the yard

As Neil works on the house, I've been working on the yard.  In May we brought in 15 yards of compost to amend our clay soil. That's the lovely dark brown above, on top of the not so lovely clay.  First we tilled the clay soil. Next we brought in the compost and spread it from the conveyor on the truck.  Much easier to do that than spreading it by shovel and wheel barrel.  It cost us an extra $300 to have this company pick up the compost and spread it.  Totally worth it.

Then we tilled the soil again to mix it all together.  After all that, I brought in a couple loads of medium mulch to cover the soil. I will be doing my main planting in the fall, but want to stop the weeds from overtaking.  Every place I had not put the mulch down over the winter, I had to pull out 1'-2' grass/weeds.  So this time it will all be covered.

In preparation for our rain garden, we went rock shopping at Marenakos. I had done a trip back in February to scope it out.  It's an amazing place.  All kinds of rocks and hardscapes. 

 We rented a truck that could carry and dump the load.  This is about 6.5 tons of rock.  3.5 tons of 1 man boulders and 3 tons of river rock.

Next posts will be about the rain garden. 

plumbing and ventilation

We have been making steady progress and I need to catch up a bit on the blog, so I'm going to do a few posts this week.  Back in May, the plumber came and installed our rough-in plumbing...cutting lots of holes in Neil's framing.  We have since passed our plumbing inspection.

While the plumber was working, Neil installed our fancy Swiss ventilation system. (with a little of my help running the ducting) Because we are building a tighter house with more insulation than code requires, our heating loads are predicted to be low. It is also important that we bring in continuous fresh air.  Instead of losing the heat in the air we exhaust, we installed a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) and specifically a Zehnder ComfoAir 200. This is the most efficient residential unit available to us.  It was also recommended by the energy consultants, Imagine Energy, that we worked with a year ago.  They did an energy analysis on the building and then made specific recommendations for our heating, water heating and ventilation.  I will do a more in-depth blog post on this at a later time.

Instead of having individual exhaust fans in the bathrooms and laundry, we have exhaust registers that are connected to the HRV.  We then have supply registers in the bedrooms and living spaces.  Before we inhabit the house, we will have the Zehnder rep come to the house to balance the system. 

There were a few reasons we ended up installing the system ourselves.

1. We had a hard time finding a mechanical subcontractor that had heard of it. Most tried to sell us on multiple spot Panasonic HRVs, which would have meant more holes in our building envelope, plus they are not nearly as efficient.  But we did end up installing one of them in the apartment portion of the house since we want a completely separate system there and it's a smaller space.
2. The subs that did quote us on installing the Zehnder wanted a ridiculous amount for it.
3. We both watched an install video and realized we could do it.  Especially since we were going to use the special Zehnder ducting shown above.  Our system was designed by Zehnder America and they were very helpful in answering our many questions.

Originally we were going to install the unit in the garage, but decided to keep it in conditioned space and put it in our conditioned attic above our bedroom and bathroom.  If you look closely you can see a grey box with 2 holes which will be connected to dampers that have the supply and exhausts ducts connected to it.

front door options

We need to choose our exteriors doors so that Neil can install the final casing and then put a temporary door up to secure the house.  Many of the contemporary door styles, just don't fit with what we want...and the ones we really like are over $3000 for one door, like 3 or 5 below.  We like the use of metal on those two and our thinking is to do something ourselves, like #6.  Start with a $600 fir door (which is really a fir veneer with a solid core of other wood) and then route out and apply a metal panel to the exterior.  Even thinking of laser cutting our address number into the top panel.






























I used photoshop elements for the study above.  I took a still image from the model that i had created for the drawings in Archicad and grabbed images off webpages of the front doors and replaced the doors with the different styles.  The lighting isn't perfect, but it very quickly shows the options.

pot of Chapucas

windows all in!

Spring has arrived and our windows are all in.  We have had some issues with them that took a bit to get sorted out, but they are now all installed and looking good.  Many of them are casement windows below with an awning above.  This will allow for upper ventilation without being a security issue.

The gutters are also on and look great! Love how they just disappear.  Downspouts are just temporary till we finish the siding.

The above picture shows our cat door to the deck...just a slider window.  Being indoor cats, they are going to love having access to the upper deck!

The windows are Milgard Ultra series which is all fiberglass. We evaluated a few different windows and settled on Milgard because they are a local company (manufactured in Tacoma, WA), their great customer service and lifetime warranty for as long as we own the house.  Also other window packages were coming in higher and with 50+ windows, cost was a major consideration. 

We went with the flat black exterior, but it would have cost an additional $5,000 to do black on the inside, so we decided we were all right with the white.  They are also triple glazing, with 2 panes of Low-E coating on the glass to give us a lower U-value averaging .26. Surprising this only added about $500 to the entire $30,000 window package.  Triple glazing also helps with sound control from the busy street....but it adds considerable weight to the window...especially with our larger windows.  Luckily during install, the window sashes were removed for easier handling.

gutter choices

 The roofers are almost done, so we need to decide on gutters today.  We are going with the "fascia" type on the left.  I did not want to go with the typical k style gutter seen on the right.  Too busy. 

construction update

 We are moving right along.  Exterior framing is done and the roof is in the process of being installed.


The kitchen is to the right and dining to the left leading out to the deck.

Our 8'x8' slider was an interesting feat in getting it up to the second story.  It took 4 guys on scaffolding to lift it over the parapet wall. I wish I had pictures of that.

It's exciting to have the upper deck framed in.  Fun to imagine hanging out on it in the future.

The light gray material is TPO which is a thermoplastic polyolefin single-ply roofing membrane. Underneath the TPO is 2" of rigid insulation and then there will be 9" more of blown-in insulation in the joist bay. 

All the water that lands on the deck will drain to the scupper in the upper corner in the above picture.  On top of the TPO we will have concrete pavers on pedestals at the level of the main room. 

Above is the skylight and windows in our shower/tub area.  Below is looking out the 2nd bedroom.

Before the composition roofing goes on, we had a ice & water shield installed as extra protection since we have a low slope roof  (3:12 pitch )

And windows are starting to go in! Here is our first layer of weather protection.  Tyvek DrainWrap next up 1-1/2" of rigid insulation.