The concept of that $1100 was a small whole house plus multiple point of use units. From what he explained, it brings the overall cost down by doing it that way versus one big whole house unit.
Does it? I think that was for 4-5 dedicated electrical circuits for each of the point of use units and one larger dedicated circuit for the small whole house, plus some zoned plumbing differences. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 2124 City: Some Airport
Posted: Mar 13, 2015 11:12 am Post subject:
It makes some sense cost wise now that you explained it, but why wouldn't he just do a tankless and a recirculating pump? As long as your hot water requirement doesn't exceed the capacity of your water heater I cannot imagine you would need $5k in point units. This is what we had in our last house and we were extremely happy with it. Did the builder explain why using the smaller tank would work for you? I would think that would never keep up with your usage.
The $5k was running all the dedicated power circuits for the point units. The tankless concept he was thinking was with a small whole house, which would preheat the water so the point units didn't have to be quite as big. We could do a large whole house at a higher cost for the unit and lower cost for the infrastructure work.
From the way he was explaining it, this tanked unit with the recirculating pump would give most of the benefit of tankless with a significant cost savings up front. Seems like it may be a good solution.
So, you had a tankless with the recirculating pump? Do you recall the size? _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
My current house has 2 tankless with recirc pumps. My previous house had one tanked with a recirc pump. At my current house, there is a hot water loop to and from each water heater so that only hot water gets circulated in the hot water lines. At my old house the hot water circulated into the cold water lines and I had the opposite problem that you typically see. I had to wait on cold water because hot water had been circulated into the cold lines. In the old house, I just unplugged the circ pump because it was just as inconvenient to wait on cold water as hot. If you're going to do a circulated hot water set up, you need a supply and return hot water line to every hot water faucet.
On the subject of plumbing, a cool idea the plumber on my new house had was to put all the water lines in the slab in 2" poly conduit. This way if a water line splits/cracks/breaks, all you have to do is pull a new line through the conduit rather than hammering up the slab.
I'll check with him to see which way he was planning to go.
Yeah, that is a cool idea. Someone mentioned that on another forum IIRC. In addition to making it easy to replace, it seems it would make it easy to figure out where the leak is coming from very quickly. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 2124 City: Some Airport
Posted: Mar 13, 2015 1:52 pm Post subject:
ohsix covered a very important point about the recirc pumps and how to run them. Proper planning of the returns is key.
We had a 8.7 gpm/199,000btu unit in our previous house (3200 total square feet) with no problem, even when using multiple draws at once. Our new house has a combi boiler with a bit less flow rate, but we are set up to add a second water heater easily if necessary. The combi boiler isn't a fair comparison, but we were around $2k for the unit we used in our previous house.
I am not sure if I agree that the tanked with recirc idea. I can't imagine that a small tanked water would keep up as well as a correctly sized gas tankless solution would based on my experience using both.
I gave never lived long term with a tankless system
I havent been impressed with my experiences with shortterm rented houses that i have stayed at that had tankless systems. Not only was there the normal purge of the pipes but it seemed to me it took a while for the system to get hot.
Take that for what its worth _________________ Is President Obama a Keynesian?
It makes some sense cost wise now that you explained it, but why wouldn't he just do a tankless and a recirculating pump? As long as your hot water requirement doesn't exceed the capacity of your water heater I cannot imagine you would need $5k in point units. This is what we had in our last house and we were extremely happy with it. Did the builder explain why using the smaller tank would work for you? I would think that would never keep up with your usage.
Talked to him a little more this evening. He explained it basically uses the Grundfos recirculating pump that mixes hot water right back into the tank that keeps that tank water hot or very hot. Because of that, the larger tank is not required to keep up with the demand. Hopefully, that makes sense. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
So, the plans and bids were finalized and we settled in on a contractor. The one we selected is somewhat of an acquaintance from the church we used to go to. He wasn't the least expensive, but he was the most open to making this a truly custom design and layout versus a nicer version of a cookie cutter home, while still staying within budget. He is planning to let us do a couple major items in the construction, which also helped with staying in budget. We made some adjustments to the plans...added a few windows in the garage and removed the window in the laundry/mud room. We may adjust window size in the kitchen and make a few small changes on lighting layout and style, but those won't be big changes. Everything is in the bank's hands now for final approval and funding. Hopefully, we'll be breaking ground in the next couple months. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Thanks y'all. I'm looking forward to the build pics, too. It will be nice to be rolling forward with the actual build. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 2124 City: Some Airport
Posted: Mar 19, 2015 11:42 am Post subject:
Okie Boarder, congratulations on this! Looking forward to seeing the progress. I find building to be a lot of fun and hope that you have fun with it too.
Thought I would post some pictures of the property. It doesn't look real "pretty" right now since things are just starting to green up. You can get a pretty good idea of the layout, with it being more in dormant mode, though.
Here are some views from the south side of the property looking north and northwest.
Back (east) side of the property.
Further west...
Looking more NW...
Looking north around the mid section of the property west to east...
A few more views from the south looking north...
Here are some views from the west side of the property looking east.
Near the SW corner...
Mid area...our son is standing around where we want to put the house...
Near the SW corner...
A couple near the middle, looking east and NE...
These views are from the NW corner of the property.
Looking SE...
Looking east...
Looking NE again...
Looking north from the SW corner...wife (pink shirt) is at the NW corner of the property.
Looking east from SW corner...
Looking ENE from SW corner...
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
I need to get some new pictures up with everything all green. We went to the property Sunday and cut up one of the trees that had been pushed over by the previous owners. It looks like we're going to get a fair amount of firewood just from that one tree.
We had some delays and issues getting everything going with our construction loan, but it looks like we are almost done with that and planning to close early next week. Hopefully we'll be breaking ground in the next month or so. I'll be updating this thread fairly often once work begins. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
LOL, nope. We are using a contractor, but plan to be fairly involved and will be doing certain jobs during the build. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Went out to the property and took some new pics. These are pretty much the same views as I posted earlier. Obviously, things are filled in and much greener than they were in those last pics. We are working on cutting up a few of the downed trees and getting the wood split so it is ready for our first winter in the house.
This picture is about 30-40 yards into the property on the south side close to the middle east to west. The nearby neighbor's dog kept coming over to see what we were up to...LOL
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Things are starting to get going...had some brushhogging done yesterday and we are supposed to break ground on Monday. Here are some pics of the land...sure did open up a lot cutting everything to prep for the dirt work.
We also found a storage place that is expanding, so they knocked down a bunch of trees. We spent a little time last night cutting some logs and hauled them to our place. They have quite a bit of downed trees, so we may do a couple more trips to their place and cut some more. We had our truck about as loaded as possible last night...probably enough for 1/3 of a rick or so. We definitely were able to get some good sized logs.
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
So, we had a lot of area cleared with a standard brush hog and the contractor had the dozer guy get started. With where we want the house, it looks like we will intrude upon the low area on the south. We also hadn't cleared that far, so it was time to stop and decide the next steps. This weekend, an acquaintance/colleague was able to pitch in to clear everything else we needed, along with some of the thicker stuff a normal brush hog wouldn't get anyway, using one of these:
We got all the area cleared we need to do some more extensive dirt work, and then some. We cleared some more areas to the north of the property, along the back of the property and created a nice open spot in the woods as a "pasture" that has trails leading in and out from where it is cleared by the house and across the back fence/property line.
The extra dirt work will start tomorrow to establish a different low lying area for drainage and prepare for the final house pad development...should be some good progress this week. I didn't get any pics with my phone and we still need to download off the good camera, so I'll get those posted once we do. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Dirt is being delivered and used to fill in the low area to the south, so the pad can be finished. I went out this morning to see it get started and had some time to take some pics.
You can see the low area to the south and how they are filling it in. The house pad need to extend into the hill about 20' or so.
Our wood pile is starting to shape up. Between the tree we cut on our place and the wood we cut off a construction job, we're getting a good pile to split. This is about half of what we have.
First load of dirt and some views of the area being worked.
Here you can see the cleared area along the back of the property and the area cleared as a "pasture" in the back.
Several shots working back up toward the front and of the cleared areas. The first several pictures are from the south facing north.
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
We went by the property yesterday to do a few things. My wife took a couple of panoramic shots. Next week begins preparations for footings, foundation and rough-ins.
Cleared "pasture" area in the back of the property.
Standing on the pad looking mostly east to what will be the "backyard"
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
We had some additional dirt work done for drainage before final layout and placement of the house. There will be additional dirt moved around and the final grade will finalize the look, but the rough grading and drainage is complete.
The layout is complete and the trenches are dug for the footings. This next week should finalize everything for the footings and piers, and get them poured.
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Looking good _________________ There'll be two dates on your tombstone/ And all your friends will read 'em/ But all that's gonna matter is that little dash between 'em...
Thanks...excited to see some progress. It definitely took a while to work out several details. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
The steel is in the footing and the pier holes. Inspection happened yesterday and there are still some concerns about drainage and the "creek" just north of the house pad. We're going to have to address that before they will let us proceed any further. Here are some pictures of the footing trenches with the steel in place. You can see the holes for the piers pretty easily in the pics.
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Okie Boarder, I didn't realize you were going with a pier and beam foundation. Is that typical in your area? I've been involved in residential construction in several parts of Texas and we've always used a slab on grade. In poor soils, we've used grade beams and drilled piers, but always topped with a slab on grade.
The drainage issue is also interesting. Is your property inside a city? It's better to address those issues now rather than later. In Texas, if you're outside city limits, there are no building inspections required.
Yeah, our builder has a design he likes to use with a large footing, the piers/posts, with a stem wall and raised slab. He normally spaces the piers/posts at 8' OC, but did his house and wanted to do mine at 6' OC. It is not typical in the area and way more than most builders will do, but is has good reasons behind it. The design was actually a collaborative effort with an engineer, and has been accepted as a standard in the state now. He also does a few notched areas in the footings that protrude into where the slab will be. He said those "anchor" the whole system a bit more. In addition, once it is time to pour the slab, he digs out some of the packed sand to create thickened areas of the slab for more strength.
Yes, we're technically within city limits. I agree it is best address the issues now. Like I said, we thought we had it under control, but the inspector gave further insight on the property history that makes it clear we need to do a little more work on the northe side of the property. _________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
So, we worked with the local fire department to plan for a controlled burn of everything in that drainage creek. We were trying to get something scheduled for Saturday morning, but they didn't seem to have people available. We were headed out the to property to put up our deer stand Saturday morning and got a call from the fire chief...they burned for us Friday evening. Now that we have that done, we can move some dirt and address the drainage issue the city wants addressed. We were bummed we didn't get to see the fire in person, but they did post a picture to their FB page.
Before and after shot my wife took.
During the burn.
End results.
Deer stand set up and view from the stand.
_________________ If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
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