Let There Be Light

Today was the day to let the sun shine in. Though it was bitterly cold, we had a nice clear day to work on our house. The big accomplishment this weekend was installing our custom home made polycarbonate window on the South wall.  By making our own, we were able to have a window encompassing the entire arched opening above the header.  This is twin wall polycarbonate with ribs running through it giving it some insulation value.  The ribs are why the view is slightly obscured (see picture above) but it lets in plenty of light.  It is also very strong and is supposed to be able to deflect a 2 x 4 traveling at 90 miles per hour.  Not sure I want to test that though.

 

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Jeff pulling off the protective plastic cover. The window looks like it’s bowed in but that’s just an optical illusion.

 

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Here is another view from the inside. With the low winter sun angle, the light from the arched window reached the north side of the house.

 

 

 

Now that the South side is closed up, we started working on the East wall.  Unfortunately in the many months from when we first put up the steel and rebar and the shotcrete was applied, the East arch got way out of plumb.  We didn’t realize that until today when we started to lay our the wall.  I’ll have to do a bit of head scratching to figure out a plan on how to deal with this.  Just one of the many challenges when one takes on building a house.

 

 2 comments
An Admirer
Awesome! I love you guys’s house and enjoy reading about it each step of the way :) Keep up the good work!
Monday, January 3, 2011 – 07:58 AM
Jeff
Wow! We have an admirer. Thanks for your interest.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 – 11:56 AM

 

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