Some more plumbing...

Plumber ended up coming pretty late on Friday, and then again on Saturday.  They got the majority of the rough in work completed.  I didn't have the shower valves yet to rough in.

Here are a couple pictures of my manifold design, and their work...

The hot is red, cold is blue.  The whole assembly feeds from the left (from 1 inch lines), and the water passes through the manifolds and continues on to the other side of the house to the Master manifolds.  The small black manifold with the 4 blue lines is actually a return loop from a reverse osmosis system, which feeds to 4 places, both refrigerators and R/O faucets in each island.  The plastic manifold will hold up much better against the caustic effects of the R/O water, which is pretty corrosive.  The manifold doesn't have any valves, but I can shut down the entire R/O system from it's feed.

Any place you see a valve that is not in use is because we planned a couple of spares in case the valves fail or in case we need to add a fixture down the road.  I had not planned for a garage sink, but they plumbed one in, and fortunately I had the valves for that.

The gap from one hot manifold to the smaller hot manifold is designed to accept a Grundfos Hot water recirc pump, which I already own, but is in use in my current house.  I just measured the pump, and installed a blank section with a union so I can add the pump when we move in.  That pump "forwards" hot water to the far end of the house, and also to the island sinks, so that the water is already hot when you turn it on.  A side effect of this is that the manifolds themselves become precharged with hot water, so an individual user only has to wait for the hot water to come from the manifold, and not all the way from the hot water tanks (in the garage).  Most people run these pumps on a timer, so they don't consume energy and hot water all day long... BUT, my lighting control system will actually be in charge of that duty.  It will know when any bathroom or kitchen is in use by knowing the status of it's lighting.  So any time a bathroom or kitchen is in use, the lighting control system will activate a relay that powers the pump... Simple and efficient.

The manifold sits directly over the top of a glulam beam over the rec room, which otherwise would be in the way.  By being right on top of the beam, the plumbers could go either north or south of that beam without having to cut the beam, and also keeps things nice and tidy.  We are looking at the tubing headed North from the manifold.  My only problem here is that one of these bays I think gets a can light.  So we will probably have to move some things a little here...  I'm not sure how close a can light can be to plastic pipe, but I doubt the two get along very well...

Quiz time.  Anybody see a problem here??  I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't have the right connector to make the jog over.  This is the power room sink.  Also, when you are checking over your plumbing, make sure the drain and vent system has purple primer and glue at every joint.  Otherwise, it's not glued together...

By stubbing out all the sinks and toilets with the copper, we have a secure connection point that will (hopefully) never need to be serviced.  The supply valve itself will probably be a compression fitting to the copper with a 1/4 turn stop.  I may consider using a solder connection with a fitting to 1/2 inch pipe thread, but not sure.

This is how the islands are fed.  The PEX comes down through the kitchen wall, and into the conduit that they put in place prior to the concrete pour.  OH, the two blue lines there are R/O lines.  I put that conduit in myself just in case they needed the extra space.  I guess they did...  You can see the pipes sticking out of the concrete in the distance.

Pex manifold systems give you the advantage of being able to shut down any fixture that is giving you issues.  For example, your master shower valve has gone bad, so rather than shut down the whole house while waiting for a new valve, you can simply take that fixture out of service with a 1/4 turn of the appropriate manifold valve... 

Also, say your 16 year old daughter is taking an amazingly long shower.  Well, you don't have to "end" her shower, but you can certainly "end" her "hot" shower.  This is another reason to keep the master bathroom manifolds out of reach of your children, as eventually they will demand revenge.

OH, and never, under even emergency circumstances, attempt to cut short a wife's shower.  Her lack of hot water makes for too much hot water for you...

In the Master area now, actually right on the rear wall behind the master toilet.  There will be a cabinet there, and I figured we could just put a little access door in the cabinet to get to these manifold.  Well, they put the cold way over to one side from the hot, so now I am thinking two doors.  I swear if I'm not standing right there, this is the kind of stuff that happens.  The manifolds were supposed to be right next to each other.  Oh, the blank valves also need some pex run from them and up into the attic, and then terminated with a plug.  If somebody were to accidently open that little valve, the wall would get blasted with water.

This is one of the tricky things about working with ICF.  The foam has to be cut away to make access channels for plumbing and electrical.  In this case, you can see the drain for a sink, with it's vent above, and then the pex lines coming from the supply (left) to the two master shower valves, as well as another sink.

Picture above here... This is the master shower.  If you zoom in, you can see they crammed the pex around the corner there pretty good, and then jammed a nail guard pretty hard over the top of things.... hmmmm...

Ok, another quiz.  I debated showing this to you, but somebody out there needs to know...  You CAN NOT kink pex tubing and leave it that way.  It greatly weakens the wall of the tubing, and someday can burst.  The red pipe here has been kinked, and still is kinked.  Pex is amazingly tough, but the stress in a kinked joint is more than it can handle.  There are two ways to deal with this.  Heat it up with a heat gun and work it back to shape, or replace the line.  I want to replace this line with another section of red... But, that would require me to open the last box of red 1/2 inch (300 feet) just for this bitty thing.  You can use the blue instead, because the blue and red PEX is exactly the same, but I am OCD about things like that... red is hot, blue is cold...  But that's 100 dollars worth of pex... grrrrr.  Oh, the other option is to put a splice in the pex with an inline coupling, but I would like to keep the connections inside walls to an absolute minimum...

I'll say it again.... Grrrrrrrrr.

My opinion about PEX pipe, though... Amazing.  Way better than cpvc, which I wouldn't even consider in an outhouse.  Copper is pretty good, but I think pex wins in the end (without factoring cost) because it is quieter, more resistant to chemicals, and the connections are very good.  Copper connections can appear fine, but water hammer can actually work a poor connection loose.  When you factor in the advantages of a manifold, cost saving of pex over copper, and the ease of installation, then pex is the hands down winner.  Now, that all being said, there are some union plumbers up north that just ain't going to ever like pex, because they have been using copper, and they get paid by the hour...

Tomorrow we are meeting with a painter, and also a stone/stucco/cantera guy.  I need to get some sleep.

One of our local Road Runners.  We love these guys because they eat snakes.... copperheads in our case are plentiful...

Plumbing and waiting

Well, my plumber has had a bad week.  A family emergency and a mechanical problem. 

Gave us a day to go look at shower fixtures, though.  Plumber likes Moen, Delta, and Kohler.  We don't really want to spend a whole ton of money on these things, but get decent ones at the same time.  Wife doesn't like the Delta ones that offer a separate temperature set knob...but Delta has made their products better in some regards, and offer a very wide variety of price range.  Moen... rock solid valves but I have medium confidence in the spray pattern.  Kohler has great valves, but even Kohler has some pretty cheap trim now so you have to watch what you are getting.  Anyway, if you spend a bunch of money on these things, you are essentially paying for a better, heavier piece of trim...  And since the jury is out on the actual pattern of the heads...  who knows if you will like the thing, and then you can't really change brands because the valve dictates what trim will fit it...

OH, and add the expense of a adjustable shower bar for the kids and guest...  Holy fish oil!!  I think instead we will just use normal shower systems with a simple head, and then use a drop ell extension to get the actual heads down at their altitude...

My soldering skills have improved... Check this out...

So, from left to right, the water comes up the wall in 1 inch PEX, then into the brass ProPex fitting, and through a Union-valve-filter-union around another corner, and then one last valve before turning up into the next wall to supply the entire house.

I have the copper going slightly downhill here... Why, because it just is, that's why...stop being so critical.  I tried to be really careful, because as you assemble the different parts, you have to plan ahead on which joints get soldered and in what order and in relation to the ones that need pipe dope and screwed...  I used the heavier gage copper pipe for all this mess.  It's pretty easy to see why the world is fast switching away from the use of copper... This process is a pain in the butt.  Pex is much faster, and simpler, and probably better in most regards down the road.  There will be some more copper in the house, as basically all the plumbing surrounding the 3 water tanks have the potential to get north of 200 degrees with the solar, so I am staying away from Pex there...  The supply manifolds are all copper 1/4 turn shutoff valves, and any stubouts will transition from pex back into copper.

The Bluebonnets are out all over Texas.  They are just everywhere all over the roads.  A very nice time to be in Texas and the weather has been stunning.

But, the fireants and copperheads are thick.

This is a Longhorn cow that lives over by the subdivision entrance.  My wife took this picture and he turned around to look at her, and made a face at her to indicate his disgust with her acting like a tourist with a camera...  I think he voted for Obama (cows are socialists and they want free veterinarian care, higher taxes, and a better union), but with Acorn out of the picture for the next election...watch out cows!

OK, hopefully more progress tomorrow.  If anybody has a brand name shower system that they do NOT like...chime in.  Need to get those ordered...

More Tile -- and More Solar

Today started out with the usual, trying to find the right supplies for another strange issue.  One would THINK, that you could walk into a roofing supply company (that means that ALL they sell is roofing supplies) and ask for a flashing to go over a 3/4 inch copper pipe.  One's conversation may go something like this...

One - "Good Morning"

Guy sitting at desk of roofing supply company -- ...............silence

One - "Would you have a roof flashing for a 3/4 inch pipe

Guy -- Yes ...  for a 2 inch pipe, right

One -- No, 3/4 inch copper, it's for a water pipe through the roof

Guy -- "those are normally a 2 inch vent pipe

One -- No, I'm putting up a solar collector. (explanation... yada yada)

Guy -- I can probably order something like that

One -- ah, how long would it take to get here

Guy -- probably a couple of weeks...

What!! You've got to be kidding me.  This pretty much describes the normal expectations of people when it comes to the building trades.  I can get on eBay and within two days have just about anything I want.  BUT, if you don't know exactly what you want in advance, it would be nice to be able to actually buy something like this.  The kicker is that he can order it, wait 2 weeks, another trip into town to pick it up, and then it costs twice as much as the internet. 

I guess I'll be paying shipping, then...  eh??

Roof progress, it's beautiful!  And it's the only finished surface on the whole place except for the garage floor.

The other day I showed you the frame supports for the solar collector.  I painted them, and then had to go up on the roof and lay them out and attach them.  This was accomplished by determining the location, then drilling a hole through the roof so my wife could figure out where I was from below, then, while she held a 2x6 in position, I put 4 giant lag screws through everything to sandwich the roof deck between the board and the flange.  Also put roofing sealant everywhere to keep things watertight. 

Today, the roofers came back, and in additon to a million other things, they installed the roof tile around all the brackets and flashed everything with giant sheets of lead.  I wasn't there, but it looks like they pound the lead over another tile to copy it's shape, and then place it similar to a tile over any holes they have cut.  Pretty cool system, actually.  The lead is not cheap...

Another thing the tile guys did was show me how to walk on the tile roof.  The other day I broke a tile getting up there, which is obviously a bummer.   Anyway, you walk on the peaks of the tile, with your foot spanning the valley, so your weight is distributed over two tiles.   AND, you have to walk on the bottom edge of the tile, because that is the spot on the tile that connects directly to the next tile below it, and thus distributes your weight to the roof deck rather than making a tile bridge, which breaks the tile. 

So, I had so much confidence with my training that I hand carried the collector frame right up into position. 

What you MAY notice is that the copper connectors do not GO anywhere...  That is because I had some holes drilled into the roof deck where the copper pipe comes out from the attic, but the roofers saw those holes and promptly fixed them....  So, one more thing to ask them to redo.  It's easy to make the hole, but it bumms me out to have the guys rework stuff. 

BUT, if the roofing supply company would have had the dang pipe flashing... We wouldn't have this problem....

The other thing that had to be figured out was how to get the sensor wires from the thermistor down through the tile and roof deck.  After some thought, I decided I would just drill a hole in the frame pipe, and another through the deck directly under the pipe flange (through the mount), and push the wire straight down...  Which I did... Should have taken a picture... It was cool.

OH, to enable me to HAVE this thermistor, I had to buy the entire Solar Pumping Station... Why??  because, of course, nobody keeps a thermistor like this in stock.  They can order it, though, which goes from the plumbing supply store, to the distributor, back to the factory, and then has to repeat the return trip...  Since I eventually needed the pump station I just bit my lip...

Here is a picture of the Taco Solar Pumping Station...

Na, that's the cat infestation....  There is an idea...  Use cats as a packing material...  How about this...

I also learned to solder (or sweat) copper pipe.  There are many things that need to be sweat fitted together. 

Here is an example of my soldering, this is the left end of the solar collector.  This is where the collector sensor also goes.  The 3/4 inch threaded hole is for the "air elimination valve" will go.  The male pipe end will act to hold the water heater pipe connection (my choice for connection) which will connect to the roof penetrations...

The leg bones connected to the thigh bone...
The thigh bones connected to the hip bone...

etc...

Goodnight...

Ok, that's it for now...  We will soon talk plumbing again...  Goodnight...

Solar Hot Water Collector

Evacuated tube, that is...  There are two basic kinds of solar hot water heaters out there (besides your typical garden hose in the sun), a flat panel collector, where you have a circuit of copper tubing running inside an insulated flat chamber, and evacuated tube.  The whole tube is not in a vacuum, but actually the outer shell of the tube is a double walled tube, and between those walls is an evacuated tube.  In the middle, there is a fin mechanismn that picks up the heat (trapped by the vacuum and the fact the glass is thermally opaque, so it can't effeciently radiate its heat back through the glass).  The fins transfer the heat to the copper tube in the middle, which contains a little bit of a working medium, which boils and evaporates, becomes superheated, and then transfers the heat to the top of the tube, where the copper tube is exposed to the insulated manifold header, where the water runs across, picks up the heat, and takes it back to the storage tank. 

No, I didn't invent this thing... I just bought it, and I think it's really cool.

There is, of course, a raging debate over which type of panel is better, but bottom line, the flat panel is normally cheaper, and the tubes are more...not for me, though, because I don't buy anything the normal way.  In our climate, we could have easily used either, but we chose the tubes for these reasons...

1.  Cool factor (yup, vanity)

2.  Higher operating output

3.  Much higher temperature output (not more heat, but more "temperature voltage")

4.  Higher resistance to hail

5.  Modular... Broken tube, change it out.

6.  Easier installation (perhaps)

7 Higher resistance to freeze

8.  Availability

I could go on...

Anyway, 30 tubes in all, have the potential to produce about 38,000 BTU/Day, or the same as 11.3 kWh per day, which at our utility rate of about 12 cents/kWh that translates to about 41 dollars per month...average.  Payback in my opinion is instant, especially if we ever had to sell the house.  There are other advantages, with tricky accounting, and I would never go into those here ;-)  Suffice it to say I have a 1.2 million pound heat storage device ;-)

OK, so here is a little experiment, moring haze, with no load on the panel, so the pipe can't get rid of it's heat, hooked up a thermistor to my non contact temp gun.  The big number, 67F, is the temperature of the grass, and the little temperature is the heat pipe, 200F and climbing fast.

Then off to check out the progress on the tile.  Most of which is now laid in the "fields", mainly they have to do the ridges and then tidy up around plumbing and flashed walls, neither of which is going to happen anytime soon, as I need to line those guys up...

You can click on these, which make them big, for much better color...  It rained in the night a little bit, which washed away a lot of the tile dust, so the color was even better than before without all the "dusty rose" powder color on things.

Starting the Master Bath tile, which was about the last thing to go.

Then, off to my regular warehouse hardware store for something to build a frame to hold the solar collector.  Of course, with a normal house, and a normal person, you could have just mounted the thing on a 5/12 pitch and about averaged out the use between summer and winter at this latitude, and on a shingle roof you wouldn't have to do much for flashing other than a little silicone...  But, we are on a tile roof, so the collector doesn't sit on the tile, it sits on the deck below, and has to be suspended up above the tile.  So here is my solution...  1/2 inch pipe fittings.  I have also decided I want to optimize the panel only for the winter season... Why??  Because the rest of the year I am trying to maximize the use of the desuperheater (which makes the GSHP run more effeciently).  To make a short story long, the solar panel with run us a chance of overheating things in the summer, because between the desuperheater, the solar collector, and low demand for hot water, we could easily cook the water past the boiling point (at atmospheric pressure, anyway, which of course we have in excess of 50 PSI which significantly raises the boiling point)...  regardless, by optimizing the panel at a higher angle in winter, there is less angle of incidence in summer, and the panel can't produce as much heat as it otherwise would in the summer....hopefully causing us to not have a boiling event which causes the pressure relief valve to let go.  In addition, it gives me more effeciency (though with less sun) in the winter, when I need the heat more.  Additionally, in the middle seasons, I am also closer to optimum when there is less chance of the desuperheater being in operaiton... Bored YET???

This is a closer look at the header, which is an extruded aluminum piece that holds the copper manifold and accepts the evacuated tubes, as shown...  They just sit in there, nothing magic.

Nifty little plastic widgets at the bottom pop onto the rail, and then allow you to tighten and push up on the tubes, holding them in position on the collector.

Another view down the row of 30 holes... 

Any why the upside down and backwards h shape?   Because I wanted the frame to have some resistance to the shear effect of having the collector being fairly heavy, and the pipe brackets being fairly small.  This makes the thing much harder to "twist" and makes it a lot stronger.  I honestly don't think you will see any of this from the ground, which is all under the collector tubes, but, I painted them anyway... brown.

So, my strategy for installation...  Tomorrow I am hoping to get the vertical supports actually mounted to the roof deck (the only place not tiled in) and then they can actualy drill holes in the appropriate place for the tile to slide over the pipes.  Then, I will have them tile the field under the collector completely, but leave a perimeter at the sides and bottom.  The copper lines coming through the roof have to wait for a special piece of flashing I ordered (later in the week), but after than happens, I can pierce the roof with the copper and then solder on all the fittings, as well as run the wire to the thermistor (temperature sensor for the controller).  I can then mount the collector frame and header.  If you mount the tubes dry, repeated heat cycles aren't good for their health...

Roof Tile

Last few days have been a flurry of activity again.  Took a few days off from construction to actually do my job...  Nothing really got done on the house, but I did need to collect my thoughts and do some shopping (per my last post).

So, here it is.... At last, the long awaited Monterosso Blend....  We basically picked this tile a few years ago at a roadsize display between Austin and San Antonio.  We both like all tile, but this particular blend was chosen independently and almost instantly as we backed up and down the feeder that day...

Anyway, the colors are all over the place.  It depends on how the light is shining, shadows, sky color, background color, etc.  If you are looking up at the house, you see the edges of the tile and they look different yet.  Also the color varies if you can see the ridges, or the ridges and the valleys together.   We counted 7 colors originally off the pallets, but there are easily 5 different shades of each of those, as the color glaze is hand applied and then fired at the factory.  Each tile is different.... oranges, reds, browns, whites, blacks, plums, grey, etc. 

This was the view up the driveway Tuesday morning.  I think there were over 30 pallets of these things.  Heavy... uh, yes.  Note the blue sky and leaves coming in on the trees!

This they called a "crawler".  It was very heavy itself and chewed up the ground pretty good.  Things are still very wet here and if you get off the driveway, you will sink in pretty good.  They were able to get around the back of the house pretty well with this thing, but I informed them the front yard was off limits!  So they basically walked the tile up and over from the back to the front where needed.

OH, this thing had foam filled tires.  I can't imagine how many roofing nails this thing has crewed over...

Looking East over freshly stacked tile.  This is actually not a random event.  Each stack is carefully placed in with a specific quantity.  They drive nails so they don't slide off the roof. 

Now over the North and East.

This pic didn't come out very good, the camera made the sky white and washed everything out.  But the tile continues, and they have some down at this point.

Here again, looking up from the bottom you can see the tile edges so you see more of a terra cotta color. 

Another washed out picture of the front.

Look how closely they cut the tile down through the valley...  I am happy because you can't see the shiney valley flashing anymore.  The black straps were all over the place...  In fact, two entire pickup loads of trash just from the pallet wrappers and straps, not including the pallets themselves...

From the driveway. 

Looking west now

And the same part of the roof from about 5 pictures ago, but different angle, different light, looks nothing the same.

Glad to see the leaves back, and a peek at the house from the street.

Different light again from the driveway, and they had finished up a lot more tile at this point.

And the garage.  Check out the ruts the "crawler" made while trucking around in there.  This area has been wet from day 1.  I would love to figure out a way to make it drain, but if I do that I trap water off to the left, which is worse...  Crawler didn't seem to mind, and it stirred up the muck a little bit and smells a little like the first day of construction, when the dozers were chewing around in this stuff...

So, here is the process for the tile...

1.  Stress the structure to hold it.

2.  Put a permenant self sealing membrane under the tile

3.  Load the roof with tile.

4.  Start at the eve, with a birdstop (I should have taken a picture of this)

5.   Tile the field from bottom to ridge.

6.  Cut the ridges and valleys to meet as appropriate.

7.  Install the tile ridge caps (these are single barrel tiles...caps without the pans)

8.  Mortar everything in place at the caps.

9.  Give all your money to the roof contractor.

I should note too that we are out of order on a few things.   Normally, the plumber has made his vent penetrations and the HVAC guys have put in any vents.  Well, the plumber isn't here yet.  So the tile guys will come back and help with those penetrations later.  I am hoping for a bare minimum of vent penetrations... How, you ask...  (yes, I heard you ask that)...  Instead of using the traditional plumbing vent method of sticking a pipe out the roof, we are going to try to maximize the use of vent valves.  Which is an air entrance valve that allows air to enter into the plumbing vent system without allowing any to escape.  So, they can be used inside the structure and draw air down when needed, but don't allow gas to flow in the other direction.  We will still need a few vents though, so the plumbing can achieve a neutral pressure to the exterior.  But, every roof penetration is a potential for a problem, and they look like crap.

So, what was I doing while all this work took place????  The wood burning chimney.  The wood buring fireplace in the Living Room vents up into the chimney chase.  In a nutshell, the vent tubes come in pieces and have to be installed up through that space.  In my case, they were 4 feet long and about 15 inches in diameter.  There is an inner and outer lining, the inner being stainless steel, and the outer galvanized metal.  These pieces are supposed to click right together...  yea, right, with a bulldozer on top of them maybe...  I also had to cut a large piece of plywood to accomodate the transition from "sealed" attic to "non-sealed" chase.  There were all kinds of braces and such in there and this board ended up looking like a strange piece of jigsaw puzzle, and it had to fit into the chase at the 5/12 pitch of the roof.  Anyway, after several hours, I was able to get all this into place. 

The chimney looks pretty small from the ground, but it is actually about 8 feet tall when you stand beside it, and the openings are about 24 inches square.  In this picture I had just stuck the chimney cap inside to make sure it fits in there...  This entire assembly has to be covered in non-flammable material.  In my case, they will use real stucco inside and out of this whole thing, with a metal pan flashing where the flu pipe goes through the top of the chase.  The rest of the structure on top is made of cement board, so it is not flammable.  I think I will paint the chimney cap black...  With your permission...

Ok, that's it for now.  Sorry for the absense, and hope you check back often.

  Happy Easter!!

Buying Spree

Wow,

The last 24 hours I've been acting like a teenage girl in a mall with a stolen credit card...

Deal with the plumber was that I would provide the supplies.  I think that just means the pex, but I went ahead and bought other things I am pretty particular about, like the ice box stubouts and laundry boxes. 

Tangent alread...

What is driving this spending spree is that I now have the plumber, electrician, roofer, hvac, and foam insulator all descending on me at the same time.  Top that with soon they will be starting stucco and stone on the outside and things will be pretty crazy.

So, sounds stupid, but I made a decision to go ahead and include a solar hot water heater NOW, rather than waiting.  I'm thinking it's just so much easier now to place the unit and have them flash around the mounts and then dodge them with the tile. 

Today I had 144 items in my "cart" with the online plumbing store, and even forgot a bunch of stuff, so will probably make another order. 

Here are the highlights...

1.  Solar Evacuated Tube 30 tube collector and manifold
2.  Propex water distribution manifolds. (about 80 ports worth)
3.  80 gallon dual heat exchanger stainless steel hot water tank
4.  40 gallon single heat exchanger stainless steel hot water tank
5.  4000 feet of Wirsbo Propex
6.  300 feet of 3/4 inch Wirstbo Barrier Pex (Oxygen barrier tubing)
7.  2 expansion and purge kits for 2 of the 3 closed loop systems (direct hot water and radiant heat)
8.  4 supply and return manifolds for radiant heat.
9.  Exhaust fans for all the bathrooms (really really really really quiet ones)
10.  A lot of little other things that you will NEVER see in a normal house.  Mostly pertaining to the ability to charge, purge, control, the flow of energy through the various water systems.

The tanks were a cool find.  I had thought I would go with a different tank and use only a 2 tank system, but at the last minute, I found the stainless tanks and they were cheaper.... To boot, I can solve my issue with the GSHP having another layer of safety between a potential refridgerant leak and the potable water system.  This of course adds another layer of complexity, and an additional mix pump.  But in the end, this arrangement is more of a known quantity...

So, as I am ordering all the plumbing supplies, I basically played out everything in my mind from one end of the house to the other and ordered parts as it came up, which was changing constantly based on availability, as well as the tank changes.  Again, this took almost a 24 hour nonstop period on the computer, all at one website.  I was afraid my computer would crash or I would lose the shopping cart to some disaster. 

I ordered a lot from this company, but the tanks from another, the manifolds from yet another, and even used ebay and saved a couple hundred dollars at one point. 

Here is what I DIDN'T buy, so donations accepted...

1.  Solar pumping station and controller (leaning towards the new Taco Solar station, though)
2.  Flashing to get the copper tubing through the roof to the collector.
3.  UV resistant wrap for the foam.
4.  Temperature probe for the solar collector (has to be in place before they flash)
5.  Lighting control system (just didn't get to it today)
6.  Control and distribution pumps for the radiant heating system (Taco RMB mixing block system)

That last item I need 2 of, in case you are buying.

Oh, and a 50 gallon electric water heater, which won't be hooked up, but rather hooked up as a "dummy" tank that will serve as the desuperheater storage tank (waste heat off the A/C system dumped into this tank will then flow to the others so we don't have to add as much energy down the line)

That's it...

I know, you hate me.... No pictures.   Don't have time and I didn't want you to think I was dead.

Have a great night...

I have to buy a torch...  I have a TON of copper to put together.

Slow Progress

Thought I would make a blog entry, but don't have much to add.

Last week the framers pretty much finished what they had to do (except cleanup ;-( )

Anyway, being the ultra picky hyper complicator that I am, I decided it was better to finish the flashing on the windows myself rather than have them do it.  So, without knowing how the framers would have done the flashing, I can't say anything but to say I am WAY more picky about this particular operation than you can imagine.

I am also a little disappointed in the windows in ONE regard...  The ones that have arches on them do not have a traditional integrated nailing flange.  Rather, they have a fold out plastic flange, and on the top, it is a curved thing that isn't just one piece, but sometimes 2 or 3...  So, after I finished (so I thought) flashing and caulking the first arched window, I walked inside and looked out.... I could see light right through where the flange attaches to the window.  It wasn't sealed at all!  So, I am using polyurethane caulk to completely seal the flashing and nail flange all together in one piece.  It is tedious beyond my patience level, and yet has to be done.  Normally, done at the top of a ladder, which makes it less fun.

Here is a picture of a fully flashed window...  What you can't see is 1 1/2 tubes of caulk to get everything as watertight as I could make it...

This is a rectangular window, so it has the integrated nailing fin around the perimeter as part of the frame.  These are much easier to flash.  Which is good, because I have 27 more of them to do...  It takes about 30 minutes to do a rectangular one, so you do the math...  The arch ones take more like 90 minutes each.

Now, I like the framers, but I'm not thinking they were going to spend this much time playing around with rubber tape...

Oh, also had to flash two arch NON recessed windows in the garage.  Those windows have house wrap and traditional framing.  I used a piece of flex flashing over the top of those, and that worked quite well.  Also had to flash the garage where the fake window and shutter will be.  Since that is tapered down, there is a sill there that otherwise would collect water.  I pulled the wrap back from that area, and basically did a repeat of the window job with some modifications. 

Does anybody know what to do where the housewrap meets the garage doors???  I am thinking it purdent to address moisture there too...  Water rots wood, and rain can easily blow over on the stucco there and saturate everything...

Today, I had some guys come over to haul a load of trash (boards) off.  They were nice guys and filled up a 16 foot trailer pretty well.  They dented the pile pretty good, but I could easily do 3 more loads.  They will come for another load tomorrow, and then we will see if I can resume those duties.

Also put in some large joist hangers where we added some beams to carry the roof load over some ceiling areas.  Reading the Simson Strong Tie book, they called for 16 penny nails (into a glue beam).  I'm not the best with my hammer, and that beam was hard as iron.  I bent over every third nail and beat the crap out of my fingers in the process.  Also added some more hurricane (wind) ties in areas where I thought were appropriate.  They tied the rafters to the garage wall, but the garage wall wasn't tied to the concrete (or sill plate).  I was out there hammering away till almost 9:30 PM, playing classical music.  I wonder if my new neighbors have figured out I am weird yet??  I'm not done, of course, but I was feeling guilty about making all that noise.

We live about 200 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and we get the remnants of hurricanes at times.  For the life of me, I can't figure out who would NOT put on a 51 cent hurricane tie.  Even with a tile roof, at over 100,000 pounds, that roof makes enough lift at about 70 knots of wind to fly right off.  Wouldn't that be embarrasing, to spend all this money on an ICF house and then have the roof blow right off...

More random stuff to do tomorrow.  I want to run the fireplace chimney up through the chase, and see how it fits.  I will be in Houston tomorrow late and if I need a different size chimney piece I can pick it up while I am down there. 

More pictures soon.