{"id":73,"date":"2020-12-26T21:20:45","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T03:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.northlat.biz\/?page_id=73"},"modified":"2022-02-02T13:12:30","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T19:12:30","slug":"things-we-learned-building-our-house","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/home\/ted-and-monas-pages\/things-we-learned-building-our-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Things We Learned Building Our House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_32\">Happily, we got most of these right, though we learned a few of them too late&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_34\"><strong>Stonework<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>the mortar for setting limestone veneer should be wetter than you think, and the scratch coat should be dry &#8211; the scratchcoat pulls the water from the setting mortar in about 15 seconds, and then the veneer sticks tenaciously<\/li><li>when pointing the stones, wait for the mortar to start to set before tryng to tool it, that will keep the stone face from being stained<\/li><li>if you build a jib boom, you can use an ordinary loader tractor to move stone and mortar to someone building a chimney on the roof<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_42\"><strong>Contractors<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>add a clause to every contract requiring written approval of any overruns or additions, before the work is done &#8211; you&#8217;ll still pay for the routine overruns but they can be somewhat controlled<\/li><li>Update 2022: We used Angie&#8217;s list with great results to vet contractors, but, sigh&#8230;, HomeAdvisor now controls &#8220;Angi&#8221;, and you can no longer get independent reviews on contractors<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_48\"><strong>Soil<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>soil thaws from the bottom up (from the heat of the earth) &#8211; Thanks Jim Vail! <\/li><li>even experienced site contractors won&#8217;t put enough pitch away from the house &#8211; keep after them until it&#8217;s obviously sloped away<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_54\"><strong>Heating<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>you MUST put a CO detector in a project when using portable propane or kerosene heaters<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_58\"><strong>Finish Woodwork<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>you need to have sophisticated tools and be prepared to hold tolerances to 10 mils or less when doing finish woodwork<\/li><li>use drywall screws behind the base molding in the corners to square and true the corners before nailing in the base<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_64\"><strong>Electrical<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>no holes in engineered structures such as trusses or joists<\/li><li>only meet code on arc-fault breakers, use regular breakers elsewhere &#8211; they&#8217;re an expensive nuisance<\/li><li>GFCI for all kitchen outlets, not just 6&#8242; to sink<\/li><li>staplers for Romex only work for about half the cabling, plastic straps with nails for the rest<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_74\"><strong>Tile<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>mortar the mortarboard to the floor before screwing it down<\/li><li>a mortar and tile shower is worth the considerable expense and time<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_80\"><strong>Deck<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>get stainless wire railing parts from a marine supplier, not a deck supplier (half price!)<\/li><li>use 70 lb\/sq ft design limits instead of 50 for a solid deck (we used 70 for the trusses, and 50 for the cross-beam, with nice results)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_86\"><strong>HVAC<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>put in as many zone dampers on your forced air system as you can afford &#8211; at least 3<\/li><li>have a contractor put in A\/C compressors &#8211; early failure is common and you want no warranty questions<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_92\"><strong>Plumbing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>use copper elbows to bring PEX out of the wall, don&#8217;t bring the PEX out<\/li><li>using a contractor for waste plumbing reassures the building inspector<\/li><li>septic designers drift toward overkill designs which are more readily approved, but can be very expensive to install &#8211; get recommendations for the designer from your installation contractor<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_100\"><strong>Carpentry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>you will own every type of pneumatic nailing\/stapling machine before you are done building &#8211; hammers are only useful to finish the occasionally machine-driven nail that doesn&#8217;t set<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_104\"><strong>Foundation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>don&#8217;t accept 3 steps into the house &#8211; push to use top-bearing floor joists, and carefully plan how grade interfaces with the foundation<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_108\"><strong>Utilities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>just because a utility says they will serve a site, doesn&#8217;t mean they will serve a site &#8211; CenturyLink (confirmed availability) wanted $3000, MidCom wanted $30,000 and Xcel (confirmed availability) gas wanted $300,000<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_112\"><strong>Money<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>yes, it will cost more than budgeted<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"h.p_ID_116\"><strong>Great Contractors<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Vail Builders<\/li><li>Dalum&#8217;s Electric Service<\/li><li>Hugo Painting and Drywall<\/li><li>Penguin Insulation<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happily, we got most of these right, though we learned a few of them too late&#8230; Stonework the mortar for setting limestone veneer should be wetter than you think, and the scratch coat should be dry &#8211; the scratchcoat pulls the water from the setting mortar in about 15 seconds, and then the veneer sticks&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/home\/ted-and-monas-pages\/things-we-learned-building-our-house\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Things We Learned Building Our House<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":602,"parent":71,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73\/revisions\/599"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}