Let there be a ROOF! (and what it looks like after 3" plus of rain w/out one)

Sunday we picked up 2000 SF of hard Wisconsin maple flooring that will cover the majority of the main floor.  We also had to clean up after the storms on Saturday which left the floor standing in water.  I expected to get to the site on Monday and have most of the floors drying out but it stormed again on Sunday night.  Below you can see what happens when you have flooring material that doesn't simply absorb all that water but contains it.  We had 1 1/2" of water over most of the main floor and more that had drained into the basement.  I spent about 3 hours in the morning sweeping/squeegeeing again.  While I was doing that the crew started roofing using the Zip roof system - the interesting thing about this is that the seams are not clipped nor are they toungue and groove.  Once the sheets are all down you tape the seams using an uber-strong tape.  To bond it well you then roll it with a special roller.  The sample rolled well during the demo was very hard to remove while that not rolled wasn't that difficult.  This flooring and roofing is warranted to be waterproof for 6 months and 10 months respectively without any other protection.  Pretty impressive.

Today the crew finished the clerestory roof section and walled up the East end of the house.  We still have to wait for the well drilling rig to get behind the house before we can put up the deck and finish the framing and sheathing of the roof.  We hope to be able to do that starting Friday but a lot depends on weather and if the soil is loose/muddy on Friday when the drilling rig arrives.

Here's the flooring after cleaning up some of the standing water on Monday morning

more of the water

and yet more..

the last view with water!

The back of the house with all roof sheathing (except the unbuilt deck) installed

The guys woking on the clerestory overhang.

This is the drive view at the end of the day on Tuesday - notice the shadow on the West end which will be he covered deck.  Perfect!  you should also be able to see the small bump in the roof over the front door which is the installed skylight.  It reflects the clerestory roof in miniature.  As the crew says No mas agua!

Transformation of the site - and Window/door delivery scheduled

The end of this week showed a significant transformation of the site - the framing crew finished one gable end, the junction between the gable roof and Clerestory section, the framing for the skylight box, and a large number of the interior walls.  Saturday was planned to be a roof sheathing day but mother nature had other plans - it started raining early and continued heavily for most of the morning.  We will now attempt for dry-in on Monday which is also rough-in for plumbing and close on the heels will be HVAC and then electrical.  Lots of decisions needed in rapid fire succession to keep the construction moving out.

  We received the confirmed delivery date for our windows set this week - it's now scheduled for 13 Sept.  Because we are getting our windows shipped at the same time as one other project Anchorage is working on, we saved a significant amount on shipping but until we get the final bill we won't know.  Part of the uncertainty is what the world Markets have been doing and the exchange rates that could impact those costs.  We did order the German tape systems so this will be an interesting experience.  I will try to photograph and video all the installations so folks see how different the installation is than typical US nailing flange installation.  As you've seen in most pictures our the window and door "framing" is concrete vice the typical lumber frames used in the US.  One thing we do have to remember is that our delivery date is based on normal customs processing - there are stories of folks who had to wait a long duration due to someone adding a gift to the container of a case of alcoholic beverages which wasn't declared on the customs form.  Now that's the epitome on the Law of Unintended Consequences!

The other change that happened was the Wilkerson crew returned with a dozer and dump truck and loader and they moved lots of earth, backfilling the house, grading the cleared area, and finishing the carving out of the East side walk-out where we'll be building a retaining wall.  We are currently waiting for an engineered solution (over 4 foot height requires that) and cost estimate for the block - we're looking at VersaLok standard size block in a mottled color (Canyon from Johnson Concrete in Willow Spring NC) that matches the soft rock colors very well.  Hopefully we'll be able to start that wall this week - and maybe get a large part of it completed.  The challenge will be placing the block, geogrid (mesh that extends 5 - 6 feet back into the ground from the wall), and backfill all by hand.  Each block weighs about 80 pounds and I expect we'll need about 750 of them!  Recommendations from the engineer were to use washed rock for the backfill and in addition we are required to have drainage installed every 25' of wall.  The interesting part of this discussion was that the wall will "flex" a bit over time - it's designed that way to prevent complete failure and the geogrid/backfill allow for drainage and flex without collapse.

The finished gable end and a view of the near-final grading from the  East edge of the cleared area.  Hard to see in this picture is the 8' drop between the camera and house.

View from the SouthWest corner of the cleared area after near-final grading. Note the "raised" deck now looks much closer to the final grade than it has in the past pictures.

View from the West edge of the cleared area - this photo shows the multiple roof lines that will be present.  Missing from the structure at this point is the garage which will attach on the left hand (viewed from this angle) corner of the house and extend North (left).

A view from the East.

View from the SouthEast.

This shows a better picture of the walk-out to the retaining walled area  from the South.  That wall at the far side is about 8' tall for perspective.

The finished framing for the skylight.  That house wrap is there to protect the beams from inclement weather and was reattached after this picture.

Looking down the front (North) wall of the house at near-final grade.  That dirt piled up is our topsoil that will go down near the end of the project.

This is the house viewed from the driveway (NorthEast).

A view from nearly due South of the entire back of the house - hard to tell in this picture but there's about 2' of drop between the house and where I'm standing to take this picture.

The next thing that happened was we decided on a geothermal contractor who will use our dry well for part of the requirement and will drill one more well for the geothermal heating.  The well driller will also drill for water for us - we've moved locations on the lot and upon further investigation, it looks like into another soil type.  The county soil survey shows 3 different types of soil on our property which may be a good thing or may be a bad thing.  The well location for our neighboring houses all seem to be in the same soil type so that may change the location of our potential well but we have to discuss with the well driller to see what he thinks.  There's always a dowser option but we have yet to find one in the area.  The unfortunate thing is they put casing in the 606' well down to 67' which means that part of the well is less efficient for geothermal.  Drilling out that casing is costly and risks losing valuable equipment and maybe use of the well.  The contractor will fill in part of the well with gravel and only use the top 350' or so. This is due in part to the standard geothermal well pumps only being good up to that depth.  We'll drill another well near (25' separation) the old well and then the water well will go elsewhere. Right now we anticipate the well drilling operation to be late in the week.  The good news is there seems to be a break in the high temp days and we may "struggle" to hit 90 degrees this week.  That's really good news because it has been insufferable for the last couple of weeks.

Building Permit in hand! Clearing starts tomorrow!

We now have the building permit and are cleared hot to start!  The process was a bit convoluted but in the end it all worked out.  Yesterday we had a bit of a concern due to possible requirements for stormwater management system installation requirements and the near-term elimination of the position in the County that reviews and approves those permits.  After some discussion with the erosion control planners we agreed to install a rainwater management system which will likely tie into our drainage systems and allow collection in a cistern.  The erosion control mechanism is important due to the slope of the land and the cistern will help us harvest rainwater for landscape irrigation.  Having the metal roof will clearly increase our ability to collect clear rainwater.  We saw a system at one house on the Green Homebuilders Tour several weeks back and were impressed with it at the time.  We will do some research for rainwater collection and stormwater management to make sure we control the erosion and use the collected water to irrigate our landscaping.

 The surveyor was scheduled to visit the site earlier today and clearly mark the house site and driveway centerline.  We removed the "billions and billions" of marking flags on the property yesterday so we have one clear set - earlier flagging efforts had been very zealous to say the least.  With the soils engineer (septic field location) and the surveyor adding to the collection we had places on the site it was looking like a mine-field of markers.  We did leave the main/repair areas for the septic marked since we won't be disturbing that area immediately.

 We'll start posting pictures of the progress on clearing the land tomorrow if all works as planned.  This is an exciting part since what we've been visualizing may soon be reality.  It's going to be hard to see those nice trees come down but fortunately we can save most of the larger oak trees.  We have some pretty large pines that may be site-milled to provide our T&G ceiling for the family room and maybe even the covered deck.  The oak that we do have to harvest will be seasoned a bit longer before we use it for projects around the house. There are also small amounts of walnut, cedar, and other hardwoods but unfortunately not much poplar which will be what we use for the wood trim (stained, not painted).

We should have our order finalized for the Hoco windows by the end of the week. We're still in limbo on the fire rated door between the garage and the house.  I plan to visit the Fire Dept to discuss the requirements with them.  The requirement as we understand it is for a 20 minute fire-rated door but we need to have specifics to order a door and specify the wall opening.  We did have one reading of Code that said we could not have glass in the doors but many public buildings meet code by using tempered glass or installing wire-mesh glass.  The main point is to allow occupants to escape to safety before the door/window fail (burn through).  More research to follow on this subject!  Our next quest is the skylights - we have found a source that claims R-20 but so far we haven't been able to get any test data supporting the claims.  The manufacturer is Tubular Skylights.  The use of dead-air space is paramount to their claims to it appears that installation methods and techniques are crucial to maintaining the started R-value.

Friday 6 May - Windows, doors, landscaping - And Skylights?

Yesterday was a pretty successful day.  We spent part of the morning with our landscape designer walking the grounds of the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill and then reviewing our plans.  Lots of great plants that are part of the plan and we got to see them in their native habitats which really helped.

 In the afternoon we met with our builders who had received a window from a canadian company that makes a good quality fiberglass window.  We liked the window but it didn't seem quite as sturdy as the German made windows - several of the seams less precise than something that costs as much as these windows.  We've decided to go with the German units (after spending most of Thursday with their salesman and an engineer who flew over from Germany at just the right time).  They're really working well with us on adjusting the designs for optimal performance and keeping within budget.  The windows will be vinyl with a U-factor of .16 (R-6.06) and a Solar Heat Gain of just over .50 which are hard numbers to match in a US-manufactured window.  This will be an important decision since the lead time is 8 to 14 weeks and the Europeans start their vacation "months" in July - where workers take an entire month off to spend with their families.  Now those Europeans know how to live!  We're going to finalize the window schedule this weekend - making sure we have the appropriate window sizes and that the operable sections of the windows is correct.  We will provide them the updated schedule for costing and once they price it out, we'll go over it one more time and sign it.  We simply can't afford to get anything wrong here - either from a timeline or cost perspective!  We will purchase the exterior doors from the same company and we may be able to share the container costs with another homeowner who is considering the same manufacturer (though a different profile). That cuts delivery costs in half which is a good thing for both of us.  We'll also try to buy the tape systems and have them shipped with the windows unless we can find a vendor in the US that sells them.  We're really impressed with the systems they use for waterproofing and air-tightness.

For the interior doors we visited a vendor's showroom in Efland NC and much to our surprise, chose a different style of door than we'd originally had in mind.  We've changed from a 3-panel (horizontal stiles) shaker style to a 2-panel (vertical stiles) shaker and we really liked the birch so that's where we're headed.  For the interior doors to the living room and formal dining room we would really like to get the antique "rolled glass" look.

With luck this coming week will be contract signing day with the builder, submission of mortgage applications, and visiting the property with the builder and surveyor one more time to clean up the flags on the property and ensure the house and septic are easily identified.  Once that's done we'll start clearing/excavation the last week of the month.

Todays' big find was skylights that appear suitable for passivehaus use - they use NanoGel technology and there are several manufacturers.  At present we've found them from a company called Wasco (www.waskoskylights.com) but we're still researching the possibilities.  Wasco also makes a triple-glaze but at present all their skylights require a minimum 3:12 grade which would simply mean changing the skylight to sit on one of the roof planes instead of straddling the ridge.  Researching the web, these skylights are not that much more expensive than standard brands available at the home improvement stores.  One thing about the nanogel is it appears to be opaque white so it's a diffused light and not direct sunlight so the shadowing will not be as pronounced and fading should be minimized as well. This is a big deal because we really want a skylight in the main entry but using a standard unit simply wasn't going to cut it and using a passivhaus certified window drives the cost through the roof.

 This was a good week!  Window vendor chosen, plans delivered to subs for estimates, interior door selections narrowed significantly, and we have found skylight options.  Next week we're hoping to sign paperwork and start moving out on the construction. First shovel planted will be before the end of May and that could mean weathertight structure by the end of August.  WoooHoo!