General Contractor (GC)
In the beginning, we anticipated handing the approved architecture drawings (approved by our local county’s building inspection team) to a General Contractor and then periodically checking in on the project in person.
Then we saw the fee attached to that and changed our minds.
A General Contractor is responsible for the daily oversight of a construction project, including managing subcontractors, ordering materials, ensuring quality, adhering to the budget and schedule, and complying with all permits and building codes.
By hiring a GC, a property owner transfers the responsibility for coordinating various specialists, such as electricians, plumbers, and carpenters, to the GC, who then serves as the single point of contact for the entire project.
In short: a GC is your quarterback (project manager).
Fortunately, we both have experience in technical project management in large industrial settings, so Tom was assigned the GC role for Sugar Hill while Sue became the GC for our temporary house nearby.
Becoming a GC in Kentucky for your own property was a straightforward process. It included filling out a form, obtaining extra insurance, and paying a small fee. A few days later, Tom was the GC for our house.
Note: Becoming a GC for other people’s houses is a more involved process.
Armed with what’s become a huge spreadsheet and using project management software, our build is currently on schedule.
To mitigate having to be on-site each day, we focused on selecting a high-quality team. Now Tom is on-site once per week, and daily during critical parts of the build.
Engineer
With both of us being engineers, the selection of a structural engineer was straightforward. We looked for a company and a lead engineer who had a similar approach to their work to ours.
- Conservative Design: We’d rather spend more on critical items, such as the foundation, and reduce costs elsewhere.
- Clever Solutions: A person who asked both of us and Vincent (our architect) questions that often started with, “…if we changed this design feature, we could substantially increase the strength of the structure with a subsequent cost savings.”
- Budget Adherence: Budget is always on the mind of a person in the position of a GC or project manager. Although our budget has contingencies built into it (example: you never know what you’ll find when you start excavating), going substantially over budget was not an option. In cases where the budget might have gone substantially over, we asked everyone to pitch in on finding “clever solutions.” And by everyone, that includes our architect, engineer, trades, utilities, and government.
- Schedule Adherence: While the need to adhere to an overall completion date wasn’t critical, there were deadlines related to the sequence of items to be purchased and the completion of specific phases of the project.
After interviewing a half-dozen engineers, we retained Brandon West at S&W Engineering, who our architect had recommended.
Trades, Utilities, and Government
There are 10 critical trades involved with building a house. Our method for finding the right people to join our team focused on referrals, looking at who was working on homes in the area of our build, and online search (in that order of importance).
1. Excavation
We found Preston Lippert and his sons, Jacob and Maxton, at PST Septic & Excavation when we asked our county sewage inspector for a list of approved sewage contractors–our house will use a septic system for sewage.
PST’s team has been instrumental in the success of our project because they’re great at excavation, building driveways (particularly on challenging terrain), and they embrace our “Clever Solutions” philosophy.
–Tom Libertiny
Plus, they’re a fun group of people to work with! Also, Jacob and Tom share a certain level of OCD, so our house and the circular driveway are perfectly aligned with the focal oak tree on our property, which makes both of them happy.
2. Concrete
This was a tricky one at first. There are plenty of concrete contractors in the area, but we found two things: half are booked far into the future, and the other half don’t return phone calls.
After trying to contact a dozen contractors, we found Jace Hammons when Tom drove past the sign for his company (Triple J Concrete) in front of a job site about a half a mile south of Sugar Hill.
What impressed me about Jace was that he requested a first meeting at our job site and then followed up by asking many great questions. He also pointed out ways to potentially save money and has been great at not being shy about asking for changes to make the overall project a success.
–Tom Libertiny
Water Management
This is different from the freshwater used in our house and sewage management (please refer to the sections later in this article).
Jace is not only taking care of the concrete (forms, rebar, and pouring), he’s also handling the installation of our somewhat complex French drain system, as well as our basement’s floor drain.
A French drain is an underground drainage system that consists of a gravel-filled trench containing a perforated pipe, all wrapped in filter fabric. Its purpose is to capture excess groundwater and subsurface water and redirect it away from saturated areas, such as flooded yards or basements, to a suitable discharge point like a ditch or lower area. The system functions by using gravity to channel water through the gravel and pipe, preventing soil loss and clogging with the filter fabric.
We’ve learned from experience with a variety of houses in Michigan that a combination of underground water (water table), rainwater, and hydrostatic pressure can cause expensive foundation issues.
While Michigan’s soil and Kentucky’s are different (Michigan is primarily sand, while Kentucky is primarily clay), it’s almost impossible to determine in advance, without a series of costly tests, how water will likely behave once our house has been constructed.
Because of our experience, we’re being very conservative regarding water management. Jacob recommended two sets of swales, which his team excavated to guide stormwater to the two streams that surround our house (our house is located on top of a 120-foot-tall hill).
A swale is a long, shallow depression in the ground, essentially a vegetated ditch designed to collect and redirect water, primarily for stormwater management.
We’re also installing what’s admittedly an overkill French drain system at the exterior footer of our house, near the exterior junction of the footer and basement wall, and then a network of French drain pipe under the basement slab. All of these drain into the streams that surround our house.
Is all of this necessary for our house? Probably not. But retrofitting would be expensive, especially if the basement floor needed to be removed. We’re considering it as insurance.
Here’s a video of an example of a retrofit French drain. And yes, we’re using pipes and parts from the French Drain Man, along with his installation process, for our new construction house.
Foundation and Government
The third component of our concrete and overall foundation team is the inspectors in Scott County, Kentucky. We’ve found that their approval turnaround time is measured in days, which is very fast. And they’re available on short notice (4-hour notice) for inspections. For comparison, it took over six weeks for our current HOA (Homeowners Association) to approve a small fence (Note: Sugar Hills doesn’t have an HOA).
Scott County, Kentucky, has demonstrated numerous times that, in comparison to other states in the US that we looked at for our house, they’re invaluable and act quickly. Frankly, that’s one of the reasons why we chose to build here.
Tom Libertiny
3. Structural steel
Kristopher Furlong at C-logic was another referral from Vincent–it really does pay to work with an architect who has substantial local experience. Being situated on top of a hill that can experience hurricane-level winds, it’s a combination of reinforced concrete and structural steel that will ensure our roof and walls don’t fall. That sounds like hyperbole, but while staying at an Airbnb in the area near Sugar Hill, we almost experienced the failure of a wall during a 70 mph (112 kmph) storm.
Kris and his team have been easy to work with, and they clearly know what they’re doing. Their process includes fabricating the steel primary structural components specified by Brandon (structural engineer) for the walls and roof, painting them for rust protection, and then shipping and installing them. Without this steel, there’s no chance that a traditional “stick-built” house (using 2x lumber) would survive a severe storm.
4. Heating and Cooling (HVAC)
The reason we needed to have a great HVAC team involved early in our project is that the only power utility available for our remote location is electricity. Granted, we can add propane or similar systems. Still, we wanted to avoid the complexity that onsite storage entails. Eventually, the house will be powered purely by electricity generated by solar panels, which is another reason why we went with an all-electric power system.
HVAC is by far the highest electric load in most buildings, and our house is no different. To specify the correct power requirements to the electric utility, we needed to understand our HVAC options.
Richmond Brothers Mechanical Heating and Cooling was great at getting us a power load estimate for our electric utility and then following-up with four great options to heat and cool our house.
More on HVAC in a future article.
5. Electrical
There are three parts to electrical:
- What’s the maximum power available from our local utility (Owen Electric).
- Transmission of the power to our house.
- Electric systems within our house.
We’re still in the process of working with several electricians to determine who best fits our team. However, with the help of William “BJ” Hammond and his team at Owen Electric, we ultimately decided on a 600-amp, single-phase power system. And when 3-phase becomes available, our house is ready for it by having the underground conduits already installed.
BJ and his team have been great at giving us plenty of options for running the high-voltage cables (primary cables) from the nearest overhead power pole to our underground system. This includes the transformer to step the power down to 600 amp, 240 volt, 60 Hz (secondary cables) before it enters our house. He has been on-site several times with Jacob and me to determine the best locations for the junction box, cable pull box, and transformer.
Tom Libertiny
This is another example of the excellent collaboration between people from organizations who have traditionally been viewed as being difficult to work with–with the right people (BJ and Jacob), it’s been smooth sailing.
6. Water
When reviewing properties to purchase, we looked very closely at water supplies (municipal and wells). While we’re able to drill a well at Sugar Hill, we’ve had some bad experiences with the availability of water and water contamination in wells when we lived in Michigan.
Our preference was to have a high-quality municipal water system available as our primary source, with the option to drill a well for irrigation at some point in the future.
Daryl Mulder at Georgetown Municipal Water has been invaluable in walking me through what can and can’t be done, how water connections are completed, and what the process is for connecting to the system. He’s another example of a person who does high-quality work, is readily available to answer questions, and gives thoughtful advice.
Tom Libertiny
The other part of water is a great plumber. We found Mika Fetick at PROfetick Plumbing through a referral. He’s been great with coordinating the installation of the underground pipe system with Jake, Daryl, and BJ so that we were able to use the same trench for both electric and water–a cost and time savings since it’s over 600 linear feet and 120 vertical feet from both the source of water and electricity to our house.
Mika’s feedback about our water system within our house has been very helpful. He’s pointed out areas that were unnecessary in our early design and fully understands the layout of our house from Vincent’s drawings.
Tom Libertiny
Our system is more complex since our house is located over 120 feet higher than the water main. We’ll have a heated backflow valve (heated so it doesn’t freeze in the winter) to ensure that we don’t introduce contamination into the water supply.
7. Framing, Floors, and Walls
The rest of our house’s structure is made from traditional wood framing (2×4, 2×6, 2×8, etc), LVL (walls), and plywood (floors).
LVL is an engineered wood product made by gluing together multiple thin, uniform wood veneers with their grain running parallel. It’s the same concept as plywood, except that plywood’s grain changes orientation for each ply, and each ply of LVL is oriented in the same direction. LVL is a strong, stable, and dimensionally consistent material that outperforms traditional lumber by eliminating natural weaknesses, such as knots, and providing greater strength and longer span capabilities. It is used for beams, headers, rafters, and columns to create open floor plans, support load-bearing walls, and build structures requiring high structural integrity, like industrial buildings.
The only difference from traditional construction is our use of stainless steel screws and bolts instead of nails. Having worked in the threaded fastener industry, screws and bolts offer superior engagement in wood, which makes for a stronger joint. And suppose a mistake is made during construction, or something needs to change during a future renovation. In that case, it’s much easier to disassemble and then reassemble a joint that doesn’t include nails.
Note to anyone considering using screws and bolts in construction: Buy high-quality materials that are rated for construction use. If you’re using a “big box” purchased product, you’re likely purchasing low-quality. It’s going to fail either during installation or, worse, a year after installation.
I’ve assembled a four-person team, including myself (Tom), to frame our house. It’s part of my quality control, OCD, and a cost savings measure.
8. Roof and Shingles
Although Tom has installed numerous roofs and shingles in his lifetime, we will subcontract this project to a contractor (to be determined).
More on this in a future article.
9. Windows and Doors
To finish sealing up the house before work starts on installing our electric, water, sewage, and HVAC systems, we’ll need a few windows and doors.
Actually, in our case, many windows, since natural light was one of the key components of our design with Vincent.
We have three options for window suppliers, and we’ll walk you through our decision in a future article.
10. Sewage
The final step is building the septic system and installing the water and sewage system within our house.
Jacob will be handling the septic system, and Mika will be handling both the fresh water and sewage system (internal to our house).
More on this in a future article.
Excavation, Water, and Electricity
Next time, we’ll share the start of construction!
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