Dropping by the laneway the other evening I ran into Vahid, the amiable plumber, who was connecting the red hoses for the heating system through the new framing in the bedroom wall. I was happy to talk about it this morning with Ian and Steve at the Home Discovery Show on the Corus network.
The system is sealed, the water going through it will not be mixing with the potable water that will be serving the bathroom and kitchen. Once everything is connected with the boiler it will just use the same water over and over, cycling through the boiler then the hoses. The water will be kept at about 15 pounds per square inch (sorry, don’t know the metric). But to test the system for leaks they pushed water through to 100 pounds per square inch and they’ll keep it there while the build is going up around it, to make sure there will be no water leaking from the system, or from any punctures that occur during the build. The water hasn’t been connected to the mains yet, they borrowed some from the main house.
And Vahid reminded me not to use any long nails when hanging things on the bedroom wall! Don’t want any nasty surprises.
I didn’t get any pictures of the framed-in pipes — I didn’t want to disturb Vahid while he was working, and when I went back the house was completely locked up. Those doors do a good job of keeping people out. We’ll be talking to some people about our security system this week, so more on that later.
The Lady Who Lives Down the Lane 
Good morning
I enjoy your updates on NW and your web
You mentioned hard wood floor over heated cement floor? I thought the host of NW mentioned before that your wood would shrink…???
Tiles and carpet are most energy efficient as heat transfer.
Q: will you have Xmas light electrical switches pre-installed and easily set up for servicing?
Q: will you have a video recording camera at your front and back door?
Q: have your smoke detector, gas fume connected to your monitor alarm system too.
All the best to you and your loved ones.
Wow, those are all good points. The possible shrinkage of the hardwood floor over the heated cement floor is something we will have to talk about with our builder. Tiles will be installed in the bathroom (I guess I didn’t make that clear when I was speaking with Ian and Steve this morning) and I know that carpet is a better heat conductor, but I have my heart set on having hardwood floors so I hope we can make that happen.
Will we have Xmas light switches? We don’t have plans for them now, although we have exterior plugs for the lights. We will be putting Xmas lights up, for sure, my daughter and I will coordinate the lights on the main and the laneway house.
Video recording? We will be speaking with the security people this week about the alarm set up. Right now we are just considering a basic alarm set-up without video recording. Cost is certainly an issue, we don’t want to spend too much on security both now during installation and for years to come for monitoring fees.
We will have our smoke detector and gas and CO monitor all hooked up to the monitor alarm.
Thanks for your good wishes and thanks for following our progress!
Looks like a big project. It’s definitely worth the trouble to really do a thorough job of testing for water leaks. Hope the rest of your project goes well!
We really feel confident in our builder. We’ve seen the work they’ve done in the “big house” and it’s good. But it’s really nice to know that our heating system won’t leak!