Today’s agenda at Emerald Hill stacked up meetings and tasks:
Gutters
Time Warner Cable for Internet, phone, TV services
Brett Grinkmeyer, architect, and his tour of Emerald Hill with prospective clients
Tyson from Granite Security for a tutorial on the security system
Blower door test
Cut down the hackberry tree at the northeast corner of the house
Assemble more Ikea furniture
Set up a computer in the pantry, out of traffic, to work on ShowStoppers @ Mobile World Congress
Above, Alex from ATS and Jonathan from Austin Air review the duct plans with Ron from Ranserve, in preparation for the blower door test.
Jonathan measures airflow from the duct in bedroom 1 as part of the blower door test.Alex assembles the blower door.We passed! The City of Austin requires less than 5 ACH — air changes per hour. Alex and Jonathan confirm that Emerald Hill is tightly insulated and not leaking a lot of air. Ron is smiling at this measure of quality.Tyson showed Steven how to configure and use the alarm system that we prewired into the house.Rodriguez from Gilsa uses a chunk of concrete to grind stains off the first paver in front of the house.Ron and Kevin opened up the stair wall to add more blocking — needed to support the shower wand in the bathroom on the other side of the wall.Taking out the hackberry tree that was leaning toward the house.Stripped of most branches in just 10 minutes.Sections of trunk cut smaller to make them lighter when carrying off to the chipper.
Above, Granite Security is back on site installing the security system, control hubs, connecting wires to circuit boards. Here’s one of the control pads near the front door, powered!
Shane installs the first door handle set — on the door to Steven’s office.Cris from Ranserve installed the last panel of what will be Jadin’s shower, tensioning it into place with 2×4 lumber. It took a long time to get all the parts on site for what should have been a simple kit with everything stuffed into three or four boxes for shipping.Pivot 90 degrees from the shower in Jadin’s bath and, cool!, Cris installed the vanity cabinets and bridge storage box.We used the same configuration — two vanities with a bridge in the middle — upstairs in bath 3.There’s a similar configuration in the master bath. These vanities are wider, as is the bridge storage box in the middle.
Chris from Granite Security today finished stringing wire for security, phone, TV and network through Emerald Hill. The last step was to install conduit between points x and y for Steven to pull cables between TVs on the wall and the amplifiers and cable boxes in the closets.
Above, the orange conduit is what Steven will use to pull cables between the TV in the loft and the equipment racked in the electrical closet above the distribution box.
The other end of the pull conduit hanging next to the distribution box in the electrical closet.In the closet downstairs behind the Great Room, Chris installed a second conduit pull.In the dim light, Chris finishes the prewire by drilling through the plywood backer of TV wall in the Great Room … not the best shot; the drywall is eating up reflective light and the camera flash was off by a fraction of a second …And from the other side of the wall, Chris pushes speaker wire through the hole he just drilled.
Over the past months, Steven has walked the house with multiple installers of structured wiring, also known as low-voltage wiring — network, telephone, audio-visual, security.
It has been a frustrating, disheartening, difficult process that delayed the start of drywall installation by at least two weeks.
Steven takes the blame.
Oversimplifying this miserable saga …
Company #1 walked the house with Steven and Ron, sent the quote to Ranserve, would not communicate with Steven.
Company #2 delivered a quote with touchpads even though Steven specified touchscreens. On the third attempt to get it right, a specialist arrived in a truck, pulled boxes from the back seat, unboxed devices to show Steven — and it still took days to get an updated proposal.
Two installers quit Company #3 and the manager instructed Steven to find someone else to do the job.
Recommended by one of the companies that participates in ShowStoppers press events, Steven walked the house with company #4 days before he departed for Berlin and ShowStoppers @ IFA. The quote arrived in time for Steven to ask questions before leaving for the airport — and during a 50-minute phone call from Berlin. How does dialtone get from the panel in the closet to the jacks in the walls of each room — what distribution module by number and hyperlink and spec goes into the panel? How does Internet signal distribute to the rooms in the house from the panel? Using what module, by hyperlink and specs? “I will have to get you that answer.”
Also recommended by a ShowStoppers company, company #5 could not schedule the install until late September — but referred Steven to another company that could possibly comply with the already-late schedule.
Company #6 missed the count on glass breaks, nailed the network, telephone and AV details, but blew the budget by more than twice the allocated amount.
At this point, Mark and Ron at Ranserve intervened. They scheduled a second meeting with Company #1. Two hours. Walking everything. Talking everything. Speccing everything. The company asked for and received Ranserve permission to communicate directly with Steven. Steven received an updated bid the next day. He reviewed it. Carefully. There were several question. Steven approved it Thursday, 10 September.
Friday, 11 September, Granite Security delivered coils of cable to Emerald Hill and began stringing wire.
Boxes of cable in the office.
Network, telephone and co-ax strung into bedroom 4.
The start of wiring up the central panel in the upstairs electrical closet.
Network, phone and co-ax cable strung to the upstairs loft.
