Mother nature hates me

The weather up here had been overall pretty mild the 2-3 years before we started building.  The moment I committed to starting this, all hell broke loose.  Last year, we had about the wettest spring on record.  I was fighting driveway and dirt washout problems constantly as the storms we were getting were dumping tons of rain in short periods, and they kept coming one after another.  It finally stopped in July and July/Aug were bone dry (and brutally hot and humid, but at least our foundation excavation did not get washed out...).  This slowed everything down and really killed progress.  And then came Fall.... Well, we didn't have a fall - it went straight into winter. And then not just any winter, but the worst winter in some 130+ yrs (also as previously noted).  And then the spring of 2014...Because 2013 wasn't wet enough - it happened AGAIN.  Storm after storm, and this year it was worse.  Now with all the extra site work that had been done, I was now having severe washout problems.  I was seriously worried that the neighbors were going to take up pitchforks and torches as there was so much silt washing off the property with these almost unprecedented rains.  We are starting at about mid May 2014 for this.

I knew I had to get the landscape under control fast.

I had been poking at the excavator for a while but he had kept putting me off.  After the last big storm I called him and said "it is now critical - you have to get out there".  He has too much going on, but finally he broke out some time and did it.  It wasn't perfect, but over the space of 2 weeks he got the landscape about 90% settled.  I was also able to use the tractor for a bunch of prep work when he wasn't there to help keep things moving along.  I took a few days off work to get this all moving.  What I found, not surprisingly, is that if I was not there, not much got done.  That was the other main reason I took the time off.  The excavator subbed out some of the wall work.  He does not like to build walls, and even though I could do it, it was one more thing I really didn't have time for -- especially since I was trying to get this all under control quickly to avoid angering the neighbors and the town with the washout problems.  So here are some photos of that process.  This gets us pretty much up to date with current progress.

First off, the main drainage culvert.  Discussion with the excavator and looking at how water flowed showed a really good place below the turnaround that could be used as a catch basin/collector to get water collected and shot out down a culvert into the woods down below so it wouldn't wash everything out like it had been.  So he created a ditch leading down to a catch basin, and dug a trench under the driveway down into the woods to run a big 8" culvert to catch the heaviest rains and shunt them down hill without blowing everything out.

Right in the middle of this photo, you can barely see the round outline of the catch basin, to the right of the road.

 Here is the culvert path going down into the woods.  If you look closely, you can see the black pipe headed straight down hill, right dead center in the photo, where the dirt ends.  The main goal here is to get the water downhill without taking all the dirt down with it.  This should do it!

Next up, the walls. We did 3 more walls.  2 of them were pretty small, and one more was a bit larger.

The garage wall.  This was mostly to clean things up at the house garage where the turnaround drops off.  Not real large, but helped the landscape flow a lot better.

 Another little one as an alcove for the service door on the shop.  Just trying to keep the hill up on the hill here...

The bigger one - the garden wall.  This thing was not supposed to be this big, but the dirt dictated it be pretty substantial.  It is 8-9' high at the house, and tapers down from there.  We had to do what made the most sense, so the guys kept building it and backfilling to see how it all laid out.  They stopped when it made sense.  This is the wall in the foreground.  The wall in the background was the massive one I did back before we started building.

So while all this was going on, I started seeding to get the ground stabilized.  This involved a few things: Grass seed, oats (they germinate and sprout a lot faster I am told, and as an annual won't keep coming back much), straw bales, and straw blankets.  The blankets are important for erosion control.  They are rolls of straw and a plastic netting that you roll out and staple down to help hold everything in place.  Plus the straw helps keep the soil moist longer, to help the grass and oats grow.

Here is the first day's work (this is just me doing all this, solo):

East side of driveway, and septic drain field mound:

West side of driveway.  My goal was to get everything that could be seen from the street settled first so there would be no question I was trying to get it under control. You can see my trailer in the cul de sac with a bunch of straw bales still on it.

 Day 2, the excavator was working on the turnaround up by the front door.  He leveled out the pad and placed the crushed limestone for the driving surfaces, and then started placing black dirt on the hillsides.  Here he is mostly done with that, and just needed to finish spreading and leveling the black dirt out.

 While he was doing that I worked on more of the driveway down slope areas for seeding.  I finished off a large chunk of this that day.  Lots of erosion control blankets on the left side, where the water tends to run faster and washout dirt and driveway.

Then I ran out of oats and it was memorial day.  I knew the feed store was not open, but the local Fleet Farm store was and they had oats.  Since I knew rain was coming, I wanted to get another critical section done. So I grabbed a couple bags and hit it.  I got that turnaround slope all settled in, which is another big washout area, so this helps a lot.

 Here is a look at the turnaround, not quite complete.  The bucket is sitting in the middle of the turnaround, where there will be some sort of garden and trees later.  The excavator placed some black dirt there the next day.

And that's about it for now.  I have been spending most of my time in the shop trying to get it more ready for work on finishing cabinets and doing doors.  Still a lot to go there, but I am making progress...


Update from last night (5/31/14):  We had yet another massive washout rain.  Something like 3-4" in the early morning hours.  And once again the driveway blew out.  The only good part is that most of the landscape work I did held up.  A couple small washouts, but nothing killer.  Next task is to figure out a way to move the water off the driveway before it causes problems.  But then they said more thunderstorms tonight.  Oh goody...

Drywall

Drywall is still underway.  As of this writing (5/31/14) all the rock has been hung and the taper is well into taping and mudding.  He has about a week left, he thinks.  He has been at it for 4 weeks already.  We had done some of the ceiling drywall ourselves, as previously noted.  Mostly where the insulators needed to foam and blow in ceilings.  Other than that, I let Den (the drywall guy) do the rest of it.  I am OK with hanging drywall, but I sure wouldn't do the mudding/taping.  I hung all the rock in the shop, so this wouldn't scare me off that much except I just don't have the time with all the other things that needed addressing.  Plus Den works at a very reasonable rate, so that helps make the call to sub it out easier.

So some sequential progress pics.  I haven't taken a lot of the mudding process as it just doesn't look like all that much in photos.  I'll get a couple final shots of that.

Day 1, he started with upstairs walls.  Ceilings were already done by us, as noted.

Library:

 Bella's BR:

 Day 2 he wrapped up most of the upstairs, except the stairwell:

 Plus he completed the office on the main floor:

 Day 3 he worked on the main level mostly.  Hallway in the master suite:

 Master BR:

 Day 4 continued in the master suite.  Laundry room into closet:

 And he did the Upper stairwell.  Not sure how he handled those sheets as that is a tough place to work:

 Day 5 he is wrapping up the master suite.  Master bath here.  The little room at the back of the photo is the shower which will get tiled, so no drywall in there:

 Master bath looking out:

 And he started on the Foyer ceiling in the main level:

 Day 6 - wrapped up the foyer:

 And the inside walls of the pantry:

 More foyer (Still with the temporary front door):

 And he started a bit on lower level ceilings:

 Day 7 - Garage ceilings were basically wrapped up in one day, except for the soffits enclosing the steel beams:

 Day 8, he moved back to the main level and did basically all of the great room ceiling:

I took a few more photos, but nothing real dramatic (drywall does not lend itself to drama...), but he finished off the rest over the next few days, and then started taping a little bit the Friday before Memorial Day (5/23/14).  He has been taping all week after Mem day, and will continue for all or most of next week.  I'll post another entry with the final pics of that.

After he wraps up taping, we still need to finish off the subfloor.  On top of the concrete on the main level, we need to put down another layer of subfloor so there is something to nail the wood floor to (or carpet, or tile...depending on the room). That will take a few days.  Then it is time to plastic off all the windows and then blast a coat of primer and some white paint on the ceilings with the sprayer.  We might do some finish painting then too, but that will depend on a lot of things (choosing colors, timing, etc).

Wrapping up radiant tubing

Here are some final shot of the radiant tubing on the main level.  Here is the shot with all the sleepers completed.  This was a a lot of messing around to get here.  The wood sleepers are for screwing down the subfloor, and also to keep the concrete nice and level.

Great room:

Master bathroom was a bit of a contortionist pattern:

Then I got a crew of guys to do the pour as a side job.  Went very well.  A nice bunch of guys with a great sense of humor.


Great room progression:

Master suite and office:

After they left and the concrete set up a bit I took a flooring scraper and scraped off the tops of all the sleepers so they were nice and flat and clear for screwing down subfloor.  That was very tiring, but had to be done quickly before the concrete set up too much.  No pics of that, just making a mess..

At this point all the rough mechanicals are done and it is basically time for drywall.

Insulation

I talked a bit about insulation in the last post.  This was a great milestone to hit as it now means the house can be somewhat livable to work in.  Only too bad it didn't happen in November before it was 150 below zero for 3 months!

The ceilings in the house are divided into two types: the cathedral great room and the truss framed roofs in the other sections (Master suite wing and upper level).  These are handled differently for insulation.  The great room gets 4" of closed cell foam sprayed directly on the underside of the roof deck, and then the remaining 10" of space are filled with dense pack cellulose giving the roof assembly something on the order of R-60.  It is important to seal a cathedral ceiling like this with spray foam to avoid moisture/condensation problems in the future.  This is the reason for spraying the closed cell foam first.  The dense pack is to gain extra insulation at lower cost.  If you want the building science details behind it, drop me a line.  Otherwise everyone's eyes are probably glazed over by now as it is...

Here are some shots of the great room insulation in process.  The first shot you can see the one side of the Big Beam is done with foam, and the other side was started.  This was the end of day 1 which included a lot of prep and setup time.

Here both sides are done foaming and they have put up netting on the first side that was already done with foam.  This netting is air permeable so when they blow the cellulose in, the air that is used to blow it can come out through the netting to allow the cellulose to settle fully in.

 Here you can see the netting is all complete, and they have finished blowing in cellulose.  The holes near the ridge beams are where they stuck the hose in to fill it up.  If there was an obstruction, they poked in another hole to finish it off.  I placed speaker boxes in the ceilings for future speakers for a general sound system or possibly for surround sound in the TV area.  I just made these boxes out of some sheet foam.

They also foamed in under all floors to help the radiant heat go the direction it is supposed to (up).  One thing that also had to happen was the duct work that was in the garage space needed to be foamed in with closed cell first to seal it in.  This is the first picture. Note the ducts covered in foam above the red steel beam.

 Then since the tuck under garage is considered unconditioned space, they foamed in 10" of the open cell foam for an R50 floor in the great room (directly over the garage).  The open cell is really wild to watch them place it as it expands an incredible amount - a lot more than the closed cell.  In the first pic you can see the main trunk duct below the trusses at the very bottom of the pic that was already sealed with closed cell.  That was later enclosed in a soffit.

There was a whole lotta foam going on for a few days...

As for the Truss ceilings, the original plan was to just blow in cellulose.  After talking with the insulation guys, and thinking it over, it made a lot of sense to first put down a seal coat of closed cell foam first on top of the ceiling drywall so everything would be totally air tight.  No sense making the rest of the house perfect and leaving this without a good seal.  So they did that first.  But there was a wrinkle.  I had been putting up plastic vapor barrier on the upper floor while they were working elsewhere in the house.  Once I got that done was when we discussed foaming it first.  And the guy told me the plastic was not very compatible with the foam so it was better to leave it out.  So after nicely covering the entire ceiling, I tore it all out.  I love tearing work out - NOT!  But it will be better in the long run and only wasted $50 of poly, so such is life...  Here it was before I tore it down.  Figured it was worth a pic at least...

More radiant tubing next