Friday, June 13, 2008

Foundation Poured Today

The foundation for the house was poured this afternoon and it finally feels like we are making some positive progress.  Up to this point they have just been taking stuff away from the lot, some house and a lot of dirt, which feels negative to me.  The foundation crew has been working hard the last few days to get the forms in and I think they had 3 crews there today, roughly 12 guys scrambling around the forms making sure all of the rebar and stuff was ready.  The structural engineer came by and inspected everything and told me that it all looked great.  The foundation is a critical part of the house and I didn’t realize just how much engineering goes into it, but it is important that it is prepared to carry the different point loads of the house that is on top of it.  The pour took 3 to 4 hours in all with 10 concrete trucks coming and going.  They would back up to the concrete pump, an amazing piece of equipment that pumps the concrete up the tube along the boom, probably 25 feet in the air and then it gushes out the other end about 60 feet away and into the forms.  The guy controlling the pump walks around with a remote control so he can see and make sure to keep the end of the boom just where it needs to be.  All of the other workers were constantly checking to make sure the forms were true and level, bracing them with 2x4’s.  It is quite a choreographed event to watch.

The forms give away the shape of the foundation and it it fun to think about where all of the different elements of the house are going in relation to the rest of the neighborhood around us.  It is exciting that after 10 months of planning the house is starting to take shape.

Click on picture to get a larger version.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Big Hole

We have a very big hole on the lot, luckily no real surprises once we dug up the dirt, I was worried about the potential groundwater situation.  This view is to the northeast, luckily our neighbors to the east seem to be very understanding about the whole situation, as you can see it might be interpreted as a major imposition to them.  We are “keeping” the current garage, which means that we want it to stay where it is, so we’ll demolish it later and then rebuild it in the same spot on the current foundation.

Click on picture to get a larger version.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Geothermal Heating and Cooling System

I have been meaning to post this for a while, but we have a final proposal from Blue Valley Energy to provide our geothermal heating and cooling system.  Click here to see the proposal from them which details the system used and how it works.  Geothermal is actually a misnomer here, we are not located on a hot spring, rather the system should be called a ground-source heat pump.  Basically they will drill 5 holes 250 feet deep and will circulate water from those through a special furnace that will provide heating and cooling for the whole house.  The furnace works a lot like and air conditioner, using a compressor to concentrate the heat or cold, so the system uses more electricity than a typical forced-air furnace (we’re hoping to put some photo-voltaic cells on the roof to offset the electricity use).  On a net basis it uses less energy than a typical furnace and should pay for itself in 8-10 years, depending on the price of natural gas.  The system is mostly forced air and has a variable-speed fan and a smart controller that will move air around the house to regulate the temperature before it turns on the water circulation system.  It will also provide some radiant heat in the basement and living room of the house.  I have a friend who has installed such a system in a very large house and it seems to be working well.  We are very excited that the system seems to be cost effective and that we can afford to install it.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Demolition in 30 seconds

Yesterday was the big day when they took the house down, and being the geek that I am I made a time-lapse movie of it.  Luckily Chris from Old Greenwich was there to help me mount the camera box on the pole that we had set in the ground at the far southeastern corner of the lot.  I got the camera going right at 7:00 am and the demolition crew pulled up, just in time!  Most of the house came down in an hour or so and it took them the rest of the day to crunch it up and load it on their trucks.  They probably would have moved faster but things are slow for them now and they’re trying to stretch this out.  I didn’t take pictures of the second day when they pulled the slab foundation up because of the snow storm - I decided to paint the box and make it more weatherproof.  I will mount it again and take pictures during the rest of the construction, so watch for periodic updates.

Click on the picture below to load the movie.  You’ll need QuickTime Player to see this movie, visit The Apple Website to get it.

Friday, May 02, 2008

The Plans Were Approved!

Yippee, we got an email today that the plans were approved and we can start construction!!!!!

Apparently Ginny had a restless night when she got a phone call that our front setback should have been 27 feet to match the neighboring houses to the east, rather than the 20 feet we’d been working with.  Luckily the 20 feet had been committed to back in October and so they approved that, phew.

We are lucky to have such a good architect who has a solid reputation with the City, it really made things go faster than expected.

Now we just have to build the thing!