When I got to the site, Jim had the other connection piece mounted to hold the piece that allows the Pex to come out of the concrete and to the manifold.
However, he discovered that the Pex connectors that he picked up the other day were the wrong thing - he had asked for crimp-style fittings and they gave him compression fittings. So he called and explained and they said they would have the correct parts at the counter. So back I drove to pick them up. When I got there, the order that they had for me was only the crimp rings - which Jim had told me he didn't need. That required me to go back and talk to a salesman who had to look through the Pex book and figure out what we needed. Jim had given me a sample which I gave this guy and told him that's what we needed except for 3/4" instead of 1/2". He finally wrote up the order, I went to the counter and picked it up and drove back to the site. Only to find when I gave the bag to Jim that they were still compression fittings and 1/2" to boot! Unbelievable! (Side note - Fran, tell Neil that Jim misses him and his advice, especially on days like this!)
Jim isn't 100% sure that he's going to connect everything up at this point, so he decided to take everything home and he may just order the fittings he needs online. Frustrating!
However, while I was driving all over the North Country, Jim got the new Pex roll out and started laying the last circuit. Because this was a smaller roll, he was able to figure out a better way to unroll it and it made laying it down easier, although it's still a lot of work.
Unrolling the Pex...
...and laying it out.
The Pex staples worked really well - we started off by putting them on all the bends. They're hard on your fingers to push in but they do the job to hold everything secure.
Finishing the end of the last circuit!
Pex is all laid out!
All the tubes organized and ready to be connected to the manifold.
Jim also started working on some of the details for the concrete pour - this piece of steel makes a perfect concrete form.
We had set an appointment with the building inspector to come at 2:00 for our pre-concrete pour inspection. As is typical, he spent probably 45 minutes with us but it was all just looking at everything that we had done because he's interested and hasn't seen so much of the materials and methods Jim is using. He kept saying how nice all the steel framing was, the rafters, and how great everything looked. Our kind of inspector! So we're all set to go - except for a concrete date.
After the inspector left, we continued finishing up details. I put the rest of the staples in on the long runs and used up our entire box of 300! So we'll probably get more staples to finish. Jim is sure that everything is secure and wouldn't be a problem but better safe than sorry when it comes to concrete.
We also got the laser level out again and marked the auto bay with the same lines for the concrete as in the rest of the area. However, depending on how Jim decides to do the slope, we may raise our lines 1/2" - so he'll decide and we'll strike new chalk lines tomorrow.
So...a great day! Another inspection in the books and all the Pex is down!
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