Thanks Joe. If my wife has her way this thread will be going on until we’re all riding around in flying cars.
After experiencing the subtropic rainy season of last Saturday, we were blessed with near perfect concrete weather this week and we pulled the trigger on the driveway. I’ll give the highlights of the job.
(40) yds. concrete delivered on (5) trucks.
2600 sf. of area.
(8) guys on the crew. Set reinforcing mesh, pour, and finish.
Started at 7:30 with arrival of first truck.
At 9:30 the last truck was gone with all (40) yards poured and rough screeded.
Expansion joints cut, edges tooled, completely bull floated, hand troweled, and broomed by 1:00.
Cure sealed by 1:30-1:45.
These guys were like watching a choreographed dance group, or a bunch of skilled acrobats. Everyone knew their job, where to be, and what was next to come. I’m fairly certain many of these guys hadn’t worked with each other before but were all familiar with the product and processes. Came back on Sunday to saw cut all the crack joints and rode the saw for somewhere around 5 hours non-stop. Every line was straight and no short cuts were taken in the layout, even with the odd shapes that were created. I would hire these guys again in a heartbeat and it was truly a pleasure to work alongside them.
BAD ASS!
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Like my father said when I was young…violence solves everything…
Holy crap, it looks perfect.
Do you have future plans for adding a garage to the Y on the left or just a parking area? Looks great regardless! I’m super jealous since my driveway is a disaster right now.
Actually I’ve already started kicking around the idea of a shop / garage in the woods to the right of the house (if you were looking at it from the road). I have more room on that side and could really be concealed from the rest of the house by the trees, both from the road and the house. Looked at the rent I spend at my shop and it’s really hard not to justify building one of my own. I like the location of my shop in relationship to the city and suburbs, but the concept of being able to do work (especially in the winter) a few steps from my house is unbelievably appealing.
Well this evening was the end of the major pre-winter house projects. I had my normal HVAC installer come to the house during the summer to look at replacing my 30+ year old boiler system, but honestly he didn’t seem interested in doing anything but throwing a run of the mill unit in it’s place and I didn’t feel like he had his heart in this. The hot water tank was installed over 10 years ago although it got little use in the past 4-5 years. I decided to contact my plumbing supply house to see what they thought / recommended.
What they all swear by over there is a German made boiler (Viessmann) that they all have in their homes and they had nothing but positive things to say about it. In a nutshell, it’s a natural gas fired boiler (98 % efficient) and it heats not only the water for the baseboard heat system, but also the 40 gallon hot water tank. It’s what I would liken to an “on demand” type of boiler so the advantage is it heats the hot water for the showers at the same efficiency, and does it with a pretty compact wall mounted, direct vented unit. The two tubes you see going into the tank are actually the hot water tubes that bring heat into the tank to heat the water for use in the house.
Since the house originally had three zones, there are three circulation pumps, instead on just one pump with three valves. The tank is a 40 gallon but pretty compact because there’s no heating element, and hence no exhaust pipe. The only pipe comes from the boiler itself.
It’s obviously an electronically controlled unit and has a pretty easily adjustable program, although I don’t really need to change too much. It also maps out heating patterns so it learns from it’s operation. One cool feature, which I’m not sure is really important, is that the boiler will spike the tank water temperature up to a certain temperature to kill off bacteria. It’s programmed to do this once a day during the night hours. Guess I’ll just have to live with them in the cold water. There are a few nifty functions that this thing has (and I’m sure I don’t understand them all) for things like vacation settings, and 6 month memory retention in the event of a power outage or simply going away for long periods of time.
This thing is so quiet I can stand next to it and actually hear the clothes dryer across the room on the other side of the wall better. It’s virtually silent.
The installer was a one man show (also recommended by the supplier) and even though he gave me good vibes in the meeting I had with him, he came in less than half the other two guys (who I should’ve suspected when they were wiping the AstroGlide off their hands when they got out of the truck). He was here the first night until almost ten o’clock, and as you can see by the pictures, he really took pride in his work.
This setup was a little more expensive than other options but as with most up front costs, they are panned to pay dividends in fuel savings over the years. I’ll try to update this as the winter season gets into full force.
I bet it makes a mean cup of joe.
When I say “I hate you”, I do so with the utmost affection and respect…bastard.
This thing is stunning. You’ve seen mine…for 4 separate units, so I hope you understand the envy here.
That’s about the only feature I haven’t figured out yet.
Maybe you should consider it one day.
Andy, even after your thorough description, I still do not fully know what I am looking at, but it looks bad ass…boilers are not my strong suit…
By the way, my appraisal is tomorrow for the next property…here’s hoping that it comes in right at purchase price…otherwise I might need to buy that old boiler/HWT from you…
Sorry sir. Boiler gone. Tank still here though. Prolly better off.
Just stumbled across this when I was looking up model numbers for my National Fuel rebate application. All said and done we will end up getting $ 600.00 back for the installation of the energy efficient boiler and tank we installed. Just thought it was interesting.
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That is one helluva boiler install, siqqq. Could I ask what the setup cost, PM would be cool if that’s preferred. I would probably use that installer, I mean WOW! Thanks.
No big secret. Materials were about 6K and the install was around 2K. Those of course are my “contractor” prices and I would expect them to be more if you walked in off the street. I was impressed with Rob the installer. Never took a break and worked until almost 10:00 the first night to make sure we had hot water. He was very anal about the quality and cleanliness of the installation, using a level on every single length of pipe. My only regret is that I couldn’t get the paint work done prior to him starting cause my wife has this “thing” against taking cold showers. We had to leave the hot water tank in place until that morning. Will do the rest of the detail painting in the Spring.
So far this thing is running without a hitch and I have no complaints. It’s brutally quiet and I don’t think you could even tell it was running if you were standing next to it.
One bright spot to this story is that National Fuel offered rebates for both the boiler ($ 350.00) and the water tank ($ 250.00) so that certainly helps. Will post up when the first fuel bill comes in. Here’s a link to their brochure.
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PS-Septic system failed the required county testing procedure a month or so ago and the contractor for replacement should be starting that in about a week or so.
Thanks for the info, sounds to be a bit under what I was expecting to pay without all the fancy Euro features and amazing install integrity. I have 2 ancient 72k boilers and 2 DHW tanks so I’m pondering going with 1 big unit that includes DHW, either zoned or maybe multiple pumps like you have. Having done some repairs recently looking at pics of MANY installs, this is seriously one of the best I’ve seen. #plumbingporn
I know they make larger boilers and tanks so you could combine and eliminate existing. Rebates are also available for this level of efficiency. I do have three zones and a pump for each instead of one pump and three valves.
Well the weather certainly hasn’t helped my septic contractor over the last week or so but today he managed to get the tank in and yesterday the sand bed was almost completed. Looking for some nice Mexican recipes so we fan do our part to start filling it up.
Cute little tank.
Oh, and I did make a plastic tote cat house, similar to yours.
My guy / girl found better accommodations so mine is going on eBay soon. Buy it before its gone!