Nothing Happens At Ten

We had a bummer today. Our builder discovered that the one-piece shower unit in the master bathroom had a crack in it. The shower unit is so big that they had to frame the bathroom walls around it because it won’t fit through the bathroom door.

It has been replaced with a new unit. I understand that some walls had to come down and the front door had to be taken out in order to swap the units. I wasn’t there to see it because I had to go to work.

Bummer.

Because of our recent network outage, I missed reporting on a lot of activity at the house last week. The biggest item is that the insulation has gone in. We found out that our new house has the distinction of being the first house in town to get these:

Is that cool, or what? That is a little styro-foam beer cooler that has been installed around every electrical box on the outside walls. These are now required by the new electrical code to make the house “greener“. They replace those dorky little rubber thingys that go under the switch plates that are supposed to keep out the drafts and that work about as well all those other dorky after-market retro-fit solutions like the silly washers that were supposed to go into your shower head that turned your shower into a spray mister an annoyed everybody to the point that most people just threw them out (like we did).

Our house has a special box around every single outlet and/or switch (on the outside walls) to keep out the breezes. How’s that for green?

But you can no longer see those boxes because they have been covered with fiberglass insulation.

Kitchen

Plant room

More plant room.

Living room.

Hey! Look! The wall board has arrived. I guess we get walls next week. Cool.

We can get excited about insulation because our old house had none, zero, nada, nichts, bupkis, insulation in the walls, thus causing us to weep each time the oil truck showed up (a frequent event back then).

Along with the insulation, they are putting in the heating system. And that involves…..  Duct work.

More duct work.

Duct work in the attic.

Duct work in the basement. That’s a lot of ducts.

But there’s more than just the ducts going on. Here is my favorite item… the fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe for the washing machine.

You will notice that it is now plumbed with our PEX tubing. We will be able to put hot and cold water into the washing machine so that it can wash our clothes and subsequently go down the perfectly clear and open drain and not spill onto our floors causing consternation and cursing. As our builder would say, “It’s all good.”

But wait! That’s not all. The electric panel is in.

And that goes out to a long conduit that goes all the way up to the roof…

Wow! That’s a long pole! It isn’t connected to the electricity yet, but it will be soon.

The water meter is in!

That measures the water that goes into the PEX tubing that goes to the washing machine and subsequently goes into the fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe and out to the brand new sewer connection all the way into the street and into the town sewer system with no tree roots in it… whew!

The radon vent has been put into place.

The radon vent is the pipe that has the turquoise bottom. I don’t know why it has a turquoise bottom, but it does. Radon, as you know is that horrid radio-active gas that comes out of granite and slowly poisons you if you don’t get rid of it.

Since the house is sitting on top of a granite ledge it is quite likely that there could be a radon problem under the basement slab. To avoid any problems in the future, we had them put in a radon vent up through the roof. This is just a horizontal, vented pipe under the basement floor that bends up and goes vertically through the roof. If any radon comes out of the granite under the slab, it is simply vented harmlessly out of the house.

This is a passive radon vent, meaning that there are no blowers or fans in it. In most cases that is all that is required for dealing with radon. If we do need to install an active radon system, the pipe will already be there and all we will have to do is add the required blowers to vent the slab. That will be way cheaper than having to dig up the slab with air hammers and install the pipe after everything is done. Cheap insurance.

BTW, I have heard in the rumor mill that some of the popular granite kitchen counter tops are suspected of leaking radon into houses. I don’t know what you would do about a problem like that. Our kitchen counters will be quartz.

Well, that is enough. I have violated my own “15 second rule” on blogging (“If you can’t read it in 15 seconds, it is too long”). But there is just too much happening now to show it all in 15 seconds.

I will end this entry with some photos of the house with the morning sun on it. I usually don’t get over there until evening when the sun is at the back of the house. It looks really nice with the dappled sunshine on it, don’t you think?

Um. Disregard the porta-potty. That is a temporary fixture. We will have real toilets that flush.

The electricians have been in, and the board for the service panel is in place.

That white board is where the electrician will put the box with the circuit breakers in it. They have already begun to run the wires into the boxes.

Um. OK. I’m glad that they understand all of that.

I hope they understand all of that.

I also found the box shown in the photo below.

I think that is a box where one of the smoke detectors will be wired in.

Notice! No dirt. No spiders!

The plumber has been busy too. He has been building the manifolds for the PEX.

Each of the tubes coming out of the manifold goes to a faucet or fixture of some kind. The ones on the right are for cold water, so that manifold is plumbed directly into the cold water pipe above. The ones on the left are for hot water, so they will eventually be plumbed into the hot water tank, sitting on the left side of the photo.

Each of the PEX tubes has its own valve, so any fixture in the house can be shut off at the panel. Pretty neat.

Meanwhile, the garage doors have been installed.

And the door knobs on the man doors….. er…… “person” doors… have been installed.

We can lock the house up.

The plumbing continues to go in. They have modified the fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe for the washing machine to add a drain for the slop sink that will sit next to it.

The horizontal connection for the stand pipe used to go sideways through those two holes in the studs. Now it appears to go straight down, and the drain for the sink sits there on the left. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle; if something doesn’t fit, just move it.

In addition to the drains, they have put in some of the PEX tubing. PEX tubing is polyethylene tubes that replace the old copper pipes that they used to run. They are used to deliver the water around the house, whereas the white PVC pipes take it back out. Here is a photo.

Red is for hot; blue is for cold. Looks cheap, but apparently it is much better than copper for many reasons. One reason is that they can just snake it through the walls and ceilings like electric wire:

They don’t have to sweat-solder dozens of copper elbows to make those turns. Also, here in New England it is very possible to lose the heat in the house and end up with frozen water pipes (it happens). The old copper pipes will split when the ice expands, but the PEX is flexible and is less likely to rupture. You can read more about PEX on the web site:

Plastic Pipes and Fittings Association (PPFA)

I don’t know. It still looks cheap. Come back in 20 years and ask me how my PEX is doing. I will appreciate the company, but don’t be offended if I misinterpret the question.

Meanwhile, in the basement, they have returned our old boiler and hot water tank.

They are not hooked up yet, but they are back….. as is the old oil tank.

We had that tank made specially to fit into our old garage. It is a standard 275 gallon tank, but the feet are welded on the end of the tank instead of the sides, so it stands straight up. Pretty cool, hunh? Fits right into that corner. Sweet.

Oy, yes, and the stairs into the basement are up.

Now it is easy enough to get in and out that any fool can do it.

That’s about it for this installment. Oh, and the front of the house is almost sided now.

That’s a really pretty house.

We had an interesting night in the Fallapartment last night. At about 1:30 a.m. one of the alarms went off. It was the normal screeching siren plus an artificial electronic voice yelling something about “smoke” and “evacuate”. So we got out of bed to see if we could puzzle out what was happening. We didn’t smell any smoke.

The Fallaparment is 115 years old now, and it is filled with dozens of legacy items such as alarms and bells and other undocumented devices. We have no idea what items are live and what items are bricked, or even what some of them are for. Our landlords have not given us a clue how anything is hooked up or how it works. There are no wiring diagrams or instruction manuals. We had to find and download a manual for the thermostat from the internet last month just to turn the heat on.

So, what to do in the middle of the night with sirens blaring?

We called the Fire Department.

The Fire Department came out (with flashing lights) and checked it all out. The showed us which smoke detectors are still live and how they work and how to reset them. They told us that a false alarm like that is generally caused by an insect getting into one of the sensors.  Here is a photo of the general state of the smoke detectors in the house.

The firemen ripped the battery out of that one trying to find the culprit. That one was not functional, but you can see how filthy it is. Here is the one we think was the culprit.

It is clean now because we knocked most of the spider webs off of it, but you can still see some of them in the photo.

I suspect that there is a deaf spider somewhere in the basement of the Fallapartment. I hope it isn’t the one that eats the other spiders.

The plumber has arrived! The pipes are going in!

So far, it is just the sewer and drain pipes, but those are important pipes. For example, below is a photo of a fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe for the washing machine.

Joy! Joy!

How can a drain for a washing machine be an event to celebrate? Let me explain.

In our old house, the stand pipe for our washing machine backed up on us and flooded the utility room. We found out (three plumbers later) that the laundry drain was a stand pipe that went into the slab and then into a dry well buried somewhere in the front yard (or under the slab). We are not sure where it was.

A dry well is a hole in the ground full of rocks. The theory is that the gray water from the clothes washer goes into the dry well where it leeches into the ground and harms nothing, leaving behind the lint and detergent and extra socks that have disappeared down the laundry drain.

Unfortunately, after 60 years, the hole was filled with lint and detergent and extra socks, and the dry well was used up. It could not be fixed. You see the proper way to fix a dry well is to dig it up, clean it out, and replace the rocks, then cover it up again….. and that is illegal now…. even if we could find it…. which we couldn’t.

The last plumber who “fixed” the laundry drain poured “Clobber®” down the drain to eat out the gunk. Clobber is concentrated sulphuric acid. Evidently, while it is illegal to clean out the well properly and replace it, it is perfectly legal to pour acid into the ground. Go figure.

The acid treatment unclogged the dry well enough that we could do one wash each day, but no more. So we have spent the last few years timing our washes around the seepage of gray water into the earth, the height of the water table and how many days since it last rained and so on and so on. PIA.

Also, while the plumber was pouring the acid into the standpipe, he slobbered sulphuric acid onto the concrete slab under the washer, and the acid ate a hole in the slab right under where the foot of the washing machine went. After that, the washing machine was perched on a board to keep the foot out of the hole. It rocked and rolled as it washed the clothes.

The rotted slab and the old stand pipe and the hidden, clogged dry well are now somewhere in Maine, and we have a brand new, fully functional, non-plugged-up, new, connected-to-the-sewer, stand pipe for the washing machine.

Imagine the joy.

We also have, in the upstairs bathrooms, two more pipes.

Those two pipes are destined to be connected to two fully functional, non-plugged-up, brand new toilets that will flush. That is a non-negotiable requirement that we handed to the architect; “toilets that flush”. These pipes may follow some torturous paths down to the basement main drain,

but, they go down to a brand new sewer connection that goes all the way out to the street.

The old sewer connection had tree roots in it and it had to be cleaned out once every year or so to keep raw sewage from backing up into the house. We knew that it was time to call the sewer guy when we flushed the toilet, and it gurgled and gave us back what we flushed. That was always an unpleasant surprise, and it usually happened during a blizzard or during a blistering heat wave.

The first time the backup happened to us was during a blistering heat wave. We did not know what was going on, so we called our regular plumber and he tried to puzzle out what was wrong. It was 97 degrees out and humid. After an hour or so of hard work he had made no progress and was covered with … um….. “matter”… as he called it… and his boss drove up and asked “How’s it going”.

He said,

“It is 97 degrees out and I am standing here with other people’s toilet paper all over my face. How do  you think it is going? I love my job.”

I don’t think we ever saw that particular plumber again.

They eventually turned our case over to a sewer specialist, who cut out the roots that were growing into the pipe. He was subsequently called out multiple times to fix the problem. Once roots find a sewer pipe, they are persistent in their pursuit of their favorite…. um…. “matter”. They keep coming back. It was a steady income stream for the sewer guy.

But now we have a pair of brand new, fully functional, non-plugged-up, pipes to be connected to two brand new toilets that will flush.

Or else.

Our joy is unmeasurable.

Moving on to a less tacky subject, the tops for our bathroom vanities are here. Here is a photo.

They are made of granite, and will be lovely with their white, under-mount bowls sitting on their respective vanities next to the new toilets that will flush.

The other counter tops, the ones for the kitchen, are not ordered yet because we have not  yet decided on a color. But while we are thinking about it, here is a photo of the view through the picture window that will be directly over the kitchen sink.

Sweet.

They started putting up the siding today. They didn’t get it all up, but one end of the house looks pretty good.

That looks nice. It looks more blue and less gray when there is a whole wall of it. Nice choice of colors! (Pats self on back).

The front door looks good too.

That is the door’s natural color. It is a fiberglass door, and it comes white, ready to paint. But I kind of like it white. It matches the rest of the trim. And if it isn’t painted, then the paint won’t peel. I like that too.

Meanwhile, down in the basement, the floor is dry so we can go down there.

Ooooo spooky! It looks like a….. a…. basement. So far it is a dry basement. We shall see what happens after the monsoon rain storm tomorrow.

BTW I think that the jaggy, sawtooth pieces over on the right hand side are the stringers for the stairs that go up to the first floor. Right now, when you are in the basement you are sort of stuck there because there are no stairs. You will have to guess how I got in and out.

The windows and doors are in.

Below is a photo of the living room windows at the front of the house.

It looks like somebody has already moved in! I think that set is representative of the quality of furniture we will be able to afford after we pay for the house. I wonder it they would be willing to sell it to us and just leave it there.

The slider from the sun room to the outside is in place.

The next photo is of the kitchen windows.

The kitchen sink goes under the large picture window in the center. The small window on the left will sit over a peninsula that sticks out from the wall. We plan on sitting at the peninsula for breakfast, staring out the window at our back yard.

We can almost taste it.

The snow shovel is for…. well I am not sure what the snow shovel is for.

Shingles! We have shingles. No, not the illness! The roof!

It took the roofers one day to put on the shingles. In the morning no roof; in the afternoon, roof. Take a look.

Meanwhile, the chimney has been finished. Here is a long photo of our new chimney.

That is a tall chimney. You can see that the cage is on top too. That keeps the critters out of the chimney. Squirrels and birds have been known to build their nests in chimneys during the warm months, and then the nests can cause a chimney fire after a fire has been lit in the fireplace .

We have the best looking chimney in the neighborhood.

Also, the framers have built the interior walls on the second floor. Below is a photo of the closet in the master bedroom.

Here is another view of the interior.

Wow! That is a lot of boards. You can see that the strapping is in place on the ceiling too. The ceiling boards will be secured to the strapping.

Buried in all of that wood are the bathroom fixtures, one tub unit and one shower unit.

They have to frame the walls around the bath fixtures because they are one-piece units and are too big to go in through a door. We don’t want to mess that up, because once the walls are finished, the only way out is Sawzall®*

*I have no financial interest in Sawzall – I don’t even own one – I am just trying to be funny again.**

**Although I do hear through the grapevine that you can take anything apart with one of those.***

***But I have no personal experience of that.****

****Which doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.*****

*****I just don’t know that for certain myself.