The Framers are here...

Today the steel beam for the basement ceiling was delivered by Brewster Iron Works, as well as the 1st lumber delivery for the first floor deck. Bruce arranged for the lumber delivery boom truck, so that the steel beam could be lifted into place.

Garage Walls poured

Poured this morning, before the rain. Glad to get something else finished.

The southeast wall of the garage was poured the full 9'4". So the top of that wall will be about 6 feet above the garage floor height. This is so I can backfill that wall, to help me with the severe elevation difference on the eastern property line. The other 3 walls will be just a few inches higher than the garage floor height.

NYSEG rant - the scum of the earth

OK, I'd like you to please take a guess. If you call NYSEG and request new electric service, how long do you think that would take?

If you guessed six (6) months, you'd be seriously underestimating the time it actually takes. Plain and simple, they are assholes. They absolutely positively don't care at all if you ever build your house. Craig Lincoln is the guy I am dealing with. He is a total jerk. Days, weeks, months go by, he never returns your calls. I hope he dies. He has absolutely no ethics at all. What a scumbag.

I really want to complain to the Public Service Commision, but I'm deathly afraid that I will never get an electric hookup then.

Garage Footings Done

The garage footing was poured today. 9 yards of concrete. The footing was double wide and pinned to the main house foundation with rebar.

The footing forms were inspected yesterday by the Town of Carmel inspector. I called for the inspection on Wed 8/27 but they could not come out to inspect until Tue 9/2.

Ed excavated for the footing Tue 8/26.
I drilled the 5/8 holes for pinning to the existing house foundation with rebar on Wed 8/27.
Paul formed the footings Fri 8/29.

Photo of the Garage Footing Forms

Boulder Wall

I have quite a few large boulders on my property, and am saving them for retaining walls etc. First thing to use them for, was to create a boulder wall near the property line. This wall has a few purposes:

1) To create a channel for keeping surface water away from my house. The land that the power lines are on, slopes towards my property, and I could see deep erosion channels, every foot or so, where water from up there flowed down to my property.

2) To create a raised berm, for planting some screening trees. Since the property line is about 12 feet higher than the garage floor height, it might seem somewhat counter-intuitive to raise this area up ever higher. This berm will give the trees more height, to screen the power lines better.

3) The boulder wall is landscaping. I think it looks pretty good. It will look much better when the area is completed, and the wall is one of a series of 3 stepped down retaining walls.

One worry, is that the wall is too close to the property line, and the power company will cut my trees. Also the boulder wall could have been curved as it got further away from the house, to give more space to the property line. But right now I'm leaving it up to Scott and his crew. His company does incredible work, and I know he has a great vision that I can't see now.

The wall took 3 days to build (Aug 28-29-30), 1 excavator and 1 laborer. It's about 150 feet long.

Photo Album of the Boulder Wall

Septic Tank Installation

The septic tank was delivered and dropped in the hole today. I got a 1500 gallon tank. I only needed a 1250 gallon tank for a 4 bedroom house, but decided to upsize it to the 5 bedroom house size (a $300 upgrade). Price also includes 10 of those concrete junction boxes, which you can see sitting on top of the septic tank in the photo album link below. It cost $1880.31 from Mid Hudson Concrete Products products. I think the tank was around $1220, and the junction boxes were around $51 each. Ed arranged everything, so I didn't shop around for this stuff at all.

Photo Album of the Septic Tank Installation

Well drilling

The Well got drilled today. It was done by Milton Hyatt of Albert M Hyatt and Sons Inc. My excavator Ed and builder Bruce have known him a long time, and said he is very honest, and won't lie about the depth of the well, and the amount of casing used (important since I'm paying by the foot!). All the well drillers around here seem to charge like the same price, which is pretty high. I think around $12-$15 per foot. The casing cost about that too. I was glad that Milton gave me a 5% discount. I don't think anyone would have gotten a well drilled any cheaper.

I am very happy with the results. The well is 325 feet deep, and needed 114 feet of casing. They left casing 10 feet above ground so I can backfill it to any level I want to, and cut the pipe later. The well had 25 gallons per minute flow, which they said is fantastic. I guess some houses only have 1 (or is it 3?) GPM. I had to get the well in now, before the garage foundation goes in, otherwise I won't be able to get a well truck back there around the house.

Here is a photo of the well pipe, and the slop hole next to it.

Backfilling the House Foundation

Ed backfilled the main house foundation today. I put up the second row of MiraDrain 5000 (Foundation Drainage Panel), as he backfilled.

Also started doing the basement floor prep work:
1) Pulling out the hay that lined the footer to protect it from last winter's frost. Ripping out all the grass/weeds that grew in there.
2) Leveling out the ground, about 3 in below the top of the footer. Excavator had to scrape the ground down in some spots, and add dirt to other spots.
3) Dumping in 3 inches of gravel base for the basement slab floor.

Photo album of Backfilling the Foundation

Main House Footing Drains Approved

Ed worked on the footing drains Aug 11 and 12. The inspector came today and approved them. Ed started to backfill in the afternoon. He tied in 2 standpipes to connect the garage footing drains, which will be about 4 feet above the main house footing drains.

Construction Loan Closing - Ulster Savings Bank !!!

This might be one of the happiest days of the past 2 years. Probably the happiest since the day my wife and I saw this piece of property, and made an offer on it.

I thought I was a financial genious, and if I found the right loan rates, etc., I would have no problem getting my construction loan. Well I am not going to go into the whole sorted story, but after literally going through a nightmare with 3 separate loan companies (Countrywide, Amerifund, and Flagstar), I finally found a great, no fantastic contruction loan company:

Ulster Savings Bank

The loan originator that I dealt with was Margaret O'Conner. She was extremely knowledgable and helpful. I was refered to this bank by the guy I bought the property from. He is a builder and finances his new construction houses this way. His own personal home too.

The best thing about Ulster Savings Bank was everything I guess. Great loan originator. Honest and upfront. Low interest rates, and very low construction loan fees. Everthing they told me in the beginning was true. They didn't spring any surprises on me. Very little paperwork/documentation compared to the other lenders I dealt with. I sent Ulster Savings Bank a small stack of paper, maybe 3/4 of an inch high. They told me what they needed, I sent it, and the loan was aproved, I closed. The closing took 25 minutes. Those people really have their act together. They don't waste time on useless paperwork. Just the facts.

I must have sent a stack of paper 3 or 4 inches high, to other lenders. Day after day, week after week, they would come up with some more documents I needed. Until eventually I gave up, or they wanted something else, which I could not provide. One bank told me, after 3 months of faxes, that I needed to liquidate my 401k account, then my loan would be approved. What a joke. I said screw them.

Boy did I make some mistakes with the financing. But I think I'm golden now.

Tree Clearing - for Electrical Pole

Bill Henry Tree Service came today and cut down a bunch of trees. Someday NYSEG will put up a telephone pole in the spot they marked off. But all trees between that spot and the preceding pole needed to be trimmed or cut down. Cost me $1000. No bargain, but I guess not that bad of a price either. Ed would have done it slightly cheaper, but he is not available right now. I want to get them cut down quickly so I can let NYSEG know immediately, that I'm ready for the pole. Not that they will actually put it up anytime soon, but who knows, hopefully I'll get lucky.

Hallowell Arcadia - cold weather heat pump

OK so I've been researching like crazy, trying to find the best way to heat my dream house. This is probably my biggest worry in this whole project. Oil heat is just going to be too expensive. I've been thinking that geothermal is my only reasonable long-term option. So I e-mailed a whole bunch of geothermal installers in my area, and one of them came back to me with a much cheaper, but almost as efficient system: the Hallowell Acadia cold weather heat pump.

I sort of ignored this suggestion, but then a week later I Google'd the thing. Well I almost crapped myself. It seems to good to be true, and you know what they say about things like that. The cost would be less than the combined cost of a Hydro-Air cooling system plus an oil burner heating system.

Does anybody know if this is real, or just a scam/scheme??? Please, pass along any information you have about this system.

And I'm going to collect links about this system. I'm sure you could find these same links yourself with a Google search...

The company website:
http://www.gotohallowell.com/

Some dudes named Kevin and John seem to have installed Hallowell Acadias in their own homes:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=50&threadID=301971&start=30&tag=forum-w;forums06
You can also find other references to the Hallowell Arcadia if you search the CNET forums.

A story with a video of the Acadia system:
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Business/Acadia-heating-beats-the-cost-of-oil-/1216432211.html

McGuire Air Force Base, Fort Dix and Marlboro NJ residents Phyllis and Seymour Garr install Acadias:
http://tritown.gmnews.com/news/2008/0724/front_page/003.html

WCVB TV Boston (ABC channel 5) runs a story on the Acadia:
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/asseenon5/16831616/detail.html

Architect Ed Nilsson of Marblehead MA, installs an Acadia:
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/state/x1542098757/Home-features-two-energy-saving-systems

Yup, even on Bob Villa's website:
http://www.bobvila.com/OnTheLevel/Big-Energy-Savings-for-the-DoD-2982.html

CNET green news article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9859871-54.html?tag=cd.blog

An article in the Architectural Record:
http://archrecord.construction.com/resources/conteduc/archives/0603edit-1.asp

An article from the Reuters newswire:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS127072+10-Mar-2008+PRN20080310

Not sure who the lazy environmentalist is:
http://www.lazyenvironmentalist.com/pages/2008/01/efficiency_and.php

Last but not least, a thread I started on heatinghelp.com:
http://forums.invision.net/Index.cfm?CFApp=2&Message_ID=412460

Installing Foundation Drainage panels

Today my brother-in-law Justin and I installed the foundation drainage panels on the foundation. There are a lot of different products for this, but I chose one that I liked, and could get locally for a reasonable price:

Carlisle CCW MiraDRAIN 2000

Purchased at Masonry Depot for about 0.45 per square foot, I got 5 rolls, each roll is 4 feet by 50 feet.

Foundation Waterproofing Membrane

I want our basement to be waterproof. Most houses just have a tar sprayed onto the foundation, which is only damp-proof. That stuff is cheap, about $28 for a 5 gallon bucket. I am going to upgrade to the better stuff which is actually waterproof. Lots of companies make stuff, but only a few products will meet my criteria. Many of the products are spray on, and I don't have the equipment for that. I need something I can roll or brush on. Also I have to be able to get it locally for a reasonable price. That really cut down the possible product I can use, so I picked this:

Mar-Flex 5000R

They only had 7 buckets in stock, so I also got 1 bucket of this more expensive product:

BASF HLM-5000

I purchased this stuff here: AH Harris and Sons

After rolling that stuff on the foundation, I will say that the HLM-5000 seems to be a better product (Well it is more expensive too). After drying, the Mar-Flex 5000 left little pinholes of exposed concrete, didn't matter how think I rolled it on. 2 coats of that stuff is really necessary, which means double the work. The 5 gallon can of HLM-5000 was much heavier, the stuff was much thicker and harder to spread on the foundation, but I can't imagine why you would need a second coat of it. It seems like it will hold up better that the Mar-Flex.

You can research product like this here:

ICC Evaluation Service - Fluid Applied Waterproofing