Rough Plumbing and Electrical - Under the Floor

Hal has been busy a few days now. Occasionally he needs my help to pull wire or play gopher but mostly it's a one person show. He has been installing copper pipe for the cold water feeds to both kitchen sinks and red PEX for hot water and blue PEX for cold water everywhere else. The reason for the copper rather than PEX everywhere are the possible chemical leaching into water from PEX that some claim can happen (like the state of CA which has banned PEX altogether). We usually only get drinking water for tea coffee, cooking, etc out of the cold tap in the kitchen anyway, so why not play it safe. So here are a few pics of the piping.

We also ran the feeder line to the location of the subpanel which will be in the laundry room. The black cable hangs a left where the coil sits in this photo and I secured it using plastic holders screwed into the joists. The sub panel will be feeding the bedrooms and laundry and bathrooms, while the main panel in the utility room feeds it and the rest of the house and garage. 

After these floor runs are finished we will probably pause the rough plumbing and electrical work as the rest would need to be inside interior walls which can't go in till we put those up. Have to have a floor first and that will be more fun once we put up the large garage doors We'll be able to use heat then). we just have to figure out how to build those first.

A Surprise Cherry Tree!

A week ago, Hal surprised me by having taken his tractor and its brush mower to the weed trees and brush, (tag alders, Russian olives, golden rod, etc) along the slight dip at the edge of our future back yard. This exposed the ridge behind it where Luna is buried. as well as the small trees we have planted there. It gives us a better view from the living room and kitchen. It also exposes the low spot we hope to turn into a small pond someday. 

He also exposed a nice cherry tree  which he mowed around. So besides the 2 apple trees I planted this spring, we will have a nice little cherry tree in the backyard.

Luna is buried near that white tree protector on the right of the photo. The daffodils I planted over her should be visible next spring.

A Garage Floor!

Prep work started last week, adding sand, tamping it down, placing a 2 x 4 barrier,  then spreading vapor barrier on top of the sand. Friday the first 3rd of the garage floor, a 12' x 36' section furthest in was poured.

This photo is from when it was just poured and smoothed out, it was cold outside (40s) so they added a 1/2% solution of chloride to speed up the process and they couldn't leave till 7:30 pm. They had started at 9.

While they waited for concrete to cure, they prepped the remaining section of the garage and poured the next day, yesterday. This time they added 1% chloride to the mix and they were done by 6 pm though the late afternoon rain and wind made them unable to do a final skim so there will be tiny fiberglass hairs sticking up which will eventually wear away. The fiberglass is the thing they do now instead of rebar and metal wire mesh in the bottom to help prevent cracking. Hopefully, this will last the rest of our lives, may they be long enough to enjoy this house!

Speaking of Vapor Barrier...

Speaking of vapor barrier, Hal had put down 2 pieces a couple months ago, and 2 days ago I helped him put down 2 more. Today we laid out the 3rd piece and  a small piece in an odd corner. So the vapor barrier in the crawlspace is down! We still need to secure it along the exterior walls and to the inside posts but we need more tape which is currently "in the mail".

Prior to this exercise of crawling through small spaces, Hal got to work on other important house things like running electric feeder cable to the house from the panel at the utility pole next to our barn. He rented a trencher and made a ~250 foot long trench about 30 inches deep into the garage and up to the new electric panel in what will eventually be the utility room.

200 Amps

After laying in ~$900 worth of 4/0 aluminum cable and then getting the inspector to come out to check it over and then tell us we also need to run a ground wire between the boxes (on this point the national electrical code is fuzzy, Hal had already done ground wire with ground rods at each end per his interpretation of code but the inspector wanted his version), so another $200 later we were able to fill in the trench and start preparing the garage for concrete. 

The other thing before concrete are floor drains. He installed one for each garage door, essentially one for under his vehicle and one for under mine. One will drain out the front and one to the back. This is mainly for snow melt off of our rides. Now we wait for the concrete guy to fit us in sometime this month.

Settling In, Sort Of

So we've been in the farmhouse a month. I've unpacked a few boxes, don't want to unpack much as there isn't a lot of room to put things. Can't find a lot of things, like my DVDs, I didn't pack them, didn't pay attention to the SIL packing them but I can't find a box labeled DVD so it looks like I won't see them till we move into the new place. Can't find my flashlight which is also very annoying. Fortunately for Kaylee, all her toys are accounted for! Hal got rid of my broken recliner, I'm using one of our old wingback chairs we managed to stuff into the family room along with my glider rocker and my dad's old recliner. Everything else makes my back hurt.

In the only room they're allowed

Because the fenced in area isn't attached to the house I have been taking the dogs on a short wal very early evert day, usually before 8 am, then we come back and they get dinner and eventually another walk before they get to go in the pheasant pen. Some days they have no problems being in there for hours, other days the whining and howling starts up pretty quickly. Today they will be coming with me to the build because 2 of Hal's brothers will be in the pen knocking down the tall poles that used  to hold up the netting. They have to behave and not crawl  under the floor joists with us while we lay down vapor barrier.