Day 212 - Lots of progress this week

(click any picture for larger view)

Sat Nov 5th. We went out to the building site today to see all the progress. Lots of it!

As mentioned on Thursday's Day 210 - Heavy Lifting entry, there are still a few things to do on the roof. This photo is the underside of the garage roof. Note the gap in the sheathing at the peak of the roof - this is to let the hot air escape from the attic through the ridge vents. The webbing on the long chords on one side is visible here - this provides support to the chords so they don't vibrate and fail under load, thereby causing roof failure.

Day 211 - here is the septic holding tank in position. It sure looks a lot smaller here than it did when I was standing beside it.

See photo from Wednesday - Day 209 - for comparison.

Here is the other end of the septic system. Lots of fine sand here...

It's nice to see progress on this, as it needs to be completed before freeze-up (still a few weeks off).


Now for the VSP for some of the trades...

VSP - Plumbing. Here you can see evidence of the plumbing progress. The plumbing connections are sticking up through holes planned out in the floor. There is lots of piping in the basement! I will take a photo of that another day.

More plumbing... This is the boiler, hot water storage tank, etc.

Charles did explain to me once how this all works, but that was a while ago and I have forgotten. I will need to get Charles to explain it again.

VSP - ventilation. The ductwork is almost all in. This was where another oversight reared its head. I had assumed the ductwork could all fit through the webbing on the Hambro steel trusses. It's obvious it can't. This is a disappointment because the ductwork significantly lowers the ceiling in the area that was planned for a media room.

The size of a media room is determined by the ceiling height (for optimum acoustic response), so a low ceiling means the room would shrink signifcantly. This means we will need to put the media room in another location, which is what Dave and Charles suggested. This isn't isn't necessarily a huge problem, but it will mean that we have to be extra careful about fastening any basement partition walls to the floor, so the Hambro tubing is not ruptured.

This HVAC system is large enough for us to be able to add an air conditioner later, if needed.