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Vi's home construction blog: Spring 2011 Update - Landscape Torment

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In our house, the furnace is in the attic. Someone forgot to install or connect the condensation drain pipe. We got the house in the winter, so the furnace was running quite a bit. About a month later, we notice a dark spot on the ceiling, didn't realize its location under the furnace. Next day, the dark spot is growing. And then it starts dripping. Then a hole opens up and about a gallon of water pours out onto our furniture and carpet.

The contractor came back and fixed it - twice. The ceiling finish still isn't uniform and you can see where they joined the patch. But we got tired of having them in the house for two days - each time - with everything in the house masked off or covered in plastic.
 
The part that just really chafes my ass is that my county has an inspector that has a reputation for being a pompous prick. He held up my house for almost 4 weeks for stupid things. He's held up occupancy permits because some little plastic clips on the side of the access panel of a furnace weren't in place. He'd deny me occupancy because a couple screws weren't spotted over with drywall compound in my fucking garage.

But HOW THE HELL do you miss something like this? The plumber missed it. The inspector missed it. The guys pouring the pea gravel over the raw pipe never spotted it. The contractor never saw it. Seriously? How does this shit happen when stupid ass stuff will get you turned down on an inspection.
 
do you have any legal recourse against the jack wagon inspector? I would be SUPER pissed as well if I were in your shoes!
 
leeland said:
do you have any legal recourse against the jack wagon inspector? I would be SUPER pissed as well if I were in your shoes!
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you never have a recourse against the inspector. they're scum by nature, and laws always on their side.
 
That really fucking sucks man. I don't know how close you are to screwing up your budget, but if you have the money I'd recommend getting a company out there with a Ground Penetrating Radar and have them do a scan of the area where they have to connect. This will give you a better idea of what is going on down there. Then I'd sit and watch them perform the work. If you have a contract with the plumber, look through it and see if you have anything in there that will allow for him to eat the cost for the whole repair job.

Quite frankly, there are so many things in residential construction that just make me want to scream. The complete lack of accountability, safety, and quality is just mind-boggling. Thank god i'm in commercial/government construction.

That said, if I ever build a house, I wonder how much of my budget would be for testing shit (concrete cylinders, head tests, building enclosure) and getting an engineers stamp (foundation, mechanical, electrical).
 
roguerower said:
That really fucking sucks man. I don't know how close you are to screwing up your budget, but if you have the money I'd recommend getting a company out there with a Ground Penetrating Radar and have them do a scan of the area where they have to connect. This will give you a better idea of what is going on down there. Then I'd sit and watch them perform the work. If you have a contract with the plumber, look through it and see if you have anything in there that will allow for him to eat the cost for the whole repair job.

Quite frankly, there are so many things in residential construction that just make me want to scream. The complete lack of accountability, safety, and quality is just mind-boggling. Thank god i'm in commercial/government construction.

That said, if I ever build a house, I wonder how much of my budget would be for testing shit (concrete cylinders, head tests, building enclosure) and getting an engineers stamp (foundation, mechanical, electrical).
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GAH...don't start...I am in the middle of building right now!
 
10/28 Update:

Lots of updates....

Plumbing issue turned out to be fairly simple actually. A different plumber did the rough in for the basement and the owner of the company was finally able to reach him. Turns out he ran a second drain line for the future septic. It was burried under pea gravel prior to pouring and no one except for him even knew it was there. I didn't have it documented in any pictures. And he never marked it. It was 9" over from the original drain line put in prior to the footings being poured. So they brought out a locator and found it outside the foundation. Dug down and tied the septic into it. 2 hours of work and it was resolved. Thank god.

I spent 14 hours yesterday moving stuff in'ish. Lots of crap piled in the garage and mostly disasembled in various rooms in the house. Got the mattress laying on the floor in the bedroom with sheets that don't even fit...but we made do and stayed there last night. I've got days worth of trim painting and touch up to do. And then there's days worth of organizing and unpacking. And then finish punching out all the low voltage stuff. And then plumb out the whole house vaccuum returns. And then I finally get a chance to finish up my theater room. And then I tackle the garage again and get the drywall finished up and painted.

And then when all of that is finally done sometime later this winter I'll start framing up a little bit in the basement around the mechanicals and close them in a little more for safety (from the kids) and to keep the noise down.
 
glad to hear your plumbing nightmare is not that bad...all works out in the end...

We are trying to pick our plumbing fixtures...

there are two prices

Expensive and FUCKING EXPENSIVE...

I am getting bent over by the plumber on pricing for decent looking faucets...

He is trying to stop me from getting them online but it is so hard not to want to when they are half the price on Amazon!
 
11/22...we closed on Friday 🙂

Still have some stuff to finish up though. My Dad and I finished the brickwork up on the main part of the house this weekend. We got the highest part of the house finished and put in the window sills. Still have a couple touch ups to do in a couple boo-boo areas. We still don't have the porch done. I've got some bids on it, but not too crazy about spending $3000 to have the pillars and arch bricked up. I still have some more bids coming in. My Dad is (rightfully) out of gas & daylight at this point and done for the year.

We've been busy inside. I've got my theatre room about 95% complete. All that's left is painting the shelf for the projector and getting some bass traps in. Already have about 20 hours on the PJ. 🙂

Other stuff has just been lots of organizing, unpacking, and still have some trim painting/caulking to do.

I'll get some pictures up later of the kitchen and theatre room since they are quite a bit more completed since the last ones I posted.

Oh...and P.S.

I don't advise spamming in a thread originated by a forum moderator 😉
 
You did it!

And we were only just talking about this 4-5 years ago sitting around the BBQ.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
roguerower said:
I'm glad that plumbing issue turned out to be an easy fix and congrats on closing. Now you just get to move 🙂.
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I've been living in it for close to a month. We just had the basement and garage as "staging" areas while we organized and unpacked. Got the basment mostly cleaned up this weekend. This week will be organizing the garage and finishing up the trim painting that was neglected from the move in rush.
 
Congrats man - it's been fun following your thread. Looking forward to the final pics (esp. the HT room)!
 
vi edit said:
11/22...we closed on Friday 🙂

Still have some stuff to finish up though. My Dad and I finished the brickwork up on the main part of the house this weekend. We got the highest part of the house finished and put in the window sills. Still have a couple touch ups to do in a couple boo-boo areas. We still don't have the porch done. I've got some bids on it, but not too crazy about spending $3000 to have the pillars and arch bricked up. I still have some more bids coming in. My Dad is (rightfully) out of gas & daylight at this point and done for the year.

We've been busy inside. I've got my theatre room about 95% complete. All that's left is painting the shelf for the projector and getting some bass traps in. Already have about 20 hours on the PJ. 🙂

Other stuff has just been lots of organizing, unpacking, and still have some trim painting/caulking to do.

I'll get some pictures up later of the kitchen and theatre room since they are quite a bit more completed since the last ones I posted.

Oh...and P.S.

I don't advise spamming in a thread originated by a forum moderator 😉
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Question: did you go with staggered studs for the theater room?
 
Juddog said:
Question: did you go with staggered studs for the theater room?
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Not staggered, no. I insulated all studs, used a resilient channel, and then did double 5/8 drywall with green glue in between. At "reasonable" levels sound does not leave the room. At painful levels it is audible in the rooms near the theater, but upstairs in the kids room it's not noticable. And that's with two fairly powerful blasting away.
 
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