Day 265 - Status updates

Wednesday December 28th, 2005

These photos were taken at the start of the day. Here you can see that the soffit and fascia has been started. The guys started on Tuesday and the job should take a full four days.

The drywalling crew came in on Saturday, Christmas Eve, and partially drywalled the garage. Yesterday they boarded the kitchen, pantry, and part of the master bedroom. Today (Wed), they completed boarding the master bedroom closet and bath, and did the solarium.

Meantime the crew has been busy. Yesterday, Dave and I were the only ones in, as Chris, Sean and Patrick took an extra day off to recover from turkey feasting.

On Tuesday, Dave installed the pocket door kit for the master bathroom (twice! it was 3/4" too low the first time - ooops!) while I installed the extra cable outlet for the great room and the sound insulation in the master bedroom. Charles came along and the three of us cleared the tools, materials, and debris out of the master bath and closets so the boarders could get in there. We proceeded to the great room where I installed the insulation around the powder room and the BR2 wall. Dave added a bit of strapping to the back wall of the solarium, levelled the ceiling and built the fan base shown here.

Today (Wed), the boarders completed the master bedroom closets and part of the master bath (except the cement board for the shower), and started in the solarium. Meanwhile the crew was busy with: completing remedying the leaky vapour barrier in the pot lights, installing strapping on the porch for the soffits, levelling the ceiling in the great room, office, and bedroom 2. Meanwhile, I continued with installing the insulation. One more day of insulation installation should see that task completed.

Day 260 - a day of many accomplishments

Sharon, feeding the hungry insulation blower. Sharon was helping Thorston because his regular crew called in sick that day. Thorston dragooned his wife (Sharon) to come in and help him since he had made a commitment to us to get the insulation done. Since it was Friday Dec 23rd, and Sharon had a lot of things to do, she would have preferred being elsewhere....

Thorston, placing the blown cellulose. It was dark in the attic, and flash is not that powerful, so I pointed out Thorston using the pink arrow.





Patrick spent the day identifying air leaks in the pot light vapour barriers, and remedying them. Here Patrick is doing a QA test with a smoke pencil. If the smoke just hovers, there is no air leak, if it blows away immediately - there is a leak that needs to be patched.

Every single pot light leaked air, some more significant than others, so it took a fair bit of time to remedy the issues with them.

Sean, installing the sound insulation in the wall between the kitchen and master bedroom.






Dave and Sean, acting like their normal selves.







This is the wall between kitchen and master bedroom with the sound insulation in place - this photo was taken from the kitchen side.

Day 259 - A hectic day

These photos are blurry since I accidentally had the camera set on the close-up setting - sorry about that!

Chris has been sick all week, which has obviously been a problem for getting ready for the drywall.

The truck with the drywall arrived around between 7:30 and 8am. This is Guy, operating the lift to unload the drywall. There was almost 20,000 square feet of drywall here. Guy lifted a load of drywall close to the door, and a couple of guys from the delivery crew put it onto a cart and moved it to the various rooms, where they unloaded it. This meant that the crew had to spend time cleaning up each room so the drywall could go in there.

Here's the drywall arriving at the door.

Once the main level was tidied up, we had to tackle the basement. It was very very messy. First we swept where the drywall was going to be stacked and then started sweepiing up all the garbage. We filled two huge bags. Once the cleanup was completed, I installed the alarm wiring for basement windows where I wanted the wires concealed.

Meanwhile Sean and Patrick started remedying the vapour barrier seal around the potlights again. I brought in my smoke pencil which was helpful to confirm that the fixes had been effective. Sean was pulling back the tape which hadn't sealed, applying a bead of acoustic sealant between the layers of plastic, and then screwing a piece of strapping on top of it all to sandwich the seal.

At the same time, Dave was working on shimming the furring strips so we can have a level ceiling instead of a wavy one that would make you sea sick.

And in the basement, the drywall boarding crew, 3 young lads and their boss Paul, started applying the drywall board.

Sean and Patrick discovered the pot light over the desk needed a backer board, so Sean climbed up into the attic to fasten it. Just then, Larry came in to apply the aluminum trim over the garage doors. A 2x2 was fastened to the outside of the garage door jamb, but was unforunately too long on the sides and drooping on the horitzontal part on the top. So Dave and Sean had to drop everything to fix that. So they could do this, I removed the plastic that was fastened up over the doors (see photo from Day 255 - Dec 18th) and then reapplied it on the inside of the doors once the aluminum was in place.

Since the drywall boarders will likely apply the drywall on a couple of the walls in the garage after completing the basement, I started to move the 1x4 furring strips because there was a big pile of stuff that was in their way. As it was getting dark I didn't get this finished. This will be my first task tomorrow. My next task will be to install an alarm wire for the kitchen door and then a cable outlet in the great room.

There were other things that happened too - moving a switch in the wrong place, discovering some steel studs that were no longer fastened as the top track had been cut away completely, and I am sure there were another 1,001 things too that were done. So... today was very hectic, with the crew jumping from one task to another. We sure missed Chris!

Tomorrow... I will walk through the main floor with Charles and the electrician to make sure that everything is ready for drywall.

Day 258 - Failed air test

Wed Dec 21st, 2005

The air test was planned for this afternoon. As part of the preparation for it, Patrick was going around the building, double checking that all the openings are foamed properly.

As the drywall is being delivered tomorrow, Sean was outside using the snowblower to clear a space for the boom truck to come in and deliver the drywall.

While waiting for Mike to set up the air test, Dave continued his work with leveling the ceilings. Some of the trusses had lifted, and were uneven due to the changing directions of the trusses. Here is Dave using the laser level to make the ceilings level.

Note the red line of the laser on the wall. Dave finds the lowest point on the ceiling and then measures the distance from that point to the laser line. Then Dave shims the furring strips down to the same point, so the distance from the laser line is the same as in the lower point.

This is the blower door setup for air test. The operator, Michael, installs the door, sets up the gages and adjusts for the air pressure. The test is started by turning on the fan, seen in the lower part of the door, which tries to blow the air out of the house. If there are leaks, air is sucked through them and the air pressure in the house doesn't really lower much.


The result - we have 1.8 ACH (air changes per hour) instead of the 1.5 required (150 on the identified scale). The bottom gauge was fluctuating from 200 to 220 which meant there is some opening somewhere which is fluctuating.





Air is leaking primarily from the four courners of the pot light vapour barrier.

It was "very challenging" for the crew to seal around the pot light vapour barrier due to the way they were installed by the electricians. Freda wants to give them a piece of her mind and deduct something from their bill.

Anyway, this has delayed completion of the main level for drywall.

I talked with the drywaller, and the drywall board is being delivered tomorrow (Thursday). The drywallers were supposed to start on Friday but they want to start tomorrow. Since the basement hasn't had an electrical inspection, it is unlikely that they can start anything until Saturday or Monday or Tuesday, whatever their next working day is.

On the main level, the crew needs to reseal around all the pot lights, shim the furring strips in some rooms (due to truss shrinkage), move a switch, complete the framing for the stair well, a half wall for a column, and around the shower in the master bath.

On the other hand, the guy who is supposed to do the soffit/fascia/etc was supposed to come today. He delivered the materials but nobody showed up to start installation. That has to be done before the garage doors can be installed.

In the same trend, the insulator can't come tomorrow (Thursday) but will come on Friday. That will be good as we will be able to stop heating the outdoors.

Day 256 - driving for drywall

Monday Dec 19th, 2005

Everyone is driving for the drywall. The plan is to be ready to start drywalling on Thursday, so the punch list of things to complete for then is steadily shrinking.

One thing that wasn't on the punch list but was on the annoyance list - was the wrong chimney cap is replaced. The fireplace people came and straightened out the pipe supports and installed the correct cap.

This is Chris tacking up furring strips. They will need to fastened in properly for the air test and also for the the insulation. The insulation guy should be ready to roll with the insulation on Wednesday.





electrician and plumber discussing some topic in the laundry room.

Andre - got the heat going
Nick - wiring basement, moved boxes that were at the wrong height above the desk
Plumber finishing up rough drywall
Buchan, Lawton, and Peron - scheduled for air test
Called in request for electrical inspection on main floor
Things to do: Go over central vac locations, review partitions with sound insulation
Call Thorston to schedule attic insulation.

Looking ahead this week

Things to do so drywall can start on Thursday:
1. Vapour Barrier inspection - Charles will call on Monday morning.
2. Complete strapping installation.
3. Complete framing around fireplace.
4. Complete framing around shower in master bath, includes wood jamb for edge of door and shower base.
5. Complete shower base for Tawny washing area in the laundry room.
6. Complete central vac rough-in.
6. Complete electrical work: A few things left to do: move the pantry light from a wall where the fixture won't fit to above the door where it should have been, lower the box for a closet light that was installed before the closet ceiling was dropped to 8', and move a 120V wire that was run through the same hole in the floor as the networking -- a major no-no.
7. Complete plumbing rough-in. I thought this was supposed to have been done a week and a half ago.

Supplies:
We ordered the trim supplies last week. They should be delivered towards the end of this week.
Flooring supplier has missed what seems like his 4th or 5th appointment to take measurements. We are concerned about getting the materials in time and therefore causing a delay. However, Mike called us on Friday to say that all the products we want are stock items with his suppliers and there should be no problems getting it in for us.

Day 255 - The week in review

Drive up - Sunday December 18th, 2005

As noted in Saturday's blog entry, we received 25cm between Thursday and Friday evening. This meant we had a lot of snow in the driveway. Since we need to have easy access for the various trades on Monday, Charles brought his snowblower over in the morning before church and we cleared out the driveway in fairly short order.

This photo also shows some of my handiwork from yesterday. Due to the wind conditions, a fair bit of snow blew in the two south facing doors. The crew stapled some poly up over the doors but the wind blew it off, so I fastened some strips of wood over the poly to hold it down. Even with the strapping on the edges of the garage doors, the plastic was flapping a lot. I fastened some strapping across the middle of the door to take some of the pressure off the plastic.

I haven't had a photo of Tawny for a while now, so here she is doing what we call her "soldier sit". She does this very upright sit posture when she is showing how good she is so she can get a treat -- very cute. You can see that Tawny has what is called "snow nose". A dog's nose should be black (or else it is considered a flaw by judges in dog shows), but dog's who sniff a lot - like Labs - stick their nose in the snow and the cold causes frostbite at the cellular level, causing the pink tones.

In the heading I promised "the week in review". So here is a review of the blog entry from Monday, Dec 12th:

Day 249 - Things for this week
Taking cover off to straighten chimney
Chimney guy didn't call back, so I faxed him a photo of the crooked chimney with a note that it was unacceptable. He called back 2 days later and left a message to call - I called back on Thursday morning and just got his voice mail. No response yet.

Heating guy there to finish hvac.
I actually think this was done.

Started on poly and strapping
Poly completed on Saturday, thanks to Dave. Started tacking strapping into place.

Charles will call for an inspection of the vapour barrier.

Drilled hole for electric supply for island - twice.
Well, that was last week actually.

Drywall guy was there to measure for quote
We received a quote last week from one company, and received another from the guy we would prefer to use on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the quote from the preferred guy was 23% higher than the first company. I negotiated a reduction in his price to match the first company.

Get heat on boiler for air-side by end of week
Didn't happen. The heating plumber had trouble getting things going - the water wasn't flowing through the coil in the air exchanger for some reason. As it was about 5pm, he said he would come back on Friday and get it going. Unfortunately, the weather made driving difficult in the morning and he never came out at all. So we still don't have heat.

We did have a propane tank heater in the basement but it ran out sometime on Friday night. The temperature in the basement on Saturday was 46F which was no problem for frost on the water pipes. I brought in the propane tank from our barbecue today and hooked it up to the heater but didn't fire it up as it was still 47F in basement.

Day 254 - A catch-up day

Saturday December 17th, 2005

Today was a bit of a catch-up day. Due to weather conditions (we had about 20cm of snow overnight on Thursday and another 5cm or so on Friday) and other things, the crew didn't quite get the poly (vapour barrier) installed and sealed - with red tape at joints and acoustic sealant at the perimeter. Because of that, Dave went above & beyond the call of duty by coming in on Saturday to finish the poly taping and "black death" (acoustic sealant).

While Dave was finishing the poly, I cleaned up the house. There were lots of little pieces of poly all over the floor plus various sawdust, bits of wire, and other construction debris. This was a critical thing to do as the poly is quite slippery and is a hazard. After I picked up the big stuff, and swept up most of the other stuff, I fired up my shop vac and vacuumed the rest of the little bits.

I took these photos after the clean up. This photo is looking at great room from from entrance.

This photo is looking at front entrance from great room. I was standing in front of the scaffolding that you can see in the previous photo.

You can see the arch more clearly in this photo. The arch is actually exactly the same radius arc as the center window in the great room.

This is the office, and you can see what it looks like with the strapping in place. It is just tacked up for now, but will be nailed in securely next week.

You can see the empty spools of wire of wire here. There are 15 spools, each was 150m or almost 500ft. There are a few other spools of wire that are in use but not yet finished. Just counting the empty spools, that means there is over 2.25 km (1.42 miles) of wire in the house.

Day 251 - Glass in doors

Wednesday December 14th, 2005

We have glass in our doors! Yippeee!!

One of Steve's guys came today and picked up the sealed units, the old door, and also installed the glass in our front doors. What a difference this makes in terms of the light in the house.

Day 249 - Things for this week

Taking cover off to straighten chimney
Heating guy there to finish hvac.
Started on poly and strapping
Drilled hole for electric supply for island - twice.
Drywall guy was there to measure for quote
Get heat on boiler for air-side by end of week