There's no place like home

Jenn and I went on a brief vacation to Spain and Morocco while the house construction continued the last couple of weeks. If you have not traveled overseas recently, here is what it looks like most of the time:





Basically, globe trotting travel involves trying to sleep in very uncomfortable places, but eventually you get there and get to do interesting things like watching America's Cup matched from the a boat off the coast of Valencia.





I even got to visit the CUP itself:



Speaking of famous cups, this church, also in Valencia, has another cup that some people may have heard of, the holy grail.



Another reason for visiting Valencia was to get inspiration for the next house. I really liked this design, but Jenn may need some convincing:




As long as we are finally on the topic of construction, I should mention that while we were gone, the construction team made some significant headway on the project.

The most visible change in the house, is the addition of the windows. This is a huge step forward and turns a plywood palace with holes in its side into the shell of a real house:




The skylights also went in:




Sliding doors and French doors for the bedrooms also went in:





The team also started installing the radiant heating system, basically a system of tubing installed under the floors. When warm water is circulated through the white tubes, the heat is transferred from the tubes to the metal brackets holding the tubes and from there to the floors, gently warming the entire house without the need for a furnace, ducting and all the noise and dust of a forced air system.

Of course, warm water does not get into the tubes without the other part of the system that consists of a gas-fired boiler that can provide the hot water needs of a small hotel, a large stainless steel tank to hold the hot water, and enough pumps to operate a small refinery to circulate the water, all of which will be installed later.





Another addition to the house in the last couple of weeks is wiring for data, TV, and Speakers. Rather than pulling individual cables for each system, the team installs what is known as a "structured cable" that has all the individual cables, including optic fiber, wrapped into a single Orange bundle that can be installed in a single run. The A/V& Data team still needs to pull a few individual wires for speakers and analog telephone lines, but the structured cable handles pretty much everything else.





The team also started putting in the new drain pipe (partially buried black pipes shown in the center of the picture) and connecting the individual drains pipes to the main drain. The old drain shown on the left of the photo will be removed.



Here's how the individual drains from the kitchen and bathrooms above are connected to the new main drain:




In the meantime, the electrical wiring also continues:



And a large load of Copper pipes just showed up that will become the fire suppression (sprinkler) system for the house.



Next week: Keeping the house on a solid footing, putting in the sprinklers, the water heater, more windows, more plumbing, and building bridges.