Monday, August 25, 2008
We're Finally Breaking Ground!!!
I’m assured that the trucks are lined up for tomorrow morning and the ground breaking will happen FOR SURE. I know I’ve said we’re going to start many times before, but the money and permit are in hand, and Joe Haaf of Rock Solid Concrete Services, who is doing the excavation and much of the building of the house, says that Tuesday, August 26th, is the day.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
It's Final! Closing on August 7th
The appraisal came in at an amount I can live with, and the closing will be on Thursday, August 7th. So I'm finally going to get started. I contacted Joe Haaf at Rock Solid Concrete this morning to let him know I'm ready to go next week, and hopefully he'll be able to work me into his schedule pronto. Joe is doing the excavation, the masonry, and a lot of the work inside. He's kind of been "on hold" since May, when I thought we'd get started. But I had delays with the building permit (not being submitted in a timely manner), and then I didn't push getting the financing through as fast as I normally would have, since I knew it was going to take 6-8 weeks to get the permit. That was a critical error, as the bank suspended all construction to perm loans a few days before I was supposed to close, and I had to switch to yet another bank for the construction loan.
Now the pressure is on. There is a LOT of detail work that has to be decided (by me), things like exactly where the windows are going, where each electrical outlet will be, colors for the walls, the roof, what kind of wood for the floors and the color, etc. It's kind of overwhelming, but it will be worth it in the end.
I hope to have the actual date for the groundbreaking soon!
Now the pressure is on. There is a LOT of detail work that has to be decided (by me), things like exactly where the windows are going, where each electrical outlet will be, colors for the walls, the roof, what kind of wood for the floors and the color, etc. It's kind of overwhelming, but it will be worth it in the end.
I hope to have the actual date for the groundbreaking soon!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Financing at Last!
It looks like we're actually going to close on the construction loan next week, and get started the week of August 11th. The appraisal has not been completed yet, so that's still a concern. The last appraisal came in at only 83% of the estimated construction costs. This was mostly due to the neighborhood and the high number of foreclosures there, which were used as comparable properties. I'm hopeful that the new appraisal will focus more on the construction costs than comparables.
Actually, the new loan is a better rate with better closing costs than the one I had (or almost had) before, so maybe it's all for the best. I hate getting started so late, though. I had planned to break ground in April, and now it's not going to happen until mid-August. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping nothing else goes wrong and I actually close on the 7th.
Actually, the new loan is a better rate with better closing costs than the one I had (or almost had) before, so maybe it's all for the best. I hate getting started so late, though. I had planned to break ground in April, and now it's not going to happen until mid-August. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping nothing else goes wrong and I actually close on the 7th.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Mortgage Meltdown Hits Home
Things have been going fast and furious the past few weeks. My stress level has been way up, because my mom fell and broke her wrist a month ago, and two weeks ago had to have surgery to put in a plate because it wasn't healing correctly. So I've had to take 3 1/2 days off work in the past two weeks to take care of her and get her to doctor appointments. My full-time job keeps me very busy, and I've been getting behind with all the time off I've been taking.
The issue that has me the most upset is the call I got Friday from Contractors Capital Corporation, where I was getting my construction loan. This 45 day process has been ongoing for 3 months now, not due to any problems on my part. I am absolutely the perfect candidate for lending money to, in every respect. So what's the problem? First it was the loan officer got pneumonia and no one else could help me for the two weeks he was out. Then he sent me a slew of papers to sign, which had all the blanks left empty. I don't sign blank paperwork. That took another week or two to straighten out. Then there were problems with his appraiser, and the appraisal took an entire month. It finally got to the title company, and we were supposed to close this week. Until I got a call on Friday telling me the underwriter had withdrawn permission for CCC to write construction loans, effective immediately. So now I'm back to square one after three months of working with CCC. The only positive thing is that the bank that was underwriting CCC has taken over the construction loan business from CCC, so much of what has been done so far will transfer over. The really bad news is that MI Bank will NOT accept the appraisal that CCC had done, which I paid $450 for. So now I have to pay for a new appraisal with the same underwriter-now-construction-loan-lender, and have to worry once more about the house appraising way under the construction costs due to the neighborhood it's in. This is all related to the mortgage meltdown; after banks and mortgage companies spent years lending huge amounts of money to people who couldn't pay it back, now they are skittish about lending money to anyone. So this new development wasn't aimed at me, it's part of the overreaction by banks trying to cover their rear ends for their past irresponsible practices.
Adding to the stress are continuing conflicts with Richard, the architect. He has not been at all happy with changes Jeffrey Swainhart, my GC Consultant, and I have made. Some of the changes have been minor, but the major ones have Richard in kind of a snit. I am having Innovative Power Systems (IPS) do the solar, and most likely White Bear Mechanical will do the radiant in-floor heating. Richard has been set all along at having Norm Tesmar do both, but the guy can't give me any references, even though he supposedly has been doing this for 20 years. He isn't licensed, either, so he can't do it himself anyway. I have been unhappy with Norm and his complicated solar system with both tanks and an under-the-basement sand pit for heat storage. IPS is an established company. If I have problems, I'll know who to call, and I know someone will be there to answer the phone. In addition, I'm taking out the sand pit, as both IPS and Bob Ramlow (who wrote the book, literally, on solar heat and sand bed heat storage) have recommended against it in this case. It's also saving me about $5000, and now I don't have to worry about living above an oven in the lower level. The other issue is the skylight over the stairwell. Richard had initially designed a cupola over the stairwell, with an elevated roof with widows around it to let in light and ventilation. That turned out to be quite an expensive addition. Then Richard decided a large skylight, 5 feet by 20 feet, would be better. It wouldn't open, so he proposed adding a window in the rear gable, near the peak, to add the ventilation. I loved the skylight proposal, but it was going to be around $6000 just for the plastic skylight. There were many seams in it, which I didn't like. One seam goes bad and the whole thing starts leaking. I wanted to put in some regular skylights instead. Jeffrey came up with a good plan putting in three 3' x 4' skylights, with one being operable for ventilation. I feel more confident that this system will be less likely to cause problems (with leaking) over the long term.
So the bottom line on the project is that the new bank said it would be 2 to 3 weeks at a minimum to get the construction loan approved, so my plans to break ground this week have been put on hold.
I know that all projects have things go wrong, and I'm just hoping that I'm getting all the kinks out before we even start, and that once we start digging, everything will go relatively smoothly.
The issue that has me the most upset is the call I got Friday from Contractors Capital Corporation, where I was getting my construction loan. This 45 day process has been ongoing for 3 months now, not due to any problems on my part. I am absolutely the perfect candidate for lending money to, in every respect. So what's the problem? First it was the loan officer got pneumonia and no one else could help me for the two weeks he was out. Then he sent me a slew of papers to sign, which had all the blanks left empty. I don't sign blank paperwork. That took another week or two to straighten out. Then there were problems with his appraiser, and the appraisal took an entire month. It finally got to the title company, and we were supposed to close this week. Until I got a call on Friday telling me the underwriter had withdrawn permission for CCC to write construction loans, effective immediately. So now I'm back to square one after three months of working with CCC. The only positive thing is that the bank that was underwriting CCC has taken over the construction loan business from CCC, so much of what has been done so far will transfer over. The really bad news is that MI Bank will NOT accept the appraisal that CCC had done, which I paid $450 for. So now I have to pay for a new appraisal with the same underwriter-now-construction-loan-lender, and have to worry once more about the house appraising way under the construction costs due to the neighborhood it's in. This is all related to the mortgage meltdown; after banks and mortgage companies spent years lending huge amounts of money to people who couldn't pay it back, now they are skittish about lending money to anyone. So this new development wasn't aimed at me, it's part of the overreaction by banks trying to cover their rear ends for their past irresponsible practices.
Adding to the stress are continuing conflicts with Richard, the architect. He has not been at all happy with changes Jeffrey Swainhart, my GC Consultant, and I have made. Some of the changes have been minor, but the major ones have Richard in kind of a snit. I am having Innovative Power Systems (IPS) do the solar, and most likely White Bear Mechanical will do the radiant in-floor heating. Richard has been set all along at having Norm Tesmar do both, but the guy can't give me any references, even though he supposedly has been doing this for 20 years. He isn't licensed, either, so he can't do it himself anyway. I have been unhappy with Norm and his complicated solar system with both tanks and an under-the-basement sand pit for heat storage. IPS is an established company. If I have problems, I'll know who to call, and I know someone will be there to answer the phone. In addition, I'm taking out the sand pit, as both IPS and Bob Ramlow (who wrote the book, literally, on solar heat and sand bed heat storage) have recommended against it in this case. It's also saving me about $5000, and now I don't have to worry about living above an oven in the lower level. The other issue is the skylight over the stairwell. Richard had initially designed a cupola over the stairwell, with an elevated roof with widows around it to let in light and ventilation. That turned out to be quite an expensive addition. Then Richard decided a large skylight, 5 feet by 20 feet, would be better. It wouldn't open, so he proposed adding a window in the rear gable, near the peak, to add the ventilation. I loved the skylight proposal, but it was going to be around $6000 just for the plastic skylight. There were many seams in it, which I didn't like. One seam goes bad and the whole thing starts leaking. I wanted to put in some regular skylights instead. Jeffrey came up with a good plan putting in three 3' x 4' skylights, with one being operable for ventilation. I feel more confident that this system will be less likely to cause problems (with leaking) over the long term.
So the bottom line on the project is that the new bank said it would be 2 to 3 weeks at a minimum to get the construction loan approved, so my plans to break ground this week have been put on hold.
I know that all projects have things go wrong, and I'm just hoping that I'm getting all the kinks out before we even start, and that once we start digging, everything will go relatively smoothly.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Update on solar and other things
Okay, my theory on using PV for electric heat didn’t work. One of my assumptions was that using an efficient electric boiler to heat the water for radiant in-floor heating would use about the same amount of electricity as the rest of the house combined. This was a faulty assumption, as it would use way, way more. By using solar for thermal, I’m able to use about 80% of the energy from the sun. PV only is able to convert 10-15% of the energy from the sun into electricity, so it’s really inefficient. IPS estimated that I’d need about a 13kW PV array just for electric heat, so that’s way too inefficient. We’re back to thermal solar after a short detour.
I’m pretty sure I’ll go with IPS and their thermal solar drain back system, with a separate HVAC contractor doing the floor.
As I mentioned in my June 9th entry, cost overruns are killing me, and I was speculating on what I could cut to meet budget costs. I was just providing examples of the extra cost of building green; I’m not actually planning on cutting out any of the green features, like the solar, living roof, or metal roof. So far, the biggest cost cutting measure has been to buy the used kitchen, which gives me way more kitchen that I could have afforded new. My original estimate on kitchen cabinets was about $20,000, which caused me to scale back and reduce the number of cabinets (uppers, the lowers stayed) by about 40% to cut costs. Now I’ll have all the cabinets I need.
I’m definitely going to have to do more of the finishing work than I had planned, especially indoor and outdoor trim. I’m handy with tools, and I have a number of real carpenters as friends and acquaintances, so I’m reasonably sure I can get someone to show me what to do and I can do it myself. I own and have used a router saw, and most every other kind of saw needed for trim. I have friends who have volunteered to help some on the house, so if I can get everything ready myself, I have people who will help me with things that need more than one pair of hands.
I’ve temporarily cut out the back porch and pergola. We’ll lay the slab for the back porch and put in the footings for both the porch and pergola, but delay those unless I have more money left over than I think I have. The pergola I can do with help from friends; the back porch will need to be done by someone professional.
The other thing that I’ll probably do to save money is do the finishing on the MgO board, the green alternative to sheetrock. If it’s hung properly, I’m not supposed to have to mud and tape it, just use a filler. You can see how this is done on the MagnesiaCore website. I may have a hanging party (to hang the MgO board) to save even more money. MgO board is much heavier (and way stronger) than sheetrock, so there’s no way I can do it myself. I remember hanging sheetrock by myself in college (I rehabbed apartments for my landlord to pay for college), but I don’t know how I did it then, and I sure as heck couldn’t do it now. At my age, I don’t even think I could pick up a piece of sheetrock. Anyway, there’s only one job I detest more than finishing wallboard, and that’s plumbing of any kind. But finishing the wallboard would probably save me $10,000, so I may not have a choice.
The longer I take on this, the happier my mom is, since she does not want to move. She’s 84, and has lived in her current home for over 40 years. She doesn’t want to move, but knows she can’t stay there by herself when the house is completed. She’s the principal reason why the main floor is handicapped accessible. The other reason is that this is my retirement home, and I’ll need it that way eventually.
I’m hoping to close on the construction loan this week or early next week, and hoping to break ground next week (week of July 14th) or the week after at the latest.
Jeffrey Swainhart, my General Contractor consultant, has been more help to me than I could ever say. What a great guy, too! He’s nailing down the contracts, and has saved me at least $30,000 in the process. The most important thing, though, is that I’m not having to worry any more about contracts and how this house is going to get built.
Jamie Queissar, an architect student from Germany who is the nephew of a good friend of mine, is helping with the project, too. He’s done a cool 3D diagram of the house using Google’s Sketch-up. Hopefully, the house will be well underway before he has to go back to Germany to school.
Things are looking up. Looks like we’ll be breaking ground very soon.
I’m pretty sure I’ll go with IPS and their thermal solar drain back system, with a separate HVAC contractor doing the floor.
As I mentioned in my June 9th entry, cost overruns are killing me, and I was speculating on what I could cut to meet budget costs. I was just providing examples of the extra cost of building green; I’m not actually planning on cutting out any of the green features, like the solar, living roof, or metal roof. So far, the biggest cost cutting measure has been to buy the used kitchen, which gives me way more kitchen that I could have afforded new. My original estimate on kitchen cabinets was about $20,000, which caused me to scale back and reduce the number of cabinets (uppers, the lowers stayed) by about 40% to cut costs. Now I’ll have all the cabinets I need.
I’m definitely going to have to do more of the finishing work than I had planned, especially indoor and outdoor trim. I’m handy with tools, and I have a number of real carpenters as friends and acquaintances, so I’m reasonably sure I can get someone to show me what to do and I can do it myself. I own and have used a router saw, and most every other kind of saw needed for trim. I have friends who have volunteered to help some on the house, so if I can get everything ready myself, I have people who will help me with things that need more than one pair of hands.
I’ve temporarily cut out the back porch and pergola. We’ll lay the slab for the back porch and put in the footings for both the porch and pergola, but delay those unless I have more money left over than I think I have. The pergola I can do with help from friends; the back porch will need to be done by someone professional.
The other thing that I’ll probably do to save money is do the finishing on the MgO board, the green alternative to sheetrock. If it’s hung properly, I’m not supposed to have to mud and tape it, just use a filler. You can see how this is done on the MagnesiaCore website. I may have a hanging party (to hang the MgO board) to save even more money. MgO board is much heavier (and way stronger) than sheetrock, so there’s no way I can do it myself. I remember hanging sheetrock by myself in college (I rehabbed apartments for my landlord to pay for college), but I don’t know how I did it then, and I sure as heck couldn’t do it now. At my age, I don’t even think I could pick up a piece of sheetrock. Anyway, there’s only one job I detest more than finishing wallboard, and that’s plumbing of any kind. But finishing the wallboard would probably save me $10,000, so I may not have a choice.
The longer I take on this, the happier my mom is, since she does not want to move. She’s 84, and has lived in her current home for over 40 years. She doesn’t want to move, but knows she can’t stay there by herself when the house is completed. She’s the principal reason why the main floor is handicapped accessible. The other reason is that this is my retirement home, and I’ll need it that way eventually.
I’m hoping to close on the construction loan this week or early next week, and hoping to break ground next week (week of July 14th) or the week after at the latest.
Jeffrey Swainhart, my General Contractor consultant, has been more help to me than I could ever say. What a great guy, too! He’s nailing down the contracts, and has saved me at least $30,000 in the process. The most important thing, though, is that I’m not having to worry any more about contracts and how this house is going to get built.
Jamie Queissar, an architect student from Germany who is the nephew of a good friend of mine, is helping with the project, too. He’s done a cool 3D diagram of the house using Google’s Sketch-up. Hopefully, the house will be well underway before he has to go back to Germany to school.
Things are looking up. Looks like we’ll be breaking ground very soon.
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Heating System
The good news is that I finally have a building permit in hand! The bad news is we aren't ready to start yet.
The biggest obstacle is not having decided on what heating system I'm going with. Since one of the options has a below-the-basement heat storing "sand pit", I can't start digging until I decide if I want this hot sand pit below the house.
When I started the project, I knew I wanted radiant in-floor heating with solar panels providing the heat. I didn't know exactly how that was done, but I thought there would be a pretty standard way of doing this and there would be companies who did it. It really isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Innovative Power Systems (IPS) is a Minnesota company that specializes in solar energy. They've done quite a few projects in Minnesota are know as the leader in installing solar and wind energy systems, both commercial and residential, in this area. They did the big PV solar array at my local food co-op. I figured IPS would probably do my solar system. Richard, my "design/builder" architect, installed his own system in his house and studio (much smaller than what I will have). I thought it would be relatively easy for him to recommend a good system and find someone to put it in.
He came to me with one heating proposal, from a guy named Norm, who had supposedly done dozens and dozens of these systems. Norm proposed a closed-loop system with 2 or 3 large (120-200 gallon) hot water storage tanks. He also proposed a 2 foot deep bed of sand with pex tubing under the basement. This sand pit would store heat from the sun all summer and then I would draw it off through the fall and early winter. There would be a heat exchanger which would warm the pex tubing in the floors, and a heat exchanger to warm water for domestic hot water use.
When I first met Norm, I wasn't impressed. There were misspelled words all over his proposal, and the grammar was terrible. It just didn't seem to be a good sign that there were so many errors in the proposal when there can be no errors in installing the system. I would have pex tubing filled with liquid, a third of which will be buried below the basement floor, another third will be embedded in the concrete basement floor, and the last third will be sealed under the first floor hardwood floors. There can't be any mistakes. Once the system is complete, mistakes can't be fixed without ripping up the floors. But Richard was absolutely sold on Norm; he'd have Norm install his heating system if he were building a home.
I told Richard I wanted a bid from IPS. I wasn't going to give a huge hunk of money to some guy named Norm without comparing it to something else. Richard never showed me the bid from IPS, just said it was a "drain back" system that was inferior to Norm's. He also told me that the water going up to the solar panels to get heated up was the same water that came out of my shower, which I didn't exactly like. (It turns out that isn't true, so either I misunderstood him or he misspoke.) We met again with Norm, as I was still having great reservations. Norm had some fancy graphs and flow charts and assured me I'd get 90% of all my heat and hot water needs from this system, it was that efficient. He presented a system that was going to total $45,000, but assured me "it would probably be a lot less." Richard kept pressuring me to go with Norm, because his was the best. No one else could do it. At one point I even said "Do you mean to tell me there is no one else in the Twin Cities who can do a solar heating system in a residential home? I don't believe that."
By this time, Richard's time was being taken up by another project, and he recommended a General Contractor to help me finish. The first time I met Jeffrey Swainhart, he stayed for a meeting we were having with Norm. With all the fancy charts Norm had, he still couldn't explain to me how the system was going to work in terms of the sand pit and storage tanks. I can understand some pretty complex issues, but he totally lost me with his explanations. I became convinced he didn't know how the system worked. Jeffrey wasn't overly impressed, either. That night, I went online and found an article by Bob Ramlo on the very kind of system Norm was proposing. Bob has written a book on soar heat and I had seen the book just a week or two before. The article Bob had written was clear and easy to understand, so I finally understood what Norm had been trying to explain. It wasn't a difficult concept, and I took it as a bad sign that Norm couldn't explain something that was pretty simple.
We asked Norm for references and actual projects he's done, and got the runaround, another really bad sign. Apparently, Norm works with a relative, Tom, on the solar heating project. Tom is the brain behind the business, and actually hooks everything up himself, while Norm makes the sales and does the grunt work of laying the pex tubing out.
Jeffrey got a hold of the bid from IPS, which had been given to Richard in the fall. IPS just bids on the solar energy hookup, they don't install any of the radiant in-floor heating itself. You have to get an HVAC installer to do that. So Norm's bid was about $45K, and the IPS drain back system plus an HVAC bid I had already gotten came out to about $48K. So the prices are close, but there are differences, the main one being how to store the heat. IPS doesn't have a sand pit under the basement (the sand pit raises the cost of excavation and masonry work by $3000 or so).
When I had a chance to look at the IPS bid this weekend, and saw the solar broken out separately from installing the heating tubes and overall heat system, it got me thinking.
Radiant in-floor heating is supposed to be the healthiest (no hot air blowing around, drying the air and spreading germs and dust), warmest, and most energy efficient. I still have to have a boiler for backup, as well as a hot water heater (for backup). The solar will still probably only provide 60-70% of the heat/hot water needs, on the average. When the sun is low and weak during the coldest months in Minnesota, the gas boiler will be on a lot.
It is going to cost about $26,000 to add the solar thermal heat. This includes heat exchangers, heat extractors, very large storage tanks, maybe a sand pit, and nine 4' by 8' solar panels on the roof.
What if I took the $26,000 and bought PV panels and used an electric boiler and tankless electric hot water heater? Shouldn't $26K worth of PV panels power a boiler and DHW heater year around, 100% of the time?
I did some research on that. My house will be incredibly energy-efficient. If I bought a 5kW system of PV panels, it should be enough to power all my electric, including an electric boiler. I could get a 5kW PV array for about $40,000. I get a $2000 rebate from the feds, and a $11,250 rebate from the state. Also, from the state, the $40K worth of PV panels are not part of the assessment for real estate tax So I'd save a few hundred bucks every year in taxes.
So do I want to spend $26K on thermal solar, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it (heat exchangers, 200 gallon storage tanks, etc.), which will provide about 60-70% of my heat and hot water (I'll still be paying for the other 30%), and I'd still be paying all my electricity? Or should I spend $27k ($40K for the PV array minus the rebates equals $27K) and get 100% of my heat, hot water, AND electricity? Unless I'm really missing something, this seems like a no-brainer.
Stay tuned as this gets fleshed out.
The biggest obstacle is not having decided on what heating system I'm going with. Since one of the options has a below-the-basement heat storing "sand pit", I can't start digging until I decide if I want this hot sand pit below the house.
When I started the project, I knew I wanted radiant in-floor heating with solar panels providing the heat. I didn't know exactly how that was done, but I thought there would be a pretty standard way of doing this and there would be companies who did it. It really isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Innovative Power Systems (IPS) is a Minnesota company that specializes in solar energy. They've done quite a few projects in Minnesota are know as the leader in installing solar and wind energy systems, both commercial and residential, in this area. They did the big PV solar array at my local food co-op. I figured IPS would probably do my solar system. Richard, my "design/builder" architect, installed his own system in his house and studio (much smaller than what I will have). I thought it would be relatively easy for him to recommend a good system and find someone to put it in.
He came to me with one heating proposal, from a guy named Norm, who had supposedly done dozens and dozens of these systems. Norm proposed a closed-loop system with 2 or 3 large (120-200 gallon) hot water storage tanks. He also proposed a 2 foot deep bed of sand with pex tubing under the basement. This sand pit would store heat from the sun all summer and then I would draw it off through the fall and early winter. There would be a heat exchanger which would warm the pex tubing in the floors, and a heat exchanger to warm water for domestic hot water use.
When I first met Norm, I wasn't impressed. There were misspelled words all over his proposal, and the grammar was terrible. It just didn't seem to be a good sign that there were so many errors in the proposal when there can be no errors in installing the system. I would have pex tubing filled with liquid, a third of which will be buried below the basement floor, another third will be embedded in the concrete basement floor, and the last third will be sealed under the first floor hardwood floors. There can't be any mistakes. Once the system is complete, mistakes can't be fixed without ripping up the floors. But Richard was absolutely sold on Norm; he'd have Norm install his heating system if he were building a home.
I told Richard I wanted a bid from IPS. I wasn't going to give a huge hunk of money to some guy named Norm without comparing it to something else. Richard never showed me the bid from IPS, just said it was a "drain back" system that was inferior to Norm's. He also told me that the water going up to the solar panels to get heated up was the same water that came out of my shower, which I didn't exactly like. (It turns out that isn't true, so either I misunderstood him or he misspoke.) We met again with Norm, as I was still having great reservations. Norm had some fancy graphs and flow charts and assured me I'd get 90% of all my heat and hot water needs from this system, it was that efficient. He presented a system that was going to total $45,000, but assured me "it would probably be a lot less." Richard kept pressuring me to go with Norm, because his was the best. No one else could do it. At one point I even said "Do you mean to tell me there is no one else in the Twin Cities who can do a solar heating system in a residential home? I don't believe that."
By this time, Richard's time was being taken up by another project, and he recommended a General Contractor to help me finish. The first time I met Jeffrey Swainhart, he stayed for a meeting we were having with Norm. With all the fancy charts Norm had, he still couldn't explain to me how the system was going to work in terms of the sand pit and storage tanks. I can understand some pretty complex issues, but he totally lost me with his explanations. I became convinced he didn't know how the system worked. Jeffrey wasn't overly impressed, either. That night, I went online and found an article by Bob Ramlo on the very kind of system Norm was proposing. Bob has written a book on soar heat and I had seen the book just a week or two before. The article Bob had written was clear and easy to understand, so I finally understood what Norm had been trying to explain. It wasn't a difficult concept, and I took it as a bad sign that Norm couldn't explain something that was pretty simple.
We asked Norm for references and actual projects he's done, and got the runaround, another really bad sign. Apparently, Norm works with a relative, Tom, on the solar heating project. Tom is the brain behind the business, and actually hooks everything up himself, while Norm makes the sales and does the grunt work of laying the pex tubing out.
Jeffrey got a hold of the bid from IPS, which had been given to Richard in the fall. IPS just bids on the solar energy hookup, they don't install any of the radiant in-floor heating itself. You have to get an HVAC installer to do that. So Norm's bid was about $45K, and the IPS drain back system plus an HVAC bid I had already gotten came out to about $48K. So the prices are close, but there are differences, the main one being how to store the heat. IPS doesn't have a sand pit under the basement (the sand pit raises the cost of excavation and masonry work by $3000 or so).
When I had a chance to look at the IPS bid this weekend, and saw the solar broken out separately from installing the heating tubes and overall heat system, it got me thinking.
Radiant in-floor heating is supposed to be the healthiest (no hot air blowing around, drying the air and spreading germs and dust), warmest, and most energy efficient. I still have to have a boiler for backup, as well as a hot water heater (for backup). The solar will still probably only provide 60-70% of the heat/hot water needs, on the average. When the sun is low and weak during the coldest months in Minnesota, the gas boiler will be on a lot.
It is going to cost about $26,000 to add the solar thermal heat. This includes heat exchangers, heat extractors, very large storage tanks, maybe a sand pit, and nine 4' by 8' solar panels on the roof.
What if I took the $26,000 and bought PV panels and used an electric boiler and tankless electric hot water heater? Shouldn't $26K worth of PV panels power a boiler and DHW heater year around, 100% of the time?
I did some research on that. My house will be incredibly energy-efficient. If I bought a 5kW system of PV panels, it should be enough to power all my electric, including an electric boiler. I could get a 5kW PV array for about $40,000. I get a $2000 rebate from the feds, and a $11,250 rebate from the state. Also, from the state, the $40K worth of PV panels are not part of the assessment for real estate tax So I'd save a few hundred bucks every year in taxes.
So do I want to spend $26K on thermal solar, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it (heat exchangers, 200 gallon storage tanks, etc.), which will provide about 60-70% of my heat and hot water (I'll still be paying for the other 30%), and I'd still be paying all my electricity? Or should I spend $27k ($40K for the PV array minus the rebates equals $27K) and get 100% of my heat, hot water, AND electricity? Unless I'm really missing something, this seems like a no-brainer.
Stay tuned as this gets fleshed out.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Budget Cuts
The project cost has escalated and is now more than twice what I originally told Richard, my architect, what I wanted to pay. I do have a finite ceiling, and since I brought Jeffrey on board, he’s been working at trying to get an accurate cost estimate. Our meeting last Thursday left me with an estimate of $62,000 more than the max I can pay. About $25,000 of that is a built in cost overrun. Even if we don’t run over cost at all, we still need to come up with $37K in cuts. We discussed a number of options to cut costs. We could put on a conventional, asphalt-shingled roof, which would save at least $5,000 over a metal one. I’ve already cut out the back porch and pergola. Cutting the skylights and interior windows into the stairwell, and building a more conventional roof, would cut another $5K. Cutting the solar radiant in-floor heating system would probably save at least $20,000. It would have cost far less to build a traditional wood frame home, well-insulated, but I’ve already bought the Faswall ICFs and they are sitting on the property.
Here's a close-up view. You can see the cabinetts are in pretty good shape. The wood looks lighter in this picture that it really is. The picture above shows the true color.
Our estimate on the interior and exterior trim was very high, close to $30,000. I can do nearly all of the interior trim myself, and a lot of the outdoor trim also. So we should save some money there. I also decided to pursue buying a used kitchen cabinet set from the ReUse Center. Most I’ve seen leave a lot to be desired, but when I stopped over there last week, a really nice one had come in.
One of the most fun things has been planning the kitchen. I cook and bake everything from scratch, and spend a lot of time in the kitchen. It’s been very satisfying to put everything exactly where I want it. Kitchens, though, are very expensive, and my kitchen had been running about $30K. I had already scaled it back considerably, but it was still a good hunk of money.
After our meeting, I headed over to the ReUse Center to see what they had, and if the one I had seen was still available. Not only was it still there, but it was marked 40% off. It was a large set, and they were kind of overwhelmed with kitchen sets and wanted to move them. So I bought it. I would guess that the set was around $20-$25,000 new, and is still in excellent shape. I got the whole ball of wax for $1,560 plus another $100 to have it delivered to my garage for storage.
Here's how the set looked at the ReUse Center. There are a LOT of cabinets there!
Here's a close-up view. You can see the cabinetts are in pretty good shape. The wood looks lighter in this picture that it really is. The picture above shows the true color.
Here's the truck that delivered the cabinets. I was able to haul the other cabinets in the pickup truck, but these ones were way to big and heavy.
The cabinets packed into the garage.
Here are the cabinets I bought earlier for the basement kitchette. The corner unit is to the right, and tilted.
The three in the middle are brand new upper cabinets. You can kind of see three 3-drawer vanities stacked on top of each other. They are brand new also, and I'll use those in the bathroom.
These were moved to the back of the garage to make room for the cabinets above.
So I have a garage full of kitchen cabinets and it has saved me a bundle.
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