Heating and inspecting

Even though for some deranged reason there are no required building inspections for the area where we live I decided to employ a proper structural engineer to make sure at least our house was properly built. Today was his visit to inspect the installation of the timber frame, floor trusses and subfloor and the SIP walls. Aside from the damaged post still needing replacement, only a couple of lag bolts in the frame were declared missing. All my work with crush blocks, truss attachment, earthquake straps etc was accepted.

The faulty post; note the tears running across the face that indicate spiral grain failure.

We also got our heatpump installed at the back of the garage, meaning that as soon as we have actual power in the house (rather than a long suffering extension cord) we can consider warming up the place. Well, after the drywall is done - you don’t want to run the fans with drywall dust in the air.

Heatpump, meet garge. The large pipe sticking out of the ground is the conduit under the garage that carries the coolant fluid lines, power, propane piping and liquid sodium coolant for the nuclear reactor. The second concrete pad is for the propane tank.

Oh yes, Bridget did a first coat of primer on the beadboard panelling in the pantry and on the foyer wall. We’ll need to sand that, maybe do a second coat and then a finish coat.

Primed pantry.

Primed foyer wall.

It makes an amazing difference to the lightness of the two areas and gives an idea what effect the drywall will have.