Choosing plumbing fixtures - Cooler than it sounds!

The dream of building my own house started a long time ago but who thinks that it will/can ever happen? I became enamored with timberframe homes a few years ago and even went so far as to buy an antique timberframe (on Ebay) and hired an architect to design a house around it. About that same time I bought a stack of books about home building, including one called The Owner Builder Book. The author explained and demonstrated throughout the book that anyone with a strong desire, some diversified experience, and half a brain can be his owner general contractor. That book also had associated with it a website with a forum and through that forum several of us formed a local owner/builder group, had a few meetings, and shared ideas. Several others from the group went on to complete their house but losing my job kind of put a damper on my own project.

A couple years later after watching the others complete their houses I reassessed my finances and decided that we really could build a downscaled version of our house with the same look and feel but sans timberframe. Last winter I looked through probably thousands of online house designs and Flora and I finally boiled it down to a single design that would give us everything we wanted. I found an engineer who would put our design into AutoCAD and give us a sealed set of drawings for a reasonable price and we started rolling.

We already owned our 3.6 acre lot so with a roughed out budget we set off knowing that we would eventually have to get a bank involved to provide further financing. Last week was the week we went to the bank to sign up for our construction loan and boy what an experience that was. Think about a job interview and an IRS audit rolled into one and that should give an indication of what it was like. I can't blame them for being careful since being able to qualify for a loan does not in itself mean that someone is qualified to build his own house. But what a stack of paperwork I had to fill out. One of the things I had to do was to get actual firm prices on all the things I had just estimated so today we went to a wholesale plumbing fixture company and spent about two hours making decisions about all of our fixtures. It was very helpful to have a knowledgeable person guiding us through the process and yet one more time I was reminded about what crappy service we come to expect in this Wal-mart/Home Depot world. The big box stores seem to have a motto "our service is crappy and so is our stuff but hey, trust us, our prices are low".

My rough budget had shown $4800 for fixtures and our total today came out to just under $4300 but I do still have a couple additional bathroom sinks to buy but still I was amazed that I was that close. I discussed the experience with Flora afterward and we both agreed that it was great fun being able to pick and choose exactly what every sink, stool, and faucet would be and we can hardly wait to use our new shower. Since we spend a lot of time in the kitchen we picked out some really cool things to use there including this faucet. It has not been that long ago that the only kitchen sink choices were porcelain-coated steel or stainless steel each in a couple of sizes. These days there are thousands of choices. We ended up with a big double stainless steel sink that is kind of restaurant style and with that great faucet who knows; maybe I will even do dishes from time to time!

Installing the Superior Walls

If you look at the prints for our house you will see that the basement walls that are embedded in the hillside are shown as concrete blocks filled with rebar and concrete. As long as these walls are totally filled with concrete they are waterproof and very strong. To complete such a wall you would to hire someone to layout the footers, a second crew to excavate the footers, a third crew to form and pour the footers, and then after they pass inspection, a crew of masons to lay the blocks. Since these are 10' walls, they would have to lay blocks to 5' high and then have a concrete truck come and fill them. After that concrete has hardened the second 5' section can be placed on top of them and then those are filled. So besides having to juggle a lot of different crews, an additional problem is that it is nearly impossible to be sure that all of the cells in the wall are actually filled with concrete; invariably there are some voids and these tend to weaken the wall and they often leak.

So we chose an alternative known as Superior Walls. These walls are produced in a factory, transported to the job site on a flatbed truck, erected with a crane, and bolted together. Since these walls are placed directly into a bed of compacted gravel, no poured footers are required. Additionally, the walls are guaranteed not to leak (although this county also requires that they be painted with waterproofing compound). Superior Walls are slightly more expensive but to me it was a no-brainer since it guaranteed a better foundation with a lot less subcontractors getting involved. Oh, and I forgot to mention that they come fully-insulated and with the studs in place, ready for drywall!

The Superior Walls crew was scheduled to arrive first thing Monday morning and I figured I had plenty of time for some last minute things at the job site on Friday. So at 6:15 AM on Friday I was awakened by the telephone and wondered who in the heck might be calling at such an hour. Not being a morning person I was sound asleep and in such a state there is no way I can get to the phone within 4 rings, so I rolled over and let the voice mail take care of it - that is why I pay for it right? A few minutes later it rang again. This time I was awake so I picked it up and the voice on the other end announced that he was waiting for me at my gate (which was locked) and that the crew would be there within a few minutes. The best laid plans right? By the time I was able to get dressed, pour myself some coffee, and get to the job site, my contact had left but I was at least able to get there before the trucks started rolling in.

It was my kind of job; everyone knew what he was doing and all I had to do was stand around with my hand in my pockets and watch. I just love watching work getting done! While Critch was extending and setting the outriggers on the crane truck, the rest of the crew was setting up lines and running a plate tamper over the gravel to ensure that it was level and well packed where the walls would go. It was not long before the first wall was attached to the crane and swung into place. A second wall was soon bolted to it and ensured that it could not fall over. While the crane swung back to hookup the third wall section, the two installers caulked both sides of the joint they had just assembled. The four man crew was a well-oiled machine and quickly completed the job. Within tow hours they were done and gone.  You can see the open ends with embedded wood for attaching the rest of the wall framing for the wooden walls that are not buried in the hillside.  

So the house build is off to a great start; now if I can only keep the momentum going!

Digging the Big Hole

One of the attributes of our lot is that it allows a house to be embedded in the hillside so that part of it is earth-sheltered and the other side is open. I remember a house I saw back in Denver that had a walkout basement and I liked the concept. The thing about most basements is that they are dark and dank and you have to descend a staircase to get into them; this one was not that way and the fact that you could walk straight out of it and it had windows made the basement into a nice space. Unlike Denver, basements in the south are very often a bad idea because of all the rain we get, but a walkout can work if the drainage is right and allows rainwater to be directed away from the foundation.

In April we had the basement excavated. They used a machine they called a loader (before talking to the owner I would have called it a bulldozer but he explained the difference to me). He used the big machine on tracks not only to excavate the hole but also to push over some fairly large trees. The largest of them was a white oak with a trunk diameter of about 30". When we had the site cleared a few years ago we had chosen to save this tree, but that year was very hot and dry and the root damage from creating the nearby road spelled its doom.  In all we took down 7 large hardwood trees that were either too dangerous to have so close to the house or that blocked too much of the sun. I have spent many hours since then cutting them up and burning the limbs. When we had originally cleared the lot I had the contractor do all of this work at that time. This time, after doing it all myself (with some help from friends and family) I now have more appreciation for how much hard work is involved. I always hate to remove large trees; we counted the rings in one of them and it was over 150 years old. On the other hand, more than one of them ended up being hollow, which really weakens them. Having a 90' tall tree fall on your house is never a good thing.

The deepest corner of the excavation is about seven feet deep and at about three feet under the surface we started running into a large shelf of granite. In some parts of the country that would have meant jack hamming or blasting, but we were lucky and most of the rock was already fractured and all that was required was a few extra hours of picking away at it with the loader (at $110 per hour). When our basement slab is poured, the concrete will be placed over a bed of gravel. We sloped the earth under that a few inches so that any water that might penetrate will run down hill and away from the house rather than puddling there.  

In all the excavation required most of two days plus a bit longer due to some miscalculations on my part in laying out the stakes, but in the end we had a right nice hole in the ground! Next, we will lay in a layer of gravel and level it for installation of the basement walls.