900 Sq. ft Earth Bermed Passive Solar Home in Upstate NY

Started by speedfunk, November 22, 2008, 11:50:08 PM

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speedfunk

Thanks Glenn and Soomb. 

Since the above pictures we ditched around the cul-de-sac to stop the run off from the hill.  Water is coming into the hole we dug for the foundation, which has me mildly concerned.  Most of it looks like run off from above which has seeped down and is coming out of the rear foundation wall above 4' ->6 below rear wall grade.  We can fix that. So It doesn't look like we hit any springs which is good.  The plan is to cut a very deep trench above and arouind the house.  Line it with either rubber sheet or heavy plastic.  This in addition to the plastic and insulation that will go out 20' in every direction from the house. 

Through out the digging process I was surprised ,as well as Tim and VInny ( excavation crew) that there were almost no rocks of a large size.  We hit one that was 4'x4' x 1' thick and other then that nothing even close.   This was nice b/c the crew moved dirt quickly.  The cost was a bit over what I was guessing it would be (500 over) for the work on the new land.  All though with the amount of variables and the custom requests it's really impossible to get it exactly right.  I estimated pretty damn close :)

We also cleaned up the driveway quite a bit and re-ditched it , it's packing really nice  and will make an amazing driveway that should not "eat" the crushed stone year after year. 

So electric is next.  Our local electric supply co was def the place to go.  I'm not sure how their prices compared to others, but the knowledge they had was very very helpful.  We managed to get all the materials deb mentioned above.  The real nice thing is that ever elbow and detail that I might have missed that had and we put it together.  So my thought now is that it's like a "kit" just assemble.  I'm sure there might be a few things missing but missing things little parts is time consuming to run and get.  Now , special order the direct burial phone cable and then backfill.  Backfill we will too, Tim did not have a small bucket when he ditched for the conduit and cables.  So it's wide and will be a good work out by hand.  it runs approx 220 foot to the meter pedestal, then another 60 foot to the house.  There will be a main breaker that will service future additons of a shed or shop and wind/solar net metering setups.   The section that runs from the house from the meter will not be run till the very end , after back filling the foundation.  By getting a permit before we have the electric installed, we saved a few bucks compared to installing "temp" service (I believe around 200 beans).   

The digging was pretty exciting for us.  The clearing of tree's was alot of me chainsawing while the guys dug roots and the dozer pushed them over the bank.  We managed to get ALOT of firewood though!!  It takes approx 2-3 years from enough energy to be store in the earth before it reaches the point where its up to comfortable interior temp.  So this would will go a long way towards helping us heat this place on a very tight budget.  Descions are made quickly sometimes b/c of not wanting to hold them up.  I tend to be more slow to my approach on decisions and try to think about all the factors.  We really can't be happier, I just like watching that machine thinking how many hours it would take me to do the same thing.  Dirt work is going to be a large part of the cost of this house so good decisions will save us jingle.   8)

Speaking of money.  We had some work also done on our Firstday cottage driveway which came to around 2300 dollars.  So we have around 4 grand in cash (after the electric supplies) for the next part of the building process.  So were a bit tight, but being that were going to be going at a slower pace I don't belive this will be a problem.  We are able to put away 1700 each month until july when it drops to 850 a month.  We are going to really try to NOT take a home equity on our firstday cottage. 

The concrete work for all the footers/walls up to the roof line I estimate at 2250-2750.  We have a good portion of the windows all ready!  But will have to buy 3-5 more say for an additional 700-800 dollars?  So this puts us at roughly 4 grand!  Perfect b/c by the time we are ready to roof this bad ass shelter we will have more saved!  The goal is to back fill the house by fall, which seems very achievable but we do have alot of stuff going on so we are trying to be realistic.  When winter comes we will have the house dryed in and can work on the interior all winter , then spring do final dirtwork and septic and hopefully move in mid summer.  We will also list our house for sale in the spring of next year.  That's the plan anway... d*



glenn kangiser

Sounds good.  We'll be looking forward to seeing your progress.
"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

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speedfunk

#52
We've been working on electric lately.   8)

Here is Scooby hauling the 300' spool of service cable and 2" conduit.



Setup the spool with a piece of rebar through the middle.  From this vantage point the electric goes downhill.



Once the Wire had been pulled out and set in ditch each piece of conduit was added and run down the wire until the bottom.  The service wire is now completely enclosed and partially buried.


I built this pedestal from pressure treated 4x4 x 12' and 1"x6" 's





Installed meter box


Installed main Breaker panel that will go to sub panels in the house and eventually garage/shed/workshop/temple of mountain worship /etc



Close up of the meter panel


Close up of main breaker distro panel.  This is not completely done yet.  I need to add the grounding rod loop to the grounding bar and add a breaker for an outlet (attached to pedestal) so we can have electric on site while building.



that is it for now.  I'm sure deb will come in with some money details (hopefully if were lucky :)



Bishopknight

Jeff and Deb,

Great work so far! I'm about to trench for my power lines and its definitely a tough task. My hats off to you both!

Even though I trenched a moat around my earth berm house because of the water, my slab corners still get wet. I don't know if it will go away either. Hopefully when I waterproof and put drain pipe in around the exterior, it will shore that up but i'm on a sand pad so its not an issue, but could be with earth bermed up against it.

Btw, I can view your pics from work!  ;D

glenn kangiser

BK, possible thimble board - or Mira Drain on the outside draining to a
French drain below the floor grade could help?

"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.


speedfunk

BK:  Thanks man, I kind of wish sometimes we did what you did and bought a backhoe.  We really considered it , but the 20G was to much for us to come up with.   You will have no problem it should go nicely with an appropriate sized bucket lol.

I got a hold of Tim (excavator dude) and he's going to stop over and help fill in the trench when we are ready.  If that did not work out I was going to rent one of those walk behind bucket loader (dingo).  Filling it by hand was the original plan but I don't want to burn out me or deb when a $150 should take care of it.  Thats 15 hours at 10/hr to fill the hole by hand.  I know that it would take alot longer so It makes more sense to use big machine :)

Interesting, so you saying you have moat at the same elevation level as the slab but behind the slab?  That's what I'm thinking of doing also.  I'm not sure what glenn is describing besides french drain, time to google!!!! 

The weather also looks like it will be nice this weekend.  Deb and I both have friday off and I don't have any shows this weekend!  We are hoping to get some things done.



Bishopknight

#56
The Mira Drain is intreguing, I'm going to find out some costs for it, thanks Glenn.

I'll definitely be doing something french drain related with the moat. Its critical that I keep the moat bed lower than my foundation.

To answer your question,  yes, the moat behind my house connects to my driveway drainage and culvert. It drains quite a bit of water, especially this time of year.


glenn kangiser

The French drain would be a ditch dug lower than your slab - six inches to a foot or so should do - then perforated drain pipe draining from the back to the sides and down hill to the front - then to daylight at a lower elevation.  It is covered with drain rock - same as a leach field, and geotextile fabric such as weedstop if nothing else around to keep the dirt from plugging the drain rock.  The Mira Drain has geotex on the outside and provides a fast drain of water down to the French drain before it gets to build up on your wall.







The perforated pipe is somewhere down there under that rock and going off to the right. 

Looking again - that is it in a black geotex sock - it came that way - or you can buy a sock to put over it or you can put the geotex over the rock or all around the outside of it. 
"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.

Redoverfarm

In cold weather climates we usually put the french drain below the frost /freeze depth.  Most people put the drain system on top of the footing.  I have heard that the proper location is below the footing top but that usually means having to either form up the footing on one side or dig beside it once it is poured.  By placing it beside the footing it can be dug on grade for drainage.  Sitting it on top unless you build up the footing with gravel it will be basicly flat with no grade for drainage.


Bishopknight

Thanks Glenn and John,

I was actually thinking about how I would implement my french drain. I'd knew about the perf pipe and socks, but didnt know french drains did that. I'll just look for the largest pipe available that can do it.

glenn kangiser

The rock also carries the water and keeps it from getting trapped as soil would . it will move water as the pipe.  Below finished floor and angled toward down hill to drain away helps keep all dry.
"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.

speedfunk

Today deb and I got a bit more done at the land.

Here is Deb Laying the cable and the telephone in the trench!



Deb then carefully covers the cables with cleanISH dirt.  Avoiding most sharp rocks and large ones that might heave when frozen



Here Deb is covering the 2 inches of dirt on the cable with old rugs to protect it when it's backfilled.



I pounded in the other grounding rod and attached them with a cooper cable .  Then attached that to grounding bar in distro panel.



We added one Ground Fault Interrupt outlet to work from.  Basically the entire electric is done.  The only thing I need to do (besides call electric inspector) is to tighten the main power service cables in the meter panel.  There is a large hex that I don't have so I'll need to borrow one!   :P  



So after each of was done with our seperate jobs , we needed to unwind and do something nice and chill together.  So we decided to move the two steel culverts from the top part of our land to the ditch so they can be filled over when Tim comes to backfill electric trench.   There's no way around it ...these are ****ing heavy.  Deb and I of course are built, diesel and all.  We did manage to get them on the trailer though using a 3 ton jack and blocks and gradually moving the trailer, WOOHOO!!!  It was quite the tag team approach!

Here are the 2 of them set where the driveway will eventually go up to the house.

That is all for now!  

drainl

Time to add up the receipts!   :(

We're wrapping up our electric work, so everything we've bought recently is for that.

300' Direct Burial Telephone          $126.90
2-8' 5/8 Copper Grounding Rod      $ 23.86
3-5/8 Ground Rod Clamp                $ 8.94
2- 5/4x6x12 PT boards                 $15.94
2-4x4x12 PT posts                       $27.94
30' 4 stranded bare copper            $34.50
Dielectric Tune-up Grease               $6.47
Miscellaneous/Tax/Screws             $35.45
15amp breaker                              $4.85

The totals...
Electric     $1413.95
Miscellaneous $69.81
Septic       $1000.00
Site Work   $4671.00

Total $7,154.76

Next up is the footers!  We hope to pick up the materials for them this week after we review the plans.  We're going to wrap the form wood in plastic and try to reuse it for our roof.  It should work out well. 

considerations



Bishopknight

Hi Jeff and Deb,

Outstanding job!

What kind of wire was the telephone wire you run from the street to the house? I need to get some...

About the footers. Thats a good idea with the plastic. Are you going to insulate the slab? If you go with XPS, I would still recommend a 6 mil vapor barrier in addition to the insulation. Thats one thing i would change if I could redo things. Also, for the tub knockout, I didnt know they sold these plastic barrel things, which you may want to consider. The wooden box works fine.

As far as leveling the foundation and footers yourself. The best advice I can give you is to have a load of sand delivered for easy leveling. Use some straight 16 footers and lay them on the tamped sand to get it as close to level as possible. Then go about assembling your form boards into a big rectangle and use masons string and string levels on nails attached to the form boards. ( buy a big sledgehammer too ). If you're going to go 4' ft underground for the south facing side, then setup the form boards first so you know precisely where to dig, then dig it. If you do the digging before the boards, you'll most certainly double your manual shoveling work.

If you rent a plate compactor, make sure you use lots of water or it wont compact :)

If I think of anything else, I'll let you know :)


speedfunk

So here we are now.  This was from early last week.

Starting by staking out the middle of the block wall.


This shows the water thats getting to the back of where the foundation.  It also shows the rear wall. We ditched this so this water now draings AROUND the house area.   The house is actually set back father and over toward the west more then originally planned.  We have to fit the septic in on the southern, eastern corner of lot.  We need as much room as possible for leech field as it's pretty tight.


We then took the other day to plant 10 blueberry bushes.  Of course finding a good earth that won't be re-dug up again was difficult.  We planted in a spot where the dozer had pushed a bunch of dirt and trees over the edge.


Here's a pic of the outside of the form work.  We originally were going to use form-a-drain plastic forms that stay in place and also act as a footer drain.  However, the cost was a 1000 dollars for the setup vs. 150 (I think) for the 2x8's which will re-use in our bedroom and in the bathroom for framing.  The plastic was 30 bucks so this should save us quite a bit!



Because I got the string on the middle of where the footers I just used a 8" block of wood to get the spot right.


This was probably 10 hrs worth of work last week.  Everything is level and secure.



This weekend I started the inside of the forms.  Debbie had been wrapping the in plastic and duct tape which takes a while.


A close up of my "system" of formwork


Rear wall , with the drainage ditch working nicely!



Over view of work this weekend



This is the our master bedroom.



Here is the laser transit I've been using.  Borrowed from a friend.  It's nice but kind of annoying at the same time.  I think i'll end up making a water tube level.



End of yesterday and a good 8 hour day of working.  It's been pretty brutal working in the 80 degree heat and pounding in 4' forming pins :)  but rewarding as things are going very well so far.


speedfunk

#66
Thanks BK.  I'm not sure the exact name .   It was speced by our local electric supply company.  The telephone is a 3 pair cable and a thick coating for direct burial.

We are not insulating under the floor, the insulation will go out from the house 20' in all directions and will be exactly as you describe.  3 layers of 6 mil plastic with 2 layers of 2" closed cell extruded poly styrene.

Thanks for the tips!!  We are actually going to fill in the inside of the house when the excavator comes again with reg ol' dirt.  this way the rain can naturally compact it!!  8) 

Jeff

Quote from: Bishopknight on April 13, 2009, 09:10:57 AM
Hi Jeff and Deb,

Outstanding job!

What kind of wire was the telephone wire you run from the street to the house? I need to get some...

About the footers. Thats a good idea with the plastic. Are you going to insulate the slab? If you go with XPS, I would still recommend a 6 mil vapor barrier in addition to the insulation. Thats one thing i would change if I could redo things. Also, for the tub knockout, I didnt know they sold these plastic barrel things, which you may want to consider. The wooden box works fine.

As far as leveling the foundation and footers yourself. The best advice I can give you is to have a load of sand delivered for easy leveling. Use some straight 16 footers and lay them on the tamped sand to get it as close to level as possible. Then go about assembling your form boards into a big rectangle and use masons string and string levels on nails attached to the form boards. ( buy a big sledgehammer too ). If you're going to go 4' ft underground for the south facing side, then setup the form boards first so you know precisely where to dig, then dig it. If you do the digging before the boards, you'll most certainly double your manual shoveling work.

If you rent a plate compactor, make sure you use lots of water or it wont compact :)

If I think of anything else, I'll let you know :)



Bishopknight

I was curious about your progress.

The last picture made me laugh. I saw your baby in its pen near the berm wall towards the back of the picture. Hehe.

80 degrees in the sun is hot, especially since were not used to it yet, but since you're also probably a few hundred miles from me, we also got 80 degrees last saturday as well. Was a beautiful weekend for sure, no complaints.

Everything looks great btw. I'm glad you have a drainage ditch around the back. I went a little overkill on my "moat" but as long as something gets rid of the water, thats all that matters.  ;D

If you put "in-slab-plumbing" in, please dont make the mistake I did, make sure all your DWV sweep towards the direction of the septic tank. Like a Y, not an L. My toilet sweep is a 90 degree bend instead of a smarter 45 degree bend d*

Squirl

Great job.  Thanks for all the postings on the permitting and inspection process.  It will be very helpful to me.  By the info provided here and on your blog I believe you are in the same county as me, and probably within 10 miles. I am planning to break ground this weekend, hopefully we will have good weather.

drainl

Quote from: Bishopknight on April 29, 2009, 11:47:23 AM
The last picture made me laugh. I saw your baby in its pen near the berm wall towards the back of the picture. Hehe.

Ha!  I didn't even notice that!  Practicing rock climbing?

Good luck squirl.  Saturday and Sunday are looking like good building days.  We've been so lucky in the Northeast with this great Spring weather!


drainl

Jeff here on debbie's account (to lazy to log in under me)

BK:  Yeah, our boy tuck was getting tired of being in the sun ...so the only remotely close spot I could put in in the shade was against the retaining wall.  He had fun playing with the dirt wall and the roots and rocks as long as there's rocks  and dirt he's happy!   

Yeah, I'd have a moat too if I had a super sweet backhoe!  However I have a pick and shovel...so i tend to "give" with the landscape :)   :D

Again thanks for the tips man.  The plumbing will be over a small 2' crawl space.   This way when I screw up the plumbing maybe i can fix it !!  I haven't giving the exacts of the plumbing to much thought yet..besdies the exit point to the septic.  We know where stuff is going the rest will fall into place.

Squid:  Good luck, I'll have to follow your posts.  If your within 10 miles of us , it's a great area ( besides the state of NY taxing the hell out of everything) I'm sure you will be happy you built here.  We both grew up here and love it and plan to stay .

UPDATE:  So I met with the town code enforcer.   I called and asked him about a few things so he met me up at the land.  I wanted to omit the front footer drain.  The drain would be bascially useless anyway becase of the way we are running our insulation horizontally from the footer .   He examined the spot and agreed with my logic so that was a small little bit of work saved. 

The other item is the footer and rebar.  I had originally in the permit specs listed 2 pieices of horizontal rebar in the footer .   Well, after talking to my brother who just built a house in binghamton , he mentioned only using 1 piece which would save us money and would be much easier to tie into the vertical rebar stubs that attach to the concrete cores.  We looked at the soil type which is hard pan, and by hard i mean almost concrete :)  So he agreed that this would be sufficient in this application.

The third item was that I made the footers for the 2 posts that hold the ridge beam up in the middle of the house 16 x 16.  Well after checking out the permit i realized that he had made a note to go 27 x 27 !   d*  So I will redo this.  I think this would be better anyway, so i'm cool with redoing it.   

Overall we saved money and time with the modifications we made so it was a good meeting. 

jeff



Bishopknight

Thats cool jeff. At least its easy to fix the box size at this stage of construction.

The raised floor is a good idea for plumbing especially. Maybe raising out that area inparticular for my house would've been a good idea too.

Squirl

When the code officer showed up did they say anything about your shed?  I was a little worried about the one I am building.

speedfunk

BK:  Yeah, no big deal at this stage to modify the post footers, actually deb allready made them I just need to get the level

It's funny today I was thinking about pouring the basement floor and weighing that option.  The trick is that the crawl space will not be very "spaceous"   .  The  lowest part of the floor joists in the bathroom will be only 1'4" inches above the floor of the crawl space, then 8" in between the floor joists!  I read what I wrote below and I mistyped.  The plumbing will be BELOW the floor lol.  So I'm going to have the excavator dig out a hole below the bathroom after the footer is poured.  Maybe adding a couple/few feet.  this will give me a least a space to be able to get down into and reach all the plumbing with relative comfort  ???

Are you glad you poured the bath floor overall?  I'm still deciding so let me know what you thought.  I just get thinking if I need to replace modify/change/add plumbing in the future it would be easier. 

Squirl:  Actually the shed was not the big deal.  Before i started code enforcement was called b/c they thought I was living in the camper on the land.  You can't camp on your own land I guess   >:(  The code enforcement dude came to look around and saw my 2 other outbuildings.  He looked around at them for a bit at the sheds , I kind of played quite.  We had a shed permit that we never got around to completing so he just added it to that and it was a non-issue.  The shed is just laying on the ground with no foundation.  People get the amish sheds all the time so it's really no big deal.  If the code has issue with it..it would be easy to remedy I would suspect  ;D

speedfunk

 More updates:  There's quite a few pics so it might not be dial up friendly :( 

Last week (Monday) I went to work on the house to find that the electric company was there and they installed the one pole we needed to get across the road.  Pretty exciting!  Here's a pic of the conduit we supplied on their pole.


Here's the electric company hooking up the new line to the pre-existing electric pole.



After A while of working they came down and put the meter in WOOT!  I'm actually surprised by this being as in the ditch that the electric is run in is not backfilled.  I guess they figure it's in conduit it's good enough?  This works well though b/c now I can delay Tim (excavation) from coming until we have a few more jobs for him piled up.  Just to check we plugged in and the electric was a go.


The pier footers for the post that supports the ridge beam had to be redone to a larger footprint size.  Deb made the boxes and I staked them in and got them level after this pic.. done.


We got 15 cubic/yard (approx) each of 1-2" rounds and of 1-2" crushed stone to lay in the footer forms to save on concrete.   It's nice to have onsite as well for misc uses.





My brother Ben stopped by mid last week and with his help we covered up the drainage pipe.  So now we have access to get cement truck near the forms etc.



Our system of moving the stone.  Go cubby and debbie





We then ran the horizontal rebar by tying it to the vertical stub rebar.



Tuckster helping out, he can say tractor now too



Over view of work as of today




So as of now we are ready to get concrete poured.  The code officer needs to inspect though before hand.  The form work has been fairly laborous as the ground varied 7 inches or so.  We used a combination of scrap wood, dirt and rocks to fill in gaps to make the forms hold concrete.  It's not pretty , but it should work just fine.

We have all these bad pics of the land and now that the colors are changing I thought I'd post a Nice shot of some of our woods.



Thats all for now  :)