Category: Infrastructure

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Glad That Is Over

The time to replace building sewer has come; most of the floor sinks & floor drains don’t actually drain. I had never used a roadway walk behind saw before. Hopefully never again! The sonic force is nuts. Payment is by day plus millimeter of blade use. Thankfully the cuts were do-able in a day, and as no one wrote down the blade diameter there was no extra charge for any excessive use which may or may not have actually taken place. As far as I am concerned this tool can stay at the rental shop henceforth. The bathrooms are luckily too small for such a saw. The rental place has a handheld model which can’t be set down while running. Bent over indoors holding a gas motor spinning a disk which can cut through seemingly anything? At the moment I choose the tranquility of a jack hammer.

Looking east. Pizza oven covered in white tarp; ice machine in blue.
Looking east showing cutout to DW floor sink.
Looking west. Want the old forced air heater in the upper right corner?
Headed NE to the DW floor sink. That is the north wall.
Looking west. Red door is into mechanical room. To the left will be the walk in fridge and freezer.
The near white lines are for the triple sink floor sink; the lines going towards the covered pizza oven are for a handwashing sink.
Pictures or it didn’t happen.
An aqueous affair indeed. Tons of water. So much water. Gallons and gallons. Sopping wet. Glad it is shoulder season.
Those buckets and pail are for exhuming water from the not functioning floor sink.
Eventually the water seeped through the cuts, suggesting complete cuts which are good news for taking the debris out.
The walk in fridge & freezer location. Notice all the power cords are off the ground. The panel was off for the entire time and when cutting here the building main too.
The cut path also prepares for mitigating the damaged floor . The cut continues behind me to get to the Chocolate Studio.
Standing on something dry to turn the power back on.
Notice the framed doorway to the Chocolate Studio just to the left of the semi tarped pizza oven.
Missing tile and sloping floors make for adversity.
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Prefer Clean?

The Sage came with several top-quality appliances. One of them is the Rancilio MD80 Coffee Grinder. This grinder can pump out 7 lbs. of coffee per hour! It took longer than that to clean it let me tell you. Thankfully I found a video showing the process. It is anybody’s guess how old the scraped off goop truly was.

Before. Looks like the yearly cleaning has been put off a few times.
During. See the cleaned parts peeking in at the top of the image?
Detritus.

It is exciting making the equipment pristine once again. This grinder is the first appliance to be made shiny and not the least filthy of the bunch by far.

Like having food and drink prepared with clean equipment? We are working hard to make it happen. Please consider donating to support the re-invention of the Sage so progress doesn’t stop.

The finished product. I used the vodka in the upper right of the image to help detach the crud; also notice some of the tools needed for the operation to the left of the unit.
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Sweating

Under the mezzanine looking NW. This is where the bar stroage room was. The women’s restroom was on the other side of the green and white wall. Through the opening is the 2 Bedroom apartment whose kitchen is fed by these lines.

These days it has been cutting and soldering to get water from the mechanical room south. So far we have made it into where the bakery used to be with a 3/4″ for hot and one for cold as well as the 1/2″ return line for the recirculation loop. All water in copper will be filtered. This feeds the commercial restrooms, both apartments, the bar, the ice machine and clothes washing machine.

Not yet in place is the 3/4″ pex for carrying cold water to the toilets and handwash sinks. The commercial kitchen is going to have its own on demand water heater fed by its own 3/4″ pex whose water will not be filtered. There will be spigots in the different sections of the kitchen with filtered water, as you no doubt guess, serviced by copper pipe.

You can see the 3/4″ main throughfare running left-right. The nearest pipe goes to the upstairs apartment and the lowest to the 2 Bedroom bathroom.
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Anode Rods

We’ve started on reinstalling the 70-gallon water heater in the new mechanical room. This same heater will be part of the hydronic heating system via a water-to-water heat exchanger. Note the socket needed to remove the old and add the new was 1 1/16”.

Note there are 2 anode rods in the photo. I hope yours are in better shape than what was replaced.

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Perspective

We continue to narrow down choices on what is going where. Next up is a meeting with the electric company to see just what is available. Current service is 200A, the transformer has 400A. EV chargers and 180 degree dishwashers amperage totals add up fast.

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The Kitchen Takes Shape

Neika is here!!!!! We are so happy our friend from totally back in the day is in town to share in the Sage’s makeover and add her marvelosity. Neika brings experience as an Executive Chef along with other superpowers including the ability to facilitate a project or process getting from here to there. She arrived on the evening of March 17 and we presented The Plan to Michael Bertin on March 21 at 2PM. We were back and forth, in and out, marking and moving all weekend. Total fun.

Neika showing maximum focus on The Plan. For the record, the printout is 1/4″ = 1′; notice the ruler.

And so with further ado and no gilding the lilly, check out the kitchen plan!! We had such a great time. In this masterpiece one can find the Chocolate Studio, Bakery, Coffee/Gelato/Soda Fountain, Bench seating in the old office, the to be build central table, stairs to the Mezzanine, Hot Food Prep, Cold Food Prep, Wash Room, Walk In Refrigerator & Freezer, Waldo, Mop Sink, 4 Hand Wash Sinks, a Vegetable Wash Station, Hot and Cold Pickup Locations, 4 Speed Racks, the Masonry Heater, Dry Storage (with the standalone refrigerators), and, at long last, where the Mechanical Room will be.

Inventory is well underway, appliances are being reviewed and given attention, and what is needed being itemized. We may have located a combi oven in Taos. Fingers crossed.

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Strong Bones

We are moving along. The photos below show the continuing work on the mezzanine. Yesterday materials arrived for the west side of the roof extension which is going to have a lower ceiling than the mezzanine.

These TJIs are to support the stack of OSB seen below them. A commercial floor must be rated to support 100 lbs./sq ft while residential has a 40 lb./sq ft requirement; these TJIs are thus 12″ on center. Polish those dancing shoes and let’s go!!
Another view of the mezzanine floor.
Looking up from the Tiki Bar. Apartment is on the other side of the wall supporting the ladder. The LVL is the floor/ceiling of the residential side, bathrooms and this space. The upper right corner has the last of the mezzanine TJIs.
Looking east at the same wall inside the apartment still supporting the same ladder.

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Coming and Going

Here are recent perspectives on the interior demo state. We are closing in on the end. One of the last areas is removing the rest of the old roof seen on the left in the lower of the two photos. At the moment the bare 2x are visible as the drywall and insulation have been taken out. The plywood path seen in the same photo on the floor covers the mostly filled trench containing the incoming air duct for the masonry heater which can be seen holding up one pair of the scaffolding wheels.

Looking east from the top of the spiral staircase.
Looking west standing between the inner doors.
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Getting Ready for The Pour

Making a stable spot for the masonry heater.
Looking east. Notice the walls dividing what was the office from the kitchen and dining room are gone. We aim to have one level floor based off of the kitchen, the only floor not changing. The plan is to have 2″ of rigid foam insulation and then a 4″ slab. Even with the bricks exhumed that’ll mean 4-5″ of dirt to be removed. The Green Room is fortunately lower though still needs a treatment.
Closeup of the 2″x15″ air intake. The firebox door will be right above it. The wood frame will be removed once the foundation has set.