Compromise Court Build

Iwearcrocs · Dec 29, 2016

Hello,

Thought I would post our new construction build and introduce myself since I've been checking out this forum for a while now.

We started planning our house build in April 2015 and broke ground in October 2015. We finished construction and moved in July 2016.

We were gifted the land of 4 acres which sits across the street from family.

My wife and I drew the layout and had a draftsmen get them up to code and get our blueprints.

I was called crazy by a few people but we are all electric. No gas or propane here. We have a self installed 24 panel grid tied solar system, 7.2kw which I couldn't be happier with. For the first 6 months we are just about even with power produced compared to used. More on this later.

House
4 bedrooms, 1 office, 2.5 bathrooms
2601 sqft
Oversized 2 car garage, benefit of making the front of the house look symmetrical (wife).

Detached shop 25x40, 2x6 framing, finished with drywall. Full bathroom and led recessed lights. Finished this way incase we need additional space, can convert to inlaw quarters easily.

Will start to dig up the pictures.

Lots of landscaping and projects to be done.

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Iwearcrocs · Dec 29, 2016

A couple pictures showing the layout of the house.

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Iwearcrocs · Dec 29, 2016

The title for this build was in good fun. I'm sure as most of you know there is lots of give and take in a healthy marriage, even more so when building a house.

We had lots of fun designing the house and were able to come to an agreement pretty quickly on the size and layout. The must haves were, large kitchen, large family room, office, and master bath "fit for a queen", mudroom, and decent kid bedrooms ( we have a 2 1/2 year old and one coming August 2017).

Some compromises were, small laundry room,master shower size, mudroom size, and initial landscaping/ fencing. Most of these were due to budget and valuing importance in other areas.

The shop was the biggest compromise. We were originally going to wait to build the shop, we thought it was going to be out of our price range. After we started doing some cost estimates and getting some early bids for the house we realized it was going to be in budget.

We were going to go with a metal building but after my wife saw what they look like, she was willing to spend a bit extra and have it match the house and be a more flexible space if a conversion is needed in the future.

We settled on the shop size of 25x40, too big for her, too small for me. One reason for this size, any bigger and it would've been a more expensive permit. It was also important that the shop have a large enough roof to hold the solar. The shop was positioned so the solar would be facing south for optimal sunlight.

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Richard Cranium · Dec 29, 2016

Thanks for sharing, post more pictures, Yes the shop

Iwearcrocs · Dec 30, 2016

Here is a picture after I put down epoxy. The back left corner is where the bathroom is.

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Duker · Dec 30, 2016

Richard Cranium said:
Thanks for sharing, post more pictures, Yes the shop

^^^^
Ditto .... would also like to see/hear more about the solar...

Iwearcrocs · Dec 30, 2016

Here is a picture of the solar, and my son out playing in the rain.

During construction I got 2 bids for solar systems. In California solar is very competitive and there is a lot of reputable companies to choose from. I got bids from local companies.

Both bids came in around $28k for a 7.2kw grid tied system with optimizers. This was a 24 panel system with 320w panels. One company gave me a second bid for Sunpower panels. That came in about 2,000 higher but is considered to be the premium panel. It's great because it's higher quality and more watts per sqft, but I was not at a premium for space.

At the advice of my father in law who was acting as our GC for construction I did some research and contacted two wholesale sellers to get some pricing. Both were very helpful and answered lots of questions. Ended up going with a company based out of the Bay Area in CA. Very impressed by their customer service and willingness to help a homeowner out.

We ended up purchasing the system and misc materials for about $10.5k. After permit and paying for instillation ( my father in law acted as GC for this as well, it was very easy and most was plug and play), we have about $12k into the system. We will get 30% of the $12k back come taxes in form of solar tax credit. Which will put us about $8400 out of pocket.

Price comparison. The system I installed was same panels, racking, inverter, and optimizers as the two quotes i received. I saved about $16,000 doing the system ourselves. It was worth all the headache that I went through while researching and trouble shooting some monitoring problems. I have my own monitoring system which is great.

We sized this system from our best calculations of how much power the house and shop would use. Probably should've gone about 2 panels bigger, but it looks like we were pretty close.

Our estimated repay time is under 6 years, after that we are technically getting free power minus our PGE monthly connection fee ($10).

I will post some SS showing power production.
View attachment 610161

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Iwearcrocs · Dec 30, 2016

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Iwearcrocs · Dec 30, 2016

Bathroom picture, nothing fancy. Still need to install some stuff in there. Rolling workbench, setting up a charging station between the two cabinets. Installed an outlet with USB charging ports as well.

I have about 6 more of those cabinets, trying to figure out where to put them. They were surplus from a reuse type of store and only $5 a piece.

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Iwearcrocs · Dec 31, 2016

Front view of shop. Inside pictures coming soon. Here a view of the back 1/3 of the shop.

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James-W · Dec 31, 2016

The building looks VERY nice and the epoxy floor looks really good.

Bib Overalls · Dec 31, 2016

So, what are you going to do in your premo shop? Hot rods? Woodwork? Vehicle maintenance? Hiding out from the rest of the family? Playing drums? Drinking beer and eating peanuts? Yoga? etc et al.

Iwearcrocs · Dec 31, 2016

Bib Overalls said:
So, what are you going to do in your premo shop? Hot rods? Woodwork? Vehicle maintenance? Hiding out from the rest of the family? Playing drums? Drinking beer and eating peanuts? Yoga? etc et al.

Occasional welding project, building stuff for the house/ garage/ shop. We have 4 acres so there is always something to do. Here's a couple projects I've done lately. Keep the Gator in there as well.

I take my 2 1/2 year old son in there regularly, want to teach him as much as he is willing to learn that is age appropriate. Try to find fun things he wants to do.

I'm thinking about building and selling a couple of pieces a month to make some extra cash.

I get up at 4:15 am and have time to myself in the morning to tinker around the shop before I leave for work 6:30.

Built the helper stool for my son to be able to do things in the kitchen, I tell him they are kitchen power tools we get to use.

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Iwearcrocs · Jan 1, 2017

Some pictures of the house inside. I wish I would've pre ran wiring for security cameras but at the time we decided against it, regretting it now.

All the cat6 and cable runs into the laundry room where the router is located. I have cat6 cable ran all the way out to the shop and a second wireless router in there. We now have wifi for the entire width of our property, about 430'.

We got a bigger tv at Black Friday online, I'm happy I hard wired internet for it because of the 4K content coming out.

We still have a sitting room that only has 2 chairs, we are thinking about getting a sleeper sofa for in there.

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Iwearcrocs · Jan 1, 2017

Better kitchen picture.

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Bib Overalls · Jan 1, 2017

Nice work. The "helper stool" is something I have never seen before. Very cool concept.

Iwearcrocs · Jan 1, 2017

Bib Overalls said:
Nice work. The "helper stool" is something I have never seen before. Very cool concept.

Yeah, found the plans online, it is great. Already being asked to make one for my niece when she's old enough.

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Richard Cranium · Jan 1, 2017

Thanks for the other pictures. It sure looks nice.

Iwearcrocs · Jan 6, 2017

Been drawing up some plans and getting some feedback on some workbench plans. This is the first draft, working on some changes. Hoping to pick up some base cabinets I found on CL, if so I will have to tweak plans a bit. Look forward to getting started and posting some pics!

The back wall is the location for this drawing, the wall on the right will be a miter station.

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Iwearcrocs · Jan 6, 2017

Super excited, got someone dropping off the cabinets tomorrow! Will redraw plans to make use of cabinets.

I will be making a butcher block top out of ripped 2x4s. Still thinking about leaving a small part with a metal top.

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Iwearcrocs · Jan 7, 2017

A couple pictures of the cabinets.

I ended up with

(1) 24w
(3) 30w
(2) 36w

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Iwearcrocs · Jan 7, 2017

Putting stuff down to get an idea of how things will look. Trying to decide what to do for the corner. Thinking about just leaving the cabinets against each other and losing that space.

Set the HF DC on the right side, will be doing outside venting after a thien box.

My Shop: http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=348643

Compromise Court Build

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