Crack Kills

On the 7th, as promised, the window contractor and two Tesla drywall guys showed up to take out the octagonal window and replace it with a smaller one within the same hole but shifted upwards. They also had a solar installer out on the roof; he took some of the siding off around the window and put the remaining roof tiles on the house. So now all our roof tiles are officially done!

Of course, we can’t turn them on yet. Zuky at Tesla emailed the week before last to say that she had followed up with our city utility company about our PTO paperwork and found out that the person she had submitted it to had quit their job without passing their workload on to anyone else. Zuky got in touch with that person’s manager and got the paperwork moving again; she also made the case that since they dropped the ball they should move our paperwork to the head of the queue.

Anyway, back to what happened to the window. The window guy swapped out the window pretty fast, blocking in the crescent-shaped lower part of the window hole with 2x4s, and then headed out. The drywall guys then pieced together odd shapes of drywall to cover the blocking and filled in drywall mud between the drywall, sanding it all to a smooth finish. Then they had to wait for the mud to dry before they could put the moulding back on, but by the end of the day it still wasn’t dry so they said they would need to come back the following week. Since I had things I needed to get done ASAP at work I scheduled them to come on Friday the 16th. Meanwhile, the roofer guy put a sheet of Tyvek over the window area to keep the water out. (As it turns out, the siding is still on order so the Tyvek sheet is also covering the area where siding was removed and not yet replaced.)

They came back on the 16th and put on the moulding, then filled the uneven section between the moulding and the window casing with drywall mud. Again the drywall mud was taking a long time to dry so one drywall dude left while the other one stayed. He decided to pull out his heat gun and set it on a stand to blow superheated air on the drywall mud right next to the window and left it there for a while.

Those of you who know a thing or two about thermodynamics can probably guess what happened next. CRACK! The glass on one side of the window expanded while the glass on the other side didn’t, and the pressure exerted by the vacuum between the panes did the rest. The window that took a month or two to order and receive now has a big crack right across the middle.

The drywall guy was very apologetic. Derrick arranged for a glass company to come out and see if they can replace just the vacuum-sealed panes of glass rather than having to order a whole new window and take the wall apart to swap it. The glass company sent somebody out this past Wednesday to take measurements and use a neat gizmo that can tell how thick the glass was and what kind of low-energy coating was on it. He took the measurements back to their shop and now they’re supposed to be getting back to Derrick with a quote. I had expressed that I wasn’t looking forward to taking another day off, so Derrick said he would see if they could get the glass company to come out on a weekend even if it winds up costing Tesla more.

So, that’s the latest — still waiting on the window, and still waiting on the PTO!