Week 4 continued "MEP" on the schedule, plus a bit of continued framing. Plus another day off for icy roads, for good measure (who ever would have thought Houston would have 2 bad weather stay-off-the-road kind of days within 5 days?!?).
We spent that entire Sunday (1/26) installing low voltage "boxes"
throughout the house and running
coaxial and cat6 cabling between our structured media panel in the hall
closet and each drop: 8 drops for a total of 15 lines run. The
contractor offered to
do it, but any hard bends in the wire could ruin the cat6, so we chose
to do it ourselves (after we removed the cat5e that we had run back in
a very hot July 2001). That was a long day and I'm thankful that Roy was willing to walk
around an attic with only joists for support, to staple up the wires.
We still need to run new wires to the back of the house, but with the
big pile of dirt in the master bedroom closet (from excavating the
bathroom drain area), we decided to wait. But it turns out it was a good
thing we got most of the lines run on Sunday, as they installed HVAC
ductwork on Monday, which leads us to....
We did our standard
mini walk-through that Monday night. There were
still some electrical things out of place, but they had corrected some others. Our walk revealed that they had finally
moved our whole house air cleaner, a Trion Air Bear that we had
had for almost a decade - a single 5-inch pleated filter that serviced all of the return air ducts
instead of having individual thin filters at each grille, and only had
to be changed once a year. So we looked over to
where it should be installed, between the heater and the return air
ducts, and nope, it wasn't there. They had installed a return air
plenum and sealed that up.
Well, that didn't bode very
well, so we went outside to the dumpster, climbed up on the outside of
it, and dug around the inside until we found what we knew we would find -
our Trion Air Bear bent up and discarded like so much trash!!
Needless
to say, that generated an e-mail to LCI. It was actually the 3rd
email before 7am on Tuesday morning. The 1st concerned securing the new, full water pipes
against damaging freezes, and the 2nd was yet more arguments about the
electrical system and what they (electrical sub) think they get to bill us for as
additional work. About the only thing I like about our architect is that
his standard project specification includes clauses like, and I quote:
"Verify the capacity of the existing electrical service to the house.
Additional panel space is available but adequate capacity should be
determined prior to submitting a bid." So for them (electrical sub) to
decide now, 4 weeks into the project that we need a new panel is a
"fine, but we're not paying for it" talk (yet to be held). It is,
amusingly, the exact same amount that he wanted to charge us to rewire
the entire house and we hadn't agreed when they were full steam ahead
ripping everything out, so that became their cost to bear, not ours. (The resolution on this did wind up us paying for a sub-panel. Yes, the contract really does cover us, and yes, they really didn't bid accurately. But, sometimes you just give a little bit for goodwill. Current NEC is ridiculous in many areas.)
But the fact that they discarded the Air Bear was simply insane. Dan
had addressed some of the other pieces of email (plumbing and
electrical), but when he got to the HVAC, I can imagine that he used
words, under his breath if nothing else, that they are not allowed to
use. Here's his response to us: "WOW- I am almost speechless here. I
have no idea why it would have been tossed as we discussed placement of
it yesterday. I certainly assure you it will be replaced. Let me
investigate." It was replaced and they did have to rework the plenum, too.
We wonder how much more profit could be made by the subs and/or the contractor if they weren't constantly doing work that had to be ripped out and done again, correctly!
Friday, February 28, 2014
Week 3 - Taking Shape
Week 3 was "MEP" on the schedule, plus continued framing. What's MEP? Turns out it is Mechanical (HVAC), Electrical, and Plumbing.
Most of W3's accomplishments involved the infrastructure of the house - for plumbing, that meant running all new water lines in the attic and walls, new water supply line between the meter and the house, new plumbing ventilation stacks, new drains and P-traps where required by our building plan or current building code.
We are utilizing a PEX manifold only for the cold water distribution in the house, because we wanted to have a more sensible hot water solution than running water down the drain waiting for it to get hot. For the hot water distribution, we specified what is called "structured plumbing system", wherein a hot water line runs in a loop through the attic, and smaller lines drop down from the loop to supply each fixture. An "on-demand water circulation pump" is installed near the water heater to circulate water through the loop, and it is activated by a simple doorbell-wired button installed at each hot water location.
The pump we chose, after much research, was the Chilipepper CP2011. We are very excited about the potential savings not only in water down the drain, but of time spent waiting for the water to get hot in the master shower, which is as far away in the house as you can get from the water heater! (This water pump was originally designed as a minimally-invasive water conservation solution for older homes. Read up on it if you are interested.)
We did pretty well in our plumbing design, requiring only the master shower drain to be relocated, which did require busting through the foundation. The master toilet, although not moving, had an issue with drain route (or something), which required them to bust through the perimeter of the foundation (another thing altogether, and they figured out how to minimize that impact--if you have to cut through the rebar reinforcing the concrete foundation perimeter, that is apparently a Bad Thing, and they were able to narrowly avoid having to do so). All other plumbing rearrangements were able to utilize existing drain lines (and therefore, roof penetrations,)!
Because we are installing real hardwood floors, the floor "height" will increase by 1.5 inches. What does that mean? Every doorway in the house must be raised 1.5 inches, even those doors whose position/type did not change. For all of the new doors/doorways, they simply framed the opening 1.5 inches higher. For the rest of the doors, they have to raise the existing door framing. This includes all of the exterior doors, so although we saw the new doors in the laundry room and front entry briefly last week, those came down so the openings could be reframed. Since we reversed the hinge side of the entry door, they have to use the new door, but it is now securely encased in sheathing to protect it from damage til it needs to be painted. The laundry room door is back to being the old steel door.
The one nod to the "current style" common in the remodeled houses in our area is the arched doorway. We changed the square opening between the front entry and the living room to be a cased arched opening. We think it looks nice already and defines the space with more panache.
Also notable in the living room is the specialty electrical box we purchased for the TV wall. It handles electrical and cabling (coaxial, cat6, and whatever audio wire you want) in a recess, which allows a flat panel TV to be installed flat against the wall. Although we don't own a TV, we figure there's a pretty good chance the next owners will. :)We also decided to install a similar box, but without the space for audio cables, in the master bedroom.
Most of W3's accomplishments involved the infrastructure of the house - for plumbing, that meant running all new water lines in the attic and walls, new water supply line between the meter and the house, new plumbing ventilation stacks, new drains and P-traps where required by our building plan or current building code.
We are utilizing a PEX manifold only for the cold water distribution in the house, because we wanted to have a more sensible hot water solution than running water down the drain waiting for it to get hot. For the hot water distribution, we specified what is called "structured plumbing system", wherein a hot water line runs in a loop through the attic, and smaller lines drop down from the loop to supply each fixture. An "on-demand water circulation pump" is installed near the water heater to circulate water through the loop, and it is activated by a simple doorbell-wired button installed at each hot water location.
The pump we chose, after much research, was the Chilipepper CP2011. We are very excited about the potential savings not only in water down the drain, but of time spent waiting for the water to get hot in the master shower, which is as far away in the house as you can get from the water heater! (This water pump was originally designed as a minimally-invasive water conservation solution for older homes. Read up on it if you are interested.)
We did pretty well in our plumbing design, requiring only the master shower drain to be relocated, which did require busting through the foundation. The master toilet, although not moving, had an issue with drain route (or something), which required them to bust through the perimeter of the foundation (another thing altogether, and they figured out how to minimize that impact--if you have to cut through the rebar reinforcing the concrete foundation perimeter, that is apparently a Bad Thing, and they were able to narrowly avoid having to do so). All other plumbing rearrangements were able to utilize existing drain lines (and therefore, roof penetrations,)!
Because we are installing real hardwood floors, the floor "height" will increase by 1.5 inches. What does that mean? Every doorway in the house must be raised 1.5 inches, even those doors whose position/type did not change. For all of the new doors/doorways, they simply framed the opening 1.5 inches higher. For the rest of the doors, they have to raise the existing door framing. This includes all of the exterior doors, so although we saw the new doors in the laundry room and front entry briefly last week, those came down so the openings could be reframed. Since we reversed the hinge side of the entry door, they have to use the new door, but it is now securely encased in sheathing to protect it from damage til it needs to be painted. The laundry room door is back to being the old steel door.
The one nod to the "current style" common in the remodeled houses in our area is the arched doorway. We changed the square opening between the front entry and the living room to be a cased arched opening. We think it looks nice already and defines the space with more panache.
Also notable in the living room is the specialty electrical box we purchased for the TV wall. It handles electrical and cabling (coaxial, cat6, and whatever audio wire you want) in a recess, which allows a flat panel TV to be installed flat against the wall. Although we don't own a TV, we figure there's a pretty good chance the next owners will. :)We also decided to install a similar box, but without the space for audio cables, in the master bedroom.
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