Although electric under-floor heat in the bathrooms uses a fair bit of energy, it is a little luxury that we can choose to use or not to warm our feet in the cool of our winters.

We bought the Flextherm heating system kit, which includes the appropriate length of green-covered heating cable for the size of the room, as well as round guides for the wire. The thermostat is purchased separately. I chose to donate the guides to the Habitat For Humanity Restore (whence cometh many of our building materials). Instead, I purchased the 12″ gridded squares to clip the wire into. It is easier, will raise the level of the tile equal to the 3/4″ fir flooring that meets it at the doorway, and at $2 each, for a small room, I thought I could justify the expense. Another advantage is that they stabilize the floor so that a second layer of plywood is not necessary before tiling. Some internet research suggested that one could just hot-glue the wires in place, forget about the guides or gridded squares. I’m very glad I didn’t try cheaping out on that step. It would have been constricting, and I would fret over whether I was damaging the wires.

The orange Flextherm blocks are quick to install directly onto the plywood sub-floor with screws. After installing, the wire needs to be checked with an ohmmeter to make sure it is conducting electricity.

I’ve spent far too many hours cutting the white 1″ square tiles out of the all-white 12″ blocks of tiles and replacing them with brown ones. 88 x 25 = 2200! I hot-glued them into place, but found when it came time to install them, many of the brown tiles fell out of the blocks. Just made more work. I learned that only good-quality large glue sticks work, not the little craft sticks.

Raff came to help, mixing the polymer-modified mortar in the wheelbarrow for me, so I could steadily apply the tiles on top of the Flextherm  heating wires. This made the job go much more smoothly.

After a week of waiting for trades to show up when they promised earlier in the week, they all showed up on Friday.

The upshot of the day’s labour is that we have LIGHTS,

These are temporary light fixtures while we do all the finishing activities that might break the permanent fixtures

we have HOT WATER, and we have a massive cabinet in the bedroom/bathroom.

The cabinet/furniture maker is Vincent Lang, who has a workshop near Sechelt. He has built the unit (and the kitchen cabinets) out of formaldehyde-free 3/4″ plywood. I was able to choose the alder veneer before it was laid up, and Vincent custom-mixed the stain, finishing the cover coat with a tough, green finish, as well as designed the doors to match a photograph of a cabinet I showed him from a magazine. Local trade, quality construction (included mortise and tenon drawers, soft-closing hardware, etc.) No particle board in our house if I can help it! I confess that a flood in our apartment convinced us that particle board cabinetry, such as the IKEA cabinets, falls apart when it gets wet. Not sustainable.

The bedroom side of the cabinet

A view of the bathroom side of the cabinet. Hardware is yet to be installed.

Plus, I filled in my spare time cleaning and cutting flooring to its useful length. Very satisfying progress.

On demand hot water heater

Let me tell you about the hot water heater. It’s a Navien CR180 on demand gas fixture, which claims 98% energy efficiency, “the highest in the industry.” And “best gallons per minute performance when comparing input BTU.” It has to be vented on an outside wall. We considered a re-circulating booster, which would deliver the hot water instantaneously, keeping all the pipes filled with hot water.  We decided against it because of course, it requires more fuel to keep it instantly ready. So now the question is: do we just let the initial (cold) water out of the faucet go down the drain? When we get the $ together to install a solar hot water booster, the water going into the tank will be hot on sunny days, but it still won’t deliver hot water until the pipes have been emptied of their room temperature water.

There hasn’t been much progress in the “green” department. We’re just painting and cleaning forever, and D has installed the T&G bedroom ceiling.

But, this week, John the electrician has been wiring the studio building, which readers will recall has been formed with Logix insulated concrete forms. There are 3 inches of styrofoam on the outside and on the inside walls.

So, the usual installation methods don’t work. Rather, John has become a styrofoam sculptor, carving out the shapes of the fixtures, affixing the wires somehow, then covering up the work with new styrofoam.

100 amp panel just for the studio

carved styrofoam channel for wire

Single or double wires just sit there. More wires in a channel need to be affixed to wood.

Then a new styrofoam strip packs the cavity to keep the wires out of harm's way (wall finish)

(….pause while I chase a mouse)

One of my tasks when I arrived back on site, after vacuuming out all the wall cavities, was documenting the “house guts” before they get covered up by insulation and drywall. Alice arrived on her bike to help (well, she arrived to observe the studio concrete-forming process, but as Raff so astutely observed, visitors are quickly pressed into service.)

Basement hallway

The process involves laying two tape measures along the walls at right angles to show where all the wiring/plumbing/heating elements are located before we cover them up with insulation and drywall.

insulation in basement hallway

This is the first time, and hopefully the last, that a Hummer parks in our driveway. It’s the guy doing the pre-wire for audio/tel/internet/video.

In fact, you can tell how much activity there is around here by the number of vehicles on the road:

Aaron and Ron form the hobbit entryway

Two types of work are happening today: In preparation for the first of three more concrete pours, some smaller forming jobs, such as heat pump pads and entryways and the deck and garage floor.

A view of the deck and soffits from the southeast side

And we’re finishing up the little framing jobs inside in preparation for the insulation.

Last minute wiring of the security system, phone/internet, built-in vacuum and similar prep.

The progress on the house is not all that apparent this week. It’s not showy. Rather, it’s the systems we’re working on, which will all be concealed behind drywall and other finishes.

red and white water

The plumbing: No, it’s not just Canadian flag-waving here. The water pipes need to show that there are two completely different systems: the red for the collected rainwater to flush toilets, and the white for potable water to the rest of the house.

Neil adds another duct to the montage

The heating and Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV): It’s a complex system, with the attic ductwork needing insulation, and great and small ducting pipes trying to hide in closets, walls, ceilings, floor joists, crawl space. The crew has been working for 3 weeks on this. The irony: it’s supposed to be a back-up heating system (heat pump and air handler). The goal is to have the thermal mass fireplace (TMF) provide the majority of heat in the cold weather.

smoke gets out where it's not wanted

(At this point, the aforementioned TMF is a dirty word in our house. On our first small firing, it smoked mightily, from around the door. I’m quite sure it’s been installed according to all the instructions, but clearly the air inflow or outflow is not functioning the way it should. In theory, the smoke exits at the bottom of the unit, through an 8” masonry chimney pipe from the side of the burning chamber. Kerry, the fellow who sold the kit to us (Lakeshore Design in Ontario) assures us that we don’t need any braid gasket around the door, and that it’s “easy” to straighten out the door. He’s not a very good listener, nor does he know how to provide good customer service. He just repeats the info in the installation guide and talks over us. He says we need to take off the chimney cap that our stonemason took half a day to install. I don’t believe the chimney cap is restricting any airflow at all.)

the "offending"? chimney cap

Electricity: John and helpers have also been here for nearly 3 weeks. The various systems are rather interdependent, needing wiring for the fan or hot water heater, or space around plumbing pipes for the ductwork, for example. John estimates 4000 feet of wire. We’re trying to think ahead to end use and comfort. Lots of lighting for older eyes, plugs on the living room floor for table lamps, pot lights where we might need them. It’s hard to know how the house will be used sometimes, so we just have to make our best guesses. One interesting new item in the BC Electrical Code is a garage plug-in for an electric car!

back-framing

Back-framing: Now that the systems are getting close to done, Ron’s crew can finish the framing around ductwork and plumbing, dropping the ceiling or boxing in smaller spaces. I have also been asking for nooks and crannies and lowered ceilings and bookshelves and grab bars and towel racks, etc. The “tin-whackers,” as Ron calls the heating guys, asked for the workshop wall to be insulated and drywalled so that they could finish the big duct on that wall. I asked for plywood as a finish, so that D can screw all manner of storage solutions anywhere he wants, without having to find studs behind. I’ll also use that approach for the kitchen wall, where cupboards and tiles will hide the plywood.

insulated shop wall

So, I leave the house for 10 days. I will have withdrawal symptoms, I’m sure, but I’m getting a bit of cabin-fever, and I could use the break. Ron and the boys will look after it just fine for us. I’m grateful that I could be on site for so many of these critical decisions.

The Vaproshield building wrap provides the Lake Louise colour!

After a four-day weekend, it seems “everyone” decided to work on our house today:

Natural gas pipe fittings

The heating guys, working on the natural gas outlets

Crawlspace - 5' high

The plumbers (who changed the location of the main drain from the middle of the crawlspace room to the side – makes sense!)

Gutter forming machine

The gutter guys, with their amazing continuous gutter-bending machine. Now I understand why the gutter guys are defined by their “profile,” or the shape of their gutters – it would be too costly to get more than one gutter-bender – we choose the profile we like best. We’re getting a leaf guard to a) make gutter-cleaning much easier for old D, and b) keep the water cleaner for our rainwater collection system.

John installs electrical boxes

The electrician, who met with me for an hour or so going over the locations of various electrical connections/switches/plugs – way too many decisions – my head hurts. Then he (John) started by placing all the boxes before running wire.

Ron, working on the exterior window trim, and D, re-staining fascia so the gutter guys can take advantage of the rare good weather to start, and using up all my dipped shingles.

I did two batches of shingle-dipping, after cleaning up the huge mess in the shingle corner that our gale-forced winds made on the weekend.  BTW, if you’re ever using shingles, don’t leave them out in the weather. Not only are they perfect nests for insects and spiders, but they take forever to dry out so that you can stain them. I squeezed in some filling/sanding of the beautiful fir window returns today, too. And, I admired the fireplace:

Fireplace with pizza oven

In the continuing saga, begun from my point-of-view on Nov. 19, the day I first applied for a Hydro connection, we have progress.

The “T-connection” could not be found by our electrician in either the stated location (the first lot line when the developer subdivided a dozen or so years ago) or 3’ inside our altered lot corner, as it was supposed to be. It could not be found by the Hydro crew, who then applied to BC Highways to trench a line from across the road (a two week permit delay.) In the meantime, Hydro hired a private crew, who found the line and inserted a new T-connection. Our electrician did a temporary service last week, and then re-applied for Hydro hook-up. We waited 8 more days, and now, finally, Hydro has hooked up our temporary service. They could only charge us for the actual hook-up ($885), not all the work that was, somewhere in the history of the development, not done or not properly located.

Now we have electricity to our temporary home, and the infernal noise of the generator can be silenced.

Here’s the latest “look”. The roof rafters are mostly on, and window framing is nearly complete. The main entry roof, parallel to the dormer roof, has yet to be framed.

The weather deities smiled on us for two wonderfully clear (little wind, no rain) days. We met with tradespeople, and D even became a 15-minute expert on building forms (for footings for pillars to hold up entry roof- he was the “steel re-bar guy”.)

In other news, we have learned from the Highways department that Hydro’s permit application to dig a new trench to install a connection duct should be processed within a week, so we’re hoping Hydro will be on top of it, since the promised connection could not be found by Hydro. Hydro will have to pay for the connection. The crew has been building for more than 4 months with no electrical connection (running off a generator.)