OK, it probably doesn’t mean much to others, but to us having the windows in the temporary site office is a huge milestone for 2008.

The major benefit is that having a secure temporary site office gives Bryan a place to go every morning. With an internet connection and mobile phone, he will have no excuse to hang out at home. Straight to work!

Windows are in.

Completed deck AND windows.

Inside site office with view over excavation.

Yeah, we know, the windows need to be cleaned. This will be Bryan’s #1 task for January 3, 2009.

I had a great site visit to Hillsborough this morning.  Matt Jung invited me to see a project he is working on there.  A combination of radiant heating with Hi-Velocity Systems.  Unfortunately, Matt had to go to San Francisco so I didn’t get the full review of the HI-Velocity air but the radiant heating design was excellent to see.

Matt’s project in Hillsborough includes some 6,000 + sq ft of radiant heat that is covered with hardwood floors.  The design includes ~1 inch subfloor, ~5/8 inch radiant layout on 7 1/2 inch centers, and 5/8 inch The subfloor is on concrete on the lower level and joists on the upper level.

One of the learnings from this site visit is that the hardwood flooring boards need to sit for at least two weeks on the working radiant heating system so the boards can adjust to the working temperature and humidity.  According to the flooring expert on site, this will make the boards tighter and prevent unnecessary expansion and contraction during their life.

Here are a couple photos showing the flooring boards being ’seasoned’ prior to installation.

Hardwood flooring 'seasoning' prior to installation.

Hardwood flooring layout over radiant flooring.

We completed the west window bay of the temporary site office today. After returning today with the 6 ft. level and finding that, yes, the framing was square, we completed the window.

Ready for windows.

As well, the final 4×8 sheet of plywood was tucked into the south-east corner of the decking and screwed down. I convinced Paul Fulton to drop by the site and give me a hand positioning the plywood (more problems with the the tongue and groove. The deck is now complete (and the pipe is even painted florescent orange for safely).

Completed deck.

Just as I was about to leave the site, Matt Jung of 88HVAC returned my call.  We discussed the visit to Hi-Velocity Systems in Edmonton and how I was impressed with their product line.  Matt asked about the final radiant design and then asked me to visit a job site in Hillsborough on Monday.  He said that it would help to understand the alternatives that we are considering so we can finalize the design.

Monday will be a busy day.

In order to monitor the rain and winds on the building site, we bought a weather station today.

After reviewing the various systems, we decided on Davis Weather Stations as it appears to be the most scaleable and reasonably priced system available.

We reviewed a number of sellers and spoke with Ryan Wilhour, of Archer Trading Post. Ryan helped guide us through the product alternatives, and outlined the difference between wired and wireless models. Although our preference would be for a wired system, the wireless have more ports available for input modules. Thus, wireless is a more scaleable system.

We decided to buy a wireless system from Ryan.

We bought a Davis 6152 Pro2 Wireless Weather Station with a Davis 6510 USB port datalogger and software. It is being delivered and should arrive on Monday.

Setting up and configuring the weather station may take some effort; the benefit will be that we will know the wind speeds and precipitation so we can understand exactly what is happening on our job site.