Checking in

Sorry I have been MIA... work is taking up most of my time lately.  Just wanted to give  a quick update on some recent service requests and some stuff we have been working on!

Service Requests:

We've been getting leaks in our basement under the front of our house.  There is a crack in the foundation at the spot of leakage so we assumed it was getting in through there.  However, when RH came to check it out, we discovered that the water was actually getting up under the siding and coming in above the foundation.  Apparently the culprit was an incorrectly installed stoop.  Now they have to come back and take off a whole bunch of siding and replace park of our framing that is already water damaged.  I'm a bit nervous because it's somewhat of a major fix, but hopefully it will go smoothly.

We had also been having problems with a banging heater, which they easily resolved with some extra screws where pipes were loose.

We lost some siding during the crazy windstorms down here last week.

And the final thing is the infamous shower!  This is the third (hopefully final) time we are having our master bathroom shower tiles fixed! 

Progress:

We have been working hard on our family room!  We did some painting last weekend, bought some awesome new furniture and I've been working on some DIY wall art!  Progress photos to come soon!

We have resumed work on the deck as well!  We are in the middle of installing our drainage system and we have ordered all of our PVC decking and railing materials, which should be arriving this week.  Once we are finished I'll share the breakdown of costs.  Let's just say our original budget was a little off. :) 

I hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's Day!

Post-Move-in Issues

Good morning blogger friends! I tried so hard to stay up on my blogging after we moved in but that has proved harder than I expected, and sadly it's been quite some time since I've posted. We have made some progress, the most exciting of which is that we started our deck!! I will dedicate my next post to our deck design, permitting process and progress so far, but for now I just wanted to give a little update about some issues that have popped up since our two-week punchlist.

Heater

Our furnace has been leaking onto the basement floor. Luckily our basement is not finished yet so it hasn't caused any damage, but obviously this should not be happening. We submitted a service request and someone came to fix it a few days later. Unfortunately, their fix did not work. It is still leaking AND the vent in the upstairs bathroom is leaking as well. I suspect that it's just condensation, but it should not be happening. The heater guys are coming again tomorrow.

 

Grading around the House

We got some seepage into our basement during Hurricane Sandy. Nothing major, but again... should not happen. From the outside, the problem was clear. The mulch bed at the front of our house was sloping toward the house so we had standing water all along our foundation in the front. There's a crack in the foundation in the area it leaked in. They came and added some fill along the house, but I'm still not sure if it will be enough. I'm hoping we get some heavy rain again soon so we can test it.

 

Shower bench

The tile on our shower bench was one of the items on our two-week punchlist. The tiles on the front of the bench were not properly attached so they were separating from each other. They originally just added more caulk and grout, but two days later it was cracking again. We submitted another service request and they came last week and took down our whole shower and replaced all of the tile on the bench. The bad news is we only have one shower for the next few weeks. The good news is we probably would not have noticed the leaking vent if we weren't forced to use the other shower for a while.

 

Water

The water coming out of our upstairs faucets was smelling like rotten eggs. I don't know how we didn't notice it when we first moved in. Apparently this is a common problem in our community because there is a lot of sulfur in the soil (we have well water). There is a different kind of filtration system which easily addresses this, and RH has had to replace the systems for almost all of the homes in our community. Why, you may ask, do they not just install the correct filtration system to begin with? Good question!  Of course, because it costs more money. I have to imagine though that installing then replacing the systems has to wind up being more expensive in the long run. I guess they are just hoping people won't complain and will just deal with stinky water forever. Anyway, we got our water system replaced and now our water is fine.

 

I hope I can report at our one-year inspection that these were the last of our problems, but have a feeling that will not be the case. I'll keep you updated!

Not so Fast!!

I posted last week that our loan processor told us we were cleared to close.... then yesterday I got an email from her saying there are 3 more things she needs from us.  I'm not that upset about it because it's minor stuff, but I just thought I'd share.  While everyone at NVR has been very nice so far, it doesn't seem like they are the most efficient when it comes to processing.  Oh, well... we will give them what they want and hope for the best.  I just hope we don't have any hiccups like this on closing day that would affect settlement.

 

The final grading has been completed on our lot!  (Thanks to my new neighbor for sending me a picture!!).

 

 

We also had our meeting with our propane provider (we have propane heat instead of natural gas).  I set up this meeting with the guy last week on the way home after a brutal day at work and didn't write it in my planner, and so I forgot all about it.  I got a call from him while I was grocery shopping last night wondering where I was.  I felt so bad, but he said he would wait so I quickly checked out and raced over there.  I was only 50 minutes late :).  He was super-nice though and didn't seem too upset about it.  The meeting was basically to tell us how propane works, show us where all of the shut off valves are and inform us that it will cost us about 50% more than natural gas.   Bummer, but we didn't really have a choice.  Greg and I will be sporting some heavy coats in our house in the winter to save on heat!  We will have another walk through with a technician after we settle.

 

Our foyer chandelier has also been installed (pictures to come)!  I think all that is left is the shower repair and installation of our stove (it's there, just not installed yet) and A LOT of cleanup work.  Oh, and another tiny to add to our punch list... one of our bedrooms has zero vents.  I can't believe our PM has not noticed and/or rectified this yet.  The air conditioning has been running so I guess the air from that line just runs into the drywall in the ceiling since it has no place to escape.  I can't imagine that is a good thing.  I wonder how they will find the spot to cut out for the vent.  I'm sure it will involve a lot of patching after the fact.  How does that happen and go for a month without being caught?

HVAC Intake Pipe Information

At our pre-drywall meeting, I talked about the fact that our furnace only had one pipe coming out of it for exhaust and no "intake pipe".  Here's a general overview of how the heating system works and why it's better to have an outside air intake pipe:

Basically, your furnace needs two types of air supplied to it in order to work properly: 1. Air to condition, heat, then re-circulate through the house and 2. combustion air, which is needed to burn the oil or gas that is used for energy in your system (just like a flame needs air to burn).  The re-circulation air is typically pulled from the rest of your house and seeps in from the outside through cracks and windows.  Some of the vents you see around your house are for blowing conditioned air out, but others are for sucking air inward to run through the system, re-condition and then blow back out.  (Ask your PM which vents are for which purpose... he should be able to tell you.  Typically the larger ones are these "return vents" that suck air in). 

The second type of air needed for your system, the combustion air enters directly into the furnace either through a pipe (typically PVC) or simply a hole in the unit.  The diagram below shows a basic furnace setup with an intake pipe.  Without this pipe, there would just be a hole in the unit where the pipe shown is entering.

Without an intake pipe, your furnace must have adequate space around it to ensure that it has enough air to pull in.  With an unfinished basement (or attic if that's where your furnace is), this is typically not a problem because there's plenty of air in the basement, and it will also suck from the upstairs through the door, windows or voids in the floor.  However, if you decide to finish you basement and want to wall off the furnace area, you would have to leave a certain amount of space within the enclosure to provide enough combustion air to the unit.  The amount of space needed is based on the size of your furnace and apparently the manufacturer provides this information, but it's also usually regulated by township code.  For instance, a typical requirement is that 1 square foot of space be provided for every 100 BTUs, so if you had an 80,000 BTU furnace, you'd need to provide 800 square feet of open space around it.  So this would basically be wasted space in your finished basement.  If however, you add an intake pipe from the outside directly into your furnace, you would not need to provide this open space since the furnace then has unlimited space to pull from outside.  (Note that in our area, Ryan only provides the intake pipe when you upgrade to have them finish the basement).

Another benefit of this intake pipe is that you are pulling much cleaner air from the outside, so it increases the efficiency and life span of your furnace.  Just like our bodies, cars, etc. work better with cleaner fuel, the same is true for an HVAC system.  In addition, the furnace needs the same amount of combustion air to work regardless of whether you have an intake pipe or not.  If you do not have one, it needs to somehow suck new air though the house to replace the air it is using to burn, so it will pull it from the outside through every little crack or crevice in your home, which can create drafts.  Having the intake pipe reduces the need to pull in air from the outside through doors and cracks, therefore making your whole system more efficient.

Side note: The energy star number that is listed on your furnace and advertised by Ryan is simply the referring to energy required to run the actual furnace, not the efficiency of your home as a whole system.  There's a big difference.

This is our actual furnace.  The pipe on the left is the exhaust and the one on the right is the intake. 
Before they intalled the second pipe the one on the right was just a stub sticking out the top.

Hopefully this helped and wasn't too confusing!  Your PM should be able to explain all of this to you in more detail.  Or if you're having an independent inspector, it can't hurt to ask their opinion too.

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):

The length of this post got away from me, so I'm going to save the "bad news" from our meeting for tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Pre-Drywall Meeting Tomorrow

Our pre-drywall meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow morning...  I can't believe it's here already!  Surprisingly, my list of questions is pretty brief.  Here goes:

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

2. Attic Access – Should be in master bedroom closet, not spare bedroom ceiling. (see below for further explanation).

3. Height to bottom of cabinets above fridge. (check model).

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?

5. Water pressure estimate for irrigation system design.

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

#1 Explanation: Our family friend who owns an HVAC/appliance company came with us to our last house visit.  He checked out all of our systems and said everything looked pretty good except for one thing.  Our heating system currently only has an exhaust pipe running to outside of the house and we will just have a stub pipe for the intake which will suck air from inside the house, condition it, then recirculate it.  Apparently this is a perfectly acceptable way to do it, but it's much less efficient and clean than the other way, which would be to have a second pipe running to outside of the house to intake air from outdoors.  

According to my expert, the outside air is about 8 times cleaner than the air in your house (think dust, cleaning supplies, paint fumes etc).  In addition, if you are sucking air from inside the house, that air will need to be replaced somehow otherwise your house will turn into a vacuum.  So outside air will try to seep in anywhere it can... around windows and doors and any small cracks in the outside walls, which makes the overall house less efficient.  Also, when we finish the basement, there are requirements as to how and where you can wall off the around around the HVAC system if you only have the stub.  With the pipe to the outside, you could do whatever you want.  

Obviously, it's preferable to have the intake pipe, so we're going to push for that.  I did some quick calculations and it's no more than 50 lf of additional PVC pipe and it can't take more than an hour or so to install, so it shouldn't cost more than about $100 to do.  I have horrible indoor allergies so I'm really going to push for this.

The internal workings of our heating system.  The exhaust pipe will be connected on the right
and the intake stub or pipe will be in the center.

#2 Explanation:  According to the plans (I found them at the house and took some pictures... shhhh), the ceiling attic access panel is supposed to be in the master bedroom closet, but right now it is framed out in the ceiling of one of the front bedrooms.  It would look much nicer to have the access panel in a closet instead of the middle of the ceiling, but the main reason I'm concerned with this is that in order to get to above the master bedroom (where we plan on eventually putting a ceiling fan or recessed lighting) from the present access location, you'd need to walk across the open two-story foyer area. 


I worry.  A lot.  About pretty much anything you can imagine.  

So the thought of my dear husband and/or father trekking across 2" wide studs above an 18 foot drop does not make my nerves very happy.  Now I realize that there are ways to get around this and that the chances of them actually falling are somewhat slim, but I don't see any reason to subject myself to this stress when the plans clearly state that the access panel should be in a different, more convenient location.   

The location on the left is where the access is currently framed out.  Am I crazy, or do the plans clearly state with with the Master Bedroom Upgrade (MBU), the access should be in the master bedroom closet next to the sitting room instead of bedroom #3? 

I will have an update later this week with the answers to all of my questions!

Week #5 Update

The PM said our HVAC and plumbing is complete and the electric is about 1/2 way done.  However it looks as though some of the HVAC pipes are still not connected so I imagine the contractor will have to come out one more time to finish up.  We discovered that we actually have a two-zone heating/cooling system, which was a pleasant surprise since our SR specifically told us it was only one. 

HVAC system.  Two zones.  Woohoo!

50 gallon hot water heater... it's not the 75 gallon we have now, but I guess it will do :)

Washer/dryer hookups

One of the hose bibs.  They are both on the sides of the house.

The men checking out the electrical work.  I'm in the master bathroom looking into the master bedroom.  There's a junction box in the ceiling of the master bedroom near where we may eventually put a ceiling fan, so that's good news.

Grounding rods on the west side of the house.

Our septic tank and drain-field pieces have also been delivered and our septic and well locations have been staked out.  PM said the septic system should be installed this week.

Septic tank.  Greg is searching for poop.  haha.

Drain field units.  Basically our entire front lawn will be full of "liquid waste" a few feet down.  It's an effective system of waste removal, but kind of gross when you think about it!  Hopefully it will help our grass grow.  :)

Pipes from the house out to where the septic tank will be.

Siding is supposed to begin this week and our pre-drywall meeting will either be tomorrow or Monday!