Day 86 - Concrete Update and Final Inspection

PM called bright and early this morning. He inspected the slab and then spoke to the concrete supervisor. Mr. Concrete (my name for him) says it was a windy day and it dried out the surface quicker which resulted in the cracks.

I only partially believe Mr. Concrete's explanation -- Weather history for April 10th (Here) says winds were 8mph with a max of 18mph out of the north west, which is almost exactly the average for the whole month of April. May was a little less windy, and June was pretty much like April. However -- 3 sides of the garage were already framed when they poured (protected by the wind) with the West facing doors open. This would give their explanation some weight, because the 1/3 closest to the north wall (most protected from wind) has no cracks.

PM is going to apply something called Crack Master  to seal them off, and I am probably going to end up doing a 2stage epoxy at some point also. I know eventually this will drive me nuts otherwise. I want to have the drywall seams finished and painted in there first though, and maybe give the slab a year to settle before I coat it.

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Final Inspection attempt #1 was today. Noticed around noon that attempt #2 had already been scheduled :-) By 3pm the following note was posted next to the FAIL status "final elect verified - master shower glass by door unable to verify safety/temp/ - wtr. her combustion - need fireplace operating and access to kitchen stove gas connection. "

Nothing seems too much of a concern on that list. Possibly water heater combustion... Fireplace works (witnessed it on friday), so not worried -- and the stove gas connection is a sore point with the inspectors I think. A house across the street has an issue, so they are probably hyper-sensative to gas leaks.

Side note about gas appliances. I ordered 2 gas/co2 detectors today. One for the furnace room (Water Heater and Furnace) and one for the kitchen. I know you can smell gas, but it will be good to have an
audible alarm in case there is any leak. My biggest concern is a toddler turning on the stove but not lighting it... resulting in a slow leak in the kitchen.


--- UPDATE at 6:30 pm ---

I talked to our PM and none of the inspection issues are of a concern to him (or me).  Seems like stupid stuff, he wouldn't want for them to slide out stove to show gas connection or turn fireplace on. Expected everything to be on and prepped.  Seems sort of petty, but I'm sure they will pass tomorrow.  Looking down my street there is only 1 house that passed on the first attempt.

Cracks look a lot better now, but not great.   I'm just going to live with it at this point and keep a close eye to make sure it doesn't change over the next year.   A little dirt in there and it will look like a normal garage eventually.

Final Grading tomorrow, Gutter re-route Wednesday. Final cleaning today.  Just missing a fridge and some grass.  

Also,  I contacted the landscaper today to get a quote for 100% sod.  We have about 5700 sq ft that is supposed to be seeded (back yard) and not sodded like the front/side (7000 sq ft).    My estimate is it will be somewhere around .35/sq ft minus the value of the seeds and labor RH paid for.   Hopefully we can swing it, but too late to include with the mortgage.    The more I see my neighbors fully sodded yard the more I wish I had included it from the beginning or added it sooner.   Highly recommend 100% sod if possible.  

Day 85 - Concrete... It's hard and it cracks...

Yesterday (Saturday) was day 85.  They say the yorkshire is an 85 day build, and they are pretty darn close.   If I didn't could the permit delays early on they would have been done in 85.   As of today they have 99% of the house done.   I have 1 inside issue still (trim in 1 wall of 1 room) and it needs a deep cleaning still, but even today it is in better shape than most houses you would move into.

Final Inspection is scheduled for tomorrow (monday, day 87).   Fridge is still missing. Stove burners are still not calibrated correct/even.

Onto the concrete.    They power washed the garage floor on Friday afternoon.   So, on Saturday when I stopped by you could see the floors for the first time in months.  Previously there was dirt and plaster, and dust all over the place.

Now there are cracks... and a lot of them.   The entire basement slab (1500 sq ft...) had zero noticeable cracks.   Garage has a few dozen.  And some appear to still be below the surface.  

First off -- I KNOW there are 2 rules of concrete  -- 1) It's hard, and 2) it will crack...   But there are a lot of them on this slab.  None are deep, or wide (1/8", maybe 1/4" at most... most are 1/16") but they are long (10' to 10").

I went back this morning (Sunday) and in the daylight, without camera flash making it look worse, and the floor dry, it looks better than it did, but I am still not thrilled with this.  Properly cured concrete should not spiderweb like this.  In the back of my mind I keep remembering how they failed initial inspection on this slab pre-pour and had to get an engineered slab, which makes me nervous also.  

I walked around the street and checked out the other slabs.   I think I was lucky on the basement slab (no cracks, where most others have some), and every other garage has some cracks, but not like us.   Maybe this is the concrete karma evening out for the extra wide driveway.

Emailing PM about this.   Not expecting a resolution before closing, but this will be brought up.  And I will continue to bring it up (survey... 30 day, 10 month inspection).    

Day 83 - Black Bean = Brown?

Stopped by quickly after work today.  House was locked, but the front door is now painted and the trim installed (sort of).  The trim is technically nailed up now, but I really hope more work remains on this.  Huge gaps, not level, etc.    

Concrete molds were off so we could walk around on it a bit (pace off that helipad ;-) but they still need to clean it up, backfill, and make it look good.

Onto the door color...   neither my wife or I really remembered picking the siding, shutters, and door colors.  After picking the brick I remember chasing a toddler (ours) around the model most of the time until I distracted her with some Dora on Netflix on demand.   Fast forward 6 months and all I knew was the selection sheet said Black Bean.    To me that meant black or something close.   Apparently it's a dark brown.   Truly it looks better than black would.  It's a perfect match for the shutters and brick, but I wasn't expecting it.

Some googling on the product number turned up the exact Sherwin-Williams paint they use.   VERY good to know for touch up purposes.  Glad I dug a bit before emailing the PM.   

Front Door with Trim installed

Black Bean?

Day 82 - Punch List, Generous Pour, and PM Hookups

Last night I sent our PM a quick punch list of items I had noticed.

Most were minor issues, or paint related (underside of 2nd floor foyer window unpainted, etc).

He called me back today and said they are all being taken care of. He is writing up his punch list today and all of my items will be on there. There were a couple of items I wasn't sure on, but he said

they would hook me up anyway. He's installing windowsills in the garage, but won't paint them. Cutting down the toilet drain in the roughed-in bathroom and installing a flange (not part of the deal, but easy/cheap for them to do, and probably a PITA for me to do).

Lastly is the driveway... Very happy about this one. The back story is that on the pre-con site plan it had a straight line drive, so basically 30x30. PM caught this, and scribbled the change on our pre-con site plan. That left the garage (3 car, side entry) as 30' wide but tapered down to 20' before it hit the sidewalk, and then the entry part is also 20' wide. Apparently that correction never made it to the actual site plan, so the concrete guys setup the forms with a 30' wide drive the whole way to the street. It looks much better this way, and avoids a hard turn to pull into the 3rd car garage, but that extra concrete costs so extra $$ (~$1k I would guess) so I figured they would catch it eventually.

Fast forward to today's phone call. PM said he was upstairs working on the punch list, noticed they had started pouring and instantly saw what was wrong. Ran down and the concrete guys said "it's exactly like on the site plan", which it was. And it was basically too late to change it. I told him obviously we preferred it that way, so there is no issue. He said he figured as much. I believe his quote was "you're out here every day so I knew if it was an issue you would have seen it and said something..." which is a pretty true statement.

The way I see this unexpected bonus is it evens out some other issues I have noticed (like a wall or 2 not being drywalled square) but bit my tongue on. You let some of the small stuff go and you get some good karma coming your way in the form of a few hundred extra square feet of concrete. Another point to bring up with future or early builders is how you interact with your PM. I have admittedly been very hand on during this whole build, but I always have maintained a good relationship with our PM and trusted his judgement on most things. I haven't emailed him daily with issues, but tried to consolidate a list, give him a chance to notice/fix first, and then emailed after a bit. And I really don't expect him to notice everything I will notice. I have 1 house to focus on, so I can get very detailed -- he has probably 4 to 6 at the same time, so his focus is different. My point is that I think maintaining a good attitude and relationship with your PM (and letting some small stuff slide) pays off in the end. I really doubt he would do little things like windowsills and toilet flanges if I was a pain the entire time. Difficult customers get the "what you ordered and nothing more"

We have a sidewalk and gutters now!

Got lucky with the extra wide driveway.

Sidewalk stops about 4' short of property line

Mailbox just appeared

Gutters today too...

Celebrating the official closing of our OLD house today.

Day 81 - Deck and NVRM Issues

Quick update -- Not a lot has changed on the house.  The deck is basically done now and looks really good.  It will look even better with some stain on it, but that project can wait a few months.   No concrete yet, no gutters,  but a lot go blue tape all over the walls where all the touch up are.   Hopefully this is just the first pass though because they missed a few (and I might have added a few pieces of tape to help out...)

The real drama of the day was that we closed on our old house 36 hours earlier than expected, so there was a bunch of running around 

...and as to be predicted NVRM is having issues keeping their head out of their ass as usual (unrelated to old closing).   My general dissatisfaction with NVRM continues to decline. After asking them repeatedly for months what we needed from old-house closing they continued to insist nothing.  They were proceeding as if it was not going to sell and said there were no issues.  I even emailed them this morning with a 10-day out check-in email to make sure we were on track and they said everything is fine.  I hadn't heard from them in 8 days so I was getting nervous.     Then an hour later they said that everything had changed, they now needed to see the all the closing info from old-house.   Seriously???    110 days into a 120 day process and NOW you figure this out? After I have been asking at least 6 times this exact question.   What would happen if I wasn't emailing them to check up like they are a kid?    The people I am dealing with are truly nice people, but this stuff isn't rocket science and I feel like I am constantly asking them questions they should be asking me and I am the one making sure THEY do their job and there are no issues delaying closing.  It is a very backward relationship.   I don't doubt (yet) that we will close on time, but mainly because I am riding their ass for the next 10 days and they will make it work just to get me off their case -- but I would not use NVRM again.  On the other hand,  I have absolutely NO issues with the builder side of the house.  Things are looking great, so I guess I can't bitch too much (but I just did :-)    

I feel better after a quick blog vent.