30 June 2014
At 6:20 (luckily I was
up and dressed), Dave Todd (across the street neighbor) knocked on the RV door
and presented me with a quart of ripe strawberries as a thank you for the use
of my trailer last week. Perry arrived at 6:40 to get set up for replacing me
on the construction team for the next few weeks. Sean and Ian got here at 7,
per usual, and the three building experts began assembling and putting up the
Garage south and east walls. I left at 7:10 with the Ranger, Mr. Jonsered, and
mouse #6 on a winding journey, first to Green Mountain Garage in Brandon to
have the Ranger fail inspection (bad bearings in the front left wheel), then to
Champlain Valley Equipment in Middlebury to drop off the chainsaw for repair,
then to Silver Lake to release the mouse. Got back to Fern Lake at 9 and got down to
some serious cleaning of Dolores’ innards, with occasional breaks to fetch and
carry for the construction crew. Sean
left at noon, so after lunch I joined the fun in the sun until Chree arrived at
2, bringing with her Geisha (our 12 year old German Sheppard) and Shlomo (our
acts-like-a- puppy 5 year old Black Lab).
Soon thereafter Shlomo snuck off down the hill and cooled off in the
lake, but then came right back… to roll in the dirt and sawdust of the building
site. Chree and I toured the house, making decisions about window and door
details (Sean is still batting 1.000 with his recommendations!), then she and
the dogs retired to the comfort of air conditioning in the RV. Just at quitting time the Goodro’s truck
arrived with another mega-thousand dollar load of lumber… with more promised
for tomorrow! Once everyone was gone,
the dogs and I partook of a refreshing swim while Chree enjoyed the waterfront
ambiance… with occasional showers from a certain black doggie who has learned
to cannonball. Lake temperature is up to
79°.
29 June 2014
Not only did Dolores
start right up (using the coach batteries, the truck battery being completely
flat after nine months of sitting), but the slide-out came all the way in. (That’s only because I’ve made an appointment
to have the slide-out repaired next week at Pete’s RV in Burlington). She and I trundled up to Kampersville for a
good purging, then I gave her a bath back at Fern Lake because she needed it
desperately had been such a good girl.
Spent the remainder of the day over at Lynne & Perry’s doing five
loads of laundry, cutting and splitting wood (so much more challenging in the
blazing hot sun), and finding out that Mr. Jonsered has a serious gas leak
somewhere in his innards, hence the starting and performance problems seen
after he has fully warmed up.
28 June 2014
Cinquo de mousy took a
one-way trip to Silver Lake right after breakfast. Then there was a tremendous beaver attack
between the house and lake.
Unfortunately, and very frustratingly, the beaver got a toothache after
the third tank of gas… wouldn’t start, then, if it did start, wouldn’t rev up,
then, if it finally would rev up, worked fine until I shut it off, then
wouldn’t start… Got all but one tree
down, which helped the view from the house somewhat, though considerable limb
removal will next be in order.
27 June 2014
Sean & Ian, with
cutting and carrying help from me, built and put up all of the remaining walls
for the Main Level house shell except for the east and south walls in the Sun
Room and the Garage. The Sun Room east
wall is awaiting a decision about door and window placement, to be made soon
after Chree arrives on Monday. The Sun
Room south wall, being a full gable, can’t be built until the roof rafters are
in place, as the studs for that wall have to be custom cut to fit under the
rafters. The Garage walls are Monday’s
project.
26 June 2014
Stopped raining at 5
am, but then misted heavily until early afternoon. Relocated mouse 14-4 to Silver Lake right
after breakfast. Sean, Ian and I spent
the day building and erecting the framework for the Main Level west wall and
that portion of the north wall that will enclose the Master Bedroom. The three of us put up the Living / Dining
wall as one piece… very heavy with the huge header over the 12+ feet of windows
in that room and, of course, the wall had to be positioned right on the edge of
a 9 foot drop. Tricky, but then, again,
Sean and Ian seem to know all the tricks.
25 June 2014
As predicted, a
totally rainy day, so the Goose stayed away, hopefully in dryer climes. Went into Middlebury first thing to move Mr.
Jonsered from gathering dust at Taylor Rental to, hopefully, having his ailment
attended to more promptly at Champlain Valley Equipment. When I got to Taylor Rental, Chris, the
manager, said that my chainsaw would be fixed “today”. With that assurance, left the saw in his
capable hands and returned to Fern Lake.
Two hours later, Chris called to say my saw was ready for pickup. Guess sometimes the squeaky mouse does get
the cheese. Problem was $50 worth of
“crap” in the carburetor, as originally suspected. Spent the remainder of the day tweaking the
house design to accommodate some size differences between the foundation that
actually got built and what the architect envisioned. When working to 1/16″
tolerances, a garage that is 6″ shorter and 6″ wider than designed causes some
major perturbations in the Force.
Fortunately, Sean (as usual) not only had some great ideas about how to
fix the resultant design problems, but also suggested some tweaks to window and
door placement and sizes to make the exterior appearance of the house much more
pleasing to the eye. Opened a new bottle
of JWB mid-afternoon…
24 June 2014
Sean got here at 7 and
put together a cut list for the Main Level door and window headers, which I got
busy producing. At 8:15 it started
raining (earlier than expected, but as forecast), so we secured everything for
heavy weather and Sean prepared to depart.
At that point it stopped raining, though Sean’s smart phone weather
radar app showed plenty of moisture supposedly headed our way within a couple
of hours. We started work again, Sean
laying out the stud, jack, and cripple placement for the walls and me making
long lumber into shorter lumber. A few
sprinkles, but nothing serious until just before lunch. With everything once again covered up, Sean
and I enjoyed a gourmet luncheon (left over from last night’s repast) in
Dolores’ dry confines, figuring we were (once again) done work for the day. The sun came out (briefly!), so back to work
we went… though we weren’t amovin’ any too fast after that heavy meal. Only occasional light sprinkles all
afternoon. Just before quitting time the
Goodro’s truck arrived with a delivery ordered for tomorrow morning. Sean must be slipping, ‘cause there was less
than $1,000 on the invoices I signed after we offloaded the “stuff”.
23 June 2014
Sean and Ian pulled in
at their usual ungodly (for us retired folk) hour. While waiting for the Goodro’s truck to
arrive with another umpteen-thousand dollar load of materials needed for the
next construction phase, Sean did some heavy thinking about the layout of the
Main Level exterior walls while Ian and I put the two steel / concrete posts in
place under the long steel beam. Then
Ian got busy sawing notches in the between-joist braces to clear the way for me
to drill four ¼″ holes through the lower flange of each beam so that the top
plate of each post could be bolted to the flange. Arduous work, which took all morning, even
with brand new, top quality drill bits. Sean
says the main level floor looks flat (but did he have his eyes shut when he
“looked”?), so maybe I did cut the posts to the correct lengths… Sean and Ian, meanwhile, started tacking in
place the sole plates for the exterior main level walls, checking to ensure
that they formed perfectly square (so, okay, the long diagonals were 1/16″
different!) rectangles of the correct sizes.
Late afternoon, as we were finishing that work, Kevin Betourney and
Brian Dunleavy, from Kevin's Roofing, came by to scope out the standing seam
metal roofing jobs (house and sauna) that will need to be done later this
summer. Sean asked Kevin to give us two
estimates: one to do the roofs like the woodshed was done and one to do the
roofs like Kevin would normally do them.
Kevin mentioned in passing that we would need a cricket on the upslope
side of the house chimney. The architect
(who at this point should be taken out and shot) said, no, the chimney was
rotated 45°, causing all sorts of hate and discontent with the house design,
specifically so that no cricket would be needed. Whereupon Sean and Kevin showed why, if the
chimney were in a “normal” position, water would flow away from it on all sides
(so no cricket needed), but because it has been twisted, water could get
trapped on the upslope side, which would necessitate putting in a cricket. Chrip, chirp…
Early quitting time today so I could prepare another fabulous lasagna
dinner for Marty & Merry… and start drinking.
22 June 2014
Vacuumed, washed,
waxed, then parked the Ranger along Lake Dunmore Road up at the head of the
driveway with a big For Sale sign taped to the driver’s window. The phone should start ringing with offers
any minute now… Applied Geocel under the
steel beams and to the seam between the west wall sill plate and the cellar
floor. Ran out of the tube I was using,
of course, with 1 foot left to go!
Discovered that there was a 1/16″ difference over
10″ between my “good” carpenter’s square and Ian’s big framing square. As it was obvious last week that the radial
arm saw, so carefully aligned using my “good” square, was not cutting straight,
completely realigned the saw using Ian’s square.
21 June 2014
Into Burlington to
pick up a special order of Cabot Weatherizing Stain 3244 (for the Sauna
siding), spend money at Lowe’s, and visit with Alverta, who treated me to
lunch. Upon return to Fern Lake late
afternoon, found that I had captured yet another mouse, who now resides with
his/her friends at the Silver Lake parking area. Patched the concrete floor areas that were
chipped when the west wall sill plates were installed, ‘cause the floor was
poured higher than the frost wall and the sill plates overlap both… and had to
be made to sit level.
20 June 2014
A very productive day…
with perfect weather! Ian and Ben got
here at 7 and resumed putting in mid-span joist braces. I finished cutting the special sloped joists
that will be under the main entry porch. Sean appeared bringing gifts from
Goodro’s: lots of hangers for me to install where joists were attached to other
joists. Sean, Ben, and Ian installed the ¾″ (technically it’s only 23/32,
if you want to quibble) AdvanTech® tongue & groove
subflooring for the main level of the house.
Ty came to join the fun mid-morning.
Because the architect (that would be me) specified that the subfloor be
both glued and screwed (vice nailed) to the joists, you’ll never guess who got
assigned to put in the 2,000+ screws needed to hold down 1,640 ft2
of AdvanTech®? Went through
four charges on the battery for my impact driver (and my back may never be the
same) before that job was done… and I had help from Ty and Ian at various
points during the almost-all-day, quite brutal process. I can hear the bed calling already…
19 June 2014
Ian pulled in at 7,
per usual, then got busy putting in the mid-span joist braces. I fetched for him between trimming off all
the shims that were used to level the west wall rim joist and then putting new
shims between each joist and the west wall top header plate (so that the joists
are resting solidly on wood vice just hanging on the nails that hold them to
the rim joist). Sean had some early
morning meetings and had to stop at Goodro’s to increase the balance on my account,
so didn’t arrive until 10. He and Ian
spent the remainder of the day installing virtually all of the rest of the
ceiling / floor joists, with me cutting and trimming as they needed that
done. Beer and steak consumed, relocated
yet another mouse to the Silver Lake parking area.
18 June 2014
A wicked good
thunderstorm overnight left a nice swimming pool in the cellar. Some earnest activity with the push broom
soon lowered the water to wading level...
and then Ian cut and removed the sill and sole plates for the Shop door,
so further flooding should only be moderately deep. Sean and Ian spent the day installing Lower
Level ceiling / Main Level floor joists.
The Goodro’s truck arrived just after 8 with the next installment from
our kid’s inheritance. From the lumber
thus delivered, I spent the morning mass producing 200 2x8x147/16
blocks that are used to brace the joists mid-span and where they rest on the
steel beam flanges. Sean, in his proper
role as adult supervisor, astutely caught a 1″ error in the measurements for
the chimney placement that directly affected the joist layout. Glad somebody on this job knows what he’s
doing!!!! Jim LaFlam stopped by
mid-morning to check on progress.
Sweating bullets, inhaling Tums, and with all ten fingers crossed, I cut
to length the two posts that will support the long steel beam. The posts are made from steel filled with
concrete… and you only get one chance to get them the correct length… which has
to be exactly right or the Main Level floor will not be level. No pressure!
17 June 2014
Turns out that Sean
caught what would have been the 6th largest salmon in the
tournament, but they ate the fish instead of taking it in for official
measuring. Sean and Ian (with some help from
me sawing and lugging), built and erected the Lower Level west wall
framework. Even though this is “rough”
carpentry, they are working to 1/16″ (or less) tolerances
on every joint… most impressive. At the
end of a very hot afternoon, we used the Tacoma’s automobile jack to
remove the sag in the long steel beam, then set a temporary wood post to hold
the beam in position until the permanent posts are installed (tomorrow). Lake temperature is up to 77°; almost
perfect!
16 June 2014
Scheduled holiday for
Goose Creek Builders – final day of the Lake Champlain Fishing Tournament. Applied Geocel® Pro Flex clear
caulking sealant (guaranteed to last 50 years) to the interior side of the sill
plate / concrete wall seams. Cut 32
2x10x142⅜ floor joists. The pile of uncut
2x10’s has been overrun with carpenter ants and a zillion eggs. Captured, then relocated to the Silver Lake
parking lot, one very fat mouse.
13 - 15 June 2014
Went down to CT for
the funeral of Chree’s 99 year old aunt and godmother, Norma Bradford. She will be missed! Was nice to see Chree again, however briefly,
two weeks earlier than expected. Got
back to Fern Lake early afternoon on Father’s Day and performed a complete
alignment procedure on the radial arm saw.
The Lapidii had me down to their place for a roast chicken dinner that
was great (company and food), as always.
12 June 2014
Sean and Ian arrived
shortly after 7, eyeballed the wet and dreary weather conditions, chatted for
awhile, and were gone by 8. I went ice
cream shopping in Brandon, then headed to Burlington to spend money at Lowes, tackle
some repairs at the condo we own there, and attend Alverta’s 90th
birthday celebration, held at Pauline’s Restaurant (her favorite). Back to Fern Lake just in time for bed,
discovering upon arrival that the Long Ridge crew had removed the revival tent
from over the newly poured Garage floor.
11 June 2014
Ian arrived at 7, as
expected, but then so did Rick and Kevin… obviously Larry had decided to pour
the Garage floor today. The rest of the
Long Ridge crew (Larry, Victor, Scott, & Ben) pulled in shortly
thereafter. Ian and I continued cutting
and notching floor joists, with Ian also cutting studs for the west wall during
breaks in the action. Sean arrived and resumed laying out the west wall top and
bottom plates. Jimmy came with a bill
and I paid him for his excavation work over the past few weeks. Sometime before
9 a Carrara mixer showed up with just over 7 cubic yards of 4,000 psi
concrete. Late morning, again just as
the concrete had set enough for finishing, the rain started. Bet you saw that coming! Rick and Kevin
quickly threw some tarps over the floor, hoping that it was going to be only a
brief shower. (Can you hear the hollow
laughter in the background?) Sean, Ian,
and I secured the carpentry worksite and took an early lunch in the RV. By noon the weather radar was looking
downright ugly, so Sean and Ian called it quits for the day. Sean went away smiling with the first
installment of the contract management fee tucked into his wallet. Larry came back shortly thereafter and the
four of us erected a nice revival tent over the Garage floor so that Rick and
Kevin could finish floating the floor in spite of the inclement weather… which they
had done by 3:30. Figured the rain would
stop then, but it didn’t…
10 June 2014
Sean & Ian were
here by 7:30; the Goodro’s big boom truck, fully loaded with many $ thousands
of lumber, flooring, and 3 steel beams, got here just after 8. First order of business was to swing the 3
beams into their approximate positions on the cellar walls, which the boom
truck accomplished easily. With all the
other Goodro’s goodies offloaded, Sean and Ian notched the sill plates to
accept the beams. Then I, clever boy
that I am, managed to single-handedly knock the long beam onto its side… and
nearly down onto the cellar floor. Major
disaster narrowly averted by pure happenstance.
Used the Kubota in forklift mode to right the beam, but then, to get it
into its notches, had to lift the beam using the top of the grid that holds the
forks to get enough weight off the beam for Sean and Ian to move it, very
carefully, into position. Balancing a
700 pound, 44 foot long, 4″ wide beam on a piece of steel 2″ wide by 36″ long
is one of those things they tell you on TV not to try at home. Many gray hairs later, with all beams in
their final resting spots, we measured less than ⅛″ difference in their top
elevations. A few hours after that all
the rim joists were in place. After
lunch I moved my radial arm saw into the area that will become the Shop. Boy is
it nice to finally have a level place, with plenty of room, to operate the saw!
Ian and I went into production mode creating floor joists. Each one, obviously, has to be cut to a
precise length to fit between the steel beams (my job), then the top corners
had to be notched to exactly fit around the top flange of the beams (Ian’s
job). Meanwhile, Sean started to lay out
the top and bottom plates for the west wall, discovering that the two concrete
end walls are exactly 60 feet apart top and bottom (as they should be), but
both are leaning to the north by ½ inch.
Oops! So, instead of building a
wall to fill a rectangular space, Sean will be constructing a
parallelogram. He needed a little
challenge in his life. A threatening
thunderstorm (that blew over without precipitating), raging thirst, and low
carbohydrate levels put an end to the day’s endeavors.
9 June 2014
Sean and Ian"Yukon" Birkett
arrived just before 9 bearing a truckload of 2x6x12 PT which became, over the
course of the day, sill plates for the house.
The sill plates were fastened to the foundation walls using the embedded
½″ galvanized J-bolts and a thick bead of Lumber Lock construction adhesive. Used
the Kubota as a improvised clamp to hold down two of the 2x6’s that wanted to
bow up when first installed on one of the Garage walls. We discovered that the
foundation walls were exactly the length they were supposed to be and
were only out of square ⅛″… which is pretty darn impressive! Thank you, Larry Kaufmann and the Long Ridge
crew, for a concrete job exceptionally well done!!!! Between beers with the boys and a much-needed
cool-down swim, helped Dave Todd move a bunch of firewood from a seasoning
stack into Kate’s woodshed.
8 June 2014
John and Mary Jane
Cuneo, friends from when we lived in Bradford, MA, came for lunch-on-the-grill
and a swim. Hadn’t seen them in person
for 24 years, though annual holiday newsletters had kept us in touch with each
other’s lives over the intervening two decades.
Can’t say they had changed much…
A delightful visit, hopefully repeated again soon, as they have strong
ties to the Middlebury area. In the
evening, shared a pre-prandial bottle of wine with Kate and her weekend guests.
7 June 2014
Larry arrived sometime
before I finished breakfast to cut control joints in the cellar floor
slab. When (not if) the cellar floor
cracks, in theory it will do so along the saw cuts (deliberately weakened
areas) Larry made… which just happen to be under where walls will be placed. That’s
why they’re called control joints. Clever, huh?!?! Spent most of the day at Lynne & Perry’s
doing laundry. But call me Mr.
Jinx. After refueling from burning the
first tank of gas cutting up logs for their firewood, Mr. Jonsered would start,
but as soon as the throttle trigger was pulled, died. Figuring maybe the older gas that I had
refueled with had gone bad (even though it had been treated with a double dose
of Stabilfuel), put in fresh gas. Saw
started, made a bunch of cuts, turned it off, and it then refused to
start. This was at 11:30, with Taylor
Rental (Jonsered authorized service / repair center) closing at noon on
Saturdays. So beat feet rapidly in their
direction. Preliminary diagnosis is
“crap” (a techno-speak repair term) in the carburetor jets. Returned to Lynne & Perry’s, where we
broke out Perry’s Jonsered. While I was
continuing to cut logs, that machine started smoking like it was on a two packs
a day habit. Determined that there is a
gasoline leak somewhere in its guts. Not
so good! Taylor Rental will be getting
another Jonsered corpse come Monday. We
then fired up Perry’s log splitter which… worked just fine. Whew!
One pickup truck filled to the brim with split hardwood later, headed
for the cool enjoyment of Fern Lake... and clean sheets on the bed tonight. Parked the Tacoma in the garage for the first
time, just because I could. Before doing
so, was thinking the garage might be a trifle oversized. It’s not!
6 June 2014
So Larry didn’t want
to pour the cellar floor slab on Wednesday because the weather was supposed to
be unsettled after a frontal passage Tuesday night. The weather Wednesday was fabulous. Then Larry didn’t want to pour yesterday
because there was a 40% chance of showers, but only a 20% chance today. Yesterday also was gorgeous. Today I awoke to the pitter patter of
raindrops falling on Dolores’ head. The
drizzle persisted most of the morning.
The concrete trucks started rolling in at 8 and by 10 there were 20
yards spread around in the cellar (plus a half yard in the sauna). At noon, just when Larry and crew wanted to
start the final smoothing of the floor, the rain came down hard for 15 minutes
or so, turning the cellar into a soggy mess.
Fortunately, no further rain fell the remainder of the day and, after
sweeping the excess water off the floor with a push broom, the Long Ridge crew
were able to resurrect the floor.
Meanwhile, Jimmy was here all day backfilling around the Garage frost
walls, prepping the Garage floor for a concrete pour sometime next week, and
doing some grading around the house foundation so that Sean can put up
scaffolding sometime in the not so distant future. Had a nice chat with Kate, who is up for the
weekend. Marty & Merry invited Kate
and me down for another great dinner á la Restaurant Formidable Lapidus.
5 June 2014
A thoroughly miserable
day. Not the weather, the job. As the cellar floor concrete pour was
postponed another day (‘cause the weather, which was beautiful, was forecast to
be not), decided to tackle replacing the errant tee in the perimeter drain with
a proper wye. Why not? Seemed simple enough, just use the backhoe to
dig down to the fitting and couplings, undo the latter, wave my magic wand, and
presto change-o. Only problem was that
the backhoe only digs six feet something and the fittings were eight feet
something under compacted stone. So the
last two feet were pure misery… aided and abetted by the banks collapsing
several times… always at critical junctures.
Got the job done, but will definitely sleep well tonight. Jimmy showed up (twice) late afternoon to drop
off equipment for tomorrow’s festivities.
Just how many excavators does that guy own????
4 June 2014
Woke up at 5 with the
horrible realization that the house design had the steel beams in the wrong
places from the perspective of both load balance and efficient use of
materials. Quickly designed a solution,
but that fix potentially impacted many other facets of the house construction…
including Sean’s floor joist layout.
Fired off an email to Sean at 6, asking him to boogey on over to Fern
Lake ASAP. Kevin and Victor got here
just before 8 and, by 10, had dismantled the Garage frost wall concrete forms
and were back over the horizon. Sean got
here at 8, then we spent a couple and a half hours looking at all the impacts
of moving the beams. Bottom line is that the toilet and window in the Master
Bath had to move westward, the staircase will have to slide east a few inches,
and the footers for the posts supporting the long beam will have to be
re-poured (which can be done the same time the cellar floor slab is poured). But,
now the load on each beam is well balanced and there will be minimal wastage
when we install the Main Level floor joists. After Sean left, I got to work digging
(literally by hand) the new holes for the post footers and lining them with 6
mil polyethylene sheeting. That was done
by noon. Fortunately, the already-installed
radiant floor tubing was easily rerouted around the new holes. Called to complain about the burgeoning
mosquito population and the failure of the BLSC driver to spray down this way
when last he/she was in the neighborhood.
Spent most of the afternoon running errands in Middlebury and Brandon,
then doing more cleaning and organizing in the woodshed / temporary workshop /
underground bunker.
3 June 2014
Back to Goodro’s first
thing to put the final color coat on the two 19′ 9″ steel beams. Also picked up a 4″ x 4″ SDR light-wall wye-coupling
(not to be confused with a regular SDR wye-coupling – which costs 6-times more)
to replace the tee-coupling we put in, by mistake, for the roof valley drain. Got back to Fern Lake just before 9 to find
that Fyles Brothers had already come and gone, leaving 14.1 gallons of propane
in Dolores’ gizzards. Kevin and Scott came just before 11 to pull apart the
garage frost wall footer forms. Larry
and Victor got here an hour later and the Long Ridge crew put up the frost wall
forms and rebar, pinning the latter into the cellar foundation walls. Chuck pulled in at 2 to put 40 psi of air pressure
on all the radiant floor PEX tubing… testing for any installation leaks (none) and
to identify any leaks created during the concrete floor pour later this week. I filled in a few shovelfuls of dirt around
the sauna drain, set the drain so it is perfectly level, then put some scrap
Blueboard around the edges to serve as expansion joints for the sauna floor
(which, obviously, will be subjected to some major temperature swings and
commensurate expansion and contraction). A Carrara mixer delivered 5 cubic yards of
3,000 psi concrete at 2 o’clock. By 4,
with the Garage frost walls filled and floated, the Long Ridge gang was packed
up and gone, so I took a quick plunge ahead of the line of thunderstorms
bearing down on Fern Lake from the west.
Made it back to the shelter of the RV with minutes to spare.
2 June 2014
Rolled out of bed at
6:45 which meant, of course, that Sean pulled in right when he said he would…
while I was still slurping coffee and calories.
We discovered that some interesting spray foam sculptures had arisen
from Blueboard gaps where I had, obviously, been a little heavy handed on the
trigger. Sean and I laid out the three
heating zones on the house lower level (and the no heat area under the Wine
Cellar Nook and Cedar Closet), marking the wall positions on the blue foam
insulation with orange spray paint. Very
colorful! Kevin and Ben from Long Ridge
got here at 8 and started putting together the forms and rebar for the Garage
frost wall footers. Chuck arrived at 9
and he, Sean, and I quickly designed the layout for the in-slab radiant floor
heat, which uses ½″ PEX tubing. [Warning,
construction details! Ideally, each tubing run should be 9″ from adjacent runs
or a wall and each loop of tubing should be no more than 250′ long. Doing the math with a 1,640 square foot
cellar, that would mean using about 2,050 feet of tubing in 8 loops.] I worked
with Chuck on the actual installation, finding ways to get the job done with
about 1,400 feet of tubing in 6 loops. A
short time after Sean left, Larry, Victor, and Scott came rolling in. Larry
gave me the invoices for work performed to date and I wrote the first
(of many!!!!) mega-thousand dollar checks in payment. Urp! On a positive note, Larry gave me credit
(at his regular labor rate) for the hours I contributed during the cellar concrete
wall construction. A Carrara mixer came
at some point and, next thing I knew, the Long Ridge crew was gone and there
was fresh concrete in the forms. Guess
Chuck and I were just having too much fun in the sweltering sun. By 2 o’clock all the PEX tubing was in place,
so Chuck left, leaving me to fabricate PVC sleeves for where the tubing will
enter and exit the cellar floor slab and a rebar support bar and posts to hold
those sleeves in place during the cellar floor concrete pour. Hit the lake (which is up to 70°) as soon as
that was done and the area cleaned up.
1 June 2014
Arose at 6:30 and departed a still slumbering Chez
Lapidus to find two and a half very much awake and hungry people in the RV. After fortifying ourselves with omelets, Alex
cut, then he and I split, then Katy and I stacked a quarter cord of campfire wood. Devin sampled the flavors of rocks down by
the cellar but, unfortunately, found one that didn’t agree with him, causing
Katy to have to change both his and her clothes. While the three younger Perkins tested the
waters down at the dock, I did some baking so we would have enough calories for
lunch. Just as we were finishing our
mid-day repast, Perry arrived to bid the Boston folks au revoir… and take a
look at construction progress made over the past several weeks. Everyone headed towards home at 1:30,
whereupon I swept the cellar insullation semi-clean of debris, then applied
four cans of low-expansion foam to all the Blueboard gaps and cutouts. Hopefully the trigger finger on my right hand
will regain feeling sometime later this month…
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