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

[ListerD]

Looks great! Can't wait to see the roof go on!

[llamaman]

I really enjoy the updates.  Thanks for sharing. 

[drainl]

Parging isn't glamourous, but we want to be sure to show all the boring tasks of house building. We have been making good progress over the last couple of weeks. The weather has been pretty cooperative for working on the outer wall.
The inside walls that will be bermed are all set! I really like the contrast of the cement walls and wood roof.




Then we moved to the back outer wall.






Today we almost got around the corner on the lower row and it started pouring out. So close! I applied the batch inside instead. It's always nice having the flexibility of moving inside when it does rain.


Our little guy hung out with us today. He was not disappointed in the rain – he loves to run around in it!


At nearly $13/bag, our SBC bill has to be getting high. I'll total that up soon. We've been picking up 5-6 bags at a time. We tried getting a pallet full last year, but some of the bags sat too long and were ruined. It's easier getting nice dry bags from the store.

Our robin(s) survived mutliple flights into the window after all! We think there are three babies – we should be able to see them well in a few days as they get bigger.

[speedfunk]

Thanks for the kind words all

Yeah this part is a bit labor intensive.  We made a video of the process we are using for the surface bonding cement.  Once I edit it I'll post a link.

I wanted to add that we have been roughing the SBC on the walls up with a bunch of nails in a small piece of wood.  We are doing this b/c we plan to use a clay paint/plaster as the finish for the interior walls to give it an earthen feel.  I'm thought this would be a good idea to give it something for the clay paint/plaster to grab onto.  I can't wait to cover the concrete with something more natural.  Concrete to me just lacks soul.

Surface bonding cement works as advertised.  However, I find it to be unpleasant after a while.  The dust can't be good to inhale, it burns your skin after a while of contact as well as drying your skin out.  It is pretty rough on clothing , so wearing "work" clothes is necessary.  The rest of the interior will be built with much more natural materials as well as buildings in the future we plan to do.  

Things are rockin', soon Tim (track hoe dude) and Vinny will start on the earthwork around the house.  

[glenn kangiser]

Thanks for the update, Jeff and Deb.  I'll bet the little guy wants to get in there and help too.    He's been there for a lot of it, eh?

[drainl]

Glenn - Tuck is at the site quite a bit, but we're also lucky to have both our mothers living nearby and they help by watching him.  He does try to help out and loves to climb the ladders!  I hope he remembers the experience when he is older.  If not, we have photos.  

Here's an update to our building costs. The biggest expense was the metal roofing from Metal Sales. We got vertical seam roofing which costs a bit more. That bill was $4624. We've also bought a lot of SBC in the last couple of months – over 50 bags! That came to around $750.

Electric             $1,513.80
Materials           $7,525.38
Miscellaneous     $1,906.42
Paid Workers      $100.00
Plumbing           $613.04
Roof                 $8,264.21
Septic              $1,000.00
Bathroom          $83.98
Heating             $973.55
Site Work          $6,019.17

Total                $27,999.55

[drainl]

More parging at the house. Luckily we're really close to being done!
The back wall is finished-


The bottom row on the side wall is done and the small window is installed-


And the front window is installed (it's been propped in there for awhile)-


We've had some really hot weather, so we worked inside.  We're avoiding the front door for now because we plan to make the opening smaller.




Jeff did some work on our spring hose. We taped on insulation (a bubble wrap kind) on the part of the hose that would be under the insulation blanket.






We're also putting 4″ perferrated pipe on it to protect the insulation when backfilling.

As you may have noticed, some friends arrived this week, so it's getting very interesting!

[drainl]

We knew the excavator & dozer were coming sometime soon, but we weren't prepared when they brought the equipment over yesterday. So much to do!
Jeff scrambled on Monday night to get the house ready to backfill. We got our drainage in just before the snow came, and then with the spring thaw, the back wall fell in quite a bit. So yet again, Jeff had to do some digging on the back wall. Luckily it should be the last time! We went with Grace Ice and Water Shield for the bermed parts. It was pricey – came to about $500 for 4 rolls, but it went on well.







An expensive way to get the lawn mowed, but it's nice to see changes in the landscape!  There's still lots more earth moving to do.






Tucker is very proud of the hole he dug out this morning with Tim-


Found some great stone – it's hard to tell from the photo, but these are about 8′x6′ each. They'll be set aside for a patio or something cool.

[Dog]

Looking really good guys!

[drainl]

More posts heavy on photos, light on words.   

July 14
Continuing to work on the drainage before the house can be backfilled







Meanwhile the septic tank was getting placed in its new home




Backfilling! We’re very happy to never have to look at our muddy pit again. It’s going to much easier doing the roof now too! Of course the first thing Tucker tried to do was climb in the windows.

They tried using the dozer first, but there are so many large rocks they decided to use the bucket to get things started.






We also got some dirt inside for backfilling our bathroom pit. Wrapping that up is near the top of our list. From the inside of the house I felt like I was being attacked by a dinosaur!


The first 100′+ line from the spring was dug. We then laid the pipe and covered it with dirt so the risk of damage was less during backfill.

[drainl]

July 15
Today was spent getting everything around the house smoothed out and ready for the insulation blanket. As you can see we have quite a bit of extra dirt! Ground level will be brought up to around the doors, so we will make use of some of the dirt.







Can you spot the kid?


The "moat" was also started. We have a lot of water behind the house (possibly another spring) so we're working hard to keep it away.

[speedfunk]

So it's been a crazy last week!!!  A lot of 12-14 hour days of almost non-stop working.  When the machines are here , stuff moves FAST.  I was basically cheif ditch digger and forman with deb helping whenever humanly possible.  We got a call on the weekend saying they would be there monday ready to go full steam.  This was good except we needed to finish up drainage around the footer and a weekend full of shows with the band.  

So we were constanly pushing to get the french drain redug out AGAIN,the vapor barier installed on the walls and french drain finished on the sides.  One more time of a day full of moving mud and digging out the work that had been filled in by errosion.  the soil we have is def high clay ...every time it's wet it's heavy and sticky.  II'm glad it's done now

I had in my head to use plastic membrane on the rear wall (per john hait PAHS book) with a rug to protect from back fill.  But the logistics of getting the plastic to stick on the wall (duck tape?) then trying to keep a rug up against it while Tim backfilled seemed tricky.  So instead we use grace ice and water shield.  It had enough adheasion to stay for quite a while (we have since tacked furring stips onto it to keep it from peeling off).  

The house is bermed into a rather steep hill and there is water consitantly running from a shelf underground ( The water that you see in the above french drain coming out).  It's not like the  spring above but seems to come out as little droplets evenly above a certain elevation point in the dirt through out a 30' swatch.  We decided instead of a  even pitch grade drop to a swale in behind the house,  to instead drain to a deep ditch (5 or so feet).  This did a few things.  It got us below the elevation in the dirt that had water dripping in it, so that it does not penetrate the mass behind the house which needs to be dry.  This was evident when after the pic was taken. The earth behind the drainage ditch we got to as steep as possible before we thought it might be a problem for errosion.  I don't see any water coming out of the french drain now that the ditch is completly done and filled in.  So maybe we got it, time will tell.  It also saved on the amount of dirt we had to do something with.  There are only so many placed we can put dirt ( 2 really) and those piles are getting REALLY high.

Having the septic set was pretty sweet.  The septic has to be away from the house 25' (past where the horizontal earth insulation skirting will go.  This way if we need to pump it when can get to it with out tearing out the insulation etc!  Tim set it with the track-hoe while i was trying to play catch up so they were not waiting.  Working with these guys is great.  Both of them are good operaters and even though they don't complelty understand why we need a drainage ditch 25' away from the house they humor me (although getting a bit of ribbing).  Not only that they are trying to understand how things work  they also  have a varied skilset (like so many around here they wear many hats) and have a lot of different experiences we can benefit from, so i'm very happy with them.

I'll let deb post the rest of the pictures and I'll comment on them.  This is about 1/2 way through the work they did

[Sassy]

Really interesting - am enjoying reading about your progress & seeing all the pictures!  Looks like the little guy is having a ball! 

[drainl]

After backfilling, we concentrated on the "moat." We smoothed out the ditch floor, laid rug over the edge and bottom of the ditch, and then did the same with two layers of plastic. Next fill with gravel. Sounds simple enough, but heavy rains made the whole process much more frustrating!  Jeff's probably mentioned this, but the rugs came from a local school.  They were replacing them, so we saved them the cost of tossing them, and we can put them to good use!  These rugs were saved up from the last couple of years, so they were a bit water logged and heavy.  We just got two more loads of nice dry stuff. 







Some of our mud




We're getting a lot of water coming out of the moat as we had hoped. The house is much dryer now. Only problem is this small pile of rocks between the moat and our drainage pipe.


It's exciting having the water run to the house. I was a little nervous that it wasn't working initally after backfilling, but after playing around at the spring intake, we had success. The pipe on the right is for hot water. You can see them coming up the back side of the house on each end.
We have a middle point about 100′ from the spring left uncovered where all the joints are. We'll leave a way to access this in the future. While burying the water line, we also cleared out some trees, which opens up the wooded area nicely. Eventually we'll thin it all out more.

[drainl]

The downside to building your own house is you end up doing things multiple times or damaging some of your work because it takes longer to complete.  Our roof is an example of this!  The small roof had typar on it, which actually held up pretty well - the water damage isn't so bad.  The large roof we first put plastic on, and then later typar when the plastic ripped off.  When there are heavy rains, the inside gets pretty wet as well.  We have lots of staining on our ceiling that we'll need to clean up.  We're going to try bleach first unless anyone has better ideas?!  If it's really bad maybe we'll just do another layer of T&G pine over the whole thing!  I like the open look though.  So getting our metal roof on is top priority right now.  

We're starting with the smaller roof - it'll be good practice before the bigger one.  First we replaced the worn typar.  Next went on the 3"+1.5" sheets of insulation.  These were both great finds - the 3" was from a commercial building and was $10/sheet.  The 1.5" was from a school roof and was $6/sheet.  The 1.5" also came with screws and washers that look brand new.  We'll be reusing those as well.  Jeff wasn't able to find this type of insulation locally.  

Here's a shot of our insulation room


Fresh Typar


First layer of insulation


Typar again, then furring strips





The wood was put in with these screws.  We also have horizontal wood, I just forgot to take a photo.


A dry run on the ground


Unfortunatly we can't just slap on the panels.  There's a lot more to it - so many pieces!  Plus we have to work from left to right, so we need to be percise when we lay the left rake.  The gutter also needs to go on before the panels.  We sat down and reviewed all the steps last week and I'm happy to have a better understanding of it all.  Later this week we hope to have a couple of good days of roof work.  We may hire a friend to help us knock out the larger roof.  

[glenn kangiser]

There is some stuff called Timber Brite - and some other stuff too I read about at the Log Home Store for cleaning wood.  Looks like things are really moving there, Jeff and Deb.

http://aloghomestore.com/

[Squirl]

Thanks for the detailed insulation pictures and screws.  I have been wondering about details on foam insulation on the outside of the building.

Also, I see that you have had a lot of gravel delivered.  I think I may need to do the same.  Do you know of local places and their prices?  I hope you don't mind asking the cost.

[poppy]

Nice update and excellent photo journal. 

That insulation you found is good stuff and specifically make for under roof insulation.  It's probably polyisocyamurate (polyiso for short) and is the most expensive but has the highest R value for rigid foam board.  You got a good buy.

BTW, I have the same type of insulation for my cabin build.

[drainl]

Thanks for the feedback!

Squirl - we got the gravel from Sewards, which is off of Cty Rd 47.  The only place in town as far as I know.  They usually deliver within a day.  In this case, our guys had a dumptruck so they picked it up for us.  I don't have the recipts in front of me, but I'll let you know!

[considerations]

My son's fascination w/heavy equipment started out like Tucker's.  Now he operates the largest concrete pump truck in the state of Texas.  You may have a career inspiration happening...Tucker's eyes are shining!

[drainl]

Jeff's been debating exactly what to do under the metal roof. One problem we have is in the time it'll take us to get the metal roofing on, the typar layer will be worthless from sun exposure. A friend mentioned SynFelt, which is good for 6 months exposed. The final(?) decision is to go with typar, 4.5″ insulation, typar, SynFelt, furring strips. So now we plan to get the small and big roof to this point and then go back and tackle the metal roofing. We had a couple of nice roofing days this week so the small roof is all set! The forecast is rain for the next few days, but by the end of the week we hope to tackle the large roof.













It's going to be an awesome day when this place has an actual roof!   

[325ABN]

Why did you choose the Grace ice & water shield  as oposed to some type of liquid based tar sealer for your below grade? Will it hold up?

[speedfunk]

Update:
I'm not sure if anyone noticed but we changed approaches on our roof.  Initially my thought was to use tyvek on the outer layer under the tin.  I've been very hesitant of any vapor barrier , esp on the outside.  The tyvek layer I thought would be good b/c it breathes.  I also thought it would be good b/c we are using some Poly ISo insulation sheets that have been previously screwed  .  So b/c of this the approach of taping all the seams seems pointless.  So instead I thought an very tight covering would do the job much better. 

Reality, TYpar is not that tough and can rip and degrade if not protected (who would have thought  ).  So we put the furring strips on the typar and I kept trying to figure out a better way.   A good friend, who is a builder showed me this rexfelt .  It is a direct replacement for felt.  Maybe most of you know about this stuff but if you don't check it out .  It's really quite amazing.  It has a much longer period of the that it can protect before degrading, which is huge for us building the pace we are.  It can take a nail hole and not leak.  Seriously a hold big enough that you could stick a piece of straw through.  I tested it.  There is a pattern printed on an interwoven poly tarp.  It seems to increase the bonding of water.  The water actually forms a bridge across the damaged area and seals it.  Its quite something. You can pour out all the water and it will still be bonded across the hole. 

Problem with this approach is that I called the manufacture and He basically said there was no perm ability.  If I sealed it to keep the insulation tightly wrapped it would form a vapor barrier and condensation could form.  I also looked a whole variety of products in an attempt to find something that was tough enough to take a beating but breathed. 

It finally occurred to me to use both.  So that's what we did.  The cracks in the insulation are now sealed.  The water that condenses on the underside of the tin, or rain that somehow gets through lands on the vapor barrier  and drains.  It also breathes through the openings that occur when you over lap the rexfelt.  I was very excited about this as it accomplished both breath-ablity and a good roof membrane  

325and:

Well it was kind of a last minute decision to be honest.  I had in my head not wanting to use tar.  Concrete cracks and also cracks the tar.  So I wanted to use a method in JOhn Haits book where he overlaps layers of poly like shingles up the wall.  This way allowing for vapor barrier that streches and gives with the building.  HOWEVER.  B/c of the speed of things, plastic hanging on the wet wall with a rug against it to protect from backfill was just to much to figure out and we needed it ready quick.  Tim suggested it , had used it once before.  So I took a look at the product, it seems a lot like what BK used on his earth berm.  It was cheaper however. 

b/c of the rush of back filling and b/c it was down pouring and everything was caving in ( all this loose dirt/clay really doesn't have much stability)  It was not back filled as nice as I had hoped.  But it is what it is.  I think it's pretty good there are prob a few spots where it got gashed into.  If anyone else uses it, backfill with rounds.  We had a few of the back fill rocks drag it down slightly.  It adheres good enough to get it on and stay on, however tacking a furring strip on the top was necessary so that after a few days it did not peel off.

For the goals of this home its very important for water not to be within 20-25 foot of the house.  So really water should not even get to that point.  Cheap insurance.  I'm also finding added the footer drain has been handy.  B/C we are moving at a slower clip and even though eventually it won't be needed, it's allowing the rain we have been getting out.  So i'm glad we did the Drain.

We just started the big roof today.

[drainl]

We've moved on to the big roof! The weather has continued to be great with only one day of rain in the last week+.



Once the insulation is in place, we spray foamed the peaks and any other large gaps.  (The top layer wasn't pushed up in this photo, so the final gap was actually much smaller.)


Insulation makes me so itchy!


Ben came over for the day and got our fallen in plastic out of the ditch – it was a huge help!


On to the second row – these days were in unusally hot – high 80s and 90s. We moved a little slower took lots of water breaks!




Half way across! 


Between some of the 3″ insulation being unsuable and not getting quite enough, we'll only have enough to do one more row with it. We may try to get some more 1.5″ and do three layers for the last section. We are planning to hire a couple of friends to help get the metal on quickly. Life is busy in the next couple of weeks, but after that we'll be able to focus more on the house and plan to do a lot more night and weekend work. Hopefully the weather stays great!

We had a visit last week from the code guy. He hasn't been there since we poured the footers. He had no problems with our work – woohoo! The last house we built we had a newbie code enforcer who was a pain, so I always expect the worst. The code guy also said since we used t&g roofers, we could have used 1/2 the amount of rafters. Jeff's never going to live that down!

[glenn kangiser]

Looks great, Deb and Jeff.

I have a question.  Roofing runs the same way your 2xs are running   Are you planning on putting strapping - purlins across the vertical ones to fasten the metal to?