Electrical Service Entrance

I've been spending a bit of time building my electrical service entrance. The service entrance consists of the electricity meter and the associated conduit and wire... basically all the electrical stuff that's on the outside of the house.

The meter base is mounted on a piece of treated lumber. It has to be anchored securely to the house, so I drilled holes in the concrete wall and used 1/2" galvanized lag bolts and anchors. The service conduit is a 2.5" galvanized steel pipe, and it's mounted to the wall in a similar fashion.

I was worried that it was going to be a huge, ugly task drilling large holes in the concrete, but I rented a rotary hammer drill and it was a piece of cake. You can drill a 3/4" hole through an 8" concrete wall in under a minute. I used a block of wood attached to the outside of the wall as a guide. It helps to hold the drill bit straight so you don't end up with a wobbly hole in the wall.

I'm having a 200 amp service installed, so the specified wire is 2/0 guage. It's about 7/16" in diameter and very hard to bend. It was quite a task getting it to bend and fit through the weatherhead on the top of the conduit.

Vinyl siding done not so ugly!

Vinyl siding is hated by most Architects and by many quality home builders. It's bad rep is deserved for the most part - I'll list just a few reasons:

• limited choice of colors - usually shades of beige
• looks flimsy
• seams are obvious
• all those j-channels around windows and doors look terrible and not authentic

On the other hand vinyl is inexpensive. And nowadays everyone is trying to find a way to construct a house plan less expensively. So in the interest of being fair to vinyl siding I am posting a link to a Fine Homebuilding Article entitled "8 ways to make vinyl siding look it's best" (just click the link). If you use all 8 of the tips I would dare say you can have a vinyl siding done not so ugly!

My favorite tip is on how to eliminate the J-trim. The J-trim I think is one of those things that really makes vinyl stand out as vinyl. If you can eliminate or reduce it's use now you can have a siding installation that looks much more authentic.

By the way I have one more tip that's not listed in the article. Tip number 9 - Don't Use Beige. Next to J-trim, Beige is the biggest thing that makes vinyl look like vinyl. The CertainTeed website has a useful took called ColorView which can help you visualize various color combinations. I did the image below very quickly using that tool. I would suggest keeping the color scheme simple when using vinyl. Keep it all white or do a simple scheme of one body color with a contrasting trim color (such as below).

Front Windows

A very good friend of mine visited me on the weekend and we put in a couple of the large front windows. They're a bit big for one person to handle, so I really appreciated the help.

They were installed using the same method as previous windows... peel-and-stick flashing goes in the opening first, then a bead of silicone is put on top of that, then the window is nailed into place. Finally, another layer of peel-and-stick flashing is put on top to seal everything up. (I still have to do the last step on these.)

Unique wall shelving system for your house plans

I ran into this interesting new wall shelving system the other day and thought I would let you in on it. The product is called Vita and it is produced by an Italian company name MDF Italia. It is a modular system made from medium density fiberboard (mdf). The system includes wall panels, shelving units and cabinet boxes. You can seemingly produce endless configurations based on how you put the modular components together. I think it is very cool and would be a great way of dressing up one of those blank walls in your house.

For more information on this see MDFITALIA VITA. Go to "products" and then find to "Vita".

The wall system is obviously quite contemporary but I think it would look great in a number of the Simply Elegant Home Designs house plans including the "scandia modern cottage" and the "marine farmhouse".