BE-COMING HOME: plumbing the depths

Home wasn’t built in a day.
[Jane Sherwood Ace]

The third week of July was all about getting the sub-floor plumbing and heating systems in place.

Those little white tubes sticking out above the joists are a fantastic sub-floor innovation:  PEX piping.  PEX is durable, dissolution resistant, chemical resistant, scratch resistant, fracture resistant, and high-functioning at both very low and very high temperatures.  It’s also terrifically flexible.  PEX relegates the copper and galvanized steel pipes to the past, along with easy-to-clog right angles and burst valves.  The future of plumbing is graceful lines of cross-linked polyethylene.

Mike the plumber was local (he walked to work) and a friend of our next-door neighbor Dorri.  Petersen Mechanical did the sub-floor heating.

They look kind of monstrous down below, but the silver dragons tucked up neatly against the joists,

and from above, only the air-intake

and floor vents were visible.

We needed the sub-floor plumbing/mechanicals inspection while the crawlspace was exposed and easily accessible.  Meanwhile, Jere and Martín prepped for 1st floor framing and got going on the stairs.

Once they had the inspector’s “ok”, the insulation went in (our old place didn’t have insulation, so we found this very exciting)

and the flooring went down.

On July 29th, Roy and I climbed our entry stairs

and stood in our main living area for the very first time.

How did things look from our new vantage?  Here’s what we’ll see out the bay window.

And this is the view through the living room sliders.

Still a long way to go… but walking about on the main floor of our home was a joy and delight, and a true milestone.