Sunday, March 18, 2012

Siding and Wiring Conduits

Last week mostly saw work on the exterior siding for the house. The electrician came by for just a bit to work on some of the last details. However, a few more questions came up, so the electrical work wasn't quite finished last week.

Quite a bit of the lap siding was installed, including the north side, upper level on the east side, the north-west side, the upper south-west side, and the upper south side.

Upper siding is all installed

We acquired the exterior wall washer light we're going to use on the west side of the house at night. We tested it out one evening after dark, and it should do a good job highlighting our house.

Light from north, near the house

The last major piece of wiring (I believe) was getting conduit for future cabling run. The endpoints are in the living room, kitchen, office, master dressing, and second bedrooms. These run down into the crawlspace, except for the office, which runs directly into the server closet. The server closet then has a single conduit that runs into the crawlspace. The media room has a conduit that runs from the closet up to the projector mount to send video up there.

Server/media closet. The blue tube is conduit directly from the office; the middle orange tube into the box is a common conduit into the crawlspace. The orange tubing by itself on the right is conduit up to the projector mount in the ceiling for running HDMI or other video wire.

I spent some time exploring the crawlspaces under our house. The crawlspace is quite generous, and there are plenty of pipes, ducts, and wires running under there. The space is large enough that we added some stub points for lights. Under the garage you can follow the electrical wiring back to the central electrical panel.

Looking down the width of the main crawlspace, there are black boxes for lights, sewer pipes on the right, HRV ducts on the left, some conduits, and lots of wiring criss-crossing

The timelapse shows the siding installation (the work later in the week was covered by a blue tarp to protect from the rain). You can catch a brief glimpse of snow falling Tuesday morning.



Next should see more work on the siding. We are hoping to have the inspections finished up soon; maybe this week if we are lucky.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Electrical Wiring, Exterior Finishing

This week saw more good progress on both the interior and exterior. The electrical wiring is nearly complete. Some exterior finishes, including siding, exterior soffits, and the rear deck all saw work done on them.

For electrical wiring, the interior line voltage work (lights, switches, electrical outlets, and a big, beefy cable for an electric car charger in the garage) is nearly completed. There might still be a few details left, but not much at all. The majority of the data wiring was completed, with Ethernet, cable, phone, and low-voltage for security or home automation run throughout the house, and speaker wire plus a bit of subwoofer coax cable run in the media room. There is still some wire that needs to be run for exterior lighting and electrical outlets, and then a few conduits for future data wiring and media room wiring need to be run. Those should be complete within a few days, and then the electrical inspection can be done.

Main electrical panel in the garage

The fireplace and gas connection on the back deck were installed this last week. The fireplace has been mostly covered up to protect it, but since part of the cardboard was detached, we took the opportunity to get a picture of it.

Fireplace installed

Some ductwork for the HRV unit was added.

Some of the exterior finish work was started last week, too. The HardiePlank and HardiePanel siding was delivered Monday morning. The panels were put up on the stair tower during the week.

Stair tower. Most of the siding is on, but not painted (may also need some finishing in the channels between boards?).

It is not painted, and there may be some other details in the channels between the boards to do, but it is starting to give a feel for what the finished house will look like. The HardiePanel is being used for the lower exterior soffit, and the bit of that was installed. The upper exterior soffit was installed using a knotty cedar.

Upper soffit for the rooftop deck

The flooring of the back deck was laid down on Friday. It isn't fully finished, but looks quite nice already, especially when it gets wet.

Back deck, looking towards the neighbor's property

We finally moved the camera to a position right in front of the house. It should be able to capture all the upcoming work on the entryway, siding installation, along with all the general activity of people moving around during the day.



Next week should see electrical finished, and some inspections done. Once all the rough-in inspections are done, insulation can go in; but we don't expect that to happen this coming week. Siding and/or deck work will probably continue on the exterior. The next big piece outside will be getting the entry foundation backfilled and the driveway filled in for better support. Once you can actually walk in through the front door, the missing panel in the garage will be filled in, and the house can be sealed up and tested for leaks. Then the garage can be cleared out, and the cement slab poured in there, which will allow installation of the hot water heater. We're not quite sure on the timing of all that, though, because a bit of landscape design needs to be done on the north side of our house (south side of the neighbor's), so that all the dirt-moving can be done at once.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Lights and a Deck

This was another exciting week of work on the house. Electrical was started, including a lot of the lighting layout; and the rooftop deck was framed and finished.

Electrical wiring was started on Monday, and a lot of progress was made. One of the first steps was placing all the can lights so we could approve the positions before they were wired. We're using 6" cans in most of the house, and 4" cans upstairs (they have better sealing than the larger ones, so they won't lose as much heat through the roof) and in a few places downstairs that we want to highlight. The electrician started placing mount points for lights such as pendants and sconces, electrical outlet boxes, light switch boxes, and tying it all to the central electrical panel.



On the exterior, the deck part of our rooftop deck was built this week. The frame for the bench and under-floor was put together earlier in the week, and then the batu planks were put in place at the end of the week. There's probably still some finishing (sanding, weatherproofing/oil/sealant of some manner), but it already looks really good!

Rooftop bench. Area behind it will be green roof.

The timelapse video has a few interesting points: first the bench frame above the garage goes up, then the garage window followed by the master dressing windows are installed (the final windows in the house), and then the batu planks on the deck wrap around the bench.



The monthly summary shows the vapor shield and foam being installed, along with the windows and upstairs doors.



More wiring will be happening next week, maybe including data wiring. The fireplace was delivered, and the space has been prepped for it, so that install should happen soon (it has to be installed before the gas inspection can happen). The knotty cedar for the exterior roof soffit was delivered. The rest of the siding should be delivered soon.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Master Bath Design

Last month, we refined the design of the master bathroom. While we had the counter, cabinets, tiles, sinks and other plumbing fixtures picked out, we hadn't discussed the mirror or light fixtures, nor had we detailed the tile layout or the placement of the glass wall and bench in the shower.

Vanity

Yuval proposed an initial design that we mostly liked. It had separate mirrors raised out from the wall, with some open shelving backed by an illuminated panel between the mirrors.


He gave us a second draft which coordinated better with our shower tiles: FAP Amour Mer accent tiles paired with FAP Fusion White tiles. The Fusion White tiles have a subtle gradient texture which makes them more interesting than plain white. Yuval proposed using the Fusion white tiles for the backsplash and all the way up the cabinet wall. This was a big change from the organic pebbles in the original design, but we liked it.



Shower

We want a fixed glass partition in the shower so that we don't have to deal with a door. But which side should have the opening? With the shower head on the west wall, an opening on the east was the natural choice (and would minimize escaping spray). However, the deck door requires a step that would overlap with the shower entrance. It also makes sense to put a shower bench opposite the shower head. To accommodate these constraints, we decided to anchor the shower partition to the east wall and put the opening on the west, by the shower head.


What's next?

This design was enough to get the tiles ordered, and allow lighting to be placed. The rest of the decisions can wait until closer to when they are needed. There is still plenty left to do: finalize the the mirrors and the shelf, choose wood for the bench by the cabinets, choose the treatment for the glass partition, figure out shelving in the shower, and place and choose hooks and towel bars.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Windows and HVAC

Lots of work on the windows and HVAC system this week. The windows are almost fully installed, as was a majority of the HVAC system.

The windows were only delivered at the end of last week, but by this weekend, they were nearly all installed. The two windows in the dressing room were left out, but that seemed to be because they are using the openings to deliver decking lumber upstairs. The rest of the windows were installed, including the skylight over the stairs and the various glass doors. Along with the windows, the rest of the house was wrapped in foam.

West side with all the windows

A lot of work was done on the HVAC system, and the mini-split system looks close to done. All the interior head units were mounted to the wall and hooked up to refrigerant lines, electrical, and some kind of piping (maybe to handle condensation?). The exterior units are not installed yet, but some kind of testing of the system seems to be in-progress. They are installing other ducting, such as the fan connections to the HRV system and the exhaust for the kitchen vent hood.

Mini-split head unit in the master dressing room

The timelapse is not terribly enlightening; you can see the powder room window going in, and later the master bath door.



Next week should see the start of the electrical wiring.

Garage Entry Design

The flow of people between the garage and the front door calls for careful design. We wanted a single entry sequence for everyone, whether they arrived from the street, the driveway, or the garage. To support this, we chose to forego an opening from the garage to the house. Instead, the garage will exit into the main exterior entry space.


A happy side effect of this design is that it is more green. A garage opening into heated living space tends to cause heat loss and has a small detrimental affect on indoor air quality.

However, the original design for this sequence had a fatal flaw, at least in Seattle — it was not fully covered! As shown in the diagram above, the sequence of stairs required that you join the main path, and follow the main entry steps down to the front door. The roof (indicated by the grey dotted line in the above image) does not cover the entire entry sequence, leaving you vulnerable to the elements as you go down the steps.

We considered two solutions:
  1. Extend the entry roof to cover the steps all the way to the top, covering the existing path from the garage to the entry.
  2. Create a shortcut path heading west, directly from the garage landing to the main entry, and put a short roof along the side of the garage to cover this new path.

Adding a larger roof has the disadvantage that it would require a post on the south-east corner, and it would make the entry darker. The second option adds more complexity to an otherwise clean design — a second set of stairs, a possible railing, a different run/rise ratio of the treads. However, our architect avoided those problems and made choosing the second option an easy choice:


Instead of just using the flat eyebrow used over the entry, we wanted to make this new section of roof a feature. A few metal supports extruding from the garage will be sandwiched with wood and support a semi-translucent polycarbonate sheet. This will allow light to filter through, while keeping off the rain. It also allows us to avoid the awkward visual that would result from the difference in height between these two surfaces. We'll use the same design of roof over the lower door to the backyard to provide some more consistency.

Here's a similar roof design from another YS Development home:

This satisfied the design problem nicely, and was finished just in time for the garage framing changes that were required to support the newly-added roof.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Mechanical and Windows

This was an exciting week for work on the house, and a couple new stages are starting.

Plumbing wrapped up this week, but the inspection was delayed due to scheduling and payment issues. There's plenty of time, though, so a delay on that is not a big deal. The natural gas pipe in the kitchen was installed. The upstairs bathtub was filled with water to test for any leaks.

Various framing modifications were done this week: the fireplace was lowered to bench height, framing for a soffit was put in over the kitchen (this ended up being just for aesthetics; there is no functional need for it), the door to the dressing room was moved, the closets in the second bedrooms were shortened to provide desk nooks, the entry closet was taken out to prepare for built-ins, and interior framing against the foundation in the lower part of the house was done. Here's the interior of the dressing room, showing the corner we have for closet space now:

Interior of dressing room. This corner will be a nice closet space now that the door has been moved.

The exciting rough-in work this week was the mechanical system. We're getting a mini-split system, a.k.a. a heat pump, a.k.a. a ductless system, which, as one of the names describes, does not use ducts for pushing heated or cooled air around. Instead, it uses a series of tubes. We want to explain this system in detail sometime soon, but the short version is that these tubes carry heat via refrigerant and move it between the interior and exterior of the house — one direction gives you heating inside, the opposite direction gives you cooling. On the inside, we'll have units in the living room, the office, the media room, the master dressing room, and each of the second bedrooms. These all aggregate to two units outside the house:

Exterior endpoints of the mini-split system. There are two external units, one for each group of tubes.

On Friday morning, our windows were delivered! A few have already been installed, and the rest should go in fairly quickly. We can finally see what the exterior charcoal frame looks like at full scale. We were surprised at how large the windows are. The framed glass panels certainly provide a sense of scale that the rough openings don't. Also, we have a lot of windows in the living room:

Windows for the living room

The timelapse is fairly boring this week; the end shows a couple of the master bath windows popping into place.



Most or all of the windows should be installed next week, and the mechanical rough-in should continue. It looks like the next step is to wrap all the tubes with insulation.