Going a Little Green

While most of the house uses conventional building techniques, we are incorporating a few green technologies.  The house will be very well insulated and will have several energy star appliances.  The previous owner of the property left a compost bin behind that we plan to use.  Our biggest venture into the green arena, however, is the installation of a geothermal heat pump which provides house heating and cooling and will also supplement the hot water heater in the summer. 

Geothermal systems are quiet and are 400% efficient compared to a high efficiency natural gas furnace which is about 98% efficient.  What exactly does that mean?  And who cares?  If you really want to know, Popular Mechanics provides a short clear explanation. I did quite a bit of research and found this article to be concise and understandable. Check out this link: Geothermal System.  The cost information in this article is out of date--the system cost a lot more than the numbers in the article.  Without the 30% tax credit available for such systems, I don't think we would have seriously considered installing it. Installation of the system was completed this week.  We had a Waterfurnace brand system installed and it will interface to a vertical loop.

I have talked to one person who has a a geothermal heat pump--the electrician working on the new house!  I only found this out when we were determining where the outside outlets would be located.  He asked where the air conditioner would be and I told him we were not going to have an air conditioner because we were installing geothermal.  He then told me has one.  His house came with one that was installed more than more than 20 years ago.  It had broken after many years and he replaced it recently.  The cooling loop was still intact so he only had to replace the heat pump.  He used the same supplier that we are using, E&D Company.  He has lived in this particular house for a few years.  When he told me where he lived, I was surprised.  Ironically, I had been to his house about 20 years ago when the previous owners lived there.  It was the home for the couple that owned and operated Sherwood Forest Theatre where I have done many shows.  It closed many years ago and the owners moved to Florida.  It really is a small world.  Of course, I knew and cared nothing about geothermal heating and cooling back then.

After we have some operating experience with this system, I'll have to report on how well it works and how we like it.

 Plaster rosette in the dining room

 Coil for the coolant loop

 Drilling equipment to drill two 300 ft deep holes

A lot of other work continues on the house.  The wiring, plumbing, and ductwork are all in.  The plasterboard is mostly installed and the plastering is well under way.  The yard has been re-graded and looks great (sans grass.)  We have a closing date of November 5, so things are moving fast.

While we were gone

In August, we attended the wedding of our first exchange student, Sandra, in Germany.  The wedding was in  a small town in Bavaria with the reception at a lodge high up in the mountains.  We hiked up to the lodge in sneakers and our wedding clothes.  Despite arriving at the top sweaty and out-of-breath, the hike was worth it--Steve might argue that point.  Although we didn't understand much of the ceremony as it was in German, there were plenty of English speakers there so that we really enjoyed the company.  We had a great time.  It was so nice to see Sandra, Henrik, and their families and friends.  After the wedding we went to Paris for two days before heading home.  We did a two day whirlwind tour of Paris so that Tania got to see most of the major tourist attractions.  I  felt a small amount of concern going so far away  with a house under construction.  But there was no need to worry. We came back to find out that the new house has a roof!  The top photo is what we came back to.

During our trip, we did have internet access on some days and we left an international phone number in case the builder or his subs absolutely needed to get in touch with us.  Although I tried to finalize the plans for the clawfoot tub well in advance, the plumber waited until the day before our leaving for the trip to note that we needed to make the decision in the next few days.  So the plumber and I exchanged messages as Steve, Tania and I travelled from Pittsburgh to Atlanta.  Fortunately we worked out the details before leaving Atlanta for Munich.  In the end, I had the plumber order the tub http://www.americanstandard-us.com/products/productDetail.aspx?id=231.  I might have saved a few hundred dollars ordering it myself, but we decided that by having him fully responsible we wouldn't have to worry about providing the right parts in time.

Work on the house continues at a fast pace--windows and exterior doors are in and the plumbing is well under-way.  Interior stairs have also been installed.  I met with the builder and the plumber Friday to work out some changes as a result of site work changing the elevation of the garage.  The garage is two feet lower than the rest of the first floor so steps needed to be added.  But where to add steps so that they won't interfere with the cars?  The result was to relocate the entrance into the laundry room to a different wall so that stairs could be added to the available space in another part of the garage.  It looks like this change will actually result in better use of the space in the laundry room.

As we enter a long holiday weekend, I hope to use some of this time to get our current home ready to list.  I've watched way too much HGTV so I know we have to box up all our clutter so that people will look at our house and not our stuff.  Time to get to it!

Back on Track

The house is going up faster than I can keep up with this blog! My in-laws came over to celebrate Steve's birthday and were eager to see our "hole in the ground." It was fun showing then that there is much more than just a hole.

Despite the little mishap of locating the house in the wrong place, the builder has been able to continue without stopping. The drawing has been revised to reflect the changes which are pretty subtle. The municipality let them continue with the changes to the house to move the back part of it west 2 feet. They had to re-pour a few footers and basement walls, but it appears that they only lost about a day or two for rework. Progress is fast and evident every day and the construction work appears to be of high quality so far. The basement is finished, the garage floor, the concrete steps to the basement, and front and back porches have all been poured. The first floor beams, floor joists and sub-floor are all installed and much of the first floor is framed. They accomplish a lot of work every day it seems--I wish my days at work were so productive.

We've made preliminary selections for lighting and flooring. It is not easy to stay within the "allowances" for various selections. The "Dummies" book I read on custom home building discourages using allowances in your contract as you almost always go over budget. On the other hand, until you pick out every little fixture, cabinet, flooring type, etc. you don't know exactly what the whole thing will cost. Our builder has the owner pay for any upgrades beyond the allowances directly to the supplier so our builder doesn't have any vested interest in selling upgrades. I think having an understanding of what is included in the allowance and how much typical upgrades cost (e.g wood flooring adds about $1000/room) works pretty well a as long as you keep some money available to pay for them as they come up. I have been trying to stay within allowances except that I knew we would exceed the kitchen allowance by several thousand. We should meet or slightly exceed some of the other allowances.

Picking out lighting was almost overwhelming. There are so many fixtures in this house. The lighting supplier was very easy to work with and very pleasant. After a while I was getting lighting fixture fatigue. I kept thinking "how many more rooms do we have to go through?" I have not made a final selection for the two most expensive light fixtures for the house--the foyer and dining room chandeliers, but there is still some room left in the lighting allowance for them. I was happy to find out that we get a real doorbell. Our current home doesn't have one so we have this "sorry ass" electronic one that sounds pretty pathetic--sometimes the little things bring joy!

Choosing flooring took time but seemed to be easier than choosing lighting--there are just fewer things to pick from. Of course the tile I really liked for the master bath was way over budget, so we'll skip that (see Steve, expense actually does matter to me!) We are getting hardwood in the living and dining rooms, so that is an extra cost and Tania is pleased to be getting the upgraded shag carpeting she picked out for her bedroom. The biggest additional expense will be installing a geo-thermal heating and cooling system. But that will be a subject of a future entry.

In the meantime, it is really starting to look like a house!

First Problem...

I received a call from the excavator yesterday. He had moved the footprint of the house east two feet because he was concerned about the size of the parking pad area. Unfortunately, the house location was already very tight to meeting the required setbacks. The building inspector determined that the house encroached on the setback by two feet. The builder acknowledged their error (they should not have deviated from the plan) and provided a few options aside from starting over:1) We could apply for a variance but that would stop work for up to 60 days and there was no guarantee it would be approved, 2) They could change the dimensions of the first floor bedroom, but we didn't like going from a square bedroom to a "bowling alley" or 3) The back of the house could be shifted back 2 feet so that only a few footers and basement walls would have to be redone.

This all happened while on vacation in Kiawah. I just happened to be in the house when the builder called because it had been raining. Otherwise I would have either been out on my bike or on the beach. Thanks to technology we were able to come to a resolution quickly. They e-mailed me pdfs of options 2 and 3 so I look at the proposed drawing changes. We are going with option 3. Unfortunately work is on hold until the new drawings are prepared and approved.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this is the biggest issue we run into!

The Digging Has Begun

The house is under way! The builder broke ground on Monday July 19. They have been working hard and long hours moving a lot of dirt. The footers are in and the last time I checked on progress, they were running the utilities to the house. Separate trenches had to be dug each for water, sewer, power, telephone/cable, and natural gas. They had already dug a trench for the electric (on the same side of the property where the previous was hooked up) when the inspector made them move the electric hook up to the other side (oops!) Good thing that they did ask if we wanted to keep the well porch--they've been digging around it.

Let's Get it Started!

OK--so it is now the middle of June, we've signed the contract, the construction loan is approved and we've closed on it, the stakes are in the ground--but no digging yet! The latest news is that construction will begin the second week of July. We were hoping to start this week, so we are a little disappointed. But, there are many things to do in the meantime.

I bought an antique mantle to install in the new house. It is presently in a storage unit that Steve's Dad is renting in Blawnox. So I will need to rent a van to move it to the fireplace supplier in Elizabeth. We also need to pick out brick color and our front door. We will be choosing a steel entry door ( see masonite.com.) The doors we like are all Energy Star rated. We also have to make that cabinet color decision. To see the cabinets we picked out, click here. You can even play around with the color if interested.

The other task we need to get moving on is getting our current home ready to sell. We need to paint our bedroom and Tania's bedroom. We also need to get new carpeting for the upstairs and new sheet vinyl for the two upstairs bathrooms. We have been slowly cleaning out the house. We participated in the neighborhood garage sale which helped and have made several trips to GoodWill. Our church is having a used book sale, so we've dropped off some boxes of books. Like so many, we have too much stuff. We are truly grateful that this is our biggest difficulty in life.

Since the last post didn't provide any views of the house exterior, I've included some views. I hope to report some construction progress soon.

Choosing a Builder and Architect

We had a few options for how to proceed with building the new house. We could have an architect do the drawings and then choose a builder or go with a design/build firm. I met with a few architects and builders based on recommendations from friends. It was not easy deciding whom to choose. I think all the people I interviewed were very capable. Going through the interview process made me wonder what the proper etiquette is for turning someone down. Do you call and tell them?--I did tell one builder that we weren't going to go with him, only because he was very interested kept in touch. We are not using any of the architects that I spoke with and I feel bad about never getting back to them. Do they expect to hear from me only if I plan to do business with them? Or do they want to know that I don't plan to use them?

Some of the features we have been considering include geothermal heating/cooling, 9 foot ceilings for the first floor, a first floor "mini-master" bedroom, first floor laundry, a professional range/oven, and a turret--Oh, and a clawfoot tub in the upstairs master bedroom. The real challenge would be to stay within budget and still get the features I wanted. I knew I would have to make some comprises. We may have to scale back on a few things. Some rough estimates I was given sent me into sticker shock.

In the end, we settled on R W Shuster, a design build firm. While I had used a home design program to develop a house plan as a starting point, Shuster had previously built a house that had many of the features I wanted. We know several people who have built with them and they build a high quality house. So we decided to start with that previously built house and modify it. Steve and I then met with the builder and made a lot of changes to the existing plan. Steve tells everyone that he has no say in this whole process, but he contributed a lot to the house layout--particularly the second floor. It was a pretty intensive process. With the original plan displayed on a computer screen, we identified changes while the designer moved walls, windows, and entire rooms as we spoke. It was a lot of fun working on the preliminary plan. We have progressed a little from the preliminary floor plans attached, but this provides a good approximation of what the floor plan will look like.

We have also started the kitchen design. Steve and I agree on the cabinet style, hardware, and counter-tops, but we are still not on the same page as far as color of the cabinets is concerned. I want stained wood and Steve wants white. We'll defer that decision as long as possible! We met with the builder again to make a few more changes for the final plans. The next step is to get the plans approved and put together the build contract. Then there is no turning back.