Wood stove

We have a stove, we have a functioning heat pump.  In fact, it is 8 degrees cooler in the new house than it is in the Carriage House.

Pennwoods brought inside our wood stove.  They installed the air intake vent, cut the ceiling, and put the chimney up. In Aspen in the summer of '71 we cranked down the AC and loaded up the fireplace on our honeymoon.  We can do that now.

In the basement Adrian and Dwayne have primed the heat pump system with about 40 gallons of ethylene glycol--they poured it into the master pump and that will combine with the water in the hoses that are in the ground.  Our new heat pump closed loop system is not pressurized (like our present system in the Carriage House) so the master pump acts like an expansion chamber and by running the pump the air in the loop lines is easily purged from the system. 

Doug, John, and Chris continue to work on the window trim.
Scott and Julian are putting in the backer board in the shower.  Scott applied sealer to the blue stone this morning.  He will put on several additional coats before he grouts the stones, as the sealer will keep the grout from adhering to the stones' faces. This is one of the preformed shampoo nooks.

Buddy found a box turtle over by the camping area.  It had a steep slope to the front half of the underside of its shell, so probably a male.  Paul rescued it and moved it into the woods.

Big changes today

Doug, John, and Chris worked on window trim.  There's not much paint showing on the sides.

Scott and Jesse have all the blue stone cut for the base of the hearth.  The cement will set up overnight with a fan on it moving air around.

The Kohlhepps guys installed the countertops--kitchen Madura Gold, master bathroom sink Verde San Fransisco, and guest bathroom sink Paradisio.

Bill has placed the support bracket on the stairs going down to the basement landing and he mortised the hinges for the gate in the loft. It's easily removable, but also folds flat against the railing.

Adrian and Dwayne have installed the fluid manifold as well as the master pump.  Adrian wants to get the heat pump working by tomorrow, for the AC rather than the heat, I'm sure: today was in the mid 80's and humid.

Just as important: no freeranging Buddy today.

Bill and Jonas completed the installation of the stair risers and treads going down to the basement landing.  Those treads are now covered with cardboard and blue painter tape to protect the new treads.  They also fitted
bull nose trim boards to the top of the stairs, top of the wall going down to the landing, and under the windows behind the staircase.  Jonas also started installing the plugs that cover the hardware that holds the railing
posts firm to the floor.
Doug mounted a plywood sheet next to the heat pump in the basement to hold the air exchange unit.  This exchange unit will have a filter that will need to be changed, so putting it within easy reach will be a big help.  John and Chris installed the window and door trim inside the  breezeway and the interior side of the garage door.  John also installed some trim boards along the top of the laundry and also above the closet wall in the upstairs bedroom.

Geothermal wells and hose trenches are filled, water line tapped and valve installed inside the basement, geothermal well lines also inside the basement to be hooked up to the manifold for the heat pump.  So far the water does not show any cloudiness, but we'll see if any develops.  The 2 drillers told me that a typical well hole will take 0.5 tons of finings for each 50 ft of well depth.  Our wells are all 200 ft deep, so they took 2 tons each.  The fourth well had a "bridge" or blockage form as they tried to shovel the filings down the hole on Thursday but the crew was able to break the bridge and finish putting down the fining and two bags of sodium bentonite  The finings and the bentonite are all needed to increase contact between the hoses and the ground.  They used washed finings to avoid clumping as they mixed with the water that was in the bottom of each well.  As they shoveled the washed finings down the wells, inevitably they would mix in some of the finings from our well which may have caused the bridge.

Inside the basement the water line is the valve on the left side and then the well hoses are in sequence, the farthest well the first two holes on the left, the closest well the last two holes on the right.

Exterior siding progresses around the front of the house with 4 workers (Doug, John, Scott, and Scott's assistant).  About 10 more feet to go on the kitchen wall up to the peak in the roof.  They are putting up the siding and the trim pieces around windows, doors, and corners.  They have also framed electrical outlets with the trim.

 Guest room

Most of the taping and mudding on the loft and main floor is done with the first coat.

 Work progresses downstairs.  More ducting has been installed in the basement to feed vents on the main floor and loft.  Dwayne worked electrical on Saturday, as did Scott and his assistant.  Scott delivered a lot of the tile materials today and staged it all on the front porch. Excess dry wall is also stacked outside the main entrance porch ready for Freecycling.

Scott's saws will cut through the 1 inch blue stone for the hearth, but he does not have any roundover bits to make a bullnose edge.  We can either flame treat the edge to give it a natural eroded look, or get the guys to frame it in 2 x 2 walnut stock--something to think over for the next couple of weeks.

Doug will get some paint to match the siding color to paint the broad course of siding that will run around the house.  That paint will also be available to paint up the numerous fresh air and exhaust vents around the house, particularly in the front.  Speaking of paint, they will be needing colors for interior walls soon, but not tomorrow.

The drillers excavated a trench to connect the 4 geothermal wells and route them to the basement wall, where they drilled 9 holes, 2 for each well, and 1 for the water line.  Excavation for the well water line went fairly easily with the water line lying about 4 ft deep.

Concrete plugs

Part of the process in routing the geothermal lines to the heat pump in the basement is to drill holes in the basement foundation walls.  This process turned out to be rather difficult for the drillers because they managed to drill in a area of the foundation where there was  rebar.
The stone aggregate is clearly visible in these plugs.The 3/4 inch rebar runs through the center plug.  The basement wall is about 7 inches thick; the large plug in the picture is only 5 inches long.  None of the plugs came out whole. The drillers used a water cooled hammer drill with a coring bit to drill the holes. Drilling the holes 3 feet below the surface of the soil around the foundation was a very muddy process both inside and out.

Geothermal

Drillers have found the water line and all 4 wells have hoses in them.  They will probably use the shale drill filings form a base for the hoses in the trenches.  They brought washed filing to put down the wells--washed filings do not clump up as they get shoveled down the wells and that makes for much better contact to the hoses.

They are now drilling holes into the basement wall for the various geothermal hoses and water line to enter the basement and get connected to the water and heat pump distribution manifolds. There are 2 holes for each well plus one for the water.  If the holes had been moved over just inches they would have missed drilling through rebar. 

Adrian was hard at work on the ducting in the basement.  We will have 2 air exchangers that will exit the front wall--laundry, stove, and powder room vents will be out back, so there was concern about the exchangers taking in air that had just be exhausted to the outside if they were all positioned in the back of the house.  We'll see if we can get the air exchange vents (4" x 4") in metal and painted the same as the siding to make them blend in.

It's easier to see the wave now that we have 3 panels installed.

Geothermal heat exchanger

It's a GeoComfort, about the size of a refrigerator and is in the basement now.