IT STARTED ON SAWYER

Construction sites are typically a target for theft and crime and our site is no different. To start the week, we found that someone had broken in and stolen our sump pump and ejector pump. They cut through the PVC piping and pulled the pumps out of the basins. Luckily, this is not terribly expensive and there was no other damage to the building, but this is certainly a wake up call. Speaking with our contractors, we learned that once burglars see windows going in on a construction site, they start to expect copper piping and other valuable materials to be on site. With that info, Andrea and I ordered a security system / service and installed window and door sensors, motion sensors, and a loud alarm in the building to help try to prevent future issues.

On a happier note, our MEP contractors continued with their work on all levels of the building. The plumber completed his PVC piping runs, the mechanical contractor started with the duct runs in the basement, and the electrician ran conduit on the first floor. The window installation has also continued, including the installation of a horizontal window in the back addition which we will eventually use to install two restored stained glass windows. We also found that the basement front bay openings were just slightly too small for the windows we ordered. It turned out that the limestone lintels were a little bigger than expected. Our masonry contractor trimmed the middle bay, while our carpenter re-framed the two side windows and we got the windows installed. Finally, our carpenter framed out the location of the 2nd floor kitchen island. Our intention is to install cabinets in the first floor island and build out shelving for the 2nd floor island.

Windows have arrived on site!! This is actually the culmination of a process that started some eight weeks prior to this week. We met several times with our window rep from Schaaf Windows to get the order details done correctly. The rough carpentry window openings had to be complete to get an accurate measure for the window sizes. Once the opening were complete, our rep came up to verify every window size and create the window schedule for the order (over 43 windows in the building). We also used old photos of the building to replicate the old grids in the front windows and bring back the historical look of the property. With our future plans to restore the old stained glass windows, we order picture windows sized so that the stained glass windows can fit tightly within the window frame. This will protect the stained glass from the outside, while still allowing all of the natural light to bring out the great detail of the windows. Finally, to try to keep the building more energy efficient, we went with double pane, low-e, argon filled windows. (The low-e coating on the window greatly affects the window’s energy emissivity and will allow a significant portion of the solar energy to be reflected back away from the building. The effect of this coating is calculated into the window’s U-value. The argon fill is less heat conductive than air, therefore improving the U-value of the window.) Once we had finalized and placed that actual order, there was about a six week lead time for the windows to be manufactured and delivered to site. Over the course of the week, our carpentry crew began installing the windows throughout the building. Its amazing to see what a big difference this make to the look and feel of the building.

With the window installation going in, we also gave the go ahead to both our electrical and plumbing contractor to begin their interior work. The electrician came in first to install the can lighting in the basement and other potential conflict areas. The order of work is important, especially in our basement, because we can’t fit plumbing pipes and can lighting between the same floor joist and you would much rather have the correct lighting spacing since this ultimately impacts the final look of the finished space. With the can lighting in place, our plumber started with the PVC piping runs (we’ll want to make sure the property is very secure before copper comes on site). Our plumber started by connecting to the previously installed sump pump and ejector pump basins and ran the pipe above street level before coming back down (our over head sewer as mentioned in week 26). With the main sewer lines connected, our plumber has gone on to install the main drains in our plumbing wall running up from the basement to the second floor.

Plenty of great work done this week! Can’t wait to see what the next week will bring!

Finally, after several weeks of waiting, our HVAC contractor has come on site. He is starting with the 2nd floor unit and will begin making his way down. The work starts with forming the ducts on site, insulating the ducts with R-8 insulation, and then hanging the ductwork in its final place. To date, the contractor has been on site for only a few days, so there’s been more work put into making the ducts than hanging them, but hopefully we’ll see much more progress above ceiling in the next few weeks to come!

In the mean time, over the last two weeks our mason has slowly built back the exterior front stairwell. We purchased new brick and tried to match it as close as possible to the old brick. The new brick was used on the exposed portion of the wall and the old salvaged brick was used to fill in the middle of the wall. Our contractor worked with old photos and pre-demo photos to build the stairway walls back to their original dimensions so that we can restore the old look of the house. It’ll still be several weeks before we pour the concrete and several more weeks before all the exterior work is complete, but its nice to finally see the house starting to take shape.

These last three weeks have seen much less progress than we were hoping for. With the framing mostly complete, we are hoping to start on the mechanical, electrical and plumbing rough-ins. Unfortunately, we have been having a difficult time scheduling our contractors to come on site. As several of my contractors have told me, the biggest issue (for us) has been that Chicago is seeing a great deal of construction and there simply aren’t enough guys around to complete the work. Its to the point where many of our specialty contractors are trying to hire on more guys, but can’t find anyone qualified enough to be brought on. The amount of work is great for our contractors, but this is delaying our project.

So while we wait, we have been able to get more masonry work done on the outside of the building. Back in March, we had mentioned in the blog that our masonry contractor had come through to sandblast and clean the brick. Much of this brick and mortar were in really bad shape, so we needed to tuck-point the whole building. Our contractor grinded away the old mortar and refilled each seem and space with new mortar. The side walls used a grey colored mortar, while the front used a red color mortar to match the brick. During this process, our masonry contractor found that the wall above the window on the north-east bedroom was so deteriorated that he was concerned it might buckle under its own wait. He therefore, took this part of the wall down, installed a iron support beam above the window, and rebuilt the wall back to the roof-line.

The other masonry progress in these last few weeks has been the dismantling of what remained of the front stairwell. The concrete has been broken up and hauled away and the bricks have been taken down and stacked to the side to be re-used. This has exposed the compacted dirt that was originally laid and compacted underneath. We intend on rebuilding the stairwell to its original condition and character and so we’ll reuse whatever brick we can so that we can match the front building facade. Unfortunately, the majority of these bricks are cracked and broken, so they will probably be only used as filler.

The final worthwhile update is the bad luck we had with the Chicago weather. We had a big downpour that sent a lot of water into the building. We noticed that most of the water came through our back addition as the water poured down from the roof onto the back wall. Because of this, we asked our roofing contractor to install the back gutter as soon as possible. This is earlier than we wanted this installed, because it will inevitably get dinged up during construction, but it will hopefully save us from more water damage in the future.

With the basement concrete set, Week 31 starts out with a big lumber delivery. Our carpentry crew met us on site to bring in the lumber and start building out the framing. After all of the demo and underground work, its certainly exciting to finally see the layout start to take shape!

Our carpenter started with framing the perimeter of the building and then worked his way towards the interior spaces. As part of this work, he demoed the remaining old windows and framed out rough openings for the future new windows. He also took out the original front stairwell that lead from the first floor to the basement, cut away some of the flooring on the first floor, to install a new stairwell that will be built to today’s codes and standards (the old stairwell was too steep and left as little as six feet of clearance at its low point).

As the framing starting taking shape, we found that the mason didn’t take down the back wall brick wall as far as he was supposed to. As the back hallway took shape, it ended 12 inches into the existing masonry. So to start Week 32, our mason came back out and cut the remaining 12 inch portion of the wall away and removed the brick so that we can avoid any awkward bends and angles.

On the first and second floor, our carpenter assessed the floor boards to determine which, if any, can be salvaged and restored. It turns out that the water damage to the flooring was too severe in about 50% of the flooring on the 2nd floor to be able to save it. The first floor was in better shape, but the flooring in the kitchen area was too damaged as well. This flooring was ripped up and new sub-flooring was installed in order to evenly install the new floor in the future.

Finally, with the framing nearing completion at the end of Week 32, our carpenter took a hydrolic lift into the basement and jacked up the middle of the building about an inch or two and installed several lvl beams for support. This was necessary because the basement columns had settled over time and the building was sagging in towards the middle. The lvl beams, resting on the masonry beams, will give added support to the floors above and allow them to lay nice and level.

The last two weeks didn’t show any progress on our site. We mostly let the concrete cure and harden to the point where it can handle framing construction on top of it. Our carpentry contractor has stopped by to remeasure and calculate how much material will be needed and we expect to be back up and running by next week. But besides that, we figured its a good time to come through and try to do something about the weeds that have taken over the yard!

To start the week, our plumbing contractor arrived with a backhoe to start the dig for the new water service into the building. As mentioned previously, this two flat had been built in 1896, which, like many old Chicago homes, means old lead pipes. Our building had 1 1/4″ lead water line serving the building and we plan on upgrading this to a 2″ copper line.

In the weeks leading up to this event, our plumbing contractor had pulled a special permit with the City of Chicago, which (1) allows him to dig up the street, and (2) notifies all relevant utility companies to come to our project site and mark all existing underground infrastructure. As shown in the first photo, the utilities place a flag marking what is beneath the ground and spray paint a line showing the approximate location and direction of said infrastructure. With the ground marked, the first order of business for our plumbing contractor was to dig a trench through the street to get down to the main city water line. At the same time, our contractor dug a smaller trench in our basement where the new water line is to come in.

With both trenches dug out, our plumber placed a hydraulic powered tool in the basement trench and aligned it pointing straight towards the trench in the street. Once everything was aligned, the tool dug underground for a good 30 or so feet, beneath our stairwell, the front walkway and the public sidewalk, to end up square in the middle of the trench by the street. Once he removed the tool, he unrolled the long copper pipe and tied it to the end of the hose, which had provided the hydraulic pressure to the tool, and pulled the copper pipe straight through the opening. On the street side, our plumber connected the pipe to the main city water pipe; on the house side, our plumber will route all water service piping from this entry point.

For the final step, our plumber built a underground vault out of cinder blocks, which will house our smart water meter. Without a water meter, Chicago uses a formula, based on factors such as building width, number of bathrooms, etc, to calculate water usage. This formula tries to capture how much water you can use, therefore in most instance you are paying much more than you would with the water meter. The meter will also give you good data in case you are trying to conserve water, you could compare your actual usage versus buildings of a similar size.

With the underground plumbing, radiant system and new water service complete, we were finally ready for a basement concrete slab! Our intention is to have a polished concrete floor as our end product, therefore our concrete contractor recommend that we make sure the concrete floor is as smooth as possible prior to the final grinding (to happen much later in our construction process). Therefore, we made sure to (1) get a 5 bag mix, meaning its a little more liquid, getting us a better chance to make sure the floor is level; (2) have a chemical free concrete mix, because you don’t want any oily streaks on the exposed floor, and (3) made sure that our contractor smoothed the concrete as much as possible during the pour, to avoid uneven / bumpy areas which would prevent us from properly grinding / polishing the concrete later on. With the concrete poured, it will take a few days for it cure and be strong enough to start building out the framing. The concrete will continue to cure for up to 3-4 weeks. Hopefully everything went well and all this effort has minimized any big cracks in the concrete!

Picking up from where we left off the previous week, with the basement ground fairly leveled out our contractors began by laying a basic plastic water proof membrane on the basement floor. This membrane is another step in trying to control the ground moisture from creeping up through the porous concrete. The continuous membrane is run along the basement soil, over the footings, and partially up the perimeter walls. The intent of this is for moisture to collect on the underside of the membrane and drain back into the soil. The perimeter walls and any woodwork used to cover the footings will be built on top of this membrane to prevent the wood from rotting.

With the membrane in place, our HVAC crew arrived on site and began to lay 2-inch insulation on the ground. The insulation was placed to cover the entire basement floor and it was raised on the sides to insulate the slab from the perimeter footings. For both energy efficiency, occupant comfort as well as slab moisture control, we intend to install a radiant heating system into our basement slab. This insulation layer will, most importantly, make sure that we are heating our slab and not the ground. In colder climates, the ground can act as an infinite heat sink, which could lead to a lot of wasted energy and very high energy bills!

The next most important thing in a radiant heating system after the insulation is to try to push the radiant tubing towards the middle / upper half of the concrete slab (without being so close to the top that you actually see the tubing). We have estimated that the concrete slab to come in around 4-5 inches thick, therefore the sweet spot for our tubing is 2-3 inches above the top of the insulation. There are a few products on the market that allow you to do this fairly seamlessly, but as our construction budget is eroding, our HVAC guy opted to build his own that is a little more cost effective. Our contractor built a lattice structure out of PVC tubing and laid it on top of the insulation. Next he laid out the PEX radiant tubing and tied it down on to the PVC lattice.  The ends of the radiant tubing loops were brought together and terminated at a temporary structure which will be the location of our in-wall radiant manifold. The manifold will eventually be supported by the wall 2x4s, but we need to make sure the tubing doesn’t move during the concrete pour (and doesn’t get buried by the concrete). We tried to place the manifold location as close to our mechanical closet to reduce the distance between the water heater and the manifold.

There were a few key items on the installation of the radiant tubing system that we made sure our contractor paid attention to. (1) The tubing was laid out with fairly uniform spacing and it was run to every corner of the basement floor. You want to be sure that the end result provides even heat throughout the basement and you don’t end up with hot and cold spots. (2) If you are using wax seals around your toilet fixtures, then you should keep a 8″ to 12″ distance from the seal to the tubing. This would prevent melting the wax seal, avoiding future leaks. (3) Place a protective sleeve on the radiant tubing at the point where the tubing penetrates the concrete into the manifold. The sleeve protects the tubing from shear forces put on the tubing which could cause the tubing to break.

With this system laid, we are waiting on our new water service to be installed and then its on to the concrete slab!

To start the week off, we had our construction crew come through and remove up to 6 inches of soil from our basement to make the basement floor level and to make sure we have adequate ceiling height. Ceiling height in a basement must be a minimum of 7’6″ per the City Code to be considered a legal living space, but anything under 8″ starts to feel cramped. We asked our contractors to dig out enough dirt to account for the future insulation, concrete slab, and ceiling drywall and leave us with a minimum of 8 feet ceiling heights.

With the dirt removed, our plumbing contractor showed up on site to install the underground plumbing. The contractor first dug  out two deep holes in the south corner of the basement and installed the catch basin, where at a later date we’ll install the sump pump, for the drain tile system (see week 22). The second hole, the plumber placed the basin for the sewage ejector system. To prevent any back-flow issues from the city sewer system during a downpour, we are building an overhead sewer system with an ejector pump.  The overhead sewer will place our piping system several feet above street level, which will make highly unlikely that the system will ever back-flow into our basement. Chicago has had flooding issues in the past and with this construction method, any city sewer issues will overflow into the city streets long before it would flow into our basement.

The catch basins are the low point of our plumbing system. The cast iron piping is connected to these basin’s and is installed with a slight slope so that everything will flow properly in the system. Once the plumbing contractor installed the catch basins, they trenched the ground to lay the cast iron pipe. As they installed the system, the piping was stubbed high enough so that it will rise above the future concrete floor. This is easy enough for plumbing that will run vertically in a wall, but it can be difficult to install the basement floor drains at the exactly correct height.

Finally, once the underground plumbing was installed, the city inspector came by to review the installation and he gave his approval. The first of several city inspections has been passed! With the city approval received, the plumber covered the piping back up with soil. We then had our work crew come back out and use a plate compactor to smooth and level the basement dirt in preparation for our mechanical contractor!

In our last post, we discussed the rubble foundation and the need for new footings. After the new footings were built, we were walking around the basement with drawings in hand and we realized that our architect never accounted for the correct dimensions of the exterior walls. We knew that our basement layout called for a “cozy” guest bedroom, but the real dimensions didn’t leave enough room to fit a full size bed. We quickly realized that we have to completely redo our basement layout and find something that works and we had to do this quick as our underground plumbing was scheduled to begin soon!

We spent the next two to three nights after work sketching out new layouts, trying to find the optimal use of space. What we ended up with, in our opinion, was a significantly better basement layout then we originally had. Our new layout cut down on wasted space and better incorporated public living space into the natural flow of the basement. This exercise moved us from a layout we were content with to a layout we are very happy with.

Once we finalized the new layout, we came back to our project and we taped out the full layout on the ground. Due to the timing between when we found the layout issue and when our plumber was scheduled to start work, there was not enough time to get our architect to complete official drawings. Though we created very accurate to scale sketches of our new layout, the underground plumbing must come up from the ground with only an inch or two of tolerance. We felt that taping out the layout, showing the contractors exactly where every wall will be, will go a long way to minimizing future errors in construction. Even with accurate drawings, we would strongly recommend to anyone working on a project of their own to go through a similar exercise. It proved to be a great way to visualize the future space and it provides a better guide to your contractors and can minimize mistakes.