Construction weeks 47 and 48: sprint to the finish

We’re in the midst of the push-for-occupancy phase, which I mentioned in my previous post. There are many moving parts that need to come together. Our biggest challenge has been staying on top of things and ensuring that the things that need doing, get done. Which is why I’ve been MIA on the blog. There’s a ton to catch up on.

But first, we had a rooftop picnic with the girls tonight (on our newly finished rooftop deck!). When we arrived back at our just-ok rental house a few blocks away, Josie started crying. She said “I no want this house”. Ha! I guess we’re all getting a wee bit anxious.

Stairs and screen wall

Stair brackets installed against screen

It glows

Climbing plants to be installed at a later date :)

Our stairs are designed to float between the wall and a 2 storey metal screen wall. So before the stairs themselves can go in we had to install the screen wall and metal bridge. Mark tackled this over a couple of weekends with some great help — huge thanks to Rob Villeneuve, Steve Dufresne, Mike Davis, Graham Dorey, Nick, and Gary Sharp (again! Gary, we owe you so much for all your help on our home). The metal screens support the bridge and the stair treads, and the bridge and stair treads stabilize the screen. Mark installed temporary treads so that the stairs are usable until the finished treads can be installed.

Kitchen install

Island – facing the living space

View of the pantry wall (with our fridge in the way)

We have a kitchen! And it’s gorgeous. Ordered our kitchen from Astro and had Kosta do the install. He was a pro. Took him 3 days. We have a combo of a white, glossy laminate for the functional kitchen drawers and a brown ash, sandblasted finish, on the doors facing the living space. For more on our kitchen design and layout, read this post.

Our counters will be installed next week. We decided on Caesarstone, in a dark cement finish. The counter is from Solid Decorum. And we have some beautiful ash butcher block from the Wood Source for the sill-come-counter under the window.

Tiles

Living room tiles (pre-grout)

Bathroom floor tile (pre-grout)

The majority of our floor tiles have been laid. With the remaining to be completed and grouted over the weekend. We have quite a bit of tile in our house. In our bottom floor entry, and our main floor living space, we went with a dark, larger-format tile, arranged in a staggered pattern Mark designed. We’re really happy with them. In our upstairs bathrooms, we opted for a 1” x 3” black tile on the floor, which conveniently hide our linear drain in the master bath. And a larger format white subway tile on the walls. We’ve got a lot of wall tile in our master bath because of our sloping ceilings. Really look forward to seeing it go up – next week.

We’ve also been very happy with our choice in tile contractors. Flowtopp. Highly, highly recommend them. Tiles was sourced from Ceragres. We used Gate on the main floors (in Licorice), Unit on the bathroom floors (black), and I forget for the bathroom walls…

By the way, we aren’t concerned in the slightest that we’ll have cold toes on ceramic tile. We won’t have any thermal bridging thanks to Passive House. We also have a lovely area rug we purchased on our Moroccan honeymoon (years ago now, wow) for the living room, to soften up all the hard surfaces.

Priming and painting

Looking down the void our bright white walls

The house has been primed and painted. Quelle difference. It’s starting to feel like a finished house. We went with Benjamin Moore, Chantilly Lace, in a flat finish (aka. white). We understand that an eggshell finish cleans more easily, but wanted to make sure that when light washes against our walls, they’ll look smooth and dreamy. Flat does a better job at hiding blemishes. We enlisted the services of Michael Fenton, who helped us paint our last house as well. This man knows his paint.

ERV and heater install

Mission control

The hair dryer heater 

Mark is nearly finished installing the Zehnder ERV and ground source heat exchanger. The units are hung in place and most of the ductwork is connected. Our 4kW Thermolec duct heater is also in place. This is the heater for the whole house! It’s small enough for our 3 year old daughter to hold on her lap while she eats ice cream. Nathan from Ackland Plumbing will be priming our ground loop and connecting it this coming week. 

Hot water tank install
Nathan from Ackland Plumbing also installed our Stiebel Eltron heat pump hot water tank. It’s an 80 gallon tank that uses an air source heat pump to heat the water (meaning super energy efficient). It looks cool too.

Siding
Our siding is finished and looks fantastic. Thanks to Graham Dorey. 

Final siding on the roof deck

That's a tall ladder

Roof deck

Our most-finished space

Our rooftop deck also looks amazing. Thanks to Graham Dorey. Who struggled with a strained knee, from a football accident and not the house, these past couple days. Going up and down a ridiculously high ladder with decking materials. 

We have yet to install a railing, which we’ll need for occupancy. The building inspector nay’ed our initial design, because it didn’t meet the building’s code definition of safe. He considered it climbable. He did say, however, that if we built a mock-up, he’d come look at it and assess the climbability in person. So that’s something we’ll be progressing next week. And/or we’ll look at redesigning it.

Front deck

Helical piles going in

Our front deck build is underway. Step one was to get some helical piles drilled into the ground to support the structure of the deck. Why helical piles? To minimize root damage to our big tree out front. A more typical deck pile requires digging of a hole much larger than the post itself. Whereas, a helical pile requires a hole only as large as the diameter of the pile itself, which you see in the picture is quite small.

Step two was to lay some landscape fabric and gravel for underneath the deck. Mark did all the gravel moving himself in the humid, sweltering heat that is Ottawa in July. Deck build is set to start this weekend and continue over the course of next week, with Graham on the job. 

That’s all folks. I’m sure I’ve missed things so I’ll be sure to write more frequently over the final weeks to come. If for some reason you don’t hear from me, it’s because we’re building a house, and are busy building it.

Weeks 35 & 36: siding, ducts & open house tour

Our daughter Josie turned two today. It was a reminder that over two years ago, our house-building adventure began. The wheels were set in motion when we found out we were pregnant with #2 and knew we would inevitably outgrow our little house. We purchased the lot across the street from us and so it began. It feels like we’re finally hitting the home stretch. With the house and the trying baby-rearing days. The baby days are over. Sniff. I very much look forward to the many adventures in our new house, however. Move-in day can’t come soon enough, which should only be a couple months off.

Scaffolding up on the north wall.

A glimpse at the cedar behind the scaffolding. C'est magnifique!

One of the most exciting site-visits for me came last week, when I saw some of the cedar siding up on our North wall. It looks fantastic! The strapping went a bit slower than we had hoped because the shell of our house is actually a lot less square than we had hoped/thought it was. Graham and crew from Vessel woods are doing a bang-up job resurrecting the issue. I cannot wait to see the siding across the rest of the house. Should take a few more weeks of work. They will tackle the front façade last, so I’ll have to hold my breath until then. At least I have our amazing blue doors to tide me over. The Hermann’s were back on site last week to install them.

The Sentinel

Our house ducts

Mark finished installing the Zehnder flex ducts throughout the house. At the moment, it looks like the sentinel robot from the Matrix has taken up residence in our walls. The install went pretty smoothly. However, in sorting out the layout for our mechanical room, Mark realized he ordered the Heat Exchanger in the wrong orientation. So we’ll have to swap it out before it gets installed.

Mark was also busy taking deliveries, making decisions, juggling a million moving parts and covering for me on the home front while I was away in NYC for work (and play). Busy is the understatement of the century. His brother Brian is in town now to help out. He’s mostly here to help with drywalling, but that’s not set to begin for another week or so. We’ll find plenty to keep him busy with in the meantime. Including hang-time with his two little nieces. Brian watched the girls on Saturday so Mark and I could both be present at the open house tour.

We had a great turnout and lots of great questions. Thank you to all who made it out, it was a really exciting day for us to meet and talk to people interested in this kind of stuff.

A few people have been surprised that we’re opening our house up to tours like this. And I guess it’s not really a normal thing to do. But then again, nothing about our house is ‘normal’. The more I learn about building, the more I believe that we should pay attention to how our houses get built and what goes into our walls. When the drywall goes up, all is hidden. When the siding goes up, all is hidden. How can you tell the difference between our house and another new build going in down the street? You can’t. Unless you look at the drawings or look for a certification like Passive House. What better opportunity to see what’s inside a wall than to see it under construction? So I guess that’s why we’ve been opening our house up the way we have been and will continue to do so.

The next open house tour will likely be when the house is complete. It will be a house like any other at this stage, albeit fantastically comfortable and incredibly beautiful. The house won’t feel like a science experiment, and all the thought, cost and planning that went into our walls happened because it’s simply the way it ought to be.

Btw, if you missed out on the open house tour, but are still interested, post a comment or send us a message. We both realized, in hindsight, that we totally should have Periscoped (web streamed) the tour. If we give another any time soon, we’ll be sure to press record and/or pass along an invite.

Construction weeks 33 & 34 – plumbing, hvac and more

manifold system

plastic in the walls

Wow, it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve provided an update. The house has been relatively quiet with only one or two people working at a time. That has since dramatically changed…

Nathan, from Ackland Plumbing, has finished the first rough-in phase for plumbing. We’ve got spiffy (BPA-free) breathable supply pipes running through the house, and a purple one which supplies the grey water. He was explaining to me how, just 10 years ago, a different kind of plastic pipe was getting installed in Canadian houses, one which does not breathe and where water stagnates and becomes unsafe for drinking. Insurance companies will not insure these houses and lawsuits are being filed against the building code. Lesson learned: what seems like a good idea today, may very well prove to untrue tomorrow. And wet things need to breathe, trapped moisture is the enemy of building. I digress. Back to our house.

Nathan managed to carefully maneuver all supplies and drains in and between our open floor trusses and walls. The design of our house helped to facilitate this, with Mark stacking all the plumbing and electrical to one side of the house, over the mechanical room. (This poses absolutely no risk Myles btw (comment from previous post), it’s actually a really clever thing to do when building because all utility runs are minimized in terms of materials and labour). We’ve received numerous compliments on Nathan’s handiwork and it passed the plumbing inspection no problem-o. He’s as excited as we are to have a neat and tidy mission control in our mechanical room, where we’ll go copper for added ‘wow’ factor. Good stuff.

wood fibreboard clads the house until the siding gets installed overtop

the cardboard box phase

Speaking of passing inspections, we also passed our building envelope inspection. Hooray! We were nervous about this one because we weren’t sure how the inspector would feel about forgoing the traditional Tyvek weatherproof house wrap for our wood fibreboard. The wood fibreboard is more common in Europe and is not often seen on our side of the pond. Mark provided specs to the building inspector and explained it to him. We’re fortunate to have an experienced and open-minded official. But there’s no doubt to anyone walking through or around our house that it’s a well-built, thoroughly considered house.

And back to the mechanical room. Hans from Pinwheel Builds met with Mark and dropped off our new Zehnder HRV and heat exchanger along with coils of flexible plastic pipes, which are to be our house’s air ducts for circulating what little heat we require. It’s a pretty groovy system. We won’t have any gross floor ducts, bulkheads or metal work in our house. All you’ll see are small 8” diameter circles mounted to the occasional wall and ceiling to circulate air. Mark went over his plan with Hans and has started installing the ducting himself. Unboxing the parts was better than Christmas for Mark. He was so excited.

parapet roof

new carhartts

From here on out, Mark will be spending as much time as possible working on the house himself. He bought himself a spiffy new pair of Carhartt overalls for the task ;) In addition to starting the ducting, he finished the parapet (a fancy word for structural railing) on our flat roof, cleaned up the front and back yards, and hosted another tour. This last one saw around 30 people who joined as guest of Malcolm Isaacs, who runs the local Passive House courses and is a director of the Canadian Passive House Institute.

brown ash cabinets

On the backend, we ordered our kitchen. Another hooray! Finally. There were a few back-and-forths during the homestretch, which prolonged the process, but were key for getting the details ironed out. We’re really excited about it. We ended up going with Astro Design Centre and have had a great experience working with Dean Large. He ‘gets’ us, in terms of design, and was able to add real value to our design experience, which we really appreciated. Astro also had the finishes we liked the most, at the best price. For example, a gloss white was the same cost as a matte white (typically gloss costs more). And we don’t want any hardware, we want recessed handles (a no hardware look typically costs more). We went with the Astro house brand in white gloss for all the cabinets except those on the backside of the island. The backside of the island faces the living area. For these cabinets we chose a sand-blasted (i.e. textured) brown ash. Haven’t ordered our countertops yet. That’s next.

Following suit, we made a decision on our wood flooring and placed the order. We’ve decided to go with white ash from the Wood Source. The same white ash that the city of Ottawa has felled throughout the city to thwart the Emerald Ash Borer. It will be sympathetic to the island wood. We also decided to order some extra wood for the sloped ceiling, which spans our open space, over the master bedroom and loft. A slatted wood ceiling will allow for clever lighting hacks. We’ll be able to hide much of the hardware behind the wood so that we only see what we want to see and can get away with using less expensive fixtures at no aesthetic compromise. It will also look incredibly beautiful. It’s a win-win.

As alluded to earlier, the house is buzzing again this week. Siding has begun amongst other exciting things. Do stay tuned and lookout for another Mark Periscope. He broadcast just today. And hope you’ll join the next house tour!

Domestic hot water heater

Part 2 of our mechanical system, the domestic hot water heater, explained over casual couch conversations.

Our Passive House HRV/heat exchanger system

Part 1 of a video series with Mark casually explaining our mechanical systems as we sit on the couch. There will be three videos following along later this week, going deeper into our mechanical systems. All of which stemmed from my earlier post on appliances.