Pre-Drywall Meeting Results

We had our pre-drywall meeting yesterday morning. I got all of my questions answered and got some good news and some bad news. First the good news... PM thinks we will be able to settle the week of Sept 17th! This is earlier than we thought and it will allow us to lock in our rate soon!

The contractors were busy working while we were there. The well and septic were being installed at the same time (well in back yard, septic in front) and a third crew was starting to put the siding on. Here's a few pictures of the guys (and one girl!) in action:

Drill rig for the well.

Guys drilling the well.

Laying out the drain-field units for the septic system.

Siding is going on!

Scaffolding for the siding... that does not look too sturdy!

Now on to the answers to my questions:

1. HVAC - Will we get intake pipe from outside? (see previous post for further explanation).

Intake pipe from outside is only required with a finished basement (since they'd be walling off the furnace area). Since we plan on finishing the basement in the near future, we'd really like to have it. Our PM basically explained the same thing my "expert" told us, that the house is designed to intake air through cracks in the walls, etc (seems to be the opposite of "energy efficient" to me). PM said he would ask if we can have the pipe installed, but warned us that RH doesn't typically like to do extra things that are not required by code (even though we said we'd pay for it... it can't be more than $100 or so). He tried to give us some BS about the contractor having to come back out, when two minutes earlier he pointed out that the vent pipe was not yet hooked up, so they'd be coming back out to do that anyway. I hope he can get this for us because it will make our lives much easier when we go to finish the basement in the future.

2. Attic Access – Should be in master bedroom closet, not spare bedroom ceiling.

Before I even asked the question, PM said we would have two ceiling access panels: one in the location it's framed out now in the spare bedroom and one in the master closet. He said there's a code requirement that when you have an open area like our 2-story foyer, you need attic access points on both sides. Apparently there's another crazy person out there writing codes who also worries about people falling through the ceiling :).

3. Height to bottom of cabinets above fridge. 68"

4. Ask to put off seeding until a week or two after closing so we can install sprinkler system? How deep will septic system and other pipes be?

I actually did some research on this the night before our meeting and apparently it's much trickier to do an irrigation system with a well vs a public system and you can actually ruin you pump if you do it wrong (= lots o' $$$). So I think we're going to stick with the traditional sprinklers for the first year and take our time to do our irrigation system right. We did speak to the the PM about it though, and he actually suggested drilling another well that would be exclusively for the irrigation system. That way we can design it from scratch and not have to use up our "house" water pressure or risk messing with our pump. The other option is to tap into the line somewhere between the well and the pump. I'm kind of leaning toward a second well though as long as it's not a ridiculous amount of money. I would just feel better if we didn't have to mess with our drinking water at all. I'll have to do some more research on that.

5. Water pressure estimate for irrigation system design. N/A. See above.

6. Check if second floor windows have the latches you can open to clean outside of windows.

Yes! (Like I'm ever actually going to clean the outside of the windows :))

After the meeting I took pictures of all of the walls that had pipes or anything else we want to avoid drilling into in the future (my dad has been known to mistake studs for water pipes in the past :)). Here's what I came up with (if you enlarge you can read the tiny labels on each):