Rejuvenation Projects Blog

Now that framing is complete, the job site has the feel of a bee hive buzzing with activity. We have the siding crew working on the exterior. Meanwhile, the plumber, electrician, and HVAC are all taking turns working on the inside. Things are progressing nicely, but having this much activity going all at once has underscored for me the importance of having a good plan from the beginning. Technically speaking, our plans were sufficient to get through the permitting phase and pass as a viable house plan. Practically speaking, however, our plans have been lacking in some important details that would help to keep the work moving along smoothly. For example, the plans do not give specific instruction on how to lay out the floor joists in order to leave room for a heating duct. Consequently, we have to spend extra time on the site planning this out with the framer and the HVAC contractor, and making on-site decisions about these things. If we had noted these things on the plans before even starting, then there would have been a lot less standing around scratching our heads. The good news in all of this is that we came up with some really good ideas about how to route ducts and align walls and so forth in order to come up with a really good final outcome. Even so, the valuable lesson I learned was to make sure that I get a really detailed architect to work on my next set of plans so that a lot of these kinds of things can be thought out before we even break ground. It’s already challenging enough to keep a job site moving along smoothly without having to improvise solutions at practically every juncture. Here’s how it looks now:

Siding is going on

HVAC, plumbing, and electrical are in

I can’t help but think of all the veins and arteries that run throughout our own bodies as a fitting analogy for how the tubes and wires look running every which way in the walls of a house. Soon enough these things get covered by a “skin” and they get forgotten when hidden from view. The only way to “take a look under the hood,” as it were, is to look back at pictures such as these.

Fireplace in the master bedroom

Tankless water heater mounted in the wall cavity

This water heater is rather special and deserves a few comments. It’s a tankless water heater, which means that it does not store hot water in a tank. Instead, it only heats water when a warm water valve is turned on in the house. This system for heating water is considerably more efficient, because normal tank water heaters expend energy just reheating a large volume of water in the tank even when no one is using the hot water (e.g. while you are sleeping at night). Furthermore, this unit is so compact that it can be mounted between studs in an exterior wall, so it doesn’t actually take up any room inside the house. This also means that it can expel its exhaust directly to the outside without the use of ducting, because the backside of the unit is exposed on the exterior of the building. One final benefit of this system is that you can never run out of hot water, because the unit makes the hot water the instant it is demanded in the house. In other words, you cannot deplete the stored hot water, because it does not store any. It’s genius!

Sneak peek at the ADU in the basement

In a previous post, I had mentioned that we had a brilliant idea about how to make these homes more versatile for the future owners. The great idea was to include an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in the basement level of these houses. This feature is so awesome that it actually warrants its own separate post, which is coming soon.