Construction status (Rain, concrete, steel, sunshine, beams, joists, more rain, subfloor, window delivery, interior framing and more Faswall block!)

With the wet weather much of February and March, not a lot a lot of progress until the end of March. Now, the structure is near to being ready for the installation of the Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) roof.

I even installed a few courses of Faswall block with my daughter and found it to be straight forward and relatively easy to do well.

Recapping the progress over the past few months…..

The joist hanger system shown here is a Simpson plate that inserts through the wall of the Faswall block and becomes imbedded in the concrete anchor.

Simpson ledger plates

The ledger is then sandwiched between the hanger hardware and the plate with thread cutting screws (see photo below). The bolts shown above the plates are to attach the subfloor diaphragm to the steel reinforced concrete walls. The bolts shown above on the CMU block wall to the left are for attaching the ledger on that wall.  Although the Simpson plates are a solid solution, they are a bit more complicated and costly to install than L bolts.



Pleasanton Steel came a few times in between rain events to install beam brackets, I-beams headers over the versolarium glass doors and impressive C-channel for the bridge over the entry.  All of the structural steel is in except for two matching I-beam headers over the upper entry foyer windows.



welding beam saddle, joist hangers and "BigBeam"

 

C-channel supporting upstairs bridge

The Windsor Pinnacle windows and doors arrived on Friday, March 25, and I went to go look at them on following Monday. We selected Windsor windows as a more cost effective alternative to Loewen Windows during the pre-construction phase. We also looked at Pella, Marvin, and Millguard. I don’t recall anything about Millguard and it is possible that I actually didn’t consider them very closely (for whatever reason or no reason). From my research and inspection, the Windsor windows appeared equal or better than the others and use the same Cardinal glass. Windsor Pinnacle with alder interior and metal clad exterior were selected. Alder was preferred over douglas fir and pine as a harder wood and character desired for other woodwork in the house.

Although the windows and doors in general looked excellent, some irregularities in the quality of the alder millwork were noticed. We immediately brought it to the attention of Windsor and they were quick to take responsibility for the defects and we are awaiting replacement of a few windows.  In general, though, this windows and frech doors look excellent.

Exterior folding-sliding doors (accordion) from a quality door company like Loewen or Quantum (originally spec'd) cost approximately $1K/lf installed. This was beyond our budget and so we considered a less expensive solution with just two sliding panels and the rest fixed from Windsor. This system is a little less than half the cost and so we made the design compromise. There will still be a folding sliding set (5X 3’x8’) on the interior and plan to purchase door panels separately and install the sliding hardware ourselves.

The downstairs interior framing is substantially complete.  Shown here is the master bedroom wing nearly ready for SIP's to be dropped in.  This portion of the house is purposely at an obtuse angle to face south and carry solar hot water panels.  The small attic space for storate is over the bathroom.