It is July 16. The plan for this week was to do final plumbing, electrical and roofing on Monday so that termite pretreatment could be done on Tuesday and start insulation on Wednesday. The cornice crew should also be here this week. Good plan, but execution not so much. U.W. and I went to the GarageDominium on Monday to see if everything was ready. Nope. Not ready. The roofing is not complete. Some areas need the steel roofing panels and other areas need flashing.
While we were there on Monday, it rained! We’ve had so little rain this summer, that the lake and river are drying up. Needless to say, this was a welcome shower. Additionally, it let us check for roof leaks. The only leak was where the roof was not yet complete.
On Tuesday the plumbers worked on completing their punch list. The list includes installing the Aquor house hydrants, moving the whole house water shut off valve, and extending the septic tank connections. Our specifications include a whole house water shut off valve inside the house. This valve eliminates the need to go to the water meter near the street and use a special tool to shut off the water. This valve can prevent a lot of water leak damage and makes plumbing maintenance and modifications easier. Shutting off water to the house is a good practice when the house will be vacant for an extended time such as when vacationing. We’ve had friends and family come home to flooded houses due to plumbing problems that happened while they were away.
The plumbers installed a valve in the garage near the main water line. I thought this was the whole house water shut off valve. They installed it in the wall. Sheetrock will cover the valve so we can’t get to it without installing a box of some sort. I don’t know why they did that, and we told them to make the valve more accessible.
The next day we tested the Aquor house hydrants and decided to make sure the water shutoff valve worked also. The hydrants work great. The shutoff valve didn’t. I took a closer look at the water lines and discovered that the valve that I thought was a whole house valve only shuts off one hydrant. We hunted and could not find a whole house shut off valve. We had to call the plumbers back out.
That same day Massey Services did the termite pretreatment. We also purchased their Pest Protection Plus (PPP) service which provides a more extensive pest control treatment inside the walls. I discussed the treatment procedure with the technician and did not come away confident that they did it correctly. After talking to the sales representative and service manager, they agreed to come back and do the PPP again (or for the first time). While it was disappointing that they had to come out again, Massey made sure the job was done right.
The cornice crew still has siding to do. However, the project manager noticed that some roof flashing that was needed prior to completing the siding was not done. Another setback. The cornice crew did not show up to do the siding work anyway.
The garage door representative came by the house on Tuesday while we were there. The garage doors will be here soon. However, the garage door springs and rails will not be installed as high on the wall as I thought. He said there is not enough room above the dormer windows and the framing is not adequate in that location. Big disappointment and frustration. The whole point of the high ceiling is to have very high clearance. The doors will cut that clearance by several feet. However, we can help the situation running the rails parallel to the sloped ceiling. The doors won’t be as high as I would like, but there should still be plenty of vertical clearance.
On the positive side, Airtron has fixed the holes in the return plenum and electricians installed the last of the can lights in the bathrooms. We also received cabinet finish samples.
Insulators had already pushed back to Thursday due to these setbacks. Then the insulators let the project manager know that they can’t do our job until next week. On step forward and two steps back.
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