We have designed our electrical system so that power comes from the street, goes under the driveway in conduits, and comes out in the northwest corner of the garage. Power will then go from the garage to the utility room under the pantry. It is done this way to keep the electrical meter as far from the living area as possible (since the meter uses radio waves so the meter reading truck does not need to visually read the meter). It also provides a convenient point to wire in the backup generator, which is located behind the garage.
Anyway, I just got this picture from the builder, who says that we have connected the wires from the town power lines to the garage. This step is needed so we can power up the whole electrical system before March 16th for the scheduled EMF testing.
Inside the house two different crews were working on the electrical system. The electricians are continuing to wire the subpanels in the basement, but they are also putting in the speakers, and starting to add face plates to all the outlets and switches.
Here is what the main electrical panels currently look like. Today they were finishing up the left subpanel, which I believe to be the one for everything with a motor.
Last week they added fire proofing around all the wires going through the studs. This is to prevent any fire from spreading easily inside the walls. The fire proofing is the orange goop you can see where each wire goes through a stud in the following picture.
Meanwhile, today a team of people from our A/V consultants were on site terminating all of the Ethernet wires. They had a work area set up in the basement and were splicing ends on some of the cables. They were also adding ends on the wires where they come out of the walls. When they are done, they will test each cable to make sure it works properly.
Because we will be doing an EMF test of all the electrical wiring starting on March 16th, we are trying to get as much load installed in advance of that test as we can. Previously, they finished the HVAC system so that can be fired up. And yesterday, they installed the water heater. This system is a heat pump, which is supposed to be very efficient, although it steals heat from the basement (which then has to be added back by the heating system).
The construction crew has also been busy. Here is what the north side of the house looked like over the weekend. Although I did not take another picture today, those last remaining areas were also sided yesterday.
I actually have a construction video of the work done on the north side of the house. In the middle of the video you can also see the small plow that removes the snow from our yard. I do not get to keep it.
Inside the game room, the construction crew were designing the beams, which will be decorative. First they installed the core for all the beams, which are in this picture.
Then they prototyped the maple cladding for our review. These will get lightly finished to match the shelves (to be installed later).
Daphne and the landscaper discussed the plans for the front yard, including the foundation plantings. I will present the plans for the plantings in a story page at a later date. The landscaper wanted to install an irrigation system, even if it was not underground. But Daphne really wanted to avoid that. She will stick to drip hoses coming off the water faucets we already have on the outside of the house.
Estimated days until completion: 111 days (late June)
I got an update from the architect today with the current expectations for the next two months and I wanted to share the schedule of interior work with my small handful of regular readers.
Weeks of March 16 and 23:
Remaining internet and other low voltage wiring (speaker, cameras, etc.)
Electrical rough inspection
Fire stops and framing inspection
Fire department inspection
Weeks of March 23 and 30:
Insulation installation
Blower door test
Weeks of April 6, 13 and 20:
Hang wall boards and plaster
Outside, I hope we get the missing siding hardware delivered so they can finish the siding and start work on the gutters. Then we wait for the ground to thaw so they can connect the gutters to the underground water collection pipes (some of which need to be moved).
I also got the confirmation that the front door will be two steps up from ground level. And the deck will also be two steps up from ground level. For the deck and pantry door, we will have portable ramps that can be installed should we need wheel chair access to the house.
Here is the architects plans for the breezeway area where you can see the two steps up. The deck is at elevation 133′ above sea level, ground (front walk) is at elevation 132′ 1.5″, and there is one intermediate step between those two elevations. You can also see where the future ramps (if needed) will be located as well as the turning circle for a wheel chair.
Or so says the structural engineer. Today the structural engineer came by to inspect the house now that the electrical, HVAC installer and plumber are done drilling holes in the beams and studs. There was one issue with one stud in the master bedroom wall, where the electrician took out a little too much wood when installing an outlet for the reading lamp that will go over my bed. But that is easily fixed with a single 2×4. Now we will get an official certificate that will be filed with the town certifying the structural integrity of the house.
Speaking of the electrician, work continues on wiring the panels. Here is the current state of the main panels in the basement utility room.
You can see that one subpanel has been wired. I have a closer picture of that panel if you are interested in seeing the details.
The electrician also added power shutoffs for the HVAC system in the utility room. The “master air handler” shutoff does not shut everything off, its short for “master bedroom”, which is on its own zone.
Meanwhile, they have been working on the porch. In this picture you can see that they had been adding black trim to the inside and outside. They will finish the trim once they get back to finishing the siding (still waiting for parts).
In the front, now that the front door has been placed, we were measuring for the front stoop. The stoop will be a single piece of blue mist granite. There will be a 7″ step up from the ground to the front stoop and a 7″ step up from there into the house. The stoop will extend 1″ past the posts, which have yet to be installed (what you see now are temporary supports), and will go down 1″ below ground level.
The crew has also been working on the front door overhang, and here you can see the ceiling and the wiring for the front stoop light. The light is recessed compared to the sides to avoid light pollution. We are trying to follow dark sky protocol in our construction.
By the way, the front door frame arrived a little warped so they will have to get a replacement.
We have ordered the garage doors. We will be getting old fashion openers without WiFi since there will be no WiFi in the house. I guess the modern way to open your garage door is using your phone, but not for us. We will go old school with that button you attach to your visor.
Speaking of WiFi. Our consultant failed to find a soundbar compatible with our old TV that does not use WiFi. So instead, we will continue to use our old Sonos soundbar which allows WiFi to be disabled (except for a quick burst when it is first turned on).
Finally, we got another foot or so of snow last Monday. Right now the cherry picker is snowed in, but we will soon get a mini-plow to clear the yard. Here is what the river view looks like with the additional snow.
No adjustment to the schedule, yet.
Estimated days until completion: 117 days (late June)
Another snow storm is predicted, so I went to the house to see recent work before the storm. There is still plenty of snow from the last two storms as you can see in the picture of the river view.
As expected, electrical work continues inside. They have finished wiring the second floor subpanel as you can see below.
In the main utility room, they are organizing the wires getting ready to populate the two subpanels.
Elsewhere in the house, the construction crew has installed the real front door. The outside is blocked with a piece of plywood to protect the door, but you can see the inside here.
In the game room, they have start to mock up the (fake) exposed beams. You can see their work near the ceiling in this picture.
The construction camera has been running on the south side of the house, but there is not enough action yet for a new movie. Perhaps, once they get the missing siding hardware and start siding the porch.
Well that’s all for this update. I am not sure how the storm will impact work on Monday, but we will find out soon.
Another Wednesday and another site meeting. The most important news from this week’s meeting is that the electrician thinks he has finished laying wire in the walls. He has not wired up any of the subpanels, or put in any switches or outlets, but he should be finished drilling holes in the framing studs.
Why is this important? Well, now we can get the house inspected by the structural engineer. This inspection had to wait until the electrical (and HVAC installers and plumbers) were finished drilling holes that might impact the house’s structural integrity. Now that they are finished, we can go ahead with the inspection, which is necessary before any more insulation is added.
The architect has taken pictures of every wall showing its wiring, but I have picked out three pictures to give you an idea. The first picture is the basement ceiling outside of the utility rooms. There are a lot of wires passing under the hallway, all shield and spaced out.
This next picture is the east wall of the front bedroom on the second floor.
And this last picture is the most interesting. This is the west wall of the second floor family room where we will be installing a computer that will drive the upstairs TV. The blue tube is call “smurf tube”. It is a conduit for snaking wires. The tube that curves to the left will hold two HDMI cables that run from the computer to the TV. The other smurf tubes are for future use if we need to snake more wires on to the second floor.
Meanwhile, the construction crew has put in the flooring for the porch. It is mostly covered with protection (brown mat), but you can see it at the edges in the following picture. This is the same color schema that will be used for the deck.
The front door has arrived on site and the builder will try to get it installed by next Tuesday. That means on Wednesday, we can measure downwards from the door sill so we can figure out the example placement for the front stoop. The goal is to raise the ground to keep water from collecting near the front door. This will mean we have one 7″ step up from the front walk to the front stoop, and one 7″ step up from the front stoop into the house. The front stoop itself will be a 9′ x 3 1/5′ x 8″ piece of blue mist granite. We will order it from the quarry on April 1st when they open for the season. (It has to be custom cut).
They were installing the side door to the garage today and once the front door is installed, they will install the basement door. The panty door will not be installed until later so that entrance can be used by the construction crew.
The breezeway trim has been finished, but we have ten more days until we get the missing pieces for finishing the siding installation, which mostly is around the porch.
We had a discussion with the landscaping team lead. Among other things, they do all the earth moving. We can not start work on fixing the locations for the downspout drains or leveling the ground until it thaws. It has been a cold winter and the ground is still frozen solid.
I checked with the builder again about the date. He is still hopefully for end of June, but is sounding a little more pessimistic. That said, I will optimistically not change the end date, yet.
Estimated days until completion: 125 days (late June)
Some quick update pictures. In the previous post, I showed you the pocket door frames, except for one. Here is that missing pocket door frame, between the pantry and the front hall. This door, which will be normally closed, will be used when we come in the pantry door from the garage and breezeway, and want to get to the front hall (main entrance) to remove our coats and shoes (coats and shoes modeled by Daphne).
And here is the second floor electrical subpanel. This is installed in the corner of the front bedroom (behind the closet door when it opens). It will have all the wires for the second floor to reduce the number of wires that have to come up from the basement. The thicker shielded wire is the main line from the basement to this panel.
This morning, they placed the air condensers that make up our HVAC system. Once the deck is finished, we will have a panel that somewhat hides the south sides of the condensers from the deck (but not their main face, to avoid blocking air flow).
Now to explain “pulling wires”. I am not sure when this is typically done during new construction, but in our case, we have an EMF consultant who will be testing the electrical installation around March 16th. That test requires that the system be live and under load, which means that we need to be connected to the electrical grid and have multiple electrical loads running (which explains why we want to get the HVAC system up and running).
The builder sent me this short video this morning. This shows the construction crew pulling wires from the house, though the conduits, to the closest electrical (telephone) pole. I am guessing that they first snaked a rope though the conduit, then attached a bundle of wires and pulled the rope (with a truck).
I have a bunch of updates from our weekly meeting with the architect and the builder.
First, I will go through recent progress. Inside the house, the electrical team continues to work. The electrical work is very complex for our new house and it is taking a long time (and costing a lot). Currently we are hoping that the electrical work will be done and connected to live power by the second week in March. At which point, we will turn on the system and our EMF consultant will fly in (from New York) and measure the radiation levels in the house. If everything looks good (or at least if there are no major problems), then the builder can move forward with doing the interior finishing.
Here is the current back wall of the electrical utility room in the basement.
Just to be clear, this is only 2 of the five sub panels we will have in the house. (Last week we were planning on four, but the electrician decided to add another one in the utility room with all the HVAC equipment.)
Because we want to have real load on the electrical system for testing, we are finishing up the HVAC system so we can also turn it on for the testing in March. As of now, they have put in the connections for the external condensers, which run through tubes under the deck. We will install the condensers themselves (two of them) in a few weeks.
Inside the garage, they have also put the connections in place for the air handling unit that will heat and cool the garage. This will keep the garage from getting too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.
Yes, the garage will be insulated and plastered. And speaking of the garage, we discovered that code requires us to provide access to the area above the garage ceiling because it is a large enough space. So they have framed an opening, although we will not have drop down stairs (I do not need the storage space).
Outside the house, I am sorry to report that final siding installation is delayed again. Really. The siding company shipped us the wrong hardware, so we still do not have enough mounting hardware to put the siding on the porch. The team will continue to do as much as they can in the meantime. This will not delay anything (the electrician is doing a fine job at that on his own).
Last week I posted a picture of the ceiling of the porch. Here is a picture of the ceiling of the breezeway.
Inside the house, the construction crew has finished installing all the remaining frames for the pocket doors. We will have six pocket doors in the house, two at the top of the stairs (second floor landing), shown here.
Two small ones for the master closet, shown here:
One for the laundry room, for which I posted a picture last week. And one between the pantry and the front hall (no picture).
The construction crew and ventilation team have also rerouted the duct work in the upstairs bathroom and framed an opening that will eventually be a cubbyhole next to the toilet.
The builder had the water tested (it’s Concord municipal water from town wells), and it came back as being quite hard (11 grains per gallon). So we will be getting a whole house water softener. On the plus side, this should extend the life of the hot water tank. We will have one filtered tap for drinking water in the kitchen that bypasses the water softener.
Tomorrow they will install three of the four exterior doors. Hopefully, I will have pictures this weekend. We are holding off installing the pantry door, which will continue to be used by the construction crew to get in and out of the house. The front door will not be used any more during construction.
This weekend, Daphne and I will look at two different samples of granite for the front stoop. You can see those samples here, to the left and right of the entrance. We be using blue mist granite tiles for the front walk. Then there will be one large granite slab, a 7″ step up from the ground, and then another 7″ step to get to the door jam. Right now, in this picture, the ground is lower than it will be when the project is finished.
We decided to add one more plug in the basement where we will put a work bench. The outlet will allow us to run small power tools. The workbench will be near, but not under the windows in the basement.
Also in the basement, we will be plastering the inside of the stairs from the first floor into the basement, but the outside of those walls will just have plywood (after all, none of the basement is finished). We will also just have plywood on the outside walls of the two utility rooms. In 30 years, after we die and our heirs sell the house, the new owners can always finish the basement if they really want.
Meanwhile, we are trying to keep the basement safe for flooding by having nothing that will get damaged if we get rising water. We have two sump pump wells in the foundation, and power near both of them, but we have not decided on whether we want a sump pump or not.
I double checked with the builder, and there has been no change in the estimated end date, but 7 days have passed so…
Estimated days until completion: 132 days (late June)
Another Wednesday meeting with the builder and architect and some special guests.
We had the security company come by to confirm the placement of the security panel, which will go next to the front door, all the smoke detectors, and the alert speaker (which will make a annoying loud sound if any of the smoke detectors, or house alarm goes off). The speaker will be in the hall under our mail table.
We then had the awning company representative come by since we are switching brands of awning. The company we were using no longer sells Sunsetter brand so we will switch to their own in-house brand, which is supposed to be both better and cheaper. The awning will go over the portion of the deck outside the dining room.
Then the media consultant came by and we decided on the positions for the outside cameras. One will go on the garage to see anyone coming up the driveway walking towards the front (or side) door. One will go on the side of the porch to watch the back door. And one will go on the second floor wall and give us a view of the back yard and river. It should trigger if there is any wildlife movement in our backyard. We will also have doorbell cameras (not Ring) by both the front and side doors. The camera system is all local — not cloud based.
Inside the electrician continues work. He is trying to finish by mid-March when we will do an EMF test with our EMF consultant, before starting on insulation and plastering. Here is the current collection of Ethernet (white) and safety cables (red) coming into the electrical room.
The electrician has also started wiring the outside fixtures. Here you can see the spot for our wall sconce and a place for a plug and Ethernet port on the deck.
Last week the HVAC team finally put in the pipes that go from the air handlers in the basement and second floor out to the condensers, which will be behind the garage. Here are those pipes where they go through the foundation (this still needs sealing).
Inside the construction crew spend some time working out how we will install the in-wall ironing board. Here is where it goes in the laundry room.
And here is an interesting picture from the laundry room.
If you can not tell, this is the frame for the pocket door between the laundry room and the front hall. The team are installing all the pocket door frames now since some of them will have outlets in them.
Some other tidbits.
We decide to add an automatic water shutoff in the laundry room is the washer hose breaks. This just detects water on the floor.
We will also add a whole house automatic shutoff if there is a leak. This system is supposed to be smart. It learns your water use patterns and shuts off the water if there is an unusual pattern. I do not know how well it works but some insurance companies require it.
We are going to try a curved back to the cove lights in the living room to reduce shadows. They will change the current mock-up and we will inspect it on the weekend.
Placement of the smoke detector in the second floor hallway will be too close to the bathroom door. Because of this we will have to impose three rules: always close the bathroom door when taking a shower, always run the bathroom fan when talking a shower, and no 30 minute long showers. This keeps the steam from escaping and setting off the smoke detector.
We still have not decided on the handles for the bathroom vanity, but I brought home another, longer handle, for Daphne to inspect. No rush because we are months away from building the kitchen.
No change in the estimated end date, but 7 days have passed so…
Estimated days until completion: 139 days (late June)
We had a big snow fall this last weekend in the Boston area. The builder brought in a small plow and is clearing the area around the house.
Meanwhile, outside the house the construction crew are adding more framing around the windows. They also put in the ceiling for the porch and under the living room awning. I have pictures here:
Inside the house, electrical work continues. Here is the south wall of the living room where the entertainment system will be. You can see lots of Ethernet boxes and electrical outlet boxes. Some of the outlets are on a switch and some are not.
The view of the front yard after the snow, then after plowing, then with the vans parked there is nothing to look at. So instead, here is a view of the river from the living room window.
The electrician has asked that we move the EMF inspection out a week and a half. Since this is on the critical path, the schedule has slipped 10 days, although 7 days has passed since my last update, so …
Estimated days until completion: 146 days (late June)
