Pwtr02ss home build

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THE YETI

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Much more progress than ours! LOL. Can't wait til you start foundation work.
 
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pwtr02ss

pwtr02ss

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Much more progress than ours! LOL. Can't wait til you start foundation work.
Me either.

The girl was working on (hopefully) our final revision on the generic elevation plans last week, so hopefully she gets them to us soon.

Here's what she's working on now.

I'm changing the roof line where the dormer is. It's going to carry all way across instead of that gayness. The siding will be bored and batten all the way around as well.

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THE YETI

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Very nice! We are going to do, at least at this moment, a combination of hardiplank, board and batten, brick, and stone. Primarily the body of the house will be white brick.
 
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pwtr02ss

pwtr02ss

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Very nice! We are going to do, at least at this moment, a combination of hardiplank, board and batten, brick, and stone. Primarily the body of the house will be white brick.
We will do stone around the bottom and maybe the posts. These still have to get my builders approval so he may make some changes in regards to materials
 
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pwtr02ss

pwtr02ss

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Dirt is moved. Grading guy sent these earlier today. Rain is coming in tonight through tomorrow. If it's not a mud hole out there on Friday, I'm going to meet him after work and rough stake the shop pad. The area closest to the house is going to have to be blended. Not real happy with the looks of it currently. Once the shop pad is staked, we can decide to blend back or fill in with the massive pile of waste dirt I have.

That back side of the slope will also make use of said waste dirt to cover the remaining rocks and slope it better. Then we get some grass growing.

He said we gained around 15' the full length of that pad, which is roughly 150' long if I had to guess. Lots of dirt seemly disappeared for that little bit of gain. I'm happy

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THE YETI

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Very cool! Stupid question, do you have like a room where all your AC handlers, hot water heater, any filtration systems, etc go?
 
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pwtr02ss

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Very cool! Stupid question, do you have like a room where all your AC handlers, hot water heater, any filtration systems, etc go?
According to my builder, the trades will handle those aspects. My thoughts are, utilize the storage room in the garage for the mechanical room. We'll likely go tankless water heater. At least two of them. They're small, so we can locate them anywhere under the house, or in mechanical room. HVAC, I want in the attic. Air filtration will be whatever hvac people design.

Your design team will likely be way more involved with all of this. I'm just winging it at this point. Relying on my builders expertise. That may prove to be the wrong move, we'll see
 

THE YETI

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Makes sense. I know our architect said they have HVAC plans built into the engineering plans to maximize efficiency. Seems legit but I’m sure I’m paying for it lol.

I believe we will also follow suit for the hot water heater. But with us being on well, a mechanical room with water filtration system is a must.
 
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Makes sense. I know our architect said they have HVAC plans built into the engineering plans to maximize efficiency. Seems legit but I’m sure I’m paying for it lol.

I believe we will also follow suit for the hot water heater. But with us being on well, a mechanical room with water filtration system is a must.
Never have a single tankless water heater. My dad had one in their house about 20 years ago. It failed on Christmas morning. Perfect time to be without hot water. I learned my lesson that day.
 

THE YETI

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Never have a single tankless water heater. My dad had one in their house about 20 years ago. It failed on Christmas morning. Perfect time to be without hot water. I learned my lesson that day.

true. I dont think we've crossed that path yet and I think technology has progressed a bit in 2 decades lol. I thought I saw something where you can have mini systems closer to each bathroom or something. I dunno.

But we will probably have one for upstairs and one for down. Good idea with running more than one.
 
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pwtr02ss

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true. I dont think we've crossed that path yet and I think technology has progressed a bit in 2 decades lol. I thought I saw something where you can have mini systems closer to each bathroom or something. I dunno.

But we will probably have one for upstairs and one for down. Good idea with running more than one.
I think we'll do the master and maybe the kitchen/laundry on one, then a separate unit for the spare bathrooms. That keeps both units in service regularly and would still be able to shower if we had a failure. They also make smaller units that could mount under the vanity, but I worry about those failing from lack of use. We'll do gas, not electric.
 

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I ran one in the kitchen, an outdoor unit and another outdoor unit to the master Bedroom. The kitchen one feeds only the kitchen sink and the master feeds the Master and second Master upstairs. Hot water is about 5 seconds in kitchen, less than 5 seconds in Master shower and maybe 15 seconds upstairs. Make sure and purchase the service valves for maintenance, if makes it easy to clean the hard water scale out of them, even with a water softener you will still get some hard water buildup, it just takes longer. I used Rheem high efficiency gas units, and have had zero issues with them. The one is the Cassita has been in use for 10 years now.
 
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pwtr02ss

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I ran one in the kitchen, an outdoor unit and another outdoor unit to the master Bedroom. The kitchen one feeds only the kitchen sink and the master feeds the Master and second Master upstairs. Hot water is about 5 seconds in kitchen, less than 5 seconds in Master shower and maybe 15 seconds upstairs. Make sure and purchase the service valves for maintenance, if makes it easy to clean the hard water scale out of them, even with a water softener you will still get some hard water buildup, it just takes longer. I used Rheem high efficiency gas units, and have had zero issues with them. The one is the Cassita has been in use for 10 years now.
I would like one on an outdoor spigot as well, not sure which one that would be. A lot of folks are using recirculating pumps, but I'm not sure that matters to me. I'm hoping to have a near maintenance free home by eliminating as many failure points as possible.
 

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You will need to keep them clean, prior to installing the water softener I would de-scale them every year, after the softener I do it every few years, it only takes 30 min or so. The softener made a huge difference, I would get chunks of scale out before but now they stay pretty clean. You will know when they need to be cleaned, it will take longer to get hot water. I still clean them because I don't trust anything. lol

I was worried the outdoor units would freeze in Winter but ours have not. We went through a below zero week a few years back, the lines to the heater froze but the unit has a small internal electric heater to keep if from freezing. I did build a foam and fiberglass box to cover them in the Winter, mostly to keep the lines to them from freezing.
 

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We have a Rinnai tankless that runs our whole 3600 sq ft, 5 bedroom house. It’s 10 years old and gets a ridiculous amount of use. Our son used to take 30 minute showers, and our daughter showers twice a day. 2 loads of dishes a day and 20 loads of laundry a week in our house.

I’ve flushed it twice in the 5 years I’ve owned it and I agree it’s an easy job. Built this year I also had to take the combustor out and clean it out real good. Then I had to hit the igniter rods with emery cloth. We were getting a burner code and it solved the problem. The Rinnais are well-designed and relatively easy to repair.
 
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pwtr02ss

pwtr02ss

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We have a Rinnai tankless that runs our whole 3600 sq ft, 5 bedroom house. It’s 10 years old and gets a ridiculous amount of use. Our son used to take 30 minute showers, and our daughter showers twice a day. 2 loads of dishes a day and 20 loads of laundry a week in our house.

I’ve flushed it twice in the 5 years I’ve owned it and I agree it’s an easy job. Built this year I also had to take the combustor out and clean it out real good. Then I had to hit the igniter rods with emery cloth. We were getting a burner code and it solved the problem. The Rinnais are well-designed and relatively easy to repair.
I believe that was the brand my guy recommended. It started with an "r" but wasn't rheem. I could not think of it to save my life. He said he's had great luck with them. Glad to hear you've had good experiences with it.

As we progress, I'll be reaching out to you guys more and more. There's a lot of moving parts and I want real world experience.

Thank you both for your input on the water heater situation
 

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