Roof is Done!

I got a great text today!

With the highs in the 90's and above (even one day of 108º!)  Nathan re-arranged his work schedule to get the roof done - he thought it might get hot and miserable.  I think it got hotter and miserable-er sooner than we thought it would. Nathan worked on the roof early in the mornings and after 6pm.  (He knew he had to stop roofing when the nails went THROUGH the shingle...and they were all melty and gooey...)  So after a week and half of morning and nights and a few days off, the roof is officially DONE!

We also had another Blower Door Test done yesterday.  This test tells you how many air changes per hour the house has if there is a 50 mph wind outside.  At the last check we were at 1.4.  Now, with the blue board on the outside, we've seen a 16% improvement on the test!  We are now at 1.2.  There is no sheetrock installed yet & the siding hasn't been put on, so there is still a bit more room to improve.  From here on out EVERY point lower is exponentially harder to achieve. 

I'm so super excited about this house!  I'm actually EXCITED about graphing out our old month to month energy bills and comparing them to what our energy bills will be!

Getting UP in the world!

We passed our electrial inspection without a hitch, so Keith is proceeding with the second layer of fiberglass batt insulation on the interior. Meanwhile, Nathan has been outside- applying the 1-1/2" layer of foam insulation to the entire house... It's pretty high work, so scaffolding is definately in order...

The first course of "blue board" goes up fine just standing on the ground, but after that, we needed something better... a real construction lift would be cool, but at a grand or so a week, it was a bit out of our budget...

So with that not being an option, Nathan resorted to the old "scaffold jacks" he and Keith used to use on jobs in years past... Here's the set up:

The first sections are just 7 ft tall-  like half a sawhorse - that leans against the house...

Once a pair of scaffold jacks are in place, a couple of scaffold planks get set up...

The second set of scaffold jacks is about 14 ft high.  Again, a pair of them are tilted up in place...

...and a scaffold plank gets lifted up in place...

and we are ready to go!  Nathan can move these around the house as required to get access to the whole house.  Soon, we'll have photos with the 20ft jacks for Nathan to get access to the gable ends where we'll have some stucco!

On a side note, a key improvement on Nathan's scaffold jacks is in the connection of the legs to the ground.  The danger would be if the legs were to slide out from below on loose ground or something...  In years past, there was a lot of wooden stakes getting pounded in and screwed to the legs- really a pain when you are setting up repeatedly in different locations.  This time around, Nathan used steel stakes in conduit:

The wire keeps the stakes up out of play when they are getting hauled around, but they slip out easily and then they get pounded in...



They pull back up quickly with a pair of channel-lock pliers.

On to the next location, and back to work!