Sunday, February 22, 2009

Radiant Tubing, Basement Floor, Upstairs Framing

After making some changes in the contracting, progress is being made. Jeffrey Swainhart of Swainhart Construction Services has been my right hand man on this project, and he has lined up some great contractors to finish this project. Lon Lichliter of Lichliter Plumbing has the plumbing roughed in, and Gardner Construction stepped in to pour the basement floor and will be doing some other work on the outside. White Bear Mechanical has started installing the radiant infloor heating. The two pictures below show the plumbing rough-in.
The two guys in the picture above are from Gardner Construction. I'm facing the rear of the house, where the bathroom and laundry room will be. The plumbing is there, and the guys are preparing the basement floor for a gravel bed. The truck below is full of gravel.
The guys are shoveling the gravel down a chute through the basement window.
After the gravel was put down, 4" foam insulation was laid down on top.
The foam floor and the temporary propane furnace above it.
The tubing in the front basement bedroom.
All the tubes are hooked up to a central point. There will be two heating zones in the basement, and two or three upstairs (I can't recall right now).
This shows the north side of the basement, looking to the front bedroom.
The family room in the basement.
The upstairs bathroom framed in.
The front upstairs bedroom framed in.
The concrete floor poured in the basement, covering up the tubes. This view is from the front south side, looking back through the bathroom to the laundry room. The "cold room" for storing canned goods and produce from the garden, will be at the very rear and under the steps. There are no tubes in the concrete floor where the cold room will be.
Below is the other side (north) of the basement, looking to the rear. There will be quite a large mechanical room there, which will hold the boiler, hot water heater, and the two 200 gallon tanks. The tanks will store heat from the solar heating panels on the roof.
Below, I'm standing at the rear of the mechanical room looking east, to the front of the house.
Here are the ends of the tubes, with the rest buried in concrete. The tubes were tested for 48 hours with high pressure to make sure there where no leaks (this was before the concrete was poured, of course).
The next step will be repeating this process of laying tubing upstairs, after the framing upstairs is completed, which should be this week. A type of gypsum floor underlayment, Gyp-Crete, will be poured on top of the tubing upstairs, and then a finished floor (bamboo, most likely), will be installed on top of the tubes.