The Little Things

Its easy to look past the little things in the house. The things that at one point seemed to be the most important decision of the day/week, now an afterthought. I was in the house cleaning up today and was thinking about all of the little things that have to be buttoned up in order for this house to end up working efficiently. Whats funny is I think that keeping in front of these little things are what tend to keep me ahead of the curve - for the most part.


The radiant heat is something that I feel like I spent a whole month on back when we were building the infrastructure of the house. The above two pictures are of the manifold that will be the control valve for the water flowing into the radian tubes. The four tubes from the floor connect to the manifold, and the manifold will connect to the combined heating source for the water.

In the case of how to provide the heated water for the radiant system, we chose to use a double use water heater. This will be a 75 gallon water heater that has a separate coil built into the bottom half of the water heater. Inside this separate coil is the water for the radiant tubes. What happens is the water heater automatically heats the water in the radiant coil as a result of keeping the water in the tank warm. Because its very difficult to drain even half a 75 gallon tank with a small house like ours, the coil being in the bottom half should keep the temperature fluctuation in radiant tubing from being too bad - this being the major drawback to this system..you could see some temperature variation. It should be fine, and it makes the most sense from an economical and energy efficiency standpoint.


The panel. Its very fun to photograph, with lots of colors and angles. Its also the hub for all of the power in the whole house. When you look at it closely, its hard to make heads or tails of all the wires and connections. What I do know is that the color of the wire being used relates to what area of the house it was being used in. I most cases a main room or switch will have 5-6 different color wires running through it. Pretty interesting process. Its something that seems so difficult looking at it from the outside and is fairly simple to do when you have the knowledge. Its truly a tradesman that is an electrician.


This isn't so much about the details as much as its about cleaning up the cabinets and making it look the way it should when its done. I decided to take a few swiffer wipes over there to get the static-y dust and grime that had accumulated on the cabinet doors. Poof, the kitchen looks as it should - pristine and new. I am really looking forward to having the floors sanded and finished and the cabinets cleaned....should be exactly what I was hoping for.


Who says there aren't plenty of hard working people out there in this world? The roofers showed up on Sunday to do the roof. I love it. They started work around 9.30am this morning and were finished with the roof by 3pm. I know its not hardest roof in the world, but I just enjoy the fact that someone else is as crazy as I am. As with the house, we chose architectural black shingles and we added a ridge vent for this (there were not vents on the house due to the spray foam) garage to release the heat that will inevitably build in the summers.

Hopefully the siding will be delivered tomorrow morning and the guys can get started on that. I got the Tyvek and other items....I will just have to bring the windows over from the basement of my house so they can put them in.

Cement patio goes in tomorrow, meetings with garage door guy, shower glass & mirror guy, and the architects are coming by to see the house for the first time in a few weeks. Going to be a busy day around the house.