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So the last few weeks have been really busy. The framing is done and we have moved on to the electrical and plumbing. This is the part of the project that I’m most excited by because I get to do the structured wiring for the house. This consists of all the phone, data and television cable runs. I chose to do a central wiring because not only does it allow for extreme flexibility but also allows you to plan for the future and what you might want to put in your house 5 or 10 years for now.

Our subdivision is wired for AT&T U-Verse. Basically, that means that all our media (TV, internet and phone) will come over fiber optic lines into the house. This is one of the first subdivisions in my area to get this. I’m so stoked to be able to get fiber optic speeds at my house. So, I wanted to make sure that I wired the house right and by doing it myself, I also saved a little bit of money. Every room in the house gets a phone, data and TV wire with some rooms, like the living areas and the master bedroom, getting multiple runs. This “future proofs” the house because there are extra cables run in the main living areas and you can take advantage of this when new technology is released. In short, I’m a technology nerd and I wanted to make sure my house was equally as “techy”. On top of that, there is going to be a media room in the basement (you knew this if you’ve read the previous posts) and I wanted to make sure I had this room wired for 7.1 surround sound and a projector.

I’ve spent the last few weekends wiring the house for all this stuff and I’m pretty proud of the way it has turned out. I started out with 2000ft of quad shield coaxial cable for all the TV runs and 2000ft of cat5e cable for the phone and data runs. I also used some if the cat5e cable to run an in house intercom system that we are going to get. This will not only be an intercom system but also act a whole house sound system. Lastly, I ran some 16/2 speaker wire in the media room for the 7.1 surround and some speaker wire outside so that we could have music on the patio if we ever choose.

On top of me doing all that, we had the electricians, plumbers, and HVAC guys running all their stuff. The electricians did all their stuff in about 2 days. The only thing that we had to decide about that was lighting and we got a lot of can lights. We added them in each room as well as in the bathrooms rather than having the typical Vegas lights in the bathroom. Also, we had them wire a generator plug by the breaker box in case we ever have another ice storm like the one we had a few years ago. If that happens, we simply shut off the main power, and plug in a generator and can power a few rooms in the house on top of all the appliances. That will be great if we ever have to use that.

The plumbers were pretty straight forward as well. The only thing we did additional to the plumbing is asked for a sink to be put in the garage. I think that will be really handy to have one of those large deep sinks in there to wash up after working outside.

For the HVAC system, we had a much harder decision. The standard HVAC system that many builders put in the houses equivalent to ours these days are 80% efficient gas furnaces and 13 seer 3 ton air conditioners. Basically, that means that for every $1 in gas you use for heating, 80 cents of that goes directly to heating and then 20 cents is lost to waste. For the air conditioner, the seer rating is the efficiency rating and the tonnage is the capacity. As of next year, 13 seer is lowest efficiency rating that will be allowed. We were faced with using the standard system, which will do a decent job of heating and cooling the house, or getting some upgrades which would be costly, but might pay off in the long run. For this decision, it is simply all about pay off period. If you spend $1000 more dollars on your HVAC system up front, but it saves you $20 a month on your heating and cooling bills (over the standard system), that is a payoff period of a little over 4 years. That would be a good investment. With that said, $1000 in upgrades for the HVAC system is just the starting point. Seriously, we had people quote us stuff that was $6000 over the base system. That stuff had a high payback period of around 15-20 years. Now, if you plan to live in your house a long time, that might not sound too bad, but if you think that the average life of an HVAC system is 10-15 years, that doesn’t make much sense. We decided to upgrade to a 90% efficient 100,000 BTU gas furnace and a 14 seer 4 ton heat pump. Now without going into a large explanation of what a heat pump is, it is basically an air conditioner with the ability to switch over to a heater in the winter. It only uses electricity rather than gas so it is a lot cheaper. The only caveat to that is it really only works when it is above freezing in the winter. So there will be a few months that you might have to use the gas furnace, but the other months the heat pump will save you a lot of money. So with all that said, we got a few upgrades to the HVAC system and I think it will be a really good investment to lower our monthly heating and cooling costs.

Ok, so that is what we have been doing for the last few weeks. And without further delay, here are the latest pictures.

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So that is all for now. In the next few weeks, we will be getting the rough in inspection done and after that is approved we will start insulation, drywall and bricking. When that starts happening, this thing will be done in no time. Check back soon!

p.s. Here is a picture of me so stoked that we are finally done with wiring the house.

OK, I know, its about time I made another post. I’ve heard the cries of most of you all screaming desperately for another house update. I started this blog mainly for myself to catalog and keep track of the whole process, and I had no idea I would attract this much attention.

It has been about 3 weeks since I made my last post and there has been a lot go on over those past 3 weeks. We have been framing for the last few weeks and I’ll have to say although we now have something that looks like a house, the framing part takes a lot of patience. Framing is one of the longest, if not the longest, parts of building a house. Once it is done, it is amazing to be able to see the structure and form of the entire house, but it just takes so long. On the flip side of that, I’m thankful for framers that take a little more time on the front side and do things right rather than speed through it and do something wrong.

There isn’t much to framing. You just have to make sure that your blue prints are exactly what you want to a T and you’re set. I mean, the framers, or at least our framers, framed everything exactly like it was on the plans. That means, the wall in the basement that divided the mechanical room from the other media room that we wanted and talked to our builder about…it didn’t get put in because it wasn’t on the plans. They will have to go back and add it. That also means, every ceiling tray, vault, window arch and more that you want that aren’t in the blue prints, won’t get built unless you specifically tell them and actually draw it on the floor or wall for them. I guess that makes sense, but it means if you aren’t out there every day, something will get missed.

I’m lucky that I work really close to our construction site because I usually try to get out there 3 or 4 times a week over lunch. I got out there one day and we went over all that. We got the ceiling trays hammered out, the entry way arches decided and everything so really the only thing that we had an issue with was a downstairs wall and then entry way between the kitchen and the living room. That had tot be changed because they originally framed it too narrow at 5ft. and it needed to be lengthened to 9ft.

Ok, so pictures pictures pictures. I know, I will try to post as many as I can in succession. I will start with the early frame of just the down stairs and work all the way through the entire roof joists and decking. Enjoy!

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Well, that is about it. We are close to being done with the framing. They are putting the finishing touches on today and tomorrow. Next will be the shingles and the windows, which will more than likely be next week. They will also be wrapping the house in Tyvex and then comes the the wiring and plumbing. This is my favorite part as I will be doing most of the house’s structured wiring. Check back in a week and I’ll show you the windows.

The next phase in the construction of our house is pouring the basement and garage floor slabs. This is pretty self explanatory but there are a few things that go along with this phase that you have to plan and make the final decisions on. These mainly consist of plumbing decisions. The basement plumbing actually is laid before the slab is poured. The concrete is poured over the plumbing and if you don’t have all your drains in place, it is too late to add more.

One thing that was an addition and an unexpected cost was the lift pump. A lift pump is designed to lift the sewage up into the main sewer line. This is only needed if the sewer line comes in higher than where the drain pipes are that run throughout the basement. Obviously, the drains up stairs will have the benefit of letting gravity do its job and carry the sewage down to the sewer line, but the basement drainage might not have that luxury. We did not know how this would work out because you don’t know how deep the sewer line is actually buried until you dig it up and since you don’t dig the sewer line up until you need to, you can’t really plan for this.

If you take a look at the following picture, you’ll see a pipe hole in the footer of the foundation. This was pre-drilled so that if the sewer line was that deep, we could just come in through that and then not have to worry about a lift pump because the sewer line would actually be lower than what the basement drains would be, hence all the sewage would flow down with the aid of gravity.

That isn’t exactly the way it worked out. In this picture, you’ll see that the actual sewer line was  only buried about 5 ft. below ground level making the entrance into the house have to be much higher. Actually, it had to come into the foundation wall about 3 ft. higher than the footer hold we drilled.

So, since that didn’t work out, we had to get a lift pump. Simply put, this pumps that crap upward into the sewer line from the basement. It would have been better had the sewer line come in lower. Not only would it have saved us money, but now if the electricity ever goes out, we cannot use the basement facilities very much because the lift pump is electrical, and if it isn’t working, then nothing gets pumped up and out into the sewer. So, that is just one thing that I learned during this phase that I didn’t ever think of before. The good thing is, all the rest of the bids we have coming in are actually lower than anticipated so that will offset the extra expense of the lift pump. Take a look at some more pictures of the basement and the garage concrete slabs being poured.

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If you look real close, you can see the beginning of the basement frame going up. They started framing last Thursday and man are they moving fast. They already have the entire basement framed and are starting on the top level. They are estimating to be done in 3 weeks if we continue to have good weather. I’m so excited to see this thing framed and roofed. Then you’ll be able to see what it is going to look like inside. Check back in a week or so as I’m going to make a post about the framing and how that is going. Here is a teaser picture of what the basement looks like as I’m posting this today.

One of the most rewarding things that has happened to me in the past year transpired over this week. All of the hard work, planning, money and set backs that we have endured over the past year came to fruition this week when we got to see the beginning phases of our house going up. They poured the foundation, water proofed it, put the brick ledge up and plumbed for the utilities. It is so awesome to see this construction go up and actually see fruits of our labor (and other people’s labor).

Arguably one of the most important parts of home construction is the foundation. Without a firm foundation, your investment could be nothing within a matter of years or even months. That statement can be applied in so many way, but for its application here, we will stick to home construction. The first step of the foundation is setting the footers. The footers are really slabs of concrete that are only about 8 inches tall and maybe 12 inches wide. These are what the foundation walls will sit on top of. They are the base of the foundation. I don’t really have a separate picture of just the footers, but they were poured and set about 2 days before the  actual foundation walls were poured. In the later pictures of the foundation, you’ll see the footers pretty clear in some of the pictures.

After the footers are poured and have time to set, the foundation forms are set and the concrete is poured into the forms to make the walls. We were able to get some pretty good pictures of them doing this.

After the foundation sat for a couple days, the forms were removed to reveal the foundation walls. Like I said earlier, to actually see this done was such a wonderful feeling. You can actually start to make out what the house is going to be like and the size as well.

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Well, there it is…the foundation and the beginnings of our house. We still have a lot more to do but it really feels good to get this done and be able to see the skeleton. Now the rush is on the get the walls up, framed and a roof on this baby before it starts getting really cold and raining or possibly even snowing. Stay tuned!