The crew is now well into the finishing phase, and yet we are still modifying the plans. As the house continues to take shape, we see things here and there that need to be improved, and we update the plans to the great consternation of the project engineer. I figure, if we are going to do this thing, let’s make sure we do it properly…  One does need some imagination to picture the finished Asia House interiors though.

We have recently decided to move the electric meter from the right edge of the fence to the left edge, and we just received permission from the electric company and from the subdivision engineer. The new location is much more aesthetically pleasing, but of course it means that we have to dig a trench and build a new concrete box, and lay down some piping and additional cable:

On the inside of the house, the meter is wired to the main switch on the panel board, which is ready for wiring. I didn’t know that a panel board could excite me so much; look at all the glorious space available for micro controller boards, data acquisition systems, and current sensors!

From the panel board, electric circuits go everywhere in the house. The picture below shows what part of the kitchen looks like. The vertical opening shows a shaft that runs from the second floor of the house down to the basement. It holds a laundry chute as well as a vertical cable tray where low-voltage auxiliary wiring is wired from floor to floor. A small door will open up to this shaft for maintenance purposes, and the door itself will only be visible if you first pull the refrigerator out of its niche.

Speaking of the basement, under the staircase landing we will mount a small generator set that will provide a minimum of power in case of a power failure - enough to power two refrigerators, one light bulb in each room, and one outlet in each room (for charging cell phones and powering floor fans for the kids). A concrete wall will isolate this area from the rest of the house. There is also a manhole here, to access the sump pit below the basement. The control panel for the sump- and sewage pumps will be located on the right-hand wall here, and on the left-hand wall we will mount the new decalcifier.

The ceiling frames are almost complete on all floors. The architect refused to let me mount the wireless access point near the ceiling in the dining room, where despite the central location he felt that it would be too ugly. Instead we decided to hide it completely, above the awning at the ground floor deck and accessible through a small manhole. This is what the ceiling looks like there, with power and LAN cables drawn in separate conduits:

A salesman came by the site office the other day, peddling an interesting little device. At first I took it for just another water purifying device, but now I’m beginning to think that maybe there’s something to this after all. If I understood it correctly, the principle is relatively simple: an electronic device generates an alternating electrostatic field using coils wrapped around the incoming water pipe. The field deactivates the calcium ions in the water and prevents them from crystallizing and forming hard lime scale.

It is true that the water where we live is very hard. We see lime (calcium carbonate) deposits everywhere: from water pipes and bathtubs to washing machines and glassware. Our water heater recently conked out too, and I’m wondering what’s built up in the pipes inside?  According to the sales guy, lime deposits clog pipes, reduce the efficiency of appliances, and increase maintenance costs. Maybe we’ll stick one in the house, just to see what happens?

Typical - first it seems as if very little happens to the house for several weeks, and then while I’m out of the country for a few weeks lots of things happen. The roof suddenly appears, ceilings are coming up, tiles are being laid, and the cabling is about two thirds done.

The roof doesn’t look so bad, I figure, even if we had originally intended to use a slightly different roof tile with gray streaks in the black. Right under the roof we have a layer of insulation to help shield the kids’ lofts from the worst heat. The lofts should make for fun play areas for the kids. There is one loft above the girl’s room and another one above the boy’s room, each one accessible from below via a ship-like ladder and both of them connected via a small door.

The ceiling frames are already up in most of the house. There’ll be a nice "shadow" effect a few inches from the edges once the gypsum boards come up. What strikes me most right now is the large number of PVC pipes there are above the ceiling in many rooms, to carry all the special wiring around the house.

The panel board will be huge!  There are so many circuit breakers, and so many spares, that they will take up an entire wall. There is a special panel just for the current measurement modules, to which I will wire up the current transformers located at the various circuits in the other panels.

It’s getting more and more exciting. Today I left detailed instructions to the electrical team on what cables to use where (CAT5 is fine for most of the low-voltage auxiliary wiring, but I want CAT6 for the LAN cabling). I also plan to spend more time with the design of the home automation system as we get closer to moving in, even if I know that it will take many years before all the bits and pieces are developed and installed.