· The house was built in 1997 and is sitting on a custom contracted basement.
· The home has an upstairs of 1904 square feet. The basement has 10 ft. high walls and spans 1944 square feet.
· Exterior walls are framed in 2 x 6’s and full of fiberglass insulation with a Tyvek wrap over the plywood covered exterior walls. White-vinyl siding covers the exterior so no painting necessary.
· Interior consists of ½ “ sheet rock taped and textured with coffered ceilings in all three upstairs bedrooms as well as the 25’ long by 10.5 ‘ wide great room.
· A bay window decorates the great room. All windows are maintenance-free low-E glass, solid vinyl, double-hung windows.
· A French door provides a means to access the full patio from the dining room off the back of the home.
· The full patio reaches from the dining room to the south corner of the home. Roughly 40’ by 10’.
· The two upstairs full bathrooms, the dining room, the utility room and all closets have 8’ tall, flat ceilings that are tape and textured.
· Ceiling fans are in all coffered ceiling rooms listed.
· Cedar chip-board lines all closets.
· The master bedroom has two full walk-in closets and the master bath has two sinks, a shower and a corner whirlpool tub. The cabinets are all oak-faced and the bathroom pantry closet is very large.
· The utility room is right off the master bath and includes an oaked-face pantry closet and cabinets above the location for the washer and dryer. There’s room for a full-size stand-up freezer next to the full-size oak pantry.
· The kitchen is large and has the same style oak-front cabinets as the two bathrooms with pull-out shelves in the cabinets that line the walls and support the counter tops.
· The two bedrooms on the north end of the house both have cedar-chip lined, walk-in closets. The attic can be accessed from either end of the house using double-sized openings found in the top of two of the walk-in closets found at both ends of the home.
· The basement is constructed of AAB foam forms with concrete sandwiched between. This prevents water from hydrating the concrete leading over time to cold and moldy walls. No musty smell!!!
· Two natural gas-fueled water heaters are positioned under each bathroom found directly above in the upstairs floor plan.
· The central heat system and blower are located in the basement leaving more room in the upstairs for storage.
· The basement has been elaborately designed to prevent damage from water and to provide a comfortable and stable floor temperature.
· Outside the southwest corner of the basement is a large plastic/synthetic double walled pipe that reaches down to the footing of the basement. At the bottom is a large sump-pump sitting on two concrete blocks connected to a pipe that is also connected at the top to an underground plastic pipe leading down to the ditch at the front of the home.
· Lining the full footing outside outline of the basement is a perforated pipe covered with a synthetic fabric to allow water to make its way to the sump-pump just described and to keep dust from filling the buried plastic perforated pipe surrounding the footing of the basement walls.
· When I back-filled I used gravel so that the water wouldn’t stand around the house and so the instability of wet/dry, clay/dirt wouldn’t push and pull on the basement exterior walls below ground.
· The floor in the basement was poured to sit on top of the basement wall footings and has flexible plastic pipe encased when poured so that heated water can be pumped through them to heat the floor of the basement. A plastic vapor barrier is under the floor slab as well as rigid pink foam insulation so the floor heat from the heated floor will not waste energy heating the gravel below it.
· Also under the floor is plastic perforated pipe to transport water to the sump located inside the basement in the southwest corner of the downstairs living area.
· The inside sump has two sump-pumps. One is a regular 110 volt and the other is a Basement Watchdog brand battery-backup in case the electricity goes out.
· Fail-safe drains also extend from the two water heaters to the inside sump in case either of them leak out because of a rusted out bottom due to hard water and such.
· A lift-station and the plumbing for a full bath/shower, a toilet, and a sink drain are already sealed and ready to be hooked up in the southeast corner of the basement.
· Four vinyl double-walled double-hung windows are framed in the basement walls measuring 3’ by 3’ allowing escape to the outside in case of a fire blocking the wooden stairs to the upstairs floor entrance/exit.
· A safe room is located at the bottom of the stairs and is topped by a 6” rebar reinforced concrete lid that is the floor to the porch on the front of the home. A main electrical shut-off is located in the south wall of the safe room and the steel-framed, steel-foam core door opens into the space of the safe room allowing you to open the door and dig yourself out in the event of a collapse from above.
· A full attic allows stand up access for maintenance and a double-layer of pink fiberglass insulation adds to the energy efficiency of this design.
