An Act of GodConstruction in the Wake of a Natural Disaster

Michael Heller

My birthday falls on August27. I was going to be 60 that year.Six years earlier my wife and I hadmoved to Florida’s southwest coastwhere we were going to start a boat-ing and fishing section for the Char-lotte Sun, the daily newspaper inPort Charlotte. We bought a nice lit-tle house right off the harbor and Ibought a fishing boat. It wasn’t ex-actly a retirement move, but livingand working on the water in Florida,and taking pictures, was what Iwanted. I am a photographer.

They made me SpecialSection’s Editor and I created aweekly section called WaterLine.Most of the time I was out on theboat exploring the incredible Char-lotte Harbor. I had not expected theharbor to beas big or as teemingwith wildlife as it was.

Numerous species of game-fish, both resident and migratory,manatees dolphins, white pelicans,eagles osprys, great blue herron...the list of creatiures goes on and onso I was thrilled and the newspaperbought all the gas for the boat. Andeven better yet I worked from homemost of the time.

I had been a photojournalistall my life. I spent a lot of timegrowing up in Florida and startedcollege at Miami. I knew the tropicsand there was a lot I still liked aboutliving here and being on the water.

I had eft Florida in 1976and spent the next 20 years in SantaFe New Mexico as a freelancer, thenas picture editor for the daily SantaFe New Mexican and finally as anindependent publisher of our ownmonthly magazine.

My wife, a New York girl,had never lived in the tropics withthe possibility of hurricanes everynow and then. Our first four yearswere quiet, a few tropical stormshere and there, a lot of rain, 20inches in one weekend was an eyeopener, but we had no hurricanes.Then came 2004.

On Thursday August 12,Hurricane Charley, a cat II stormcame up from the Caribbean andheaded straight towards Florida. Thewater in the Gulf of Mexico was 89degrees, the water in Charlotte Har-bor was almost 92. In a coastalcommunity, weather talk from old-timers, longtimers and especially

those with a maritime interest fillsthe air. You can’t go to the super-market without someone adding anopinion or questioning the weatherforecast. With the warm water for itto feed on we were talking abouthow the storm could strengthen,then we went to bed. Some peoplehad evacuated, but a lot of peoplehunkered down to ride it out. It wasonly a Cat II storm, only 90 mphwinds. The consensus was it would-n’t push the water up too high, thestorm was moving at over 20 mph,“it will blow by,” was the sentimentbecause at that time the forecasttracks had it going north off the westcoast of Florida in the Gulf.

But the storm turned rightand headed into Charlotte harbor, an14 mile bay with mangrove treeslining both shores and manatees,gamefish, dolphins shrimp and crabsin the water. Charlotte Harbor is apristine estuary fed by two freshwater rivers. Before Charley themangroves overhung the shorelineby over 25 feet in a lot of places.baitfish and crabs populated a fan-tasy like underwater environment inthe tangle of mangrove roots and de-caying leaves. It was an ecosystemthat was truly intertwined and sym-biotic. The storm mixed it all upand for the most part all the naturrallife and beauty survived. And wesurvived too, although we some-times wondered

Later when NOAA and thelocal weather service issued print-outs of the official track of the stormwe would learn that the geographiccenter of the eye of the hurricane,the cross hairs on the bull’s eye,came within 100 yards of our house.The wind gauge at the heliport at thehospital in Punta Gorda had report-edly touched 176 mph before it andthe pole it was attached to were lev-eled by airborne debri. The hurri-cane it turned out was a tightlywound buzz-saw of a storm. It in-flicted severe wind damage withvery little water-rise and then it wasgone.

We were publishing ourboating and fishing magazine, WaterLIFE before Hurricane Charley andwe continued to publish after thestorm and have every month since.This story chronicles our experi-ences. The chapters are taken from

the series of monthly articles thatappeared in our magazine and re-flercts what our lives were like atthe time

In the aftermath of thatstorm and the three others that fol-lowed that year, and then Katrina thefollowing year, and Wilma tghe yearafter that, construction in Floridawent crazy. Prices went through theroof, contractors were taking on asmuch work as they could and doingjust a little on each project to moveall those jobs along. Materials werescarce, concrete delivery had to bescheduled weeks in advance. Fastbuck artists came out of the wood-work, shoddy workmanship, ripoffs, roberies and theft. There werean endless line of scrap metal scav-engers. Disasters bring good peopletogether, but bad things still oftenhappened to those who were notalert.

Insurance companiesacross the board stalled for time be-fore they made any payments. Thecounty’s building department was

overwhelmed with permit requests.There wasn’t a swimming pool cagein the area that did not collapse fromthe wind. Prices on pool cage re-placement tripled overnight. Andevery wet-back with a hammer wasin the roofing business.

Some of these unlicensedcontractors actually helped, but howcould you know who to trust? So itwas with some reservation but withno real other alternative that, I de-cided to build our new house my-self. There were a lot of fishingguides who were also in the con-struction trades. I knew many ofthem through our publication, Icould network most of the trades-men I needed. I would be the gen-eral contractor. I knew how toestimate, price and order materials, Icould read a set of plans, I knewabout concrete work, I could sched-ule the trades, I’d done all that be-fore, back when I was a kid. Butnow I was 60.

- Michael Heller

Background

At 2:00 p.m. on Friday the 13th ofAugust we gather all our last minutecontainers and important papers andput them near the door. Charley wasnow a full blown Cat III hurricanewith winds of 125 mph and was 35miles south of Sanibel. There wasmention of possible Cat IV enhance-ment and then 25 minutes later theweather service came on the air withthe news that Charley was approach-ing Captiva and was a full blown CatIV storm with winds of 140 mph. Afriend from Fon Du Lac Wisconsincalls to ask if we are ‘some of theknuckleheads’ he heard about on TVwho are staying. “Will this housewithstand a 140 mph wind?” my wifeasks, as I stash stuff up high just incase there is a storm surge. I think fora moment and then answer “No.” Istop when I hear my own words re-verberate in the empty garage. At2:35 my friend Capt. Ralph Allencalls and asks: “What do you think?”“I think this is the worst case sce-nario,” I tell him and we agree it istime to leave... if it’s not too late. Atjust before 3 pm my wife, dog and Iare in our car. Ralph and I have de-cided to head to Arcadia. He’ll takeHwy. 17 from Punta Gorda and we’llrun out Kings Highway crossing theriver at 560 where we will hook upwith Route17 at Nocatee. There is notmuch traffic on the road any more.The sky is grey black with some verygusty winds. Out past the Nav-A-Gator, transformers on the telephonepoles begin to explode in electric blueeruptions. It is a scene right out of themovie Twister, but happening in reallife. “This is not good,” I tell my wifeas I mash the gas pedal harder into thefloorboards. At Arcadia it is raininghard and it is extremely windy. Wefind out later that a tornado blewthrough Arcadia at the time we ar-rived. We make it to SR 70 and haul-ass east in and out of torrential bandsof rain and gusty wind. It is amazinghow slowly some other people aredriving. We pass them all and keephauling-ass. In a half hour we are inclearing conditions and we reconnoi-ter with Ralph and his family at a gasstation outside of Okeechobee. Weare now out of broadcast radio rangeand have no further contact with anyreal time reports about where thestorm is headed. By the clouds I know

it is right behindus and is stillclosing fast.Ralph decidesto continue on70 east, but webreak off for In-dian Town, run-ning on the leftside of the darkblack sky. Wepick up theTurnpike, thenthe SawgrassE x p r e s s w a yand finally Alli-gator Alley.Now we areheaded back home from behind thestorm, coming back up from thesouth. At Naples we see the first ex-amples of damage, huge highwaysigns uprooted and thrown into thepine trees. As we proceed north thescenery only gets worse. At the Char-lotte County line tractor trailers alongthe interstate are overturned and laysprawled like toys on the road. Wewait for 30 minutes near the Char-lotte County airport for the Interstateto be cleared, then we move on. Bythe time we get to the Peace Riverbridge everything is dark. From theHarborview exit we follow a statetrooper into Port Charlotte. Thetrooper swings his hand held spot-light in front of him as we moveslowly ahead, through fallen treesand dropped power lines. Calamity iseverywhere. A boat hangs against apower pole, houses and their contentsare split open and strewn e v e r y wh e r e . At Whidden Industrial Park,a cluster of metal buildings is rippedopen and balled up like tin foil in thetrash. Aluminum roofs, plastic sof-fits, and wires are everywhere. AtU.S 41 the trooper turns north and weare on our own. Driving down Edge-water we drive across lawns and in 4-wheel climb over several powerpoles and felled trees. We are head-ing home. We turn down our block infront of two houses with no roofs atall. We look at each other in silence.A chill runs down my neck, but by8:30 p.m. we are home. Our roof ismostly intact, but devoid of shingles.Bare wood shows through every-where. One piece of plywood is miss-ing and I can see into the attic there.

Two of our boarded up windows havebeen blown out into the street. Theliving room parquet floor is under aninch of water. Our bedroom only hasa two broken panes and the bed is rel-atively dry. Holding each other in our

arms, my wife sobbing quietly withthe dog lying against her side, we fallto sleep. It will be two weeks beforethe power comes back on. We willcamp out in the ruins, trying to copeand figure out what comes next.

We Almost Waited Too Long

Our HouseOur House

The eye of hurricane Charley passedover the Bangsberg - Beaney - Severinarea in Port Charlotte where we live.Five houses on our block were totallydemolished, many others sustainedmajor damage. At first I thought ourhouse was ‘fixable’, but now it lookslike our county’s 50- percent rule willforce us to rebuild. The 50- percentrule ststes that if you spend more than50-percent of the county’s appraisedvalue of your house (without the land)then you must bring it up to currentbuilding codes. That means the fin-ished floor elevation must be broughtup to 11 feet. Homes in our area are at7 feet, so the only way to comply is torebuild. Personally I think this is a‘conspiracy’ between the county (whogets their flood insurance from theFederal Government) and the insur-ance companies, who don’t want to in-sure these properties anyway. At anyrate we may be out of luck, but we stillsee other things every day that remindus we are luckier than others. Folks onfixed incomes will be forced to moveelsewhere because of this rule but inour case we’ll borrow heavily from theSBA and hope to survive. A monthafter Charlie, Charlotte County is stillreeling. Our house was five lots up acanal from the Peace River in a placewhere the Charley was particularly vi-cious. The storm blew the plywoodcovered windows on the canal side ofour home, plywood still attached, rightout of the wall and through the livingroom and kitchen. Then it punched ahole in the boarded up windows on theopposite side of the house and blew thewhole mess out. It was ugly. If itweren’t for the windows letting gothere is no doubt in my mind the roofwould have lifted off. But to everyevent of catastrophic proportion there

comes a point of closure, a time whenyou leave the disaster behind and beginto move on. For us, in the wake of hur-ricane Charley, closure came at 7:15 inthe morning on Friday, August 27th,which happened to be my birthday. Upto that day we had been camped out inthe one dry room we had left, livingwith bottled water, Red Cross “heatermeals” and getting minimal powerfrom an old gasoline generator. Everyday we were up at dawn, asleep atdusk, probably still in shock. We weresitting in the living room, that morn-ing, contemplating yet another day ofsorting through the mess in the swel-tering heat. There was a nice breezeblowing in from the south that camethrough the gaping hole in the Floridaroom and blew out through the openfront door, pretty much on the samepath Charley took. Up to that pointevery morning had been the same:wake up and start on the heavy workbefore the day got too hot, but on thismorning we lingered in the breeze,drinking coffee boiled with thegrounds, camp-style, and not sayingmuch. My wife sat at the battered din-ing room table, that was in the middleof the living room now, and I wasagainst the wall sitting in a pool chairabout ten feet away. We were stupefiedand exhausted from the long ordeal.Suddenly, something caught my eyeoutside, a shadow moving in the airand getting bigger. I looked up, focus-ing on the street through the open frontdoor and saw a wingspan that was big;three feet, maybe four. With the sunrising in the east the bird was clearlyvisible as it swooped down lower. Anosprey, talons dangling, with greatbrown feathers and yellow eyes,tucked its wings back at the shoulder,then folded them some more and flew

right into the living room throughour open front doorway - perhapsfour feet above the ground. We did-n’t have time (or the energy) toreact. We sat still. Once inside, thebird extended its wings in a gentleglide, banked slightly to the rightand flew directly between us, flap-ping once, ever so lightly as itsright wing tip passed not two feetfrom my face. The soft air from thegreat bird’s wings blew across myface like a kiss from heaven. Thebird dipped left then right, zig-zag-ging artfully from the living roominto the Florida room and then flewout the large gaping hole left by themissing windows. We sat motion-less for a moment or two, goosebumps blossoming, skin tingling, inan uplifting swell of awe. Like thegreat owl in the Harry Potter moviethe osprey brought us a message, areminder of why we live here; thewildlife, the birds, the fishing,clean water, unspoiled shorelines,tropical breezes, blue skies. That’swhat Charlotte County is all about.That’s why Frank and Chuck and Ronand Rob and everyone I know is re-

building. This is still the best place tolive. Hurricanes happen, but that’s lifein the tropics.

Then, There Was A Sign

P a g e 1 0 W a t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E F e b r u a r y 2 0 0 5

BlueBlueTarpTarpReportReportMoreMoreHURRICANEHURRICANEAFTERMATHAFTERMATH

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE Editor

It has now been almost sixmonths since Charley and thingsare finally starting to move ... alittle. Progress is being made onroof repairs and remodelingaround town, but new construc-tion still lags behind. Along the‘Edgewater Corridor’ in Port

Charlotte, trucks continue to carry awayhouseloads of concrete rubble – headed tothe dump, but by late January only onenew home had begun to come out of theground. The process is slow and the hur-ricane induced consequences and revela-tions which have surfaced since thestorms are numerous.

For me, the big thing is the way mylife has changed. Before the storm I’dempty my pockets at night and have,maybe, a split shot or two, a swivel orsome other fishy accoutriments mixed inwith my pocket change. Now I find wirenuts, screw driver bits and nails when Idump my pockets.

Used to be, I’d wear boat shoes or bebarefoot most of the time when I was onthe boat. Now I’m in sneakers every day,wearing socks, on land, in my truck.

My truck, a new in 2002 ToyotaTundra was always clean and waxed. Itdidn’t have a scratch before the storms.Now it’s a work truck and I’m lucky if Ihave time to whisk out the sand from thecarpet once a month. The pick-up bedisn’t only scratched it’s dented with sever-al new post Charley ‘impressions.’

The time dropping off and picking upmy pictures is worth saving when everyday seems to be backed to the max withthings to do. So I bought a digital cam-era. Time is important since there is stillso much paperwork to deal with.

First it was just the insurance formsbut now insurance is pretty much settled.Today, our time is spent chasing checksand permits. Insurance checks don’t justget made out to the insured, they have tobe made payable to our private adjuster,the mortgage company, and since we areborrowing more money, to the SmallBusiness Administration. I have one

checkwe are still wait-

ing on that has been ‘inthe process’ since Nov 11;

and when I finally get thatcheck back, since it’s over

$5,000, my own bank will puta hold on it for another week. This

takes tracking and vigilance, not tomention Fed-X charges, phone calls andstill more time ... often spent on hold.

On my ping pong table, files fromFEMA, the SBA, the Insurance company,demolition contractor, a title policy, newsurveys and proposals are all keepingcompany with the in-progress drawingsfor our new house. The ping pong pad-dles haven’t surfaced in two months.

We are currently waiting for a soilsampling and have engineering plans, andtruss drawings in the works. The surveyhas been shot, but I have to go to Arcadiato pick it up. If everything goes in theright cubbyhole by the end of this monthwe’ll almost be on schedule. Then therewill be another month of waiting untilthe county building department checkseverything over and gives us our permit.

To keep the money flowing there areprogress reports for the financial institu-tions and draws on the loans which haveto be completed.

Over at the old house, we have ‘cutaway’ our old garage and will be incorpo-rating what’s left of that structure intoour new plan. There is minor cementwork and some carpentry waiting to bedone on the garage and one side still hassome broken glass to be replaced. Littleprojects for my ‘spare’ time.

I’ve got a gearbox on one of my davitsthat is going bad but I was lucky enoughto find a used replacement. Now, the drivegear has to be cut off the old box andwelded onto the new one. I hope to havethat done by the time you read this, oth-erwise my boat may not get back into thewater.

In the rental house we are living in,my wife refuses to hang any of our art-work on the walls (“it’s only temporary”)so where ever you look the walls arestark white. We call it the asylum.

The lush green shrubbery that oncewas the tropical alure of our old yard hasbeen shredded, so we’re going shoppingfor trees when we get an afternoon off.It’s not the same as it was, living in ourshady little house on Bangsberg Rd inPort Charlotte, but in time things willget back to normal. I’ll know when thattime comes because I’ll have split shotsand swivels mixed in with my pocketchange once again.

P a g e 2 8 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E J u n e 2 0 0 5

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

This begins a series about building our new waterfronthome in Port Charlotte. Our old house was destroyed byhurricane Charley and after six months of battling with ourinsurance company, Clarendon Select, Tower Hill, we final-ly received our settlement checks for the house and its con-tents. Along with the check came a note from our adjusterthat we had $7,500 remaining for demolition of the oldhouse and $37,500 for law and ordinance. Law and ordi-nance is additional coverage which we paid for and whichprovides funds to comply with all the new building codes.This is significant since the new code requirements for ourarea say the finished floor of the new house must be fourfeet higher than the finished floor of the old house. That’s alot of extra concrete and fill. Another new code requirementis for hurricane compliant windows and shutters. That willad another big chunk to the price of our new home. Lawand ordinance coverage is very important.

Back in the early 70’s I was field superintendent for acompany that built single family homes in Palm BeachCounty. In a five year period we completed over 600homes. With that experience under my belt (and some helpfrom more currently knowledgable friends) I decided I wouldbe the owner/contractor for our own new house.

In late December I called Doug Timmons, of ShoreProtection Inc. Doug is a friend and a local fishermen whosponsors a team in some of the local tournaments. Hiscompany built our new seawall two years ago. I contractedwith Doug to do the demolition of our old house and, rightaround the same, time I contacted another boating and fish-ing friend, Jon Cole, president of Giffels WebsterEngineering in Englewood, to start drawing up the plans for

our new house. Doug sent over a heavy track-hoe in early January. When

I talked to Nick King, the operator, I found he was also afisherman and the father of the former Punta Gorda on-the-water policeman Joe King. All good people.

With the house knocked down and plans in the works wecalled Universal Engineering testing service to bore a coupleof test holes in our lot and make sure there were no pocketsof muck under the spot the new house was going on. Whenthe drilling crew showed up they were interested in the fishin our canal - they were both fisherman, and when I wentdown to their office to pick up the engineering report I metwith Lindsay Weaver. He was wearing a sailfish shirt –another fisherman.

Next came the roof trusses. Truss engineering takes timeand the local suppliers were quoting 18 to 20 weeks fortruss design and another month for manufacturing. I startedlooking out of the area for truss manufacturers and came upwith Martinez Truss Company in Miami.

I called one Saturday morning and got the owner GeorgeMartinez on the phone. We made small talk for a while. Iknew trusses made in Miami met the more stringent DadeCounty wind loading criteria. I found out George was afisherman. The price was right and the design and produc-tion time was in weeks not months, so I went to Miami to

check out his operation. The office had pictures of boats onthe wall. The shop was professional. George got my job.

In the interim I began to interview sub-contractors.Manny, our concrete guy is a serious fisherman. AndyMedina, our monthly tournament fishing columnist is alsoa block mason, Josh Smith who fishes the Redfish Tourowns Palmetto Custom Homes and he is going to be ourframing carpenter and Jack Pierson of Bayside Plumbing inEnglewood, a loyal Water LIFE subscriber and another fish-erman, is our plumber. Blake Beerbower, a regular atFishin' Franks, has offered to help with the electric and MrSnook, Norm Day will be the ceramic tile man. and JimmyFrye of Cabinets Plus will do the kitchen. Windows andglass doors will all be PGT products and Mike our supplieris a PGT distributor and of course he is a fisherman.

There are still a few trades outstanding from our list: weare still looking for the right drywall crew and if we haveenough money at the end, a roofer who does metal roofs andfishes will finish it off. It looks like our new digs onBangsberg Road will be a fancy fish shack built on thewater by local fisherman. We are excited. I couldn’t think ofa better place to live in or a better crew to build it.

Now for the Bad News.With our house torn down and the debris hauled away we

submitted the demolition bill for our expenses to ClarendonTower Hill Insurance.

A week later we got a call from one Mr. Chad Honea oftheir Gainesville home office. He said “We have reviewedyour initial claim and it looks like we overpaid you, therefor we are not going to pay your demolition bill or yourlaw and ordinance claim.” You’re what?

I bit my tongue so as not to say anything which mightlater incriminate me. Brown and Brown Insurance is ourlocal agent in Port Charlotte, they are the agents who putus with Tower Hill in the first place. We called them nextand were told there is ‘nothing they can do,’ that we have todeal with the insurance company ourself. So I called ourprivate adjuster and told him he was back on the case.

Now our private adjuster has had his law firm (theremust be a fisherman in that office, somewhere) in Tampafile a Notice of Civil Remedy with the State InsuranceCommissioner’s office. Clarendon/Tower Hill now has 60days to resolve this matter or, as I understand it, they openthemselves to a civil claim and we could then file for dam-ages. Please feel free to contact me if you have similarproblems. I’ll gladly give you copies of our Civil Remedyfiling so you can copy it and file your own paperwork.

Next Month: Permitting with the county and groundbreaking ...if we are lucky.

BUILDING This New House Part 1: AIN!T NO THRILL WITH TOWER HILL

Like many homeowners who are starting over we demol-ished the house but are keeping our swimming pool.

Thanks to raised floor elevations and a move closer to thecanal our new house will have a great second story view.

P a g e 2 8 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E J u l y 2 0 0 5

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

You’d think it would be easy: Get someone to draw upsome plans, take them down to the building department,pay a fee and get your building permit. If you were BobVilla maybe it would work that way, but if you’re Joe Blowyou’d be dead wrong. First of all, in a county where thereare 18,000 homes and businesses being demolished nothingcomes easy, or fast. Architects are backed up for months. Ifengineering is a nightmare then getting concrete is likefinding gold. The story we were hearing in May was thatAugust was the soonest most people would be able to evenget a builder to talk to them about drawing up new plans.Now, with all the rain in June, (19 inches in PortCharlotte) things have slowed down even more and com-plaints about new roofs leaking are tying up the lines evenmore.

“In general, everything is running seven weeks late,”one contractor told us, blaming the problem on shortages inmaterials, the rain and the fact that motivated by greedmany sub contractors have taken on an unreasonable load ofwork and are now trying to divide their time between toomany jobs. ‘Many builders are doing a little work in a lotof places and nothing gets finished on time’ was the per-spective we heard most often.

Add to that the fact that the work force of laborers isstretched thin, and that contractors are pirating laborers fromeach other and you have the recipe for seven week delays ifnot more.

The biggest holdup in the building process right now isconcrete. Blocks are available, but concrete in a truck is adelicacy. Only a few big customers are able to put cementon order and have it delivered on time, and even the biggestusers of concrete have to plan ahead. If you are workingwith a small time builder, two months could easily be thewaiting time for a delivery of cement. Our neighbors acrossthe street waited a month for a 10-yard concrete order fortheir driveway. Then it started raining and their order wasrescheduled for a month later.

Part of the problem is that three months ago CMEX theMexican giant in the cement industry took over the concreteplant in Punta Gorda. With that sale a lot of the local good-ole-boy concrete connections went away. The result is a lotof builders are pouring concrete whenever they can get it.With the rain, it takes a lot longer to finish off the surfaceso on some nights we have seen concrete laborers workingunder the headlights of their cars.

Another stumbling block in the construction process isthe flood plane elevation. Many houses being rebuilt haveto be built on elevated foundations.

On our own house we spent $1,600 for an engineeringsurvey of our property. For that we got a detailed report onsub surface investigation and how to build on our lot.

The primary caveat was: scrape the lot down to the natu-ral surface elevation, then dig the footers at least 18 inchesbelow the surface. When adding fill to raise the elevation doso in 10 inch to 1-foot ‘lifts’ with compaction between eachlift to a density of 95-percent. That all takes more time andmaterial. Unfortunately, what we are seeing around townnow are builders who are piling dirt up three or four feethigh and pouring a slab on top of it. We think this leads tosettlement cracks and problems down the road.

Our plans went to the building department on June 17,almost 10 months to the day after the hurricane hit. We’rein the system now, but the zoning department we were toldonly has one examiner today, and some of their other staffare on vacation. We’re waiting again.

Permit applications are not just looked at and stamped.Permits go through numerous different departments in thecounty before they are approved, and you need more than

just a simple set of plans to build your house.First you need a survey, then you need engineered draw-

ings of the structure. Then you need engineered drawings ofthe roof trusses you plan to use. If you are building a twostory, like we are, you need engineered drawings of theupstairs flooring system as well. You need a list of the sub-contractors signed by each and every one of them, you needwindow attachment schedules and you need energy calcula-tions.

Energy calculations were new to me, and luckily myfriend Bob Wills of Dolphin Air sat down with me atHooters one day last month and explained the procedure.

The plans are examined for material, type of constructionand exposure to the sun. All the data is fed into a computerprogram and the efficiency of the house is determined. Thatnumber is then correlated to the size air conditioning unityour plans will have to specify. There are supply and returnair ducts required and depending on the square footage of thehouse and the distance the air has to travel from the air han-dler, the ducts must be correctly sized. “Insulating yourhouse well is extremely important,” Bob said, suggesting itwas a good idea to over insulate the sunny west side of ourhouse and install a reflective barrier beneath the roof in theattic, to keep the attic cool. The less hot air you havearound your living space the less the AC has to work. Weare using solar shielded double glazed glass on the west sideof our house and double insulation in the west side walls.When we got our energy calcs back they ran 26 pages,itemizing each room and space within our new house, andall those calculations have to be submitted with your planswhen you go to the building department. “Get four sets ofthese copied,” he advised “and save a set for yourself forlater,” he said.

Also included with our plan submittal are two new sur-veys, a fire hydrant affidavit, tree preservation forms,drainage plans, site plans, window and garage door specifica-tions, and a summary sheet showing flood zone and windexposure (velocity) zone. Of course there is the applicationform itself and a $150 pre application fee. The actual permitfee will be calculated when our plans are reviewed.

Then a notice of commencement will have to be filedbefore we can start construction.

When we dropped our plans off they told us the waitwould be four to eight weeks. What’s another couple ofmonths at this point?

BUILDING This New House Part 2: PAPERWORK AND PERMITTING

You can follow any permit application through thecounty examiners at: www.charlottecountyfl.com

Meanwhile, at our rental house, the seawall has collapsed.Seawalls in the area are old and many are in need of repair.This one was made of corregated pannels which some say areasbestos based. Record setting rains in June (over 18 inchesin a couple of weeks) have now taken their toll.

It takes this much paper to apply for a building permit

A u g u s t 2 0 0 5 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 2 9

BUILDING This New House Part 3: SCRATCHING AND SCRAPINGBy Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

Already I’m realizing how outof construction-shape I am. Myhammer-hand is on the verge ofblistering just from driving stakesinto the ground. I’m afraid tothink about the aches and painsI’ll have in a month when we real-ly get started.

Right now I've been on thephone holding with the Countyfor 20 minutes. It’s hard to getthrough to them, but they arehelpful when you finally makecontact.

At first, the permitting processlooked good. Our applicationbreezed through addressing (wealready had an address) and Rightof Way (that was pre-existing aswell) but then we hit Zoning andour permit application sat in abox, or pile, somewhere for threeweeks. We called every other dayor so to check on progress, butthere was none. The one day Ispoke to Nicole Dozier and toldher we really were getting tired ofliving in our rental house andasked what the hold up was.Nicole pulled our file and told usit didn't say 'Hurricane' on it.

“Was there a box that I wassupposed to check? Or a line I wassupposed to write hurricane on?Was there some instruction Imissed in the application process,”I asked. Nicole said “No,” and thatsomeone just should have told me

that. We lost almost a month onthat ‘someone’s’ oversight.

Nicole said she would write theword ‘Hurricane’ on our applica-tion and later that day we got acall from Pat Haley at zoning say-ing that he was reviewing our planright then. I smiled a thanks toNicole, but it was a short smile.

Mr Haley said there was oneproblem – that the overhang onour second story bedroomencroached into the canal mainte-nance easement by about 6 inchesand that we'd have to fix that. Thefact that the overhang is 25 feet inthe air didn't matter. We could geta variance but that could take threemonths, Pat said

I called our engineers and toldthem of the problem. We talkedover the options and decided totake one foot out of our new utili-ty room and redraw the plans. Inthe mean time our old plansmoved through to the next step,and into the construction plansexaminer's department. That wentwithout a hitch and they approvedour mechanicals as is. It was areally important step and it hap-pened almost too quickly for us toappreciate. We got busy with theKids Cup redfish tournament andanother week slipped by.

Right after the tournament, Ichecked the progress of our planson the county’s website and sawthat the zoning department hadstill had not approved our change.

I was 15 minutes on the phonebefore I finally got through andthe nice lady on the phone said shewould track down our applicationpackage and get it over to Zoningfor them to sign off on immediate-ly. Then the next day we were toldour permit was ‘waived on’ by thehealth department (we are onsewer, and the Health Departmentonly gets involved with houseshaving septic tanks) and CharlotteCounty Utilities passed us on usas well, since we still have wateron our site and we are still payinga water bill. “Your permit is readyto be picked up,” the lady on thephone told me. “That will be$726.80,” she added.

We dropped everything andheaded for Murdock, where in factwe were able to pick up our per-mit and our approved plans. Thewe went out to lunch for a minicelebration. It was an importantday, and after hearing our jubilantconversation the waitress evenbrought us a complimentarydesert.

Back on our old street, a demo-lition contractor was working onremoving the 13th house from ourblock. I had talked to him the daybefore about scraping the weedsoff our overgrown site, and as Iwaited for him to drive over, Iopened the newly approved plansto have a look at them.Everything looked good, exceptfor one thing. They had stamped

and approved the original draw-ings, not the ones which we hadresubmitted with the 1-foot shorterfloorplan. If I kept those plans onthe jobsite, the house might comeout 1-foot bigger with the over-hang back in the easement. Thenext morning I made the countyaware of the problem. Then mywife went back to Murdock toexchange the plans. Two steps for-ward and only one step back. Atleast we are making a smallamount of progress.

The phone rang. It was mywife, calling from the buildingdepartment, the guy she has to seewas ‘on break.’ We were waitingagain, but this time not for long –he soon returned and then we hadthe right plans in hand. The build-ing department has really beenvery good about all this.

Next: We get going with theconstruction.

On the insurance front, thingsare not moving ahead at all. The60-day period which our insurancecompany, Clarendon Select /Tower Hill, had to reply to ourcomplaint with the State InsuranceCommissioner has now elapsedwithout so much as a word. Nowour private adjuster says hislawyers will now sue them forbreach of contract and for more ...which will be just fine with us.

Late Flash! We!ve now got the footer dug and by the time you readthis it may be filled with concrete. Construction is underway!

S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 5 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 2 9

BUILDING This New House Part 4 SBA LOANS INFLUENCE INSURANCE SETTLEMENTSBy Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

My fingernails are impeccably clean, a rewarding benefitof scratching in the dirt all day. I am tired. Its been a monthof digging in the morning, rain in the afternoon, goinghome to get some rest, getting up early and doing it allagain. At least I'm sleeping good, but I'm getting to be tooold to be doing this on a regular basis. Luckily I am notworking alone.

We received a successful inspection of our foundations. Then concrete became the problem. Our foundation guy

had promised concrete two days after inspection. It didn’thappen. We called and he said his ‘man’ at the concreteplant was on vacation. We called again, he didn’t answer.Then he stopped answering our phone calls altogether. Icalled him from my wife’s phone and he answered. “I’ll callright now and call you back in ten minutes,” he said, buthe didn’t. We dumped him and started looking for anotherguy.

It’s the way things are going in Port Charlotte and PuntaGorda. No call backs, excuses and broken promises. Timemeans nothing. Deals are made to be broken. Katrina willonly make the labor scene worse in the coming months.

I'm thankful we're not living in a trailer like my nextdoor neighbor Ronnie. Ronnie has a head start on us, hisconcrete work is already done and he is now moving intothe framing stage. But Ronnie waited two weeks for hisframers to show up. Everyone is waiting for something.

We have heard stories of people now looking for buildersto construct their new homes and we have heard prices rang-ing from $300,000- to over $500,000 for a 2500 squarefoot house. These are ridiculous numbers considering a yearago you could build for a third of that. The local level ofunconscionable price gouging is enormous. That's why weare building our own house. We can't afford to do it anyother way. What happened to the Governor and the state andtheir promises of penalizing unfair practices in the wake ofthe hurricane?

Another part of the problem is a little known alliancebetween the insurance industry and the Small BusinessAdministration. The SBA was quick on the scene withcheap loans when the storms hit. They offered low interestrates and a lot of people signed up. But, as we have found

out from our lawyer, there was a catch.When you take an SBA loan you give up your rights to

the insurance proceeds and you give up your right to sue theinsurance company if they don’t pay you what they are sup-posed to. Insurance companies, according to our lawyer,know this very well, and as soon as they see you havetaken an SBA loan they know they are free to ‘readjust’your claim because the SBA seldom if ever perseus them.

“The SBA is intentionally letting the insurance compa-nies off the hook,” our lawyer told us.

Tower Hill, our carrier, settled with us on our house andcontents and then when it came time to pay us for our‘ordinance and law’ and ‘demolition’ coverage, theybackpedaled and said they were not going to pay becausethey had recomputed our claim. They owed us over$40,000, but only sent us a check for $10,000. We called alawyer.

We filed a grievance with the state insurance commissionand waited the requisite 60 days for them to respond. Weheard nothing, our private adjuster heard nothing, the 60days elapsed. We thought we had a shot at suing them forbreach of contract and opening the door for a damage suit.But there appears to be yet another unspoken wrinkle in theprocess, one only known well by insurance lawyers.

You don’t get notified whether the insurance companyresponds or doesn’t. “The insurance commissioner does notreally protect the consumers of this state,” our lawyer toldus. Currently there are 40,000 insurance claims in the statethat still have not been settled. The insurance commission-er’s office is overwhelmed with notices filed from the 2004storms. That’s not my problem...but now it is.

So now we are faced with yet another dilemma. We havenot drawn any money from our SBA loan yet, so we couldcancel the loan, there by opening the door to suing theinsurance company for the money they still owe us, but ifwe come up short we might need to borrow money to fin-ish our house. Will the interest on a new loan exceed$34,000? Our lawyer advised: “What you want to do is seehow much meat is left on the bone (money remaining thatcould be collected from the insurance company) and thenweigh your options.” It doesn’t get easier, it only gets moreexpensive. That’s the real disaster.

We have now fired our first concrete contractor and hiredanother, who got the concrete for us the very next day.

O c t o b e r 2 0 0 5 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 2 9

BUILDING This New House Part 5 WE!VE GOT BLOCK ABOVE THE GROUND NOWBy Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

Last month we poured our foot-ers, thanks to our friend DougTimmons of Shore Protection Inc.,who helped us get concrete onshort notice. This month, ourfriend and Water LIFE staff writerAndy Medina and his brother Gregpitched in for the block work. Atone point we had a price to buyblock for $3 each. That was ridicu-lous, so we called around. HomeDepot in Cape coral was at $1.38 -they had 500 block and could deliv-er, but we needed 2500. We talkedto a guy at the CEMEX plant inPunta Gorda who told us theirblock should be $1.12, so we wentup to the Peachland CEMEX plantand asked to buy some block. Thatwill be $1.51 the guy at the blocksales desk told us. Andy and I wereflabbergasted, but that’s the way itis, the salesman told us, take it orleave it.

We were just about to leavewhen Paul Hardy walked in. Paul, Isensed, was important at the plant... and Paul was wearing aColumbia shirt, a clean whiterfishing cap and a pair of Costa DelMar fishing glasses. ‘Are you afisherman?’ I asked Paul. “That’swhat I do,” he said, ‘I only workhere when I don’t feel like fishing.”We hit it off right away and I cameto find out he was important.When I told him the problem wewere having getting block, he toldme they had plenty of block and

they were in business to sell block.“What kind of fishing do you guysdo?” he asked. I told him I wroteWater LIFE and that Andy fishedthe Redfish Cup. I showed him acopy of last month’s publicationand he said, “... yeah I read this allthe time.” Paul bailed us out, setup an account for me on the spotand OK’d our order for delivery thenext morning. We talked aboutfishing in the Keys, redfishing, theKids Cup and other importantdetails of our new found friendship.A fisherman helping out anotherfellow angler. It just doesn’t getany better than that. Thanks againPaul, we owe you a dinner!

Andy and I spent Friday after-noon putting the block out so itwould be handy to lay-up andSaturday morning Andy and hisbrother Greg, got started. First wegot the long wall, about 700 blockdone, Sunday we were at it againby 7 a.m. and got around the canalside corner and up the pool side tothe kitchen – another 600 or so.Then Monday, Andy and I werealone. I hauled block and Andymixed mortar and layed it up. Gregshowed up after work at 4 p.m. andthe three of us worked until about8 p.m., laying another 600 block.Then Tuesday we started early andworked late. Andy and I did the dayshift and by 3:30 Greg showed up.Together the three of us workeduntil almost 10 p.m., under theillumination of my old photogra-phy studio lights and by the time it

was all over we had laid 2140block and the stem wall was done.But we had more work to do.

I made up some special connec-tions to link the reinforcing steelin the footer to the steel in thewalls and my wife and I tied it alltogether on Thursday, then onFriday afternoon, in the 92 degreeheat of the day we pumped thestem walls solid with concrete - amust for filling the foundation fullof dirt and not having the sidesblow out.

A week later my friend Capt.Keith Benner got us the first 5loads of fill and on Saturday Douglet us use his loader and move thefill into the foundation.

Another fishermen-friend, J.R.Witt (Westwind Contracting) sentup a small vibrating roller from hisjob rebuilding the Pine Island Roadand we used it to pack down thefirst layer of fill. Then, after anoth-er three days of hauling and pack-ing we were done.

Next comes the plumber andthen we have to form the edges andget ready to pour the slab. Then wecan start laying the block for theactual house. Stay Tuned ...andthanks to everyone involved.

Once again our pal Doug Timmons from Shore Protection Seawalls Inc.helped us out by sending over three of his his crew to pump our stemwalls full of concrete. Then, since he!s working on a seawall job just downour street, he loaned us his loader to start moving fill. I can!t say enoughabout Doug Timmons and his Shore Protection crew. They are not just OKcontractors, they are first class, reputable people and they do excellentwork at a fair price. If you need more of a reference, call me directly.

P a g e 2 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 5

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE Editor

Jason from Universal Testingin Punta Gorda prodded aroundwith a bent piece of re-bar, lever-aging his whole body weight onit at various spots in the dirt.Then, when it wouldn’t penetrate,he deemed our dirt ready for thecompaction test. Not much sci-ence there.

It had rained for several daysbefore. “All the slabs I tested sofar this week had standing wateron them,” Jason said. “I’m sur-prised yours is dry.” Jason dug asmall hole and then got out ahammer-cup that he pounded downinto the dirt, coming up with asoup-can-sized sample from sixinches down. He took the sampleback to his truck, weighed it andremoved a small amount. That dirtwent into a coffee-can sized canis-ter with a gauge on one end andtwo lead balls inside. Somereagent chemical was added andthen the whole thing was shakenlike a margarita until the gaugeregistered the moisture in the soil.When we passed the test, Jasonissued us a green sticker that wenton our building permit. I calledour plumber immediately.

Jack Giuliano is our plumber.Jack is from Englewood and a

partner in the H20 plumbing com-pany. Jack of course is a fisher-man, but like many tradesmenwho love to fish Jack hasn’t beenon the water in a while. “It’s crazyhow much work there is,” Jacknoted.

Jack and I had been coordinat-ing the start of our plumbingproject for weeks and Jack showedup on schedule Friday with histwo laborers, Jesse and Kyle.

The first thing that happensafter you have your nice hard dirtall compacted and you call theplumbers is that the plumber digsit all up. Jack laid out the mainwaste lines, calculated the pipesizes and fall, and started cutting

PVC. Four-inch pipe makes upthe main run, three inch runsfrom the washing machine andkitchen and the pipes from theupstairs. Once the drainage was

done they went back and laid inthe water lines using a differentgrade of PVC and a special gluefor drinking water and hot waterlines.

All had gone smoothly to thispoint. And then I looked at theweather. It was nice in PortCharlotte but down in the tropicsthere was a depression forming. Itwas Wilma.

We went into ‘emergencymode’ immediately. If we didn’tget the concrete slab poured beforeWilma came we’d be screwed. Icalled my friend and concrete man,John Bunch and we talked overthe options. We were shooting forpouring concrete in a week or so,but now we had to move it up.

The thing I like about John(aside from his excellent concretework) is that he’s a do-it-when-hesays -he-will kind of guy. If Johnsays he’ll be over at 2:30 you canset your watch by it.

“I’ve got a driveway scheduledfor Thursday,” John said, “20-plusyards. Let me see what I can do.I’ll be over on Wednesday to getstarted.”

I told Jack of our plan thatafternoon and Jack said he’d havehis plumbing done and ready toinspect on Monday. That soundedgood. Jack had a soccer game tocoach on Saturday but like the

professional that he also is, Jackand his guys came back Sundaymorning to finish up and byMonday we were ready for aplumbing inspection. Meanwhile,out in the Gulf, Wilma was now ahurricane and moving closer.

Monday came and went and theplumbing inspector did not. Thecounty inspectors are busy, andplumbing inspections can be ‘nextday’ or the ‘following day’ thelady in permitting told me. Weneeded plywood to form the slabedges. There was none available inPort Charlotte or Punta Gorda, sothat night my wife and I ran

down to Home Depot in CapeCoral to pick some up. We’ll usethat same material later to formthe tie-beam atop the block walls.We came back and immediatelycut the 4x8 boards in half underthe lights.

The steel and wire mesh arrivedalong with two rolls of plastic‘Visqueen’ sheeting (which has tobe put on top of the dirt as amoisture barrier) the next morn-ing. At 1:30 on Tuesday theplumbing inspector showed upand approved our pipe work.

Wilma was a Cat 1 storm andheaded towards the Yucatan, butthe forecasts said it would turneast. John and his guys (Bubbaand Ernesto) showed up on sched-ule and started to get the materialsready. They cut the wire meshinto manageable lengths andstockpiled it alongside the slab.Then they backfilled theplumber’s ditches (the pipesremain uncovered until they areinspected) and I called in Soshfrom SOS Pest Control to spraythe dirt with a heavy dose of sub-terranean termite juice as requiredby the building code. Sosh put apink sticker on our permit and wecalled in the slab for inspection.

John and his guys worked lateTuesday afternoon getting the

steel re-bar in around the perimeterand wire mesh in place. Then myfriend Greg Medina came over at4:30 after work and Gregg, mywife and I snapped a line aroundthe stem wall and got out the t-nailer to hang the form boards. Bydark on Tuesday we had all the bigboards in place and went home torest.

Wednesday morning I got up at5:00 and turned on the TV. Wilmawas suddenly a Cat 5 storm!

I worked by myself all morn-ing filling in the last pieces of theedge forms and tying up the steelon the concrete deck outside of thekitchen. At 11:30 the inspectorcame and took the plans and per-mit card out of the box. Wewalked around the slab talking

mostly about the hurricane. “Itlooks like you know what you aredoing,” the inspector said and hesigned off on our slab inspection.I called John immediately and hereleased the concrete for 9 a.m thenext morning.

John, who had spent most ofthe day before forming up the

front steps worked meticulouslyto make it all come together. Wepoured the lower steps first thenmoved to the back of the slab andstarted pouring concrete towardsthe front. John and Bubba workedthe long ‘screed’ keeping the floorlevel, while Erenesto kept theedges smooth. I worked with thepump guy using my hammer clawto grab the wire mesh and pull itup into the middle of the concrete.

“You’d be surprised how manybuilders just leave that mesh lyingon the plastic,” the pump guycommented.

When the concrete was all inplace, we lifted the whirly-bird uponto the slab and Bubba tookover. The whirly bird, as it’scalled, is a four-bladed gas-pow-ered circular trowel. It looks likean upside down helicopter. Youwalk it around like a floor polish-er and it spins on the concrete tomake a soothe fine finish. Bubbais a master at operating thismachine. By 4 p.m. Thursday wehad a beautiful, flat, smooth andshiny slab. One by one, Johnpulled the forms off the steps andour entry way looked spectacular.I can’t say enough good thingsabout the quality of John andBubba’s concrete work.

I watered the slab down with ahose late that afternoon and then,when I couldn’t sleep at 3 a.m., Igot up and drove over to the newhouse and put the hose on itagain. The wetter you keep freshconcrete the harder it gets. Thenext morning I watered it againand again. Then early in the after-noon John came back with hiscement saw to cut in the expan-sion joints. Wilma had stalled onCozumel, so I set about securingthe boat and the other thingsaround the job site and kept water-ing the slab.

Friday afternoon I called aboutour framing lumber package andfound the price had gone up againin the last two weeks. “Concretewill be going up 16-percent in

January,” John told me and bothdrywall and plywood will be outof sight since the two biggestplants in the nation were outsideNew Orleans.

Our thanks to all the guys whoare helping make it happen. “Justrun our pictures big and in color,”Bubba asked. So here you go,Bubba, and thanks again!

By next month, we could belaying up the cement block.

BUILDING This New House Part 6 PLUMBING & THE SLAB IN THE SHADOW OF WILMA

P a g e 2 2 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 5

This New House Part 7: Blockwork Happening

By Michael HellerWater LIFE Editor

In Pavlov’s famous response, an animal, I think it wasa dog, was made to drool when it heard a sound associatedwith its feeding. It was a second level of response: theanimal knew after the noise the next thing coming wouldbe food.

Snowbirds returning to our block have wondered aloudwhy our new house is on such a high foundation. ‘It’sFEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers,’ I tell them;‘the same people who mandated our 5 foot high founda-tion were the wisdom behind the design of the levees sur-rounding New Orleans.’ Everyone laughs when I say that.

Actually in a way it’s way cool. Our view will be bet-ter, the breeze will be stronger and bugs and ants will behard pressed to invade our new up-in-the-sky structure.

While houses along Edgewater drive are elevated threefeet, we are a full five feet up because we are down by thebig water. Our neighbors have come to call our newhouse and our next door neighbor’s new house ‘the towersection’ of Bangsberg Road. On the final plan, the tippy-top of our second story roof will be a staggering 34 feetin the air. That’s three and a half stories any where else.

With such lofty levels comes some loft constructionconsequences. Materials which normally are simply laidout in front of a regular house are having to be hauled andhoisted up to the first floor level.

This month’s project was the blocking up of the walls,which meant about 2,500 cement blocks had to somehowget from the stockpile at the side of our old garage to thefloor 50 feet away and 5 feet up, in the process. Toaccomplish this task, I hired a guy whose name I shallnot mention because he turned out to be a flake, but atleast in the beginning, he brought his Moffit, a soft tired,super-sized fork lift, to pick up stacks of block, and loaded20 cubes of 74 blocks each onto our slab. The plan wasto lay up those 1500 block and then have him return toload up the rest. His return, however did not occur, so wehand-lifted and stacked the last 600 block ourselves. I stillfeel the exercise in my back a week later.

The project started easily enough. My friend and blockmason and super fishermen Capt. Andy Medina showed upthe day he got back from the Redfish cup finals and start-ed laying block. The immediate hard part was getting themud (mortar mix) up from the mixer at street level to theslab. I had saved a dozen or so 4x6 rafters from ourFlorida room when the old house was destroyed and weused some of them to build a big ramp up the 5 feet tothe slab. It was a good idea, but in practice it was morethan any one human could do to wheel a full 200 poundwheel barrow up a 30-percent grade. So we doubledteamed it. Every time Andy had a load of mud to bring uphe’d call me. “Ug” he’d say, “...come here Ug,” and I’dgrab the dock line tied to the front of the wheelbarrow andAndy would take the back and we’d charge up the rampwith him pushing and me pulling... “Ug” I’d say, untilwe made it to the top. Continued onFacing page

It got so that what ever else I was doing when I heardthe mixer stop I’d go ‘Ug,’ like Pavlov’s dog. I knew whatwas coming next.

Andy laid up the Florida room and the pool side one dayand then the hallway and the kitchen the next. In blockwork the idea is to lay up 7 courses from the floor and thenbring in the scaffolding to ‘top-out’ the remaining courses.Andy single handedly must have laid 1500 blocks in fourdays. Then on Saturday his brother Greg showed up withhis crew and they blocked up the long 63 foot wall and set

the four ridiculously high (25blocks up) columns.

You learn a lot when you movethat many block. Did you knowthere is a handle on every cementblock? A thick part of the centerweb, designed to make it easier formasons to handle them? Did youknow that almost every ‘cube’ ofblock you buy comes with the han-dle upside down? No, I don’t knowwhy. Did you know that halfblocks cost more than full blocks?and that without a concrete saw youare lost when it comes to makingthings fit. You’d think that CADdesigned plans would have it down toa science when it comes to ‘block work’ with theright number of full sized blocks to go between thewindows and in the walls so everything comes outequal. It ain’t so, not all the time anyway. Thesponge is an invaluable tool to masons, used to‘float’ the mortar joints and clean off excess mud.‘Preachers’ are tools that hold the leveling strings inplace on a wall and that masons use short levels andblocks themselves are really not that square. Thereare preferences for the type of sand that masons likeand mortar mix left laying around too long gets staleand is hard to work. There are ‘right handed’ and ‘lefthanded’ trowels, ‘mortarboards’ and ‘jump boards’that all come into play in building a house.

We finished the block before Thanksgiving andstarted on the tie beam, the concrete beam around thetop, the very next day. It’s not done as of this writ-ing, but by early December we should have it. Staytuned.

Now for an insurance update. After jerking us around for16 months Tower Hill has finally paid us off. House con-tents, pool cage, alternate living, the whole eñchilada.Done, finished, thank you and good bye. But it has takenso long that now the SBA wants us to requalify for ourloan, in spite of the fact that we closed on the loan 8months ago and have recorded a mortgage in their name.More paperwork, more proof of insurance, a builders riskpolicy, flood insurance updates and some other stuff that Ijust don’t feel like looking up right now. Will it ever end?It’s not the natural disaster that drives you crazy, you candeal with that, you can clean up and rebuild, but the manmade disaster, the paperwork, the lying contractors, theguys that simply don’t do what they said, the government,they’re the ones that make it so difficult. Ug.

Here!s a look at the start of the tie beam. The form boardsare going up atop the block walls. One of the completedcolumns is shown in the foreground. Scaffolding will followsoon.

The four outside columns are 24 blocksin the air. It!s scary high!

Water LIFE Editor Michael Heller (Ug!) and Andy Medina pulling up the mud.

The block crew working on "the long wall.!

A Mule named "Ug!

J a n u a r y 2 0 0 6 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 2 5

This New House Part 8F O R T I F I C AT I O N S : Steel, Concrete and the Big Tie Beam

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

“We failed the inspection.”The words echoed in my headlike a garbage truck backfiring ontop of a morning hangover.

I had called in the inspectionfor our tie beam the day before,but on this morning we wereshort a few supplies so I ran upto Murdock to get them. Myfriend Andy Medina stayed at thejobsite and waited in case theinspector came early. Naturally,as soon as I left the inspectorarrived.

And when I got back Andysaid “We’re going to have to geta letter from the engineer detail-ing every single little change wemade.” Thoughts of every tinyarea where we deviated the slight-est bit from the plans racedthrough my brain. There were anumber of changes, but we onlychanged things for the better,how could there be a problem?How could I get all that docu-mented? It would take weeks. Iwas crushed.

Then Andy cracked a bigsmile. “Only kidding,” Andysaid. “We didn’t fail, we passedwith flying colors!” “Almostnot funny, Andy,” I said. Then Ismiled too.

If you’ve been following thisconstruction story every monthyou’ll remember that last monthwe were just starting the tiebeam and had hoped to be settingthe roof trusses by now, but thebeam took longer than weexpected, the extra time eaten upby a family medical emergency,changing construction details andweather.

Several cold fronts movedthrough the area bringing rainand delays with them. And thenthere was one ‘clarification.’

We had struggled for threedays trying to figure out how toform the tie beam in one contin-uous pour of concrete when itstepped up in height 16 feet

above the ground to accommodatethe second-story floor joists. Onthe plans the beam was at oneelevation over the front part ofthe house and at another eleva-tion at the back. The alreadycomplicated scaffolding and sup-ports required would need to beeven more complicated and timeconsuming. We stood on theground and cursed FEMA formaking us elevate the new houseso high. We were already work-ing on two levels of scaffolding,sometimes with a ladder on topof that. We were stumped.

Finally I called the engineerand set up a meeting. We spreadthe plans out on his table and thesenior designer at the firm lookedthem over. “You can’t do this,”he said matter of factly. “Thiswon’t work.” “I don’t see how itwill work either,” I said. Withthat, a change was made and lifegot a lot easier. The beam wouldbe built all at one height andthen we’d go back and use block-work to construct the elevatedarea for the floor joists. It wasmuch simpler all around, andstronger too.

But the work still wasn’t easy.We were still climbing up anddown double layers of scaffold-ing, and moving the few scaffoldswe had around the site a lot. Bythe end of the day my legs feltlike rubber. Lifting boards up,moving scaffolds over...and thenthere was all the steel andclamps.

We bought steel and moresteel. We tied steel, built cagesand laid them out around thehouse. My good buddy FishinFrank came over and tied a lot ofit together. A long time agoFrank worked tying steel oncommercial jobs for a living.When you drive over the 41bridge, know that Frank helpedtie it together.

Steel cages are what give sup-port to concrete where it spans adistance between supports. We’ve

got lots of spans and lots ofcages in the new house. Theworst part is that the cages areheavy and once formed we had tolift them up and set them inbetween the tie-beam formboards. A number of the cages are16 feet in the air. This all tooktime. Much more time than weexpected. One week quicklyturned into two. Big work for thethree of us.

Then came the clamps. All the

plywood and steel in the world isuseless unless you clamp it intoplace. Clamps holds the weightof the 5000-pound concrete tryingto push the plywood out.

Andy found a place in FortMyers that rented clamps and wetook two trucks down there tohaul 225 clamps back to PortCharlotte. Then we went backand got 60 more.

When the inspector came hetold Andy he had never seen asmuch steel in a residential proj-ect. I liked hearing that.

My theory is: bigger is betterand more is good. There wereplaces where five rods of steelwould have sufficed, over thewindows in the Florida room forexample, but we built cages thereinstead. Over the door in the din-ing room, over the door that goesout to the pool; anywhere we hadan opening on the exposed southor east facing sides of the housewe ‘caged it.’ By the end of thetie beam process we were callingthe house a fortress. When fin-ished no compass will work inhere! “The next time a hurricanecomes, I’m staying at yourhouse,” Andy said, and he knowshe’ll be welcome.

When we finally finishedforming up the ‘beam’ and gotour approval on December 18thanother old nemesis, unavailableconcrete, came back to visit.Apparently a lot of local contrac-tors were pushing to get theirjobs done before the end of theyear when concrete prices werescheduled to go up 15 percent.

The soonest we could get con-crete was Dec. 23, so we were onhold for a week. I took the timeto clean up the jobsite and makeroom for the roof truss delivery.

I got the windows on orderwith PGT and we formed andpoured the bases of the four bigcolumns using sixty 80-pound-bags of high strength concretethat we mixed up one by one ina wheelbarrow. We did that sowhen we pumped the concreteinto the columns it wouldn’tblow out at the bottom from theweight. My theory is; you justcan’t be too careful or build stufftoo strong.

Then Friday the 23rd came andwe were ready to pour. We pouredthe beam and pumped all thewalls solid. Six hours and 33yards of concrete later we weredone and I can’t thank my friendTodd Pilcher enough for draggingthe heavy hose full of concretealong the top of all 436 feet oftie beam to fill it.

On Saturday morning Andyshowed up to strip the forms.Every cell was full of concreteand everything looking great. Weordered our trusses from Miamibecause of the 146 mph windloading Dade County requires(Charlotte only requires 130mph) and two days afterChristmas the trusses arrived.We will soon be setting thetrusses in place and putting ply-wood on the first floor roof.Watch for the progress here nextmonth.

Frank and Andy setting one of thesmaller !cages"

Todd Pilcher ran his pump andwalked the beam to pour concrete

Andy forming the beam he is stand-ing on in the photo above right

We used the weight of a truck tobend some steel into shape

Cages of steel look are all custom

Clamps holding the beam together

F e b r u a r y 2 0 0 6 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 9

This New House Part 9

Bigger & Tal ler . . . and Much More Difficult Than We Thought

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

The good news is that when Icome home and take off my shirtmy wife admires my shouldersand my ‘6-pak abs’. The badnews is that I’m asleep by eighto’clock! Lifting block up to thefirst floor was bad enough butworking on the second floor wasway too much. Having lunch atHarpoon Harry's, I saw our newhouse across the water. It rose tothe tree line. I lifted every blockup there – ground to slab, slab toscaffold, scaffold to second floor,second floor to second floor scaf-

fold. Nine hundred blocks. I thinkabout it and it kills my appetite,but last month we made somegreat progress.

Early in January my friendJosh Smith (Palmetto CustomHomes and Tie Beams) got theroof trusses set and the down-stairs sheeted with plywood. In

the process I got aclose look at theengineered ‘holddowns’ that maketoday’s roofs decid-edly stronger andsignificantly morelabor intensive.Metal straps arestill embedded inthe concrete beam

at the top of the walls so whenthe trusses are set the straps canbe bent over each truss and nailedinto them, but for the rareinstance when a big wind couldget under the roof (like a hurri-cane when a door or windowblows in) engineers now calculatethe exact uplift for each roof sec-tion and define the points wherethat force must be contained. Inour roof there are four specialattachment points where 5/8 inchbolts are embedded into the con-crete beam to contain a theoreti-cal uplift of over 4000 pounds ateach spot. Uplift is the ‘buzzword’ in roofing today.

Buildings built in CharlotteCounty are designed to withstand130 mph winds, but that wasn’tenough for us. We went toMiami to take advantage of the146 mph Dade County hurricanecode and had our trusses builtthere. Josh told me that on thebarrier islands like Sanibelbuilders are required to not onlynail, but also glue every outwardsheet of plywood around theperimeter of the roof. So weglued the plywood to the trussesaround the whole outside of ourhouse, and to make it eventighter, every piece of 2x6 fasciawas beveled so the plywoodattached flatly to it. Additionally,we will be blocking up the spacebetween each truss with morewood and installing screenedvents to keep bugs out and asolar powered attic fan to help theair circulate. I don’t want anyroof vents sticking up.

For thermal value we chose to

use the Solar Ply brand foilbacked plywood. It costs a fewdollars more per sheet, but itreduces the heat inside the attic.

When our roof was decked, butbefore the roofers came to putdown the tar paper, I climbed upand painted the fascia and onefoot of the roof’s perimeter withan oil based primer to reduce thechance of rotting around the edgesif anything ever gets wet. Therotten edges were where numer-ous roofs came apart afterCharley. Then we called in for asheeting inspection from thecounty and after that, the guysfrom Superior Roofing came byto ‘dry in’ the downstairs roof.They had it done in an hour and ahalf.

But the work we did on thefront roof was only one part ofthis month’s progress. Out backit was a different story.

Out back we started the secondfloor, so while Josh and his boyswere nailing the front off, AndyMedina and I were laying blockgetting up another few feet andforming the concrete deck whichis outside the master bedroom.

I had thought we could setscaffolds to do the upstairs blockwork, but that proved to be avery bad idea requiring way toomany contortions and way toomuch time. Andy suggested weditch the scaffolds and install thefloor joists, decking them tem-porarily with plywood left overfrom the tie-beam and workingup from there. Block, mortar andsteel all had to go up 28 feetabove the ground. “Think of it as

muscle toning,” Andy said at onepoint, but I have to admit I wasthinking more about a coronarythrombosis. But we worked likedogs and got it done, Andy and I.

A few new changes evolvedupstairs; a change from slidingglass doors to better looking andstronger PGT impact resistantFrench doors, a redesign of awall, a strengthening change inthe patio beam and a new 8-inchcolumn where a cantilever hadbeen designed. Thankfully ourengineers at Giffels Webster wereonce again immensely accommo-dating. So this month, while youare reading about our progress wewill again be moving ahead. Joshand his carpenters are scheduled tobe back to set the trusses on theupstairs and to frame out the inte-rior walls. Then we will have aroof over the whole house and beready for windows, AC ductingand the rough plumbing. Staytuned. All 128 yards of the struc-tural concrete has now beenpoured and we’re moving into thenext phase.

Andy Medina lays the block for the door leadimng from the master bed room to the upstairs patio.

M a r c h 2 0 0 6 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 11This New House Part 10

Hammers and Nai ls Plumbers, Framers and AC

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

Things have changed. Nowwhen i go home at night andempty my pockets out I havenails mixed in with my change.Big nails, 16-penny framingnails. We’re out of the concretephase and into the wood. Mike ??our AC guy from Tommy's Air,noted things have changed in hisbusiness too. Used to be ACducts were metal, lined withrough fiberboard insulation.Ducting was a breeding place formiucrobes, bacteria and mold.Now the ducts are smoothe dou-ble wall plastic insulated in themidle and wrapped with amylar-reflective covering that helpsinsulate them from high tempera-tures in the attic. Ducts are hungfrom plastic straps to keep themfrom matting down the ceilinginsulation in the house and wherethe ducts attach to the 'registerboxes' the 'cans' behind thegrilles in the ceiling or wall, theyare sealed with white masticgoop. First the duct hose issealed, then tie-wrapped and thenthe outer hose is sealed and tirewrapped. This aint never comingapart, Mike said as he lathered thewhite stuff on the duct for oursecond bedroom. Even the regis-

ter boxes them-selves are better.Today they arelined with anit-microbial' surfacethet protects andinsulates.

I loked aroundthe house, what adifference a monthmakes.

The roof is on,both upstairs anddown. Our fishingbuddy Josh Smithstarted one carpen-try crew on thedownstairs butthey 'moved on'before we had theupstairs ready soJosh made a calland hoked us upwith Wayne Kerrywho goes by thename ofConstructionProfessionals incfor the upstairs

trusses and theinteriro wall framing.I knew Wayne from

the local tournament fishingvenue and the day he arrived onthe job our first conversation wasabout his entry in the Kids Cuptournament. I can't say enoughgood things about Wayne and hiscrew. Top notch, professionsl,down to business carpenters whoknocked out the upstairs roof andinterior walls in a week. Waynehad built my friend BruceLaishley's house out on CayoCosta Island, one of theonlystructures left standing,intact after Charley passed over-head, so when Wayne wasthrough glueing every piece ofplywood onto the upstairs roofand nailing it off with ring-shenknails I knew our roof wasn'tgoing anywhere. But Wayne was-n't the only guy involved lastmonth. Before Wayne was doneinside, the guys from Superiorroofing were back to dry in theroof, nailing metal flashing intoall the valleys, flashing the roofwhere it attaches to the upstairswall and putting the metal dripedge on around the perrimiter.Then they loaded the house withshingles, ready to nail downwhen the dry-in inspectiuon wasdone.

Inside I had a little 'fixin' topdo. There were some truss attach-

ments that needed additionalstraps, a few "chases' for the ACthat needed ‘opening up’ and awhole lot of picking up and car-rying out of wood scraps the car-penters left behind. Right aroundthat time Jack and his guys fromH20 plumbing in Englewoodwere back to’ rough in’ theplumbing. They ran the linesfrom the upstiars bath and got thewater supply pipes into place.But that wan't all for lastmonth’s progress. We got a callfrom PGT saying our windowswere ready so we made somecalls to find a rental truck to goup to Venice and pick them up.But there wasn't atruck to befound, so we got hold of a friendwho graciously cleared his back-hoe trailer off and we used that tohaul our windows home. Alsolast month we trimmed off thejagged end of the old garage roofand repaired it so when theroofers shingle the house theycould do the existing un-attachedgarage as well.

In the paperwork arena lastmonth I ran down too 84 lumbrerin Ft Myers and talked to mysalesman friend Jamie and got ourexterior doors on order then Icame back and met with the guysfrom two different stucco compa-nies andworked out the numberswith them.

So by the time you read thisthe windows will be in and I'llbe doing electric. Hopefully bythe end of the month I’ll be readyfor our framing/AC/Plumbingand electric inspection. The coun-ty likes to doo all that on onepass so there is a lot to get ready.Then we'll insulate the interiorand get ready to hang drywall.

Stay tuned.

Andy Medina lays the block for the door leadimngfrom the master bed room to the upstairs patio.

From the Top: 1) The upstairs roof trusses are set in place2) The R-Max wall insulation goes on3) Framing the interior walls4) Finishing off the old garage roof – note the small square win-dow in the house in the photo above. That!s the "Molly window,!an under-the-kitchen-counter vantage point designed for our dogto look out on the street.Left: Plumbing for the washing machine in the laundry area.

A p r i l 2 0 0 6 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 11T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 11

Windows and Doors ... and the fear of the !Shower Police"

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

Our insurance company TowerHill, and our local agent Brownand Brown have notified us theyare cancelling our policy. Last Iheard they can’t do that while ournew house is still under construc-tion ... ‘a special law signed bythe Governor,’ another insuranceagent told me. Obviously we’regoing to have to research this andprobably get back with our privateadjuster and his lawyer. ‘Yourinsurance company is trying tolimit their exposure,’ the otheragent explained. They suck, I said.

We’ve gotten our plumbing andAC inspections passed and nowwe have some projects delegatedto sub-contractors, the biggest ofwhich was the installation of thewindows.

We had planned to install thewindows ourselves, but with mymom having medical problems,we called back our framing carpen-ter friend Wayne Kerry(Construction Professionals Inc.)and paid his guys to install thewindows and French doors. In thereal world installing windows iscalculated at 25% of the window’scost. The best windows don’tcome cheap. We’ve got over 15-large in PGT ‘hurricane proof’Winguard products. Luckily, wehad Wayne’s help and luckier yet,he cut us a ‘deal’.

We were extra careful when

laying the cementblock and settingthe openings forthe windows, butwhen it came timeto install them thefit was simply tootight. "I've foundthat with PGTwindows you haveto go 3/8 of aninch bigger thanthe measurementsthey give you,"Wayne told me.That sentimentwould later beechoed by severalother tradesmanwho are used toinstalling thePGT products.Too bad we didn’thear that earlier."Think about it,"my friend JoshSmith, anothercontractor said. "Ifyou had contractedwith me to build

your house and you had thesetight fitting windows that tookextra time to install you’d be allover my ass to fix them and I'd bewanting to charge you for theextra time to make them right.That's the kind of stuff that ruinsa relationship between a contractorand a homeowner. And that's hap-pening all over ... and not justwith windows. Shoddy work;laborers and manufacturers whoare doing the least possible tryingto spend as little time on eachproject as they can. Who getsburned? the consumer, the guy atthe end of the line,” Josh said.

Dave Olmsted of PGT dis-agreed. “We design our windowsfor a very tight fit, that’s part ofthe hurricane impact testing,” hesaid. You want the tightest fit.

Still, we wound up having togrind down or resize numerouswooden framing 'bucks'. But nowthe windows are in and they arerock solid and air-tight. And ourPGT French doors, with their7/16 tempered and laminatedglass, feel like they are bullet-proof. All in all we are happywith the PGT products.

Back at our house, Wayne’scarpenters built the staircase to thesecond floor and hung the 'trayceiling' in the kitchen. Then,with Wayne's permission, wehired a couple of his guys to workSaturdays and do some of the stuff

we'd otherwise have done our-selves.

First up was the plywood. Wehad bought 40 or 50 sheets of 3/4inch plywood some of which weused to edge-form the slab backwhen we poured it months ago,and the rest of which we used toform the tie-beams around thehouse. I've kept the wood flat anddry since then and last month itwas time to 'recycle' it. We hadWayne’s guys (Robert and Jim)cover one side of almost all theinterior walls with the 3/4 inchplywood. This gives us a much'sturdier' house, better sound-dead-ening acoustics and when thewood is covered with drywall itwill make a wall you can drive anail into and hang a picture onanywhere. We ‘blocked’ (braced)the trusses in the ceilings to tight-en everything up even further and'scabbed’ the trusses where neces-sary so when we hang the drywallceiling we will have a flat smoothsurface. Finally our three steelexterior doors arrived: the front,poolside and kitchen doors. Thefront went in OK – my friendAndy Medina and I set that onelate one Thursday afternoon, thenRobert set the poolside door thatweekend while we were in Miami.The kitchen door arrived dentedwith a split jamb so we'll installthat temporarily to get our fram-ing inspection and then remove itand replace it when the new onecomes in.

But all this stuff doesn't getmy goat as much as one almostunnoticeable detail in this month’sconstruction process.

One day I was looking over theplumbing and noticed two adjust-ing screws on the valve that con-trols the water to the shower. Ifound a booklet on the floor thatcame in the box with the valveand read through it. "Pressure bal-ancing valve" it said. So when thecounty plumbing inspector cameto check our job I asked him whatthat meant. He told me it wasrequired by code. That showervalves are now of the pressure bal-ancing design so you can't scaldyourself by turning on only thehot water. “The valve adds cold tothe hot so you won't get burnt,”he told me. But what if I wantjust hot water? I like to get in theshower, close the door, adjust theshower head away from my bodyand put on only the hot to steamit up. I am even planning on put-ting a seat in the shower to sit on

when I take asteam shower."You can’t dothat," the inspec-tor told me. Howabout a second‘hot only’ wateroutlet? “Nope, not allowed,” theinspector said.

So it looks like I will bebreaking the law whenever I take ashower, because I'll be dammed ifthe government is going to tellme what temperature the water inmy shower has to be. What if Ijust call it a sauna? Maybe that’sthe answer, I don’t know.

I’m thinking someplace downthe line that valve may disappear,and I'll have to takemy chances of ‘get-ting in hot water withthe ‘shower police’.So if you see me run-ning down the streetone day, clad in onlya towel, at leastyou’ll know who willbe chasing me.

Next month, itcould be stucco onthe exterior andwiring inside. Stay Tuned!

The house looks deceptively small from the street, (above) but shows itssize from the backyard view. We"ve kept the openings small on the streetside, which is the west side that gets full hot sun in the afternoon.

The pesky temperature regulatedvalve (above left), the shower area

in the upstairs master bath(above) and the PGT French doors

in the master bedroom (below)

M a y 2 0 0 6 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 2 5T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 2A Cementuous Coating ... we get stuccoed and broken into

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

“There’s a bunch of seedy looking guysin a black truck parked in your yard. Areyou expecting anyone?” It was my neigh-bor Ronnie calling at just before 7 am onemorning and it was a fair question, consid-ering our new house had been broken intoearlier that week. Is there any stuff outside?I asked, thinking what next of mine couldbe missing. I slid my 45 clip holster intomy pants and grabbed my car keys. Thehouse we are renting is only a minute awayfrom our new house. “Looks like wire,”Ronnie said. “Flat sheets of wire lath,” headded. I slowed down and took a breath.“Don’t run them off,” I told Ronnie,emphatically. “Those guys are probably mystucco crew!”

We’ve been a little jittery since someonekicked in our kitchen door and made offwith a nail gun. Then, the very next night,they came back, tried to unscrew the sidedoor to my garage and when that didn’twork broke through a 10-inch window andtook a new sawzall and a $230 right-angledrill. “There is so much of this going onaround here,’ the sheriff investigating theburglary later said, “that we just can’t keepup with it.” Two other houses on our blockand one across the canal were also burglar-ized that week. Up the block, my neighborLance’s house, like ours, was hit twice.

“Be real careful when you get your aircondition compressors and your appliancesdelivered,” the deputy had warned us.“They’ll take that stuff the day it arrives.”

I topped off my coffee and cruised overto the jobsite to meet the stucco crew. PaulHart is the stucco ‘sub’ we are workingwith – a long time local contractor whocame highly recommended through a friend.I wasn’t sure when Paul’s guys would start,but any day was fine with me, even if I

wasn’t totally ready. We had passed our framing inspection

without a problem the week before and Icalled Paul at that time to tell him I wasready for stucco. I figured it would be acouple of weeks before he got to my job.But he did me a favor by sending his guysover right away. One thing you have toknow about working with contractorsthese days is when they show up, younever send them away, so I dropped what Iwas doing and went right to work gettingthe last few things ready.

The ‘few things’ had to do with electri-cal boxes that needed to be set around theexterior. I had drilled the holes through thesolid concrete walls a week earlier, butnow I needed a chipping hammer to getthe outside ready and then tap-con theboxes into the wall. I’m an old fashionedkind of guy and I like metal electricalboxes, inside and out. I like them outsidebecause they hold a fixture better and Ilike them inside because you can yank alamp cord from across the room without

fear of ripping a plastic box apart. But Ineeded just the right depth boxes. Theinch-and-a-half ones were too deep, inchand a quarter would be just right, but I onlyhad inch-and-a half ones.

Graybar electric is in Whidden IndustrialPark, just across US 41 from our house. Iwent over and met the supervisor, JoshBoyd, who just happens to be a fishermenand who knows a slew of fishermen Iknow. Bingo! I was wearing my Kids Cupshirt so we talked about the Kids Cup andthen about electric and in the end Josh setme up, gave me the boxes I needed andsigned on as a Kids Cup sponsor. You’ll behearing more about Graybar and our electri-cal progress next month.

We’ve been busy with the Kids tourna-ment so having the stucco crew workingon the house was a blessing since I didn’thave the time to do much else. It was acurse too, since I wasn’t able to be there,but that in turn was probably a blessing forthe stucco crew ... because I wasn’t there,so it all worked out.

The crew spent two and a half full daysstapling wire and attaching corner beadunder the overhangs and around the houseand setting up scaffolding. In the meantime my carpenter-helper Bob Schick hus-tled to get the brick moulding up aroundthe exterior doors. Then my friend AndyMedina and his brother Greg took time offfrom pre-fishing for the Oberto Cup andnailed up the runners and ‘j’ channel for thesoffit using the stucco crews scaffolding.The scaffolding was a god-send because ourroof is so FEMA high it would otherwisehave taken a fire truck with an extensionladder to get up to it.

The stucco crew started with a skim-coaton the east canal side. The stuccoersworked their way down the long 75 footwall on the north and around to the west

facing front during the next two days andthen started on the back side and garage,hauling heavy 5-gallon buckets of mud upthe walls with a rope and pulley. Little bylittle the blocky look of our house changedto a textured grey ‘cementuous coating’(that’s what they call stucco now) that willsomeday get painted.

Earlier in the month, before the stuccocrew, before the soffit, before the electricalboxes, I had a chance to get our mainunderground electrical conduit burried; run-ning it from our existing meter on theunattached garage over to the new house.That took a two foot deep trench and abunch of other electrical supplies. Thoseparts came from City Electric inOkeechobee, through another fishing con-nection I had made in Sebring. Fishingreally is helping to build this house.

Walter Groggins and the City Electricguys in Okeechobee were involved with akids bass tournament fundraiser. One thinglead to another and, well you know, fisher-men helping fishermen... so I drove toOkeechobee, went over the plans withWalter and came back with a truckload ofboxes, conduit, the breaker panel and exte-rior disconnect; everything I needed to getthe power from the meter to the new houseand more. But the best part came when Icalled the county for an inspection of theunderground work.

The inspector showed up and told me hehad been reading about our house and wasglad that he finally had a chance to see itfor himself. “You are reading about this inthe building department?” I asked. “I hopethat’s a good thing,” I added, and he assuredme it was. “If you have any questionsabout electrical work just call me,” he saidand he gave me his card. ‘Senior ElectricalInspector, Charlotte County,’ the card read.

All the Charlotte county inspectors havebeen accommodating and professional andwilling to help us with the owner-builderbuilding process beyond my expectations. Itold Jim appreciated that. “We’d do thesame for anyone,” he said.

So next month we’ll hang some lightson the outside, wire the inside, insulate itand drywall one room. Then when that’sdone, we’re camping out. I’m not countingon the sheriff to watch our stuff any more.

Top Left: Bob trims a piece of brickmold, on thestairs, for the front door. Above: Stucco scaffolding,facia and new concrete steps to the kitchen. Below:The canal side of our new house. The house nextdoor has been boarded up since Charley.

P a g e 1 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E J u n e 2 0 0 6T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 3Electrical Connections ... If you think gas is expensive, wait till you price copperBy Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

This has been a month ofsmall projects and little detailscoupled with one single massiveundertaking. In the realm ofsmall projects, our stucco con-tractor Paul Hart sent a couple ofhis ‘guys’ back to finish up thestucco work on a few ornate deco-rative walls we built around ourswimming pool. We’ve decidednot to put up a new pool cage sothe two and three foot high walls,along with a full height wall sur-rounding the pool filter, neededstuccoing.

Where the main stucco crewworked with a mixer, these two‘grunts’ mixed stucco for two anda half days by hand on a sheet ofplywood with a shovel, but even-

tually they got the job done.Another detail was the clean

up. I had to get all the stuccowaste and other concrete debrisout front where we could scrape itinto a pile with a tractor and loadit up with a back hoe. Thirtythree wheelbarrows of concretelater it was all in the right placeand I went home that night tosoak in a hot tub. Next we wereready to move inside and attend tocaulking, foaming and then theelectrical work.

Bugs are a part of living inFlorida, but to what extent theyshare your accommodations is upto you. At this phase of construc-tion a hundred dollars worth ofexpandable foam and siliconecaulking goes a long way towards

keeping bugs fromgetting aroundbehind the finishedwalls.

We noticed theprime highwaywhere bugs cantravel was behindthe baseboard back-ing, below the wallinsulation. So wedrilled holes in theboard every 10inches all aroundthe perimeter wallsand filled thecrevices withexpandable foam.We ran a bead ofsilicone around thewindow frames andcaulked the perime-ter openings aswell. Then when allthe wiring was in Iwent to Auto Zoneand got a case ofrubberized automo-tive undercoatingand sprayed the the tie beam toseal the area on top of the rigidinsulation so no bugs could enterfrom above. Right before weinsulate the ceilings we’ll havethe whole house sprayed profes-sionally by an exterminator andbefore we drywall the interiorwalls we’ll spread borax on thefloor plates inside the walls. Youcan’t not have bugs come intoyour house in Florida, but youcan minimize their stay.

Small projects done, wemoved on to the electrical workwhich broke down into severaldistinct phases. First up was theboxes. Outlets at one foot abovethe floor, switches at four feet,we went around the house locat-ing the electrical boxes andinstalling them. In addition to theoutlets and switches (almost 70

boxes in all) we had fan boxesand ‘can lights’ to install in theceilings. It doesn’t sound likemuch... until you realize someboxes are recessed into the con-crete or saber-sawed into the 3/4inch plywood sub walls. Someare surface mounted on the studsand others require additional woodsupports to be cut and installedfirst. It took me almost a weekto get the house ‘boxed out.’Then it was on to the realwiring. We are using almost allnumber 12 wire, one step upfrom the code required number14. We ran 25 ‘home runs’ offeeder cable from the panel toeach area of the house.

Wire, copper wire, is going upin price faster than gasoline. A1,000 foot roll of wire that wasaround $150 a little more than ayear ago is now almost $360.You’d think 1,000 feet would beenough, but it was more like1,500 feet of wire when the jobwas done. That’s over a quartermile of wire in our house and itdoesn’t include phone or TVcable. Yikes!

Wiring isn’t all one size inany house. The wire that feedsthe bigger stuff like the 220 voltoven or the heat strip in the airconditioners needs to be heavier.

I’ve learned a lot about wireand the circuits required in a newhouse in the last month. Thingslike we needed two small appli-

ance circuits in the kitchen, aseparate circuit for the refrigera-tor, dishwasher, disposal oven andand kitchen lights. The smokedetectors needed to be on a loopso if one goes off they all go off(that uses a three wire cable) andall the bathroom outlets in thewhole house need to be on onecircuit and that must be a groundfault circuit as well. The bed-rooms have to be on a computer-chip arc-fault circuit to keep thechances of a fire starting in thebedroom area to a minimum andthere has to be an outside outleton the front side and the backside of every residence – the rea-soning being that most fires arestarted by extension cords andoutlets placed appropriately out-side the house eliminate the needfor a long extension cord on thehedge trimmer or weed eater.

We’ve got a dedicated circuitfor computers, an attic fan and acircuit for the davits and the dock.Then there are the phone linesand the cable for TV. Two weeksof wiring and I still wasn’t done.Wire for the main 200 amp serv-ice was the real surprise.

Wire sizes, like fishing hooks,are gauged in numbers The num-

ber- sized wire (like #14 or #12)goes up in size as the numbergets smaller (#12 is bigger than#14) until you get to #1 wire.Then like fish hooks they add aslash-zero and the wire gets big-ger. 1/0 is smaller than 2/0 wireand so forth. Our 200 amp serv-ice required 3/0 wire for the feedsand 2/0 for the neutral with a #6for the ground. Since the serviceneeds to be 220 volts, thatrequires two of the 3/0 wires. Bigwire is sold by the foot. 3/0 was$3.40 per foot, 2/0 was $2.75per foot and #6 was 80 cents afoot. Do the math. 90 feet fromthe meter to the panel and it

comes out to almost $1,000 forthe wire to feed the house. Add inthe inside wire and the switch andoutlet boxes and you’re over two-grand and that doesn’t include thehigh end switches and outlets wewant to use nor does it take intoaccount the $60 cable cutter, $30Klein pliers and a slew of connec-tors, pigtails, standoffs, a ripperand other ‘electrician stuff’ thatwill make it hard to keep theelectrical outlay for hard suppliesunder $3500 when the house isdone ...and that won’t include anyfixtures.

My neighbor Ronnie used tobe a commercial electrician inNew York, so Ronnie showed mehow to rig up the heavy 4-wireservice cables and pull themthrough the 2-inch conduit fromoutside to the panel. That took acouple of hours a 3/8 inch ropeand some special goop to makethe whole wire bundle slide. Nowthe wiring is almost done. All Ineed to do next is hook up thepanel and get my electricalinspection and then we’ll be onto insulation and drywall – andsometime, I’m going to get a dayoff.

Top Left: The wires feeding eachcircuit come to the breaker paneland each one is labeled. Middleabove. Attic wires (not yet stapleddown) run to the kitchen area.Above: Before pulling wires, everyreceptical box had to be mountedfirst.Throughout the house, wherethe circuits come in, each box iscoded red for future reference. We drilled the baseboard backing and filled the area behind with foam

P a g e 1 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E J u l y 2 0 0 6T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 4Insulation and Drywall ... we!re pushing hard to be in before August 13

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

We made good progress thispast month. It’s ten months intothe hard construction and maybe 5weeks to go. We got the electricdone, the insulation is all in andthe drywall is well underway.

In the interim, my friend PaulHart, who did the stucco work forus a month ago, came by with atractor and a laborer and spent ahalf-day cleaning up all the con-crete rubble around the front andnorth side of the house. Paul wentway beyond the call with this taskleaving not a single piece of bro-ken concrete in the dirt. I swear Icould plant flowers and they wouldgrow, but that’s just the kind ofguy Paul is. They don’t come anybetter. Again thanks.

You can add being and electri-cian to the list of trades that I don’twant to do for a living. Not thatit’s as tough as being a blockmason, but being an electrician,especially a one-man-band electri-cian - wiring a whole house alone- is a never ending job. Other’smore knowledgeable than I (likethe county’s electrical inspector,Jim Anderson) had indicated wiringmy own house wouldn’t go asquickly as I had predicted. Jim wasright. On the brighter side, mywiring work passed on the first goaround, on the dim side it took methree hard weeks to bring it to thatpoint. The wiring wasn’t hard, infact having been ‘weaned’ on thetiny wires of 12-volt aircraft radioswith 50 or 100 wires in a harness,

the big, fat10/2 and 12/2

wires used in the average house areeasier to see for a guy my age, butthey run so far and every runmeans going up and down the lad-der a dozen times. My legs arestronger, but my back is sore andI’m glad the wiring is done. I’mnot a better person for it, but wesaved about 10 grand.

The day after I passed my elec-trical inspection it was on to thenext task at hand - insulation.Now I may have been dumb aboutthe electrical work, but I’m notstupid when it comes to insula-tion. I don’t do insulation.Fiberglass, even in boats is notone of my favorite things, so Icalled around and wound up strik-ing a deal with Richard Droege atWest Coast Insulation in Sarasota- cold call, no referral. Richardcame over to the house, measuredit up and we agreed on a price.Then on schedule and as promisedhis crew showed up with a truck-load of the pink itchy stuff andwent to work. It took three guys 5hours to insulate the house and thegarage. It would have been quickerif I had not had them insulate themain interior walls separating theliving room from the guest bed-room and utility room and thewalls around and floor under theupstairs master bedroom. We havea separate AC unit for upstairs andwe want to keep things energy effi-cient.

Richard and I made small talkwhile his guys cut and stapled the‘batts. We put R 30 in the ceil-

ings, and R19 in the 2x6 wallsand under the bedroom. Thecounty requires every new home tosubmit professionally preparedenergy calculations along with thebuilding permit application. At theend of all the insulating there wasa county inspection to make surewe did what our calculations hadspecified. The whole focus is toreduce energy use. To that end, weput in a separate switch upstairs soat night, when we go to bed, wecan shut off the downstairs AC.We could have had a programmablethermostat downstairs, but how doyou know what time to program itfor? I figure when I go upstairs tohit the hay, I hit the switch ...what ever time it is.

The insulation crew was a pro-fessional team. One guy workedfrom a rolling scaffold, wheelinghimself around the room, handover hand by the ceiling trusses,stapling up four foot sections ofinsulation effortlessly. The otherguy, he introduced himself asPerro, (but isn’t perro Spanish fora dog, I asked? – No , Perro, hesaid ... OK Perro!?) was the teamleader. He worked on stilts, walk-ing around the house doing thetight spots up high that the rollingscaffold guy couldn’t get to. Hepeeled the paper backing off theinsulation around the can lights tokeep the danger from a fire down.The third ‘hombre’ was an allaround low man who did the wallsand filled in with what ever elseneeded doing. Everyone woremasks and they even left a fewmasks for me to wear – breathing

fiberglass is a bad thing.Insulation done, I vacuumed up

the pieces and walked around. Thehouse had taken on a different feel.Gone was the view looking up tothe silvery underside of the roof.Gone was that open feel. The insu-lation gave the house a homeyfeel, a secure personality.

Sound won’t travel in thishouse, which has its good pointsand, I just realized, its bad ones. IfI’m in the upstairs bedroom andwifey is in the kitchen at the otherend of the house will she hear mewhen I call out for a cold drink? Ithink there is still time to put inan intercom.

When the insulation was doneit was on to thedrywall.

Jim Stephensis my go-to guyon drywall. Jimis another fisher-man. I met himat a FlatsMasterstournament twomonths ago.He’s sponsoredby SeacoastSupply, thebiggest drywallsupplier in thearea. They toldme they are sell-ing 2,000,000square feet ofdrywall a monthin this area.

Jim has beena great help. He

arranged to get the drywall deliv-ered and for Robert Becerril’s dry-wall crew to hang it. The next daya truckload of drywall arrived andwith a little artful manipulationthe guys from Seacoast filled thedownstairs through the front doorand then squeezed their big truckdown the 9-foot alley on the northside and ‘boomed’ the ‘rock’ up tothe bedroom patio. It was a planwe had come up with the daybefore and it worked like a charm.Sometimes you get lucky!

Jack and the plumbers fromH2O plumbing snuck in and setthe tub in the upstairs bathroom.The hangers took three days andthen left at noon. The tapers camein an hour later and that’s wherewe are today. Next, Jim will spraythe texture on the walls and ceil-ings and then it’s on to the trim.We are getting closer!

P a g e 1 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E A u g u s t 2 0 0 6T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 5Texture, Paint and Cabinets ... we spend our first night in the new house.By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

We must be getting close because allmy work clothes are now covered withpaint instead of concrete. After we gotthe drywall hung and taped Jim Stevenscame in and texture-sprayed it. The dry-wall texture process is necessary tocover the taped seams of the individualdrywall boards hung in the interior. Inour case 212 boards, to be exact.

Texture spraying involves applyinga watery liquefied mixture of gypsumwith a high pressure air gun. It’s anoisy, messy process. The gun ‘scream-s’ loudly as the spray goes on. Hearingprotection is required. After coveringthe windows, Jim ‘fogged’ all our ceil-ings on the first day with a thin layerof white. Then he came back the nextday and sprayed over the walls andwhite ceiling with texture. The texturecoat goes on in a controlled splatter pat-tern - Jim then ‘knocks down’ (flattens)the splatter with a big acrylic paddle.The finished result is elegant. Jim’swork shows a soft subtle detail that hasalready inspired complimentary com-ments from other contractors. Our ceil-ings look like a finely detailed bride’sveil. The walls are equally perfect.When Jim finished the texture spray hecame back a third day and hand-sandedthe round corners and window open-ings. What a great job!

Then, the next day, my friend ‘AC-Mike’ came over to set the air condi-tioning units. Suddenly we were ‘underair.’ This was a big step forward. Wewere no longer sweating, in fact wewere shivering. Two tons upstairs, fourtons downstairs. On a ‘test-dive’ we gotthe temperature down to 65. Moistureran out of the condensation pipes in astream and the house started to dry out.

My fishin’ friend Mel who lives inMiami is in the barrel, drum and buck-et business. As it turns out, he supplies5-gallon pails to Povia Paint, in FortMyers. Mel hooked me up with theowner of Povia, and we cut a deal onpaint. I had a painter lined up who wasgoing to do the exterior but he flakedout. I knew I didn’t want to do the exte-rior myself – the AC had me spoiledalready, so while we were waiting onthe exterior, my wife Ellen, my friendBob and I started painting the interior.

One morning when I ran over toTrue Value Hardware for some moreroller covers I ran into Gary Arnold,owner of Spectrum Paint. Gary and Istruck up a conversation and then hefollowed me back to the house to checkit out. We cut a deal and two days laterGary and his crew started painting theexterior.

From the start I could see Gary’sguys were professional painters.

They’ve done this before. Gary’s pricewas fair and he got the job done onschedule. I’d recommend him to any-one. But there was one problem. Whenit was done, we hated the way the houselooked. What we thought would be asubtle brown turned out to look morelike a dirty diaper. It was nothing Garydid, we simply picked the wrong color.So we had Gary paint it all again. Thehouse took over 200 gallons in all!

While Gary was doing the outsidethe first time I started on the plugs andswitches for the interior electric - 83outlets and 36 switches. We used theLeviton ‘Vizia’ line of digital switchesthat not only dim the lights but fadethem out when you turn them off –expensive, but nice. I only hope theyhold up to the typical Florida powersurges we get. I put in a whole-housesurge protector just to be sure.

Long about the time I finishedthe electric, Jimmy Fry’s guysfrom Cabinet’s Plus in PuntaGorda arrived to install our cabi-netry. They too turned out to beprofessional-quality craftsmen,assembling the various modulesthat made up our kitchen and twobaths. Then the guy who does theCorian countertops came by andcut out cardboard templates for hisshop. The house is starting tocome together.

Our one little stumbling blockthis month (if you don’t countpainting the house the wrongcolor!) was the sewerline.

Jack from H2Oplumbing came outand dug up the yard tohook up the house tothe sewer, but hecould only find an old3-inch plastic line. Iwent up to CharlotteCounty Utilities andtalked to the lady behind the desk whotold me I’d need to hire an engineer andretain a licensed sewer contracting com-pany to design and install the 4-inch tapI was looking for. “Why don’t you justreduce it to three inches?” anotherworker suggested. Both were bad ideas.The lady handed me some paperworkthat she said could take four months toget approved. I asked to speak to one ofthe guys in the back.

To make a long story short, the guyin the back told me who to call and ina couple of days he had the problemsolved. Thank you Charlotte CountyUtilities.

So on Monday July 24, we took amattress over to the new house andspent the first night. It was one year tothe day from when we got our permit.

Photos from the Top:Jim Stevens sprays the drywall,then he !knocks it down and finallyJim and his wife Brenda clean up themess and scrape the floors.All clean and aired out, the houselooks good in the afternoon light.Cabinets installed, cardboard tem-plates for the countertops are cut out.Spectrum painters work the exteriorwhile my wife Ellen paints thesecond bedroom.Insert: OllieTipton and hiscrew plant thefirst of three 16-foot palm clus-ters to replacetrees Charleybroke off.

P a g e 1 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 6T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 6Floors and countertops ... and a plumbing problem I still don!t understandBy Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

“No, that’s not the way we do it. I wantto be paid in full before we finish yourjob. In fact, I want all the money before Ieven unload my truck.” The words cameas a surprise to me, words from RodBodell owner of H20 Plumbing inEnglewood. Rod and his partner JackGuiliano were already late in arriving toset the toilets, install the hot water heaterand ‘trim out’ the house. Jack had avoidedmy phone calls for a week. I chalked it upto him being busy in Englewood and ourjob being an inconvenience in PortCharlotte. But I thought Jack and I had agood relationship. He was introduced tome by a mutual friend and we had nomajor problems, I thought, to date. ButJack went partners with Rod after my jobgot started so I didn’t know Rod and I did-n’t understand why the demand to be paidup front. Our agreement was three draws,with payment on completion for eachstage. Piping in the underground for theslab, rouging in the pipes inside the houseand then the ‘trim out’ of toilets andsinks. The previous two stages had beenpaid on the day they were completed.“Why the change?” I asked Rod. That’s theway we do it,” he said. “We’ll that’s notwhat we agreed on,” I answered. “I’ll havethe cash in my pocket. I’ll show it to youwhen you arrive. I’ll even give you halfup front, but I want to see the toilets flushand feel the water get hot before you getthe last part.” I said. “Nope,” Rodanswered, “all or nothing.” “Then I guessyou’re not going to finish my job,” I said.

The next day I called BK plumbing inPort Charlotte and talked to Bob Konigthe owner. I never, met or talked to Bobbefore that call. “You live on BangsbergRoad?” Bob said, “I grew up onBangsberg. I used to live at 210,” he toldme - 210 was the house directly across thestreet from ours.

To make a long story short, Bob bailedus out. The next day he sent over a coupleof plumbers and they got to work. A wallhad to be cut open to fix a problem. Onetoilet was roughed in too close to the walland the flange had to be moved to make itfit. The stub for the hose fitting on theupstairs deck was too short to solder. Icalled Jack to talk with him about theproblems, but he never returned my call.

I didn’t get it until a couple of dayslater when another plumber shed somelight on the situation. “They took theirmoney out of the ‘front end’ of your job,”he said. “They might not have wanted tofinish your job. They might have wantedyou to refuse to pay them up front so theydidn’t have to come back.” Maybe, Ithought, but I didn’t want to believe that.

On the brighter side, there was a lot ofgood stuff last month. On any job, oncethe drywall is done things usually pick up

speed. Ours was no different. Jimmy Fryand his Cabinets Plus team got thekitchen and bathrooms looking great.Everything came out just as planned andtheir installer, Dave, went an extra milefitting the custom top crown mouldingthat took the cabinets right to the ceiling.

Next, the corian guys came to do thetops. At first there was a little glitch withthe kitchen top but after a trip back to the

factory it went on and looked great. Theyused a special vacuum clamp to draw thecountertop sections together, literallyseamlessly – an interesting procedure ifyou like building. In the baths we usedcorian tops as well so the sinks took aspecial overflow connection but once wegot that worked out all was well.

While Jimmy’s cabinet guys wereworking in one part of the house, DavidCarter showed up to do the tile work.David was a referral from my friend RalphAllen’s daughter Jan. Thank you, Jan.David was great. He and I talked fishingon an off throughout the week he workedon our house. David’s a tournamentangler, and a life long Florida boy whogrew up doing tile work. I don’t knowenough details of the tile business to tellyou the nuances of what David did, butwhen David was done it all came togethersquare. Showers, floors, walls, the laun-dry room. A few days later we went toSeahorse flooring in Murdock and boughtsome Impregnator 511 sealer and sealed allthe tile and grout. You wipe it on and buff

it off with a cleantowel. Do this ifyou have new tile.

Next up was thedownstairs woodfloor. We had woodin the old houseand we wantedwood not tile inthe new house aswell. We searchedaround

see facing page

COUNTER CLOCKWISE, FROM THE TOP:The kitchen looks good but the range is missing some parts and doesn!t work. The vacuum device used to pull the Corian countertop sections together and make an invisi-ble seam.FLOORING: MVP undercoat is applied to the floorFLOORING: Wood going down in the family roomFLOORING: Wood going down in the hallGutter workThe new rain barrel was full the first dayDavid Carter doing tile work in the master bath.

P a g e 1 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E O c t o b e r 2 0 0 6

T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 7Carpet and One New piece of Glass ... How much can it take?By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE editor

“No Way!” was the consensus of opin-ion when I told my friend Capt. Keith anda group of his friends about the anvil test.Earlier that day I had borrowed an anvilfrom Keith’s A-1 Auto Body and Sales inCharlotte Harbor and lugged it up to thesecond floor patio of our new PortCharlotte home. The house is on a 6 foothigh foundation, thanks to FEMA, so bythe time I balanced the anvil on the patiorail it was 22 feet above the ground. I hadconstructed a wooden frame 16 inchesabove the ground and placed a sheet of 1/4inch PGT laminated glass on the frame.PGT touts their hurricane resistant glassto withstand a 2x4 traveling at 60 mph,but how would it do with a 90 poundanvil dropped from 22 feet?

Several friends thought the idea wasludicrous, that I should start by droppingsmaller stuff on the glass. Sinkers, thenbigger sinkers, a hammer, a sledge, asmall cannonball, a bowling ball - therewere as many suggestions as there werepeople who I talked to. But an anvil -there is just something about an anvil.

The glass we used had come from ourFlorida room and our first repair. A monthbefore, one of our installers had hung alarge piece of brown paper over the eastfacing window to keep the morning sunout. Later when the paper was removedthere was a crack in the glass. Theinstaller owned up to the problem and lastweek we had a new piece of glassinstalled. This was roughly a 30 by 54inch piece of laminated glass that filledthe center opening between two casementwindows. The replacement process wasn’teasy.

The first problem was selecting aninstaller. PGT recommended several oftheir ‘certified’ installers and after callingaround we picked Quality Door in PortCharlotte. They came out and measuredand gave us a price; $750 installed. That’s$62.50 a square foot. It could be the mostexpensive square foot in the entire house!At those prices, homeowners might wantto install hurricane shutters just to protectthe expensive hurricane glass.

And if there is a big storm how longwill it take to get all the laminated glasschanged? A hurricane window will breakbut it’s still very hard to penetrate.

It took the two man crew about twohours to get the old glass out. PGTWinguard glass is secured by rubber edgedaluminum strips that go in with what iscalled (in automotive terms) an ‘interfer-ence’ fit. Interference fit means ‘wedged-in, really tight.’ And in case that’s notenough they also use a heavy bead of sil-icone.

“Sometimes the new glass breaks whenwe put it in,” the installer said, but luck-ily ours didn’t. The new glass in, sealed

with silicone, wedged with aluminum, theglass guys packed up their truck.

“Just a minute,” I said. Can I have theold glass? “Sure,” they said and theyleaned it against the side of the house.“What do you want it for?” one installerasked. “I want to do some tests,” I said.

With only the one piece of glass Iwanted to go for the gusto right off the bat– that’s where the anvil idea came in.

Up on the patio I lifted the anvil off therail and let it go. The sound it made hit-ting the glass, a loud dull thud that clear-ly said something had broken, caused theworkers on the house across the canal tolook up from their jobs.

Looking down from above, the concen-tric circles of the impact were what firstcaught my eye. As I followed the ringsmy eyes came to the center...and theanvil. Not having been secured to theframe, the glass had collapsed inward, butthe anvil hadn’t passed through. “I’d standbehind that glass in any hurricane,” mywife said when she saw what happened,“but I’d still duck if a cow was coming,”Capt. Keith later added!

This was far from a scientific test, butit still spoke volumes for the merits ofannealed and laminated glass. Annealingin case you don’t know, is the process ofheating and slow cooling glass whichgives it strength.

There were other house projects on ourlist last month as well.

We’re working on our right-of-wayimprovements. Doug Timmons of ShoreProtection (the local seawall and dockcompany) came to our rescue when theystopped by to cut our swale down to therequired contour and ordered some sod forour front yard. The sod hasn’t arrived yet,but we’re on the way to greenery one daysoon. Once again, thanks to Doug.

Inside the house, my neighbor Butchspent another Saturday mitering trim andbaseboards and then we caulked the nailholes and painted it all just ahead of thecarpet installers. We shopped around local-

ly for carpet and settled on Hessler Carpetand Tile in Punta Gorda to get the jobdone. The carpet was ordered on Thursdayand by the following Wednesday it was in.

In preparation for the carpet install wesealed all the plywood joints in the floorand had a water-resistant under carpet padinstalled so that if we ever leave anupstairs window open in a big rainstormmaybe we won’t ruin the ceiling in theroom below. Maybe.

The carpet guys arrived at 10 a.m. wentupstairs and came back down. “Boy it’shot up there” one fellow immediately said.It was. We intentionally left the upstairsair conditioning off the night before, thereason being; you want carpet installedhot so that when the room is later cooledoff the carpet will shrink a little tighter.

What a pleasure having carpet. We’vebeen living for the last three weeks likehippies from the 70s, with a mattress onthe plywood floor. I was reminded of howold I was getting every morning when Itried to crawl up to a standing position.Now we’re in high cotton. The carpetedfloor is like having a new pair of air-Nikesunder your feet, everywhere.

Our dog Molly came upstairs for thefirst time and sniffed her way around theperimeter of the room, covering everyinch of it. Then she lay down in the mid-dle of the floor and gave a big sigh ofrelief. She didn’t much like the old ply-wood floor either.

Outside we paintedthe front of the garageand up in the attic Ibegan to map out theplan to install theUnited Enertec ventand fan.

United Enertec’sunit is a beautifulpiece. We wantedsomething strongwhen it came to a ventfan, something to gowith the strength of

the rest of the house. A vent that failed ina hurricane would be a breach in theintegrity of the entire house. We foundnothing that looked stronger than this unitwhich is engineered to meet the MiamiDade hurricane codes. It’s welded 1/4 inchaluminum

continued on facing pageHouse continuedwith a weather tight motorized clamshelldoor on the back side. With a fire hose on

Top: I couldn!t photograph the anvil-drop sowe illustrated the path here in this photo.Below: The glass sen from above, beforeand after.

O c t o b e r 2 0 0 6 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E P a g e 1 5

it you might have a 1/4 ounce of watercome through in an hour. The fan will goin the north side gable, anchored in a cus-tom fabricated angle iron frame bolted tothe top of the tie beam. The only otherhole in the roof is a our 14 gauge goose-neck vent for the kitchen hood fan boltedto the roof trusses.

Now for a few updates: After talkingwith the county’s zoning administratorthe county has agreed to allow us to posta bond instead of pay a fee for our treerequirements. Previously we had been toldwe couldn’t move in until we either paid$500 or planted five trees. We agreed toplant the trees, but we couldn’t get it done

right away. The county bent over back-wards to give us some leeway to buy andinstall trees on our lot, which is what wewanted to do and still move in under atemporary C.O. That was good.

Last update: We received a letter from alaw firm in Englewood demanding wecease publishing any more informationabout our previous plumber and the prob-lems we had with him. The letter calledfor us to print a retraction.

Here’s my retraction: Jack you nolonger need to call me.

This 16-inch square United Enertech venthas a motorized weathertight clamshelldoor on the back side. A second duct anda housing for the vent-fan will be attachedin the attic. The wiring is set so the fan isregulated by a thermostat in the attic.When the fan comes on, the small motoron the vent opens the clamshell doors. The website is: www.unitedenertech.com

By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE Editor

My wife ran into a friend in town acouple of days ago. “How much longerare you going to write about thathouse? Aren’t you living there? Haven’tyou milked that story long enough?”This fellow never had a problem com-ing right to the point.

‘No’ is the answer, “...not quite yet.”This, it turns out is not just aboutbuilding a new house, these stories areabout rebuilding our lives. I’ll quitwhen things are ‘a little closer to nor-mal,’ but that hasn’t happened yet.

I can still dig pretty-much-anywhereon our property and find some smashedsmitherene of our old life. Not necessar-ily storm smashed stuff, although thereis still a lot of storm glass around inour landscaping; but I’ll find a bluepiece of tile from my old bathroom, apiece of wood from the parquet floor inthe living room, maybe a fleck of thegreen plaster from the living roomwalls. No one else would know what itwas, pieces crushed up in the demoli-tion and left now for future archaeolo-gists to rediscover. Or to be a futureoyster bar. But I know.

A lot has changed in our neighbor-hood. The biggest thing is the invasionof the ‘big houses.’ I call it an inva-sion, even though I’m one of theinvaders. FEMA made us do it. I wouldhave been very happy to roll the diceagain and still live at our old 7.5 footelevation. In the event of anotherCategory 4 storm, I’d still do the samething I did last time...get out!

But now we have a big cementhouse with a finished floor elevationthat is 5 feet higher than our old floor.If anything, these big new houses maygive us all a false sense of security.Time will tell, and I hope I still run.

What’s become evident, as newhouses sprout up, is the disparity inelevations when compared to the old

neighboring houses. In areas like theEdgewater corridor of Port Charlotte,where so many houses were torn down,the contrast is striking.

This neighborhood was hit withwhat residents all pretty much agreewas an outbreak of small tornadoes.Parts of the eye wall were danglingdown like dreadlocks. Finger-likeappendages touching one house, andskipping over the next.

Now the new houses are here, manywith steeply sloped tall metal roofs thatmagnify their already disproportionatesize.

Where once people in the olderhouses had a view out a side windowwith sunlight coming down from abovethere may now be a tall cement wall tocontend with and no sun at all.

I’ve already noticed the shadow fromour own second floor roof and how theystretch across the street and cover halfof our neighbor’s garage in the earlymorning. With all this new cement andthe new contours on the ground whatwill happen with the old drainage andrun-off when we have our next big bigrain event? Some of these new housesare simply built on mounds of dirt.What will wash away, or undermine andwhat will remain is also a question.How real estate prices will be effectedby the advent of the ‘Big Houses’ isanother important concern.

And the fabric of our neighborhoodhas changed as well. Gone now are thetravel trailers that people lived in forthe first two years. Where once we werea seamless knit of residents, today weare a patchwork of more transient types.There are houses for sale, vacant lotsfor sale, houses for rent, constructiontrailers, pick up trucks, heavy machin-ery, concrete pumpers, trash dumpsters,boats, motorhomes, generators running,nail guns hammering, still more pickup trucks and trailers.

Not much real construction inside

our house this month. Our GEMonagram high end stainless steel dish-washer, the one we bought from BillSmith Appliances, coughed up itspump after less than a month. The GEwashing machine squeaks like a subwaytrain and the service-rep tells me I haveto accept the noise. We narrowed thesource to a metal rod that rides on ametal plate. ‘Bad design’ I said. “Yeah itis,” the service guy concurred, “...butthat’s the way they make ‘em. Youcould put some lithium grease on it, ifyou want to,” he added.

So, new GE owners: – don’t forgetto grease your brand new GE washingmachine when you get it. Come on!

This is the holiday season. Thingscan’t end on a sour note. Not on holi-day. I look down our block and there areholiday lights wrapped around the palmtrees and icicles on some roofs. Thereare red bulbs in the bushes and outback, on the canal side, a neighboracross the water already has his poolcage decorated. In the next canal over,some neighbors are rigging up Santa ona sleigh for the mast of their sailboat.There are two lighted boat parades thismonth. I’m going to put our boat inthe water tonight and see what else islit up around in our neighborhood. Theholidays are here and this community isstill a great place for night boating atChristmas. I’m glad that hasn’tchanged.

This New House Part 17

The NeighborhoodInvasion of the !Big Houses”

Across our canal it!s easy to see how much bigger and higher the new houses are.

P a g e 2 8 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 6

P a g e 1 4 Wa t e r L I F E M A G A Z I N E N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 6T h i s N e w H o u s e P a r t 1 8One Deck Finished ... But too much else to be done before the first of the year.By Michael Hel lerWater LIFE Editor

My life is upside down. I’ve had amonth of eating and sleeping on a regu-lar schedule. The heavy lifting, climbingand push-push-push of the past year hascome to an end. My body doesn’t knowwhat to do. My tendons are in shock.

With all the local talk about increasedtaxes, millage and assessments we’reglad not to be done with our construc-tion.We are at a conveniently awkwardspot. We’ve moved into our new houseunder a temporary Certificate ofOccupancy but we don’t have our finalC.O because we’re missing hand rails atthe stairs, a few ceiling fans (which fig-ure into the energy calculations) and afew assorted light fixtures here and there.Our plans call for a small deck withsteps at the hall door to the yard and alarger one off the family room. Thebigger one is in progress, but the railingand the steps aren’t done. The smallerone has yet to be started. So I’mthinking...big taxes, a new assess-ment.... why rush?

It’s not realistic to get all this stuffdone by the first of the year anyway andif we roll over to the new year stillunder construction our taxes shouldreflect an unfinished house and should be(theoretically since this is still CharlotteCounty and anything can happen) basedonly on the land value of our property.Theoretically. In the meantime, I’m get-ting used to the deck with no railings. Ijust hope I don’t fall off it one night!

That deck was the sole big project ofthe month. It took almost $1000 worthof pressure treated lumber. It’s a frameand ledger of 2x10’s bolted to the wallwith 5/8 studs epoxied into the cementand stringers of 2x8’s spanning thelength. Then 2x6 decking. It was a sim-ple but tedious project, especially whenyou count the 700 screws, 50 pieces ofdecking and 7 big stringers that all hadto be carried in from the canal side gate.Luckily we had a gun to put all thescrews in.

The deck connects the breezeway out-side the kitchen with the dining room. Itreally opens up the flow of traffic – ifflow really matters in a house with twopeople and one dog.

Deck done, I hauled the scrap lumberout to the driveway. And then it struckme. We need a gate between the unat-tached garage and the wing wall off thehouse, why not use the remaining deckmaterial? I had just enough.

Sticking with the heavy-duty, over-built is better, theme of the wholehouse, a six foot high 4 foot wide 2x6and 2x8 gate would be just the ticket.

We stopped over at Crossties Farmand Garden supply out on Highway 17and bought a set of pasture gate hingeswith 3/4 inch galvanized threaded rodsand huge hinge pins and brackets. You’duse these on a 10 foot wide gate withno problem. I got out the hammer drilland punched some 3/4 inch holes in thesolid concrete wall and epoxied the studsin place and then cut and screwed a gatetogether while the epoxy was drying.

I built the gate right where it wouldhang so I’d only have to stand it up,jack it up to the hinges and drop it on.That was a good idea! That sucker of agate must weigh 200 pounds! My wifeuses two hands to open it. She says itshould not swing but instead shouldraise and lower on chains. We’ll call itthe ‘Castle Gate. All we need now is amoat,” she said. “It’s ridiculously over-built.” I took that as a compliment.

Inside, we stained the upstairs doorsand painted the jambs.

Downstairs we’ve been living with aconcrete floor in the utility room whichdoubles as the Water LIFE office so lastmonth when Home Depot had a 20-per-cent off sale on carpet we had the officedone. A steal at $230...installed.

The carpet installers showed up oneFriday morning and parked their truck inthe street. Then two men lugged a rollof carpet up to the house. I wasn’t pay-ing much attention when an agonizing‘Arragaaahhhhh!’ yell echoed through theneighborhood.

Immediately I knew what it was. Thesound of a grown man scared to death bya little wooden snake.

Back when we lived in New Mexicowe collected wood carvings made bylocal artisans. One of the popular itemsat the time were carved tree roots,cleaned up and painted to look like orna-mental snakes. Stores had them stock-piled by the hundreds, literally barrelsfull of snakes for sale.

We unpacked some boxes last monthand found one of our own carved woodensnakes. It was a little weathered and hadlost a most of its hand painted vibrantcoloring. Now it looked like a brownFlorida rattlesnake. Its head was archedup and its red painted mouth was open. Iput it on the front stoop, its bent bodycurled around a post. You can’t miss itwhen you come up the stairs. The carpet

guy will attest to that.Looking back, the poor carpet guy

could have dropped dead and it wouldhave been my fault, but in the end weall laughed it off.

Back outside the last project of themonth was my favorite.

We had the front yard sodded and theswale area along the street contoured andsodded as well. We didn’tneed a whole truckloadof sod, only four pallets.My friend Doug fromShore ProtectionSeawalls had some extrasod from a job he justfinished so I made thecall and he had his guyscome over and sod theyard. As you can see inthe photo above thegrass is green and theold bougenvilla we dugup from the back yard a year ago, leftlaying in the dirt for a month and thenreplanted, is doing well. You just can’tkill those suckers. And yes, I know I’mgoing to regret it when I have to prunethat thorny thing, but right now it’s inbloom and it looks great. Lastly, thecounty came by and passed our finalright-of-way inspection so when we getour bond money back I can buy a lawn-mower.