Categories
house construction Solar Power

Progress on the House; Part Three

Today is Sunday, October 16,2022. I am woefully behind in updating this blog. Below is a walkthrough of the house. AT is hoping to finish up the house and get an occupancy permit by the end of the week. Also, Kate is coming for a visit this Saturday (10/22/22).

Mostly Done with Siding

The siding is mostly done, lacking the corner pieces. We still need to pour a 20′ parking apron in front of garage.

Solar Panels

Off to the left are the solar panels. There are two panels not installed yet. I got 30 with the package I got. The minimum to reorder is 10, due to packaging requirements, so I will add two when we order Jill’s. The wires from the panels run underground to the panels in the garage.

Solar Power Installation

This is the South wall of the garage. The rack mount of 6 batteries is in the center. The two boxes labelled “EG4” are the main inverters that produce 240V to the Main Breaker panel to the right. The large white box to the left is the demand hot water heater. /

Master Bedroom

The master bedroom is currently the staging area for trim work. Note the ceiling fan (one in each bedroom) and the trim work.

Living Room

The living room. Note the ceiling lights in the living room and kitchen. The red blotch in the living room is for smoke detector. The butcher block on the kitchen counter is covered by protective cardboard. The cardboard covered black thing by the front door is the range waiting to be installed in the kitchen.

Kitchen

The microwave is installed over where the range will go. The cupboards are in, but still need handles.

Bedroom/Laundry/Office?

This is the bedroom at the front of the house. The window looks out at the front porch and door. The closet to the right of the laundry area will be the linen closet. The two boxes under the window are monitors for Kate to try out this week.

Second Bath

The second bathroom, with the magic toilet. Need to install some sort of glass around the shower.

Master Bath

This is the master bath. Note the slightly larger shower with built in window.

Patio

The patio off the dining room. Note the trim work is done on the house, along with the patio lights under the eaves. From L-R we have two MBR windows, Master bath window in the shower, window over the sink, patio doors and finally window in the office/bedroom.

Front of house & Solar Panels

Front of the house, note the large pile of dirt and big bank is knocked down. The solar panels on the left.

Garage

“Let there be Light!” in the garage. Note the attic stairs in the middle, and the garage bathroom and water heater on the right.

That’s the house as of 10/16/2022.

In other news, here’s some looks from back over the three weeks.

Erecting Poles

Mike, Jan, Jill, and I erecting the poles for the solar panels. Photo taken by Dawn.

Sisters

My three sisters, Dawn (Sis), Jill, and Jan after finishing erecting the poles.

Jon

My middle Jon, who spent the last couple of weeks helping out tiling in the showers and helping out immensely with the putting together the solar panels and the power system.

Categories
house construction Solar Power

Progress on the House; Part Two

I suddenly realized I am woefully behind on updating you about the progress on the house. You are welcomed by the front yard antelope that greeted me one day last week.

Antelope in the Front Yard

We are making progress on several fronts. First of all we have completed all of the wallboard, completed mud work and wallboard finishing, texturing and painting. For those of keeping score the exact shade of white is “Platinum”, a very light grey.

Painted Office
Kitchen with cabinets

Moving on to flooring, we started back in the Master Bedroom.

MBR Flooring

The flooring is mostly light shades of greyish wood. It is Luxury Vinyl Plank with interlocking pieces.

Master Bath

Continuing to the Master Bath, we can also see the greyish shaker-style vanity.

From MBR through hallway w/ coat closet

The flooring runs from the Master Bedroom down the hallway and into the Living Room/Kitchen area.

Setting Kitchen Cabinets

In addition to the flooring, we have started putting up the kitchen cabinets starting with the corner pieces. The general theme for the kitchen cabinets (as well as bathroom cabinets) is a simple grey Shaker style. In other news this week, we have installed the garage door.

Garage door and side door into Garage.

Since my last update we have also installed the side door into the garage. The siding installation has encountered a minor problem in that they ran short of “J-channel” pieces. They should get it finished up next week or so. Also note the patio off to the right

Starting to set poles for the Solar Power Panels.

Also, during a brief rain shower this afternoon the cement truck arrived to put in the poles to support the solar panels.

Mostly Done, about 5 hours later.

You can see 7 of the 8 poles standing proudly erect. We ran a little short while emptying out the cement truck (we ordered 2 cubic yards of cement. Over the next week we will rent a mixer and buy some bags of cement and fill that last hole.

Categories
Gardening house construction

How the Garden is Growing

I occasionally get questions on how the garden is growing. An illustration below is a close-up of a Zucchini harvested today (Sept 4, 20220).

Zucchini

To get a better idea of the size, here is the same picture with a scale.

Foot Long Zucchini

This is the largest of several more that are growing, so I am searching the web for pickling & canning recipes. I had planned to wait until I moved into the new house to start canning, but the Zucchini may drive me to start sooner.

As long as I was in the garden, here is an overview of how things are:

Zucchini bush taking over the planter.
Potato planter

Potatoes in the planter have been growing like gangbusters. the ones in buckets not so much.

Corn & Potatoes on the Left

The corn started off fine but seems to have stalled. (Maybe leaving for three-weeks in July wasn’t the best idea.) The tops are dying off while the one or two small ears of corn are just sitting there.

Corn

The house continues apace. A quick tour, I estimate that it’s about 85% done with drywalling. See the tour below.

Back bedroom.
Office/Back Bedroom
Looking towards Living Room from kitchen

The right side of the above is back side of wallboard, the left side is unfinished wall behind kitchen.

Kitchen & Living Room
Master Bedroom & Bath
The garage (and fireproof door into the house.

Categories
house construction weather

Progress on the House

We’ve been making steady progress on the house over the past couple of weeks, as of Sunday 8/28.

Most progress was made on the spetic system.

Hole for Septic Drain Field

Above is the 30×30 foot hole for the septic drain field. it is set so that the marks on the wall are where the top of the1 foot gravel bed should be. We have already put the 12 inches of “magic” non-draining dirt on top of the sand layer.

Filling septic hole with water

Filling the septic hole & magic dirt with water on Friday afternoon. The pool of water lasted until Monday morning, proving that indeed the magic dirt did the job and prevented the packed sand form draining the water away too quickly.

Laying out the Septic Drain Field

After laying out 6″ of gravel, we started laying out the septic tank drain field. The plan calls for 5 rows of 25′ of drain tile. We ordered a plastic 6 port (one input, 5 output drains) distribution box from Amazon.

Septic Field Layout

Here is the final layout after getting a preliminary layout evaluation from the county health dept. What you don’t see is that the end of each line, instead of being capped, is tied back across like the distribution end. That is an optional layout that ensures that all lines get equally used.

Top layer of gravel. Note the 5′ inspection pipe over distro box

Now the filed gets covered with another 6″ of gravel, getting at least 2″ above the 4″ pipes. Note the 5 foot inspection port over the distribution box and the edge of the 6-7 foot bank on the left.

Covering the drain field

The drain field is about half covered. Note the black fabric weed cover that keeps the sand from filling the interstices in the gravel bed. Also note the inspection port is about 2/3 covered.

After covering/shaping the hillside.

This is looking North up the hillside after grading and shaping the hillside. Note the white inspection port over the distro box just below the rear bumper of the dark vehicle and the removal of the cliff section from the road above.

In other news, we removed another bunch of dirt from behind the house to cover the rainwater tanks behind the house.

More dirt, start of siding installation.

Two more dirt piles that got dumped on storage tanks out back of house.

Covering the tanks out back (~1,650 gallons)

Going back to the above pictures of the dirt piles, you can see the start of the house siding going up. You can’t really see the color of the siding since it’s in the shade (North side of house) but it is only a couple of shades darker than the roofing color.

After covering tanks

This is the finished view of the tank covering. The gravel patch at the lower center is the end of the 10′ overflow pipe. The top of the tank is about 4-5 feet deep in the soil so it shouldn’t freeze. Notice in the east wall of the house is the swamp cooler (in my office). Given the very low humidity (currently 40%) a swamp cooler seems like a lower energy cost solution to cooling. It is extraordinarily close to the swamp cooler we had on Powell Way in Riverside. Of course, I will have AC and a generator if need be, but I think that a well insulated house and swamp cooler should do nicely for most of the year.

Siding done on the North side

Here is one view with the North side siding complete.

Better view of front door & siding on North side.

A better view of the North side of the house with the front door set back under the room. You can barely make out the dark wood of the front door (behind the white vent pipes)

In other news, the break from the hot weather seems to have brought out the flies. It turns out that something in the iPhone screen spectra seems to attract them. I have also seemed to misplace the two flyswatters I have, so I picked up two more at WallyWorld today (2 ea for 97 cents).

Mk 1 Mod 0 fly swatters.

However, in the next display they had a high tech equivalent, powered by 2 each AA batteries.

As sold.

When unwrapped and ready for use.

Ready for use.

Finally, I will try to embed a short view of the storm clouds on the northern horizon. I captured this about 2 weeks ago, but it is typical of how the spotty rains come and go.

Categories
health issues house construction Uncategorized weather

State of Health & Other Matters

I had a follow up at the doctor’s office (back lesion biopsy) and asked about Parkinson’s Disease. She enquired on why I hadn’t asked last Friday so I threw the girls under the bus and blamed them for the questions.

The bottom line is that I wasn’t displaying any specific symptoms. Trembling when attempting to do fine work is more symptomatic of aging; Parkinsons symptoms are trembling while at rest (while watching TV for instance). We agreed to keep watch for symptoms and discuss it in 6 months or a year or so.

I go back next Tuesday to get the stitch removed and she should have the biopsy back to tell if it was cancerous or not. She mentioned that I had apparently spent a lot of time in the sun and warned this may have to be repeated.

In other news, I got the rain gauge installed on Saturday, 2 days into the monsoon event and it shows the below as of today. A half an inch as of today (with another half an inch or an inch that I missed),

Thunderclouds building to the West

This is a view of the thunderclouds building during the afternoon all last week. It looks like the monsoons are gone, and we are back to clear, sunny weather, but the high temps are in the mid-80’s rather than the high 90’s.

Weather forecast on 8/162022

This week we should get the drywall finished, with mudding, taping and texturizing done.

Wallboard on ceiling in Dining Room
Master Bedroom