Hello All, I've been lurking here for a while, and I really appreciate all the tips and feedback you all have provided. Alex in Mesa, AZ

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Meeting With the Architects #6 - Power Planning

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 10/1/2008

Not "power planning" as in a huge mega session that decided a zillion things--I mean "power planning" as in "what will be the power infrastruture for Tanglewood?".

Anyway, we met with Architect Scott yesterday for a couple of hours. The purpose of this particular tag-up was to discuss the power source for Tanglewood.  As it turns out, the Planning Department wants a swag of not just "roughly where things might go so we know it all fits", but they also want details--what kind of solar panel and/or wind turbine? will you be setting up your system for multiple strings or just one?  will there be hydro or wind involved? what kind of batteries and how many? wiring up to code? conduit or open-air?  how many inverters?  AC, DC, or both to the house?  how will that wiring be run, by the way?

Etc.  Etc.

Now, they're not hard-over on this being "the final answer period"--they just want to know that you've thought this out, that you'll have sufficient power for the house, and that it'll all fit where you think it will fit.  I can change out the inverter from, say, a Xantrex to an Outback later if I want--they don't really care.

Since the wind measures to date aren't looking promising, I went ahead and spec'd a hybrid system (allowing for wind or hydro down the road) but focused on solar PV for now.  I ended up using a couple of online calculators to get some rough recommendations (since that seemed to be what they wanted, finally settling down on pulling numbers from the Alternative Energy Store's calculator for the purposes of these calculations (there are plenty of other good ones out there; this is just the one I chose).

The way I figure it we're going to have basically three clusters of solar panels, one string on the roof of the wellhouse (receiving about 4 to 4 1/2 hours of sunlight a day because of location) and two more strings up on the ridge (where they should get 6 hours/day easy).  The wellhouse will be easy since those are just roof mounts, but the ridge emplacements will require fancier mounting on "sunflowers" of 4-6 panels each and there will be a long line run down the ridge and through the creek valley to the wellhouse.  That long run means that I need to step up the voltage to 48V to minimize losses on the run, and of course I'll have to have good-sized wiring for that to work properly (Architect Scott is estimating either 2-gauge or 1-gauge at this point).  I'll also need controllers for each string and an automatic cut-in for the backup propane generator (hate to have such a thing but it seems a wise investment when you're off-grid).

By the end of the session we'd hammered together some basics for the Planning Department.  I have some  homework to do in terms of listing all the specs which I hope to get back to Scott by the end of the week. 

Next up we've still got to place the outlets, switches, and whatnot around both the wellhouse and the main house.  Since I'm planning both DC and AC lines that will make things more interesting, to be sure.

Dang this is fun!

Steve

ICF Supplier Selected!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/21/2008

This was a big month for us.  Our plans got past the Planning Department with no changes, we narrowed down the options for our power generation, and last but not least I've selected my ICF supplier.

I would imagine I spent way too much time on this, analyzing the various products that we'd sent out bids for.  There was a lot of "back and forth" between myself, my contractor, and the various suppliers as well--I learned all kinds of things I never knew about settling, reversing blocks, R-values, etc.  I finally (like most folks here I suspect) built myself a fancy spreadsheet to  hold all the information I had; when a particular element was missing from a given supplier (for example, the Greenblock guys didn't give me a concrete estimate), I averaged the values I got from everybody else and plugged those in instead.  I then added the numbers that seemed to be missing (such as nobody saying I'd need any of that fancy-expensive spray foam stuff when I know I'll probably need it around the V-bucks and special cuts) and took a look at the bottom lines.  Then, just for good measure, I divided the R-value of each system into its estimated cost to get (effectively) a "dollar cost per point of R-value" measure.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, on balance, there wasn't all that much difference in price between the various systems.

Oh there was some, to be sure, and it was more evident when I used the $$$ per R-value measure.  The various systems (I compared seven) broke out three rough groupings of "high" to "low", though to be fair the high value and the low value were only $764.00 apart. Looking at bottom-line cost they varied from ~ $87K to ~$105K (this is for the walls, floors, rebar, foam, concrete and concrete trucks, bracing, V-buck, etc.).  This seems more significant than it is, given that all concrete estimates were purely estimates only--there's really no good way to tell until the day you place the concrete order. 

I also kicked around the various system differences. As systems the seven broke into two main categories--those that used a "tongue and groove" connection system between blocks and those that used a "Lego-like" interface.  I decided after much research that the "steel vs. plastic" issue (where most systems use plastic webbing and a few use steel) was basically a wash--while there used to be issues with thermal bridging with the steel systems they'd rectified that years ago and the newer studies didn't indicate any issues.

So after I built this spreadsheet and fiddled with the numbers, I gave myself two weeks to let it simmer--and then I selected Buildblock for our ICFs.  I like their Lego-style connection system, I like their more closely-spaced webbing than most systems have, I like their plethora of measuring marks on the forms themselves (which makes cuts much simpler), I like the fact that the shipping is more efficient, I like the fact that they have a plant local to me, I like their prompt replies to my questions--in short, I just plain liked them more.  Using the $$$-per-R-value measure they came in at the high end of the low group, which indicates good value.  It just "feels" like it will be an easy product to work with.  Last but not least, the couple of local O-Bs I'd talked to who built with this system had nothing but praise for it--that's a big plus in my book.

This was probably the single most significant decision I'd have to make since we're going to build this  monster ourselves, so I wanted to make sure it was as easy as possible.  There will be other hard ones (I don't look forward to picking out the windows) but this is the one that would probably annoy me most if I got it wrong. I  think I made a good choice--at least I hope so!

Dang this is fun!

Steve

More Weather Data

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/16/2008

I got up to the site again this evening and downloaded some more data.  It's definitely interesting.

We've recently had a ton of rain here in Colorado Springs, with over 3" up there over a 24 hour period.  The average wind speeds and high wind speeds dropped slightly, to 5.78 mph and 10.18 mph respectively. The wind run also dropped a bit, from .98 minutes to .79 minutes.

What does this tell me?  Well, my guess is that the rain settling in and going nice and steady meant that fronts were not moving through/in during that timeframe, and so atmospheric disturbances (which cause wind) just weren't as prevalent.  We're still at the bare-bottom end for wind though, which I dare say surprises me.

I'm thinking about buying another anemometer for the other wind site I'm considering, up towards the edge of the property overlooking the valley to the south. This spot isn't ideal as I'd have to set any tower back from the nearby property line (so it doesn't fall over onto somebody else's property--county code) and so I'd have to take down several trees for this to work.  I also have serious doubts that the wind here would be more than up on the ridge, but it's worth measuring.

And all these numbers finally blew up Excel!  Wimpy program....

Steve

Closer to Getting the Building Permit Approved!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/9/2008

Today my GC became worth absolutely every penny I've been paying her to date.  Our building permit was approved!

Okay, it's technically not the building permit per se, but probably the most important hurdle we had to jump. Anybody who's been following this blog will remember that a few days ago I posted about some problems we were having getting our plans approved.  The Planning Department had balked at the size of the mother-in-law apartment; apparently El Paso County has a restriction that it must weigh in at 850 square feet or less.  While that is indeed a decent-sized apartment (I think my very first apartment up in Denver was only 640 square feet), their internal policy was that "the garage obviously associated with the apartment" had to be counted as part of the total.  Since the associated garage is around 400 square feet in size--that was a problem.

After much discussion and attempts to accommodate the rules, we were just about ready to throw in the towel.  Then A Miracle Occurred.

Turns out that they didn't quite realize that the garage in question supported a second floor bedroom.  Shrinking or redesigning the garage would have caused huge problems to the layout of the upstairs.  They pondered that for a bit--and waived the rule!

We're good.  Plans were accepted as is!  No changes, no tweaks, all the stamps stamped and the marks marked and the files filed--the architect picked up the plans yesterday.

Wow.  So this is how clean and virtuous living pays off....

Boy is this fun!

Steve

Got the Driveway Permit!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/8/2008

Got a call that the driveway permit has been approved!  Colleen's going to swing by to pick it up tomorrow.

Making progress, making progress.....

Steve

Rough Pics of the House Site

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/4/2008

A while back we got up to Tanglewood and staked out (roughly) where the house was going to go.  This wasn't a terribly precise job--I just worked off the plans the architects had and used a ruler to estimate a couple of things--but it was good enough to let us "get a feel" for the house itself.

I've attached some pics of the outline, though I'm not sure if they're all that useful.  We used orange marking tape for this particular task, and in the pics I work my way from the northern "apartment" end down the garages and towards the "Y" at the south end of the house.   You can't really see everything from these pics (to do that I'd need to be up in the air a few dozen feet) but it gives interested folks an idea, anyway.  They'll make way more sense once the excavator does his magic.

All the trees in this area need to come down (that's a task for the Near Future, actually), and I hope we can get the excavator to do his work before we lose the warm weather this fall.  In some of the pics a yellow "CAUTION" tape can be seen in the background; this marks a rough 20' "area of disturbance" around the house which needs to be cleared out as part of the excavation.  This is mostly only applicable in the uphill areas where the excavator will  have to cut a swale for drainage though--on the downhill side nothing is that close and we're not going to need to engineer any drainage to get water away from the house. The zone itself can actually be divided into two sub-zones--we have to cut out everything within 10' since the excavator will dump dirt there and (eventually) dig the swale, and then there's a 20' zone in which we want to clear things out mostly for fire and machine movement reasons.  There are a handful of trees right on the edge of the 20' zone that I should be able to keep, which is good--I'm not adverse to cutting down trees but definitely want to minimize it as much as possible!

This weekend I'm headed up to explicitly mark the trees to be saved, probably with green marking tape (note:  Ace Hardware is an awesome place to get this kind of tape in many different colors!) so it will be clearly different from the orange and pink we've been using to outline other areas (the house and the log dump areas, respectively). All of this will of course be carefully explained to the excavator when the time comes, and Colleen will be riding herd on him when the time comes.

Progress, slow but sure!

Steve

Photos

The end of the house, roughly where the apartment will be.	More or less in the driveway facing the garages.	Looking "down" from the driveway towards the "Y" of the house.
The living room and kitchen area of the house.	Standing more or less where the masonry fireplace will go, looking down towards the master bedroom.

Problems at the Planning Department

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/2/2008

Well, I had hopes that this kind of thing wouldn't happen after hearing all the horror stories that others have had, but it did.  The initial draft of our plans had a couple of minor redlines (no big deal) and one big roadblock.

Turns out that in El Paso County any "mother in law" apartment, which is how they're viewing the apartment at the north end of the house, has to be 850 square feet or less in size.  By itself that's not so bad--our architect works it out as somewhere around 836 square feet--but there's a hitch.  The planner whom Colleen talked to said that the associated garage also had to count against this footage.

Now of course this doesn't make a lot of sense to us or our architect, since the garage isn't livable space.  So we had a strategy meeting to figure out how to approach this and kick around some ideas.  The overall logic seems to be that the county doesn't want people building a duplex "under the table" and then renting out half of it, so they set things up to make such an arrangement unattractive.  Okay, that kinda makes sense I guess. However, a careful combing of the building code (so far) has only uncovered the 850 square foot requirement, with no mention of the garage needing to be  part of that, so this seems to be very much a matter of interpretation.

We discussed a couple of ways to handle this dilemma.  On Monday Colleen is going to go in to deliver the plans with the redlines addressed and then sit down with one of the reviewers to explain what we're after.  Being non-livable space seems to be the biggest reason not to count the garage, and there are extenuating circumstances in any event--that being the bears that live in the canyon (cars simply must be parked inside or they'll be mauled by the bears in search of food--there are no reasonable options otherwise).  We think that a carefully reasoned explanation together with an offer to put the no-duplex pledge into the property deed, if necessary, might do the trick.

Wish us luck!

Steve

Yet More Weather Results

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 9/2/2008

Well now, the seasons are changing and I'm definitely seeing this reflected in the weather station results.

I download the latest set of data (408 pages, 80% of RAM) on Labor Day and just finished running them through the spreadsheet to get some new averages.  As I expected everything (Wind Speed, Wind Run, and High Wind Speed) have all increased from the last reading:

• Wind Speed - Was 5.65 mph, is now 5.98 mph
• Wind Run - Was .40 minutes, now .98 minutes
• High Wind Speed - Was 9.40 mph, now 10.34 mph

Fun with the Planning Department

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/27/2008

I am beginning to understand why some folks give up on the whole O-B process when they run into their local Planning Department.  I know that these guys are there to help but sometimes it's very easy to think the whole process is just to slow you down with arbitrary arbitrariness....

Colleen trundled down to the local Planning Department with our final, approved plans (we'd looked them over closely for about two weeks after we got them) and started The Process.  Our county is simpler than many in that it seems there are only a few steps, but some of them (of course) have "loose" definitions of "done".  She found somebody who took pity on her obvious confusion and helped her walk through the steps, taking copious notes as she went:

1. The first step was to actually turn over a copy of the plans to be approved by the Planning Department.  These are the guys who basically look at the huge former-tree sized stack of paper we got from the architects and make sure that this thing won't fall down when you slam a door, or when the snow piles up on the roof, or whatever.  Good thing to check, I figure.  It'll take them "between four and six weeks" to do this, and that assumes there aren't any delays or problems (which we're told by Architect Scott that there almost always are).  We can check progress online which is kinda cool.
   Cost for this service:  $295.12 (it's based on the livable area of the house, apparently).
   
   
2. The next steps can happen while the Planning Department are mulling things over, since that takes some time.  The Fire Marshall has to approve the building layout and lay on some conditions (if he feels it's necessary) about the location.  I was worried about this since we're in what is essentially a Wet European Pine Forest--there are a lot of trees around the area (even after we started taking some down for the 20 foot setback) and he could have gone nuts, but everything worked out pretty good. He studied the plans for a couple of days and ended up with two recommendations (which means we don't have to do them)--clear a 30 foot setback (rather than the 20 driven by the excavation) and make sure the driveway is a hard surface of some kind (so his trucks don't sink in mud or something).  I'm considering the first and planned on the second anyway, so this was easy.
   Cost for this service:  Zero (how'd they miss that?).
   
   
3. Next up is a Driveway Permit. The Driveway Permit most involves analysis of what your driveway will do to the local drainage, and makes sure there aren't going to be any problems with the county's drains and such.  Since we're W-A-Y up high in the mountains and the only thing downhill from us is Little Turkey Creek itself, I doubt this will be much of a problem.
   Cost for this service: $222.50.
   
   
4. After that we need to get a Site Permit.  Now, you might think that we'd already be getting one of those with the afore-mentioned Planning Department review--you silly, silly goose.  Ya see (as the kind folks at the county carefully explained), the Planning Department review lets you build this house, while the Site Permit lets you build it here. They basically make sure there aren't any endangered species listed for that area, mines planned to go in the week after you start, that kind of thing.
   Cost for this service:  Variable (based on size of house; didn't have an estimate yet; approximately $250).
   
   
5. Health Department Well Water Test.  This is where they check the well water for all kinds of nasty bugs, heavy metals, and assorted other things that can mess up your drinking plans. The well was on the property when we bought it; it was drilled in 1994 and is about 200 feet deep.  It's a fantastic well--sometimes it actually bubbles up out of the pipe, and normally the water is very high in the pipe (only about 20 feet down).  In order to do this, we have to run the well pump for a period of time and then take a sample in a container that they provide.
   Cost for this service:  Unknown (we just haven't checked yet).

Updated Weather Results

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/26/2008

It's been a bit since I updated the weather station results, and since then I've done a bit more analysis.

After a bit of fiddling I have the weather capture rate down to once every five (5) minutes, which works out fairly well.  A week of data runs about 398 "pages" (a page is five entries) and fills the weather console's flash RAM to about 78% of capacity. That's just about what the Davis geeky manual said I would have and so I was happy enough, and now I know I can run an extra day without gathering data if I have to for some reason. Good to know.

The numbers are interesting and I've changed my basic analysis of them a bit.  I decided to throw out the earlier data that was collected on the 2-hour intervals, simply because it didn't have the resolution I was looking for.  I did that, and then ran averages on Wind Speed, Wind Run (how long the wind blows at a given speed), and Hi Wind Speed, to get values of 4.66 mph, .33 minutes (about 20 seconds), and 8.37 mph respectively.  Not very good numbers, but bear in mind we're still in the summer doldrums (despite some hefty thunderstorms in the afternoons and evenings).

After a bit of thought it occurred to me that I was just taking an average over time, and that was probably given too much weight to the zero values--that is, the time when no wind was blowing at all. There are some odd outages in the data during several days in the past week especially that look like the weather station wasn't receiving any wind data for an hour or so.  Several things can cause that--maybe the atmosphere was messing up the wireless.  When I took those values out, I got new numbers of 5.65 mph for Wind Speed, .40 minutes (about 20 seconds) for Wind Run, and 9.40 mph for Hi Wind Speed--still not enough to really rely on power wise, but probably closer to accurate.

Looking at the numbers more directly I can see some definite patterns.  As expected wind speed really picks up in the evening hours, jumping from around 1-3 mph to 12-13 mph.  The Hi Wind Speeds really jump to numbers like 20, 25, and 28 mph (one day last week we had a 33 mph gust that lasted a minute and a half)...this tells me that the air is very turbulent and gusty, and might indicate (as I'd suspected) that I really need to get the anemometer on a taller pole.  I can also see that the are slowing angling up, which backs my thinking that we're in the summer doldrums right now and that we'll get heavier winds as the seasons change.

In case there are any geeks out there I'm attaching the Excel spreadsheet with all the latest numbers in it, just for fun.  Let me know if you find anything awesome.

Overall it still feels to me that there's enough wind up there to get some decent power though.  I really need to get the anemometer up at altitude where it belongs, and I need to spend an evening plugging the numbers I've gathered so far into a Bergey turbine model to see what it might do.

Dang this is fun stuff!

Steve

Files

Accepted Our Second Bid!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/21/2008

As usual conditional on the permit and construction loan (I guess I'd really better get started on that paperwork too...sigh), but we accepted our second bid today.  This one's for the trusses, but the "normal" ones and the exposed timber trusses that will dominate the living room/library areas.

We were really very impressed with this company and Colleen quickly determined that there just wasn't too much competition.  We had let bids out to three companies and honestly they were all close to each other price-wise, but the guys over at Foxworth-Galbraith were clearly more interested and more "involved" in asking questions than the others.  Their architect noted immediately that the trusses are heavily "over-engineered" for what the "need" to be and of course he was exactly right--we increased for higher snow loads and a thicker roof than what is "normal" for t his area.  They also expressed frank admiration for the work Architect Scott had done with the stress work on the exposed trusses--he had a tricky job getting the compression and tension forces right everywhere.  (Note to those just starting this process:  this is one of the reasons you hire a good architect--he's worth his weight in gold!)

The ICF bids are still sitting out there.  I had to delay an extra couple of weeks to get some more bids in (read about that in a previous semi-rant).  The septic tank will be easy a there's only one company hereabouts that makes the  things, as it turns out.  Architect Scott is still designing the leach field (he ran into some problems there) so that's not ready yet, and we'll need to make final decisions on heating/cooling so those bids can go out the door.

Busy busy busy!

But boy is this fun!

Steve

Calculating Wind Speed From Known Data

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/20/2008

I mentioned yesterday that while the data I've been collecting so far is at best imprecise.  What I didn't mention is that climatologists and weather industry folks have put together a formula to estimate wind speeds at  higher altitudes based on measurements as lower altitudes.  It's not perfect, of course, but it's an interesting guide.

I'd read about it in a recent issue of Home Power magazine (which I highly recommend for anybody who has to live off-grid), so I dug up the issue and ran some numbers.  The results are somewhat interesting (at least to those with a geekier bent).

The formula itself is fairly straightforward:

V₂/V₁ = (H₂/H₁)^a

where  V₁ is your measured speed at height H₁, height H₂ is the height your prospective turbine will be located at, and ^a is a wind shear factor based on the terrain surrounding the turbine.  It runs from 0.1 (for perfectly smooth surroundings like calm water) to 0.6 (surrounded by tall trees or buildings).  I decided to choose 0.3 since it's in the middle.

With a 10.1 mph measured average taken at 6 feet, and a desired tower of 60 feet, we can crunch the numbers and get roughly 20 mph.  If I kick the height up to 80 feet, the calculated speed bumps up to 22 mph; at 100 feet it reaches 24 mph. 

In other words, height may not help much during the "summer doldrums".  I'll know more after I'm able to compare the measured value at 30 feet (where the anemometer will eventually be) against the calculated value (16.3 mph).  I'll also be very interested to see what the numbers are once we get outside the summer doldrums.

Ain't this kind of stuff fun?

Steve

More Weather Results

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/19/2008

Since my last post on the subject I've been up to the site and gotten a few more readings on the weather.  I just got back from my most recent trip and have had a chance to analyze the numbers a bit; they're interesting.

It very much looks to me like Tanglewood is in the classic "summer doldrums" right now. When the new numbers are added to the mix (bringing the data up to 8/19/08 @ 6:00 PM) the average wind speed has come up to 10.1 mph, with the average high bumping up to 15.2 mph.  That's definitely not enough to power the house (or even get much off of most wind turbines, frankly) during the month of mid-July thru mid-August, so assuming these numbers are typical of summertime up there it's already clear I'm going to have to at least go with some kind of hybrid system (solar PV and wind combined).

There are a couple of mitigating factors still that cast some fuzziness on the numbers, to be sure.  The anemometer is still only located about 4 feet up from the ground atop the ridge (though that is itself roughly 50 feet above the nearest treetop) and that's not ideal--it ought to be 30 or 40 feet up if possible.  When I tried to lift the mounting pole to put it that high by myself a few weeks back I nearly dropped the whole thing, anemometer and all--and that's not a good thing to do to a $200 instrument!  Come Labor Day weekend I'll be doing a bunch of work at the site, and one item is to get the anemometer properly placed--this time I'm taking enough rope and a couple of pulleys to do the job all proper-like.

Couple of other interesting points.  I figured out that if I step up the data archive rate to every 5 minutes I can capture 8 days' worth of data.  Right now I'm going up every few days, so this is working out very well--I get much finer resolution and more accurate data as a result.  (For the geeks out there, the Davis Vantage Pro 2 has 128K of flash ROM for storing this kind of thing--a tiny number by more "modern" standards but seemingly near state of the art in the weather instrument industry.)

I'm also very surprised by a couple of the numbers.  The weather data shows TWO incidents of 42.1 mph wind gusts lasting 5 minutes each and ONE incident of a 52.3 mph burst lasting 5 minutes as well!  Amazing....those are very robust wind gusts (by way of comparison, a tropical storm runs anywhere from 39-73 mph) with a much longer duration than I would have guessed.  If we could keep that up we'd have one heck of wind generation capacity, though you wouldn't be able to set anything down outside!

Very interesting stuff, to be sure.  But it's definitely enough for me to start looking more closely at solar PV options!

Steve

ICF Update

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/14/2008

Been a while since I posted an update, mostly due to real-world (that silly thing) job reasons. Nothing's wrong, just very busy these days.  We're about through it now though.

It hasn't things too much though, as I'm starting to wonder if some people get into the ICF business because, well, they're maybe just not reliable enough to do "normal" house building.  It's either that or >>>shudder<<< maybe this is normal when dealing with building contractors....oh what a thought....

Back a while ago we sent out our first bids for ICF suppliers, and honestly I thought that this part of the whole process would be close to the simplest (aside from my picking up nails or something at Home Depot down the road). I figured to myself, "Self, it's an economic downturn and contractors will be hungry for new business, especially some sucker building a custom home, so you won't have any trouble getting prompt bids that are fully fleshed out".  Turns out that was a wee bit optimistic.

One guy made it clear that he wants us to hire his crew, not build it ourselves.  Another was clearly annoyed that I didn't want to use their waffle-grid forms and wanted a bid instead on the more "normal" straight forms.  The third was late and sent us a bid for the wrong type of ICF block--not a bad one, mind you, just not the one we'd asked for.

So we decided to expand the search and sent out three more bids, and after that another.  Four more requests for bids went out.....

....and to date I have a semi-complete answer from one (his concrete numbers don't quite add up and he thought he didn't have enough info to do the LiteDeck estimate) and a promise to hear from the other one on the 18th.

Sigh.

Okay--we can work with this.  On the positive side, most of them have given me estimated assembly hours (which I'd also asked for) and it's been  interesting to glean some of the differences between the various suppliers by looking at what is and isn't included in their bids.  Everybody has left out something, it seems, and so Colleen is busy calling/faxing around getting clarifications and additional numbers.

I'm giving the process until the 22nd, but then I will pick one.  I don't feel like the actual ICF itself matters a whole heck of a lot beyond some basic things like steel/plastic, interface style, and maybe thickness, so I'm going for what looks like it'll be the easiest to work with (and which has the easiest supplier to work with too).

But good grief.  Is this kind of--"sloppy" is the only word I can use here--normal when working with contractors, or is this why the good ones stand out?

Steve

Arnold's Forum Posts: 48 Journal Entries: 74 Interview Answers: 32 Average Forum Rating: 4.37 Send Private Message My Construction Website Randomly Selected Image 8/20/2008	Steven, It's normal!  Welcome to the GC business. Hope everything's going well. AG Werschky
Steven's Forum Posts: 12 Journal Entries: 67 Interview Answers: 95 Average Forum Rating: 3.18 Send Private Message My Construction Website Steven's Selected Image 8/20/2008	Oh dear.... Ah well....thanks!  We'll make it work if it means hauling out the Big Guns--I'll sic Colleen on them! <grin> Steve

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Accepted Our First Bid!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/5/2008

All conditional on the permit and construction loan, of course, but today we accepted our first bid--the one from the excavation guy we showed around the place last Sunday. We really liked his professionalism, the amount of work he'd do for the price, and his attitude--he genuinely seems to enjoy his work!  That plus all of the recommendations from others in the canyon pretty much cinched the deal.

With the plans nearing completion more bids are going to start going out.  We'll be selecting an ICF bid very soon (I'm giving the others until the 8th to come in with bids) and we should be getting truss bids shortly.  Foundation and septic bids also need to go out.  Windows should be going out very soon--that will probably be the "most bid item" in the whole thing since there are so many.  I don't plan on getting door bids since we'll pretty much be picking and installing those ourselves.

Boy this is fun!

Steve

Final Plan Review Feedback, Round One

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 8/1/2008

I'm not sure what experience other folks have had with their architects (if you used one), but I have to say I'm enormously pleased with the guys we picked out.

A few days ago the architects gave me the first draft of their "final" plans for review. It took me a couple of days but I finally worked my way through them and provided some feedback.  All in all I was very pleased--while my feedback consisted of twenty-odd points most of those were questions seeking clarification, rather than issues or problems.

A couple of points surprised me--the architect decided to use I-beams between the second floor and the computer room on the third floor rather than Lite-Deck.  This was a good move on his part since it really the insulation value isn't needed between those two rooms, and either way it's not worth having the concrete truck come out just for that.  I was also surprised that he went with a different wall construction between the media room and the adjacent bedroom--rather than a 2x6 wall with stagged 2x4s and sound insulation, he went all out with TWO 2x4 walls sandwiching sound-proofing insulation between them.  Very nice.

There were a handful of oversights, all smaller stuff.  A drain in the garage got overlooked, and (this was probably my fault) there were no drains in the utility or laundry rooms.  I also made a couple of tweaks, the most significant one being to run the garage drains all the way out to daylight (they were about twenty feet away anyway, so it isn't too much extra work).

There will be a couple of days while he rolls in the changes, but we're almost there!

Boy this is fun!


Steve

First Weather Results!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 7/29/2008

The first weather station results are in!

I ran up this afternoon to download the weather data (once I figured out that the weather station stored data internally for a period of time this became quite simple).  I had a couple of minor problems getting the USB drivers to work (the station has a serial interface but I'd bought a USB-to-serial connection cable; many blessings to the Davis Weather software geek who thoughtfully put the USB drivers on the install disk even though I didn't "technically" need them!) but since I'm basically a computer genius I figured it out pretty quickly.

I haven't had a change to really analyze the data in depth but what I've found is interesting. Measurements were taken from 7/20/08 @ 6:00 PM thru 7/29/08 @ 6:00 PM. The average overall wind speed (based on 10-second intervals) was only 2.3 mph, but the average high wind speed was 9.4 mph.  We had one gust hit a whopping 43mph for nearly 4 hours--very impressive.  Naturally that average wind speed is nowhere near enough to be of use for power generation and frankly the average high wind speed is only marginal, but the data isn't all it needs to be yet and it's too soon to draw any conclusions. 

There are still a couple of issues with the equipment that prohibit this from being anything more than anecdotal at this point though. The anemometer is only about 4 feet off the ground right now (even if it is on top of the ridge) which is nowhere near the right height (I had a lot of trouble getting the 30 foot pole I had intended to put it on set up properly on Sunday).  Additionally, while the station samples data every 10 seconds it's not clear to me yet whether the summary data I'm looking at is averaged into 2-hour chunks--I've got to dig into the documentation and the weather forums some more yet.  Finally of course, summertime is probably the worst time to measure the winds around here--if these numbers hold true I'll be pushed towards supplementing the wind with solar power just so I am generating during the "doldrums" (this is rather common with many wind turbine installations, as it turns out). I'll just have to get some more numbers so I know more.

Other averages over those 9 days:

• Average low temp:  64.5 degrees
• Average high temp: 70.0 degrees
• Average humidity:   48%
• Average barometric pressure:  29.67 inches
  

Final Plan Review, Round One

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 7/28/2008

I have in my hands (well, on my desk) what the architect refers to as the final drafts.  These are what we will submit to the Planning Department barring any problems or oversights I might find, etc.

If you've not gotten to this stage I can only say it's impressive to see all your discussions and sketches turn into a wad of blueprints like this.  There are fifteen 3x2 sheets in this massive stack of paper, running from a basic site plan showing the house location on the 30 acre lot to a semi-detailed electrical layout plan (intended more to show that we've got the requisite number of lights per room than anything else).  There are truss plans, side view plans, foundation plans, excavation plans, floor-by-floor plans, SIP-ICF interface plans, insulation plans, masonry heater plans, detailed masonry heater plans--the list goes on and on.  Just about the only thing not in here is a detailed plan for the plumbing (the county apparently doesn't care about that just so long as you've got some) or details regarding some of the external retaining walls (those come later).

I'm very impressed.  These architects have done a fantastic job.

I think I'll be spending the rest of the evening reviewing....

Steve

Minor Weather Station Setback

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 7/27/2008

Grrrrr.

I'd forgotten how heavy 30 feet of galvanized steel pipe can be.  Add dragging it to the top of a ridge in 90 degree weather through granite, cactus, and scrub oak and then trying to lever it up into place so I can locate the weather station's anemometer up where it can get some good measuring done and you've got a setup for exhaustion.  Which is basically what happened over the course of several frustrating hours.

My biggest problem was the fact that I didn't have anything to brace this pole against.  When I set up the 20 foot pole here at Wyrdhaven, I was able to leverage it against my back fence, giving me a solid backstop to push and lever against to get it vertical.  Up on the Tanglewood ridge, however, I've got no such backstop--the only thing up there are a handful of pine trees and the funny thing about them is that they have round trunks. That means you can put the pole up against them, try to lever everything up, and then they slip away from the trunk and you've got a semi-out-of-control piece of galvanized steel with an expensive piece of equipment on it trying to fall off the cliff!

Since the afternoon thunderstorms were rolling in and I was exhausted anyway, I decided to punt and just mount the anemometer on the ridgetop fence marker.  It's not at all an ideal location--I can only mount the anemometer about four feet off the top of the ridge--but at least it's something.  I can test that it transmits to the weather station okay and gather some preliminary numbers, if nothing else.

Very annoying afternoon, to be sure.  I'll revisit next weekend, this time with some rope and pulleys!

Steve

Of Excavators and Bids

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 7/27/2008

It's been an interesting week since my last post.  We've gotten some more work done clearing lumber and chipping branches up at Tanglewood (30 acres means you have a never ending supply) and had two potential excacvators up for bids.  The excacators were particularly interesting.

As I've posted elsewhere in the forums, we've had two guys come look and provide bids to date.  The first guy was straightforward, all business like, gave us several hints on how to cut the trees so he could remove them more easily, and basically provided what we asked for.  He spent about a half hour at the site, maybe 45 minutes.  I never met him myself, only my GC (Colleen) did.

The second guy spent 4 hours on the site, hiked all over the place, did everyting the first guy did and provided all kinds of advice regarding how he'd cut the drainage swales, suggested improvements on the gutter drains, said he'd be sure to soften up the foundation drain digs so our trenching with the shovels would be simp