Note: Since completion of the house I have also decided to allow guest bloggers to post articles related to remodeling. This continues the education process.
TIMELINE
Architect Selection - December 2002 through January 2003
Getting a Permit - January 2003 through November 2004
Construction - November 2004 through September 2006
Post Construction - October 2006 through ???
Maintaining this House is Something Else!
Exterior Paint - The South sides of the house start to fade due to the constant sunlight received throughout the year. On average, we have been needing to paint the South side of the house every 12-18 months at a minimum. For this we are using a clear coat of Varathane on the shingles and the bark-colored Cabot stain on the redwood trim. Just last year I had the garage door sanded down and refinished along with the house as it was fading bad with only a clear coat on the mahogany. I had it stained and recoated. Now it looks like a million bucks.
Tankless Water Heater - Once a year I have to flush the tankless water heater with vinegar. It's not difficult to do but just another thing to do.
Hot Tub Pump - I just had the hot tub pump replaced with about 3 months left on the warranty. Whew! Apparently, it's better to keep the water pH on the high side to prevent corrosion of the parts.


Koi Pond - The koi in the pond are HUGE!!! I'm glad to see the pond thriving but that being said, I just got through my annual cleaning of the pond. It costs about $650 per year! They take out the fish, scrub all of the algae off the rocks, clean out the filters, check everything, and refill it. I'm sure there's more to it than that. It takes 3 guys about 4 hours. See the koi pond cleaning here. But wait, there's more. The lights in the pond are failing and I have been told that the new lights out now are the way to go and will last for 10 years or so. So there's another grand or so. Stay tuned.

Now after all of these things, people always say "you wouldn't do it again, would you?" I would do it all over in a second! I love this!!!
Bye for now......Mike
Flushing the Tankless Water Heater and Streamlining the Hot Water System
I have a Takagi Mobius TM-1 tankless water heater that receives cold water and outputs hot water on demand. The initial problem I had with water being on demand was I would have to let the shower run for 3 minutes just to get hot water. To remedy this, I had a 10 gallon electric heater hooked up to the hot outlet of the tankless water heater to maintain a reservoir of hot water that I would recirculate through the house every 30 minutes through the use of a recirculating pump.
The problem I have with this setup is my electrical bills have been really high and I'm sure the electric heater is not helping matters so I'm trying to find ways to lower that expense. I'm not sure how much I'll save but I think it may be as high as $50 per month.
The following pictures show the tankless heater and recirculating pump right after the electric heater was removed. The plan is to bypass the electric heater and go straight from the tankless water heater to the recirculating pump.
Since the system is open, I decided to flush the tankless water heater. You are supposed to do this every year but it has been two years since I installed it and haven't done it yet. We are using two bottles of white vinegar.
A small pump is connected to the cold water line entering the tankless water heater and a return line from the hot side is fed back into the bucket.
Here you can see the whole setup in action.
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