Trick or Treat

It's Halloween night and Don sent some nice photos for trick or treat. For the treat, these are the first images I've seen of the completed glass. For the trick, our insulators have sprayed the inside walls and ceiling with soy-based spray insulation. Pretty cool stuff.

Earlier this week Don dropped off the RAIS Pina wood stove--all 500 lbs. of it! Today, I also had a security company wire the place with a fire and security system. The system includes motion detectors, glass break sensors, door sensors, smoke detectors and a temperature monitor that will alert me if the inside temp drops below a certain limit. We also ran RG6 cable for satellite tv and internet.

The drywaller starts tomorrow and the ipe wood for the deck and bridge should arrive Friday. Found a good source for cable railings and posts in Tacoma, WA--American Metal Specialties.

In a few weeks I'll order the flooring from Green Building Supply. We're going with natural strand bamboo in living and bedrooms and natural cork for the utility room. We'll do 1x1 daltile in the bathrooms with whisper-quiet Panasonic exhaust fans. At this point we're shooting for an early December move-in date.

Octoberfest

The leaves may not have changed yet, but SFH certainly has since my last post. Lots to celebrate. The tar paper is on the outside. Don added a coat of green-gray paint to the foundation wall. Many of the interior walls have been framed out. Travis and crew from All-Weather Control installed the ductwork and air handler for the heat pump. The electrician and plumber are on the job next week. And the windows are in progress.

Don and I spoke about a few modifications to the original plan. We will take the guest bath walls to the ceiling rather than the 7 feet or so in the plan. Also, we'll be pulling return air through wall vents in the hallway and bedrooms. We'll locate the electrical panel on the exterior porch wall in the utility room and run circuits for radiant floors in both baths.

I dropped off a few finish items as well:
• two in-wall and two ceiling speakers for install (Accurian brand from RadioShack)
• mounting bracket for 42" LCD tv
• tub valve and tub/shower valve for bathroom fixtures (Pharma and Como by Danze)

Lighting Design

Here's a preliminary design for placement of recessed lights throughout. We'll most likely use 5" cans. The yellow dots indicate light fixtures and the green represent outside power locations. The yellow rectangle in the master bath is a fixed skylight.

R-19 and Counting

The faux walls are up and insulated with Johns Manville formaldehyde-free fiberglass batt. Kraft paper backing was removed to reduce the probability of mold issues. We plan to use a soy-based spray insulation inside the interior walls bringing the R value well over 20 (35+ for some walls). The minimum for our area is R-11. The roof will get the same treatment with 1" of insulation where the insulating roof board is thicker and 3" where the board tapers for drainage on the east side (back).

Full Steam Ahead

Don and crew are really cruising now. The TPO roof is down and we've added a skylight to brighten the master bathroom. The electrician has started on wiring and Don has started framing out the interior walls. A crew will spray soy-based insulation into the interior wall spaces next. This alone should provide a high R-value, but we're also investigating using a formaldehyde-free fiberglass batt for the exterior faux walls.

We needed to lower the porch to accommodate a three-layer floor made with tapered insulation board, waterproof barrier and ipe wood planks. We could do this because we went with a floor design using 2" x 10" joists rather than I-joists. The intent is to level out the transition between the outside ipe and inside bamboo flooring (natural, horizontal). Don is fabricating a 14-foot steel ramp that will connect the entry with the higher ground on the west side. We'll use ipe here as well.