The Dark Knight

R30 Fiber Glass for the roof

Abraham the Insulator, otherwise known as Battman, spent the day laying insulation in the roof, the sub-floor and all of the perimeter walls. I was hoping to avoid fiber glass insulation, but that's still the most cost-effective form of insulation, and in its R30 form it's what Battman used in the roof/attic space.

Kitchen and dining room, now with added snugness

After stuffing the R30 into every nook and cranny of the ceiling and the sub-floor, Battman also filled up all the perimeter wall bays with R19 EcoBatt, and by the end of the day the house felt warm and snug.

Stair windows surrounded by Wookiee entrails

That comfy-ness was also partly due to the expansive foam that Battman sprayed to seal any and all air penetrations around the windows and doors before he left in the Battmobile.

Corrugated Kynar siding being pieced together

Meanwhile, Hector and his mate were forging ahead with the exceedingly tricky Kynar steel siding. The lower flat panels now wrap around the front and the side of the building, several of the upper flat panels now grace the rear of the house, and the south-west side, which is the bedroom wall, is close to being finished.

Hector expects to complete the installation of the siding by the end of the week, but with rain forecast for both tomorrow and Friday I'm highly skeptical. As my mum used to say, we shall see what we shall see.

The Chewbacca Defence

My friend and colleague Jovanny staples the first EcoBatts into the sheer wall

Today marks another major milestone: the beginning of the end (in a good way). We've now embarked on the final stages of construction, starting with insulation: then drywall, priming, cabinets/counters/tiles, finished plumbing and electric, painting and finished floor.

The master bedroom is now warm, cosy, brown and green

We're using 500 sq ft of R13 EcoBatt insulation, bought from a Craigslist ad for $170.00, for the interior walls. EcoBatt is a green product from Knauf which combines sand ("one of the world’s most abundant and renewable resources"), post-consumer recycled bottle glass and ECOSE Technology (since you ask, it's "a revolutionary, new, formaldehyde-free binder technology, based on rapidly renewable materials instead of petro-based chemicals") to create "the next generation of sustainable insulation." Now isn't that sexy? As an added bonus "it doesn't contain phenol, formaldehyde, acrylics or artificial colors used to make traditional fiberglass insulation."

This is exactly what the inside of a Wookiee looks like

It looks kind of cool, but weirdly and rather unnervingly, when you cut it, it feels like you're a medical examiner living on Endor and conducting an autopsy on a recently murdered Wookiee called Chewbacca.

An Inspector Calls

Rain stopped play yesterday, but at least I was able to clean the ginormous windows

After losing a whole day yesterday thanks to torrential rain, the house was buzzing with activity today - Inspection Day!

Andrew the HVAC Guy and his assistant were running 4" vents from the dryer hook-up in the utility room to the 4" hole in the concrete basement wall that Hector drilled last week (this vent cleverly turns 90º downwards into the faux panel, so that it emerges invisibly underneath the panel). Additionally they added intake and outake vents to the utility room and ran them throught the floor joists to then emerge underneath the deck.

The fire sprinkler guy was running water through his system in advance of his inspection, and was concerned because the inspection involves pumping water at 200psi pressure through the pipes - nearly four times more than the regular 60psi that the system uses. He sounded a little like Scotty, warning Captain Kirk that "I can't hold her Captain, she's gonna blow!"

Hector was busy cutting Kynar for the bedroom window, and was nearly ready to start hoisting up the big corrugated panels onto that side of the house when I had to leave for work.

Danny the Plumber was doing a pressure test of his own, filling the big sexy Duravit Happy D bathtub with water to ensure that it would drain properly to the rear of the house - and it did.

And it was all good. Inspector Chai arrived and we passed our rough electrical and rough plumbing inspections; and the Fire Marshall visited after lunch and approved our elaborate and very expensive fire sprinkler system. Now we're ready to move ahead with insulation, and I'll be on site in the morning with my friend Jovanny to pack some green R13 EcoBatt insulation into the interior bays, and R19 EcoBatts into the basement ceiling/sub-floor.

Then it may finally be time to spend my first night at The Minnie House.

Don't Know Why (There's No Sun Up in the Sky)

A little more Kynar siding appears on the front of the house

Stormy weather. Another excuse for no-one but yours truly to work on the house today. Yes, it's raining, it's pouring, and the old man is probably snoring, but really, couldn't the guys find something to do? We're falling further and further behind schedule, and unless the house finds a way to build itself I don't know when it's going to be finished.

The fire sprinkler system in thankfully finished

On the plus side, the electrical wiring is now complete, as is the fire sprinkler system. The latter is unfortunately required here in Pacifica (it added over $8,000 to the cost of the house), and we're also required to install flashing strobe lights and sirens in both the inside and the outside of the house. That's not going to look good!

This mess of wires represents my entire distributed A/V system

Carlos the Alarmist came last week and installed the Bay Alarm security system (and he has to come back because the fire sprinkler guys cut one of his wires), and the A/V guys from Crawford Satellite & Electronics finished their pre-wire for all of the home entertainment system components. As you can see above, everything conveniently terminates in the media closet in the second bedroom.

Kynar flat panels at the front of the house

It wasn't raining yesterday so Hector the Framer was able to get a few more Kynar panels installed on the front and side of the house, and I noticed today that the first corrugated panel was also installed. I'll get a photo after the scaffolding is removed, assuming that the weather improves.

The kitchen, and the newly clean front entry sliding doors

A rainy day seemed like as good a time as any to start cleaning the massive (and very dirty) windows around the house while listening to Band of Horses. I managed to finish the two sliders in the living room and the front door, but I need to spend at least another 2-3 hours at the house this weekend to get the rest of the windows vaguely clean.

Next up is tomorrow's wiring/plumbing and sprinkler system inspection. Assuming we pass, we can move on to installing insulation around the house in preparation for the arrival of the drywall guy, who should start hanging drywall next week.

Can A House Trundle?

Hector core drills 4" vents through the concrete

I think it can, because the house is trundling along. Signs of progress here and there, but nothing earth-shatteringly exciting. Unless you find core drilling to be an erotic experience. Which I don't.

The retaining wall is finally finished and ready for backfill

The retaining wall, on the other hand, is one Sexy Beast (but not like Ben Kingsley as Don Logan...). It's essentially finished now, at long last, with spacers between the beams of pressure treated lumber to allow for drainage. Next step will be for Ken the Excavator to come in with his Bobcat and backfill to the top of the wall.

My new 58" cardboard TV!

Oh, wait, this is exciting too! The A/V guys marked out the spot for the new 58 inch Samsung 3D plasma TV, which I ordered from USAppliance.com at an outrageous price last week (outrageously low for such an amazing TV). The TV will be centered on the wall, but we weren't able to fit my big in-wall speakers into the bays between the studs, and as it's a sheer wall we can't cut any studs. So we're going to switch out the excellent NTIW28s from The Speaker Company (an online retailer that went belly-up earlier this year) for three much smaller Niles HD LCRs, which also come highly recommended.

Rough-in for a Bose in-ceiling speaker alongside a recessed can light

While Mike the Sparks and his intrepid gang of wily electricians finish the rough wiring for the entire house, the A/V guys finish wiring and setting the rough-ins for the eight pairs of Bose 191 in-ceiling speakers that will rock the house in a couple of months.

These look like Hobbit door compared to the giant ones upstairs

And, yes, sliding doors #6 & #7 are now installed in the basement, lending an air of sophisticated comfort that was otherwise missing to the lower half of the house.

The basement starts to look a little more cosy

I also removed the masonite sheets from the basement floor and threw them away, so the concrete floor now looks a thousand times better, even though it's hard to keep it clean during construction.

All six of the rear sliding doors are now installed

Today Hector had to use a Skil saw to cut away big chunks of the OSB above the sliders at the rear of the house, to enable Mike the Sparks to run cables and install the outdoor recessed puck lights into the 6" eaves. Those should go in tomorrow, although the rain may delay the process. And finally, a big clean-up crew came to the house today and worked their collective bollocks off removing waste, trash, materials and junk from all over the site. When the weather improves I will for the first time be able to get some great photos of the exterior of the house, unencumbered by construction detritus.

A Week of Nothing Much

Pressure treated lumber forms the framing for the entry ramp

Another frustrating week of nothing much. Still waiting for the replacement Kynar steel panels, which may (or may not) arrive tomorrow. I wanted the Tyvek wrap finished, but the crew said we've run out of wrap. They said they'd attach chicken wire to the exterior of the basement for the stucco application, but they don't have any chicken wire.

Finally - the sliding front door

They were going to install the basement sliding doors, but they don't have the equipment they need to first smooth out the concrete floor. They need to drill through the concrete for the last remaining vents, but they don't have the core drill. They probably could have built the blocking for the framing of the deck - if they had the requisite lumber.

Another beautiful Pacifica evening

In short, not much happened due to bad planning and lack of foresight, and as a result we're slipping further and further behind schedule. Time to kick ass and take names.

The Doors of Perception

A couple of problems on the home front. No-one could figure out why the Kynar window pans (which are designed to sit just below each window, provide a tapered sill, clip into cleats and then cover the top of a corrugated panel) wouldn't fit properly.

Well, funny story. After talking to Rocio, it turns out that, as we suspected, the window pans were actually manufactured upside down, with the 1 1/2" lip at the window, and the 3/4" lip at the faux panel on the outside, instead of the other way around.

The only solution is to have all of the window pan Kynar pieces re-fabricated and shipped out to us ASAP, although with a holiday coming up fast, ASAP isn't likely to be S enough.

The Kynar wasn't the only trouble today. There was also a slight problem with The Doors. Turns out that, for reasons I can't quite fathom, we have no way of securing the stationary door panels in place.

Jim the Window guy said we're supposed to screw three, um, screws through each door jamb and into the fixed panels, but there's simply no way to do it, so he's going to have to FedEx seven pairs of clips to us, even though they apparently don't belong with these particular doors. Weird, eh?

In other news, Hector the Framer had to cut an inch of concrete from the driveway retaining wall where it meets the Kynar trim at the front of the house, so that we have a clean, continuous line of steel all the way along the bottom. Which was, quite frankly, a pain in the arse.

In short, progress today was painfully slow as a plethora of problems were explained and agonized over. Tomorrow will be better.

And finally, at the end of a long day, it occurred to me that Murphy, of Law fame, was, without a doubt, a builder.

Ladies and Gentlemen... The Doors!

Door pans in place prior to installing the door frames

For the past few days Hector the Framer and the rest of the guys have been working on the frames for the rear sliding doors. We had to order door pans and wait for those to be delivered before work could even start.

A door frame is assembled in the second bedroom

Once the door pans were in place, the frames could be assembled, hopefully with everything connected correctly.

All of the frames in place, awaiting the doors

Then the frames were lifted into place. They have no nail fins, just what are called block frames, which nail directly onto the wood opening. Where the doors meet the steel posts there are wood shims, to provide thermal breaks between metal surfaces.

The assembly and installation of the sliding doors was certainly more complicated than it looked, and much more complicated than I imagined it would be. Grace Vycor weatherproofing had to be in place before anything else could be done.

After all of the frames were secured and made plumb and level, pieces of Kynar trim were installed above the door headers.

Finally, on the foggiest day I've seen in Pacifica thus far, the massive and incredibly heavy doors were carefully lifted onto their rails. I know they were incredibly heavy; I assume they were lifted carefully, although I wasn't there to witness it. Thanks to the douchebag who rear-ended my Prius with his gigantic, gleaming new Cadillac Escalade on Sunday, I spent the morning at the body shop.

The anodized aluminum Jeld-Wen Premium Series doors do look quite magnificent, and they have a seriously solid and meaty feel to them. We'll see over the coming years how effectively the LoE 366 glass protects the house and furnishings from the harsh rays of the sun.

Silver Kynar steel panels will provide a shiny finish for the house

With the rear sliding doors done (we still have to install the front sliding door and the pair of sliders in the basement - maybe tomorrow?), the guys moved on to the Kynar siding, and as with everything else, it seems, progress was frustratingly awkward and slow.

Eventually Jose was able to get the first silver panel to slide down the cleats and clip into the bottom trim, but not without making a cut here and a tweak there, and expending a considerable amount of energy. He was adding the second panel when I left for the day;  tomorrow it's my fervent hope and expectation that Jose and Hector will be able to fly through the remaining rear panels, and move on to the front of the house.

Jose adds a flat Kynar steel panel to the rear face of the house

Up on the Roof With The Blue Man Group

Hold-downs for solar panels from the future

While Hector the Framer and his crew were busy for a second day of constructing the door pans and frames for the big sliding doors at the back of the house, the guys from Dura-Foam spent the day doing their thing up on the roof.

I can't afford a solar panel system right now (plus, it would cost in the region of $11,000 after rebates, and I only expect to spend about $75.00 or less per month on gas and electric, so we're looking at a twelve or thirteen year return on investment) but I'd still like to be a good green citizen and go solar at some point, so I had the Dura-Foam guys install the hold-downs for some future photovoltaic panels before they sprayed the roof.

The Blue Man Group

Once they were finished with the hold-downs, they donned their blue man group outfits and freaky-looking masks and sprayed foam around all of the roof penetrations.

After that was done they let loose, and within a couple of hours an inch and a half of polyurethane foam covered the entire roof.

Wasn't guy on the right in The Empire Strikes Back?

I like the look of this. The foam provides a completely seamless roof, and has an R9 insulation value, so when we add batts in between the I-joists we should be able to easily meet and even surpass the required R30 for the roof.

A roof full of foam penises?

In fact the insulation properties of the foam roof are better than advertised: the light color is reflective so the roof will never get too hot, and because it's seamless there's no way for cold air to penetrate the building.

The finished roof in all its foamy glory

The sliders are taking longer than expected to install but they should all go in tomorrow, when many exciting pictures of The (post-Jim Morrison) Doors will undoubtedly adorn my blog post.