Lost of Things going on!

Lots going on at the jobsite and behind the scenes. The last few days I have had three crews onsite doing their respective "things":

Framers-Finishing off roofing details like the Fascia board and other misc small stuff
Plumbers-Doing the rest of the rough-in work on the 1st and 2nd floors
Heating-Roughing in all the in floor heating tubing etc

Very busy times and lots of stuff moving ahead

Sample of the plumbing work. Everyone uses PEX tubing now. It goes a lot faster and you have better flow because there are less joints, elbows etc. Plus copper is a lot more expensive! :-)

I had a request for a picture of the Insulated Roof Panels so here it is. These are basically SIPs (Structrual Insulated Panels). They are 9 1/2" of rigid foam with a 4x8 sheet of 1/2" OSB attached to one side. A normal SIP has OSB on both sides. There is a groove just below the OSB where you glue in a strip of OSB during installation. Then you screw through the entire panel with 10" screws.

Front entrance with the Fascia board attached.

House wrapped and with the Fascia Board on. The drive has also been leveled out with the fill dirt, plus I got some extra to use on the front yard and around the side of the garage.

Lessons and MIsc Stuff

1. Fascia Board - This trim piece gets a lot of abuse from the weather so it needs to be able to hold up. Traditionally a 2" thick piece of cedar was used. Strong and stable stuff. Nowadays it seems that the wood is not up to the task anymore. Fast growing wood is more likely to bend, cup and twist. To make a long story short I looked at over half a dozen choices and just couldn't decide. Cost and performance just didn't seem to mesh. Finally I came up with using 12" Hardiplank that is used for siding. It is a stable cement fiber product that should paint up nicely. It is pretty thin but I think I will add a trim piece at the bottom edge to give it thickened appearance. Plus it only cost around $250 compared to cedar which was as much as $1200! I hope it will work!

2. Roofing - I had in mind a metal roof because it seemed to suit the house design, is low maintenance, and I had a line on a good deal :-) A concern we had was that the shallow sloped valleys could have ice daming in cold weather leading to potential leaks. So I looked at other options including PVC membrane and Granulated Torchdown. The Torchdown won out in the end. Almost half the cost of the metal roof plus it will be less likely to have any problems in the valleys in cold weather. Also I looked at the views of the house and came to realize that you only see a small portion of the roof surface from directly across the street only. Therefore it doesn't have a huge visual design impact. Research got me the best product for my purposes, it cost less and will look just fine aesthetically!

3. Craigslist - It's been awhile since I mentioned using this site. I check it frequently for deals, especially for bicycles that I don't really need :-) Who can pass up a great deal right! So I had the idea of having a spiral staircase from the upper deck down to the patio by the Master Bedroom. It was one of those things that would probably be eliminated due to budget constraints. Of course the other day I ran across a spiral staircase on Craigslist for sale at a cut rate. We are checking it out on Saturday. Cross your fingers but hopefully I can make it work and we can get it set up for about half the price of a new one.