edit at 6pm – added Geothermal details at the bottom of the post
I have been doing some work travel and so it is has been a couple of weeks since any post here. Fall has arrived in a definite way – it got very windy last week and a majority of the trees are now pretty bare as you can see here the maple next to the big white pine at the end of my driveway is still hanging on – but winter is coming!
Lots and lots of progress at the house construction site – my Dad has been over taking pictures and talking to Paul Hebert and his team, so I have some shots to share from across the last few weeks and some we took yesterday. When my Dad and I were there yesterday, Paul was there with his mechanic working on some of the equipment. Apparently we have the electrical inspection(s) complete to the point where NSTAR/Eversource can connect live power to the house – which is great – assuming we can find them and actually get them to show up.
We talked about the grade of the carport and workshop floor, the patio entrance ramp and some other things – including the very, very neat air pressure valves he is using as end blockers on the vents for the dryer, the bathroom fans and the kitchen venting. He is running hard tin ducting either under the floor or in the ceiling trusses out under the house at the pilings or along the exterior wall by the bedrooms under the roof – all to minimize the number of roof piercings. It is a very neat set of solutions.
Paul also told us that he hopes to have the pad built in the next week or two for the generator and the propane tanks.
Finally we talked through a lot of stuff about the custom work with the aluminum i-beam for the kitchen island. A friend of my Dad’s has agreed to do the welding and machine work for us – we agreed that we would wait and do final measurements from the cabinets themselves.
Apparently some portion of the design team came by last week from Deck / Acorn and they were VERY pleased with what they saw – they had a lot of questions for Paul regarding some of the product and finish details he has been applying to the house – the house is getting more and more interesting to a lot of people!
Various external resources (will launch a new window)
- Everlast roofing – this is a video done by a roofing company in Maine that is near the Everlast Roofing factory – it is super interesting how they make the product and it really convinced me that they were the manufacturer to go with. This was Paul’s number one choice in terms of product – highly recommended. https://youtu.be/hKP1XSpPfCw
- the geothermal unit – Comfort Aire –
- This Old House explaining how a geothermal heat pump works. My system is an OPEN LOOP ground water system (re-circulation of potable water in the water column of my 600′ well. This is a clear explanation of how the systems work – but the sample home owner’s system looks like a retrofit and is really way more complex than my ‘designed in from scratch’ platform
Edit – more detail on the Geothermal unit – my Dad and I went over to look at the house in order to remind ourselves on the make and model
