A sweet visit!

(Brendan)

I stopped by the home site today, and once you look at the pictures I'm sure you'll see why I walked around with a big smile on my face the whole time I was there :-) It's beyond cool to actually walk through physical spaces in the house that have been three years in the planning.

(You can click any of these pictures to enlarge them)

Front view.

Two words: Holy tallness! Looking at renderings for months and months definitely fooled me as to how tall the house will be. There was also an adjustment to the height of the second floor vaulted ceilings before we ordered the SIP's in order to ensure we had at least 8' walls on the sides, and also an adjustment to the between-floor truss height, so those adjustments also increased the overall height of the house.

Front facade (front entry door is the opening in the middle).

Looking straight through the front entry doorway, through the house and out to the wetland (remember this rendering below?)

Looking toward the kitchen.

The view looking out the kitchen windows. Makes doing dishes at the sink a little easier :-)

The storage room by the garage.

Looking through the school room towards the family room.

Ahh... the first sneak peek of the wall of windows, looking through the East window in the school room.

A picture taken after several moments of just staring.

Standing in the library looking toward the kitchen across the way.

It would be kind of a cool large-scale sculpture if we just left it this way :-)

Standing outside the kitchen looking back at the wall of windows. A comparison side elevation drawing is below.

A picture from behind the home.

Praise God!

SIP's have arrived!

(Brendan)

The structural insulated panels are onsite and ready to be assembled (finally). If you've been wondering, there was a few more days of delay last week when the assembly crew was coming off of another job and needing to get their heavy equipment in place at our site. At any rate, here's a few pics from this morning:

The SIP's have been off-loaded from the delivery trucks and lifted into stacks near where they will be assembled.

Behind a few stacks of SIP's you can also see some of the engineered floor trusses have been delivered.

Here's a close-up of a SIP, where you can see the solid foam insulation sandwiched between two sheets of oriented strand board adhesively bonded to the insulation (no studs).

Here's a good picture of a SIP that has two electrical chases in the solid foam for running electrical wire. Also, the connection beam on the left side is a unique, patented feature of Enercept SIP's. Essentially, these SIP's have an additional load-bearing beam at each connection point (the continuous insulation is still maintained in the beam), which makes the entire structure ridiculously strong. As Enercept notes:

The Enercept system is the only SIP (structural insulated panel) and insulated connecting post. EPS insulation is laminated between 2x4 members and then nailed into the edge of each panel. The result is superior strength from the structural lumber without losing thermal performance.

Our visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

(Brendan)

Last Saturday (10/23/09) Molly and I were able to arrange for my parents to watch the kids while we took a trip to LaCrosse, WI to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This was super exciting for us, as we had long wanted to visit the Shrine, not only for great opportunities for prayer but also to see the stunning architecture and beautiful art. Duncan Stroik, a classical architect from the University of Notre Dame who is renewing the Catholic tradition in sacred architecture, designed the Shrine, and Anthony Visco created much of the sculpture and paintings that are at the Shrine. This is as good a one-two punch as the Catholic Church in the U.S. can get.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is given the title "Patroness of the Americas" by the Church because of her fundamental role in the conversion of Mexico to Christianity. For background on the 1531 apparition of Mary to St. Juan Diego, I highly recommend doing the following:

1. First watch the movie Apocalypto, which sets the context of what was occurring in the early 16th century in Mexico just prior to when Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego. The seemingly endless daily slaughter of thousands of innocent people as sacrifices to false Gods was rampant.

2. Read the short book (119 pages) called Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, which reads like a gripping novel and describes how the Spanish came to Mexico and what they found when they arrived and how Our Lord used the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to cause the conversion of millions to Christianity.

If you have less time, here is a good link with the story of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and here's a recent reminder of the fact that the image Mary left in Juan Diego's tilma is truly miraculous and "Completely beyond scientific explanation."

We once again put our camera and camcorder to good use when we were at the Shrine, and I put together the following summary of our visit:

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Evan's installation as acolyte

(Brendan)

My brother Evan, a seminarian at the St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, MN, was installed as an acolyte a week ago (what might be considered the second "step" in a four step process of eventually becoming a priest - lector, acolyte, deacon, priest). Here are a few pictures of Evan (who now can wear clerics in certain instances!) and the chapel at the St. Paul Seminary.

The seminarians and candidates for the permanent diaconate pictured with Bishop Kinney from the Diocese of St. Cloud, MN (Evan in the center in the back row)

Looking toward the back of the seminary chapel

Me and Evan

Me, Molly, Evan, my Mom, and my Dad

As a bonus, if you've ever wondered what an actual ordination to the priesthood is like, you have to check out this fantastic video (only a minute and half in length). Enjoy!

10.19.09 Construction Update

(Brendan)

Well, the concrete floor has been poured and now the radiant heat tubing that we installed is safely encased in a solid mass of concrete. Here's a short video update...

The project is mostly on pause right now while we wait for the structural insulated panels to be fabricated and delivered, which is actually great timing since it's going to be a wash out tomorrow and Wednesday for sure (and potentially it will rain the entire rest of this week). The great news is that the panels are actually going to be done and ready for delivery either toward the end of this week or early next week! Then framing will finally begin and the house will start taking shape.

In regard to another item, our well was also installed and completed last week. They ended up having to go 240 feet down (!) to get access to a big enough aquifer. This was bad news for us since you pay by the foot for the well digging, and we were budgeted for 100-120 feet. But, such is home building. Our dirt fill for the grading around the foundation came in way under budget, so in many ways it evens out in the end. One thing I'm particularly excited about is that we decided to invest a little extra money in the completely awesome Grudfos Constant Pressure Pump for the well.

This pump gives city water pressure even though you have a well, and constantly adjusts its pressure output to meet demand. It also has a two gallon holding tank that resides in the garage (or mechanical room) and holds pressurized water so that as soon as a faucet or shower turns on there is instant high pressure supply. Our builder has one installed in his well and he loves it, and also noted if we ever added a sprinkler system it is particularly handy.

As a mechanical engineer, the Grundfos pump upgrade was a no brainer :-)

10.12.09 construction update

(Brendan)

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, for a while the "scene" pretty much looked the same as my last picture update. The septic system has been installed and inspected, plumbing lines to and from the house have been installed, floor outlets were installed, and gas lines were put in place. All of that had to happen in order for the floor insulation to be laid down and the hydronic radiant heat tubing to be installed.

Radiant heat tubing was one of things that I decided to do in order to save money, and this past weekend was free and the construction crew was able to get everything in ready for me and my brother Evan to work on Saturday. Molly even helped finish it off on Sunday!

More cell phone pics...

(Brendan)

I dropped in on the construction site again today over my lunch hour, here's a few cell phone pics...

The backfill within the frost footing walls is nearly complete, and some exterior grading still remains to be done. These next two pics show what the outside view will look like beyond the wall of windows (the wall opposite the side I'm standing) in the family room/library.


The next pic is looking toward the front of the garage; the digger in the background was being used at the time to complete the backfill in the kitchen.


Our general contractor had a new sign put up, which I like because it advertises lots of the high performance features of their preferred method of construction (structural insulated panels, high-performance HVAC systems, green-friendly construction practices, etc.).

9.25.09 Construction Update

(Brendan)

Foundation work is highlighted in this update...

Update: A panorama view of the foundation (click to enlarge)...

Construction Schedule

(Brendan)

Now that we've started construction, I thought I'd post the updated construction schedule from our builder. The balance of everything will be done for us to move in at the end of January '10. There are a couple things that are going to have to wait for warmer weather next year: the driveway and exterior painting (May).

I updated the "Construction Schedule" link under "Other Info" in the sidebar so that it points to this post so that anyone can check it easily throughout the construction process.

Quick update pics

(Brendan)

Here's a couple pics I took on my cell phone when I went out to the site for a brief look during my lunch hour today. Just as I left they were getting ready to pour the frost footings for the foundation. I'll do a better update this weekend as Molly and I and the kids will visit the site on Friday afternoon and take some video and pictures.

Looking toward the front of the garage

Looking across the South corner of the garage toward the front of the house

It's great to actually see the footprint of the house in place!