Olliesmom -- actually, I noticed a lot of natural light. It didn't feel closed in. The fact that all of the main rooms overlooked the courtyard made it feel connected to the outdoors. The courtyard seemed like the hub of the house. The POH house had cathedral ceilings in the family/kitchen and in the living room. The master bedroom had a cathedral ceiling. The dining room would have been cathedral, but they flattened it out at about 11' up and had an artist put a beautiful subtle design up there. If you walk through the plan: Living room -- large windows into the courtyard, there were small windows flanking the fireplace in the POH house. Whenever you have windows on two walls, you get more light. Dining room -- French doors onto lanai, large front windows. Kitchen/breakfast -- French doors opened onto the lanai. Windows over the sink on the opposite wall. Family room -- French doors opened onto the lani. Windows were put on the POH house on the opposite wall as there are no neighbors on that side of the 2 acre lot. The builder moved the fireplace to the inside wall of the POH house at the opposite end from the kitchen. That freed up the outside wall for larger windows. Master bedroom -- French door opened onto the lanai. Large bow window on the back. The only downside that I could see from building it as a one level house is that due to all of the cathedral ceilings, there was no attic space. There was a pull-down stair in the garage, so I believe that's where the only attic was located. Also, look for where you'd put a pantry (if needed) or a broom/vacuum utility closet. That's about the only thing that came to mind in my functional critique when walking through it. I noticed on the actual plan, there is a stairway up to the room above the garage. I didn't see a stairway, but I might have missed it in the POH house. There is a large closet off the foyer for storage. I did like the economy of that small foyer. It was enough to give you a transitional entrance, yet no space was wasted as in some foyers.

Hi Chisue, Glad you found the info useful. The $US 10,000 bid las time round I think puts you into the class two gen set area. These are good systems and popular where I live. Auto start and essentially auto everything. Good in that when the power goes out you do nothing and everything comes back on line in about 20 seconds. These units are lawn mower engine based. Typically air cooled and have two cylinders. They run fast at 3,600 rpm and are noisy. But this is not that big a deal in that this is for only a few days of running untill the power comes back on. The amount of power they can handle is about 10-12kw range. Some companies rate them higher like 15 kw, but I would say this is pushing it. Another something worth remembering is starting current. The other poster was correct in that the calculation is amount of power + some buffer. The some buffer is important. The reason why is that at start up, electric motors draw a lot more current. Can be up to 8 times as much. So to handle this surge you need a big generator head, more copper, and a heavier momentum in the engine. You can begin to see why heavier is better in generators. You have two sumps, I do not know how big these are, also the fridge. Immediately upon power restart this is when the power requirement is the largest. All your motors will be trying to start at the same time. You need to ensure that you have sufficient power to start these motors. At a guess, I think 10kw should be sufficient quite comfortably. A portable 6kw gen set may require some messing about with breakers. IE. you only start one motor at a time. Hence the power surge demand is spread out over time. The other useful thing to remember, or your electrician should know is that your generator set actually generates power as two phases. Huh? What is a phase? Imagine a smooth wave like line, in math it is a sine wave. Now imagine two of them. Just like waves on the ocean sometimes one wave is at a peak, and another wave is at a low point. Your generator will produce these two waves, two phases, and they will be perfectly out of phase with each other. One will be at the peak, while the other will be at the low point. OK now you are confused :) OK the simple thing to remember is that most things you want to power up will be a 120v one phase item. You need to try and evenly divide these items on each of the phases. Sometimes one thing is a power hungry one. This will use up a lot of power on one phase. You cannot borrow power from the other phase. Because you cannot borrow power, you have to size your generator accordingly. For example, a 12 kw generator can be thought of as two 6kw generators (one for each phase). Make sue that if you have a big power item, e.g. your cook top, that you have sufficient to power that one one of the phases. This phase thing can be confusing, and there are some items which actually do use both phases, hence what I have just said in the paragraph above may not be applicable. e.g. Some well pumps are two phased powered. Hence in general it is a good idea to have spare capacity in your generator set. This is expensive. How much spare capacity is difficult to guesstimate. My recommendation is to go for the more expensive class two gensets and stick with that. The reason why is that once you jump to class three the cost tends to almost double because of the genset weight on installation, and the genset cost itself. If you have some key big power items, e.g. you cook top that you must have running, then maybe consider a class three genset setup. From can see from your post, I do not see any big items that would reuire a class three. If you have central A/C and want to run that, then I would recommend a class three genset. May people go for a class two set up, and buy a window air conditioner which they can install and run for a few days while their central A/C is out. You also asked in your post how log you can run a genset for. Well so long as you top up the oil etc. at a shot you can run continuously untill your fuel runs out. Fuel is usually the limitation. If you are on mains gas, then almost indefinately. My genset burns at max rate such that a 500 gallon propane tank will be depleted in 5 days. Note propane tanks can only be filled to 80% capacity, so a 500 gallon tank by volume, but only 400 gallons actual LPG propane. Then your tank may not be full, say half full. So right now I have a two day burn reserve. The flip side is you do not have to run your genset 24 hours. In power outages, I only run for say a few hours for showers, heating no burst pipes etc. The rest of the time if I am out keep it shut off if I am out etc. You may want to run 24/7 however due to your sump pump and basement flooding risk. Hope this is useful, and you are not falling asleep .... All the best, Mike.

aec-well yes but since our door is such an annoyance we don't even USE it and actually walk A LOT further than what that set up proposed - AND with a solid wall vs a door it will be quieter. I like that if the light happens to even accidentally get flipped on and the door is open it will not shine on your face or even on your bed. Bonus points for that. Flipping the bed would make a huge difference and I'd say you could easy keep your layout with bath access where you have it. Plus - think about daytime and you want to use your bathroom. The access is convenient. You may use it much more frequently during the waking hours than at night and at night getting woke up is more critical of an issue to me than being the one awake and using the bathroom. For reference - this is how ours is and the bathroom door off the bedroom is closed nearly 100% of the time. I nearly always walk through the laundry to access it - day or night. Check out that walk in the middle of the night. Crazy! I have to add that I do love my closet and it's access to the laundry room and being able to use both without going into the bedroom if hubby is sleeping (2nd shifter). But I'd definitely re-think the bath entry and bed placement. Right now ours is on the wall with the 3 windows and you can see the opposite wall has the 2 mulled together. I checked last night and our headboard would cover over half the window so I don't think I can reposition the bed. :( JMO - your lifestyle may be completely different. And you may be one of those people that can sleep through anything too so it may not be a bother at all.

You can tie into the existing vent anywhere above the other active drain lines so it is not a wet vent. You dont need a new vent all the way to the roof. There is a limit on fixtures based on the vent size, but meeting that in residential is hard. I guess call them and ask if you could speak to the inspector and query if it is ok to make that modification to the plans before you start. If you are dealing with cast, rent a chain breaker. Otherwise, angle grinder with metal cutoff wheel works. If pipe is not in great condition the chain breaker can crush it instead of leaving a nice edge to work with. If the pipe is in good condition you will appreciate the chain breaker, it quickly and easily makes a nice clean break. Try to replace anything that looks not in good condition while the floor is opened up. When in doubt with a connection, or having trouble, fernco boots are your friend. These are what you use to connect PVC and cast. They can also be used to connect PVC and PVC if you had to cut something and dont have space for a normal coupling. With the concrete work, for sure rent a demo hammer. Take into consideration the weight of the unit and getting it down/up the stairs. I rented the 20 lb hammer and that did the trick for me (approx 4" thick slab). Trying to lift an 80 lb hammer for a long time is rough. The metal strapping news is a newer revelation, over the years people have noticed wear on the PVC and are now seeing its the strapping. There is woven strapping that works well and doesnt get brittle like plastic strapping.