USS Propane arrives at the dock

Our 1000 gallon propane tank was installed this morning. The propane company specified a hole of 5' wide by 6' deep by 18' long - huge! Trouble is, the hole was deep enough to get about 8-10" of standing water in the bottom:

Brad (excavation contractor, or as he calls himself, "the dirt guy") used a small pump to get the hole mostly dry, but there was some serious concerns about what this much water would mean for the propane tank. Propane is lighter than water, and it is not unknown for an underground propane tank to abruptly emerge from the ground if the soil is saturated, water table is high, rains are heavy, etc. Luckily when the propane tank installer showed up, he said it'd be fine to add another foot or so of dirt to the bottom of the hole, so that's what we did. The dirt was then further capped off with a layer of sand - sand is specified for backfilling under, around, and on top of the tank. This is because corrosion is the enemy of an underground tank, and regular dirt, pebbles, and rocks can lead to scratches which can lead to corrosion.

With all that prep work done, it was time to install the tank:

The tank installer used his truck-mounted crane to get the tank on the ground, then it was moved the rest of the way with the track hoe:

And thar she blows:

I had to leave at that point, unfortunately. The tank installer guy called me later and said that everything was ready for inspection (supply line hooked up to the tank and routed to the house, but not connected to the house). The tank must be inspected before it can be connected to the house, and before it can be covered up with sand.

Forgot to mention: the permit fee to install a propane tank in King County is $800. Ouch!

The septic designer was also on-site this morning to test the septic system, and to measure the dimensions and location of the septic field so he can create the "as-built" drawing, which (I think) needs to be filed with the county. We should have the county septic inspection pretty soon as well, at which point Brad will be covering up the drain field with dirt (the rock "paths" containing the PVC pipes will get covered with a landscape fabric material to prevent clogging). He warned me that in five years the drain field will be overgrown as bad as the surrounding forest, and advised me to use steel fence post stakes to mark the important points in the field (shutoff valve box, cleanout connections, etc) while I can still see them.

Slab shopping

We went down to the Pental showroom in Seattle today to pick out some granite slabs. This turned out to be a pretty fun experience actually. Which is ironic, because I've had always been somewhat dismissive of the whole idea of granite countertops in a house, believing them to be an overpriced, frou-frou cosmetic material that only really vain people would spend money on. Well, I still think they're overpriced, but OTOH I guess I've become vain - the materials are really pretty to look at (which of course is the whole point). A good friend (hi Dan!) had helped us narrow down our style choices, so the next step was to go down to the slab warehouse and pick out the specific slabs we wanted.

There are several slab suppliers in downtown Seattle, but Pental was the first one we went to. They have a large warehouse with (I'm guessing) several thousand slabs, all arranged by color\style:

There were several such aisles of slabs like you see in the picture above. You can walk around by yourself looking them over (being careful to dodge forklifts), or if you want to look more closely at a specific slab, you can ask the warehouse crew for help. The workers have forklift-mounted cranes so they can pick up individual slabs and place them onto heavy-duty dollies:

Once you have decided on a particular slab, you give them your credit card and the warehouse crew loads the slab onto the roof of your Honda Civic....just kidding! The way the process works, you reserve your specific slab(s) (each slab is bar-coded for identification, so there's no chance of mixup) and your fabricator will come by later and pick them up (and he'll have a good, heavy-duty truck for hauling these things around). Our fabricator (recommended by our builder Paul) is ProGranite.

The slab in the picture above is a style called "Sapphire Blue", and it and the slab immediately behind it will eventually become the countertops and island top in our kitchen. I am really disappointed in how the pictures of these slabs turned out, because they are much nicer looking in real life. We also picked out a slab of "Blue Pearl" for our master bathroom vanity top, and for some reason I don't have a good picture of that one. Ah well - next time you see them, they'll likely be getting installed. :)

Drywall taping started

We stopped by the house yesterday to see how things are going. The drywall guys have started taping and mudding. Nothing too interesting to see here if you've ever seen drywall done before. This is from the kitchen looking toward the garage:

Those stilt things look cool, I want a pair for Christmas. :)

Kitchen, looking toward dining room (on left) and living room (on right):

I like how they put brown paper down and tape it together, to protect the floor.

At the top of the stairs, looking down:

The heating guys came out and looked at the heating system, and said it was doing fine (90+ deg F water output from the chiller). They said reasons for the poor performance so-far were lack of under-floor insulation in the crawl space, and the fact that the garage floor loops had been turned on; since there was no garage doors installed yet, that was just a losing battle. They turned off the garage floor and the house did feel a little bit warmer last time we were out there.

Last but not least, exterior painting is continuing and is just about complete except for trim details. I was going to wait on the frontal shots until all the trim was done, but this is just looking too good:

We'll visit the site again on Sunday morning to see how far they got today.