Almost a day and a half of digging from our friends at Hallford Excavating left us with about 600 ft of 3′ wide, 6-8′ deep trench in the back yard. Here you can see the trench closest to you which holds the two plastic pipes which exit the house and head towards the backyard behind the hedge. One of the pipes takes the liquid into the house, the other sends it out.

Below is a picture of the location of the manifold, the two pipes running to the house connect to the manifold and then the actual loops are connected to this manifold. The manifold was placed behind the hedge so that the loops could be laid in the back yard where there are no underground sprinklers.

Below a look at one of the three trenches dug to lay the loop, the three trenches are all just a bit under 200′ long each.

Below is a closeup of the pipe (loop) that is laid in these three trenches, this loop pulls about 4 degrees out of the ground and carries it into the house via a water / chemical mix running through these pipes;

and here is a shot taken from the back of our property showing the extent of the earth that was moved for this part of the project;

We have now started remodeling the guest room with the same hardwood floor as Dylan’s flooring. To give myself a break I rented a pneumatic floor nailer, much easier than the manual nailer although they really get you on the rental price. Dylan was present for this install and was excited about helping, it wasn’t long before he was installing the hardwood floor all by himself. Shortly after teaching how to hit the nailer and giving him the opportunity to hit it while I held it, Napolean was handling the nailer all by himself.

After teaching him how to nail the hardwood floor, I showed him how to select the correct piece of wood (quality of finish, warping, and the correct length [so that breaks are staggered]) and how to pound it into place.

He was then doing the job all by himself, yes, the pictures you are viewing are actual shots of him in action (using the sports mode of my camera) laying approximately 12 11′ 6″ long rows of Bellawood rustic maple 3/4″ hardwood flooring with a pneumatic floor nailer.

The brutal heat last summer was enough to push us over the edge, this long with the fact that pellets are costing us $2 a day and leaving the house with cold spots made this a no brainer. These are the house plans detailing the HVAC system, orange indicates ‘runs’ going upstairs, yellow indicates downstairs runs, blue indicates return duct, and yellow indicates supply duct. The red line towards the middle of the house details a wall to be put up, blocking off access from the garage to the downstairs, while the red line at the bottom details an addition which provides additional access to the downstairs from the room off of the garage.

(Click for larger view)

Before

(spare the comments about the paint job)

3 days later

The above was done mostly with a drywall [hand] saw, but partially with a circular saw. The circular saw did a GREAT job but kicked up so much dust. If you notice the top left of the picture you will notice a fan which shoots air into our open foyer and therefor the living room, dining room, kitchen, and upstairs [bedrooms], the house was full of dust, my son thought there was a fire. This cut out takes care of almost half of the trunkline, the rest being separated from the living area, will be done with the circular saw.

A couple problems encountered when cutting out the drywall;

Where the trunkline is to cut through the wall, its load bearing, also theres a pesky electrical wire. Luckily there is a wall 3ft in one direction and about 5ft in another direction which will help support the load when I take down a stud in the wall. The trunkline will have to move a bit to get around the wire though.

There are lights in the ceiling so what did you expect? Apparently I wasn’t thinking so I expected nothing. This will have to be cut and rerouted, hopefully without cutting down anymore drywall.

Today we had a truck of Missoula River Rock delivered from Dolandson Brothers Ready Mix Inc in Hamilton. We have a 3ft x 150ft strip along the driveway that has a border, it has recently been cleaned out and covered with a liner, this is where the bulk of the rock was needed. We also did the same with a 6ft x 16ft on the south west side of the house and a 22ft x 4ft area along the south side of the house. Providing Donaldsons Brothers with these measurements, at 2 inches thick they calculated that we would require “5 yards”.

The rock varies in color dull shades of red, gray, white, and brown. A good percentage of the rock was dirty and there was a bit of dirt in the load but it shouldn’t take long to naturally clean itself.

This post will cover the installation of Bellawood “rustic maple” hardwood flooring from Lumber Liquidators; per Bellawood and the way it was actually installed. The flooring is 3/4 ” thick solid, tongue and groove, prefinished hardwood strip flooring that comes in random lengths (from 10 to 82 inches). The flooring is nailed down with blind-nails (cleats), set with a specialized hardwood flooring nailing machine over a wood subfloor. The product I used to nail down the floor is the Bostitch MFN200 Manual Flooring Cleat Nailer.

The subfloor should be contructed of 5/8 inch or thicker plywood, when installed over 16 inch center joists. My subfloor was 3/4 inch on 16 inch centered joists

I ordered 17 boxes (360sqft) of Bellawood 3/4″ x 3-1/4″ Rustic Maple Flooring. A fedex semi arrived with a lift gate and pallet jack. Upon arrival damage to the boxes was observed.

The extent of the damage appears to be limited to the packaging, the wood itself looks very nice; straight and unscuffed.

before;

after;

1 truckload of topsoil was brought to the house and spread over the area during grading;

sod delivery;

laying the sod;

23 skip (Schipkaensis) laurels planted along the side of our driveway. before;

after;

water booster pump,
originally uploaded by LanShark.

the first step in preparing for sod was figuring out our water situation, we knew our water pressure was weak and inconsistent so we needed a plan to water the entire front yard effectively and consistently. ideally one would also test this plan before hand but we will get to that later…

i did some research and found good reviews for the davey water booster pump.

before installing the pump i measured the water pressure at the faucet outside and found it to fluctuate between 25 and 50 psi. the install of the pump was as easy as a little cpvc and teflon tape. weve been using the pump for a week now and we find that it quietly and consistely provides 60psi at the faucet.