House Update

Well, the past week has been extremely busy. My brother in law, Sam, has a heating and air conditioning business down in Tracy, MN. He came up to do the heating program on the house. We started on Monday morning and finished up running the duct work and hooking up everything on Tuesday afternoon. Here is the furnace, which actually consists of an electric heat pump (provides heat and a/c), an electric plenum heater for additional heating assistance, and a gas furnace for when the electric company cycles off the electricity. That is very common up here and it qualifies you for cheap electrical rates. These furnace units operate seamlessly, so the homeowner just sets the temperature and the unit takes care of the rest. Most of the rest of the house is on a separate electrical meter, which cannot be turned on or off by the power company.
Below is a view of the walkout side of the house (north side). As you can see, there is still quite a lot of dirt work to be done. There will be a rock retaining wall to the right of where Beth is standing. We pulled out quite a few rocks during the building process, so there will not be a shortage of rocks to work with. A few of them are pretty hefty and will be set in place when the excavator comes next week to finish up the dirt work. The dirt to the left will be dug out and used to level out areas on the property and to create a building pad for a shed and work shop.


The crew has been working on installation of the vinyl siding. As you can see below, the back of the house has been sided. The large white area left incomplete below the patio door is space for a treated 2x8 ledger board. This is where the deck will attach to the house. The deck will come later once we complete the excavation and build up the dirt level a bit more around the house. The cool thing is that I have a gas line already coiled up in the basement to run out to the deck. I'll am planning to run both a gas grill and a gas fireplace off the line. Should be pretty slick once everything is set up.