Rainwater System

I am pleased to announce that our rainwater system, although dry as a bone currently, is physically in place. Many thanks to our sub-contractors with Scott's Plumbing who have been hard at work for the past 3 days to complete the installation.

Several items still remain to be completed, however, before we can start washing clothes and flushing toilets with reclaimed water. First, the gutters need to go on. Second, city ordinances still need to be officially adopted that make what we are doing legal in the City of Norris. And third, the system needs to be primed and commissioned!

We are estimating this work to be done by mid-June. The legal process to adopt new city ordinances requires several readings and subsequent approvals, as well as a final public hearing.

Installation in progress. Cistern [bottom left], pump and controller [middle], and filters [right]

Multiple water meters installed in-line will allow us to measure how much rainwater is used in the house and how much city water had to be supplied to supplement. Other important factors include total rainfall (used to calculate how much rain passed through the system and was diverted as storm-water), as well as the total city water use (to indicate how much water was used specifically by potable fixtures.

Casework Update

The casework team has been full steam ahead over the past couple of weeks, but we still have a lot of ground to cover. Every room in the house has some casework component and we have taken on the responsibility of completing the casework ourselves, from design to fabrication to installation. At this point, we have finished the majority of fabrication for the kitchen casework and are waiting for the flooring to be installed before we install our cabinets.

In the meantime, we will be setting up a large painting operation at our warehouse on Henson Rd. We decided to use a low VOC paint product to comply with our environmental goals, but with every decision comes some pros and cons. With this decision, the water based paint dries hard - similar to the quality of a lacquer based paint - but it takes about thirty days to cure. Therefore, our small, 10x10 paint booth was simply inadequate for the large amount of painting that we have to do.

We should receive a new order of plywood from A&M Supply within the next couple of days to continue fabricating the cabinets for the swing space and the bedroom. The challenge for these cabinets has been integrating all of the necessary components within them. Integrated into all of our cabinets are the Mitsubishi mini-split units which provide the heating and air for the whole house. In addition to the HVAC, most of the cabinets include recessed lighting, so all of the MEP disciplines are coordinated into one piece of millwork. Needless to say, we will have our hands full, blitzing towards the finish line.

This picture has nothing to do with my post... but its beautiful.