SIP wall construction day 1

Today the framers completed stairs ( sort of ) and started putting the SIPs up,  The sort of comment is due to the top two not being in.  Not a big deal.  We ended up switching the run between the landings to be 5 stairs instead of 6.  The math worked out better, but it took some time as the lower landing needed to be raised.  Things may speed up in the next day or so.  The crew had to sort the SIPs today as we just unloaded them onto the upper floor as fast as possible to free up the truck driver and the fork lift, and for each SIP they need to drill out all of the electric chases into the sill plates and splines.

More walls and probably more pics tomorrow.

Looking out the eating noook window

Doorway to the deck.  Watch that step, no deck yet.

Eating nook and deck door from the inside

Electrical chases holes

Stairs going down

Stairs going up

SIP delivery

The exterior walls of the upper floor will be constructed using SIPs ( Structurally Insulated Panels ).  We chose Premier SIPs in Fife, WA for our SIP supplier.   SIPs offer a few key advantages when building.  First they are structurally very strong, and well insulated.  They are basically OSB sheathing sandwiching 6 inches of XPS foam.   Due to the added strength none of the interior walls are required to be shear walls, and the insulation performance increase comes from the reduction in thermal breaks.  In a traditional stick frame construction there is a thermal break every 16 inches.   Another advantage is the speed of construction, as the walls are already insulated and sheeted.   The panels for my project total 45 total panels with the largest ones being 8 feet by 9 feet.

To install them a 2x6 is attached to the floor and the SIP panel is placed on top of it.   A bit of mastic and some screws and you have a wall.   The major disadvantage is with plumbing and electrical.  While it's never a good idea to run plumbing in exterior walls, it's pretty much impossible with SIPs.  Luckily we designed with this in mind and only have two areas to address.  The first being the Master Bath.  Since the room is fairly large we opted to fur in the West wall for plumbing, and in the kitchen we are also going to fur in the East wall.  In the kitchen this is primarily for the sink vent, but will also make electrical a bit easier too.    For electrical there are factory pre-cut chases at both outlet and light switch heights along with vertical chases on each end of a panel.   It does require a bit of wire fishing, but you do eliminate all of the hole drilling required in stick framing.

The panels arrive on a flatbed truck.  I needed to rent a four wheel drive fork lift to offload them.  Since I ended up being the forklift driver I wasn't able to get pics of the process, but here are some pics of my snazzy fork lift and the panels after we got them onto the second floor.

My 4WD fork lift

Some of the panels, you can see the 2x6 sill plate they will be fitted over

More SIP panels.  They are numbered by wall.

The rest of the panels

Floor

Framing continues, a majority of the floor is now in.  The stairs will be coming in the next few days along with the remaining basement walls.   I'll be out of town the next few days returning on Tuesday when the SIPs arrive.  That should be an exciting day.  I'll make sure to take pictures of the off loading, and with any luck a few of them may even get put in place on Tuesday.

On other topics.  For now the parging questions are answered and we are going to go with some sort of flashing, more details in a few weeks when this is actually occurring.   On the deck brackets I did find someone to fabricate them, but it will be a few weeks before they are complete.  For stairs we decided to go with the original plan and use hardwood.  The precast concrete presented too many weight obstacles and we will be happy with either choice so we chose the easier option.

Here are the pics from the upper floor and basement framing progress

Finally an upstairs

Hole for the stairs

Looking south from the Northeast corner

Doorway between garage and basement

Northwest corner looking southeast

Framing week 2

Week 2 of framing is underway.  Most of the floor joists were put in last week, all of the interior beams are installed along with a couple of walls.  The floor decking and the remaining basement walls will be completed in the next few days.   In 8 days  the SIPs ( Structurally Insulated Panels ) arrive.  I've arranged to rent a 4 wheel drive forklift to unload them and stack them on the second floor, as of now I'm the forklift operator.  I'm looking forward to the task. The following Monday the excavator is scheduled to complete the back fill around the foundation.  We are anxious to see the yard grading and to remove the silt fencing.   I'm sure the neighbors are ready for this too.

Sometimes it seems like things are going slow and sometimes way too fast.   While there may not be huge strides shown in pictures, a great deal of things are going on behind the scenes to make sure this all goes smoothly.   We've been diving into some of the finer details of the plans and realized that the post to beam brackets for the front deck are something not to take lightly, and are an item we need to have fabricated.  After asking around I found a local metal fabricator up to the task.  Due to the tolerances I need to have these on hand prior to pouring the pillars for the deck to ensure everything lines up.   I'm tentatively thinking I can get these poured in 2-3 weeks.   There is not a rush on the 3 deck pillars, but I have 4 pillars to pour with one of them supporting the southwest roof corner, thus the priority is a bit higher.  I can let the deck slide a bit but the roof I need, and it makes very little sense to pour the pillars separately.  The pillars were not poured during the footings due to the obstacle they would create for back filling.  Thus the plan was to complete to the point of back fill, once back fill completes clear a spot for the pillars.   I know probably too much information.  There will be more posts on the subject later.  

I've also been exploring parging and stair tread options.  I know parging.  I never heard of it either.  It's basically the transition between below grade and above grade.  Not a big deal if your foundation isn't ICFs.  Actually after all the research and ideas, and even one not so great attempt at a solution it's still not a big deal, just something that needs to be accounted for prior to back fill.   With the foundation waterproofed using a peel and stick membrane,  protected by dimple board, applying stucco for the concrete look becomes more difficult and really isn't aesthetically what we want for the transition area.  My siding contractor and I are exploring an option where we can just use flashing and paint it to match the house.  More on this later.   As for stair treads it turns out it helps the framers to know the thickness of each tread, and we really haven't nailed down this detail as we are going back and forth between precast concrete and wood.  More on that later too.

OK.  Enough minutia.  On to today's pics.

Center bedroom view toward garage.

Garage looking at utility sink and where the stairwell will be

Decking is on top.  A few more joists to fill in plus the A35s for shear need to be installed on the joists, then the decking can go on.

Looking in from the Southwest bedroom window.

Utility room.  Door between garage and house will be on the right and the stairs will be on the left behind the red radiant heat tubing

Pretty much the same as above taken from farther back

Framing begins

Today was day 2 of framing.   Merrygait construction is on the job.  Over the course of the next week they plan to frame in the basement walls and construct the floor system.  Once the floor is in the excavator will return to backfill the exterior and on the 26th the SIPs will arrive for the upper floor exterior walls.

 Here are some pics of todays progress.  Expect more pictures later this week as things should start moving fast for awhile.

Conduit laid for the utilities

Looking West from the Garage.  North Bedroom wall is built

A couple of 6x6 posts to support the garage beams

View from the backyard

Looking in from the West Bedroom

Pouring the slab

Today Will from allure concrete came out and poured the concrete slab.  In the basement this will be the finished floor.  In a couple of days the framing materials will show up and framing of the interior basement walls and the main floor will begin on Monday.

Here are some pictures from the slab pour.

Radiant floor heat

In the basement we are installing hydronic radiant floor heat.  Handy's Heating in Mount Vernon is the supplier, and designer of our HVAC needs for the new house.   Yesterday Don came out and gave me a quick tutorial on how to install it.

To heat the basement we have 7 zones ( bathroom, bedroom1, bedroom2, rec room loop 1, rec room loop 2, garage loop 1, and garage loop 2).  Each zone consists of about 250 feet of tubing.  The tubing is 1/2 inch pex that connects to a manifold in the utility room.   A combi boiler from Intellihot will supply domestic hot water and hot water for space heating.  The space heating part of the combi boiler connects to the manifold and supplies the hot water.

The key to laying out the loops is not to run them under any walls and not to cross them.  Here is a diagram of the layout.




To install you start by marking all the wall and door locations on the foam, and I cut a piece of leftover foam to use for spacing.   After everything is marked we connected the first loop to the manifold and started uncoiling the pex.  The pex is stapled to the foam about every 2 feet and at the corners.  When a loop is complete it connects to the return side of the manifold.  Here are some pics of the process.

What it looks like when it's done.

Uncoiler for the pex roll.  This roll started out at 1200 feet.

Finished product.  Ready for some concrete.

Master Pex stapler with his trusty foam stapler

Once finished you need to pressure test it to 100 PSI.  This took a bit of time with my baby compressor, but it's holding.   I'll check it again in the morning and call the inspector for Monday.

The guage on the manifold.  Reads 100 PSI

I had a couple of visitors helping me out while I waited for the compressor to recharge.