#94. Your smile

I called this list 99TILAY (Things I Love About You). I know, it was a cheesy, sappy, and desperate attempt to be romantic, but I discovered something as I compiled it: Valerie was made for me. Seriously, God said to Jesus back in 1976, “Hey, this guy, uh…Luke, he needs a wife. Here’s the specs on what he needs. I know…let’s make her be from Athens County, that would be a hoot!”

I think I have always known that Valerie was designed for me and only me, but I guess after 10 years of marriage, I had somehow relegated that fact to the back of my mind and taken it for granted. What shocked me even more as I made the list is that I didn’t even know many of the things on it when I married Valerie. The question is was she this way when we wed and I am just now seeing it, or did she become these things to me after 12 years of loving me? It’s probably a bit of both, but it really doesn’t matter. I’m just glad that God knew what I needed even before I did and brought her to Lynchburg in 1996. I wonder what my list will look like 10 years from now?

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.