Here’s a look at the steel framing.
That is beyond gorgeous, both the house and the scenery. Wish I could do it, but I’ll bet the land alone was way more than I could afford.
Did you say whether you’re going to have a basement? We did a shop vac system where we connected those sweep pans for central vacuums to a shop vac in the basement with PVC, and it’s been awesome and cost about $50.
My husband and I are finishing up a DIY ICF build right now. The only things we hired out were drywall, siding, roofing, and basement/garage slab. The ICF is really easy, and fantastic in a lot of ways. I’d urge you to reconsider it, especially if you plan to stay in this home forever. Ours turned out great, and we’d never worked with it before. Here’s a pic.
I’ve got to go right now, but I’ll come back to this trhead tomorrow if you’re interested in the ICF process or want to see more pics.
If you don’t have carpets, I would really question the value of a central vacuum. At the same time, I would caution that robot vacuums are probably going to get better at a lot slower rate than you imagine. There’s real limitations on power/battery life that make roomba style vacuums a lot less effective than traditional vacuums, let alone central vacs.
It looks like you did a great job, but trust me, if I tried to frame a house myself, it would look like a Picasso, or maybe a Jackson Pollock. Given the limited resources available in the area I’m building in, I’m pretty much forced to use conventional construction, so I’ll just have to keep a sharp eye out for termites, and hopefully nip them in the bud if I see any.
That said, I’m interested in the process, and would welcome more pictures.
Lessee, we built a few years ago.
2 dishwashers if you have kids. We use them every day and never have dirty dishes in the sink or elsewhere piling up. Most people have 2 ovens they maybe use 2x a year. Our dueling dishwashers see a LOT of use. Just makes the kitchen so much cleaner and tidier.
For your propane, make sure you put a line out to your patio where you BBQ.
If you’re on the Olympic Penninsula, you probably don’t need rain capture barrels, but now would be the time to put them in.
Extra smurf tubes just because.
We really like the Miele induction stove cooktop. Again, if you have kiddos you might want to look into this. Plus it really heats up fast. My wife has very exacting standards to cook her beloved Chinese food, and she can do it with the induction stove versus gas.
If you want a sound system, now is the time to wire for it. Ditto for an alarm system. We barely use our sound system and methinks they are going the way of the dodo in the ipad and echo age.
If I think of more lessons learned I’ll jump back in.
What the hell are smurf tubes? (Because I’m sure imagining some pretty odd possibilities!)
Consider getting a whole-house surge suppressor wired into your electric panels.
Make sure all rooms with exterior walls (especially bedrooms!) have a window that is large enough for you to exit the house in an emergency and low enough to the floor that even if your mobility is impaired, you can still use it.
Get carbon monoxide detectors and smoke detectors wired into the house current with battery backup. If you’re getting a security system, a lot of companies will add those in so that if they go off, the emergency services are alerted immediately.
If you have the money to spare (har! har!), consider a whole-house sprinkler/fire suppression system. The township I live in has that mandated for all new construction, and it’s one of the reasons I bought the house I did. I hope to never need it, but the peace of mind is well worth it.
Think about maybe putting a cork floor into the kitchen. If you do a lot of cooking, it’ll keep your feet a LOT happier.
Porcelain tile is a bit cheaper than wood, and you can tile that looks like wood. Bamboo is also a good choice. http://www.wfca.org/Pages/Flooring-Comparison.aspx
Your house is only going to be one floor so you may not need or want a zoned HVAC, but it’s also something to think about. I remember a This Old House that did a segment in Japan showing that each room had individual thermostats.
Be *very *careful if installing thermostats or security cameras or other smart devices; the IoT is not well-secured, so if you get into the gadgets, make sure either you know how to secure them or get someone who does.
Electrical conduit. Basically, it’s a flexible tube designed to thread wiring through.
Actually I think it would do the opposite for me — I would worry about a malfunction flooding my home much more than I would worry about a fire.
Although I have to say, I’m less complacent about fires now than I was a few months ago. I’ve lived in several states and a few countries, sometimes in very old buildings (like an army barracks in Germany), and was never involved with a fire, so I figured anything with modern wiring was safe. I even worked as a firefighter many years ago, and almost all of our calls were fires caused by stupidity, like putting candles on Christmas trees, or using gasoline as a charcoal starter, or stacking newspapers next to a space heater, or not even knowing that there was a lint trap in the dryer.
But just a few weeks ago, I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, and I heard a sizzling sound, and then I saw a flame inside my computer!
I have a home-built PC with a lot of internal and external drives, and it was easier for me to just put a clear plastic sheet (OK, fine, it’s a garbage bag) over one side of it than to try to stuff everything in the case. Thank God I did that, because it allowed me to see the flame inside just a second after it started. I hit the off button on the power supply, lifted the plastic, and blew out the flame. After it cooled, I looked at it, and saw that what happened was the DVD drive power wire just burst into flame for no reason. The drive was empty, so who knows, I guess it was just a defective wire, although it had worked fine for a year. Didn’t hurt the rest of the PC at all, which was a thousand dollar relief.
So now I always turn the PC off if I’m going to be out of the room for more than a few minutes, and I unplug it if I’m going to be gone for more than a day. And for the rest of my days, I’ll always use garbage bags instead of the metal side panel on my desktop PCs.
But I still wouldn’t feel comfortable with a sprinkler system. Maybe Halon or something, but it’s moot, since it would bust my budget.
Talk to your homeowners’ insurance company. They can advise you better, but my guess is that they would rather pay for the rare accidental discharge of a sprinkler than pay for the whole house to rebuilt. And they can advise as to the likelihood of the sprinkler going off due to malfunction.
doesn’t read the thread
Probably a bunch of 2x4s would be a good place to start.
Not saying this is a bad decision, but you might want to double-check it. If you completely replace the roof with a Tesla solar roof, then yes, cheaper shorter-warranty shingles make sense. But on the other hand, if you end up installing panels on top of the roof, you want a longer-lasting roof, since removing the panels and re-installing them adds cost to re-roofing (typically if the roof is 5-10 years or less from replacement, solar companies will tell you to wait until the new roof is on before installing panels).
Also, you might ask your electrician if wiring in a connection for future solar panels would be cheaper during construction than as a later add-on. Just because with the auto-switching generator things could get a little complicated.
This may be pretty standard with new construction, but it’s the upgrade I’d most like to make to my house.
I love those showers. I never knew the name, but my brother always heard them called “Roman showers”
The first one I ever saw was my great-uncle’s in about 1970, and I was fascinated.
I just wonder how cold you get standing out there naked, but Uncle Charlie said he loved it and had no problems with it at all.
Yes, the building code is updated frequently, and now has all kinds of stuff required that used to be high-end options, like super insulation, outlets no more than 6’ from anywhere, etc.
But some of it is overkill, IMO. I just found out that as of 2014, ALL 15 or 20-amp circuits inside new construction have to be either GFCI or AFCI (ground fault or arc fault protected). The GFCI part certainly makes sense for bathrooms and outdoors, but I guess requiring AFCI even in hallways is so kids or morons who stick forks in outlets won’t get fried. We don’t have kids (I’ll take the fifth on the moron part), but we do have a treadmill that won’t work with that kind of circuit, so now I’m trying to find out how to keep it from becoming a $2K coat rack.
From my googling about it, it seems to be a very common problem, and even among pro electricians, the most common answer seems to be to switch in an old-fashioned breaker after the inspector leaves.
AFCI is not about protecting people from sticking stuff into sockets.
It’s about detecting wiring faults inside the walls and cutting power before that fault starts a fire. The vast majority of structure fires (after getting past the stupid people setting their house on fire) are in-wall arc faults.
If you’re in the Olympic Peninsula, you might want a back up electric generator. At least, you’ll want to add it to the wiring when building.
Japanese A/C actually consists of individual units for each room.
When we moved to Taiwan, we brought three units which we had in our Tokyo house.
The thermostats are actually in the unit but are controlled by remote controls. It’s a pain to attempt to put them in home automation systems.
Speaking of which, are you getting anything? There are a wide range of options with a fair number of rather simple and inexpensive ones.
Those are called “mini-splits” in the US, btw.
Or, always mix the lighting and the GPO’s, so that when you blow a power fuse, some of the lighting goes out at the same time, so that you know what has happened.
Where I live, seperate circuits used to be standard, because the lighting circuits could be cheaper. They’ve simplified our regulations now, so everything is the same, and now our standard practice is to always put a light on a power circuit if possible.