Additional landscaping

The City said we need to ensure water doesn’t run onto the neighbor’s property. It always has done, since before we were here, since the lowest point is the ditch on his property. They said it runs on his driveway, but that’s because he built his driveway on a wet weather creek. I interpret this rule as meaning our water can’t run-off on his driveway, since the literal interpretation would mean all water must go down or evaporate since all other land is someone else’s land.

To ensure our water stays off his driveway we’re building our own rock-filled ditch around the neighbor’s ditch. So now the neighbor is unhappy saying that we’ve strayed onto his land! We don’t believe we have but we can’t find the metal pin that marks the boundary so Ian from ESC rented a metal detector to find it.

All to prevent water going on the neighbor’s land, which it always has and which he doesn’t care about. The new ditch he’s not so keen on though.

 

Meanwhile we’re taking down some dead and poorly trees.

Driveway widening

Driveway widening started today. The local ordinance says 12ft minimum width so the architects put 12ft in the plans. The builder made the driveway 12ft +/- 6 inch, then added 6 inch curbs on each side, making it 11 ft +/- 6 inch. The rule is 12 ft to drive on minimum.

The first job is removing the curb on one side, where it will be widened.

Garage ceiling

Garage ceiling was done today. The guys are fixing the last panel here.

The GC didn’t view this as part of the job of building a house.

Fridge in, landscaping started

The fridge is in, no thanks to the contractor who made the space too small.

It backs onto the heat pump water heater which scavenges fridge waste heat.

The glass in the master shower is now properly supported, something the Lakeway City inspector didn’t like. I got the CRL hardware myself and Mike my handyman put it on, rather than getting the incompetents who left it like that back in.

Landscaping is in full swing. The City rules say no more than a 2ft drop hence the terracing on the driveway. Culvert under the driveway is nicely hidden by the rock bridge.

Lots of stone and dirt keeps arriving onto the driveway.

They cleared this area of rocks to use elsewhere in the landscape.

Wooden steps redux

These steps are even nicer! I was worried how the vertical drop would look but it looks great.

Wooden steps

The steps came out well. These were poured concrete with the foundation slab and covered with Tigerwood. Blue tape is to keep boards together until the glue dries.

Dual-flush toilets get a reprieve. What a relief!

I received a call from a very nice man at LCRA this morning, apparently they’ve been informed of my blog (fame at last!). I am pleased to say that he said the dual-flush, WaterSense certified Toto Aquia CT418FG in-wall toilets are OK. Apparently he had been wrongly informed by the installer that they’re 1.6 gpf and he was not told they’re dual flush.

So they don’t need to go to landfill in the name of green after all. That’s a huge relief then!

Yay! We’re safe!

LCRA? WaterSense? No sense! Big cents!

The septic was connected up today and the LCRA (Lower Colorado River Authority) inspector came. (LCRA regulates the water around Austin and Lake Travis). Surprisingly, he was happy with the septic, but not our lovely water-saving Toto wall-hung dual-flush toilets.

It seems LCRA has recently adopted a rule that says toilets should use no more than 1.3 gallons per flush (gpf). Federal regulations state no more than 1.6 gpf, but LCRA, quite reasonably, want to go further. US EPA WaterSense guidelines define a High Efficiency Toilet as being one that uses 1.3 gpf or less on average.

Ours is dual-flush, using 0.8 gpf for a number 1 and 1.6 gpf for a number 2. The manufacturer claims this equates to an average of 1.1 gpf or less. Seems reasonable, I do more number 1’s than number 2’s.

This website lists certified EPA WaterSense High-Efficiency Toilets. And guess what? Ours is on it.

http://www.map-testing.com/about/maximum-performance/map-search.html#result

California has brought in strict rules, including the 1.3 gpf average, but allow the dual-flush solution, so ours would be fine there, as it’s an average, not a maximum.

But it’s no good for LCRA. They have decided that since you can flush more than 1.3 gpf, these toilets don’t comply with their regulations. They have to come out and be replaced with 1.3 gpf single-flush units. LCRA can be proud to say they have the strictest and most bone-headed set of rules in the whole of the USA. Something they can truly be proud of.

One of our three Toto HET dual-flush 0.8 / 1.6 gpf USA EPA WaterSense certified, CalGreen approved toilets. Goodbye toilet you have to go, you’re too clever by half for LCRA.

Redlink Internet Connected Thermostats

We have 6 zones so 6 thermostats. At the weekend I tried to hook up the thermostats to the cloud (internet) via the Honeywell Redlink Internet Gateway.

It’s so simple the instructions say. Just press the button on the thermostat to put it into wireless pairing mode, and then press the button on the bottom of the internet gateway to pair it to the thermostat. Except it turns out that the button to press is not on what I would call the ‘thermostat’, but on the wireless transceiver on the A/C unit itself. What I would call the ‘thermostat’, ie the thing on the wall that you set the temperature on, is in fact really a ‘wireless remote control’. So having puzzled for a while as to why there was no button to press on the thermostat (sorry ‘remote control’), I finally tried pairing to a ‘thermostat’ (wireless transceiver on A/C unit).

Success! One thermostat paired, 5 to go. This is gonna be easy!

Uh-uh! Attempts to pair a second thermostat resulted in total failure. No can do. Only one would pair. But this is so easy, it must be true, I read it on the internet. OK, so several more hours of cursing and swearing and I gave up and went home.

Then I researched it on the internet. And I discovered two interesting things.

1) The Redink Internet Gateway (aka RIG) only supports 4 thermostats. I have 6. So that’s gonna be a problem. But it doesn’t explain why I can’t pair more than one. And  any case, you can have more than one RIG, so I just need two. An easily solvable problem.

2) I discovered on a HVAC contractor’s forum that after completion of one thermostat, you must press the pairing button on the A/C unit (aka thermostat) again to toggle it out of pairing mode. Otherwise it stays in pairing mode and prevents any other thermostat pairing. Bingo! The information I needed. Nowhere in any Mitsubishi or Honeywell documentation is this fact mentioned. No where. Believe me, I’ve read it all. I had to go to a forum to find this vital piece of information. Well vital for anyone with more than one thermostat anyway.

Armed with this information, I went back today and knowing I need two RIGs, I divided the house into two, and since I only have one RIG now, paired one set of 3 thermostats to the RIG. Easy! When you know how. And no thanks to the appalling Honeywell and Mitsubishi documentation which always assumes there is only one thermostat and never tells you what to do to pair a second one.

So for now I have three of the six zones connected up. Here is what the control looks like on my laptop.

And here is the same on my iPhone

I will have to wait for the second RIG to come for the other 3 zones (bedrooms area). The HVAC contractor is supplying it free of charge, since it should have come with two anyway. In any case, they are only about $90-$100 each. I can’t understand the four zone limit per unit though. It seems odd. Not that more than four zones is common, but I just can’t see that it’s either hard or expensive to implement more.

Is that thing above, labeled ‘Mitsubishi Electric’ a thermostat?

No fool! It’s a remote control. The thing below is a thermostat. Obvious, innit?

Don’t call me a thermostat

Spy hole

I fitted a door spy hole this morning. On the outside it looks like a regular spy hole.

But inside it is a bit easier to see.

The doorbell looks good but the electricians damaged the wood, I think they didn’t pre-drill. This Accoya wood is brittle.

Old fashioned chrome bell is OK though.