The house – Page 6 – Into the Woods

What are arc fault circuit breakers?

Some of the 17 arc fault breakers in my main electrical panel

Starting in 2008, the National Electrical Code included a new requirement: new homes must use arc fault circuit breakers. Like most people, I was unaware of this new requirement, nor did I know what purpose these breakers serve until my electrician explained it to me.

Many electrical fires are caused by arcs. Arcs can happen when a wire has been damaged, leaving a gap in the insulation, or when a connection has come loose. Ordinary circuit breakers don’t detect this problem. If enough current arcs for long enough, it will heat up and cause a fire. These new breakers are expensive (at least $45 each). They added more than $600 to the cost of my electrical system.

This added cost has caused many people to complain. In fact the North Carolina Building Code Council (under pressure from developers, as always) recently considered dropping this requirement. But they backed down and kept the requirement after wiser heads put some pressure on them.

If you’ve ever been around a house fire, as I have, you want all the protection you can get. There are 41,000 house fires each year, causing around 360 fire deaths each year and thousands of injuries. Children and the elderly are always at higher risk in house fires (and I’m not getting any younger). I gladly shelled out the money for these breakers. My electrician was able to negotiate a good price for me because my house has much more wiring than most houses this size (I’m a nerd). My 1250-square-foot house has more than 30 circuits.

So how does an arc fault breaker differ from a ground fault breaker? An arc fault breaker is for preventing fires. A ground fault breaker is to protect humans from electrical shock. The code still requires ground fault breakers in kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, basements, etc. Typically the ground fault breakers are in the outlet boxes, so these circuits have both arc fault and ground fault protection.

Interior photos … eventually

I haven’t forgotten my promise to post some interior photos of the new house. It’s going to take a little time. I’m still working on getting things in place. Not to mention that the lighting and photography are difficult to manage. But I’ll get there.

In fact…

In fact, Lily has gotten so at-home in the new house that she is rooting her way into the most important spot in the house — my computer chair. Never mind that I got two identical chairs, one for her and one for me. She wants my chair.

Quoi? Moi?

Evicted and grouchy

Update, 30 minutes later: She moved to her own chair.

Cats and new houses

It has taken time and patience for Lily to accept the new house as home. She’s known this place for a year from her cozy little trailer up the hill, but it’s always been associated with loud noises and strange traffic.

I’ve taken a bit of a vacation after the painters left three weeks ago. I needed the time off, and Lily needed the quiet time in the new house so that she could start seeing it as home. She has adapted, and I do believe she likes it. She’ll like it even better when I bring in the furniture, and more rugs.

But I do still have to paint the bathrooms and finish some woodwork. The floor that Lily is sitting on here, for example, has not yet had the finish applied.

On the absence of color contrast

Looking through the radio room railing to the living room fireplace

I’ve had a lot of doubts about the lack of contrast in my interior color scheme. The pine floors are lot like the rosy beige walls, the pine trim, the gray-pink marble, and even the almond Formica in the kitchen. I made the decision not to stain the wood and alter the natural colors, though, not out of an opposition to contrast, but rather out of a sense of honesty and humility in the materials used. Pine is pine. Formica is Formica. It would be dishonest, in my mind, for pine and Formica to try to pretend to be something they aren’t. Pine, like all children, is beautiful just the way it is.

So I was interested to find a piece in the Washington Post about a decorator — a Southerner, no less — who intentionally avoids color contrast.

I am reminded of advice I’ve given other people often enough: Just do what feels right to you and don’t be overly influenced by the opinions of others. Still, I am pleased to know that there are professorial decorators who agree that lack of contrast does not necessarily indicate a lack of imagination.

I am reminded of a time some years ago when a friend made fun of me for singing what he thought was a silly and obsolete old song, “My Funny Valentine.” Then he heard Matt Damon sing it in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

“See there,” I said. “Truly being cool is about knowing what to like before Matt Damon gives you permission to like it.”

I like my honest, unremittingly neutral colors.

Washington Post

Done! (Except for…)

The downstairs bedroom, painting and woodwork finish by yours truly. This is the guest room, so, all of you houseguests to be, this is where you’ll stay.

I got the certificate of occupancy on Monday, which means that I passed the final inspection and, as far as the county is concerned, the house is complete. What remains, though, is quite a lot of painting and finishing of woodwork. That’s a lot of work, on which I got started this week. One room, the downstair bedroom, is done. Next: the radio room upstairs.

I’ve been busy and distracted, and I’m reluctant to post a lot of photos until all the painting and interior finish work is done. I’ll post updates each time I come up for air.

The last ditch

I have often complained that ditches and mud have been the most irritating part of the building process. Today the electric company dug the last ditch to bury my power cable. The house now has power. If it doesn’t rain this evening, I hope to get an exterior photo of the lit-up house at dusk.

Busy, busy, busy

I haven’t had much time to post lately. I’ve been busy with a long list of things that need to be done to get the house ready for the final inspection. Plus I had a visitor from California last week. Above: A new chicken feeder ordered from Randall Burkey has made it much easier to keep the chickens’ food clean and cut down on waste. Floor level troughs don’t work very well. This one is suspended from a wire.

The baby squash are coming along.

Basil, a bug, and a squash tendril

The view toward the North Carolina Piedmont from Fox Hunter’s Paradise on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My friend from California and I went for a little road trip to the New River Valley of Virginia.

Kitchen cabinets

I haven’t felt inspired to take a lot of interior photos because there’s still so much missing detail, clutter, and a saw table in the middle of the living room floor. But here’s a preview of the kitchen cabinets, which my brother finished last week. With luck, the plumbers will install the dishwasher and faucets tomorrow. The electrician also should be here tomorrow to hook up the switches, receptacles and light fixtures. I’m seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

These cabinets, by the way, are all hand made by my brother, though he jobs out the door panels. The wood is maple, with a varnish finish.

Dealing with downpours

Grass after today’s downpour: If I’d had it last year I’d have saved some soil and some hard work.

One of the things I’ve learned from building a house is that half the problem, both for the house and the landscaping, is water security. Rain comes in two types, I figure. Just plain rain, which gets to everything that is exposed. And downpours, which can cause heavy runoff and ugly damage.

Here in the South, downpours are common, especially from thunderstorms. Early last summer, almost three inches of rain fell in a violent storm one night before I had established ground cover. The result was ugly and depressing — muddy gullies, parts of the driveway washed out, and young grass washed away before its roots were deep enough to hold on. I’m on a steep hillside. Simply holding the soil has to be my first priority. That’s one of the reasons I’ve not cut my grass. But even when the landscaping is mature enough to not wash out during a downpour, one wants to hold as much water as possible, let it sink into the ground, and either feed the underground aquifer or cause something to grow.

Today just before sunset we had a downpour of between a half an inch and three-quarters of an inch in less than an hour. I did what I always do after a heavy rain. As soon as the rain stopped, I did a walkaround to see how the water was flowing and how things held up. This downpour caused no trouble. No soil washed away. And the tall grass captured a lot of the water so that there really wasn’t much runoff.

Ultimately, with terracing, thick vegetation, and healthy soil, I would like to be able to capture virtually all the water that falls here, with as little runoff as possible. Rain should stay put and make something grow, not run down the hill in a gully.

This bank on the uphill side of my driveway was my most difficult runoff problem. It was nothing but a muddy scar after the driveway was made last spring. Now it’s covered with talls grass and lots of day lilies.

The driveway culvert: running clean and light after a heavy rain

The uphill side of the driveway: not much runoff, even though there’s quite a large watershed above it, and no mud flowing