Toshi's thread

Now that I look at that insulation math I think the guy screwed up. It's supposed to be R-50 per spec, so that R-49 line should be applied. 1574 sq ft actual * 22.6 bags per 1000 sq ft in the spec sheet is 35 bags. 25 works out to the incorrect line he crossed out for R-38.

Toshi said:

Now that I look at that insulation math I think the guy screwed up. It's supposed to be R-50 per spec, so that R-49 line should be applied. 1574 sq ft actual * 22.6 bags per 1000 sq ft in the spec sheet is 35 bags. 25 works out to the incorrect line he crossed out for R-38.

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I got a reply:

We have to do R-50. We will not pass Energy Logic and final with it not being R-50.
It will get corrected.

[name redacted]
Community Construction Manager

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That Energy Logic thing he mentions is the determination of the house's HERS score: http://www.nrglogic.com/builders/services-for-homebuilders/

My apologies for the quiet audio.

Google+ randomly bite-sized some of my photos so here's a smattering of what I saw today. One month out from closing now!


100% more banister action now. Stairs are going to be carpeted and no carpet is laid down yet.


Fireplace in daytime, now with hardwood extending up to it in the great room.


Fancy two-stage furnace.


This built in shelf will have to be ripped down, as our to-be-built pedestal + washer/dryer height will run afoul of it.


Pocket door replete with trim and paint.


Where hallway wood and half bath tile meet.


Tile to the ceiling in all the bathrooms. All but ours got the stock white, simple tile.


Master bath still in progress. Pebble tile shower floor and glass enclosure still yet to be completed.


Almost all of the outlets are in place now. About half of the light fixtures are in, such as this one over the 1st to 2nd floor stairwell.


We've seen this photo a few times already: Behind that paint and drywall there's an outlet that's still completely covered up.


Proper outdoor outlet on porch.


Ghetto outdoor outlet on porch. Should I still make a fuss about it since it's not like the other?

It was like that when I stopped by. No hardware or anything to grab on to pull it out. I tried to pull it out from the top but it didn't come out smoothly.

More photos now that I've uploaded them properly from a desktop computer instead of via Google+'s very flawed new app.


Wall and ceiling color as seen in light of day. I think the walls will look lighter when there's interior lighting on.




Efficient new two-stage furnace is efficient.



Stock thermostat, which I will pull in favor of a Nest v3 unless this is decent. Looks like this model: http://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/thermostats/systxccitn01-a/ , which has crap reviews: http://smile.amazon.com/Carrier-Infinity-SYSTXCCITN01-Thermostat-Control/dp/B00GSACQJY?sa-no-redirect=1 . That reminds me that I need to check on whether the in-duct humidifier system has been set up yet.


View from (temporary) front door. Orientation of wood relative to length of hall was determined by orientation of supporting beams, in turn.


My hard-fought NEMA 14-50R receptacle in the garage. This is to power 240V 40A EVSE used to charge up my wife's RAV4 EV.


Random extra interior outlet the electricians put up when they misread the instructions to put an exterior 120V outlet on the back side of this very garage wall.


Stair from basement to first floor. This is the part wall that will be behind the couch, with my Fallout 4 station across from it.


Lots of outlets plus Ethernet, coax, and in-wall speaker wiring on the TV/media center/Fallout 4 computer wall.


Specifics on the basement windows.


Sump pump is in that corner under the cover. Not sure what the tube above it is about.



This must be either incomplete or a sub panel, as there's no 50A breaker for the 14-50R outlet as above.


Tankless water heater is still MIA.

Carpet pad in most places, and what's probably a roll of carpet in the garage.




Toilets.





Kitchen is coming together nicely.


Deep window sills remain deep. I'm getting window covering quotes from Budget Blinds and Hunter Douglas in the next few weeks.



Random new holes in the drywall. This is in the master bedroom in a wall shared with the bath, but there are no holes on the other side and nothing to explain this.



Pebbles but not grout down in the shower now.



Call me stupid but this appears to be two water heaters?!


Now with labeling, confirming lack of 50A breaker for the 14-50R outlet in the garage.


Sump pump now hooked up. Tube is for passive radon mitigation?


This is how the carpet pad is held in place before nailing.



Solar! That's 2.6 kW, I think. We will add more next fall.

DaveW said:

2nd to last photo.... the biggest window is not oriented in the same direction as the solar panels (presumably the sunniest direction but pointed at the garage?

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Views basically every which way from the first floor will be obstructed by other houses. Such is the reality of this neighborhood, where 0.15 acres such as this is on the big side of lots. Those windows will give an angled view from the kitchen out into the yard as accessed via the patio, at least.

DaveW said:

Like Suburbanite rats in a cage.

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New Urban. This is the closest good school district neighborhood to work. I'm deliberately choosing a smaller lot for a shorter commute—that's like anti-suburbanism.

Unfortunately I have no way of finding out if that was actually taken care of. I'll ask the inspector but I think all evidence is behind drywall.

dan-o said:

Make them open it up for inspection.
Your photo is evidence enough to make it happen.

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cecil said:

I'm a commercial contractor we do no residential, I asked a structural engineer he said "minimum" 3 1/2" of bearing in residential construction, typically 8" in commercial due to foundation walls being 12" thick rather than 8" thick in most residential applications

Here is a typical bearing detail
View attachment 121028

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Ok. I emailed my inspector and asked how to make it happen. He's a third party that I hired directly so has no incentive to cover for the builder.

cecil said:

I really like the dark wood, the appliances, the SS hood over the cook top that's a really sweet place

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Thanks. It was nice being able to pick out what finishes we wanted, even if the process is a profit center for the builder. (Cabinet pulls including labor are 100% marked up over the parts themselves, for example.) This is my first house, and I hope it will be my last house before retiring... in Wellington? I have 20 or so years to convince Jessica that's a good idea yet.

Carpet pad turned into carpet through the magic of subcontractors working this weekend.




I left the RAV4 EV outside for a few days, choosing to drive the Land Cruiser instead given ice and snow on Denver's roads. Meanwhile the temperature dropped, in the 20s during the day, single digits overnight.

The car apparently didn't like that one bit. Turtle mode when first started, with these messages after a few minutes charging and warming up in the balmy ~40 degree garage. It took several minutes and miles of driving before I got regen back and the message disappeared, and the reappearance of regen was gradual: first one bar, then two, three, four, finally ending up at six.

It worked fine once warmed up but goes to show that BEVs are not ready for prime time in all climates. (This probably never would have happened in the metro California areas where the RAV4 EV was originally sold.)

Latest from the house:



100% more garage door opener! This looks to be this one: LiftMaster Premium Series 8365-267.

Per that page and the logos it has Security+ 2.0, some new coding system. This means I might need a HomeLink repeater despite both of my vehicles actually having HomeLink built in, because planned obsolescence? Homelink.com says I'm good but I'll believe it when it actually opens.

Anyway, the other thing about it is it has MyQ built in. This means I just need a $48 internet gateway for it to get the remote opening/closing/checking functionality instead of the $100 box for pre-built-in-MyQ units.



Water heaters are not happy about their circulation pump as of yet.




Carpet all the things!

Smart Vents have arrived!

http://www.electronichouse.com/daily/home-energy-management/keen-home-debuts-keen-money-saving-smart-vents/?google_editors_picks=true

The amusing thing is that their "starter pack" actually represents a $2 price increase over buying the two vents and one hub separately. :lol:

Oof. Peanut gallery, is this a reasonable quote for blinds?



This was via Budget Blinds. Add $1,900 for motorization in living room and master bedroom.

Update on the blinds situation: after cutting out some stuff (that $1,000+ horizontal setup for the sliding door and some other ones we probably don't need in stairwell and basement) I got this below $5k. I then priced out JC Penney and Costco against Budget Blinds.

JC Penney house brand is about equally expensive/cheap as Budget Blinds. JC Penney also resells Bali Blinds but their prices are not good.

Bali Blinds through Costco, on the other hand, are very well priced. Their motorized setup is almost 20% cheaper than Budget Blinds' non-motorized, for instance!

Therefore I shall be measuring myself, installing myself, and going through Costco.

[rehosted on Google+ instead of just Google Photos]


100% more sidewalk.


Front steps! It's too bad we have extra space out front instead of in back due to the curve of the lot and setbacks. Front yard/landscaping space is not nearly as useful to us as fenced in back yard given young kids.



AC compressor!

Per this site and what it says outright this was manufactured in August 2015. The last 3 digits of PROD are 030, too, which means 2.5 tons! I was expecting 2, although I don't quite remember where I got that from. I hope this means the AC will keep up all summer long, unlike in our rental house.


Half bath on main floor now has a sink.


Sliding door now has hardware. I had no idea it'd have a glass panel.


Range hood is installed. Some holes to patch yet in the drywall.

Toshi said:

Bali Blinds through Costco, on the other hand, are very well priced. Their motorized setup is almost 20% cheaper than Budget Blinds' non-motorized, for instance!

Therefore I shall be measuring myself, installing myself, and going through Costco.

Click to expand...

I measured every last window and then priced it out at Costco. It came out to $4,800 pre-tax, this with a 10% discount that's good through tomorrow.

This includes motorized blinds in the basement TV room, living room, stairwell window, and master bedroom; Roman shades in living room and double cell cellular blinds elsewhere; blackout in TV room and kids bedrooms and light filtering elsewhere. This is more motorization and nicer stuff than even the $8,500 Budget Blinds quote: double vs single cell, Roman shades in living room. (On the other hand, the Budget Blinds quote had a ridiculous $675 vertical sliding shade for the sliding door, whereas I went with a standard horizontal one that opens bottom on up in the usual manner.)

It still feels obscenely expensive but there are 25 windows to cover and we wanted the fancy toys.

Preliminary walkthrough today, where we established a punch list to be checked a day before closing.


Paint! And front steps. The last segment is still-drying concrete, not asphalt.


Kitchen is looking pretty complete minus the range hood trim. Fridge will be bought post-closing. Note huge island, because why not?


50A breaker finally found, in an outside box that also has the whole house 200A breaker. The 20A to the bottom left is for the solar setup, I believe.


Siding is not supposed to be wavy. They were fixing it today--would have fixed it yesterday but that was paint day.


Top right is range hood vent. Bottom left is fresh air intake that goes right to the furnace ducts with a damper.

Fiber cement.

TIL that Energy Star qualification doesn't mean that much, at least in the realm of ceiling fans.

Per this post [1] I found links to the PDF [2] and XLS [3] formatted lists of ceiling fans. The Excel format allowed for sorting, which then allowed for focused comparison of a particular format (60" ceiling fans) and criterion (CFM/Watt when on low settings).

The highest efficiency fans in this format are the Haiku models from Big Ass Fans. They push out 848-1018 CFM/Watt, with the between-model difference not entirely clear to me.

The lowest efficiency fans in this format are a trio of Hunter Fans Casablanca models. They push out 173-182 CFM/Watt.

Yeah, so about that Energy Star certification: depending on model it could mean a difference in efficiency of nearly 6x. Methinks the bar needs to be raised. The flip side of this is that non-certified fans are likely to be pushing under even the paltry 173 CFM/Watt, and are therefore probably better suited as space heaters than actual aids to produce a cooler-feeling environment.

[1] http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-curmudgeon/ceiling-fans-are-evil
[2] http://downloads.energystar.gov/bi/qplist/ceiling_fan_with_lightkit_prod_list.pdf
[3] http://downloads.energystar.gov/bi/qplist/ceiling_fan_with_lightkit_prod_list.xls



Cliffs Notes for the above: I probably will be spending more rather than less on ceiling fans (if I get any at all!), because inefficient ones will act like little space heaters. In our super-insulated house this is not desired in the summer, and why bother in the winter?

10 days to close!


Much better than the off-kilter, white, loose outlet on the island that was there before.


The electricians left a work order that said they installed the long-missing outdoor outlet. Did they pick an invisible model?!


120V by master bathroom toilet is finally in place, so that I can install my Toto Washlet after the fact. Warm butt FTW. The patched but not yet painted holes are where they were hunting for the box. I ended up sending the superintendent a screen shot from my pre-drywall video that showed where the box was, and that did the trick.



In-duct humidifier now in place +/- photo taken with potato. The valve on the water line has wires leading to it. I'm not sure whether it'll communicate with the thermostat or not yet. There is a big off/on "switch" on the humidifier output with "winter" and "summer" settings.

Does this product exist? Li-ion WiFi car pre-heater idea
Context: One of the nicest things about electric cars is the ability to pre-condition the interior, whether it's sitting on the street or (plugged in) in the garage. (Note to rice h8r: pre-conditioning the interior on gasoline vehicles in garages via remote start is not recommended.)

Idea: Decent capacity lithium-ion battery, like those used on the portable jump starter packs these days but twice as large. 24 Ah at 7.4V (2p), perhaps? Integrated resistive heater, let's say 1 kW. Stand and surrounding cage so that the surface wouldn't get hot, like a household resistive heater.

The pièce de résistance would be that this would sync with a smartphone app via WiFi (probably not worth it to have its own cellular modem), and one could schedule it to turn on at a certain time. Whether triggered via app or via the start button on it it'd run for 10 minutes tops (both dictated by timer and because 24 Ah * 7.4V * (60 minutes / 1 hr) / 1000W ~= 10 minutes) and then turn off.

Logistics: It'd have to be charged in the house or office at 120V, as typical commute times * 12V charging in the car wouldn't be sufficient. The typical use case would be to keep it in the footwell of the car in the garage, with the app used to start its heating goodness 10 minutes before one's planned departure for work. I bet this could be produced at a profit at the $100-150 price point judging from what's currently sold at $50 (12 Ah car starters/portable battery packs).

Have I described something that already exists? Why doesn't this exist? I think having a pre-warmed car (and not via outdoors-only, gas-wasting remote start setups) would be quite nice indeed.



Update: I posted this on NASIOC as well and got the usual mix of snark and useful suggestions. http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2763973

Today my RAV4 EV got stuck in a state where it wasn't fully on yet couldn't be turned off, either.

Setting: climate preconditioning turned on via Entune app. I could hear the heater whirring away as I walked up to the vehicle. I unlocked it via the driver's door handle touch pad but pulled open the rear door instead of the front in order to toss a backpack in the rear seat.

When I opened the front door and hit the power button like usual the car went into this weird state as shown in the photo: all warning lights on, HVAC working, stereo/Bluetooth working, but not ready to drive. I tried to shift to Drive but the car just beeped once and refused. What's weirder yet is that I couldn't turn the vehicle off.



Hitting the power button did nothing. Holding it down did nothing. Trying to lock the car just had it yell at me even though the keyfob was in my pocket, not in the car.

I called Carson Toyota and they had no suggestions. I called Toyota Safety Connect and they had no suggestions other than to summon a flatbed. Finally I had the bright idea that this was something related to the climate preconditioning, and fired up Entune on my phone from within the malfunctioning vehicle. Not 20 seconds after trying to start climate preconditioning again via the app the car turned off, finally.

Once off in the normal manner it then turned on in the normal manner in turn, and I was able to drive it the rest of the afternoon without incident.

Weird, eh?

I've been sitting in the new house most of this morning. Things I've noticed:

1) They did a crap job of sealing the front door, which is amusing given the green build aspect.

There's visible daylight under there and it's whistling up a storm today. I let the construction superintendent know and I trust that this will be resolved when I come back on Sunday from a brief vacation.

2) With no window coverings up there's quite a bit of southern sun exposure in the mornings from the great room's tall window bank. I got here and the thermostat was set to 70 and the actual temperature 70. I set it to 60. 2.5 hours later it is now... 71 degrees. :

:notbadobama:

3) In-duct humidifier doesn't seem to be able to keep up. I have the humidity set at 40% desired in the thermostat to challenge it. It's wavering between 21 and 22% now, whereas Google Weather says ambient air is nearly 40% at the moment. Hmph.

Finally ordered, after having an electric car of some sort since August 2013. No more 1 kW Level 1 charging: 10 kW from here on out.

(This actually will help in moving: otherwise the many trips back between the houses would sap the RAV4 EV's battery and I'd have to use the Land Cruiser.)

Over in the alt personal trans thread I noted that the 10% Federal tax credit for 2- and 3-wheeled EVs has been signed into law, extended to Dec 31, 2016 and retroactive back to Jan 1, 2016.

The glory days where Colorado's probably incorrectly-interpreted tax credit of its own applied to electric motorcycles are long gone, on the other hand, but the upside is that the machines are much better than in that era.

Anyway, to bring this to something of a point: I'm less than enthused about the value proposition of ~250W factory electric bicycles for commuting purposes, but am similarly not excited about spending an equal amount (~$3-4k) on another home-brewed Frankenstein machine that'd no doubt be about as reliable as the first two iterations of my electric bike.

I also don't have ample parking space: new house has a 2.5 car garage that'll barely fit the Land Cruiser and RAV4 EV as it is.

So... maybe, just maybe, a factory-supported electric motorcycle in my future, timed to catch the tax credit in the fall around the time of my bonus (which remains partially slated for more solar for the house, etc.)? It wouldn't really solve the issue of bad traffic on the roads between work and home as I couldn't justify poaching multi-use trails on it, however sparsely utilized. It would be fun, though, and fits with my general philosophy. Hmm.



Contender for this thought experiment: 2016 Zero FX. I'd have to pony up for the bigger battery for the tax credit, not to mention that the range with the small-packed one would be only good for commuting. Since we will have EVSE in the garage I might as well go for quick-charge as well (which I think gives it an SAE J1772 connector). After the tax credit that'd be an out the door price of just over $10k.

With the depreciation of these kinds of things it'd be much more prudent to get a used LEAF from out of state and take advantage of the Colorado (used and new alike as long as not registered here before) EV tax credit for 4-wheeled vehicles. The only things the Zero would have going for it would be fun and the ability to fit in the 0.5 section of the garage without booting my Land Cruiser unceremoniously to the street. Fun is worth something, though, right?

This does look like it would be fun: