Update

06:58 Saturday, 25 July 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 58.91°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 83% Wind: 5.79mph
Words: 521

It's been a minute.

So I saw the doc on Thursday. Great visit. She's younger than I thought, and an army veteran. Served two tours in Iraq as an enlisted medic. We talked about current events. We are of like minds.

Did a bunch of blood work, have another appointment in a couple of weeks to go over the results and discuss next steps.

We still have company, so it's a full house here.

In the new house, the plumbing is going in that will be below the slab. We hope to pour the slab on Thursday. It's beginning to give me a greater sense of reality in terms of it being a house and not just a hole in the ground.

I've installed Parallels and Windows 11 so I can use the 30 day free trial of LoopCAD to try and figure out the most efficient way to run the radiant heating piping in the slab. Oof! I'm not sure I can figure this thing out in time. It wants to run a full Manual J calculation, but apparently you can manually enter the heat loss, so I need to find that video. I'm afraid I may have spent almost $300 to no good effect.

We have a professional plumber, Gary, who is helping Brad with the plumbing layout and he has experience with radiant floor piping as well. If I can't figure something out, we'll go with his recommendation.

We'll be moving a lot of dirt on Monday. Ken, the excavator, is coming back to finish putting stone beneath the slab to bring it up to the footer level. Then he's got to move the mounds of earth around the basement so we can use a telehandler to set the floor trusses after the slab is poured. We're planning on using most of the dirt to form a berm at the north side of the property where the neighbor has expressed some disappointment with having to see our house. (They can't in the summer, because of the trees. In the winter, they may be able to see part of it.) So we'll make a berm and put some plantings on it so that eventually they will never have to set eyes on our place except when they're coming up their driveway.

People are weird.

While Ken's here, we'll probably also run the line from the well to the new house. It'll just be a water line, the pressure switch in this house will control the well pump for both houses. They're hydraulically connected at the well, so when we turn the water on in the new house the drop in pressure will be sensed in both houses. Turns on at 30psi and off at 50psi.

We dropped in at the local credit union and inquired about a HELOC, (home equity line of credit). I'll be taking that on for my portion of the cost beyond what I have from my portion of the sale of our Florida home. I may use it to put in ground-mounted solar as well. We shall see.

As usual, the beat goes on...

✍️ Reply by email