Thanksgiving

Below are a few random pictures from Thanksgiving, a day that seemed especially poignant to us this year, given all that we have to be thankful for around our new home. The septic field and all the back yard grading are now in, shown in the first picture, ready for state inspection. Cabinets are being installed, shown in pantry and stacked up ready to install in kitchen. Doors are going up, shown are front closet doors. Stairs and all the interior carpentry finishing work is in progress. The red birch floor is down on the mainfloor, a small uncovered segment is shown below. Meanwhile, outdoors, our carpenty crew is finishing the siding, and the masons are finishing the stone columns that support the porch. Last, but not least, the electricians are doing all the panel wiring, including then new generator, shown in the last picture. The house is now being heated by the geothermal system that is functional. Great to have heat without propane in NE! We are now in the race to the finish, starting our packing at 7 Juniper Lane, which we will vacate after 26.5 years on Jan 15, 2011!

November progress

The first few pictures show some new trees planted to screen the house. Very exciting to see some trees. They are at top of our driveway and along the north side of drive. The masons finished the front porch piers this week except for the granite caps to be placed) and are now working on the piers under the back porch. The picture looking up the driveway shows where the water runoff collects, so we are going to build a small pond there. The picture of the back yard shows the excavation being done to finish the leach field and add a rain garden to collect runnoff water (stones under mulch in circular area close to lake).

The next 5 pictures are indoors. Fireplace is finished (except for hearth stone to be cut) and the plastering is all done. The hardwood floor is in and ready for sanding. In the basement (3rd pic) the trim and doors are almost done. The 4th pic shows the geothermal heating/cooling units, which are now operational pumping water out of one high flow well (we hit 50-80 gallons of water per minute at 150 ft) and pumping back into a second well. The last picture shows the neat plumbing of the 2 well systems, with variable speed pumps, one for geothermal, one for domestic water. Since they are variable speed, only a very small (stainless steel) holding tank is required, instead of the large ones usually associated with wells, and the variable speed pumps are much more energy efficient.

Lots of progress still needed before our move in by Jan 15!

Fall colors at the site

This weekend we took in the dock. The water had gotten a bit cold, so we donned our wetsuits. It was a beautiful sunny day, so here are a few misc pictures of the site.

Wells and geothermal

We decided to put in geothermal heating/cooling, which requires a source of ground temperature water to pump through a geothermal heat pump and return to the ground. In rocky NE, this normally requires a very deep well to pump from and back in to, so the water temperature can equilibrate before it is pumped back in. At any rate, we had our well drilled and by 150 feet they hit 50-80 gallons per minute of water, so much they had to stop drilling to avoid a flood! This is good, but today they had to drill a second well, and fortunately also hit plenty of water at 130' so they can pump out of one well and back into the other, an optimal geothermal arrangement. Shown below is the large drilling rig. If you don't quite get the geothermal concepts above, don't worry, it took Jack many hours of study.

Siding, windows and interior drywall

Lots happening the past 2 weeks, inside and out. All the insulation is in, sprayed foam covered by blown in batts. Wall board is starting to go up, shown below is Jack's sutdy in loft. On outside, windows are mostly in and siding is going up. Clapboards in places and cedar shakes in others. Notice in the picture below how they weave the outside corners of the clapboards. Very fine carpentry in my opinion.

Standing seam roof

We had a long search to find a roof color that matched siding, trim and windows, but we finally found it and are very happy to see it going up. They pre-paint large rolls of the steel, and form it on site in the truck shown below, while others are on roof installing each piece. A few roof shots follow.

Stone work, fireplace and chimney

The masons have been busy this month putting up stone veneer around the base of the house, building the fireplace and chimney, and putting stone around the surface of fireplace and chimney. We selected a natural Vermont stone called Old Chester from a quarry about one hour from our house. Below are various stages of the work.

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