South Central Oklahoma Farmhouse

[Pat]

UPDATE: House is fuly shingled except ran short finishing the roof ridge 10 feet from completion and have ordered ONE MORE BUNDLE.

Windows to be delivered Feb 6. I didn't buy bragging rights, i.e. didn't get Pella or Anderson. Pella quote went over $30,000 for windows. Got good windows from someone only folks in the trade would ever hear about.

Vinyl guys got a good start today.

Electricians came and asked a lot of embarassing questions that I wasn't fully prepared to answer.

The plumbers sawed and jackhammered to remore some slab to put in a shower drain that missed being installed.

A truck load of bricks should arrive in 2-3 weeks. How many bricks in a truck load? 11,320 at about 54,000 lbs. Seems the color coated side of the brick (wire cut brick only NOT smooth faced brick) is done with a water solution of portland cement and proprietary coloring agents they baked. They can't make them if there is danger of a freeze prior to baking.

Going crazy trying to find reasonalbly priced jalousie windows for the sunporch. Haven't found company that sells them in this area. My local lumberyard contacted some manufacturers who were not interested in shipping product out here. Certainteed will do it, yes indeed Certainteed, for only about $5000 plus shipping. I may be switching to banks of crankout casement windows.

Porch railing for the elevated cement slab porch: How about $50-$70 per running foot for prefab vinyl? I don't think so! I prefer to not create an ongoing maintenance issue so prefer to not have exposed wood or steel. May have to build it myself out of aluminum or stainless. Will consider steel but would have to have it galvanized which sort of destroys the cost savings of using steel. There has to be something that is adequately strong, not toooo expensive, and looks better than used tires cut into strips and woven in place and tied with galvanized wire.



[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[dummy]

Are you keeping a running tab on the ONE MORE of everything that you're buying? [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Sorry to hear about your window issues. For railing, you might want to try this place wholesalefence . Just ordered some aluminum panels from them and so far so good.

Dale

[Pat]

Here is a shot of the front with shingles on and most windows installed. Expecting columns for porch support next week (6 inch diameter fluted aluminum in white).

[Pat]

Here is the back view. I expect to receive windows for the sun room next week. Not counting the windows of the sun room we have 35 windows, 31 of which are installed. The others are over slab floors so rain isn't a problem and only one doesn't have a porch over it. I think I will put a window in the patio storage room but that isn't ordered yet. We must be getting almost to the place where we do the rest ourselves since the construction account is getting pretty low.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Well, it seems there was confusion at the brick supplier. About 3 weeks after we were told our brick would be delivered in 2-3 weeks we were told it would be another 2-3 weeks but I got a call last night from the driver who delivered our bricks this morning. He arrived and started unloading before sunrise and was finished and on the road again before 0800 AM O'clock in the morning. One complete flatbed load of bricks, just a few more than actually ordered. I guess they, like tile suppliers I have used, ship a bit long to cover breakage.

Now if only the weather would cooperate and stay above freezing so the brick layers could lay brick without the mortar freezing, we'd be making some real house building progress.

Electricians, plumbers, vinyl siding guys, and HVAC crew still showing up some of the time. Not to bad now with the windows in, cut way down on the draft through the house, an important issue this morning at 17 F.

l [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[dummy]

Pat, how about some updates on your project? I'm getting some numbers together for a small garage package. What brand of windows did you end up using?

[Pat]

dummy (AKA Einstein), I bought mostly Simonton windows Contractor series with Low E2 and argon. Good price performance ratio.

Are you fully insulating your garage? Are you heating or cooling it?

I'm curious as to your need for "performance" windows in a garage.

If you do intend to heat or cool it, insulate the slab. You may get comments and speculation as to your intelligence but insulate the slab if you want to heat or cool the garage. Not every contractor is clued in as regards energy efficiency, even if they think they are. At a minimum I recommend a "thermal blanket" under the slab. Essentially bubble wrap with small bubbles with aluminum coatings to reflect heat.

The air space in the bubbles has low conductivity and the way heat would get across is via radiation in long wave IR. The aluminum reflection coatings reflect about 97% of this radiant energy.

The next step up in cost would be to use rigid high density foam insulation. Make sure the foam is approved for underslab installation as some low density foams may colapse under the wieight of the slab and vehicles over time and cause cracks in slab.

I put 2 inches of rigid under my basement and thermal blanket under the garage and shop slab. My HVAC contractor is quite modern and high tech and savy re energy efficiency and supplied the blanket.

Best of luck to you.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Here are some more recent photos. I expect there won't be much change in exterior looks till brick gets layed. Starting soon I hope!

This is the view from the front gate out at the gravel section line road where the mailbox is. This will look some better after we get more leaves on the trees.

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[Pat]

Here is a picture looking south from about 1/3 of the way down the drive way to the house. The foot bridge isn't decked yet but I promise I will get to it. Honest!

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O O P S

[Pat]

Here it is. The bush/tree is called a Redbud, for obvious reasons and there are a lot of them growing wild in Oklahoma. They frequently don't get real big or real old due to disease. There are domestic culltivars as well with more disease resistance.

The creek continues on to the right and goes under the elevated driveway through a 30 inch culvert and the next pond upstream. Three of my ponds are along this creek and ther is a good place for a fourth downstream of the farthest you can see in this picture.

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