Five Years

You may be wondering what is up with our house. It is not unreasonable to expect that, in the six months since our last update, some kind of progress might have been made. And, indeed, there has been progress.

Power generation is all set. The solar panels, batteries, inverters, generator, and propane tank are all hooked up together and ready to supply power to the house. This only matters insofar as it’s a thing that needs to be done, since in the course of normal construction, hooking power up to the structure is one of the last things that happens. However, we have prevailed upon the various contractors to at least start running some of their equipment off this system rather than the PG&E pole. So there’s limited power distribution happening in the garage. That feels like a really nice milestone to have passed.

The water supply has been hooked up, and there are hose bibs around the house. Fire sprinklers have all been installed and plumbed in. This is another milestone that helps us rest easy.

The siding is almost all on. In theory, the stone cladding will be coming next week and after that’s been put on they’ll finish the last bit of siding. Incidentally, the siding may look like it’s “board and batten”, leading one to suppose it’s about as fire resistant as a pile of pallets, but it’s made of a non-flammable composite kind of like concrete. So, don’t worry about that.

Heating and cooling is being done with heat pumps, and they have been installed, along with all the tubes and ducting and power. The thermostats aren’t installed yet, of course, but the system has actually been turned on just to demonstrate that everything works and to check for leaks while it’s still relatively easy to access all the bits.

All of the doors have been installed. We don’t have all the locks in yet, but we’re close to it.

We’ve now got a deer fence all the way around the property. This will, we hope, enable us to have nice plants outside (deer find roses extra delicious) and to have fewer unexpected pedestrians traipsing around our house. Let’s just, you know, feel a bit more secure in our home, right?