Sagebrush & Solar

You know in school when you were assigned a group project, and instead of delegating work to everyone, you just do it all yourself (perhaps sort of trusting one or two other seemingly competent individuals) so you don’t fail? Come on, I know I’m not the only one. Anyway, that’s how I feel about our ICF subcontractor—we have no experience with ICFs, but I’m starting to think we should have headed up the group project ourselves.

I’ve been nice. I’ve bit my…fingertips? My keystrokes? My point is, I’ve been exceedingly kind in posts. We’ve given him the benefit of the doubt. We aren’t out to run a smear campaign; but there’s a reason a business name — or any name, for that matter — hasn’t been listed.

Prior to pouring our footings (aka the first step of the foundation), we ran into a myriad of errors on his behalf involving measurements. Things got better once we corrected them (thanks to my attention-to-every-small-detail dad). The rest of the stem wall was pretty straightforward: lay block, no cuts, no measurements.

There has been a lot of overpromising and underdelivering. Lots of excuses. Lots of wasted time. Lots of miscommunication. We’ve given the benefit of the doubt and have been patient.

Fast forward to now: we just double checked the window and doorway cuts, and again, numerous issues with the measurements. Some were within a reasonable margin of error. Some were not cut large enough (easier to fix). Some were completely wrong. This sets us back another week, unfortunately, so they can be corrected. The tricky thing about ICF is we are essentially setting these things in stone — aka concrete — and mistakes cannot happen without costly consequences.

In other news, the garage is seeing progress, which is nice. I’m really looking forward to having my home gym in there next year.

The trusses have also been delivered. They’re significantly larger than I thought they would be. Which makes sense, considering they’re the width of our house. We hired a small crew who will come with a crane to set them…whenever our exterior walls are poured and cured.