Rain water - how to keep it out of the basement

A week or so ago, we had a day of rain. We needed it, but the house was not ready, at least to the point where rain would not come in.

While working on the low-voltage wiring (Friday, July 13th), I saw a storm approaching. I decided I would clean up so the rain water would not mix with wood chips and sawdust. I started sweeping and moving other things like a newly delivered door.

Sure enough, the storm hit. It was mostly wind, but rain did come. After a few minutes of hearing rain on the house, I started to see it pour in the cold storage. I went upstairs and saw the rain coming off the house (no gutters yet) and into the porch forms. We don't have a porch yet either.

It was good I got things cleaned up, but the water still was a mess to work around.

That night, I decided to rig up a plastic tarp over the porch because we had storms in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday. Here is a picture of the result.

A storm hit Saturday afternoon. I was still working and got to witness my work. I did have to adjust the flow over the plastic a bit, but it worked great. Just some minimal water, but nothing like before.

I sent a txt to Jesse and told him what I did. I hope it was OK!

It's a Small World

We know we live in a small town when we run into our builder and our job super at Home Depot.

Rob & I were picking up some last minute items we needed before we started our dry radiant installation.  We were discussing which right angle drill we should purchase when Jesse showed up.  We don't know how he found us.  It's a really big store, but he walked right up to us (it was like he knew exactly where we were) and we had a mini-site conference right then and there. 

I asked him how he found us and he just laughed and said, "Oh, you know." 

No - I don't.  Are we loud talkers?  Does he have a special ability to track his home owners?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Just over a week later, we were back at the big Orange store so Rob could show me the A/V panel that HD carries and Justin walked by and recognized us so he came over and we had a nice chat.

He gets really excited about things and starts making all kinds of suggestions about what we can do to really make our house super cool!  We are like, yeah, that sounds great.  Will YOU pay for it because we don't want to.  But he also offers practical suggestions too....like using a gorilla rack (or something similar) for the A/V equipment instead of buying a more expensive customized rack.

We are taking bets on whom we will run into next.

A week can sure change things

I've been out of town for a week now and Rob just got back from traveling for a couple of days.  When he pulled up to the lot early this morning THIS is what he found!

He sent me this picture and I just had to put it up quickly. 

We have Windows!  We have Shingles!  We have Tyvek Wrap!

We have a house. 

I'm not sure what things look like inside.  The plumber, electrician and heating subs have been hard at work.  Hopefully Rob will snap some good pictures because by the time I get back home the four-way inspection will be complete and they will be starting on sheetrock.

In other news, the baby is gorgeous and is settling into life nicely, but that's another story (on another blog).

A Wish. Granted.

July 3
Karen asked that I take a picture of the view to the east out the window of the guest bedroom.  She's excited about being able to come up with Hannah.  Karen brought her with when she was helping us with the dry radiant and Hannah made herself right at home.  At one point she headed upstairs and we heard her walking around the main floor exploring.  Next thing I knew I saw her peeking out the hole for the sliding door looking at us through the unfinished deck.  She saw Karen and came running down the stairs so she could be close to her mommy again.  Funny dog!  I think she'll like coming to visit too.

I think we'll place the bed so this is the view that you will see when you wake up in the morning.  I'm going to have to make sure that the landscaping doesn't block this amazing view.  There will eventually be a house across the street, but unless it is a three story mansion it shouldn't block too much of the view.  Imagine falling asleep to the moon shining on the mountainside and then waking up to the sun peeking up over the peaks.

I don't know if you noticed the little rock wall out the window. 
Yes, folks...I get not one, but TWO rock walls. 

Mark (with the track hoe) did a great job finishing the rock wall in the backyard.  Rob was unhappy about the extra expense but we both agreed that if we didn't take care of it now, it probably would never happen.  It creates such a cozy gathering area in the lower yard and will be a lovely area for a fire pit. 

Because the rocks are stacked with so much surface showing on the top it almost looks like an amphitheater.  I'm anxious to see how the dirt settles over the summer and I'm sure a couple of good rainstorms will help.

It's fun to walk around the house and start thinking about how we want to use our yard.  I'm starting to research WaterWise and FireWise landscaping ideas.  I'm a little discouraged at how sandy our backyard turned out to be.  But if I think about it we are building on what used to be the beach for Lake Bonneville.

This picture was taken the evening of July 3rd. The roofers got the roofing felt up, the plumbers got a good start on the rough plumbing and the heating crew dropped off their trailer. 

Rob and I stayed up at the lot to watch the firework show.  There were three other groups that drove up to watch them from the hill above our house.  I'm sure Laurie & Bryce's neighborhood was much more crowded, but they are much closer to the show.  We had a perfect view from our driveway.  As soon as the finale ended we closed up the back of the truck, jumped in and headed down the hill.  We got to 16th East and turned left just moments before all the traffic heading north got there.  If we'd been two minutes slower we would have had to wait for a kind driver to stop long enough to let us turn left.  When we got to the duplex we realized there were even more cars on 12th East; the line of cars going by our house was pretty steady until about 11:30. 

Dry Radiant Heat

Rob & I have gone back and forth several times on whether or not we were going to use radiant heat through the whole house.  We wanted to, but were worried about the cost.  If we'd had Visionary include radiant heating in our quote we figure it would have added at least 20 grand to the total.  It may have even cost more than that by the time they re-engineered the house to support the layer of gypcrete that they would have put down over the tubing on the main floor.

First we thought we'd just use radiant in the basement and forced air on the main floor.  Then we got to the point where we decided to run baseboards to heat the the main floor.  I was a little leery of keeping the great room warm with the large expanse of floor, minimal walls, a large sliding door to the deck and plenty of windows, but was reassured that it would be fine.

In the meantime, Rob and I kept talking about it, asking questions and researching online.  When it was almost time to order everything we FINALLY made our final decision to run PEX through the joists under the subfloor.  Once that decision was made then we had several more decisions to consider.  How were we going to "hang" or support the tubing?  How were we going to keep the nails from the hardwood floor installation from going through the tubes?  How were we going to insulate between floors? 

The guys at Peterson Plumbing were invaluable as they offered advice and answered all of our questions.  They suggested using heat transfer plates in conjunction with the tubing and flatly stated that the foil bubble layer was basically a waste of money. 

Ray did a heat loss calc for us and Rob started planning the loops for each of the zones.  This was a lot more complicated than what we did in the basement floor; designing and installing required a lot more attention to detail and flexibility when adjustments needed to be made.

The heat transfer plates are made out of aluminum so they are excellent conductors of heat and allow the heat to transfer to the subfloor above, (this is the ideal - heating the floor above by conduction and convection).  In ideal situations the plates are stapled directly to the subfloor but because we are having hardwood installed in our great room our builder asked us to fasten the heat transfer plates to the top "I" part of the joist.  This put the tube about an inch below the subfloor. 

Justin suggested running an extra loop or two under the shower for an extra toasty floor in the winter and avoiding the joist where the dryer vent runs out of the house, but #1 - I forgot to review my notes before we actually started doing the installation and #2 - that would have made a complicated situation even trickier.  But we probably could have managed to avoid the dryer vent if we'd thought about it ahead of time.  (I can't remember why we were supposed to do that though - was it to keep that spot in the floor from getting extra hot?  was it to keep the vent hose from getting too warm?  I didn't right down the reason why in my notes, and am afraid it's too late to do anything about it at this point.)

It took the framers a little longer than expected to finish up so we weren't able to get started until Thursday night.  Rob and I started out by measuring and marking the locations of the rooms upstairs and the areas where we didn't need to run any tubing (the stairs, the pantry, under the cabinets and in closets).  It took a little while to get used to thinking upside down as we marked the ceiling above us.  Then we tried walking the loops from the mechanical room, out and back again.  It was both a help and a hindrance to have the joists to work with. 

Thanks to our amazing helpers we were able to finish up in three (long) days.  Granddad and Mark and Emily helped us out on Friday, Karen and Steven helped us Saturday and Granddad and Grandma came over after their shift at the temple and helped (I wish I'd gotten a picture of Grandma up on the ladder!), on Monday, Mark and Emily came and helped us get finished up.  Grandma also helped by keeping Noah so his mom and dad could come work.  And it was HARD work.  We needed 1" holes drilled in the joists for the PEX to run through.  We needed the total linear feet of tubing pulled off the coil and fed through the holes in the joists.  We needed to have the heat transfer plates stapled to the joists.  AND this was all done overhead while standing on ladders.  Rob looked into renting scaffolding but the lowest available was 5' and that would have put the men too high so we used ladders.

We revamped the process several times as we worked through the house.  The first loop we measured and drilled the holes, ran the tube and stapled the plates.  Doing it this way allowed us to be precise, but it was slow and there was quite a bit of time where Emily & I had nothing to do.  So while Rob, Mark and Dad were working their way throught the second loop Emily & I realized that we could help get a little bet ahead and started to mark the spots where we would need to drill through the joists.  We also marked out where each loop should start and begin and added a couple of arrows here and there to signify which way the loops needed to run.  Then, the person with the drill followed us and then we got the tubing up.  Rob realized it would be a more efficient use of our time to run all the tubing and then staple up the plates.

It was quite a team effort to get the tubing up.  Mark likened it to lacing a shoe.  We'd have one person managing the tubing at the uncoiler, one or two people managing the tubing in the yard or in the house (depending on where we were working), and someone managing where the tube was running through the joists.  Then we had to approximate the correct amount of tubing to run down each joist and back again.  We also had to keep track of where the tubing went in and out through the walls.  Amazingly, we only wrapped the PEX around a stud one time. 

We did have to revamp a couple of loops, but overall Rob's plan worked pretty well. 
We were so grateful to family who came to help.  Rob and I COULD have done this by ourselves but it would have taken so much longer.  Thanks to Steven, Granddad, Grandma, Karen, and Mark and Emily.  Bryce & Laurie brought over a nice tall ladder and let us borrow their air compressor and pneumatic stapler, which ended up being a lifesaver for us. 

Green paint represents walls between rooms upstairs.Red paint indicates areas that we didn't need to heat.  The pink numbers tell us where to stop and end each loop.  Rob thinks I had way too much fun spray painting the house.  Emily and I did "tag" it in a couple of spots and he was not amused.

The straight tubes are supply and return lines for kitchen loops.  An advantage of drilling through the joists is that it holds the tube up and at the height we need.

Depending on where we started running the tubing, some of it "hung" in between the joists and some of it fell to the floor.  The family room looked a bit like a bowl of spaghetti at one point.

Once all the tubing was in place we went back through and stapled up the plates.  Then we worked together to lift and place the tubing, adjusting for tension and length as needed.  At one point we had three ladders standing next to each other spaced two joists apart.  Rob, Emily and Mark stapled up four (or six?) plates and handed off the stapler to the next person, then they would move their ladder to the front of the line and get ready for the next hand off.  It was a pretty effective way of getting a lot done quickly. 

It would have gone much more quickly if we'd been able to staple directly to the sub floor.  We actually did that in three or four places where the corners were just a little too tight.  When we told Justin we did that he asked us to mark the area on the subfloor above it. 

This picture shows the transfer plates stapled to the top of the joists and one (cut in half) stapled right to the subfloor.

These guys worked so hard.  I was uber impressed with Rob.  He manhandled every inch of tubing that went up, sometimes two or three times.  He pulled and pushed it through the holes in the joists, he coaxed it around tight corners and just kept going.

Doesn't this make your neck sore just looking at them?

A finished loop!

Rob went back after he dropped me off at the airport and built a box to control the chaos of the tubes coming into the mechanical room. Isn't he clever?

Update from Rob

July 5
-  Rain all day leads to water in the basement! The front porch acts as a catch basin because it is still waiting to catch concrete. The water ended up in the cold storage and spread out from there. I had to uncover the drain in the mechanical and remove a plug. I also swept out a bunch of water out the doorway in the office.

- The heating guys were busy in the attic. They installed several if not all the vents. I feel like the cold air / hot air return vents should be lower in the room. We'll have to figure that out by talking to Jesse.

The blower, heater, and AC evaporator are in the attic mechanical room above the garage. 


Once we decided we were doing whole house radiant heat we had to decide if we wanted air conditioning and where we wanted it. Because we only have one basement window facing south and one facing west we figured we could get away without running AC in the basement. We will crack windows and install ceiling fans and believe that will keep the basement appropriately cool during the summers. This allowed us to save a little bit of money, but mostly saved us from having to run ductwork in the basement ceiling. However we needed a home for the equipment so Visionary created a little room above our garage. It took Rob a couple of days to recognize the room above the garage for what it was (which I thought was hilarious). We opted to include a heater in this equipment as a back-up (you know how computer guys like their back-up systems).
- No sign of the plumbers or roofers today, but they were here earlier in the week.  Boy do these guys work fast. 

Just a note - I (Sue) am currently out of state on "Baby Watch 2012" so Rob is responsible for taking pictures and getting them onto the blog with a bit of explanation.  If I understand enough of what's going on and have something to say, I will add my own commentary to the post in italics.  If YOU have something to say, feel free to comment.  We like to hear from you.

Rain, Rain, Rain ...

Everyone in Utah was praying for rain to stop the wild fires. I was wondering if we would make it to a closed in house before it rain, but praying for rain like everyone else. When it rains and your house is not closed up, you get water in the house. The unfinished porch ended up as a catch basin and sent the water to the cold storage.

I activated the basement drain by removing the plastic cover and test plug. I also swept out a bunch. We had a few inches over the drain and about a half inch in other places.