The main thing that happened in mid-late February was getting insulation in the rafters. Primarily for energy savings (but also providing heat protection and general convenience in attic access) we went with a ventless attic and foam insulation on the rafters. This means that instead of blown-in puffs of material or "pink stuff" fiberglass in the attic floor (which happens after drywall is placed on the ceilings) we opted for a sprayed-in foam. This foam is sprayed from a compressed air paint-gun-type apparatus and comes out as a liquid, but then quickly expands and dries into a solid. This is like the spray-foam cans you can buy at the hardware store for fixing small leaks or plugging leaks around door/window installations.
So after the whole attic roof area is covered in this foam, the wiring and plumbing for the house is still exposed and easy to get to, and no itchy pink stuff. Not to mention the insulative properties of the foam: the attic should be less than 10 degrees warmer than the living areas during the summer. This lets you do away with vents in the attic as well (obviously vents would actually mess up the benefits of insulation and climate of the attic).
Here are some pics of foam in the bonus room as well as where they started in the attic. You can see in a finished room like the bonus room where they need to install drywall, they scrape along the rafters so that the foam is not protruding where it would interfere with the drywall laid flat on the rafters. In the attic though they just let the foam expand completely and don't have to trim it.
Another issue we ran into in February was a torrential two days of rain, which exposed some weak spots in our gravel road. We knew this would be an issue eventually because the ground where we originally built parts of the road had a natural runoff area that turned into a small creek when it rained. We were lucky for months as the rains we got were pretty mild and didn't make too many ruts in the road. But then we got two days of rain, with the worst being a couple of inches of rain in one night. This kind of volume flooded the road and created huge ruts and valleys as the water rushed downhill. So it forced our hand and we added a drain pipe across the road to force the water to the other side under the road instead of flowing over it.
This stainless steel pipe (commonly called a "tin horn") is 40 feet long, and we just called up the man who did our road and house pad and he came out and his crew trenched the road and placed the tin horn, and then he re-graded all of the gravel so you could never tell anything had ever happened!
Good as new!
Finally in late February we had two other major developments: electricians hooked up a temporary power pole and meter to the transformer, and we got a water well dug!
Since these pictures they have connected the power pole to the well pump for fresh water and have run a line all the way to the house for some electicity in the house.
The well doesn't look like much but it's 300 feet deep and flows >40 gallons a minute!
This past week in early March there was much activity again as the electicians went to work and plumbers finished their work on the faucet valves and gas lines. We've done a few walkthroughs already, picking final locations and amounts of plugs, switches, and lighting spots. This is tedious and somewhat nerve-wracking as you always feel like you're forgetting something and you know when all is done you will realize you forgot to add a plug, switch or light somewhere. But you've got to try and get it as close as possible! The contractors go around with permanent markers and draw locations of things directly onto the framing wood or cement slab. Then they go nuts pulling wire everywhere!
Preliminary gas and electrical wiring in the kitchen:
Switchboxes at the patio door:
Master bathroom shower valves. Note the metal plates on the framing studs to prevent the next installers (drywall) from putting nails through electrical or plumbing lines:
Tons of wires all run to the area where they will install the breakers and meter. The lone orange wire is 220V for the dryer:
Gas inlet elbow into the house. The gas (propane) is run through a flexible metal pipe coated in plastic (the yellow pipe) to the fireplaces and cooktop.
Vivi's bathtub is already installed:
For the shop, we only drew cold water to it from the house. We're going to wire an electrical outlet to the space above the bathroom and install a small 6-7 gallon electric water heater. So the black insulated line runs up above the bathroom to connect to the heater once installed and then back to the hot water faucet on the tub sink to be installed.
So next week the electricians continue their installations including working on the shop installing 220V connectors for various toys ;-)
Also the low-voltage wiring should be done next week (ethernet and alarm).
More pics as things develop!
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