Tube Migration

Our plumbing is a series of tubes, not too unlike the Internet. We are going to put different stuff into our tubes, of course. For the past few days, Dean, our master plumber, has been installing new plumbing and tidying up existing stuff--mainly to reconnect it to the main lines and to get it moved into the walls, chase, and closets.

One thing that strikes me about Dean is that he is a bit of a sculptor. He has a real intentionality for the aesthetics of his finished plumbing. No kidding.

Like any plumber, he's got about a dozen different shapes and angles of plastic to work with plus varying lengths of tube, and that's about the extent of the palette. The size of our house doesn't give him a whole lot of space to work in, especially considering he's now working around heat ducts and flues, electrical wiring and switch boxes, doorways and windows (inside and out).

The result is something you could put in a gallery or a bonsai garden: elegant, sweeping curves of plastic that hug the contours of the framing and cleverly placed junctions fitted into impossible corners without sacrificing function. Our plumbing, spreading and branching as it goes from basement to first floor to second, unfolds like a plastic tree into the house's cavities.

This is plumbing you look at and you just know is the best plumbing on the block.

In addition to the art installation, Michael soffited about 10 inches of the kitchen ceiling along the wall containing the window to accommodate the upstairs toilet trap, which incidentally, is an original installation, not a piece of Dean's work. It makes more sense for us to drop a strip of ceiling than to try to re-plumb that trap. We simply don't have any vertical play unless we do some massive changes to the plumbing and the way it's run in the house.

In this photo, the toilet trap is just to the left of the green spray-painted dot on the right.

The green dots on the soffit are where we're going to install the kitchen stereo speakers. The two green streaks of paint on the wall mark the locations of the room audio controls. More on home audio in a later post.

• 5/6 :: Eliza adds : But is that a kitty in the photo, too?

Evening Glow

The windows framed on the interior wall will allow sunlight to pass from the stair tower into the kitchen in the evenings. If you look directly through the foreground window, you can see the second window behind it, framed in the wall above the doorway opening to the stair well.

The metal column is a heating duct for the upstairs bathroom. It's rectangular in shape so that it fits comfortably inside normal 3.5" wide framing.

Take note of some of the details in this photo, which I took yesterday evening. The next photo was taken today, and there are a couple of changes.

Nude Scene

Not much here but asphalt and dirt. The form for the main deck stair pad is out to the right at the rear of the photo. In the foreground to the left we've dug footings for the back entry deck and recycling center. There's a half ton of sound proofing under the blue tarp. The driveway is its temporary home until we lay flooring in a few weeks.

Pad Form

Tomorrow we will pour concrete into this form. The long edge along the left of the form will be the landing point for the front deck stairs.

The southeast corner of the house foundation is on the right edge of the photo.

North Annex Wrap

The North Annex is sheathed and wrapped. The electrical meter is on. This part of the house is going to look a little different than what it used to look like. One significant improvement is that the lattice skirting is a thing of the past--it looked bad and wasn't doing anything to support the structure. The upper portion will have matching siding as before, but we'll probably cover the bottom three feet with something slightly more daring, like corrugated steel.

Slate Green Challenge

I encourage all of our loyal readers to participate in the Slate Green Challenge. It's a seven-week program that helps assess your carbon footprint while introducing tangible steps you can implement to decrease your fossil fuel consumption. It's packaged in the form of articles and associated quizzes, and has a problem-solving, not nagging, approach.

One thing that's surprised us is how large of an impact some seemingly small choices have on our personal footprint. We're feeling mighty good about our decision to purchase all new low-e windows and up the R-value of our insulation. We're feeling mighty guilty about our penchants for air travel.

Earth Advantage: Update

Seems that, since our March meeting with Earth Advantage, the organization has opted to phase out their remodeled-home certification division. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the most widespread and arguably well-respected "green-building" rating system, has yet to implement a remodeling certification process. Both groups are currently focusing solely on new construction.

Alas, this leaves us without a badge to pin to the house (or our lapels) in honor of our efforts. Good thing we were doing it for the karma, eh?

Look in the near future for a summary of the specific "sustainable" aspects of the remodel.

Romex

A roughed-in switch box with 15A Romex for our stairwell lights. Romex is a brand and common term for the hundreds or thousands of feet of copper electrical cable run through probably 99.99% of American homes and businesses. In other countries I think they call it a Royale with cheese.

Breaker Box

Statewide Electric is doing our electrical work. These guys move fast, and they've indicated that they haven't even hit their groove yet. This is the electrical panel in the basement. It doesn't have breakers in it yet, hence the sparse look.

Front Porch Excavation

The concrete guys will be back on Monday to pour the footings for the front and back porches (the deck footings are already done). They'll also be pouring concrete pads for all three stairways. You pour pads when you need something other than dirt on which to terminate the bottom of your stairs, unless you want your bottom steps to rot off. One of our early lessons in home ownership: earth-to-wood contact equals trouble.

We're not quite finished with the excavating. We need to run plumbing and electrical out to the garage, so we'll be trenching for that as early as next week.

Hogging

Dean, our plumber, was on site today ripping out old plumbing and making room for the new stuff. In this photo he's hogged out a hole for the bathroom sink drainpipe. Hogging is different than drilling. To hog is to tear out in chunks, usually leaving a rough finish. Drilling produces particles of dust and leaves a smoother finish. Hogging typically takes a lot less time than drilling, which makes it a useful process for a plumber.

North Annex Repair

The sheathing for the lower half of the North Annex (old porch, now a kitchen and bath) is on. A couple of other less visible but vitally necessary repairs have been going on the last few days in this section of the house, including floor leveling and rot repair.

Tyvek

Fernando (standing) and Carlos (ladder) finish applying the house's windbreaker. Using a wrap like Tyvek or felt prevents airflow in the places you can't control it. The idea is to totally own the airflow through your house using windows, doors, HVAC and exhaust fans.

Tyvek is essentially plastic, so it's not a very green product from a petroleum-use point of view, but the added energy efficiency for the life of the home is well worth it. If you've ever seen this stuff close-up you've probably noticed that it's a mesh, not an impermeable plastic membrane. That's important because we don't want to trap moisture against the wood of the house, which would cause accelerated wet rot and eventual building collapse. This has been a big problem with homes wrapped in EIFS and several other hardboard and composite sidings. In Portland alone, there are quite a few class action lawsuits open against manufacturers of house weather barrier materials that have kept the cold out, but the water in.

Electric Beginnings

Yep, pretty much.

This One's for the Doubters

Hannah D. and Giles, this means you. A day or two is all it takes to frame in an exterior wall. At least with our superhero Green Hammer guys on the job.