Anticlimax

I had a busy day, but I heard the plumbing installation was happening today, so I carved out some time to make a trip over to the house to check it out. It seemed rather quiet from the outside -- and it looked pretty much the same since my last visit.
For once, there was nothing parked in the driveway (except the Bobcat), so I noticed that the paved part had been torn up and replaced with gravel. Apparently all the heavy trucks that had been driving on it caused it to crack and buckle. We were planning to eventually replace it with some kind of permeable surface, which requires a gravel base anyway, so it's not a huge tragedy...
Beyond the driveway, the new basement window well has been poured. The forms are still in place while it sets.
In the back, Paul was working on building our new back porch.
Here's what the house looks like from the back. The new master bedroom is slightly cantilevered over the expanded family room below, which will help protect the windows from the elements.
It seemed pretty quiet inside, too. Rob was set up in the dining room cutting boards to size for Paul. (This was taken from just inside the front door.)
And John (not shown) was working on the stairs. There have apparently been a lot of changes to the stair design, so they've had to rip them out and start over a few times. For now, we seem to have stairs going down to the basement, but you still need to climb the ladder to get up to the second floor.
As far as I could tell, they were the only 3 guys working on the house this afternoon. I asked Rob about the plumbing, and he said it was pretty anti-climactic. One guy came by in the morning and installed a few pipes, but no one took any video or photos. He thought that could still happen later this week, since there was plenty more to do. But for now, the only new thing I noticed were these little green pipes running along the dining room ceiling:
What's the big deal? Well, this is a new kind of 'green' piping called Aquatherm that only recently became available in the US -- the company is based in Germany. Not only are the manufacturing process and materials more environmentally-friendly (and toxin-free) than standard pipe, but rather than having to screw various parts together, this product can be seamlessly heat-fused together. No leaky joints!

According to Rob (and he may have been exaggerating), our house will be the only one between here and Canada to have this kind of piping installed in it. This is as exciting as plumbing can get!