It always surprises me how quickly construction goes and how slow the finish work goes. I remodeled our house five years ago and I still have projects to finish. It really drags on when you’re living in it!

Havent chimed in here for awhile, hows the project going Yak? I noticed that you might have had a "little" snowfall recently

Jim

Looks like you have underground service (I don't see any overhead wires in any of your pics). Do you have a transformer at the street? Sometimes utilities give rebates or free upgrades, especially since you seem to be less than 100 feet from their line I would think. Any such luck with you? When you start filling up that game room and have all your circuits on at the same time, I am sure you would appreciate the extra amps.

I went from 100 to 200 service and it required an extra transformer by the house because of the distance. They wanted me to pay the whole cost of an extra transformer, but it serves my neighbor as well, so I argued he should pay half if and when he upgrades. That cut my cost in half, it pays to push back a little. I have a 100 sub to the garage off it, geothermal and remote lines to the boat lift/shoreline and an outbuilding. Haven't had any issues with the 200 amp service so far.

Just remember you dont "get" 150Amps. Its just what your equipment is protected at. You could have 150 15Amp breakers in there and it would work fine if each one only drew 1Amp each.

Waiting for the snow pictures

yaksplat I hope you and your family are ok and have survived this blizzard in relatively good terms with no loss personal or otherwise. Thoughts are with you and it looks like you are getting some warm weather this week which is welcomed I am sure.

Glad to hear you and yours came out OK!

Nice job - finished with all rough-ins now, or low voltage still to go?

Holy crap, this is one hell of a large project. It looks like another 50-60 hour a week job on top of your regular job.

You have done a great job on this insanely huge addition to your home and it looks really nice.

Gord

So THAT’S where all the Oreos ended up.

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Have you had inspection yet? I know every inspector is different and things are done differently in different parts of the country but you would have failed around here.

Your work looks nice and neat but one of the biggest mistakes homeowners make when doing there own wiring is not leaving enough "free conductors" at the boxes. Your wires have to extend 6" or more past the face of the box and all pigtails have to be 6" or more. This makes it easier to install your devices.

There's also a thing called box fill. You're only allowed so many wires in a box depending on the size for the box. A couple of yours look questionable. It takes a while to get used to it but "making up a box" gets to be a bit of an art.

I think you're misunderstanding the length requirement. The pigtails themselves have to be 6". It's the wires entering the boxes that have to extend 6" past the face of the box.

Makes no difference as long as the inspector you're dealing with is happy!

Carry on!

I'm not an electrician, but my understanding was 6" from the entry point in the box? 3" from the face of boxes?

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Don't be like the bonehead that owned my house before me - all the boxes (which were metal 'handy' boxes, i.e. not permitted to be installed inside walls) the wires were terminated about an inch into the box, with pigtails attached to each one. Handy boxes are about an outlet's depth deep and are useless IMO.

What a PITA to work on though, and whomever did the work to replace the house wiring was lazy and there's junction boxes outside the wiring panel for all the circuits, and all of them were overstuffed. I found non-box enclosed splices in the attic as well. Needless to say I've corrected all this. I'm not an electrician either, but I can read. The picture you found is even clearer for this rule.

Somehow at my Mom's house the electrician replaced the main panel (old 40 amp fuses) with the new updated panel, which is mounted in front of a cellar window, not even on a piece of plywood. I have no idea how that passed inspection. The electrician was a hack anyway, all his box replacements require an oversized plate as he just hacked into the walls without marking or taking his time. It IS a 300 year old house, so I understand there's a lot of constraints on remodels due to materials, but still....

Don't even get me started on whatever plumber she had.

Just because it occurs to me here Bryan.... what's your opinion on electrical tape on top of the wire nuts? I was always told not to do that, but a lot of people say to do it so the wire nut doesn't work itself off. I don't like it because the tape turns to goo over time and pukes all over the wires.

I never understood why people go cheap on stuff either, I mean, you can certainly buy outlets for 19 cents apiece, but they are such crap. When I moved from Allentown a buddy laughed his ass off at me because I took the outlets from the gameroom with me (I safed all the circuits, pulling the wires back out and disconnecting them from the circuit panel). I was like, hey, these were six bucks each!!!

Interesting. Is that a change made recently?

All inspectors I ever dealt with in MN, wanted it from the face of the box. I got so used to doing it that way, I'd find it a pain in the ass and time consuming to install a device if there was only 3" of wire.

The ONLY time I saw tape on a wire nut was if a homeowner had done it. You'd never see a licensed electrician do that. There's no need to. Install the wire nut tight enough and it's not coming off.

I like having more wire to deal with just for convenience. I don't mind deep boxes though so plenty of room to fold up the wires.

Yep, that's what I said... my brother was pretty adamant about it but he's a machinist not an electrician so I don't favor his opinion on that matter. Lots of other people said the wire tape was ok that I polled at the time but I thought it was 100% amateurish. Then again, I also asked a couple of them what the purpose of the wire nut itself was and they all thought it was to twist the wires together, and they were dumbfounded when I said you're supposed to twist the wires together with the pliers before you put the wire nut on. I think my dad agreed with me on that one at least, but he was still in the wire tape camp.

Now that I'm thinking back on this, I think my brother had an electrical fire in his house about 10 years ago. Hmmm......

I hate to derail the thread any more than it already is but I never pre-twisted the wires before installing the wire nut. No electrician I ever worked with did either.

Install a wire nut properly, then remove it and you'll see why it's not necessary.

Insulation is made with MUCH tinier fibers than even about 15 years ago. I installed as a kid and usually wore gloves, but got exceptionally good at cold showers after a job (closes up your pores and ensures the fibers don’t stick). now I basically don’t even bother, it’s gotten so much better. Since Manville went out of business effectively, all competitors like RIS have a superior product.

Key post!!

Time to call that Drywall sub!

Johns Manville!

Do the insulation guys put on the vapour barrier, or is that done by the dry wallers? Or is that something that you don’t do in your climate? I don’t see plastic around the outlets.

Going to foam the basement walls, then frame? Or just leave alone?

When we built, the builder did a skim coat on the 1st floor (ranch) for air leakage, then standard insulation between studs. R19, I think (6" walls).

hopefully it was r-15 because that 19 will be compressed 3/4 inch, definitely reducing its R value

Pretty sure it was R-19, but I could be wrong.

Either way, you effectively will get R-15. Still good!

Just for the heck of it (I was curious), I did look up the R-19 batts (Mansfield), looks like 6.5", the R-15 is 3.5", So the R-19 sounds about right (right or wrong). Skim coat of foam was maybe a third of an inch. But I understand your comment about compressing and losing R value.

Maybe a little compressed - but still good. Heating bills aren't much and the house is comfy. I do think the foam skim coat is really beneficial.

If I build again, I think I'd look into using a ZipSystem or equivalent to get a thermal break between the framing and outside.
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I used wet spray cellulose - 6" R value is 21

In the great room I have 10" SIP (structural insulated panel) over 2" Doug Fir planks (sitting on timber frame beams). The rest of the house I have either lose blown in celloluse (very small area at least 24" deep) or dense packed celloluse (vaulted ceiling, standard framing). Overall the house is very well insulated.

I think I might have mentioned somewhere in this thread, that when we built, I opted for better insulation and 6" walls, then combined that with a heat pump/gas forced air furnace. Not high-end systems, but middle of the road setups (but efficient numbers). Some of the neighbors went with geothermal (some closed, some open systems) but mostly 2x4 walls. I figured better insulation was passive (i.e. paid for once and done) as opposed to a more expensive geothermal. Oddly enough, the geothermal folks complain about high costs of heating - not sure what's up with that, our gas/electric bill is pretty cheap. I have the heat pump running down to about 40F, then the gas forced air kicks in. I could run the heat pump lower, but just not sure of the best crossover point.

Don't mean to stir the pot w/respect to the geothermal, there's so many other variables that can affect the monthly bill.

I'd definitely construct/insulate differently if we build again, especially the basement.

My geothermal has been terrific performance wise, but I am sure it is the combination of good insulation, passive design and we are located in a very good area for geo with 58-60 degree ground temperatures. Still, like any heat pump, when the air temp gets down to 5 degrees or less, electric resistance backup kicks on to keep up with the load. However, the electric bill was only $250 last month (I heard of other all-electric systems in our area at $700 or more, and of course gas/propane were pretty high too).

You’re fine - I was just clarifying that a 6” wall thickness isn’t actually 6 inches of actual void space, and any compression (like at all) of a fiberglass batt will compromise its R-value. It’s seriously not a big deal, I was just getting nerdy about the technicality.

LOL, I wasn't worried. I recall seeing R-19 and was wondering if the brain cells were wearing out and it was really a R-15 roll in the walls, so I had to look it up.

Yeah, insulation can be one of those nerdy topics. But fun to talk about all the options.