We have walls

When you are in between homes, time has a way of crawling by. Heather and I find things to do from our temporary home base in a condo building on the east side of High River but we both long for the day when the house arrives on a truck and get placed on our land. 

At the SEED Homes manufacturing facility in south Calgary, a team of 12 is working 12-hour days to put everything together. Stephen Morgan, the CEO of SEED Homes, sent us a progress shot yesterday morning. The wall joists are up in what they call the utility corridor. This is the 8-foot wide section of the home through which all the utilities run: electrical and plumbing. At the end of the process, Trusscore wall panels will get installed, appliances put in place with cabinets. Everything gets strapped down in preparation for transportation to site.

We will make one final visit to SEED Homes at the end of the workday to look at the progress for ourselves. Heather is excited to get some measurements. I’m looking forward to looking underneath and seeing the plumbing roughed in. Heather also intimately knows the design and will want to confirm placement of certain fixtures.

As this is their first build of a home, the process might look a little different than customers who get the 5th, 10th or 100th home. There is a lot of learning going on as the SEED Homes team takes the concept from design to reality. 

One friend on Facebook asked how this structure will handle the weather changes inherent with living in a northern climate. It’s a good question, one that I asked at the beginning of the progress. The insulation method being used in the walls and ceiling will result in an overall R-value of 30 or more. What is an R-value? According to Dr. Google, the R-value is the capacity of an insulating material to resist heat flow. The higher the R-value, the greater the insulating power. With the thermal windows and in-floor electric heat, we will be toasty in the deep dark days of winter.

We were on our lot yesterday, taking a few loads of yard debris to the landfill. A gentleman named Chris walked by with his beautiful poodle named Grommet. We had a great visit. He is the owner of the adjacent building across the back alley from Birdsong Studio 3.0. He shared that during the flood of 2013, the water came up three feet on his building. We’re not worried. Thanks to the flood mitigation work that has happened over the last 10 years, High River is apparently one of the most flood protected communities in Canada. 

As the house construction continues over the next week, Heather and I are excited to travel north to Grande Prairie to explore my sister’s acreage northeast of Grande Prairie. The dogs will LOVE running around the property to their hearts’ content. We will enjoy spending time with Corinne and her husband Chris.