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

[speedfunk]

I got an e-mail with some great info that I wanted to pass along.  Anyone thinking about dry stack Surface-bonded walls and code issues this should help (in regard to International building code which a lot of states adopt i think).  Here is the Line from the code book for anyone who needs to prove to a hesitant code enforcer dude or dude-ette.  Thank you paul for this info

* the relevant section in the 2009 IBC, is Chapter 21 (masonry), and more specifically 2109, as shown below

concrete masonry walls shall comply with the requirements of
Chapter 5 ofTMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5, except where other-
wise noted in this section.
2109.2.1 Strength. Dry-stacked, surface-bonded concrete
masonry walls shall be of adequate strength and proportions
to support all superimposed loads without exceeding the
allowable stresses listed in Table 2109.2.1. Allowable
stresses not specified in Table 2109.2.1 shall comply with
the requirements ofTMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5.
TABLE 2109.2.1
ALLOWABLE STRESS GROSS CROSS-SECTIONAL
AREA FOR DRY-STACKED, SURFACE-BONDED
CONCRETE MASONRY WALLS
DESCRIPTION
MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE STRESS
(psi)
Compression standard block
Flexural tension
Horizontal span
Vertical span
Shear
For 51:
1 pound per square inch = 0.006895 MPa.
45
30
18
10
2109.2.2 Construction. Construction of dry-stacked, sur-
face-bonded masonry walls, including stacking and level-
ing of units, mixing and application of mortar and curing
and protection shall comply with ASTM C 946.y

[drainl]

While things are quiet at the house site, it's a good time to add up our bills. So far we haven't dipped into our home equity loan, but once things pick up again in a month or so that'll change.

The biggest expenses since the last update have been the wood for the roof and the woodstove parts. We spent $1539 on the T&G pine roofers 1″x8″ – various lengths.

Electric $1,513.80
Materials $6,755.50
Miscellaneous $1,853.87
Paid Workers $100.00
Plumbing $613.04
Roof $3,279.58
Septic $1,000.00
Bathroom $83.98
Heating $973.55
Site Work $6,019.17

Total $22,192.49

Now that the weather is warming up, we're getting anxious to get back to work on the house. First we need to finish up work on our current house, including packing up some of the extra stuff we can do without for several months. Fun! It'll be nice doing our last move!
We talked today and our plan is to get the roof finished, the interior walls parged, and then the concrete floor poured. I feel like we're in the calm before the storm. We're going to have to push to get in by fall.  It should be an interesting year!

[Bishopknight]

Ugh, I bet that ice is still there huh. Removing that ice off my slab was probably the worst part of the whole experience.

Anyways, the pics look great Jeff & Deb. I think the ceiling corner where the wood is exposed looks awesome. I love the shape of your house too. I kind of wish I did some different architectural details but I'll save that for the next house 

Glad to see the wood stove there too.

The price of your house is still less than the cost of my backhoe, lol. So I'd say you're doing very well!

[speedfunk]

Next house sean?!!!!  LOL.

I can't believe you would have the motivation to do another   well actually I could see it.  This being the 3rd house we've worked on 2nd from foundation I'm ready to finish the house up and take a break.  Maybe buy a yurt put it up to camp in at various spots at friends and family for mini-vacations   Ahh the easy life.  Thanks for nice words man... you have some interesting things happening architecturally as well.  Half circle windows etc.  We are going to have a round-ish (top part) door in the front , I think it's key to work in some circles into this square structure.   Sometimes though it's tough to do visually. 

Ok..i'm procrastiing finishing the 2nd house.  Working on my sons room closet and walls.  Then 2 more closets and some painting and we are pretty much done and ready to put the firstday back on the market.  Trying to beat that deadline for tax credits to help our profit

Update:  Went over to land, nothing stolen, Some boards are wet and but i'll have to get the plastic back on part of the roof.

Jeff

[drainl]

We've had some nice sunny weather and figured it'd be a good time to get up to the new house and put the typar on. I can't wait until the darn roof is done! Once they typar is on, we'll go back to getting our current house ready to put on the market.

With everything melting, our back dirt wall caved in a lot. I guess we'll be digging a lot of that back out. Fun!


As we said, our plastic blew off on the back side awhile back.  Hopefully we won't need to do too much sanding on the inside to remove water stains!  It didn't look too bad to me today.
 

We took down all the plastic and furring strips and started working on the typar.  We plan to finish the rest tomorrow before it starts raining for a few days.


Here's the slate tile we got for the bathroom floor.


Tuck hanging out eating snow and soaking up the sun.  He was pretty good on the site today entertaining himself.  He couldn't run away too quickly either.


In bird watching news, everyone is coming back!  A bald eagle, several hawks, our resident raven, and turkey vultures all came close by today.  Jeff got me a bird identification book and binoculors so I can improve my spotting skills.

[eddiescabin]

To go back to your french drain...how do you orient the holes on the pipe? Maybe you could explain in it a timeclock fashion, as in the holes were placed at 10, 2 4 and 8 o'clock or whatever. Thanks,  Looks Great! It's an interesting build!

[Redoverfarm]

Not to step on drainl's toes but normally if you are using the drain tile/pipe with the pre-drilled holes on one side they go toward the bottom.  Probably at 4PM & 8PM.  If you are using the slotted pipe/sock it doesn't matter as they are all around the pipe. If you look at the pre-drilled you will notice there is an area at the 6PM position that is not drilled.  That is laid on the ground/stone.

[drainl]

I'll have Jeff report back on how our pipes were laid.  I'm not sure.     Redoverfarms answer sounds good to me. 

We went back to the house bright and early yesterday to get the rest of the Typar on before the predicted rain came. I drove by today to check on it since it is very windy, and a part was already coming up. Agh! Jeff went back and put one a bunch of furring strips. We wanted to avoid nail holes in the Typar, but they're easier to fix than massive tears. We're really looking forward to getting the metal roofing on this sucker!



We broke ground on the house almost exactly a year ago.  In another year, we plan to be relaxed & snug in our new home with no projects needing our attention!

Here's the site on 3/17/2009


And a similar shot from 3/12/2010

[considerations]

I'm curious and may have missed something in your prior posts.  Are those concrete blocks hollow or did you fill them with something? 

[speedfunk]

Well some our filled and some are not.  The ones that are filled are 1 every 4 or 5 cores.  Along every window and door there is a core full of concrete.  The empty ones will be used to run electric so I don't have to use conduit on the wall.

Also the bond beam being full on concrete and a stick of rebar

hope that helps

[Don & Ginger Lundgren]

The place is looking good. I do have a question and that is in regard to your use of Typar HouseWrap on the roof... that particular product is the sidewall product and not the roof product. Typar specifically sells a product called Typar RoofWrap that is designed for use as a roofing underlayment.  I have been told that they two products are really not interchangable as the needs for proper roof underlayment are dramatically different then sidewalls. How did you come to use this particular product? Would be interested in any alternate opinions as this forum has a lot of good minds to learn from.

[MountainDon]

The big thing I remember from when we were looking at re-roofing our house a few years back was that the wraps intended for roof use had a textured surface that made walking on it safer than smooth face wraps.

We used Titanium UDL as it had the greatest amount of texture.

I do not know if there are other technical differences between the wall and roof wraps.

[speedfunk]

to be honest Don and Ginger I did not even know they made such a thing.  From a quick online research it looks as if it has a bit more tear strength and more texture. 

It's on now though and I'm done with it lol.  As far as the texture even if there is not as much it's still 10x better then when I had the black poly on the roof.  It wouldn't take much to slide right off the roof , even on our 3/12 , the housewrap it's like standing on sandpaper (even the wall stuff) compared to the plastic.

Thanks for sharing that info.
Jeff

[Bishopknight]

Housewrap is tough stuff, I don't think its a permanent solution. I have a feeling Jeff will probably have the house roofed this summer so it should be fine for now.

Jeff,

I still haven't bolted the blueboard insulation to the block walls myself. I was thinking of using large 2" washers with a 3" tapcon screw to anchor the insulation to the wall but I wanted to see what you thought first before I do that? 

[speedfunk]

That should def work Sean, 

Is it on the rear wall that your backfilling?  I'm leaning toward using glue and asticking it to the block wall, where the foam meets the wood on the gable ends I was thinking of using screws with plastic washers.  I've seen this done in other house builds online and seems to work quite nicely.  I know that tapcons get expensive after a while but they will def stay put lol.

I'm sure either will work just fine. 

Good news today we just got our Firstday cottage for sale with a broker.  I'll post a video of it within a few days.

[speedfunk]

Here is the listing of our finally complete firstday.





http://odbrmls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Nyst&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N890324078,-N34850,-N,-A,-N3680761

There is more pictures if you click additional pictures below the main pic.

Since we took it of the market 2.5 years ago we have been finishing things.  I just got done with 4 closets and adding a bedroom wall to make what was a office space into a 4th bedroom.   We added another porch roof.  We added rug in the living room.  We polyurathaned most all interior walls.  Added tile to both bathrooms.  Added lattice under porch.  Stained the walls colors in the master bath and the kitchen.  
So we will now be able to shift back into working on the new house again.

A lot of work has gone into this lil' ole cottage.    The market around here isn't banging but it's consistant so we will see what happens.

[Bishopknight]

Beautiful house Jeff!

I'm sure it will sell. Spring is a good time to list. I'd love to see pics of your other house, have you been working on it or mainly getting this house ready for sale? ( Which I know can be a lot of work! )

[John Raabe]

Nice cottage Jeff:

You added a lot of nice touches.

[speedfunk]

Thanks John Thanks Sean

We have been mainly getting the Cottage ready for sale.  My heads ready to explode, so I'm trying to focus so I don't feel so over whelmed  Also would love to get our 8x8 cabin done (enter it for kahns book )

We had 3 people look at this weekend and 2 really like it, the 3rd we don't know yet.  So that's good.  Right now we are on vacation near Gatlinburg in Tennessee Smoky Mountains.  So once we get back we will start again on the new house.  We've done a bunch of camping and hiking as well as played in our resort/place hotel.  Found some really awesome parts of the national park so far now we are going to venture north of Sevierville and see what's up there .

[drainl]

We had a couple of tennants move into the house. Jeff took down this nest, since it was on the raw pine. Pretty neat with the moss, twigs, and typar!


This one we decided to leave because it wouldn't do too much damage.


Unfortunately the bird had a run-in with a window. It ended badly.


Jeff did a lot of work cleaning up the house. We piled a bunch of stuff in over the winter to keep dry. Now we're back to SBC! I'm going to join in on the fun next week. It's really nice having the option to work inside or outside. Even on a rainy day we can be productive.


One of the trees has been debarked. It's going to look great when we're done!


We requested estimates from three local stores for the vertical seam metal roofing from MetalSales. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive was $1300! It's always good to check around. We'll place the order next week. I believe it's about two weeks before delivery.

We've got a long busy summer ahead, but we're starting to get back in the groove with the new house. Exciting!

[ListerD]

Looks great folks!!! 

[Redoverfarm]

Nice job.  Yes the birds.   I have had them several years now and like you lost one as well.  If they were not so messy  wouldn't mind them staying around.

[speedfunk]

I figured being that I had a list of parts put together anyway I'd share it...maybe of some use to someone.

We got 3 quotes
lowes:5500 + 80 delivery (i'm not sure if this included tax)
Picketts:  4756 + 40 delivery +337 in tax = $5,143
HomeDepot: 4279 + 10 delivery + tax = $4,625

I would have bought from picketts ..local store and all but the HD  price was  better.  Picketts has gotten my block order though which has been quite a bit.  They have a installation manual that I got all the parts needed from.  I hope I got it right, lots of pieces

The brand is metal sales .  They are through out the US.

Description of building: House has a 3/12 Pitch.  Built like a standard ranch (with a same roof pitch addition to the side of it.  I

24 Gauge Standing seam roof with no striations.  Galvanized metal (No color on anything)

Parts List:

Quantity
Item
22
18" Panels.  11'8"'s in length
22
18" Panels.   20' in length
14
18" Panels.  10' in length
1
16" Panel.  11'8" in length
1
16" Panel.  20' in length
2
Box Gutters.  20' in length. 101degree angle (3/12 roof pitch)
7
Box Gutters.  10' in length.  101degree angle (3/12 roof pitch)
8
Box Gutter ends
4
Downspouts.  10' sections
33
Universal Downspout Straps
19
Offset Cleat.  10' sections
1
Hemming Tool
2
Vented Ridge Cover.  20' length.  3/12 roof pitch
1
Vented Ridge Cover.  10' length.  3/12 Roof pitch
9
Vent drip.  10' length
23
Vent Material.  4' Sections
11
Floating Roof Rake.  10' sections
11
Cleat.  10' Sections
11
Rake Cleat.  10' Sections
4
Rake. 10' Sections
1
Rake. 20' Sections
2
Rake Wall.  10' Sections
2
Vertical Seam Rake.  10' Sections
1
Vertical Seam Rake.  20' Sections
600
Double Bead Sealant tape.  1' length
386
UL Standing Seam Clips
2
Counter Flashing .  10' Sections
7
Tubes of Sealant
Quantity
Screws etc
250
1/8" x 3/16" Pop Rivits. Unpainted
3800
#10-12 x 1" PHW
125
#12-14 x 1 1/4" SD
125
#12-14 x 1 1/4" SD XL
100
#14-13 x 1 5/8"  Dekfast

[drainl]

Parging, parging, and more parging...
We're pushing to get the entire house parged with the surface bonded cement. It doesn't go too quickly, but we're making good progress. Getting motivated is tough some days. I really like the look of the concrete. We'll do some sort of tinted sand paint down the road, so it'll be more uniform in color then. We tackled our bedroom first. The inside and outside are now all done! Too bad it's the smallest part of the house.  I really like the rounded interior door.









Now we're on to the big part of the house. The inside back wall is about 2/3 done. We'll focus on the areas of the house that will be bermed first.






We also just got our delivery of roofing materials. It's an intimidating pile of metal. I guess we'll get back to that after we're done parging, depending on where we are with excavation. For now we only have a few small leaks and the typar isn't flying off, so we're ok with that!




We just keep plugging away! Our original move in goal of fall is looking pretty poor – I'm hoping for end of the year now. It'll be awesome whenever we do move in!

[glenn kangiser]

Thanks for the progress report, Jeff and Deb.

Looks like a lot of real hard work but you two are motivated and handle it well.