At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Tile Work

The first 3 pictures are the master bath.
The second picture is the hall bath.

The 4th picture is the laundry room facing the W/D connection. Note: The floor slopes to the middle where there is a drain in case the washer tries to flood the house. I had a co-worker whose washer flooded two floors of the house. We hope to prevent that nightmare. The smaller tiles enable the tiles to be sloped toward the drain.
The 5th picture is the laundry room facing the laundry sink cabinet.

None of the grout has yet been installed.

 

[Obed]

We now have breakers in the panels and powered outlets in the upstairs hallway and kitchen. The panel on the right is for the basement. I can open a 200A breaker at the outside pedestal to disconnect power to either panel. I really like the idea of being able to work in the panel without it's being hot.

The orange wire hanging down the wall on the right is for the well water pressure tank; the electrician's helper installed it today. Note: The electrician has not done any of the electrical work; his helpers did all the work. The electrician was hardly ever here. If I had it to do over again, I would ask every sub during the bid process what parts of the work they would personally perform and what percentage of the time they would be onsite while their workers were working. I don't mind the subs having crews; what I entirely dislike is having unsupervised crews performing the work. For electrical, I really wish we had had a licensed electrician who was onsite whenever his helpers were onsite. I would not hire this electrician again. Please forgive the rant.

Phone Conduit
In the back right corner you can see a 1" grey conduit going through the concrete wall. That conduit pipe is just stuck in the hole for now; it won't stick out of the wall when we're done. Our hammer drill is not big enough and we don't have a big enough drill bit. So the electrician said he would drill it for us. However, the workers kept forgetting to bring the drill bit. A few days ago they drilled a 3/4" hole and told me I didn't need the conduit to run through the hole or that I could reduce the conduit from 1" to 3/4" at the wall. I didn't like that idea. After several days pestering them, they finally got the hole drilled to the right size today. The hole slopes so that water would have to run uphill to come in through the hole. The hole is below grade.

The conduit runs from the basement to close to the electrical pedestal by the driveway. When the phone company pulls their phone cable through the conduit, I'm going to ask them to pull a Cat6 cable of mine at the same time. I'm not sure what I will use the Cat6 cable for but like having it their. If we install a light at the pedestal or any security equipment out there, I could use the Cat6 cable to control them.

 

[Obed]

Heat & Air
We got the H&A units mostly installed. The outside unit requires an electrical disconnect installed on the outside wall. The third picture shows a grey wire coming out of the wall where the disconnect needs to be installed. Both the electrician and the H&A sub both claimed that they "never" install the disconnect but that the other guy "always" installs it. After you've heard claims like these for the umpteenth time, you get so you don't believe half of what the workers tell you when it comes to getting out of work.

So my wife got disconnect installation prices from both the H&A guy and the electrician and asked the H&A guy to do it because he was cheaper. There's a part of me that thinks the disconnect should be part of the electrician's job original bid and now he's just trying to get out of doing it or trying to get extra money. Let's face it; every house will have one of these so why wouldn't that be part of the electrician's standard job? How is this disconnect different from wiring up the outlet for the refrigerator?

 

[tony Cecil]

I sure agree with you..Seems like the electrician would be responsible for the disconnect....I wonder what the inspector would say?....surely they have to have some opinion on this as they have on everything else ....It could be that the A/C guy would have to connect his equipment to the switch, but electricity is electricity...Tony ps You are almost there and I know you will be pleased with yourself..

 

[dstig1]

Yeah that's the electrician's job, for sure. But I think you have discovered that you did not find a decent electrician already. It is a big problem with residential electricians - many of them look at it as scut work, best I can tell, and they cut corners and try to bang it out as fast and cheap as possible. I bet he is using the push-connect outlets too (where you just push the wire in the spring contact socket on back of the 29-cent outlet and hope it remains connected and doesn't cause a fire from a high-resistance connection in a couple years). Well why not? It's fast and cheap! In my place(s), I only use screw contacts and spend the extra money for commercial grade outlets. They are only like $1 ea, which is a trivial cost increase but the quality is way higher.

For my money - fire the electrician and do the rest yourself. But not everyone is comfortable with doing that.


Make sure you seal around that conduit with hydraulic cement. I hate below grade foundation penetrations...

 

[brin]

Obed...With the electricain be sure he does not put your freezer or refrigerator on a GFI receptacle ..if he does and one of those trips while you are away....all your food is lost. I hate those things unless they are only used by a sink or near water. After our final inspection I took all the unecessary one out. Also if your electrician is wiring you phone lines be sure each line is a homerun or if you ever have problems with a short in a line it will be a big job to isolate the problem.

Misery loves company...If it is any consolation, when we built our house I had an electrician that was difficult to work with and looking back I should have fired him in the first couple of days...You are not alone. I had minutes to go before the building inspector was to arrive for my final inspection..and I had to do plumbing and electrical finishing touches at the last minute...Not fun...but I passed the final and we moved in.

It seems some of these subs will let you down right at the end...they have drawn most of their money and could care less...the bad ones that is...Hang in there...this too shall pass...LOL

 

[srs]

Tile Work

The first 3 pictures are the master bath.
The second picture is the hall bath.

The 4th picture is the laundry room facing the W/D connection.

None of the grout has yet been installed.

Obed, tile work looks really good from the photos you supplied. Tile spacing look nice, grout lines are straight and equal in size.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I don't get the 44 day occupancy or loose power. My utility let me hook up as soon as it was weatherproof, which meant there was felt on the roof over the panel. As long as your paying the bill, why would they shut you off just because you don't have occupancy.

anyway, the house is looking good.

 

[dstig1]

My guess is the 44 days is to stop people from abusing it. Get the temp power and then stretch it out for a couple years...That sort of thing. Does seem arbitrarily short though. Who knows how precise they will be on that too. They may not get around to coming out to do anything about it for a few weeks or more after. Things get forgotten like that.

The other key point is that having a CO is not the same as having to live there. You can get the CO once you meet a set of criteria that is basic level stuff (functioning bathroom, kitchen sink, insulation/drywall, etc). It doesn't mean you are necessarily ready to move in. So you do what you need to get the CO and keep plugging away to finish it off to truly livable. Even if that means you cobble togther something to mount the kitchen sink into, even though the cabinets have not arrived yet, for example...

 

[Obed]

I straighted up the mess below the culvert. Originally I had haphazzardly dumped a bunch of brick and concrete debris below the culvert. It ended up to be a big ugly pile. I really didn't like being able to see the brick and concrete rip-rap right beside the driveway. This week after work I tossed the whole pile, brick by brick, down the gully. I loaded some rocks from the waterline trench and put them below the culvert near the road in a more orderly fashion. I like the looks of the natural rocks as rip-rap much better than the bricks, mortar, and concrete. The bricks, mortar, and concrete are still acting as rip-rap to resist the gully's washing out, but they are now farther away from the driveway and less noticeable.