WE NEED A NOAH EVENT!

Howdy Y'all!

This past week has been principally focused on the exterior of the house. We went another week with little to no progress inside other than a couple of things, but we have reached another milestone outside.

The Concrete Guys returned this week to start forming the Motor Court area, and part of the driveway leading up to the arches. This required about 10 loads of roadbed rock to raise the level to that of the garage entrances, and thankfully, we got a small amount of drizzle last week that helped settle and compact the dirt. This entire concrete pour will be a challenge since it is about 19,000 sq ft of exposed aggregate extending about 1000 feet to the street entrance.

Forming the outer driveway area in front of the Motor Court.

Setting the grade.

Digging the beams. (Heh-heh, couldn't resist.)

Digging the second of four beams, and grading the base.

Beginning the forming of the front walkway.

Our major milestone this week is the final installation of the water collection system around the house, and the downspouts that will feed the system. From past blog posts, you'll remember that we a.) have no city water system connection, and b.) chose not to dig a well on the property. So, at this point, we are totally reliant on Mother Nature and her rainfall largesse. Enter the water collection system, capturing rainfall from the roof and transporting it to the tank 300 feet away.

Trenching for the collection pipes.

Bingo! Collection pipes!

6" main collection line

The collection system starts with 4" downspouts connecting at various points into 5" collection pipes, which all terminate into one long 6" collection pipe that terminates at the tank. At the tank, the 6" standpipe rises and terminates into the tank.

Standpipe that feeds the tank.

The particular system we chose has two "first-flush" tanks that work on an interesting principal - as the standpipe begins to fill with water, water is diverted into the first-flush tank, and when that is full, pushes into the second-flush tank. The principal behind "first-flush" is that any pollen, dirt, small leaves, etc. that might come off of the roof at the start of a rainfall, and isn't caught by the gutter screens, is diverted into the two tanks, thus "flushing" the first 60-70 gallons of water into the diverter tanks. Once the first-flush tanks are full, the water bypasses them and goes straight into the main tank, where the secondary and tertiary filtration systems take over in the tank. We expect that the tank filter screens will capture any silt down to the size of a grain of salt. We'll see.

After that, the water that is pumped back to the house goes through two addition filtration systems (10 and 5 micron), and a fairly robust UV system. Our neighbors and we have been told that our water collection systems actually produce cleaner particulate systems (less stuff) than city water, and without all of the chemicals.

Test assembly to measure the correct height for the first-flush systems.

Setting up the pad for the pump station and to-house pipe system.

Finalizing all of the 19 downspouts around the house.

Finally! Ready to collect rainwater! (Where's the rain?)

We're finally done with the water system!! Now we need everyone, (yes, You!) to go outside and do the absolute very best rain dance you can possibly conjure up. We want Noah to be proud of the deluge that you are dancing for. Don't hesitate a moment, 'cause we need pool water, now! (Thank you in advance for your fine effort.) We, here, will sacrifice a couple of bottles of good wine to the Rain Gods in the hope that the skies will open for us shortly.

That's all for now. See y'all later!

- Jan and John - 

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

Howdy Y'all!

This week marked an additional milestone on the march to completion. We have POWER!! The electricians and crew were here this week trenching, digging, pulling, (cursing), and laying two 300 foot lines from the house to the main power panel (by the water tank).

Real light! Finally!

Gabe (Water PM) and Jeff (Builder) discussing the water collection system.

Pulling the strands of wire thru the sleeves in the wall.

300 feet of electrical cable - twice!

Along with the electrical work, the Water Tank Guys started work on trenching, laying the water collection perimeter pipe, and preparing to set up the downspouts at various places along the roofline. If you remember from past blog posts, we talked about using rainwater collection as our sole method of providing a water supply to the house. This is becoming more commonplace here in our ranch neighborhood, so pray for rain. We have about 11,000 square feet of roof, which means that we will collect about 650 gallons of water per 1000 square feet of roof for every inch of rainfall. Confused yet?? Here's the equation - 11,000/1000 X 650 X 1 = 7,150 gallons for every one inch of rain. It will take about 7 inches of rain to fill the 51,000 gal tank.

First of three loads of inventory for water collection.

Getting' busy!

Remember the infamous Rocksaw from one of our original posts? Well, his baby brother is here to dig the trenches for the water collection tubes.

Baby Rocksaw.

Big bad teeth!

Trenching for the water line.

In addition to the electrical and water collection work, the Audio/Video Guys started work this week installing all of the speakers for the in-house audio system. The system design appears complicated, but these guys knew where every wire was in the walls, and assured us that it will be brain-dead easy to operate. I guess we'll find out. (All of the speaker grills and various grates in the walls and ceilings will be painted at a later date, so they won't appear as obvious as they are in the pictures here.)

Speakers in the Office ceiling.

Wall speakers for the Master Bedroom TV/audio.

Dining Room in-wall speakers for 'mood music'.

Partial TV cabling for installation later.

But Wait, There's More!
This last weekend we attended the Nationals Cheering event in San Antonio with Jennifer, Tristan and Lauren. Lauren's team was competing, and took First Place in their team event. Nothing better than a happy grandchild!

Jennifer and Jan

One happy child!

That's all for now! See ya later!
- Jan and John -                                                                      

WAITING FOR THE SANDWICH

Howdy Y'all!

Watching the house progress at this point is like watching paint dry. Individual tasks are being completed, but as the builder remarked last week, "don't worry about the individual ingredients, just wait for the sandwich". Okay, I guess there is some logic to this, but we'll worry about the ingredients just the same.

As we mentioned in the last blog post, all of the rock work on the house is essentially done. The green area left is for a fountain outside, and that will be one of the final things completed. 

Front Entrance completed sans the lights and fountain.

The roofers finally showed up today to complete the remaining work on the tile roof. Most of the work was contained to a couple of sections, and one re-do that we wanted addressed. As you can see from the picture below, they elected to dispense with the forklift and just started tossing roof tiles up to each other. Remarkably, they didn't drop a single one, at least not in front of us!

Roofer's "Toss a Tile", up.

Working the edge pieces 18 ft off the patio concrete.

This was the re-do as shown in the picture below. The original ridge pieces were a single stack at the termination of the ridge, but we didn't think it looked quite finished. So we had the roofers redo the edge pieces for a stacked look that is more consistent with a Tuscan or Mediterranean look. You can tell us later what you think.

Stacked ridge cap.

The Tile Guys also revisited us yesterday and today to complete the bathrooms, Mud Room, and Wine Room floors. In the Master Bath, Jan had originally specified small "squares", but the Tile Guys went ahead and laid the floor without them, leaving us to think they forgot them. Only later did we learn that they cut the squares into the floor tile post-grout, which concerned us even more regarding cuts, proportions, chips, etc. However, they did get it done yesterday, and to our relief, they look terrific.

The elusive squares finally set.

Mud Room floor pre-grout.

Guest Bath #1 completed!

Guest Bath #2 completed!

Cracked stone Wine Room floor done!

Additionally, our friends the Electricians surfaced yesterday and started hanging drop lights, overhead fans, undercounter lighting, a couple of missing overhead cans that we added, cabinet pucks, and outlet plugs in the cabinetry. With any luck, we are told that we will have "light" on Friday when they throw the power switch on the main panel.

Installing the undercounted lighting.

Fans, fans and more fans. 11 to be exact.

We also had a small redo on the Prep Kitchen table that we had custom-made for the room. The original table was wider (we didn't catch it in the approval phase), so they had to narrow it by six inches. It's now perfect and ready for stain, lacquer and granite.

Redo on the Prep Kitchen table.

And lastly, I (yes, me) constructed some box sleeves for the box speakers that will go into the stone on the Great Room wall. Unfortunately, yours truly is chikensh$t to climb the worker's rickety ladder and stand on my tippy-toes to mount them in the wall holes. I'll wait for the scaffolding.

Sleeves for the Polk Audio box speakers.

Sleeve slots, and the rickety ladder. Ain't happening!

But Wait, There's More!!
Our good friend and ranch neighbor, Hoyt, stopped by to visit with us today. Hoyt has a great eye for catching little things that we've overlooked, so we appreciate his visits.

Hoyt educating me on the finer points.

Well, that's all for now. See ya later!

- Jan and John -