Virtual Build
Last post, we talked about finding problems with the architects drawings. Mostly, the issue was just that the drawing was not quite to scale. The dimensions shown were not actually the dimensions used. I had followed the dimensions as shown when building my virtual model, so by the time I got around to fitting the kitchen door, it didn’t work. Some things I could fix, such as the radius of certain rooms that had been mislabeled by a number of inches. Other things, such as the width of the arch shown on the kitchen wall elevation, were just plain wrong and I had to figure out how to deal with the misfit.
Note: In an earlier post and on a page, I talked about how I went with the architect who offered only 2D drawings because it saved me a lot of money on this difficult-to-3D-render home. At the time I understood that 3D is better for most rectilinear homes because it does help to find these problems, changes are properly propagated, etc. But for this complicated unconventional home, I reasoned that I would be paying a lot for the 3D cad skills when I really only needed the architects design skills and the final builders would only need 2D drawings. I never did get a lot of architectural input on my 2D design, and now that I am doing the 3D model myself, I am finding all the problems that a 3D architect would have found. Choose wisely, even if I am not really sure what the wise choice would have been yet.
I am using SpaceClaim to build my virtual model. It doesn’t have a lot of the fancy textures or architectural features like widets for making sloped roofs or easily adding doors to walls. I also have Autodesk Revit, which does have those features. I used it for my earlier models (pre architect) and that tool was great for layout, etc, but I found it much harder for the complex geometry of my roof. SpaceClaim can handle the complex geometry. Spaceclaim is also great and modifying a geometry to fix a problem. It is a “direct modeler”, so you can grab any surface and “Pull” it to adjust it. Everything gets taken care of along the way. This made fixing the model pretty easy.
I needed to reduce the radius by 4 inches. Even on complex objects like this concrete over my quad-deck, it was easy to pull things into place…
Other tools, like Rhino3D, are popular with architects and could handle the geometry and has much better rending functionality (and my architect’s junior guy did model some aspects of my design in Rhino3D), but it doesn’t have the tools for easy modification and I didn’t have a licensed copy. I am told that Sketchup Pro, very popular with architects, could handle this. However, I tried the very popular free version, aka “Sketchup-Make” and it could not handle the ends of the vaults in the circular portion of the house (although it would be great for something more rectolinear).
Once the radius problems were fixed (and I added all the changes to my errata sheet), the door still didn’t fit because of the out of scale arch used in the architects elevation. I had to think about my options. I was not willing to re-scale the rib to match the architects mistake in one drawing. I decided that the rib at that location was “architectural”, not structural. This meant that I didn’t want to move it outward or upward and lose its architectural look/fit with the rest of the space. It also meant that I could cut the spandrel without needing to re-engineer the arch because that arch was not really bearing the load of the roof like the other arches were.
This left me with two main options.
1) I could cut the arch to fit the door. This would give me a full rectangle door to work with. I could get my “architectural” look back somewhat by coloring the door some how to continue the arch. Maybe I would add a veneer of granite, or stained glass or just stain or paint, shaped so that when the door was closed the concrete arch lines were continuous across it. Well, my wife did not like that idea. She is concerned about the structural aspects and she is probably concerned that it will be more work (the house is enough work as it is and she hates it when I add to my potential work load).
2) I could accept the fact that the arch crosses a big corner of the door. To test this idea, I have actually put duct tape across the corner of my office door in a way that matches the profile of the arch crossing the kitchen door. It has been there a while now and I have not minded it at all. Even if I brush my shoulders against the door frame, my head still does not hit the duct tape corner. If I go with this plan, I have multiple ways of proceeding…
2a) I could cut out a section (or just prevent concrete from forming in that middle space) so that I could fit a rectangular sliding door frame tucked into the arch. If I take out 4 inches of concrete from the middle of the spandrel, there will still be 4 inches on either side. Plenty of structure for an arch that is filled in on the underside with concrete anyway. The door would slide into the wall between the kitchen and basement stairs. I like this idea, but it will take some careful planning if I am to form the concrete rib with the void in exactly the right place… (planning the wall void is easier because I am building it right in place over a framework.)
2b) I could simply hang a sliding barn door (but a modern looking one with nice or hidden hardware) on the outside of this kitchen doorway. The door would be hanging in the mudroom and could slide the opposite way along the mudroom wall, so I wouldn’t need any voids in the wall between the kitchen and basement stairs. This is Sherri’s preference, at least partially because she thinks it will be easier to implement. I think the architect may also have suggested it at one point (because he didn’t know how I would get the mechanism inside the concrete wall). I don’t like the “fit” of it as much, but I will try to keep an open mind and think about it some more.
In the mean time, here is how things are looking in the kitchen (I modeled in some cabinets to make sure it all fit)… The three open blocks above the cupboards will be 8″ glass blocks and are there to let light from the main living space into the basement stair well.
And here is a wider view of the north side of the house (the original plan was to virtual-build just the section over the basement). Of course, this is just the initial concrete structure (plus door bucks). No earth cover, windows, etc. You can see that the mezzanine windows have been moved closer together to allow the dirt to cover the roof better. Inside, I added other details, including the spiral stairs, etc. Maybe I will include some of those pics in the gallery at the bottom.
Fusion welding HDPE Plastic Pipe
I got a section (about 6 ft) of 8 inch HDPE pipe from a contractor a while ago. It was old and cruddy and maybe had a bit of oil on it, but I took it so I could experiment with it. The expensive part about building earth tubes with HDPE plastic is that you have to hire someone to fusion weld them together… Or at least, you can’t buy a fusion welder from Home Depot. The fusion welder equipment is very expensive and only intended for professionals. I thought that maybe I could make my own fusion welder. The professional equipment specs I found on-line called for Teflon plates that could reach 450ºF (230°C), along with some jigs to help align the heater plate between two ends of pipe and then move the heater plate out of the way and press the pipes into alignment.
I started by taking an old toaster apart. I was going to run the elements between two Pyrex glass plates that I found in the cupboard. I figured they were garage sale plates and not part of a set (there were just 3 of them). Boy was I wrong… Those were part of a special 3 plate cake holder thingy that my wife loves. Good thing I checked first.
I decided that her fold-able electric grill would be better because it already has two nice Teflon surfaces and dials for adjusting the temperature. I would just need to break it in half so it would fold outward instead of inward, and probably disable what ever safety switches its designers had included to prevent me from using it that way. Of course, I would also need to buy her a new grill (I already got her a new toaster), but that would be a lot cheaper than hiring a guy with a professional fusion machine, so win-win.
I put rings sliced from my pipe on the grill and the edge softened right away. I then lifted them off and pressed them together… Instant fusion weld… Actually, I guess I heated them too much (too soft) and pressed them together too hard, because I got a bit of a bead inside.
Later, I sliced up my samples, including a cross cut so I could see that the fusion weld was as strong as the rest of the pipe. For scale, the pipe shown in this image is 1/4 inch thick (twice as thick as the pipe I plan to use eventually), so the bead is about 1/12 of an inch. (sorry the pic isn’t very good, my camera doesn’t do macro well, but you can see the bump where the soft plastic at the join pushed into the pipe). Well, that was easy. I am sure I can handle that.
Of course, I wanted to see what else I could use to fuse the plastic… I have a small benzomatic torch. I thought maybe it would burn the plastic, but, even with the direct flame to the plastic, it only burned for a second (some surface residue) and then it just softened the HDPE nicely. The problem was the heat was not even enough… So for an additional experiment, I used the benzomatic to heat a piece of metal and put the plastic against the other side… That distributed the heat well to soften the plastic evenly and wouldn’t require any electricity. For one attempt after the metal was probably too hot, the HDPE plastic did stick to the metal a little, but a piece of my wife’s parchment paper fixed that problem (just like fusing perler beads). I later hooked up my benzomatic hotknife attachment and found I could cut the HDPE pretty well with that.
In general, I found that the HDPE plastic softened easily, once soft, it was a bit tacky to the touch, but would instantly fuse with other HDPE plastic. I found that the joints seemed as solid as the rest of the pipe. I also found that the heavy plastic also kept its heat well (high Specific Heat Capacity), so I had quite a bit of time to get the two pieces together.
The only hard part was aligning the two pipes perfectly. I imagine that would be even more difficult with 20ft long sections of pipe, but I am sure I could build a simple jig to make that alignment much easier.
Quotes (estimates)
I started back up the process of getting quotes last week. I probably called a dozen companies. Only one has got back to me with a quote (so far). A couple others just had follow up questions. And in one case, I am still waiting for a call from the “lady in the office who knows the email and such.” I need the email address to send in the plans.
The one quote that did come in this week was for the footings. It was about 1/4 the price of the last footings quote I got and this guy seemed much more interested in the project and much more pleasant to work with.
Previously, excavators had all told me that they would get down to the depth at the top of the footings and would let the whoever did the footings excavate from there. The other foundation people I spoke to agreed with this and included several thousand dollars of additional excavation in their quotes. However, this latest foundation guy said that it was very difficult to dig a precisely curved trench with their equipment and my sandy site probably wouldn’t be well suited to trench footings anyway. It would be much easier for the excavator to level out the area to the bottom of the trench depth (an extra foot) and then the foundation guy could lay out the curved forms (just thin plywood staked in place) in an open flat space in much less time and much more precisely.
This foundations guy is actually a full service concrete company that also has Shotcrete equipment. It looks like his experience is mostly limited to smaller jobs like turning “michgian basements” into real basements. I still prefer my other shotcrete guy, if I can ever manage to arrange a meeting with him. The foundations guy also said he would do flatwork and gave me reasonable rates for that.
Much Simpler…
I know I have mentioned this tiny house design site before, but I saw another post that I want to share… They have a few small underground homes and even more green roof homes and I recently stumbled on to another one (posted mid 2012) here. Man that look so easy to build compared to mine ;^)
Well, August is here and still no hole in the ground. I didn’t post anything in July at all. Mostly, I blame work. There were a few weeks there where things got really crazy because I took on a big project that I should have declined. I spent my evening computer time preparing “packets” to make it easier for contractors to work out their bids and that didn’t leave much time for the website.
I submitted my construction drawings (emailed pdfs) to my neighborhood’s architectural committee on June 24th (just before my last post). I expected they would setup some sort of meeting so I could explain the drawings, so I offered to bring in the full size prints (one member of the committee told me he wanted prints instead of pdfs). Instead of inviting me to a meeting, they just sent me some questions by email.
I expected questions about the direction the garage is facing. The rules say the garage shouldn’t face the road, but because the road wraps around my property, it would have been difficult for me to face the garage away from the road, but I at least made sure it wasn’t facing the “circle” that my driveway comes off. Unfortunately, you could still see the garage doors from the circle. I talked about planting arborvitae to block the view and they were willing to accept that.
Rough landscape plan that we sent to the architectural committee
They did ask some questions about our landscaping plans. They didn’t give much detail about the green roof and I think they were concerned that we planned to leave everything “natural” on the roof ;^). Our answer of “park-like” seemed to satisfy. They also expressed some concern about the back of the garage, which I admit is not the most attractive side of the house. I promised to hide it as best as I could with trees and a bougainvillea vine.
The guardrail is drawn with straight lines, like wires, but I hope to use curved steel or aluminum tubes
The thing they were most concerned about was the safety rail. Admittedly, the architect did make it look like stretched wires (very nautical), but I explained that my intent was more for horizontal steel rails that could be bent to follow the contours of the land. They seemed to prefer horizontal rails to a vertical fence which may have appeared a bit like a palisade. In the end, “safety rails” made it past the neighborhood association’s fence restrictions, but meant the building inspector would be much more interested in them. They said that “before” they would approve, I would need to make sure those “guardrails” would pass inspection.
I contacted the inspector (who got back to me very quickly) and said that there was a rule for guard rails along a walking path next to a drop of more than 30 inches. It is basically a 4 inch ball test. Not sure how I missed it, but my wife found the exact wording of the rule on-line.
R 312 Guardrails are required on any exterior walking surface over 30in. from floor or grade. Openings in guards shall be designed such that a 4 in. ball will not pass through the guard at any point including open treads. Residential guards shall be 36 in. in height minimum from the finished floor or stairway nosing.
Horizontal rail, I would like this in black, but the relaxed openings would fail the 4 inch ball test for guard rails next to a walking surface.
If this rule is applied to my project, it means that I will actually need to go with a safety rail designed to meet that rule rather than the much cheaper and more open horizontal steel or aluminum fence that I liked.
On the other hand, the rule was intended for stair or balcony railings, so I am looking into if I could make a couple changes so the rule does not apply. For instance, perhaps it will not apply if I move the rail back a couple feet from the edge. I could plant bushes between the fence and the edge. Or perhaps putting a flower bed along the fence, instead of a walking path would change things.
Getting bids in summer (construction season) is no easy task. It gets a lot harder when the house is complicated. And the beautiful building weather we have had the past month has only made it harder. I keep hoping for some really hot days so that these guys will want to be inside, even if it means filling out a quote.
I am sure I will put in a page about what I have learned, but I am not done learning yet. Instead, I will give you my strategy and a few stories…
My strategy was to first put together a packet of information, and then phone each potential contractor for a conversation. Many contractors ruled themselves out right away because they are not interested in new construction.
One told me that new construction requires you to work fast, but he would rather do a good job. I have heard that line before and personally believe that a real pro can do both, but lets get back to the topic…
If they were interested, I could answer questions during the call with the information I had collected in the prepared packet (such as how many square feet of wall or how many fixtures). I could also write down their questions and add the info to the packet. For instance, the electrical packet included the electrical sheets from the construction drawings, as well as a spreadsheet where I had already gone thru and summed up the number of electrical outlets, light switches, 3 way switches, etc. so the contractor wouldn’t have to.
The strategy behind the packets was that contractors would get back to me more quickly if I made it easier for them. It would also make the bids easier to compare if I provided the counts and areas.
But once I had a contractor (such as an electrician) on the phone, they often asked questions I had not thought of; such as which rooms should have switches controlling the bottom half of the outlets, or who my electricity supplier was (because one of the suppliers requires a separate meter for the electric HVAC stuff). I then added this information to the packet so that all the bidders would have the same info. After talking to 3 available contractors, collecting questions and polishing up my packet, I emailed the information out to each.
Then I made a mistake, I gave the contractors a couple weeks of “space”. I think this may have sent a bad signal. After the couple weeks, I emailed. Again, too little too late. A couple weeks after that, I called them again… After a month of not responding to my emails, they mostly acted like the ball had been in my court the whole time. Sure, they got my packet, sure they were interested. Why did I wait a month to call and when did I want to get together to discuss it?
A couple of contractors have bothered to call me back and tell me that my project is too big for them. I appreciate that because I can just move on to another contractor. I know of at least one contractor who changed his mind and decided he was not up for it, but didn’t bother to tell me (I heard it thru the grape vine). I want contractors who find it interesting and actually want to be a part of the project.
In one case, I did get a quote and filed it away while I waited for others. After a few weeks, I took a closer look at it and compared it with the others. I realized that it was totally inadequate in terms of detail. It didn’t include the equipment rental costs and labor components that the other similar quotes had. I called them up and they said they could give a more detailed quote if I was actually interested. I said I was, which was why I had asked for the first quote, and they agreed to give it another try. So now I wait again because they didn’t take my first request for a quote seriously.
In another case, I drove an hour to meet with the contractor (who made himself available after hours) to discuss what I needed. I didn’t provide any information I had not already included in the email or phone calls. He showed me some brochures that I had already seen on line. After a while it became clear to me that it would be very easy for him to prepare the quote because he only had a few components to choose from and my needs made the final assembly pretty obvious. So, I said something like, “I guess this quote should be pretty easy for you to put together, you didn’t need me to come in after all”, and he let slip “Yea, but I like to have people come in before I bother. It shows me who is serious.”
In another case, during the initial phone call, I found the contractor did not have email. Instead, he wanted me to drive out to the property (1 hour each way) to meet with him and “walk the site” with me before he could quote it. His references were good, so I drove out and I spent over an hour with him. I also gave him some print outs. A couple weeks later when I called, he said he had sent the quote. I checked and said he hadn’t. I called again the next week and he said he was working 100 hrs a week, and hadn’t had time to quote it. I said I would have to find someone else who had time for my project. He said he did have time for working, just not for quoting. I told him I needed the quote before I could hire him, so he said he would get it done that weekend… Then a couple weeks after that I called him again (now six weeks since we had met) and he admitted that he had forgotten most of the details, could I come out and meet him again to “refresh his memory” and bring more print outs… I called a few other contractors to start the bidding process with them instead.
In another case, after wasting a month, I started calling a particular ICF distributor every day for a while. I left 7 messages over two weeks and got no replies. I realized that I had not got a reply to anything (email or phone) in 2 months. I did get a reply from him months earlier after meeting him at a trade show, so I know I had the right email and phone number. I decided to contact the main company and told them I couldn’t get a hold of their exclusive distributor in my region. They confirmed the contact info was correct and said they would follow up. Two weeks later, they called to say they tried and tried, but couldn’t get a hold of him either and put me in contact with the next closest distributor. Actually, this other distributor was much closer to my building site even though I was technically out of their region, and with corporate watching, they got me a good quote in a day or so.
In another case, the office person responsible for quotes kept acting like she was just about to send me a quote. I kept missing her because she had gone to lunch or was in the shop. She never called me back. Eventually she sent me a scan of a hand written quote. I couldn’t read it (it was too faint to make out her handwriting), but I could see that it was only a few lines long and couldn’t possibly be complete, so I called again and this time I got her. After 5 weeks, she told me that the drawings in the packet I sent were not sufficient and I would need to get shop drawings made before she could quote accurately. I thought the drawings were good enough, so I asked her what she would like to see. We opened the excel doc that I sent here at the same time so were were looking at the same thing. She started saying how it didn’t give enough info to bid… I asked her if we could go thru a row together. We started on the first row, and it was clear that she had not got past the 5th column. Once she saw that, it started to click for her. Then I got her to pan over even further to the right where I had inserted the drawings in the sheet (I had also sent them separately as PDFs which she had not noticed). The lights went on (I heard a little gasp) and she said she would get me a proper quote right away. That was 10 days ago, I guess I should call her again.
In another case, I had met a contractor who had impressed me by already printing out the drawings I had sent him so I didn’t need to give him my set. We were going thru the plans and he said that he guessed most contractors would take one look at these plans and decide that it would be easier to bid on a more standard job. But he thought it was cool and he give me the name of a contractor for another part of the project who he though would also think my project was cool enough to want to be involved…
My main shotcrete contractor has not yet been able to meet with me or talk to me since I started the bidding process. He is just too busy and I am starting to get concerned. I will call him again this week and try to set something up.
A number of the contractors I have spoken to have said they would need to bid “time and materials” for such an uncertain job. For a contractor to make a bid, he is betting that he can get a job done to your satisfaction for less cost than the bid. He needs to estimate carefully so that he makes his bet correctly. If he bids too high, you will choose someone else, if he bids too low, he may end up losing money (worse than you choosing someone else). All the contractors make sure to guess a bit high to protect themselves. You are paying a bit more than they really think it will cost because you are paying them for the risk of the fixed price bid. On the other hand, if they can send in a “time and materials” bid, they are passing the risk over to you. You should expect to pay less if all goes well, but pay more if it doesn’t. The problem with “time and materials” is a lack of motivation for the contractor to get things done efficiently. If you want things to go as slowly as possible, pay by the hour. However, if you trust the contractor to work at a reasonable speed, “time and materials” gives a lot of flexibility. You can ask them to add something without needing to renegotiate. It will just add to the time and materials cost.
After a number of weeks, one of my steel stud contractors got back to me with a quote that was about 10 times what I was expecting (well over $100k for just the vertical steel stud work). So that was shocking… I thought maybe he had mistyped, so I wrote him back and asked him to separate it into Labor and Materials. I thought he would catch his mistake, but he just confirmed that it was more than $30k for materials and more than $80k for labor, for just the steel studs… Ouch.
But then I got talking to another steel stud contractor who told me that I would probably need specific drawings of how all the steel studs went together. He said it would be helpful for his quote, but probably required by the county building inspector. I asked the inspector about it and he gave some cryptic answer about how I should want the drawings so I would have a better record of what was hidden behind the walls. I wrote back and asked if he could be more clear about if I need those drawings or not. My architectural drawings just have one wall detail cross section with a note that says something something basic and generic like “STEEL STUDS, 24″ ON CENTER”. My steel stud work is very basic, with no load bearing walls or connections with floors or roofing assemblies… I can always take a photo before the walls are closed if I wanted good records. I am still waiting to here if I need these, but if I do, it will be more expense.
And on and on it goes. I should be making a bunch of calls this next week. But I also need to keep my job ;^). My plan is to make an hour of calls in the morning and another in the afternoon each day, and then to just extend my work day by a couple hours… I am very glad that my job is flexible enough to get away with that kind of time management so I can save my vacation days for actual construction.
One of my pet peeves is how secretive the contractors are about where the costs come from. The GeoThermal guys are the worst because they have big chunky components that should be the easiest to quote. They want to make it seem like they need to do this big fancy energy audit before they can possibly work on the quote. But in actual fact, they only have 3 hydronic units (for radiant floor) and I want the small one. Then they start to say that the load requirements determine the feet of pipe they need to bury, but later admit that hardly changes the price at all so they always put in more than they need… 
Still, the price is a mystery. This is particularly annoying when I am trying to decide if I need an add-on. For instance, I am not sure I need AC, but wanted to check the cost of adding the air handler. They only have one model that would be compatible with the rest of the system I need, so I asked for the price… They gave me a range that was so wide that the high number was double the low number… As I have said before, I find informational asymmetry frustrating.
I had planned to avoid spending money as long as possible, so I was going to wait on the permits until after I got the bids in. Also, many of bids I had already received included that they would file for the permits. This is probably right for some of the permits (well, pluming, electrical, mechanical), but the septic field size needs to be set by the county based on some formula that takes the number of bathrooms and bedrooms into account. Apparently this size is specified in the permit, which the excavator needs before it can be accurately estimated… So we need to take care of that sooner rather than later.
Fortunately, my wife has taken over the permit stuff. She recently spent a couple hours following the daisy chain of permits and printing them out as she goes. I will let her explain it better in her own post if she ever finds the time, but it doesn’t seem like a nice clear set of paperwork. Instead, it is more like a branching tree. Each permit needs several other permits filled out first and she is following it to the bottom. We joked that our county is very “liberal” which is why there is so many restrictions and complicated paperwork is required to do anything. She has already covered a large desk in forms organized into some sort of hierarchy. Now to fill them all out. ;^)
Sorry, none today. This post is already too long. But I will come back soon and do a special Eye Candy edition this coming week.
From the plumbers perspective, our home is really just a slab on grade house… but he was surprised to hear that there was earth on the roof.
The plumber story isn’t so much about the plumber himself, but rather about our meeting.
We had an appointment with the president of the company, made a couple days prior to our arrival. He gave us specific instructions as to which door to enter from the exterior, and to call him when we were on our way. We followed all these steps. After entering the exterior door, we found ourself in the middle of two hallways, one straight ahead and one to our left, neither of which was very well decorated. The building was musty and had paper signs taped to the doors. A sign pointed us straight ahead and through a set of double doors that led to a very large and very dark warehouse. We thought, “this can’t be right”, and turned around to the other hallway.
Down the second hallway, different company names were listed on each, but not the plumber. We passed one open door with a man sitting behind a desk (no computer, just an empty desk). He appeared to have nothing to do except stare out his door at us as we wandered up and down the hallway. I’m sure that we looked very much lost. Since he was very attentive to our wanderings, we asked him for directions and he sent us back to the double doors leading to the “warehouse”. We went back there, and entered cautiously as Simon called out, “Hello?” It was rather dark to house an office.
Nonetheless, we did notice the plumbers sign made of metal that was attached to the side of the third door down the walkway in this warehouse. Hmmm, not what we expected. Both of us had talked with multiple receptionists on the phone while making our appointment. We expected a large company, a large office, and not a smaller warehouse space through the window of a locked door. There was a doorbell, but no one answered the door. Were we still at the wrong place? We didn’t want to head any further into the darker corners of the warehouse. Surely, there must be a larger welcoming office for customers and this was just an employee workroom? Simon called the plumber on the phone to confirm our appointment and asked for someone to open the door, we learned that even the secretary wasn’t there. What? Oh, it was just an answering service, and she would leave a message. But we have an appointment, right?
So, not until we walked back again out the double doors trying to figure out where we should be, and then back through the double doors (a fourth time) into the ominous warehouse did we see the shadow of a large figure approaching. Hello? Yes, indeed, this was the plumber. He was just arriving back late from lunch. Our appointment continued for the next hour. A good 15 minutes was wasted on printing the info that Simon had e-mailed to him 2 days prior. And much time was spent by Simon explaining how our earth sheltered home will be uniquely built.
Simon has so much patience to explain the building processes to so many contractors who have no experience with earth sheltered homes. This is difficult because some contractors think they already know so much and feel the need to let us know.
This may or may not be the plumber that we choose to hire, we’ll see how the bidding process continues, but, it certainly was an interesting first meeting with him.
Thanks Sherri for adding to this blog…
The funniest part, from my perspective, was the phone call with the receptionist… When I called to ask her where the entrance to the office was, she just repeated the address back to me. I said, “no, we are already there, we just can’t find anything with “Suite 24″ on it. We were on the first floor in the ware house. Was there a second floor and how could we get to it?” She simply said, “I don’t know.” What? How could she not know? So I asked her to come and let us in. she said, “Sorry, I can’t do that”. Eventually she admitted that she was just part of an answering service and she was not even in Michigan. So I asked if she could forward me to [the president of the company]?”, but no, she couldn’t do that either. So I said, “What can you do?” She said she was only able to take a message.
Anyway, if you have a small company, my suggestion is to skip the silly receptionist service and get a cell phone with voice mail and texting instead 
You are only fooling customers until they visit. Personally, I don’t mind working with a small company, as long as I can get ahold of the right people when I need them.
I started by taking an old toaster apart. I was going to run the elements between two Pyrex glass plates that I found in the cupboard. I figured they were garage sale plates and not part of a set (there were just 3 of them). Boy was I wrong… Those were part of a special 3 plate cake holder thingy that my wife loves. Good thing I checked first.
I put rings sliced from my pipe on the grill and the edge softened right away. I then lifted them off and pressed them together… Instant fusion weld… Actually, I guess I heated them too much (too soft) and pressed them together too hard, because I got a bit of a bead inside.
