We expected the spray foam contractor to show up yesterday and insulate the main floor of the house, and the basement wall headers/rim joists, but unfortunately in the bad snow we had yesterday – their truck slid off the road and they needed to be towed.

Today they arrived without incident and got right to work, and by the end of the day they had pretty much wrapped up, here’s a couple pictures to show how it looks now:

In the meantime, we are just barely getting by up here.  As Murphy’s Law seems to dictate, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and it seems like we’re getting it back-to-back these days.  Most recently, the furnace in the RV packed it in, so now we are heating the RV with a small propane heater (thank god we have CO detectors in here, or this would be pretty unsafe on the scale of things), but it’s really not quite sufficient, and on cold mornings like today (-26C, feels like -33C), it’s very chilly in here.  A consequence of this is, of course, that the RV water systems have now all since frozen up – so we are really roughing it up here now.

Hopefully now that the insulation is in, we can start making steps towards moving in there and out of the RV, to give us some better shelter from this winter weather.

As always, thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Yesterday I was able to finish putting up the rest of the vapour barrier, and decided that if we are going to have to heat up the place to get the spray-foam insulation done, it might be best to insulate the attic space, at least partially to keep some of the heat in!

To that end today I ordered 33 bags of Roxul R-22 rockwool batts, that are designed to fit nicely between each of the ceiling joists.  I will need to put in a couple more layers eventually, to get the total R-value of the attic up to a minimum of R-50 (ideally more!), but this should at least get us started and hopefully prepare the house for the spray-foaming!  It arrived not long after I ordered it, and having just lugged it all up the stairs, I will spend the rest of the day installing it.

The only tough part about this, is getting the Roxul up the attic stairs, as the bags are too big to squeeze through the opening, so it’s endless trips up and down the stairs taking up a couple pieces at a time.  Cutting the batts is easily done with a standard kitchen (serrated) bread knife, which you need to do to fit them around plumbing, wiring, light boxes, and so forth.

I’ll get some more pictures as I get further along, though I am not sure they will come out much better than the photo above.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the pictures!

For the past couple of days I have been preparing to start installing the vapour barrier on the ceiling.  This 6mil poly sheeting is the same stuff we laid down under our basement slab, and the goal is to prevent any uncontrolled airflow in or out of the living area of the house.  Mostly my work has consisted of adding additional 2×4’s around the perimeter of the walls, to ensure that we have something to fasten the drywall to, and they also create a nice area to seal the edge of the vapour barrier with acoustical sealant (you use this stuff because it remains pliable forever and creates an airtight seal).

I also wired up an exterior plug (in a weather resistant housing), and we now power the RV from the off-grid system in the house, and recharge the batteries using the generator.  This is actually more economical than running the RV off the generator directly, as the generator produces more power than the RV consumes when it’s running – power that just goes to waste.  It’s really nice now because we only have to run the generator for a few hours every day and then can leave it off through the evening/night.  This is also giving us a good opportunity to charge/discharge the batteries repeatedly, which is an important part of commissioning the battery bank.

This morning I started putting up the actual vapour barrier on the ceiling, and managed to finish the main bathroom/laundry room, master bathroom, master bedroom, and part of the kitchen/dining/living room.  I’m confident I will get that wrapped up tomorrow, then I will work on taping up all the seams/over all the staples, and applying the acoustical sealant around the perimeter to create an airtight seal.

The insulation contractors are scheduled to be on-site to spray foam the main floor walls and the sills/rim joists next Monday, and I’ll be sure to get some pictures of that while it’s going on.  My biggest obstacle to overcome before then, is to find some way to heat up the house enough for them to do their work – ideally the house will be above zero degrees (celsius), and that’s going to be tough with the cold snap we are experiencing right now.  Perhaps we will get lucky and it will warm up by next week  🙂

As always, thanks for reading, all the best in 2015!

It’s been a while since the last post and for that I do apologize.  We have, surprisingly, not frozen to death and died up here in the snow, on the contrary, we are quite cozy in the RV – except we continue to battle with keeping the drain lines working in this cold weather.  I am not sure these RV’s were designed to handle the Canadian winters  – but for all we ask of it, it seems to do alright.

On the house front, I continue to plug away, and have been spending most of the past few weeks working hard on the electrical.  I had to wire up a 30A generator inlet plug, so we can push power from our generator into the off-grid inverter and start getting our batteries all charged up and commissioned.  This was quite a bit of an endeavour on it’s own but that is a story for another day.  I keep my “coles notes” of electrical code books handy, and must say you cannot refer to it too often.  They really specify every little detail with regards to how to run the wiring – which is great, if a little overwhelming at times.  I’ve made a few mistakes so far and had to undo, and redo a bunch of work, but I guess thats what happens when you are doing things for the first time.

A while back, I finally got up the energy to break through the frozen ground and dig a hole to bury our grounding electrode, so that is finally squared away and I can get to work running the ground wire into the electrical service panel inside the house.

We also got one of our two gas fireplaces, and I managed to fit it into the framed opening nicely, though the installation instructions certainly leave a lot to be desired.

Today, we had our electrical rough-in inspection (done by the ESA), which has to be passed before we can start insulating the house.  The inspector was here for about a half hour, checking various outlets and whether the cables were secured correctly, and finally reviewed our electrical service panel.  He recommended a few quite minor changes, but otherwise approved our rough-in work – very exciting news (even better to pass the inspection the first time out!)  So after a couple small fixes (less than a days work) we are good to have the spray foam experts out to start foaming in the walls.

In the meantime I will have to start installing the vapour barrier on the bottom of the attic joists, and sealing it all up with “acoustical sealant”, so we can install the ceiling drywall, then have the ceiling cavity insulated!  Very exciting times, and what better way to start 2015 with power in our house!

Take care all – best wishes to everyone in 2015, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates!

The past few days have been quite stressful and at times almost overwhelming.  The day after my last post, where I was hoping for no strong winds, we got some terribly powerful winds that tore up some of our Tyvek housewrap and was doing it’s level best to lift the steel roofing panels right off the roof.  In the end, everything largely worked out, but it was touch and go there for awhile.

Since then, I have actually gone up on the roof one more time to install the pipe boot around the plumbing vent, so the roof *should* be completely watertight at this point (fingers crossed).  It’s quite scary to be up there now as with the cold temperatures, even when the roof is dry, there is very little traction.  I *think* (and am choosing to hope) that we got enough done on the roof to get us through until spring.

I also ran a few more plumbing supply lines, for the master bath toilet and sink, but it turns out I need to get my hands on some more 90-degree supports for the PEX tubing to run it nicely so they are on order and I am waiting on them to be delivered.

My cousin Jonathan stopped by yesterday after work and the two of us combined managed to wrestle the ridiculously heavy Xantrex off-grid inverter up onto the wall.  So now I have all the main boxes (inverter, distribution cabinet, and both solar charge controllers), except the main A/C supply box, mounted up on the wall and ready to be wired.

You can also see our Venmar HRV in the foreground of that picture, it’s almost ready to get hung up from the joists and have the ducting run.

Finally, in amongst all that, I’ve been working on our electrical plan and getting my shopping list together to get that underway, and managed to finish putting up the housewrap on the last end of the house:

Tomorrow Jonathan will be returning with his truck, and we’ll drive over to Smiths Falls and pick up our two hot water heaters, and get them located in the basement, in preparation to connect them to the propane system.  Hopefully that goes smoothly.

Take care and thanks for reading!

Over the past couple of days it has actually been warming up, and all the snow and ice melted off the roof of the house.  It’s still wet, which makes it extremely dangerous to work on, but I was able to get out there anyway and finish putting up the roof ridge vent, and the remaining steel trimwork to keep the rain / snow from coming in.  It is good to get it done so that I don’t really have to go up there anymore unless there is a particularly good day for it.  All that’s left up there is installing a “pipe boot” around the main plumbing vent, and a few more rows of screw fasteners into the steel roofing panels to fully secure them.  For now we will just pray there is no hurricane force winds!

We did get a *lot* of rain last night and this morning when I checked the house, the only water that had come in, was around the plumbing vent, so it’ll be good to get that pipe boot installed in the coming days.

I also got started on the plumbing supply rough in work, first step was picking a good location to mount the PEX manifold and from there it’s as easy as running the lines and crimping the ends.  Here’s a picture of our supply manifold (lots of ports left for future expansion):

and the PEX supply lines roughed-in to the laundry area:

I also spoke with the building inspector about the next steps to insulation, we came to an agreement that since no plumbing supply lines would be run in the exterior walls, except for the laundry supply, that we could forego the rest of that work for the time being and focus on the electrical work.

Oh, right, and I also finished up the framing for the main fireplace:

I’ll end here so I can get back out there and keep building!  Thanks for reading!

This morning I was able to get a couple jobs done that weren’t on my list but still pretty important – I installed one toilet in the house (we can flush it with a bucket), and also got the front house stairs installed (roughly).

Since the last post I finished off nailing the rest of the framing angles (all done, thank god), and also installed the attic ladder, at least, enough to get us to the point we can insulate!  Still needs a few finishing touches but we will pick away at that later on.

I also got started on framing in the openings for the fireplaces and expect to get that wrapped up tomorrow.

Recapping next steps:

• Installation of HRV and associated ducting (exhaust from kitchen, bathrooms; supply to bedrooms, basement, living room)
• Complete plumbing supply rough-in
• Electrical rough-in (both AC house wiring and solar equipment)
• Install remaining soffit on gable end, complete metal roof trim & fasteners, and ridge vent installation.
• Install vapour barrier (6mil poly) on the ceiling of the main floor
• Drywall ceiling of the main floor

Stay warm!

Right now our main goal is to get the house complete enough to get the spray foam company to come out and do the insulation – after that the house will be sealed enough that we can probably largely move over into that while we finish the rest of construction, and we can stop worrying about any plumbing or our batteries freezing (currently running a propane heater in the basement to keep things above freezing).

I made a  list of things we still have left to do before we can insulate, and thought I’d share it here for fun  😉  They are listed in the rough order of priority.

• Finish nailing remainder of framing angles (I had put this off in the rush to get the roof done, a possibly regrettable choice as some of the nailing is now more difficult to access and will take longer)
• Complete plumbing supply rough-in (drains are all complete, waiting on materials to arrive to do the supply side)
• Electrical rough-in (both AC house wiring and solar equipment)
• Framing for fireplaces
• Installation of HRV and associated ducting (exhaust from kitchen, bathrooms; supply to bedrooms, basement, living room)
• Install remaining soffit on gable end, complete metal roof trim & fasteners, and ridge vent installation.
• Install attic ladder
• Install vapour barrier (6mil poly) on the ceiling of the main floor
• Drywall ceiling of the main floor

When I sit back and look at that list, it’s kind of overwhelming, but I just have to work my way through one thing at a time and eventually it will all get done.  It is unfortunately still snowing, so I’ve arranged to borrow a safety harness for working on the remainder of the roof, and will have to try and get up there on the next sunny day (it’s November so god knows when that will be) to wrap all that stuff up.

Thanks for reading!

Not what I really wanted to wake up to this morning:

Oh well, the first snow always melts off anyway, right?  …right?