Supply Lines

The week after Thanksgiving the guys really outdid themselves. The supply lines bringing water into the house and to every faucet and toilet have to be routed to the right spots for hot and cold water and to places where the water can be shut off if necessary. They did all this in just two days.

The main valve area for shutoff and geothermal, water heater, water softener, etc. is in the garage. One nice feature is there is a loop of hot water pipe that goes all around the house and has about 20 gallons of volume if you add the volume up of all the hot water pipes encircling the house. This means that whenever you turn on a hot water faucet in the house there is already hot water there in the pipe no matter how far away you are from the hot water heater/source.

I say pipe...it really is a thick plastic tubing with foam insulation. They haven't used any actual metal pipe in any of the plumbing so far. It just feels more normal to call plumbing "pipes." But there are tubes everywhere now!

Pics:


Deep hole dug with a backhoe to route geothermal pipes under the stem wall


The main valve and pipe central is there on the left:


Look at all the pipes/tubes!



A two-foot or so trench was dug all the way from the house to the garage shop building to provide water service to the little building (toilet and sink). The septic for the garage/shop is separate from the house.





So that's it for the regular plumbing. Next is geothermal plumbing, inspection and then it's time for more cement!

Let the Plumbing Begin

The week of Thanksgiving the plumbers finally started their work. The original plumbers had some schedule problems, so we ended up getting plumbers that work for the same company that's doing our geothermal work. It ended up working out well because they work together sometimes and the guys who do the plumbing groundwork can better prepare for the geothermal equipment because they know what they will need when it's their turn to install the equipment.

So the plumbers go first. The plumbing at this stage is roughly separated into two parts: the septic and the supply. Supply is fresh water coming into the house and septic is...water going away from the house. Both of these stages need to be done before the slab is poured because the pipes go into the floor.

I've been told there are only two things a plumber needs to know:
1) Sh*t flows downhill
2) Payday is Friday
In reality these guys seem to know a lot more...although I'm confident all of the pipes are slightly tilted downhill. ;-)

Septic goes first. So using the plans as a guide the plumbers dig trenches and put in PVC pipes for sink, shower, bath, and toilet drains. All of the pipes are connected and flow into one large pipe section that goes out of the house under the stem wall to where the septic tank will be.





In less than three days the guys finished the septic pipes. When they got done laying down the PVC, they filled in the trenches around the pipes with sand for cushioning so as things expand nothing breaks and the sand will just give.

Vivi really liked the sand because apparently it was fun to hit with a stick. I told her to go ahead and pound sand.





So now the septic pipes are in and ready for the next step - plumbing for the water supply.






Typically the master bath has the most septic with two sinks, a shower, tub, and toilet




Bonus pics: Vivi found a hockey puck with "Copenhagen" printed on it. Must be some sort of hockey supply company. She proceeded to play hockey with it using her sand-pounding stick...

Storm Shelter Day

We live in Oklahoma so yeah, we're putting in a storm shelter!
Today a crew installed our storm shelter in the garage floor of the house.
The storm shelter is a pre-formed concrete "cube" (technically it's 5'x7' and the sides are angled so it's not technically a cube *snort*). The concrete is delivered in two halves with a built-in door in the top half and the shelter comes with a steel ladder.

First the site of the shelter was marked on the ground and wall to be perfectly clear:


Then a huge hole was dug out with a backhoe...the hole is about 7'x10' and at least 6 feet deep! The idea is to have the top of the shelter where the door hinge is right at the level of the garage slab or just above (so water/dirt does not pour in the shelter).




The complete shelter was delivered a couple of days ago. A specialized truck came with a hoist on a track that was made to lift the pieces and place them. The storm shelter was pre-formed with some threaded metal inserts placed in the concrete.


The truck backed up to the pieces and chains/bolts attached to the holes in the top shelter piece. Then the top was lifted off the bottom.




Then the bottom, which has steel loops molded into the bottom, was hoisted up with chains and hooks onto the truck.


Now the truck moves both pieces into place (hey there's a huge truck backed into our garage already!)


Now the truck reverses the process, lowering the bottom into the pit. The guys were really good about lowering it gently, riding the base down into the pit. Then they measured it relative to the height of the garage floor, leveled it and rotated it to be square in the corner.





Finally they used a pneumatic caulking gun and several tubes of sealant to put caulk all over the edge of the bottom shelter piece. Then they lowered the top onto the bottom for the final time, bolted the top to the bottom using the threaded pre-molded bolt holes, cleaned up the excess caulk, and bolted the ladder to the wall and floor inside the bottom!







With that I went back to work. The next step was to fill the rest of the hole in with dirt. Supposedly the plumber will be here Friday. Pics of that if he's there!

Stem Walls!

It's unbelievable to me how much progress can be made in a week. After so many months of preparation, it's hard to believe this is our house being built. I feel sorry for the sucker paying for all of this work. D'oh!

We generally only have time to check on the site during lunch so we miss a lot of stuff. By the time we got to the site, the dozer had already pushed the extra dirt from the excavation off to the north side, the pad was flat again, the footings were dry, the stem wall forms already measured and lined up, and a cement truck was already on site dumping concrete for the stem walls!

Stem walls are formed by pouring concrete into pre-made wooden forms that have been carefully measured and propped up. This cement will be the outside border of our foundation, the part you see from the outside even when the house is finished. Some parts of the floorplan border have been left without stem walls because they will be poured with cement at the same time as the foundation but will not be supporting walls, such as the screen porch and the garage door area.

Pics of stem wall forms and concrete pouring:






Bonus pic of the day - our ridiculously cute child pausing while playing with leftover slightly rusty rebar:


Next week, the plumber arrives. Stay tuned (I will try not to get any butt crack shots)!

Pouring the footings

Hard to believe but only a flash of time passed before everything was dug up, rebar placed, and the site was ready to be filled with cement for the footings.

Our builder called to let me know I should meet him on site because the cement trucks would be there around lunchtime.
On site he took a moment to trim and place a couple of pieces of PVC into the north and south footing trenches to be used as a path for plumbing into the foundation. The cement would be poured into the trench soon and the pipe would create a little hole to pass pipes though.

Here's our builder earning some $$:


Here's one of the foundation guys digging to make some room for the pipe. Lots of rebar in that trench.


Minutes later the first cement truck arrived. Our entrance is a bit steep so the driver had to back up the hill to keep the cement from spilling out the back!


Very quickly the guys got to work dumping the cement into the trenches. Then they smoothed the cement flat on top with some wood pieces. In all I think 9 cement trucks arrived, one after the other. Every other cement truck was directed to the opposite corner of the house so they could fill somewhat evenly from both sides of the house instead of dumping everything in the same area and trying to push cement around.
Some pics of the process:





Our genius dog Lucie even managed to fall into the wet cement of one of the footings and was shocked to suddenly be swimming. She could have just asked for a bath...

The cement only needs overnight to dry. The next morning a dozer would push all of the dirt hills from the footing/pier excavation to the side of the pad out of the way and it would be time for stem walls to be built and filled.