Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[s219]

you are putting WAY to much faith in the local municipal inspector.

It would take them several hours per dwelling to do a proper inspection, and you're lucky if they are on site for 15-30 min.

We just finished building here, and I was amazed at the little things the inspectors picked up. They aren't comprehensive, but they do look at the little details quite a bit.

 

[mkane09]

Not hard enough. Peter, forgive me:

Hey, there's Mom! Just as I described her! Hi, Mom!!!

mkane09

 

[FairfaxStu]

Peter:

With the strong threat of nasty storms this afternoon, have you tested your Mom's new generator to make sure it will fire up and transfer power properly? Last I heard you still have to manually start your's because of fuel delivery issues. Hopefully, you have fixed that now.
-Stu

 

[pacerron]

Peter:

With the strong threat of nasty storms this afternoon, have you tested your Mom's new generator to make sure it will fire up and transfer power properly? Last I heard you still have to manually start your's because of fuel delivery issues. Hopefully, you have fixed that now.
-Stu

Stu,
On 5-30 Peter said, "Moving outside, the propane was connected today and the generator is now online. I'll get the painter to paint the iron pipes to match the siding color."

I would think this means he tested it, but not sure?

Ron

 

[FairfaxStu]

Yeah, I saw that Ron. As we both know, there is nothing like a real world test, however. That is what I meant.
-Stu

 

[pacerron]

Peter,
I've been thinking about your fridge issue and the mess and expense to cut the closet wall at an angle so the right door will open far enough for the drawers to come out. The curved out profile of the doors complicates the clearance further.

You may have already tried this suggestion and been turned down by your mom.
Looking at your posted pictures, have you tried pulling the fridge forward enough so everything has clearance?
That would further add some more air circulation space behind the fridge. It looks air starved and may run excessively
the way it is now.
A couple pictures for consideration.
# 1 is as you showed it installed.
#2 is with the unit pulled forward a few inches.
Ron

 

[J F]

Neat trick Ron. :laughing: As I "drag and drop" each pic onto my 2nd monitor, I can watch the fridge "move".

 

[pclausen]

Actually, the person in that one image is my aunt, not my mother. I did see it before posting and let it slide. No biggie. They have actually been following this thread from abroad, and so has mom.

As far as the fridge, we did try pulling the fridge out far enough to where the door would open all the way, but it meant pulling it about 3" past the corner, which really compromised the floor space and ingress to the kitchen. The builder put a protective clear rubber bumper on the corner of the wall to keep from damaging the fridge door when opening it. The bottom drawer does pull out all the way (it goes below the lowest pocket in the door), as do other drawers on the right side. So for now, we're going to leave it like this and decide later if we want to go through the trouble of cutting out a 45 in the corner. For now, mom wants to just get fully settled in and now have workers in the house every day.

As for the railing, I do believe there are screws in addition to nails holding them to the posts, I'll double check when I get a chance.

The speaker grilles can be painted, in fact Polk includes specific instructions on how to do it. As Stu pointed out, the paint has to be sprayed on. After the 1st coat, the grill has to be turned 90 degrees and then the 2nd coat applied. This is to prevent the small holes from being clogged. Not sure we'll bother. The while matches the white in the picture frames nicely as it is.

Yes, all the speaker wire was run ahead of time, although with the large openings for the in-wall speakers, it would have been relatively easy to snake them up from below after the fact. DirecTV was installed yesterday and is working great. Mom got the Genie HD DVR, and it is great. I showed her how she could pause live TV and automatically record TV series shows, and setup favorite channel lists, etc. She was blown away. I had to cut down a cluster of 3 poplar trees to get a clear signal. One was leaning towards the house, so it was probably good to get it down anyway.

As for Internet, that is scheduled for tomorrow, and will be Satellite based (Exceed), as that is unfortunately the only option presently. Verizon were not willing to sell me a dry loop between my house and mom's, and other wireless options failed to get decent signals.

There have already been a few brief power outages and the generator comes online and transfers powers within 10 seconds. It starts within 3 seconds of loosing utility power. The generator I'm having issues with is the one at my house (the Generac).

The rock on the chimney is done, as are the front walls. I'll take some pics this afternoon of those, as well as the DirecTV dish install on the chimney and the coax and Ethernet cabling in conduits. Turned out nice I think.

 

[jdonovan]

if you have line of sight between the two houses you can get good distance out of commercial WIFI gear and directional antennas.

If you own all the property between the two homes, rent a trencher and run your own dry pair.

 

[aczlan]

As for Internet, that is scheduled for tomorrow, and will be Satellite based (Exceed), as that is unfortunately the only option presently. Verizon were not willing to sell me a dry loop between my house and mom's, and other wireless options failed to get decent signals.

Curious what you tried... I use a couple of Ubiquity Nanostations for a link to my inlaws place and they work very well but leaves make them very unhappy.

Aaron Z

 

[FairfaxStu]

Peter:

As I expected, it sounds like you are on top of everything. The main thing is to make sure that your Mom is happy and living in a house that is safe. I think all of us can agree on that point.

On the internet access, I find it hard to believe that you can hit the AP on the mountain but your Mom cannot since you are so close. Did you install your router or did somebody else do it? Jdonovan has a good point about the potential for using commercial WiFi products as an alternate solution. I have heard that Satellite internet is, well, not so good.

The last point I have, and one that was brought up by Ron, is the effective length of the dryer vent. I am not going to say it is too long but I really think it is iffy at best. As long as you trust it and think it will work, I am satisfied.
-Stu

 

[jdonovan]

On the internet access, I find it hard to believe that you can hit the AP on the mountain but your Mom cannot since you are so close. Did you install your router or did somebody else do it? Jdonovan has a good point about the potential for using commercial WiFi products as an alternate solution. I have heard that Satellite internet is, well, not so good.

depends what mom uses the net for...

low latency things, VOIP, gaming, video conferencing are mostly no-go on satellite.
VPN back to the corp office is marginal.

General web browsing, email etc... works fairly well.

 

[pclausen]

Regarding the dryer, it actually vented into the house when mom tried it day before yesterday. It had come undone where the flex pipe attaches to the dryer. I'll let them deal with pull it out from the wall (after pulling the washer out as there is no way to get to it otherwise). We didn't want it venting directly to the porch which is on the other side of the exterior wall where it is located. Fortunately she will only use it on rare occasions when the outside weather does not permit hanging it there. She much prefers the freshness of clothes dried outside.

As for Internet, she'll primary use it for general web browsing and email, so the latency associated with a satellite link should not be a large concern. Unfortunately there are 4 parcels of land between our houses, so trenching my own ditch is not a very viable option. We have tried shooting various 900MHz, 1.8, 2.8 and 5.4GHz solutions between our houses with no success. I was wrong about it being 800ft. It is more like 1700 ft. Here's a Google Earth view.

Stu, my house was unable to pickup the transmitter on Afton mountain. It wasn't until they put an AP on Ennis Mountain that I was able to pickup a signal. We, the neighbors on the street, have been thinking about chipping in and getting fiber run and be done with it. Problem is that the cost to us is about $25k. Split 8 ways, that's still a sizable chunk per household!

 

[pclausen]

Some cell phone pics from this afternoon (sorry I forgot my camera what I was over there spreading what will hopefully be the last load of crush & run.

Gravel spread in front of driveway

Rock work in front of house done

Chimney and DirecTV dish

Misc other shots from back side

Stamped concrete sealed

 

[FairfaxStu]

Stu, my house was unable to pickup the transmitter on Afton mountain. It wasn't until they put an AP on Ennis Mountain that I was able to pickup a signal. We, the neighbors on the street, have been thinking about chipping in and getting fiber run and be done with it. Problem is that the cost to us is about $25k. Split 8 ways, that's still a sizable chunk per household!

Jeez. Is that a one time cost or would you still have to pay a monthly rate in addition. I suspect I know the answer.
-Stu

 

[cfhuber]

As for Internet, she'll primary use it for general web browsing and email, so the latency associated with a satellite link should not be a large concern. Unfortunately there are 4 parcels of land between our houses, so trenching my own ditch is not a very viable option. We have tried shooting various 900MHz, 1.8, 2.8 and 5.4GHz solutions between our houses with no success. I was wrong about it being 800ft. It is more like 1700 ft.

Stu, my house was unable to pickup the transmitter on Afton mountain. It wasn't until they put an AP on Ennis Mountain that I was able to pickup a signal. We, the neighbors on the street, have been thinking about chipping in and getting fiber run and be done with it. Problem is that the cost to us is about $25k. Split 8 ways, that's still a sizable chunk per household!

I've been lurking on this thread since the early days (as I was intrigued by the fact that the build was just 10 miles west of my (new-to-me) house as the crow files). I think you will be pleasantly surprised with Exceed.

The CenturyLink central office for the less than 20 houses on my gravel road is 4 cable miles from my house. The neighbors' hope for DSL is a pipe dream (perhaps in this case it should be called a "cable dream"). My nearest neighbor was still using dial-up until last summer. My house sits in a little valley between two ridges in southern Albemarle county. The county's dislike of cell towers means that my AT&T iPhone is a brick when I'm home. Having moved from Arlington with FIOS, I was ready for an unpleasant reversal of experience with internet access.

Providentially, ViaSat had just launched their newest internet satellite, providing an alternative to the much panned HughesNet. We got our Exceed service by way of Nelson County Cable and are just coming up on a year's worth of experience. Installation was no fuss (both times: we also got a receiver for an office). Service has been very good. We only loose connectivity during very heavy rain storms (it was gone for five minutes during those heavy thunder storms last week). Satellite reacquisition after connection loss is very fast and I have never needed to manually intervene.

As for speed, that one or two second latency until pages start loading gives you a moment to contemplate whether you want to continue your youtube binge or go outside and do something useful. But once they do start loading the experience is reminiscent of DSL. And the IP address is rarely changed, an added bonus if your managing remote firewalls. The contract has bandwidth limitations, but they don't seem to be enforcing them at the moment.

Frank.

 

[Jim Shooz]

Might be a solution a couple of years away here:

Google launches Project Loon - National - NZ Herald News

Don't know if the video link will run. Sometime they are "copyrighted" and wont run in another country.

 

[FairfaxStu]

Jim:

It ran fine for me. Not to bog this thread down with techno-geek speak, I suspect the major providers here in the US will lobby against this like crazy because it is a cash cow for them. As such, I don't see this available here for a long time - 5-10 years minimum. I am not sure of the climate for devices like cellphones and tablets with cellular access, etc in NZ, but here in the states you typically get devices "on the cheap" but get locked into a contract where you are obligated to pay your provider X amount per month over Y amount of years. My understanding is that outside of the US, you buy your own device at full price but then can get service for much cheaper and then can change service providers at will with no penalty.
-Stu

 

[J F]

Do they allow paragraph spacing, Stu?

 

[murphy1244]

Do they allow paragraph spacing, Stu?

That really bugs go, don't it.:shocked: