Just thought I would take a moment to provide an update on how we got through the winter season of 2016/2017.  As I updated previously, we now have our full occupancy permit, and while we still have a fair amount of jobs to do, to get the house “complete” (lots of trim, painting, etc), we are settling in nonetheless.

This past winter was reasonably mild, compared to the winter we had a couple years ago when we were still in the RV, which was a nice change.  We did get a fair amount of snow, but had added a compact tractor to our range of snow clearing devices last fall, so things were much more manageable in that regard…though I didn’t get the exercise shoveling that I have the past couple years  🙂

I was also able to rig up our radiant heating in the basement, in a kind of rudimentary fashion (currently we can only control it manually, I still need to install some thermostats), but it did an excellent job of keeping the whole house cozy and warm.  We currently have the radiant set up as five “zones” – the main living room, the utility room, the two bedrooms, and the storage room (which may one day become a bathroom), and we were able to stay comfortable with only the living room zone activated.  Enabling other zones made the house ridiculously hot.  It is good to know our investment in insulation was worth the money spent and time invested.  We really only needed the fireplaces on the coldest of days, to take the chill out of the air upstairs.

In terms of new work completed, I have slowly been mudding the drywall upstairs, and we’ve got our master bathroom painted (nice to have at least one painted room in the house!) and will soon be painting the main bathroom / laundry room.  I’ve also started framing in the walls in the basement to divide up the space into the various rooms.  Even without drywall, it makes a big difference to define the space.

Our solar system served us well again this winter, and we had a good amount of sun, so we did not need to run the generator as much.  I also discovered that even though I took down a group of cedars that cast shadows on the solar panels during winter, there is a second group I’m going to have to take down as well, for the same reason.  Always another job to take care of  🙂

That’s about all there is to report, so I’ll sign off and wish you all a happy spring!

Today was a big day!  Two years, five months, and exactly one week since we applied for our building permit (May 26th, 2014), we had our final house inspection with the building inspector, which we passed, and have now received our final approval for unconditional occupancy.

This was a pretty monumental journey, with some really great times, but also some very difficult periods.  Definitely a life-changing experience and something we will probably not get the opportunity to do again.

While we do have our final approval for occupancy, that does not mean we are done by any stretch – it simple means we are done with the building inspector  😉  We still have a fair amount of trim and detail work to do, as well as finishing out the basement, but at least now we can take our time and do it all right and on our terms.

Thanks for following along with our journey and if anyone wants to come for a visit to the homestead, by all means get in touch!  We’ll be sure to post from time to time with updates as we make further progress.  Next up – tiling and finishing our master bathroom 100%, including connecting our heated towel warmer and completing the installation of our freestanding tub!

Today I managed to get the last of the siding installed – a big relief as it is getting colder out there!  Even though this is complete, I’ll still have to finish off the putting up the trim around the windows, installing the battens, and staining / caulking.  Thankfully I do not believe that is a requirement for our occupancy permit.

Now I’ve just got to square a few more small things away and we can get the inspector back for final inspection!

The picture says it all, really.  Today I got the scaffolding and planks set up to finish the second course of siding on the last wall.  I was able to push myself and get passed the halfway point, and ended the day installing the gable end vent and the two soffit trim boards on the completed half.  Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, it was 5pm and with the time change it was already getting quite dark (as you can see from the warm glow of the lights inside the house).

There’s probably only another half days work to finish that siding off, then I will start installing the battens on that side of the house (since the scaffolding it already set up there) and install the window trim as well.

We are getting very close to official “completion” (even though there are a ton of small details to finish off to make the house enjoyable to live in), which is really exciting.

In an effort to complete all the items on the list the building inspector provided, to get our final occupancy certificate, yesterday I spent what ended up being far too long installing a thermal mixing valve on our domestic hot water tank.

As part of new building code requirements, hot water heaters need to have a thermal mixing valve installed to prevent scalds at any hot water faucets in the house.  Our shower valve already came with one of these built-in, but to comply with Ontario Building code you need one installed at the hot water heater.  A hot water heater is typically set at 140F, to prevent legionella bacteria (cause of legionnaires’ disease), but 140F is a scald hazard. To prevent scalds, you install a thermal mixing valve – which mixes some cold water with the hot water coming out of the hot water heater, to regulate the temperature of the hot water to something more reasonable.  I chose around 118F-120F, which is about the maximum it should be set to.

Getting the mixing valve installed was quite the comedy of errors.  To install the valve, I had to remove that black connector (labeled HOT/CHAUD) section of the exhaust/flue system, so that I was able to screw on the cold and hot water portions of the mixing valve.  Getting that off was a little tricky, and then once I got it off, I accidentally knocked my small flashlight down into the resulting hole, and it ended up at the bottom of the hot water heater on top of the gas heating element.  *sigh*  That one careless mistake meant I now had to remove the gas heating element, to retrieve the flashlight.  You might think that might be fairly straightforward, which it was, but it was finicky, and an incredibly frustrating task getting it done.

Thankfully, that is all behind us now, the mixing valve is installed and working, leak-free, so that is one more thing we can cross off the list.  I am hoping to get back outside today and get more of the siding finished, so we can have it wrapped up before it’s truly miserable to work outside.  Will post more soon!

Another update for you all on the siding front.  Today I got the first course of siding completed, on the last side of the house!  We are so nearly there!

I am hoping to get the upper course completed within the next week or so before it gets too cold for working outdoors, and will post pictures when it’s finally all complete!

Another quick post just to update on our solar system.  All is well on that front, though now that it is fall/nearly winter, I’m going to have to get out there and change the angle of the solar panels for their winter orientation.  Thankfully, this is an easy job, and it helps collect the most solar energy possible due to the suns changing position in the winter sky.

Since the days have gotten shorter, we have had to run the generator again periodically to recharge the batteries – the following image summarizes our power usage and generator input for the month of October:

Just wanted to do a quick update on our recent progress with the house.  You might have thought, “Those guys must be finished everything by now”, but you’d be wrong.  We have only a couple things left to do to get our final occupancy certificate, and one of them that is just taking forever to get done is the siding.

I finally completed the third (of four) walls, and have started on the last wall in hopes of getting it done before it is too cold to work outside.

Of course there is still the battens and trim around the window to be installed, and then staining the siding after that, but we are getting there (baby steps!)

I also managed to get our radiant heat system connected, and it works really well.  I still have to figure out some kind of thermostat system, it is very much manual, but we are exceptionally cozy in here so far as the temperatures are dropping off.

Hopefully I will be able to post again soon showing the final wall of siding completed, that will mean we will be just about ready to get our final occupancy!

Hey all – just a quick picture of the current progress.  We finished off all  the siding around the porch and have our scaffolding up to tackle the siding on the west end.  We’ve also begun priming and painting all the trim to go around the windows and doors.

We still have not had to run our generator since the last post, it’s been since May 3rd that we’ve been living off the power of the sun – awesome!

Just a quick update on how the solar system is working out.  Everything has been going great, and it’s getting even better now that the days are getting longer.  We recently hit a record of going nearly a full month without having to run the generator at all!

Even on partly cloudy days we generally collect enough solar power to fully recharge our batteries, which is ideal.  Hopefully we will be able to break our record as spring turns to summer!