Down with the old & Up with the new
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Cheese
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Well, the good news is that the garage passed the initial electrical inspection today. So I can now start filling standard sized stud cavities with fiberglass batts and filling smaller sized stud cavities with foam board. While the foam board can be a real PITA to install, it does have a higher R value for 6" stud construction. Foam board layered, is R-27.5 while high performance fiberglass is R-21...or R-19 if you opt for the easier to find, cheaper version.
However, the cheaper R-19 isn't really that much cheaper. A package of R-19 unfaced batts costs $50 while the same sized package of R-21 batts costs $51. And while R-21 batts are optimized for use in 2x6 construction, R-19 batts must be compressed down to 5-1/2" which reduces the R value to R-17. So saving a single buck results in a 20% reduction of R value.
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However, the cheaper R-19 isn't really that much cheaper. A package of R-19 unfaced batts costs $50 while the same sized package of R-21 batts costs $51. And while R-21 batts are optimized for use in 2x6 construction, R-19 batts must be compressed down to 5-1/2" which reduces the R value to R-17. So saving a single buck results in a 20% reduction of R value.
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Cheese
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The temporary service door was removed and the new one was installed. These new doors are heavy...I didn't realize it but this is a full-view thermo-pane door with wooden panels attached to the glass to give it the appearance of 4 individual lights. That makes sense, as it's easier to maintain the integrity of a large single thermo-pane as opposed to 4 smaller individual items. It has a 3-point latching mechanism and I'm pretty impressed overall with the robustness of the design. We'll see, as the winter weather will certainly point out any foibles inherent with the package.
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Lighting at night really brings out the splendor of these doors and helps to soften their appearance and make them part of the landscape...exactly what's needed for an urban area.
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Here's the garage door.
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Lighting at night really brings out the splendor of these doors and helps to soften their appearance and make them part of the landscape...exactly what's needed for an urban area.
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Here's the garage door.
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rmwarren
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Looking great [member=44099]Cheese[/member]
Trying to orient everything. I assume the service doors face the house and the garage door is on a rear alley?
Things are looking remarkably finished. Aside from the electric service, are there any other major delays or will you wrap up the rest of construction soon?
RMW
Trying to orient everything. I assume the service doors face the house and the garage door is on a rear alley?
Things are looking remarkably finished. Aside from the electric service, are there any other major delays or will you wrap up the rest of construction soon?
RMW
Cheese
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Richard/RMW said:
Yes, the service door does face the house, that along with the casement windows was meant to provide a welcoming effect from a structure as large as it is. Just today, when looking at the garage from the loft skylight, the garage appears to be taller than the house...that was a surprise. [eek] I'm going to pull some tapes tomorrow. [scared]
Actually, things are looking pretty good despite the electrical debacle. The electrical Xcel connection was supposed to be on the 11th with final sign-off on the 15th. That whole historical district thing and them sitting on their thumbs, still rubs me the wrong way so I decided to back-feed the garage from the house today. [mad] I figured the city would not be connecting any electrical services on Saturday, Sunday or Christmas day...that was a pretty safe bet. [smile]
Besides, I left a large sign on the meter socket box that advised caution as I was back feeding from the house, I'm sure they'll have something to say about that. I'm pretty cognizant about when they show up and I certainly don't want to endanger anyone. I just wish they exhibited the same amount of care/concern for a homeowner.
No electricity in April is one thing...no electricity in December is another...shame on Xcel. How do you even actuate the garage door opener without juice? If this was last year, that red electrical cord would be buried under 30" of snow...I just lucked out this year. [smile]
That looks awesome, [member=44099]Cheese[/member]. I love the look of the new doors. Once you get the insulation up, will you be able to finish the interior walls and ceiling? Or do you need another inspection? Can you get some temporary heat out there?
Cheese
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BarneyD said:
Thanks for the kind words Barney...at this point those beautiful doors don't lock because additional parts were missing, at this point electricity will be connected but it will be sometime ??? in the future, at this point another inspection is required but it will be...???...whenever. At this time the ONLY SINGLE thing I can control is the temporary heat issue. [smile]
I've ranted before but I will continue to sing my song [smile] that this is the reason I do things myself...all of these issues I can control when I do the work myself...however, I cannot control any of these issues when I leave them for others to perform.
I don't mean to demean the trades, I support them fully, my father was a HVAC guy for over 45 years, but I do offer up this example of what happens on a relatively simple project when things go awry. Communication is imperative between all of the trades, don't consider your work is done once you've left the job site. Your work or lack of work does impact the other trades that follow you.
So, with the local official electricity hookup time frame remaining in limbo, and the outdoor temperatures trending downwards, I recently purchased a Milwaukee space heater to attempt to push things further in my favor.
It's pretty slick, it's small lightweight and QUIET. It has a variable output from 30,000 BTU's to 70,000 BTU's.
The typical kerosene heater is loud, noisy and smelly. This Milwaukee unit is really quiet when throttled back to minimal heat which (I assume is 30,000 BTU's).
As an example, the garage is 750 sq ft with an upstairs attic space, the daytime temperature is 39º and after running it for 3 hours on the minimum heat level, the garage temperature was 54º. I find this to be pretty impressive considering there is virtually NO insulation in the garage at this time.
mino
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Aand, dear kids, this is why "master contractors" are as paid as they are.Cheese said:
The real problem comes .. when they do not care and fudge it while still taking their full cut ..
I see the exact same problem in IT. It is oh so easy to get a good programmer, good network guy, good DBA etc. BUT. Getting them to talk to each other .. oh man. And that is even ignoring the "customer has no clue what needs, but a lot of clues what wants".
When it happens (once in a lifetime) that the customer wants what he actually needs .. it even becomes harder as the whole "community" of IT people is just so conditioned to customer spewing bull they are utterly flabergasted when one knows one's stuff.
Eventually, if one has the know-how, and the time, it is almost relaxing to drive the thing oneself and just sub-contract some very well defined specialist pieces. There is a LOT of emotional satisfaction seeing the result just grow before one. And knowing there are no skeletons hidden in the walls ...
I see the exact game play in (building) construction. Thumbs up!
Sparktrician
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rvieceli said:
Here in northern Virginia, one can get a "partial" inspections, allowing close-in (insulation/drywall) before the final inspection when the utility has gotten off their butts and actually done some work. YMMV...
Tom the Remodeler
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mino said:
^^This^^
I am a licensed general contractor serving the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. While I'm trying to focus on building doors/windows, I invariably get called in to produce remodeling projects (these days, kicking and screaming). I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked with many lovely clients, most of whom are happy to pay the premium to have the project professionally run. Even so, I suspect most customers don't fully appreciate the hours/days/weeks of work that go into coordinating all of the different trades before the project begins, let alone all of the wrangling that occurs mid-stream.
That being said, one key is to make sure you're using trade partners (plumbers, electricians, HVAC, framers, etc....) who know each other and work with each other regularly. This way, it's not unusual to hear the electrician say something like "well, I know the guys at Acme HVAC prefer it if we mount the disconnect box here instead of there, so we'll make sure they're taken care of", and so on. That beings said, it can take decades to cultivate those relationships, and access to those networks of relationships doesn't come cheap, so I can see why many people choose to self-contract....
Cheese, I realize it doesn't help you now, but FYI there was a moment a few years ago when new service drops were 6+ months out, so if there's a silver lining it's that new service drops are only a couple months out these days....
Cheese
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Sparktrician said:
Sparky [member=7493]Sparktrician[/member] ...you've made my day. That was absolutely hilarious as spoken by a person that obviously has some insight into current utility operations.
I'm waiting for them to install a meter which still needs to be "ORDERED". Are these meters made from gold or unobtanium? What's wrong with keeping a few of them in stock? It's just a flipping electric meter...nothing more...nothing less. A simple valve that records KWH usage.
rmwarren
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[member=44099]Cheese[/member] we are experiencing worsening supply chain issues in some areas, electrical components being one in my day job, industrial real estate. Extrapolating, but this likely extends to residential components. From other reading I know that electrical steel in particular is gumming up the works right now.
I've been experimenting with AI as a search engine on steroids, take it with a grain of salt however this is the response I'd got to the question whether the shortage of electrical steel is impacting residential electric meter availablity.
https://chat.openai.com/share/35d37981-4b9d-488a-b5d8-fc83c4a394a7
RE the validity of AI responses, my standing instructions to the AI is to provide links to references, and overall the responses I've received seem to be backed up by valid sources. YMMV
Anyway, doesn't help resolve your situation.
RMW
I've been experimenting with AI as a search engine on steroids, take it with a grain of salt however this is the response I'd got to the question whether the shortage of electrical steel is impacting residential electric meter availablity.
https://chat.openai.com/share/35d37981-4b9d-488a-b5d8-fc83c4a394a7
RE the validity of AI responses, my standing instructions to the AI is to provide links to references, and overall the responses I've received seem to be backed up by valid sources. YMMV
Anyway, doesn't help resolve your situation.
RMW
mino
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Yeah, As long as one is mindful the LLMs are very happy to "halucinate" answers, having no inherent "logic" to detect nonsense.Richard/RMW said:
For this they are a very useful search tool to find the actual primary source .. the only issue is that some vendors obfuscate the sources, so one needs to know to ask the model who stated that. Works very well that way.
Cheese
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rvieceli said:
That technology has been used on the water meter for the last 12 years or so. [smile] The electric company is playing catch-up in that regard.
Just had a new electrical meter installed on the house last month and I asked the guy a bunch of questions about it. He said standard meters turn in one direction, if you add solar panels, the meter has to be able to change directions if necessary. He also said that people that are installing car charging equipment for E vehicles need a completely different meter.
So, there are at least 3 different meter versions out there that need to be swapped around from time to time. However, he said the latest meter he installed can have its functionality changed by Xcel simply sending a signal to the meter. No swap outs required.
Curiously enough, he was also very quick to point out that the communication energy was very focused in traveling FROM the house and not INTO the house. He stated several times that the communication was outward only...this must have been a hot button for some customers. [eek]
Cheese
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Tom Gensmer said:
Tom, I hear you and agree with everything you've said. It's the lack of communication that brings this project to its knees at times. How should I say this...There are language issues at times and that exacerbates the situation. However, maintaining direct communication between similar speaking individuals and between different speaking individuals is imperative to driving the project forward in a timely manner. When the communication breaks down all is lost.
I'm sure you're familiar with the largest garage builder in the Twin Cities. They erect over 300 garages per year which means they need lots of construction crews. That also means the trade partners probably don't work with each other that often.
On this garage build I've had; 1 demo crew, 1 masonry crew, 3 different framing crews, 2 different roofing crews, 1 electrical crew & 2 different siding crews...keeping the communication channels open and coherent is a full time job for the project manager. Unfortunately, including my project, he has 60 other garage projects that he has to ride herd on from April to January.
All of these issues contribute to the lack of communication between the trades that are being contracted by the same builder. Some of these subs are located in Texas and Arizona so this work becomes supplemental income. Again, communication may not be really important to them because if they miss something in the construction process, they'll probably be back home before it's found by the local inspector. This has been the case in this garage build.
The original framing crew was already back in Texas before the framing inspector flagged some trusses that were not nailed off completely. The 2nd framing crew was sent over to fix some additional issues but they forgot to fix the truss issue, so just 2 days ago, a 3rd framing crew was sent to fix the trusses before the framing inspector arrived 1 hour later.
Overall, I'm very happy with the results, just frustrated by the herky-jerky progress. I'm so used to doing all of this stuff myself it's hard to just stand around and ONLY observe.
The Xcel issue however, does push my hot button because in that situation there's only 1 crew to manage...their own crew. [mad]
I was talking with the Xcel guy and because of the increase in people using a garage for multiple purposes, they are adding another person to doing nothing but schedule garage service panel connections. He said that between the solar installs, EV charging stations, home offices and work shops, that over 80% of new garage/old garage updates now have electrical service panels being installed in the garage. How times have changed. [smile]
rvieceli said:
Some smart meters (aka Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)) go beyond that and create a wireless mesh network that communicate to a central node so that no moving vehicle is required. For example see: AMI
I suspect removing the need to send people out to read the meters (and remote connect/disconnect) is probably a big part of the business case to justify deploying them. Please realtime consumption data.
Bob
Cheese
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rmhinden said:
Thanks for that Bob it was an interesting read.
I mentioned my previous conversation with the Xcel guy and this article highlights other advantages for the smart meter.
"Smart meters were the most numerous assets deployed in the SGIG Program and are a key enabling technology. In addition to remote meter reading, smart meters can provide other important functions, such as remote connect/disconnect, tamper detection, outage monitoring, voltage monitoring, and bidirectional measurement of electricity use to better enable adoption of distributed generation and dynamic pricing."
Bob, you're asking for realtime consumption data but near-realtime consumption data is already available with the smart meter. It's probably the customer interface that needs to be further addressed. Again from the article,
"The core element of AMI is smart meters, which provide a number of functions, including measuring customer electricity consumption on 5-, 15-, 30-, or 60-minute intervals; measuring voltage levels; and monitoring the on/off status of electric service."
