 August 20th, 2014 Dean is here today to start some planning work on the HVAC duct installation. This house has a lot of duct work. There are two sets of separate duct since I want the HRV duct to run on its dedicated duct system. And the furnace is placed in the corner of the house with duct work laid out very specifically to make sure ceiling are high where it matters. And because of the small size of the house the duct must be place exactly or else it won’t have enough room to fit.
So before the HVAC work is even quotes, I have modeled all the duct work based on the revised HVAC design. I then produced a 3D layout of how I think the duct will run and give that to Dean so that he understand what I am after.
Continue reading ‘HVAC & ESA inspection’ »
August 8th, 2014 Today the brothers from AV Mechanical is here to finish my private portion of the sewer connection. When City of Toronto contractors did the city portion of the new sewer connection, they informed me that I still have clay pipes down there. Apparently only a small portion of the private portion of the sewer pipe was replaced with plastic pipes and the rest are still clay pipes. That’s how I ended up asking Angelo and his crew to come and dig up the ground again, so that the remaining sewer connection can all be replaced with proper PVC piping and then connect my sewer connection to the city portion.
This time they rented a slightly bigger excavator because the small one just doesn’t work all that well. Here they are digging up the old sewer connection.
Continue reading ‘Sewer connection on the private side’ »
August 6th, 2014 Back July 30th, on the post titled Water / sewer service day 2, I indicated that city contractor filled a huge amount of concrete into the trench they dug. I like to elaborate a bit on this. City contractor excavated two trenches and dug up a big pile of soil for the sewer connection and a smaller trench for the water service connection. They used their dump truck to truck the soil away. By the time they back fill the trench, they didn’t have enough to back fill. Look at the picture below, you can see the sewer trench on the far left. That’s how much they back filled. There’s more than 1 meter of trenches not back filled and at places even more. Then they dump a huge load of concrete into that trench. Now in my drive way, there’s concrete over 1 meter thick. I can’t image this is the proper way to do this. How are you supposed to fix thing later one if you want to fix things down there?
For the water service line trench, they just shoved the dirt in, there’s no attempt to compact the back fill what so ever. So a few days later two thunderstorm passes by and right here a sink hole developed right next to the sidewalk. Later this sink hole collapsed even more including partially underneath the sidewalk. Again I can’t imagine this is the proper way to do this.
So OJCR Construction Ltd, enjoy your city contracts, because you surely are not making the grade here in my world.
August 1st, 2014 Flat roofs are not very good on water drainage, especially if you want to have a roof top terrace which is what my design is. If you don’t have a roof top terrace, you can have a consistent pitch on your flat roof and drain the water to one side. That’s proven to be pretty effective. You can always have a higher pitch if you don’t have a roof top terrace, since no one will be walking on it. But in my case because of the roof top terrace and the accompanied parapet wall, the roof has to be designed to drain into interior points. This creates the necessity of creating complex low pitches on the roof to drive water towards where you wanted. And sometimes these pitches might not work the way you wanted.
No that the roof top is pretty much completed, I need to make sure that any standing water on the flat roof is within an acceptable range. And just so happens that today right after the metal sidings are installed, a quick thunderstorm passed through. A good time to check to see if the drainage is working the way it should be.
So here’s what I have immediately after the storm. The south side is the low side and that’s where the roof drains are. The south side mostly drained well. But the two skylight curb created a bit of a high point and is preventing some of the water from flowing towards the low points. This is a view from the west side. As you can see there’s a small body of water right around the skylight curb.
Continue reading ‘Flat roof drainage’ »
July 31st, 2014 Today the contractor from OJCR Construction Ltd came to fill whatever remain from the trenches they dug up yesterday with asphalt.
Continue reading ‘Water / sewer service day 3’ »
July 30th, 2014 My new water and sewer connection is being installed today by city contractor OJCR Construction Ltd. And since this being city contract work, everything is extravagant. Here for the first time, my construction project not only shutdown down half of the street for most of the day, it also closed the pedestrian sidewalk. Look at his, the yield sign, the construction sign, the pylons, all are here just for me.
Continue reading ‘Water / sewer service day 2’ »
July 29th, 2014 Finally my new water and sewer connection is schedule with the city. Today the contractor from OJCR came on site to take a look. The work will be carried out over the next two days. Today they get out the concrete cutter and cute out the concrete and asphalt that they will have to dig out later. This is a brand new water and sewer connection so they will have to cut all the way into the road where the main sewer is.
Continue reading ‘Water / sewer service day 1’ »
July 24th, 2014 It has been over 2.5 month since I have applied for new water and sewer connection from the City. They’ve taken the money yet I’m faced with delay after delay. So I decided to call in my plumber at AV Mechanical to lay the water service line on my private side so that I can pour the concrete floor in my basement.
Last week on July 18th, the last locate for the water / sewer service is performed and they marked up the natural gas service line. Now the city contractor should have all the locate they need and I am waiting for them to schedule a call to confirm schedule when they are going to come and do the new water / sewer connection.
Continue reading ‘Water service’ »
June 10th, 2014 It’s has been a month since I applied for new water / sewer connection from the city and I’m getting no where close to get the work to be performed. Meanwhile because I have a flat roof and the inside plumbing is not done yet for the roof drains the water are pouring into the house every time it rains. So I decided to get some temporary remedy for it. I bought some soil pipes from Home Depot and hooked it to the roof drain.
Continue reading ‘Temporary drainage’ »
May 8th, 2014 Day 3 of the plumbing. Since yesterday the sanitary connection was done, it’s really just finishing up the underground drain connection today and mark up all the rest of the drain pipes. Not much problem today, everything went relatively smoothly. Here’s a photo of finished underground plumbing in the basement.
Continue reading ‘Plumbing day 3’ »
|
|
Tags: 
Categories: 
