FINALLY!! The saga begins

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:09 am

Well, a bit of a strange weekend...

The framers didn't get the two walls up for the shower, so I've drawn that as my lot to do. No biggie, but a biggie.

The framers ended up concentrating on getting the banding done on the exterior wall of the Tracking Room. There's a few things they didn't get right, but they're easily fixed... now it's just a matter of fixing them.

I got the two shower walls up yesterday, and today I'm going to get the shower pan done... I hope.

The building code says I have to make the building ADA accessible. The part of ADA that refers to bathrooms and showers dictates that the showers cannot have any more than a 1/2" lip at their edge to retain water.

The pan has to slope towards the drain obviously, so its looking like I have two, maybe three options.

The first option is to lay the tile for the bathroom on the concrete floor. The shower lip will then need to be an integrated part of the pan, which would be traditionally made - With sand and mortar mix. This is the most labor intensive. It's also the weakest method for creating the lip.

The second option is to lay the floor tile on a layer of concrete backer board. This option certainly makes the water retaining lip much easier to create, but then I have the backer board work and expense. It also means creating a sloped threshold for the bathroom door which cannot be over 1/2" in height.

The third option is to find a pre-made shower pan made to fit on a concrete pad. Most of the ones I have seen are made to go in a recessed shower area.

I'm not hitting on all four cylinders as to which is the best method. So... I'm off to the local building centers to see if there's some insight or tips/tricks they can pass on.

Pix a bit later...

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:08 am

UPDATE... There's also option #4...

This option was in the back of my head, but thought it kind of impractical. Which just goes to show ya' that simple is sometimes cost effective and better.

Essentially, I'll create an entire mortar bed for the whole bathroom. The bed will be a bit of a complex series of slopes that will end up all funneling to the shower drain.

If I tile the entire bathroom; floors, walls and possibly the ceiling, I can actually put a hose bib under the sink and literally just spay the whole bathroom down, and then just squeegy it clean and dry.

Because of the complexity of the sloping angles on the floor, I will start calling tile installers in the morning.

Since I'm gonna try to get a tile installer, that means that I can go on with fixing the little stuff that the framers did Friday.

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 12:05 pm

Quote:

Because of the complexity of the sloping angles on the floor, I will start calling tile installers in the morning.

Ah, the often overlooked option #5. Good idea!

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:33 pm

Just make sure the code allows for sloped floors (esp ones that will likely get wet, going by your description)...
Something made my heart thump hard there, probably the thought of the whole thing being torn down.

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:48 am

Code,

Of course the code allows for sloped floors. How else will water be able to be drained out of the shower, or a tub? Heck, it's actually spec'd that the floors MUST slope.

The real challenge is to make the slope(s) proportional to the area of the bathroom. These are gentle slopes, not to exceed the slope of a sidewalk at the very most (in concept).

We're talking about something on the order of a 1" fall from the wall edge to the drain center, which is approximately 4 feet away.

Again, it's not my forte', so it makes sense to be smart about this and hire a professional to handle the parts I shouldn't. If I'm lucky, they might give me a price that will allow me to concentrate on other things and let them do the whole thing... I wish! I might get by with having a contractor doing everything but the grout.

Here's a link to ADA information:
http://www.access-board.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:30 am

My bad. I thought you meant that the whole bathroom floor would be sloped...

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:37 am

Man, oh man, there are TONS of loose ends to get cleaned up and done... some of which I took care of yesterday.

The biggie of the day was hunting down and hiring a tile contractor for the bathroom. Dovetailing in with that, is a new modification to the North Carolina plumbing code...

After several calls, I met with the contractor I felt would do the job and do it right.

We already have the materials needed to do the majority of the work, if we only tile the floor and the walls of the shower. We're WAY short if we tile all the walls from floor to ceiling. Of course, it's more expense labor wise as well.

Now for the new plumbing code deal...

It seems that the inspectors in Alamance County are enforcing a new construction principle whereby the floor of a shower has a new construction. The water barrier now has to be sandwiched between two mortar beds. Each bed has to be sloped towards the drain.

We confirmed this with the plumbers when they got here in the afternoon. They set the shower drain and the toilet flanges in the bathroom.

While they were doing that, I dug out all the boxes of tile in the basement and moved them down to the studio. With the ground still being a bit torn up from all the construction, I ended up having to hand carry each box to the studio. While that doesn't sound like much work, it really is. Tile is not light, probably 40lbs a box. Carrying 18 boxes of tile 150 feet to the studio... I walked just about a mile to get all that done and took a lot of time. Especially when interrupted with a dozen phone calls.

I called the vendor I purchased the 15KVA isolation transformer from, and got the shipping information confirmed. The transformer should be shipping Wednesday, with an estimated delivery Thursday or Friday of next week.

I met with the electrician and the lighting vendor to get the "final" on the lighting scheme.

We're looking at an "ideal" design of 11 lighting zones. With the cost of copper rising, and the price of special ordering enclosures for the variac's, we might actually be cheaper to just add four channels of dimming to the overall lighting package. Of course I won't know for sure until the quote comes back on Thursday or Friday.

I like the idea of adding the 4 channels of dimming for the tracking room to the controller package. The reason being that I can then adjust the lighting from the console area using a digital control pad connected via cat5 control wire. Depending on the actual dimmer control purchased, the materials should only take 7-12 days to be delivered.

When I spoke to Andy, the electrician, he indicated that we're probably only looking at a week and a maximum of two weeks to get the electrical installed once we have the bill of materials. There is plenty of other work to do before the dimmer control would get here, so it's conceivable we could get the rough-in inspection in two weeks. More likely it will be three.

That means I could conceivably be starting to button up the walls by May 1st!!!

If that takes two weeks and I can get the kitchen portion of the lounge done in that same time... we could be going for the Certificate of Occupancy by May 15th or sooner!

In the meantime... (e.g. back to reality) the tile contractor is coming this morning to get started on the bathroom floor. He will set the initial slope bed for the shower today. He may even get the tile started for the floor.

Once the initial bed is in and dry, the plumbers will come back and set the shower pan vapor barrier and pull the water lines throughout the lounge. I've got to remind them that there will be humidifier lines to go to the HVAC system.

While the plumbers were here, we went back over the main incoming line and the septic drain paths. They can do the digging just about any time, but they want to wait for the ground to dry a bit more before they dig. So depending on the weather, possible next week if it stays dry.

I worked on framing up the support jacking for the fire barrier that runs between the exterior wall and the angled wall on the loading door side of the studio. I ran out of ability to go any farther because I need to set the main exterior door. I need to get some 5/4" door framing stock before I can do that. Maybe I can pick that up this afternoon.

I'll snag some pix and update later this evening.

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:46 am

Here's pix of the 1st shower pad...

I stopped buy the local big box Home center and picked up some 2x2 type tiles to check out which color/size/style the Mrs will let me have... errrr.... so I could make a decision on what tile to use for the shower floor.

I think "The Boss" and I agree on which tile! (See... miracles DO too happen!)

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 6:08 am

The framers stopped by yesterday. WOO HOO!!

They worked on the Control Room ceiling. We got about half of the blocking in after getting the air returns and the air supply boxing done. So now, all of the rafters for the Control Room are done. All that's left are the second row of blocking and to put in the assorted joist hangers.

Our inspectors are pretty damn picky. They're going to insist that we put horizontal blocking in for any wall over 10 feet in height. My plan is to stagger the blocking; Odd Studs with blocking at 4 foot and even studs at 8 foot. That will give me the blocking, something to nail the MDF to and HOPEFULLY not create harmonic cavities.

Another thing they get anal about is double rafters... if there is a double rafter, there needs to be a double stud below it. There are only 2 places this happens... in the Control Room. So, we'll just add those two studs and hopefully be ahead of the game when it comes to the inspection.

We've still got to build the platform over the Control Room for the air handlers. Hopefully I can get that built over the next week or so.

I've got a buddy flying in Wed to intern/help with a remote session on Fri/Sat. He's gonna hang for a coupla' days and help out with the build, so I'm pretty excited about that.

There was a bit of confusion on the shipping of the Isolation Transformer for clean power. It won't ship until Monday. It is supposed to be coming FedEx freight, with a delivery date of Wed or Thurs. This is gonna be a real trick if it comes in Wed. R3... you may have to belly up to the airport bar for an hour or so while I unload that beast... Hopefully it'll come in Thursday.

Gotta get a few things taken care of... pix in a bit... (I hope!)

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:51 pm

The plumbers are done with rough-in!!

They called for inspection to be done tomorrow.

The framers are almost done!!!

A wall next to the mic closet, a coupla of double studs and the wall in the lounge is about all that's left!

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:39 am

Well, it's a mixed bag today...

My buddy who's in from DFW, AtticusFinch, and I survived the recording session. It was extremely brutal hours. We had a major problem with the venue's splitter snake and tying in to it with our snake. We eventually got it sussed out and the recording session came off without a hitch. All the gear worked flawlessly and other than exhaustion, we have some great tracks to get mixing on.

The framers are about done, as I've mentioned. Here's a few pix;

Since the framers are also the same guys who did the roof, the lead framer also noticed that the lounge roof was a bit "bouncy" when he was up there putting in the wall to roof venting. So, he strongly encouraged fortifying the roof with extra bracing. I agreed, so they got that in place Friday...

We are all concerned with how picky our inspectors are. We opted to go back and add some extra bracing to the tracking room rafters. The reason being that because of the weight of MDF, two layers of gypsum and the finish lumber may give him reason to request extra bracing for the rafters. So, we're attempting to head off too much of a confrontation about the stability of the rafter ends at the beam. We through bolted a 4x4 on each side of the beam with a 5/8" x 16" bolt. Then, each rafter was lag bolted to the 4x4 with a 3/8" x 6" lag. To prevent any twist from occurring to the 4x4, we added a 3/8" x 6" lag.

Now for the bad...

While the plumbers are "finished" with the roug-in. We failed the inspection. I checked the inspection box and the note is very cryptic... all is says is; "drain to low"... whatever that means.... ARRRRGH!!

I'll call the plumbers in a few minutes to find out what the heck is going on...

One bit of ugly showed up Friday;

This is a 500 lb piece of ugly... but beautiful at the same time. The 15KVA Isolation Transformer for the clean power.

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:57 am

OK, talked to the plumber and found out what the del with the failed inspection was.

Evidently they had a blocking bulb in the shower pan drain that had burst and let all the water go down the drain. They fixed that Friday and the inspector should be here today to reinspect the plumbing.

At least that's all it was and evidently everything else passed, so as long as that bulb hold out, I think we're gonna be good to go! (WHEW!)

Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:48 pm

It'll be a day or so before pix are up, but the framing is like 99.9% DONE!!!

The boxing at the rear CR ceiling is up, all of the blocking and fire blocking is done as well!

I've GOT to get some mineral wool purchased ASAP. I really do need to the the fire barriers stuffed and caulked soon!

Then I need to go back and put all of the insulation back up in the exterior walls that we took down for fire blocking and framing.

I've also got to get outside and finish caulking the exterior and get it painted.

Oh yeah... other good news! The exterior loading door is up and square! I've got some bits and pieces to finish before putting the lead and MDF on the inside of the door, but at least, the building is secured now. WHEW!!! That door frame was a bear!

Between the recording session last weekend and a BUNCH of political rally gigs this week, I've been real short on time to work on the studio. But hopefully next week I'll get some better days.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:52 am

I had one heck of a fun afternoon yesterday. I rented a jack hammer to try and break up this one HUGE granite rock that sits right in front of the parking pad.

After 3 rounds and 6 hours... the final score was Rock-4 Me-2. I've only been able to bust that rock up enough to say that I've gotten maybe a third of it out of the way. Thankfully, it's the highest one third. I think it'll be enough to put the gravel down and have a decent slope to the pad.

I'll pull a string in a few minutes and find out.

Getting the doors completely done is now on the list.

I know places like Lowe's and Home Depot carry lead flashing at 2 lb/sq ft... which is a FAR cry from the 8 lb/sq ft called for in Rod's door design.

So, I have a coupla' options to sort through... put up multiple layers of the flashing, or shop outside of NC and pay some brutal shipping costs.

I'll be caulking the door frames and getting the insulation up this morning as well.

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 4:23 am

Well... here's the pix I've promised...

Good news! The electricians were here today to start wiring the place up!

These last two shots are the pseudo "money shots" of the day. Since the finish treatments are so thick; 3/4" MDF, 2 Layers of MDF and the finish lumber, we're having to extend the electrical boxes and the signal panel boxes well beyond normal depth