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It’s been nearly two months since the last post, so an update is overdue.  We love this house and living in this area.  It’s nice to see deer, birds of all kinds (we particularly enjoy the hummingbirds and road runners) and other critters.  But u.W. (the small u is not a typo – see the last post for details) is not crazy about the large and creepy insects which are also abundant.

Anyone that has moved into a newly constructed house, or any house for that matter, can tell you that you’ll find issues.  Hopefully they are minor or insignificant, but often they are more that just annoying.  In our case, we had both.  There were some major issues and some much more insignificant.

Back in post 38 I mentioned tile problems where there was excessive lippage and poor tile to floor bonding.  After moving in we noticed more and more tiles that sounded hollow when you step on them.  All toll we found nearly 100 tiles that needed to be replaced.  There were bad tiles in every room except the powder room and the carpeted guest bedrooms.

On March 27 they started replacing tiles.  All of the furniture, appliances, and cabinets had to be covered to keep dust from accumulating on them.  We also had to move all of the furniture out of the way. The first two nights we stayed in the house.  On March 29 the builder came to check the progress and was astounded at the amount of mess and disruption.  He put us up in a hotel for the remainder of these repairs.  It was quite a mess. After the tile work was complete, the builder hired a cleaning company to thoroughly clean the entire house.

Since moving in, the weather has been mild.  There has been little need for heating or cooling.  The dehumidifier has kept the house comfortable.  However, one weekend we had our first overnight guests.  It was warmer that weekend and the house was a bit uncomfortable.  We set the thermostats to a lower temperature.  The A/C fan ran, but the air was not cold.  It became obvious that the compressor was not running.  We survived the weekend using the ceiling fans and our guests were gracious enough not to complain. 

We investigated the A/C issue and discovered that the heat pump did not have power.  It took a couple of trips from the electrics to determine that they had not connected the heat pump in the main electrical panel.  When the electricians installed the outlet and wiring for the generator connection, they moved some of the wiring in the electric panel.  The heat pump was never reconnected.  Once this was corrected the HVAC works fine.

On April 20 we were blessed with some much-needed rain.  In true Texas Hill Country fashion, it came all at once.  We got about 2” in less than and hour.  Not an extreme storm, but enough to cause some big problems for the GarageDominium.   Fortunately, no water entered the house.  However, the landscape work did not fair so well. 

The beautiful terrace retaining walls both toppled over.  Water ran down the hill toward the house, filled the terrace areas, and the pressure caused the walls to collapse.  Water ran down beside the house, through our man-made rocky riverbed, under the bridge to the shed, and out into the back yard.  Rain water was uncomfortably close to the foundation.  It is amazing how much water runs down the hill and off our roof during a 2” rain.  Our drainage system did not keep up well.

Back to the drawing board with the landscaper.  The original terrace walls were rock with mortar joints.  This created dams with no escape for the water.  He rebuilt the walls in a semi-dry stack fashion with gaps between many of the stones.

The landscaper also created a much larger rocky riverbed and berm in the front yard to divert water away from the garage.  He also made larger stone areas down the front slope to give water a better place to flow.

The end of the driveway was also a problem.  Lots of water runs down our expansive driveway.  It is supposed to flow from the driveway into our backyard.  Instead, much of the water flows from the driveway into the neighbor’s backyard.  To help this situation, the landscaper dug a larger rock filled trough at the end of the driveway.  He also made a small berm between the two yards.

After all of this work, we got more rain.  It rained about 2.25” on day and 2 days later rained another 2.25”.  The drainage worked better.  The terrace walls remained standing.  But water still came to close to the house and too much water went from the driveway into the neighbor’s yard.  We still have more work to do on this situation.  A truly big storm will be devastating.

Other than continuing to unpack and decorate that is about it for now.  In the next post I hope to have more uplifting news.