Just put on metal roof, rigid foam and spray foam

[rvCharlie]

Originally Posted by dablack

Charlie,

That sounds really cool! I like that! I would love to see pictures if you have any.

thanks
Austin

I don't think I have any pics of the house (might have been pre-digital era...), but here are a couple of shots of a door into my workroom and looking into a lean-to added to the side of my hangar. I used landscape timbers (cheap, & usually stay straight because they're the core of a tree after they peal it for plywood plys) for the vertical framing of the doors and the small (20x20) work space inside the larger hangar. The lean-to addition uses 3x9 C-channel purlins as rafters, on heavy 'joist hangars' on the eaves of the hangar & screwed to 4x4's on the new eave, with the door cores as decking, galvalume on top.

Hope the pics upload ok; I've never tried to post pics.

[dablack]

Here is a shot of how the attic looks now. On the left is the pex manifold, then water heater, and finally 2.5 ton heat pump. This AC is supposed to be only for the upstairs. We won't be able to install a downstairs AC this year. We aren't living in the house yet but the wife is already putting stuff in the attic and I'm in there every afternoon working. That 2.5 ton heat pump is keeping the whole house at 70F with ease. With the attic, that is 2750 sqft. We have already had a 85F day here and it wasn't a problem. I think this summer will be fine too.

I'm also attaching a kitchen shot because I really like our kitchen.

[dablack]

Been a while since I updated. We have been in the house for a couple of months and things are going great. We haven't had to have AC downstairs and it has been 100F (or very close) every afternoon for a couple of weeks now. I did put in a ceiling fan above the living room. On high, it really moves the air and keeps us more than cool. We do tend to chill the house at night so it will stay cool during the day.

I still haven't put the rigid foam up outside. It is so hot right now, the foam and siding will wait until late fall. I have plenty to do finishing the master bathroom and painting the kitchen.

Also, I have found multiple air leaks where the spray foam didn't get. I've been going around fixing those as I find them. One of my buddies at work has a good thermal camera so I'm going to borrow that and see if I can find anything else. We gotta keep that cold air inside!

thanks
Austin

[Elcam84]

Nice looking attic dablack. I assume that's a temporary breaker panel being in the attic and quite far from an exterior wall.

[dablack]

Originally Posted by Elcam84

Nice looking attic dablack. I assume that's a temporary breaker panel being in the attic and quite far from an exterior wall.

HA! I guess it is a breaker panel of sorts.....

That is for water, not electricity. It is a pex manifold. It has individual valves for all the different lines. Hot and cold water comes in and then goes out the individual lines to the shower, sinks, etc.

I designed the house so the two bathrooms were back to back and they were also right above the kitchen. This really simplified the plumbing to a very limited part of the house. So, from the south west corner of the house, I have one water line come in and go up to the water heater in the attic. From the water heater, it goes to the pex manifold about 2' away. Then the hot and/or cold water is run to the individual uses with the pex line. Basically, it didn't take long at all to plumb the supply side of this house. I bought 250' of red pex and 250' of blue pex. I still have tons of it left.

In a similar fashion, I have the actual breaker box in the very middle of the north wall. With large 2' tall floor trusses between the floor, running all the electricity didn't take long either. It is a huge house and I used way less than the average wire use to wire the place. A little thought goes a long way.

have a good one,
Austin

[dablack]

Here is the actual breaker box.

[Daox]

It sounds like things are going very well. Any other updates?

[dablack]

Sure, I've got some updates. I used a thermal camera and found some leaks in my foam. I will post pictures on Monday. The camera was from work so all the pictures are on my work laptop.

Austin

[dablack]

Ok, first two pictures for showing how the FLIR thermal camera works. Here is the pex manifold. You can see the hot water line and that we had the shower and something else going at the same time.

The rest of the pictures are where I found then spots in the spray foam or areas that were leaks due to framing. One of the attic trusses is doubles up because it is a stair area. There was a little space between the two trusses was creating a hot spot. Spraying some foam in between the trusses, into the gap fixed it.

I found lots of spots along the floor of the 2nd floor. These areas were foamed or caulked as best as possible.

Once the exterior rigid foam goes up, most of these problems will be mitigated, but I wanted to fix them as best as I can now, while they are easy to spot with the camera.

Austin

[jeff5may]

The flir camera approach makes the job of getting that last little bit taken care of much easier. Those photos are very revealing. What model did you use to shoot these pics? It looks like it did its job very well.