We have it covered!

It was a productive weekend. On Saturday, we worked in Dad's garage, and fabricated more supports for the electrical and plumbing. We tested out a new purchase of mine.

This can heat things up in a hurry!

Since it has been darn cold, it has limited work on certain things. The Hardie panels are supposed to have primer applied to cut edges, however the primer requires temperatures in the 50's to dry properly. I have not been able to make progress on the siding, since even being mostly buried, my house can't maintain that sort of temperature when it is getting into single digits overnight. Since we can't be out there for an extended period of time, I needed something that could heat up at least part of the house, faster than the radiant heater could manage. This heater shouldn't be operated in a house as well sealed as mine. We took a carbon monoxide detector out with us to make sure we knew if we should shut it down and open the doors. We tested it in dad's garage. Within an hour it had taken the temperature up from 41F to over 72F (i.e. from needing a coat to work comfortably, to room temperature). We worked out there and turned it back on occasionally as the temperature got cool again.

We cut wood and drilled pieces to act as supports for the wiring and plumbing lines that will be up in the joists. We cut more pieces for the columns. Then we turned to the detail pieces that will go behind the lights on the garage wall. These will serve a couple purposes. First I think they will look nice. Second, they will provide more space for wiring behind the lights. We had picked up some pieces of Trex and brought them back to dads garage. We discussed the design and started cutting. We started cutting holes in the pieces to accommodate the electrical boxes. Then the blade on the saw broke. The rest of those blades were out at my house. Hmmm, how to finish the holes. Well, we have this bit that is making good sized holes pretty fast, mounted in the drill press. Lets start there. Then we took dad's router, and finished up the openings. Here you can see where we were part way done, and needed to still finish up the holes with the router.

First pass with the router gave a clean edge, then we needed to use that edge as a guide, and finish the holes.

We used the router to put a nice detail around the edges instead of having the square edges. They were ready to mount on the wall.

Sunday, we got up early, loaded up the truck, and headed out. We got the heater set up and running. Then we looked over the roof leak. The temporary drain was working somewhat. We dumped water that had missed the drain and collected in the buckets, then we got the Hardie panel set up so I could paint the edges with the primer. The heater warmed up the house to a sufficient temperature in a fairly short time. We needed holes for the gas line, hydrogen vent, and water heater air intake, cut into the last Hardie panel. We checked out the hole in the wall where these pipes would come out. We took measurements, then we marked the panel. Then we put the panel up into the correct position, and I checked that the holes would line up with where we wanted the pipes. That was good, so we cut the holes i the panel. I bought a hole saw designed to cut through masonry. It worked very well. I painted all the cut edges on the panel, and dad took some measurements of walls we needed. Things were proceeding fairly well.

After lunch, I positioned the powered scaffold. In other words, dad directed me as I backed the truck up to the house so we could stand in the bed of the truck and work at least for the ones side. We first had to cut an opening for the wire to come out to the light fixture. In some of these pictures you may be able to see where we marked out where we were going to cut and drill on the Hardie panel. We used pencil, but the nice thing is with a Trex board covering the area, we didn't have to be real worried about the marks, as they would all be covered.

Dad stood on the tailgate, and cut the hole for the wire, then drilled pilot holes for where we would mount the electrical box.

 We fished the wire up and through the hole. 

Here dad is mounting the electrical box. We have very little depth to work with.

Hopefully the inspector will approve of the protection we put on the electrical wire. We didn't have room to put a normal clamp in place to protect the wires, so we added a piece of sheathing from wire that goes down the well to protect the wire from the edges of the box.

Fishing the wires up behind the panels that were already installed, was an aggravation. But we managed.

 A better view of the Trex plate. We put some blocks in so that the wire didn't dangle down like you see here.

 

Now the last panel has been attached on the garage side.

Next on the garage side, we will probably work on the trim and gaskets around the garage door. We will need to run the pipes out through the holes in the panel on the left, but this side can be left this way for a while. We will probably try to concentrate on getting the siding up on the front now. The weather seems to be giving us a break for now, so we are going to get as much done outside while it lasts.