The whole issue of overhangs was now on everyone's mind a little more,
and I wanted more information on what was structurally possible without
running into problems with window sightlines and trim. For the front
and back, yet to be determined, nobody had really
asked me what I would like to try for in general. I heard at least
one opinion on how larger overhangs to the front and back would somehow
look funny relative to shorter ones on the gables, and dismissed it. One
of my salient points in design thinking was a nice big overhang in the
back to help protect the infrastructure stuff under there -- the A/C
condenser, the ventilation ducts, and basement bulkhead area.
Everything I'd read about best practice for seasonal sun
shading said use big overhangs in key places to block heat in the summer
and let it in over the winter.
I drew up a little plan view of the back roofline with potential overhang areas shaded in and decided to ignore the naysayers, size *does* matter here and I knew how I wanted to configure that area. |
Declination
Day 8
As on the front, the assembly of foam, plywood, and Grace proceeded upward toward the peak. |
Dimensions of simple pre-cuts to cover large areas could thus for the most part be verbally described air-to-ground, cut, and handed up. Our easel-master was a busy boy that morning. |
I spotted this on one of the cleats. Someone must have been bored... |
Day 9
The GC finally scheduled a site visit to come
check the progress of the job, at which point we could also go over a bunch
of stuff on my punch-list to be officially figured out.
The guys on site all worked for a subcontractor for the main
company I was financially dealing with, sort of a consortium of a few
different green-building outfits in the area. While it was clearly in the
best interest of the GC staff to keep tabs on the ongoing jobs and what
their subs were doing, they had just spent the previous few days out
at Joe Lstiburek's
summer camp
soaking themselves in building-science geekdom and were understandably less
available. But this week they could finally catch up to where we were.
So with everyone slated to descend on the site later this morning and get all the design stuff hashed out *and* finally bring my new side door with them, it was probably going to be one of the more chaotic days of the job. What I really didn't need was any additional headaches on top of that. Thus, this was the completely wrong day to wake up and discover that my camera had bricked itself. Dead dead dead, no power-on, not even with a fresh battery, zip, a big nothin'. This was my faithful Canon G9 that despite a recurring issue with its zoom spring had been rock-solid for me through the years without any sign of trouble, and then -- boom. Turned out to be a known hardware problem with this particular camera, and I wrote up the autopsy later on. But right now I needed to be able to capture at least some of the day's doings in pictures. I managed to limp along for the next day and a half on the cellphone cam, and then borrow a small succession of better units from friends. So that should explain a fairly obvious drop in picture quality starting here. Some of the cell-phone shots were passable only after a *lot* of postprocessing to rescue what I could, but the next couple of days in general yielded far fewer decent shots. |
The door spec had been another sort of last-minute conversation. One bore
or two? Still want the plain half lite with no muntins? Is white okay?
I thought we had this all figured out before. At any rate, before they
showed up they had stopped by their usual
lumberyard on the way out
and picked this one up.
They also brought along the first few boxes of siding, which were stashed aside for the moment. |
A couple of guys pulled the hunk of plywood off the side opening and got started on installing the door. A metal sill pan definitely went in here, no mystery pictures this time. |
This frame got a proper set of shims to position it. It takes a bit of tweaking on those to get everything level, plumb, and square and then hope nothing shifts during later steps. |
Even with a proper solid installation, the door's attachment to the house
looked really tenuous with all the gaps around the opening. Those got
temporarily stuffed with some foam backer rod later for nominal bug-blocking.
Once I could watch it a couple of times, I had a much greater understanding
of how a door gets installed in a wall -- it's really not that complex but
could be easy to screw up without due care.
The nominally "fiberglass" door unit turned out to be fiberglass cladding over a wood and foam core, with the cross section clearly visible in the lock holes. This didn't appear to be an actual ThermaTru door like we had talked about getting ... in fact it didn't seem to carry any particular brand at all, and may have been simply assembled in Maki's shop from disparate parts. The sill had a shipping protector labeled "Endura Products" on it, and the hinge edge of the door itself said "Masonite". At least researching the latter turned up a chart that implied a U-factor of 0.28 [aka R-3.5] for this one -- not great, but probably on par with the old one which *was* a ThermaTru. At least this one's window was double-pane, but not filled with any exotic gas mix. |
At this point we had completed our site walkaround and after the GC did a
little geometry exercise, determined that not only would the
two-foot overhang on the back would be just fine, we could do a fairly
generous 17 inches on the front and matched on the two little rear wing-wall
pieces and still clear the front door and windows by a reasonable margin.
And I finally got everyone aware of the special attachment points
I'd need on the exterior walls -- for the ventilation duct supports in the
back, and the new electric meter box on the side right over my pass-through.
We also talked a little about roofing, concluding that it would be pretty much up to me to figure out what I wanted. I spent some time that week poking around their preferred manufacturers' web sites, specifically Fabral and ATAS, and doing a little more research while gradually working toward a decision and trying to avoid feeling rushed on it. |
Day 10
This part of the roof was *far* easier to work on. No cleats or climbing
assists needed.
Again, the lower edge of the ply was left a foot-plus shy of the edge of the foam. |
Once the ply was down, *more* flashing went on around the pipe as the Grace was rolled out across the completed over-deck. |
Day 11
Additional framing tied these two ladder pieces together and formed the return and soffit box for the wing-wall roof piece. |
More parts for the larger overhangs had been cut and put together in the meantime. |
They moved around to the front, and the guy building the ladders had the first half of the large front overhang ready for them. |
This got hoisted into place and attached, same lag-into-framing method. |
In fact the house was starting to look like it might eventually have a real roof again. |
_H* 121201