Steady, Steady!

Since the last post, the progress has been mostly incremental and it is hard to make it look too dramatic, but here goes:

The most amount of progress has been in the back yard where the excavation for the deck foundation is progressing apace. The excavation crew have been working constantly to prepare the footing for the perimeter wall -- they are even working on Sunday.




The removed dirt is transported to the Grotto via the ad hoc dirt chute and from thence removed to unknown destinations.

Another bit of progress is the addition of tile to the floor of this shack in the back yard:

which will house, among other things, the impressive 120-Gallon water tank in this box:


Finally, the garage is cleaned up and prepared for the next concrete pour.



Now if that was not sufficiently exciting, this weekend my current neighborhood was host to an annual event known as the Folsom Street Fair. For those of you who may not be familiar with this event, the somewhat innocent term "fair" does not really apply to this particular bacchanal. Here are some of the characters we encountered at the fair:






I am pretty sure there are not a lot of county fairs that feature whipping booths. I hope to have more progress to report next week.

There is No Such Thing as Too Much Concrete

As nature abhors a vacuumm, so does the Earth abhor an empty trench and demands that it be filled with something. So what could we possibly use to satisfy the need; the need to fill?

Starting at the beginning, here are the trenches:





And then this truck happens by ...

and the concrete flows into one trench, then the other like the spring thaw. Here's the trench leading to the stairs:







And here's the trench on the opposite side of the garage:







And here's what the concrete looks like after setting for a day:





This is certainly an improvement over the ricketty board and plywood arrangements that required lightness of foot and precise balance to cross from the front door to the stairs without getting impaled on rebar. The fact that it is also holding up the building is a definite bonus as well.

And there is a lot of progress all over the house. First, large slabs of drywall material are delivered and staged througout the house:





Some of the drywall material is not exactly dry any more. An early rainstorm found its way into the house and onto the waiting drywall:



The Teak flooring is also sitting in the house getting acclimated to its new home:





Other than the concrete, which always gets top billing, the next exciting bits of news are from the plumbing department, and here they are:

Both bathtubs are installed and plumbed and wired in.

This is the master bathroom soaking tub:



with the tub filler connector installed in the ceiling:



And the second bathtub is also ready for some (simulated) soaking action:



In addition to the tubs, the plumbing of the Mansoon Room, or as it is known in the plans, the master bathroom shower, continues apace:

The electronically controlled mixing valve is connected to the Water Tiles:



And this is what makes it rain in the shower:



Needless to say, this is bit more complex to plumb than your average shower:



And to keep all this supplied with plenty of hot water, the plumbing and wiring for the boiler and the associated pumps and other machinary was put into the boiler shack:





And the Grotto's wall is getting ready to receive all the control panels and circuits for the systems in the house.



Next week: things get steamy, more plumbing, and some of the most dramatic elements of the house start to take shape.

Can we move in yet?

Our projected move-in date, September 1, 2007, came and went and we still have some major work ahead of us, but progress is being made. Compared to the rapid pace of framing however, the current pace seems glacial. I am told that the work is progressing as fast as possible and the seemingly slow pace is only an optical illusion, or more accurately, an optical delusion.

Let's see if it is a delusion. Here's what has transpired since the last blog entry in late August:

There are still two large trench-sized holes in the garage waiting for concrete, one of which is still being dug with a jackhammer:



The other trench actually has some rebar in it and looks ready for concrete:



The plan is to pour the concrete early next week, after the required inspection, of course.

Another bit of progress is the installation of some of the pocket doors. Now you can actually get some privacy by closing the door, assuming, of course that you also have an actual wall in the room. Some of the pocket doors have a translucent glass insert to admit light into the room while maintaining privacy:









As cool as this is, not every door is in its assigned post yet and some, like this fellow, are waiting for their orders to find out where they will have to hang around for the next few years:



One possible use of all this privacy is to take a relaxing bath, and just in time for this, we got the bathtubs:



Before anyone can take a bath, the tubs have to be installed and plumbed in:





No, these are not the world's shallowest bathtubs. These are copper pans that will sit underneath the bathtubs to catch any drips from the heater and pump and other machinery that is tucked in under the bathtubs. When it's all done, the master bathtub would look something like this:



If there is no time for a hot bath, maybe a steam bath may be in order:



Here is an artist's rendition of what steam relaxation might look like once the system is installed and operating:



Of course, if neither bubbling hot water nor steam is exactly right, a vigorous shower may do the trick. To that end, an electronically controlled mixer valve will control 7 shower heads strategically located throughout the shower enclosure. Here is the business end of the valve:



And this is what replaces all the individual valves to control the water temperature and flow to each shower head. This is probably the only shower valve that has a network connection:



and here is Kohler's idea of a shower:



Of course, our shower will not be this elaborate, but it should be very relaxing.

All of this is going to need a lot of power, and here is the electrical distribution panel that is going to supply all the power:



This smaller panel connects some of the more important circuits of the house, for example the shower controller, to a battery back up system to permit us to shower during a power outage.




Speaking of wiring, the Grotto, aka systems central, is coming along nicely and concrete walls are being framed, including all the drain pipes.











And here is the master plan for all the other control panels and systems that will inhabit the far wall of the Grotto as each system is installed.



Another area of progress is the back yard, where a fair amount of dirt and debris has been removed and hauled off through the Grotto. To appreciate how much material has been taken away, compare the following three photographs, taken from the same vantage point, the floor of the master bedroom looking out the double doors leading, currently, to a precipitous 30' fall to the concrete patio below:





The wooden structure in the middle of the picture is an ingenious chute that allows the dirt to be moved by gravity alone to a wheel barrow waiting in the Grotto to be transported to a waiting dumpster. This ad hoc piece of engineering is a very elegant solution to the problem of moving lots of dirt from the backyard and through the house. Here is what it looks like:





And this is business end of the chute that discharges the dirt into a wheel barrow parked under it. There is even a "stop shoveling" signal that consists of a wire and a couple of empty bottles.



When the wheel barrow is almost full, the guy in Grotto pulls the wire to stop the guy at the other end from sending in any more dirt. This is really cool!



Unfortunately, everything that came off the back yard does not fit into the wooden chute. The branches, roots and other similar detritus, have to be removed later:





Back inside the house, the industrial strength in-line blower that will exhaust the cooking fumes from the kitchen is tucked away in the laundry closet on the second floor:





The other part of the venting system is a duct silencer, very similar to a car's muffler, is installed in the kitchen to reduce the sound of the 1200 Cubic Feet of air being sucked out of the kitchen every minute. With the thrust generated by a couple of these things, and a very long extension cord, you could get a small airplane off the ground.



Seems like a lot of progress, but Jennifer is still looking for even one room that is completed and ready to move in -- no such luck!



Next week: More concrete, flooring, drywall and more structural elements. And speaking of flooring, if you ever wondered what 3600 Sq. Feet of hardwood flooring looks like in the warehouse, wonder no more: (Note the warehouse worker in the shot for reference)



They are delivering all of this on Monday. Unless Fai can turn the house into a Tardis, I am not sure where all of it is going to go.