Sunday, January 18, 2009

Gypcrete, Metal Roof, Spray Insulation, and still more AV wiring

Lots of stuff going on this week. They poured the gypcrete over the PEX tubing on Thursday. I was out of town, but Cathy took some pictures and video. Here's the pouring process:

video

Here it is all fresh and shiny shiny:






And here's what it looks like now. It feels really hard, but still has a lot of moisture in it.





The new floor really transformed the house - it feels much less like the old+new, and more like "all new".

They also started work on the two metal shed roofs. It looks like they got most of the 2nd story roof on, but only just started on the first floor one:



Here it is, looking over from a couple of houses down the street:



They also did some spray-in insulation on the ceilings - yet another layer of insulation. At the end we'll have a layer of spray-in, plus cellulose batting (not un-green fiberglass), and the 1" rigid board insulation over the plywood roof sheeting (which has a reflective insulation barrier as well). The spray-in made a huge mess, but they did cover the (new) floors with paper so as to minimize the mess.



Still though, it looks like a stuffed animal exploded in the great room:



I also spent another weekend doing AV wiring. This time it was the prep for the family/TV room/home theater - a pretty big project I've been somewhat dreading as there are a million wires going in all directions. I'm installing a full-on 7.1 surround sound system (that's 7+1=8 speakers). I'm also adding spare wiring for another pair of stereo speakers, plus all kinds of extra smurf tubing for pulling stuff like cable, network, phone, optical fiber, etc. down the road. It is WAY easier to install this stuff now, even if I never end up using it.

Here's the in-process shot of the TV wall - you can see the framed enclosures for the left and right speakers and center channel speaker, plus lots and lots of wall boxes. Most of those will be hidden by the credenza we will be putting in front, fortunately. I'll have to machine some custom cover plates for all the connections (particularly the speaker patch panel which will have something like 28 banana plug receptacles on it) down the road.



Here it is at the end of the day:



The worst is over for the AV stuff, as long as you don't count the actual pulling of the network wiring through the crawlspace later on. I still have to pull some more speaker wire for some bathroom speakers as well as figure out where to run the wires for outside speakers for the deck and pool areas, but that won't be too horrible.

It only took like 4 trips to Home Depot this weekend to get all the stuff, which isn't too bad. I'm working on my 3rd 500-foot spool of speaker wire - I've already got over 1000 feet of speaker wire strung already.

Hopefully we'll see the electrician start next week, as well as finishing up the metal roofs.

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