Warm Concrete and Nearly Finished Garage

Hey there folks,

Not to worry, I haven’t forgotten about you, this blog, or documenting my awesome project. Just had an overwhelming amount of distractions, real-life responsibilities, and overall not so fun stuff to keep me from writing.  What might you say? Let’s see, how about:  Graduate school finals… Website deadlines… Grandmother who messed up her computer… Neighbor who caught a nasty virus on his computer… And fighting with the University who gave me a pretend scholarship that isn’t actually real. LOTS OF FUN!

So progress! There’s been plenty!

Probably the most notable and fantastic is WE’VE GOT HEAT! Not just boiler churning through massive amounts of oil to get the slab up to temperature heat (well that happened too), but the type of heat that radiates from the concrete below and feels warm to your inner being. It took two full days of our boiler running absolutely wide open to get the massive piece of rock our house is anchored to up to temperature, but now that it’s there everything is so comfortable and our heating system just coasting along barely needing to turn itself on throughout the day. Friday was a spectacularly sunny, but very cold day and the boiler didn’t even cycle once during the time I was up there in the afternoon.  The sun was shining through the windows deep into of the house generating so much heat that the thermostats actually rose 5-8° Fahrenheit above their setting. Check out how everything lights up with a bit of sun and snowy white carpet.

From the Front… What a Beautiful Day!

Back to the Rear! What you say… Does it almost look like winter?

The Grand Room… Look How Deeply the Sun Penetrates

My Family Room… Toasty!

Looking at the View from My Family Room

It’s Almost like you’re outside

More Lovely Sunshine in the Porch

Is Anyone Skiing at Bigrock?

The Sun Is Warming Everything!

The next big push that has happened over the last few days and will probably finish up tomorrow is getting everything closed in and warm inside the garage. With this crazy, unseasonal 50° warm weather the builders decided to take advantage of the weather and finish up the garage when it wasn’t freezing cold. The electrician made quick work of wiring up the entire garage and pulled almost 1000 feet of romax off its reel to get everything ready for Jerry and Mike to insulate/sheetrock and Gary to get pumping heat through the floor. Why heat in the garage? Well, it’s all attached and we decided to go with a monolithic slab (no frost walls) so to keep everything safe from moving and freezing up we decided that we’d heat the garage to a low temperature. Who minds pulling into a toasty warm garage anyways?

So my b-team photographer was the only one on staff tonight (sorry dad) so the only picture we’ve got is one of the front with the first garage door installed and a second looking at a pile of stuff underneath the finished ceiling. There will be more photos to follow most certainly tomorrow.