The House: Plumbing and Central Vacuum

It seems that I am always running behind on my blog these days! The great news is that everything is moving along very quickly. I have tons of current pictures and will try to hit the highlights quickly so I can move on to writing the next post! 

Last month, among other things, we finished the plumbing and central vacuum installation, again with much help from family. My Mom and I went around and covered all the water pipes in the attic with foam. Mom did most of the work, and had to stand on the ladder while I passed up to her what she needed. Unfortunately as my pregnancy has progressed, I can do less and less, and standing on a ladder is not a wise choice. I can handle a step stool but have to be very careful how precarious I let myself get with heights! Here are some pictures of our little project!

OK enough of that. Another project was the ERV, or Energy Recovery Ventilation system, which is basically a heat exchanger. It helps the house to breath by allowing air exchange, considering we have the foam insulation sealing everything off. (You'll see the foam in my next post!) 

Here are some pictures of the duct work we did for the ERV:

I got a couple of "action shots" while Bruce's Dad was sealing up the ducts:

You can see the two holes in the wall where the ducts are placed. One is for air intake and the other for exhaust:

Finally, once they were installed we built boxes around them to keep them in place:

When the inspector came out to check on some things, he wanted some of the beams in the garage reinforced. Basically, our framer didn't quite do it right according to code, and we needed to add some lumber. Apparently I didn't get a picture afterwards, but in the picture below you can see some double beams. Bruce and his Dad made them triple beams:

Here is the lumber before it went in. Nice big boards! Too bad I missed the chance for an "after" pic!

We finished he plumbing as well! I already showed pictures of all the sink areas in my last post, so here are just a couple of the finished areas.

The kitchen sink:

And the master bathroom shower! It's a double shower with various features so it takes up two pictures:

With a few days of work we also got both water heaters installed. Below is the one that goes to the master bathroom. The main water heater is in the attic, and I'm not climbing up unsecured ladders while pregnant so I didn't get any pictures. It is still visible from the attic though.

A project my Dad worked on was replacing the light switches in the already-redone older section of the house with the flat switches we have in the additions. Now everything matches!

I will close out this post with some pictures of the central vacuum we installed. The unit will be installed in the garage, but I took pictures of the ports we installed in the house. I'm pretty excited about being able to attach a hose to the wall and not have to drag a shop vac or other unit all over the house!

This one is in the garage:

We had to open up the wall in the front hallway to put this one in. It will service the front of the house:

Here is the back hallway outside of the main guest bathroom:

This port goes to the laundry room and kitchen. The one further down goes into the kitchen where we will have a little vent close to the floor that I can sweep dirt into:

We also have a port in the attic and one by the master bedroom door.

I covered quite a bit in this post, but trust me we've come a long way since then! I will try to get the next post up very soon to show the AC and foam insulation, and then the most recent development: DRYWALL!!!