4 & 8 barrel manifolds (Day 102 of 273)

Hey Blew-by-You, bet you thought I was going on a tirade about those gas-guzzling pre-fuel injection cars you are so found of——Not. Instead, we're talking about water distribution.

Levi Ross (formerly of Sunshine Propane) started building the radiant heating system this week. I had routed all the supply and return tubing through the subfloor and arranged the bundles of Pex tubing by zones (3) and loops (11 total). Mounted a 4'x8' sheet of plywood to the basement wall to mount all the paraphernalia on painted it a less than appetizing Forest Green (Craig, this compliments the Forest Service Brown shingles on your old house). Hey, we're not making artwork here, just heat.The manifold system consists of 2 8-port tubes (one with shutoff valves) and 4 4-port tubes (2 with shutoff valves). There are pumps for each zone, but only two are installed (one is in the hands of UPS Ground delivery service right now). All this stuff is interconnected with 3/4 and 1" copper pipe, skillfully brazed together by Levi. The water heater is a 60 gallon Polaris with a stainless steel liner (read $4000). This baby is 95% efficient, so we're going to wring most of the BTUs out of that propane. (Natural gas is not available on the Olympic Peninsula). Interestingly, propane generates 1 gal of waste water (from the cooled exhaust gas) per hour when the heater is running full tilt, so the heater is close to the floor drain and sump basin. We'll keep that sump pump exercised pretty well, especially in the winter.


The big white PVC pipe to the left (east) of the heater is the an air intake, and the muffler-like sausage is an air filter. It seems that little buggers (mosquitoes, gnats, etc.) have a liking for propane and will fly down the pipe and roost on the wire-mesh flame spreader. After a while you have a nice coating of roaster buggers and poor heat transmission. The round cylinder at the top is an expansion tank for the radiant heating fluid (water). As I mentioned before, the domestic water comes off the same system but this won't get built out for a while. For now, Levi's about done. Once all the parts are connected and open pipes are plugged, we'll do an air-pressure test and see if we have any leaks. If so, out comes the pipe cutter and Pex connectors. No worries, everything can be fixed.

Roof decking going on (Day 98 of 273)

Well we're almost 100 days into this project, which is supposed to be finished in 9 months (273 days) according to the Kala Point Architectural Committee. The problem is that they haven't showed up on site with rakes, shovels or hammers, so I don't feel particularly obliged to meet that deadline. More important is the fact that our house rental lease expired on August 18th, 2009, so that is when the crows will come to roost. We've budgeted $385k for construction of the house (= net from the Denver house) and our Quicken account says we've spent about $200k so far. Can't really tell if we're on budget or not, but I'm sleeping OK so we're probably OK. The high dollar-density purchases are still out there: appliances, flooring, doors, and fixtures so have to keep an eye on the checkbook. Whatever is left goes for a driveway and landscaping.

All the major framing is done. In the photo to the left, Lonnie is securing the barge rafters (the ladder-like overhang on gable ends of the house) with another type of Simpson bracket. One every foot (with 8 screws), so no overkill here. Gotta watch out for those rogue NW Pacific hurricanes. Now the roof decking is going on. It is 5/8" OSB (actually its 19/32" to make life complicated), which we upgraded to the minimum code mandated 1/2" (7/16ths). Do you know of anything else that is labeled one sized and delivered smaller. 2x4s are 1.5x3.5. Its like buying a pint of your favorite lager and getting 13 oz. Anyway, we'll have a stiff roof to drive several thousand nails into. We're interviewing roofers this next week so that we can get it really watertight before the monsoon season hits (now until June).
The photos show the roof rafters (2x12s) on the bedroom/sunroom and decking on the 2nd floor and over the kitchen/sauna area. Notice the gable "love nest"; as previously mentioned naming rights are still available. The garage roof will be built next week; roof trusses should arrive on Friday morning. Beca of NW Trusses came over on Wednesday and measured all the critical things, then went back and fine-tuned the truss plan. She managed to make the room above the garage (lets call it the boat loft for fun) big enough to build an 18 ft kayak or canoe in, so I'm happy. The garage and mudroom roof gets built over the decking that already in place.

Last weekend I scouted out a local sawmill at the advice of Gary Ellis. Its a small shop owned by Bill McCutchen about 15 miles to the south out in the forest. He's been a fisherman in Alaska, then a contractor in PT, and now is running his own mill. He reminds me of a cross between Bryan Frahm (Hobie sailor and Kansas farmer) and Benjamin Bufford "Bubba" Blue (Forrest Gump's shrimper friend). Bill eats, drinks and breathes wood—any kind. But he mainly cuts and mills Western Red Cedar, as well as some fir, madrona, and local hardwoods. I toured the wood ranch and checked out his new mill. Sort of a gigantic Alaskan saw mill. This thing is pneumatically assisted, so it can lift a 20' long 34" diameter log onto the mill. Then the saw gets pulled thru the log, cutting progressively lower and wider into the log. For us, he's cutting 420 ft of 5/4 x 8 S3S cedar, which will go as facia board (this is the vertical facing piece that bounds the roof and to which the gutters connect). If we're pleased with the quality, we'll order more for the window and door trip. His price is pretty good, about 20% less than the commercial wood offered by Carl's and its of a comparable quality, and LOCAL.

Garage walls up, rafters going on (Day 97 of 293)

Last week Gary moved his shop (site-built stand for the Makita 10" chop saw) from the garage to the front yard so that the garage walls could be built and stood up. I enlarged the garage doors (lots of size options) at the last minute from 7'h x 9'w to 8' x 9'. Seems like there were lots of times I could have used taller doors in Denver, so now we have it. The added expense for larger doors are nominal, and it helps to fill the high garage profile better.

The garage walls went up in about a day, then they started on the roof rafters. Most of these are site built from 2"x12" boards, which were amazingly straight and not too knotty (sorry Jeff). Even the 20'ers are pretty good (thanks to Carls). They put the rafters over the bedroom/sunroom wing up first, then nailed in three types of hold-downs, all so-called hurricane (earthquake here) clips: Simpson H1, H2.5T, and H3s. LET IT BLOW, BABY. More business for that company, and now I see that they have the market on double-wall stove pipe, so even more $$ are headed there way. Simpson (SSD) is currently trading at $21.37, down 20% in the past year.

[For Ken, Steve C, and Colleen: Simpson Manufacturing Co., Inc. (SSD: NYSE; Basic Materials/Steel) is primarily a holding company. Through its subsidiary, Simpson Strong-Tie Company Inc. (SST), the Company designs, engineers and manufactures wood-to-wood, wood-to-concrete and wood-to-masonry connectors, SST Quik Drive screw fastening systems and collated screws, stainless steel fasteners, and pre-fabricated shear walls. The Company's subsidiary, Simpson Dura-Vent Company, Inc. (SDV), designs, engineers and manufactures venting systems for gas, wood, oil, pellet and other alternative fuel burning appliances. SST is the Company's connector products segment. SDV is the Company's venting products segment. SST's Anchor Systems product line is included in the connector product segment. SST Anchor Systems offers a line of adhesives, mechanical anchors, carbide drill bits and powder actuated tools for concrete, masonry and steel.]

On Friday, they put up the rafters over the kitchen/pantry area and over the back of the second-floor complex. (Is is variously known as the Olsen, Cooley, Hart, and Lee Rooms, the final decision being determined at the August naming-rights auction.) The front (W) side of the second floor complex carries a dormer over the "love nest", so they have some more big beams to place there before finishing off the rafters. This morning (Monday) they started framing the main kitchen wall (3 side by side windows centered over the sink). I expect that most of the rafter-built roof will be finished by Thursday (Day 100!), then on we go to the roof trusses over the mudroom/sauna and garage. Then the house will have its final roof form; oh boy.

Mikey's Thermoboards (Day 92 of 273)

Last week we had to decide on what sort of heating we wanted for the upstairs, which will be an office area (maybe) and honeymoon suite (aka love nest) for visitors. No reason to spend a fortune on this, since we already allocated that money for the kitchen. We have several choices for heating:

1) Electric wall or baseboard heaters: Cheap to buy, expensive to operate and can be noisy (like at the rental house).

2) Hot water baseboard heaters: these can be attractive, a bit expensive, and require much hotter water (ca 160-180°F) than we'll be making in the basement (120°F for Warmboard). So that means buying a second water heater (boiler really), and that doesn't make any sense to us.

3) Radiant heating—Staple up. There are various companies that make systems for heating your space by stapling radiant tubing below the subfloor and insulating the joist cavity. The idea is that the heat moves up and through the floor: early versions were simply hot-water tubing attached to the subfloor. Now they prefer to use aluminum plates or sheets to spread the heat out, which works pretty well. The heat source (pipe) is still 1.5" away from your feet, but wood has an R value of 0.7-1.4/inch, so there isn't much resistance. These plates screw to the bottom of the subfloor and provide a track for the tubing. Typical products are include Joist Trak by Wirsbo ($2/sq. ft) and Thermofin C heat transfer panels ($3.50 sq. ft) by Radiant Engineering. The materials are commonly priced at about $6-10 a square foot, which is as much as the clearly superior Warmboard we used downstairs ($215 per 4'x8' sheet = $6.72 sq. ft). One problem with staple up is you need to snake 300 ft of semi-rigid Pex through holes in the floor joists, joist blocking, and any headers. You use 8" spacing, so 300 ft of pipe (max length per loop) only covers 200 sq. ft of floor. Plus all the work is overhead with ladders, which isn't pretty when middle-aged folks are involved.

4) Radiant heating—Above floor. In retrospect, we probably should have used the Warmboard upstairs too since the other (inferior) commercial products are nearly comparable in price. However, we went past that fork in the construction road several months ago and there's no point in looking back (sorry Bruce Hull, our Warmboard guy). Nevertheless, other above-floor options are out there. Two prominent ones are Quik Trak panels by Wirsbo and Raupanels by Rehau. The Quik Trak panels are 7" by 48 and screw down onto the subfloor. They price out at about $4/sq. ft (currently on sale). One problem with these is that they use 5/16" HePex O2-barrier tubing which is not compatible with co-mingled radiant and domestic water system. Same goes for the Raupanels, which are lower tech. The are basically 8" x 48" plywood panels with a groove routered down the middle for the Pex. The ends are pre-routered returns, so when its all laid out and screwed down it looks like a less eloquent version of Warmboard, but priced at about $11/sq. ft. The attractive part about above floor heating is how easy the tubing goes down. So I got thinking about a 4th option, which I like to call Mikey's Thermoboards.

4) Thermoboards (aka poorman's Warmboard). This is a hybrid version of Raupanels made out of 5/8" plywood. Technically, the piping gets laid out just like the Warmboard, but it doesn't have a continuous bonded-aluminum upper face. I'll rip 11 3/8" wide panels out of the 5/8" AC plywood (longways, 4 panels per sheet, ca. $35 each or about $1 sq ft.). The 1/2"AquaPex tubing (5/8" OD, $0.37/ft mail order) will go between the panels, for a finished width of 12" per panel. For the returns, I'll cut 12" x 48" panels from plywood, screw then down and use the router templates and bit that Warmboard supplied to make the return channels for each pipe run. I'll put a layer of aluminum under the panels (heat transmission) where I want it a bit warmer (bathroom) and cover the tubing with 10"-wide aluminum (comes in rolls, like the stuff they extrude gutters from now days). I can staple the aluminum down with my new airgun (Porter Cable from Tool King in Denver; it has a compressor, stapler, finish nailer and brad nailer; $229) and screw the panels in place with 1 1/8" drywall screws (ca. 800). Lots of labor, but like Pete Rowley (ex-USGS) was fond of saying "what is time to a pig." When you install the finished flooring, be careful to not nail through any of the aluminum or piping, and all is well (same goes with the Warmboard). The aluminum runs about $1 a square foot, so I think the finished Thermoboards (without tubing in them) will price out at $2.50 a sq. ft, which is 2/3rds to 1/4th the price of commercial options. Did I mention the No. 1 reason to build your own house: You can easily justify every tool you'd want to buy (new table saw comes next week, oh boy).

By the way, we've got a daytime security system in place. It has high-gain audio capability, search and retrieve options, and the ability to incapacitate intruders. It operates during working hours and is fueled by bacon, treats, and lunch scraps: a pretty efficient unit named Coal. He's Gary's buddy and worksite dog. He grew up on the job and, in fact, Gary has turned down framing jobs for people that aren't particularly fond of dogs.

Framing upstairs (Day 90 of 273)

Wow, no rain for a whole week (knock on wood). Lots of fog, but the sun has been out for several days. Framers were upstairs last week. They added the floor joists (BCI 5000 and 6500 engineered floor joists, 11 7/8" high), the 3/4" A/C plywood subfloor, and then started framing and rolled up the exterior walls (2x6).

On Friday they got the second floor exterior finished, and we're waiting for two large overhead beams to arrive on Monday. The big one is a 26-ft long 6 3/4" x 21" Gluelam and the shorter one (first floor bedroom) is a 22-ft long 5 1/4" x 18" Versalam. The gluelam is basically a sandwich of 2x6s, 14 of them glued together on their broad side. It weighs about 750 pounds, whereas the smaller Versalam only weighs 500 pounds.

On Monday morning, Carl's dropped off (skidded) the beams using a tilt bed truck, and in the afternoon, a small crane arrived to lift these in place. The bedroom (Versalam) beam went in first: it sits in a pocket of the upstairs bedroom and rests in top of the outside bedroom wall, each of which accommodate big Simpson brackets (4@ $60 each). Once that was done, Gary and crew wrestled the bigger one onto the peak of the roof (26 ft above grade). It dropped right into the brackets like a hot dog in its bun (its getting to be lunch time, can you tell). Troy (Gary's son) nonchalantly walked out onto the beam and undid the lifting straps—Nancy couldn't even watch this part.

On Tuesday morning they'll start the roof rafters. These will be hand built from 2x12 # 1 DF (doug fir) for most of the house. Twenty three engineered roof trusses are used for the roof over the mudroom and garage, where I asked for an box-type attic truss. This will allow some additional work space in the garage attic for storing wood or other manly stuff. The roof-truss company (TrusWorks in Bothel, WA) will send someone over to confirm the measurements, then build them in a week±. I suspect they'll arrive at the end of the month, just 2 weeks away. Once all the trusses and roof rafters are in place, we can put the 5/8" OSB (oriented strand board) roof underlayment on and the house will be "dried in". I suspect this event will be accompanied by the onset of a record setting drought in the Pacific NW.

So today is Day 90 of the build, which puts us at about 25% into our allowed 9 month (273 day) schedule. So far, so good. Once the roof is on (late February), the weather won't be a real factor and it should be getting warmer. Days are already noticeably longer (sunset at 4:30 pm) and by the vernal equinox on April 21, we'll have 12 hrs of sunlight ( fog permitting).

Making changes on the fly (Day 83 of 273)

Well, I don't know how people can build (or have a house built) for them without being on the site at least several days a week. Almost daily, we need to make decisions about door placements, window dimensions, and other other framing details. For example, this morning (Monday) we needed to decide on the placement of the washer and dryer in the Laundry Room. No biggie, but we noticed that Darlene (jr. architect with Richard Berg) had placed the door in the center of the end wall. Now that seems appropriate, but with an 8-ft-wide room and a 3-ft wide door, you only have 5 ft to work with. The washer and dryers are about 30" deep, but set 4-6" out from the wall. So you really need to have about 36" on one side of door to accommodate these appliances. However, with the door in the center you only have about 30" on each side. Oops. So we resized the door to 30" (standard bedroom size) and moved it off center. That way we have 36" on the outer-wall side and about 24" on the inner wall side. Problem solved, except Gary built this wall last Friday. So, he'll take the carpenter's best friend (a Sazsall) and cut the door framing out, move it over, and renail it. Its probably an hour job, which he says he won't charge us for (keep the cookies coming Nancy). Otherwise we'd enter the realm of "Change Orders", also known as screwups you pay extra for. The picture below is of the framing downstairs showing placement of a large beam over the fireplace (see thru, between the den and living room). This beam only weighed about 300 pounds, so they just lifted it into place. The crane comes next week for the heavy lifting.

We also needed to size of the owner-built window (and shoji screens) between the bedroom and sunroom. When we saw the room layout on Friday we also decided to move enlarge the living room by 2 ft at the expense of the den. This actually simplified some framing and fireplace details. While we were at it, we enlarged the linen closet in the guest bathroom, so that it is a reasonable size if and when we convert it to a shower for the sauna. Best to plan this stuff ahead, that way remodeling will be much simpler. We'll stub in a floor drain and water supply at the same time, then just drywall over it for now.

Today the upper floor package should arrive from Carls. This includes about 30 floor joists, all the framing timber and some massive Versalam beams. The one that extends above the fireplace and supports the upstairs bedroom is 6"x16" and about 24 ft long. Looks like there might be a problem moving it around and lifting it into place. I put an order in for a sky crane and space hook. Stayed tuned.

THE BLIND CARPENTER

A blind carpenter walks into a lumber mill and shouts out, "I am a blind carpenter and I need a job."

The foreman walks over to the blind carpenter and says, "If you're blind, how can you work in a lumber yard?"

The blind carpenter says, "I can tell any piece of lumber by it's smell."

The foreman says "O.K. I'll give you a test and if you pass the test, you've got a job."

The foreman takes the carpenter over to a table and says, "I will put some lumber on a table in front of you and you tell me what it is."

The foreman then puts a piece of lumber on the table and says, "Ready!"

The carpenter bends over and takes a deep sniff moving his head from one side to the other. He says "That's a number two pine, two by four, eight foot long."

The foreman says, "Duh! That's right, but pine is easy to tell by the smell and I think you guessed the rest. Here's another piece of lumber for you to identify."

The foreman puts a piece of lumber on the table and says, "Ready!"

The blind carpenter bends over and takes a deep sniff moving his head from one side to the other and says, "This is a tough one, please turn it over so I can smell the other side."

The foreman does this and says "Ready!"

The carpenter takes another deep sniff moving his head from side to side. He then says, "That's a clear heart redwood, four by four, six foot long."

The foreman is amazed and says "That's right, but I still think you're just lucky and still guessing. If you get this one right you got a job."

The foreman then goes into the office and asks his secretary to help him stump the blind carpenter by taking off all of her clothes and laying down on the table. She takes off her clothes walks out of the office and lays face down on the table. The foreman says, "Ready!"

The blind carpenter takes a deep sniff moving his head from side to side. He looks puzzled and takes another sniff and says, "This also is a tough one, please turn it over so I can smell the other side."

The foreman gestures with his hand to the secretary, she rolls over, and the foreman says, "Ready!"

The blind carpenter moves his head from side to side again looking puzzled. He sniffs one more time, looks surprised, and says, "I got it. That's a shit house door off a tuna boat."

He got the job.

The Blue Hole (Day 79 of 273)

The Blue Hole. Not the one in the Caribbean (Michele Tuttle), but the one here in Port Townsend and Sequim to the west. Its the result of little meterological miracle called a rain shadow. Basically, the high Olympic Mountains to the west provide a barrier to Pacific storms that approach Washington. As the low approaches, the cyclonic CCW circulation brings SW winds onshore. The Olympics wrench out a lot of the moisture, thereby providing a "rain shadow" on the back (eastern) side of the mountains. The Ho rainforest in the wet (western) side of the Olympics gets something like 200" of rainfall a year and Lake Quinault (where they race Hobies, Steve C & T) gets about 13 ft of rain a year. In the recent Jan 2009 storm that caused all the flooding in the Seattle area, Lake Quinault got 13.7 inches of rain in 36 hours—not bad if your are a fish or a frog. We got about 1/2" in spits and spurts, just enough to annoy an old desert rat like me (Michael).

When Nancy and I stayed at the Lake Quinault lodge last year, we were fasinated by their totum-pole rain gauge. It is a 20-ft-tall pole with a sliding gauge. In August they'd had 7 ft for the 2007 year, and in November they got 12 inches in one day. The rain comes into the lake so fast it can escape through the narrow natural spillway, to the lake can rise 8-10 ft overnight, inundating the campgrounds. All the houses and permanent structures are built at least 10 ft above the spillway elevation. Great place to visit, and the lodge is a USPS historic lodge.

Port Townsend gets about 17-18" of annual precip, as we do at Kala Point 5 airline miles south of town. We are in the south center of the Blue Hole. The Komo (Seattle TV Ch. 4) website (http://www.komonews.com/weather/faq/4306627.html) has a good discussion of the Blue Hole, but highlight the town of Sequim because it has the least rainfall (14") of all the towns. There is catcus growing on south facing slopes in Sequim, so they have a Denver-like climate without the snow and >80°F temps. However, you know what they say about Sequim. That's where the old folks go . . . to visit their parents. Enough said.

Dancing with the Subs (Day 78 of 273)

With the exterior walls mostly up, the framers are waiting on us to do the Warmboard/Pex routine. They can go down into the basement and build the stairs and a few walls, but they are so fast that's only a morning's work for them. So, we're frantically trying to lay Pex tubing in the Warmboard between rain storms. This is what I like to call "Dancing with the Subs." Sub 1, Us, the layers. Sub 2, the framers (Gary and Lonnie). Sub 3, Mother Nature. Three variables (subs), two outcomes (go, no go) for each, means 8 possible scenarios. In order to get the Pex down we need dry weather or the silicon caulk won't hold the tubing in place. Monday we got 2 loops (500 ft) of tubing down before Sub 3 took control. Tuesday, we got 3 loops in by dancing around the rain and getting Gary and Lonnie to help on the last loop. With 4 people involved, it felt like a circus. After cleaning and drying off the Warmboard (ca. 200 square ft per loop), it started to sprinkle. So Lonnie led off with a roll of paper towels and dried the channel. Nancy followed with her new favorite tool—an electric caulking gun. Gary followed her with the tubing, which he dried off and placed in the channel. I pulled up the rear with hammer and tamping block in hand. At every corner I nailed the tubing down using electricians plates. The only nut-breaker in this process is too much or too little caulk. With too much the tubing won't go all the way in and stands up proud (high). With too little, the tubing will pop out, usually on the corners. Loops 3 and 4 (earlier that day) took Nancy and I about 90 minutes to do. However, with the new circus crew of 4, we finished the fifth loop in 30 minutes. There is hope.

So today we'll try for a few more loops (4 of 9 to go). I bought a 20' x 30' tarp and a bunch of bungees and rope last night, hoping to tent over the next loop. That way we'll only have to clean and dry each section once. That the plan—let's see what Sub 3 has in mind. By the way, the forecast is for 10-20 inches (yes inches not cm) of rainfall in the Olympic Mtns for Wed and Thursday. They are about 50 miles SW of us, so we are praying for the famous Blue Hole to save us.

P.S. Thursday. I called Jason back to the jobsite to help me, since Nancy had to work today (I call it her day off when she works downtown). It rained in the am, so we constructed a tent over the floor and pressed on. Managed to get loops 6 & 7 done before lunch, then the wind came up and whipped the 20' x 30' tarp around like a bandana. However, that was followed by sun and dry weather, so we laid the last two loops (8 & 9) in record time. Finished about 4 pm, and spent the rest of my day cleaning up all the paper towels (5 rolls) and empty caulking tubes (52) that we scattered hither and yond. So, as of today (Jan. 8th), the house is back in the hands of Ellis Construction. Friday (tomorrow) is the framer's weekly construction meeting, which we've been invited too, at the Spruce Goose Cafe—7 am prompt. If we don't show up there will be a lot of owner/builder jokes told.

Fast framers afoot (Day 75 of 273)

Now that the Warmboard is glued and nailed down, the framers are itching to do their real thing, which is to build and raise walls. Its an interesting process and fast at that. They nail down the base plate on end along the edge of the floor, then tack the top plate to it. All the framing layout gets marked up on the plates, much like Bill Hart used to do with a cabinet-layout stick. Then they separate the upper and lower plates and nail all the vertical pieces in place (studs, king studs, etc). Gary is the master cutter, a position reserved for guys with a few years and miles on them. Troy and Lonnie are the young turks (30s, I'd guess) so they do most of the nailing using Hitachi framing nailers and framing hammers (yes Dorothy, framers still can swing a hammer). They start with the the windows and doors as laid out by the architect, then fill in the remainder with studs every 16". Then the headers go in, which carry the load above windows and doors. Then blocking (horizontal pieces) is added to carry the seams of the exterior 1/2" plywood, nailed very 4-6 ". These guys use nails up pretty fast ($60 a box for 5000 collated 16d nails). Now the wall is almost ready to go up. The last step is to drill holes in the base plate to accomodate the hold down rods (yes all 42 of them).

Once assembled, the three framers attach jacks to 12'-long 2x4s. The bottom of the 2x4s are nailed to blocking on the floor, and the jack is hooked to the top of the wall. The wall is wedged up a bit, and the jacking begins (Tony, these jacks are a variety of our famously dangerous Handyman jacks we used at the USGS). The sunroom wall went up first. Two jacks and about 5 minutes later it was in place. Next was the massive (58 ft. long) north wall. Three jacks and 10 minutes of jacking and it was up. Two shorter walls also went up, all in about 6 hours on Friday. The only glitch was a brain fart that Troy had. He'd left the plastic gas can next to the end of the long wall and when they jacked it up, the plywood skirt got caught on the can and compressed it. So they had to dig the gas can out, but put a hole in it in the process. No biggie, Home Depot has lots of them.

Monday they'll finish the exterior walls (but not garage, thats next) and tie them all together. Then its time for Nancy and I to do the Pex thing. We spent the weekend cleaning up the Warmboard. The channels were filled with frozen sawdust, nails and other construction flotsam, so this was quite a treat. The Pex is pretty rigid and isn't supposed to be installed below 40°F. The forecast is for warming weather, so we hope that around Tuesday and Wednesday well put all the radiant (Wisbo) tubing in place, but that's another blog.