Good morning all
NSTAR might be coming in the near future – but I am starting to wonder if Paul will be able to get the Generac placed and running before they get organized and arrive – lol
Paul’s Kubota tractor and a warm sun shining. The tractor is for leveling and lowering the grade in the garage in preparation of pouring the concrete floor
There have been some beautiful fall days here in New England and the weather, on average, has been very mild. There has been some frost and some rain, but not very much so far. The picture above gives a good feel for it. Paul and his team have continued to be very productive in this environment
The orange Kubota tractor was onsite to do some site leveling but also mainly to lower the grade of the garage. The original Deck Acorn plans called for a 7′ garage entrance. Paul thought I would like a 7′ 6″ entrance better (and the subsequent lower grade) and he suggested we lower the planned height of the floor. This gives the building less of the planned linear flow horizontally – but we looked at the ground and realized it just felt better in terms of the grade of the overall property, and while 6″ doesn’t sound like much, it means that the interior of the shop is now an 8′ ceiling AND we don’t need a concrete ramp up to the garage once the final grade is done (which we were afraid would crack in the future).
The concrete team did an AMAZING job. I was assuming I would need to put down a layer of epoxy or a product I saw on Jay Leno’s Garage webseries – SwissTrax. My Dad’s shop has a rough concrete floor and it is very difficult to keep swept up and clean. However, my new shop floor is already like a crystal still millpond – it is fantastically smooth and even. They did an phenomenal job on it and on the concrete pad for the Generac generator (which I forgot to take a picture of yesterday).
I really, really like it. I may still put something like SwissTrax or padding down, but for clean up purposes, I think we are good to go!
On other fronts, the insulation is blown in (two stages – a foam sealer and then standard pink fiberglass). This includes the work under the house – though everything, inside and out still needs to be closed up. The ducting and exit of the bathroom fans into the underside of the roof was also completed (so they do not have to pierce the roof itself)
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- A VERY nice job on the concrete floor for the shop – I was originally thinking I would want to put down an epoxy product to smooth it out and make it easier to clean, but now I don’t think so – it is a work of art !
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- 2 to 3′ of insulation wrapping the pipes and duct work between the shop and the house. The shop is going to be heated year round (in needs to be since the sprinkler system water tank is there – we don’t want any pipes to freeze). This area in the ceiling of the car port will be enclosed, but not fully insulated since it won’t be actively temperature controlled like the shop
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- Picture taken from approximately where the TV will be placed, looking back at the kitchen. With the insulation in the walls, you really start to feel the space (and it is much more quiet when you walk around)
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- The fireplace is a definite focal point – the angle so it faces the room really makes a difference. I hope it works out in practice the way it was planned. No problems with the curing of the mortar – we hit our 28 day minimum cure time a few weeks ago.
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- ComfortAire is placed and awaiting attachment of the water lines to the 600′ open loop geothermal well
Whoops – I forgot to show you what is behind the pink fiberglass – an hard foam product that blows in and cures very hard. They also put in fire stop on the poke throughs
