Making our new retirement place

[skyking]

I have a big update on the progress.
A) the house is rough wired and inspected.
B) the solar panel installation is wired and inspected.
C) I applied for net metering with the PUD and got that all done and we are making power!
D) I had my neighbor and his friend hang all the sheetrock,, about 300 pieces.
E) I have a big drywall finishing crew doing the upper two floors.
F) My neighbor is doing the basement drywall.

For @Gwaithmir
The elevator company would not let me install a multi piece column and forced my hand. I had to order the system now before I closed the walls.
The required column was 24' long and weighs 292 pounds.
I modeled the installation with a couple of 12' long 2x4 scabbed together. I had to send it all the way to the basement floor to get it in.




I discovered some verbiage about getting a column locally, and did so. That let me get the column installed before the lift arrived.
Here is the column on the trailer, the last long piece to come to the house.



I unloaded it myself one end at a time, and had it ready on the board cart.



Now I had to wait for the drywall hangers to get going.

[skyking]

I had embedded a 4x6 across 3 rafters before the sheetrock, with a threaded rod protruding out.
Plan your work, work the plan. This is heavy lifting I have experience with.
I had a half ton chain fall for this job with a 10' stroke and 10' operating loop.
I climbed a ladder with it and hung it on a picking loop on that embedded rod.

Note that there are safety decks at floor 0, 1 and 2. These have obscured the shaft up until this time.
Demolish deck 2:


Wait for sheet rock crew to put on the next sheets. Once that is done, the column can come on in.
My framer and his son were there to help. He was all gung ho to pick it up and pack it in when I pointed out that it was on wheels. ROFL!
Roll it in onto safety deck 1, and then lift 1 end only until it is on the edge of that deck, and slide it through to the basement floor through the bearing wall. Gravity does all the work and the lifting was easy for a couple of guys.
I climbed a ladder and rigged the column to the chain fall. Then we pulled it up to this position, back up through the wall on the left and set it on that stair.




Now we can remove safety deck 1 .
The view of that operation as seen from floor 2.


We had already removed safety deck 0 from the 8" deep elevator pit in the basement.



Hoist it up a bit more, then lower it to the floor of the pit.


For the first time I can see what I had planned, the natural light from that picture window down through the shaft.
Now we waited for the sheetrock to come on down the shaft again.

[skyking]

They put up the last sheetrock.
The freight company showed up with the lift on a pallet. We broke that down, then put in a floor at minus 2" in the elevator pit, and then hoisted the column and tipped it into the top landing so we could set the  90 pound motor unit on top safely. Chain falls for the win.
Then we hoisted it up, set it on the new floor and bolted it in place. I could reach the one side from the landing, and the other from a little Giant ladder on the stairs.





Now we could assemble the platform onto the column.
Note the removed chain fall in the background. The hole is already patched.



It is all installed to this point and operational, awaiting fabrication of the safety railings and gates. I ordered it without them so I could fabricate it to match the rest of the house railings, which I think I will build in stainless.

[skyking]

picture a plant wall down the column side, with trailing stuff that can handle the indirect light.
On the other side, a water feature 20' tall.
I put some parameters into ChatGPT and used copper rain chains and gutters in front of vinyl flooring to get something to look at.
This is not the final idea by far, just something to get the artistic juices going.

[skyking]

Fast forward to today.
I am having a ton of fun doing sciencing.
I got the slab loops connected today.
My brother brought down an old water heater we are using for testing while waiting for the hydronic heat pump. We have the house loops running upstairs and it got the floor to about 70 today.


Here they are as we installed them in September of 2024. My brother is at the equipment room in the blue shirt where the above picture is taken.



Then I shut them all down at the return valves, and started purging out air one loop at a time. I had a live system so I did not do the traditional "flow and dump".
With the pump on low I pushed 1 GPM through each, and the automatic vent on the left ( just out of frame ) farted out the air. I kept adding makeup water to keep the system in the 20~30 PSI range, and I had shut down the two upstairs manifolds to expedite the process and to not dump a bunch of air up that way.
Once I got it stable and purged, I balanced the flows and set the pump at ~3 GPM across the 6 loops.
The slab measured 55 to start with. Return water was 57.
Plus 2 hours:
I went back and re-balanced and added makeup to 30 PSI, and now the return is 61 and the supply is 67.
The mud guys are gone for the weekend, so I left the furnace upstairs at 60 and now I am warming the basement for Monday mudding.
My hope and prediction is to get the slab to a measured 65 degrees by Monday morning with the commensurate return and supply temps.
My neighbor is doing the taping and mud work in the basement. He got some big coats on at the belly band and windows and went home to recover. It will be dry and ready Monday and I will have some heat in there.


I was laying down there connecting stuff when I heard a fan running.
I thought the Solis S6 inverter was passive cooling only?
It had run all morning into the afternoon at 9500~10000 watts quietly, but when the stepchild string got out of the shade and it started clipping at 12000 watts, the fan started up.
I will put a computer fan with a thermostat on the heat sinks to keep that from happening. I'd hate to wear out the internal fan.

We are operating at a deficit with all the heating to dry out the mud. That will change at the end of the week when we get the ground source heat pump going.

[Fireball]

Way cool! That's a whole lot of work accomplished.

[skyking]

I underestimated how quickly the slab would react, and turned one of the upstairs manifold sets back on.
This group is the west set at the basement landing, next to the low voltage cabinet.


The east set is in the back of the coat closet at the main functional entry at the carport. Here is the set before I had it terminated.


The under floor heating is friction installed in aluminum extrusions to transfer the heat evenly. This is 3/8 tubing with a maximum loop length of 200'.
I installed two manifold locations to reduce the deadheading or unused tubing going to and from an area.
The process:
We installed the extrusions with ~6000 screws.
The the tubing is populated in there as loops that you expand bay by bay. It is not bad once you get used to it. This is the most advanced Festoonery on the job.


I had to create a raised section to get the stair landing where we wanted it. This added some complication.

The adjacent bay, which is also the inside of the cantilevered balcony with the added sistered 2x12 joists.








there is 4000' of 3/8" tubing in 20 loops heating the finished 2700 SF.
1500' of 1/2" tubing in the ~1500 SF "unfinished" basement.

[Fireball]

That'll make for quiet heat. Nice!

[skyking]

That'll make for quiet heat. Nice!

When those upper floor surfaces were at ~70, you could just feel it. Comfortable with no heat stratification.

[skyking]

today was a banner day. I had tried to commission the heat pump yesterday and ran afoul of an error that prevented the start up. I emailed tech support and he had me switch one of the Dip switches to a different setting ( NOT what was laid out in the manual) and that fixed it.
We are harvesting heat from the earth and electricity from the sun
It was a new high production day of 81+ KWh, and 425 KWh for the first week of April.
The PVwatts estimate for April is 1522 KWh so it is on track.
The upstairs mud crew is sanding now, and the basement crew is about done. We plan on painting at noon tomorrow and blast out the basement. Then we can install lights, switches, and outlets down here and get the cabinet shop going.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That's fuckin' great, Flyboy.

[skyking]

Preface: the PV inverter puts off waste heat, the Heat Pump Water Heater extracts heat from the room it is in.


" I make the juice you use it well,
you take my heat I think it's swell,
We hang around the basement room,
the meter outside I make it zoom,
I can tell that we are gonna be friends"

[skyking]

The paint is done.
I suffer from wood fever and had to preserve the beams. The drywall finishers did a great job protecting them.



The late afternoon light playing in the downstairs cupola, projecting faux portholes on the walls.
That is viewed through the interior window opening while standing in the main ensuite bathroom. It will start with a clear pane and then we can think about stained glass or art or plants. I tend to massacre the latter.


That cupola from the elevator after a long day of painting and stripping and washing glass.



My family came out to see it after many months and for some it was the first visit. We brunched in Mary's sewing room.


The heat pump for the floor heat has arrived! Hoping to deploy that next week.



The view property next door is for sale by owner. Anybody want to be my neighbor?