Progress on the house is slow but steady. All of the foundation gravel backfill is complete, and the concrete guys are back for the 4th pour, the floors. This last pour should be about 80 yards. There are still 4-5 more days of steel rebar installation, then if the weather allows it 1 or 2 days of pour.
Next up after that is structural steel installation.
Since I am build a new shop, I figure I will put the compressed air lines inside the walls. I am considering using 3/4″ PEX-AL-PEX, which is a variety of PEX that has an aluminum layer. You can buy kits from Rapidair that use PEX-AL-PEX, and those include aluminum mounting blocks for putting on walls. It will be nice to have it routed inside the walls, with drops at different locations.
Anyone used this technique?
I am working on the internal wiring plan for the new house. On the networking side, I am leaning towards using Cat6A F/UTP cabling (as contrasted to U/UTP or F/FTP). It seems like F/UTP is a good compromise as the shielding provides better alien (NEXT/FEXT) protection compared to U/UTP. Any comments on this thinking?
It looks like I will have 52 Camera drops, 21 AP drops, 140 data drops (2 drops per location), and 38 speaker drops, plus all of the normal security wiring, etc.
While I don’t need that many APs right now, over time as APs evolve to higher frequency line-of-sight speeds those wires will help, especially if they can support 10G.
The camera drops could be simple Cat6, as I doubt I will need 10Gig for security cameras. Every drop will have 2 cables for redundancy. In total that should be something around 500 cable runs. I would guess average length would be around 20 meters, so about 10km (6.2 miles) of Cat6 or 6A.
For the dedicated locations that have TVs I would probably due 4 Cat6A for video, plus a few extra for control and network.
Anything obvious I am missing?
Progress continues with rain drain system and significant rock backfill. So far 60 trucks of rock, which is about 1.6 million pounds of rock. Once that tree garden is filled it should be a tad over 2 million pound of rock. The excavator crew thinks I should have invested in a quarry.
The conduit is for the service entrance. 3x 4″ conduits for primary power, and that should support 600 amps with no difficulty, and could grow to 800 or 1000amps.
Last foundation wall pour complete. Time for lots and lots of gravel and rock, then the floors get poured.
Forms have been removed from second foundation pour, and forms are going up for the third pour, which includes the ceiling in the vault/safe room. The third pour should happen mid next week.
Foundation wall pour tomorrow. woot woot. 160 yards of concrete for the walls (~650,000 lbs).
With the footers poured, construction of the forms for the foundation wall are underway. Yes Neil A. Switzer, I have notified the NSA that the battleship is nearly ready. 😉
Electrical plan round 2. Eric Rosenberry keyed me into a good idea. I was planning on getting a residential 600amp service, but PGE offers a metering plan for EV charging that has variable time-of-day rates. From 10pm-6am power is about half the cost of normal day rates, but day rates are between 2 and 3 times normal rates. If you did your entire house as time-of-day metering you would probably pay more, but if you get 2 meters, and only connect EV charging to the time-of-day meter you can get the best of both world. Since you can program the Tesla chargers to only charge in that time interval you can always charge at the low rate every night. The additional meter cost is only $11/month, so less than the additional charge for a 600 amp service.
That leaves me with the other 400amp service for other regular house stuff. Attached is a new house layout with 5 total panels. 1 Panel dedicated for EVs, to main panels in the mechanical room, a seperate generator panel, and a panel in the shop (for all of the lower level stuff).
Comments and criticisms welcome!
A little progress on the house…
The foundation footing are almost setup for pour. Due to some small changes, it looks like the footings will be about 150 yards, the foundation walls about 140 yards, and the garage floors about 70 yards.. so around 360 yards give or take a bit. That would be around 45 trucks worth, or about 1.5 million pounds of concrete.
That seems like a lot of concrete. The guys putting the forms together said it seems like these load calcs are for a commercial building, not residential.
Of course there are already 46 pilings that go 50-55 feet deep, and are 3 feet in diameter, so that is probably at least 500 cubic yards, so I guess I am getting off easy!