Preparing for 5 Inspections

Rough-ins may be complete now, but nothing gets covered until the city has seen it. Plumbing, mechanical, and electrical are each inspected separately, and all three must pass before the framing inspection can happen. Framing has to pass before insulation goes in, and insulation is inspected before the first sheet of drywall goes up. That’s five inspections, in a fixed order, on the city’s calendar rather than ours. Inspectors have full schedules, holidays, and busy seasons, so our project manager builds a cushion into this part of the schedule from the start.

Smooth inspections depend on what happens long before an inspector arrives. We work with trade partners we trust. Plus, our project manager is on site through every phase, fielding questions, solving problems as needed, and making sure each crew understands what success looks like for every job. When questions do come up, like whether an electrical line can run through a certain joist, either side raises a hand, and they solve it together.

Before insulation, our project managers also walk each other’s jobs. A second set of experienced eyes can spot small adjustments, like a wall that should be furred out, while they’re still easy to make. For our clients, this means the systems behind their walls have been checked by the trades that installed them, our team, and the city before drywall finally encloses the home again.

There’s more than one way to insulate a wall, and we walked our clients through the main options. Fiberglass batt is the most economical. Mineral wool resists moisture and has a high R-value, a measure of how well a material slows the flow of heat, but it’s slower to cut and fit. Spray foam goes in quickly once the crew is set up, fits into every crevice, and has excellent R-value.

For the exterior walls of a 1931 house that had been facing Minnesota winters with just newspaper, spray foam was the right call. It expanded to fill the gaps around old framing, wiring, and pipes that batt insulation wouldn’t have reached, especially at the entry.

The vault discovered above the front door during demolition was part of the same uninsulated space that kept the closet so cold. Now it’s foamed to its peak, so the coldest spot in the house is now one of its best-protected.

Not every wall needs the same treatment. We’re less concerned about heat loss in an interior wall, so insulation in these cases is typically about sound rather than temperature. Where we insulated interior walls on this project, we used fiberglass batt, which dampens sound between rooms at a lower cost than spray foam would.

The new insulation finishes a job our clients started more than 10 years ago, when they replaced the main-level windows. With those windows, new sheathing in areas, new exterior doors, and insulation improvements, the house can finally hold onto the heat its new radiators produce and the cool air from the high-velocity system they decided to keep.

Before the drywall crew began, our project manager walked the house with them to set expectations, like where corners should get metal corner bead, which openings would be cased with trim, and which transitions needed extra care. Weather was part of that conversation too, since joint compound dries based on the air around it. With no heating or cooling running in the house mid-remodel, we always prepared with dehumidifiers on humid days and portable heaters for potentially cold ones.

Once drywall was done and primed, the rooms actually felt like rooms again. For the first time since demolition, our clients could walk the main level and see the open plan they’d been imagining, with real walls and real openings instead of studs.