Front yard taking shape

Landscaping looks great! We are always impressed with how hard those guys work. Looks like they are probably wrapping up for the winter and will finish the rest of the details in the spring when we start to think about plants and such. Just rocks for the winter! The irrigation system is roughed in and we have hills and rivers to help control the drainage. We've lucked out with a pretty mild November so they were able to get a bunch of work done.

 

 

The big coil of plastic tube is the water line coming from the house. The plumber needs to get this hooked up to our water meter (in the little concrete box by the sidewalk) soon so that we can have water before the snow covers everything! 

 

We absolutely love the flagstone stairs. They used some of the flat malapai rock for the risers and then big pieces of Flagstone from Ash Fork for the treads. Our neighbor said that stairs are nice so that people don't have to walk up the steep driveway slope...plus they add some interest to the massive slab of concrete!

They nicely graded the left side of the driveway. We'll see how the drainage is this winter and add some crushed rock in the spring to help contain the dirt. 

The driveway is all clean and ready to be sealed!

Hydronic Radiant Heating

Well one of our big desires for the house was to have hydronic radiant floor heat instead of forced air. Flagstaff gets pretty cold in the winter; where we live now has forced air, which we've learned is an expensive way to heat a big house with 2 stories and the floors are always freezing cold because it's on a slab. So we decided to make sure we could have the in-floor heat in the house we're building. Andy says the future dog will love it! Plus we didn't leave any room for ducts when we designed the floor plan! Since Flagstaff doesn't get overly hot during the summer, we are not putting in air conditioning. Folks from Phoenix seem to feel they need to have air conditioning in their Flagstaff houses, but I'd say the majority of people don't have it. So that's another reason that we don't need ducts.

In the garage we have a small utility room that houses the boiler and domestic hot water tank. The future controls and equipment for the driveway snow melt system will eventually be housed here as well. The hot water from the boiler is pumped to several manifolds throughout the house which control the loops of water going to the different heating zones. The guest bedroom, office and jack and jill bathroom are on one loop. The great room, kitchen, laundry room and powder room are on a second loop. The master suite is one the third loop. The game room/shop downstairs is on the fourth loop (these tubes were put in when the garage slab was poured).

Ted nicely arranged and installed all of the equipment in the boiler room and the manifolds in the ceiling locations. Next Alan the plumber and his sons installed the 1/2" PEX tubing that takes the water to and from the manifolds to heat the rooms. The tubes are placed at ~12" on center. Near windows and doors, the tubes are run closer together to allow for extra heating in the drafty areas.The tubes are stapled to the sub-floor. Ted did a pressure test to make sure we didn't have any leaks.

 

Gypcrete, which is a lightweight concrete product, will be poured on top of the tubes to provide the large thermal mass to carry the heat throughout the room. The gypcrete and tubes add a total of 1.5" height above the subfloor (which the builder planned for with double sill plates so that our ceilings don't feel lower!) Apparently gypcrete is used often in commercial and multifamily construction as a sound barrier between floors. So maybe Andy's woodworking equipment downstairs won't be that loud upstairs!

Tile can be put down on top of the gypcrete, but hardwood is a little more challenging since you can't easily nail into the gypcrete. So for the great room and the bedrooms we had to put down strips of wood (called sleepers) in between the rows of tubing to have a place to nail the hardwood. We cut all of these boards to length and glued and screwed them down to the sub-floor. When the gypcrete is poured, it will be leveled to the top of these 2x2s so everything is flush. Hopefully we can still see the tops of the sleepers so that we know where to nail! We also plan to glue the hardwood floor so that we don't have problems with imperfect sleeper placement.

 

 

The gypcrete should go in on Monday!

Landscaping progress

 

The landscapers have been working away! The snow is mostly gone and it's easier to work. The malapai walls look great. The lower wall helps to keep the yard from washing onto the sidewalk and the upper walls provide areas for plants and flower beds. We will wait until the spring to plant anything. Linda next door has a similar malapai wall across the front yard as well.

 They are starting to work on the flagstone steps by the side of the driveway. The big pile of malapai rock for the house exterior is in the way now!

Driveway

The driveway is in! Kip shoveled the snow off of the roof and the sun melted the remaining ice. We were worried about the roof dripping onto the driveway since we don't have gutters yet! We left the black plastic down onto of the XPS foam insulation as an extra moisture barrier.Once things dried out, we were able to put down the wire mesh that we planned to use to tie the PEX tubing to. It was pretty easy to cut to the right size and wire together.

 

Ted (the guy doing the in-floor heating system for the house) supervised us while we laid the tubing down on the driveway. The PEX was a bit stiff and hard to wrestle, but we managed to get it all down. The trick was to figure out what spacing we needed to cover the entire driveway but not have extra tubing left over. In the end we had a mix of 18" apart in the middle and 12" apart on the top and bottom. Hopefully that's enough to heat the driveway!
All of the neighbors driving by were jealous to see that we plan to heat the driveway. They'll probably laugh at us when they see us out there shoveling since we don't actually plan to buy the rest of the system components necessary to hook it all up. Those items aren't in the budget right now, plus we're young and enjoy shoveling, right?

After getting the tubes all down and connected to the manifold with Ted's help, we did a pressure test and all looked good. We finished up tying the tubes every 2' as the sun set and covered it all back up with the concrete blankets to keep it warm. The driveway sure was slippery with the black plastic and concrete blankets. I think everyone took a spill and slid partway down the driveway. Hopefully it's less slippery with the concrete!

The concrete company arrived bright and early Thursday morning. It was a cold morning, but the sun was out and it wasn't very windy.

They put thicker mesh onto of the tubes and tied them together in order to keep the tubes from floating in the concrete and to give the slab more strength. They used an overhead pump to get the concrete up the driveway. Pretty big piece of equipment for our size driveway! 3 truck loads (26yds) of concrete to do the driveway. It's a 6" thick slab...which looked pretty thick! They worked for a while to smooth out and finish the driveway surface. They covered it with plastic and concrete blankets.

 

The concrete company came back Friday morning to do the washing step to make the surface exposed aggregate. All looked good. They covered it up again with blankets. Monday they came and rolled up the blankets (guess it's cured enough that frost is okay now!)

 

I thought this was a cool shot where you can see the pink foam. We'll fill in along the sides of the driveway with dirt/rock/landscaping so that it's all hidden. 

Slip and slide

The forecast was correct this time! 3-4 inches of snow fell last night and it's pretty cold out today. Look at the snowy roof, we have a well insulated roof since there are no melted parts...or we don't have any heat in the house to leak out! We spent a vacation day on Friday to prep the driveway. Since the fill had been put down and compacted, we wanted to make sure the ground stayed dry and relatively warm.

Thursday afternoon after the sidewalk was poured and the driveway was covered with concrete blankets.

 Friday morning we uncovered the driveway and put the drains and PVC in the fill for gutters and a few extra runs for irrigation, electrical wiring or dog fences. Was sunny and warm for most of the day. Then we put down 1" thick sheets of pink Dow extruded polystyrene foam (they have the pink panther on them!). We taped the seams between the sheets with packaging tape. The rocks are key (good think we bought a huge pile of rocks for landscaping!). The winds were super gusty Friday so we had to weigh everything down or it would fly away. One gust got us and several sheets blew across the yard. After that I learned to dive quickly on top of anything that wanted to blow away. Took about 3 hours to put all of the foam down, a pretty easy task.

Next we covered the driveway with thick black plastic. This was even more entertaining with the wind 20' wide strips can get quite a bit of lift! More rocks to weigh it down... And then on top we put the concrete blankets back to help keep the driveway warm. So the driveway looks pretty much identical to how it did on Friday morning, but it's even more slippery with the foam and black plastic under the blankets. Everyone had a few near slips trying to walk down the steep part. And then add 3" of snow on top and you have a great slip and slide! But watch all of the hidden rocks, they can hurt!

The landscapers were busy all day Friday. They enjoyed watching me wrestle with the foam, plastic and blankets for the driveway. I don't make manual labor tasks look quite as easy as they do (guess I'm cut out for that desk job)! At least I could provide entertainment at no additional charge.

 

 Plenty of activity in the front yard. 

 The river swale on the south side is nearly done, but it runs into the porta potty at the bottom of the hill.

 3 out of 10 truck loads of large malapai boulders. 

 A truck load of topsoil was delivered Friday. The guys were impressive pushing the wheel barrows up the wooden ramp to get up the hill. 

 A nice start to the 3' high boulder wall along the sidewalk. Three guys move all of the boulders and place them carefully to make a nice looking wall. 

Moving dirt and installing the irrigation system.

Building the irrigation system on the north side of the house. 

 

Looks like a muddy mess. They were out there this morning finishing shoveling the dirt and rock out of the street so that the plow could come by.