Mayher Street – Day 20ish
Once the house is set onto its foundation only two additional weeks are required for the house to be move-in ready. We had already lined up numerous contractors and now we needed to organize all of them to get the house fully completed. At this point, it is a real test of project management skill to coordinate about 7 different small businesses whose tasks are inter-related and to some extent dependent on each other.
For example, you can’t turn the water on until the heat is working, and heat doesn’t work until the electricity is connected and you can’t get electricity flowing until the power company runs a new service from the street!
As this was the first project we purposely didn’t schedule our team too tight. There is nothing worse for a subcontractor than scheduling them too early and needing to cancel on short notice because a prior task required more time. It drives havoc into their schedule and will cost someone money (them, us or the homeowner).
At the end of Day 20, we were just about done, but the Covid-19 forced us to slam on the brakes. More on that in our next post.
So what did we do?
Mike and Mike talking about siding
Siding is done and the gable end is waiting for Lou Conover to do his design work.
Finish the Siding
The house components do not come fully sided. This is mostly due to our insistence on upgraded insulation techniques, a steeper pitched roof, and 10” roof overhangs. This means our onsite team is responsible for installing the soffits, facia, frieze board details, and some of the actual siding. In total, this is about 2.5 days of work for two carpenters.
Despite the additional cost (about $7,500-10,000), we feel strongly that these add-ons are worth the expense.
However, there are exceptions. If you like single pitch roof designs we can have those delivered with all of the sidings already on. This keeps more tasks in the highly efficient factory saving time and money.
Install the Heat Pump for Heating and Cooling
Pomeroy Climates spearheaded our super-efficient HVAC system. In this home, we installed a 2-head heat pump system (aka mini-split). This system is capable and heating and cooling year-round and forecast to cost 20% less than natural gas to run.
We also include 2 heads despite only needing 1 to heat and cool the 525 SF. This cost an extra $1,300, but it means the bedroom and living area can be kept at different temperatures. This means you can keep the bedroom cooler for sleeping and over the course of the year will use less energy.
Hook Up Plumbing
Andy Black of Prestige Plumbing hooked up the plumbing. For these homes, this means connecting all fixtures together and then connecting everything to the main service lines.
For most backyard homes (ADUs), the plumbing will then be connected to the water and sewer service already used by the main house. We extended the service lines from the main house via a 4’ deep trench earlier in the construction process.
Connect Electrical
The task list for our electrician, Ryan Martin of Current Electric, was a bit more extensive than the plumbing. Ryan had to:
Run wire through an underground conduit to get a 100 amp electric service to the house
Install the meter socket
Coordinate with Eversource
Install two exterior light fixtures and several interior fixtures
Install lights in the basement and attic
Connect the electrical panel to the meter socket
“Fractured Earth” by Crystal Brook Decorative Concrete.
Just another wheel barrow chair
Install Parking Pad and Front Walkway
Crystal Brook took point on the parking pad and beautifully curved front walkway. Justin’s team did all the concrete work for this project including the foundation and everything was spot on. For the concrete coloring, he used a special process of dying the concrete in the truck, drawing the color to the surface and then adding accents with acid. This helps prevent the color from fading.
The stamped concrete design that Ramona chose is called “fractured earth”. Overall we were amazed by what Justin is able to do with concrete.
ADD AN ENDING??
Enormous progress as been achieved, and had it not been for the pandemic, we would have met our two-week completion goal.
-or-
We would have easily achieved our two-week completion goal if we had not been rudely interrupted by the pandemic. The only tasks remaining now are XY and Z. With any luck we will all be back to work soon!