An Inspector Calls

This morning we had a preliminary pre-drywall inspection for the NAHB Green Building certification -- one of three green home certifications our builders and architect are hoping to get for our house. When Josh and I arrived at 9 am, we were happy to see Attila (standing in white shirt) and his crew already at work on the roof.
Here's a closer look at the roof tile. It's a plastic composite material with 58% recycled content that is much lighter than real Spanish tile, and has a 50-year warranty.
The roofers set up this cool ladder elevator to transport the tile up to the roof. It has a mechanical pulley system that moves the little blue cart up to the top and back down.
Once everyone had arrived, we gathered around the table inside to meet with the inspector. From left to right is Dane, Marta, Steve B., Steve W., Greg (the inspector), and Josh.
Greg works for CGE Solutions, which will also be helping us with our LEED certification. The NAHB certification is new, so the was the first time anyone at the table had been through the process, including Greg. Most of it required going through a checklist and assigning points for various features of the house. For example, we get points for being walking distance to public transportation, shops, restaurants, parks, etc. We also get points for using green construction techniques and materials, Energy Star appliances, and water conservation strategies, among other things. It was a long, complicated process that required a fair amount of documentation and visual verification. Josh left at 9:30, and Steve B. had to duck out early as well, but I stayed to see how it went.

We ended up using the boxes that Jim had made the day before as "chairs," since we got tired of standing after a while. They were not particularly comfortable, but better than nothing. In this photo Rob (standing), Dane, Steve W., Greg, and Marta are going over the checklist items.
The preliminary inspection gave us a sense of what level of certification we could hope to get (Bronze, Silver, or Gold), based on the points we scored in each category. I think Gold is out of our reach, but it sounds like Silver is a possibility. We'll have to wait until the final inspection to see how we scored.

After we finished the checklist, Greg offered to test our ducts to make sure they were properly sealed. You can lose a lot of the efficiency of your HVAC system if the air leaks out of the ducts before getting to the registers. In order to test the system, all the registers needed to be sealed, so Justin was pulled away from installing a pocket door in the upstairs bathroom to work on that.
Then Greg cut a hole in the seal over the air intake upstairs and attached a large vacuum to it. Unfortunately, when he tried to depressurize the system, it wouldn't work, indicating a major leak somewhere.
That sent everyone scrambling to check all the registers again to make sure they were properly sealed up, but that still didn't work. In a scene right out of The Princess Bride, Greg said if we only had a bundle of sage, we could blow smoke through the system to see where the leak was -- and Rob ran downstairs and promptly returned with a bundle of sage. He lit it up while Greg reversed the fan on the vacuum to convert it into a blower...
... and then blew the smoke into the fan so it would flow through the ducts.
It wasn't long before the whole house was filled with smoke. It turned out there were multiple leaks -- all in extremely hard-to-reach places. Everyone (who knew what they were doing) grabbed a ladder and whatever sealant was handy to try to find and fix the leaks, but we were eventually smoked out of the house. Greg went home and got his fog machine, which was an improvement over the sage smoke, but they still weren't able to patch everything up enough to pressurize the system by the time I had to leave. But, as Marta pointed out, it's good that they discovered the leaks now so they can repair them before the drywall goes up. After that, it would be much more difficult to diagnose the problem, let along fix it.

Dane had received an email from Steve B. earlier in the day suggesting he set up a meeting with yet another cabinet person he knew, since we have been having trouble getting the information/pricing we need from the three companies we've already met with and they need to order them ASAP. Dane was able to schedule a meeting with her for 3 in the afternoon, so at 2:30 I told him I was going to head back to the apartment so I could get a little work done before she arrived. Just then, she called to tell Dane she had already arrived, so I grabbed my stuff and ran out the door to meet her -- Dane said he'd be 5 minutes behind me.

On the way out, I was impressed with the progress they'd made on the roof. It's going to look so nice when it's all done!
And the foam guys had finished their job and were trying to maneuver their huge trailer out of my driveway. Our street is pretty narrow, so I'm sure it was just as challenging to get it out of the driveway as it was to get it in there.
When I got back to the apartment, I spotted the cabinet lady, Cindy, sitting in her car across the street, so I introduced myself and we talked a bit about door styles until Dane showed up -- at which point we decided to move the meeting into my apartment rather than out on the street. Since we had already finalized the kitchen layout, all we really needed to do was decide on a door style and paint/stain colors and give her the specs and dimensions. Dane and I have another cabinet meeting on Monday morning with a rep from Starmark, so I'm hoping we can pull the trigger on the cabinets sometime next week.

I wasn't able to get an substantive work done until after Cindy and Dane left around 4, so I was still slogging away on my computer when Josh came home from work around 8. What a long day!