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

[mldrenen]

congratulations!  that must feel like a huge relief.

hope you put enough aside to pay uncle sam his pound of flesh!

[325ABN]

Better hurry up and spend that $45K before it's only worth $10K.

Just saying.

[HomeschoolMom]

Exciting on all accounts!!!!!   

[rick91351]

sold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


not the Earthberm lol.  Our First Day cottage we closed on a few days ago.  We are now completly debt free.  We (esp me) are VERY excited.  We got enough to pay off every single debt we have, not only that but we have 45G in the bank to finish our house and buy a new car (for new kids coming). 

woohoo. freedom

Other then that little has been done at the house... work will start to resume with the thawing of frozen muscles

WOW!!!!!!!!!!   Way to go!!!  That is so stinking cool!  You now have an opportunity most can never do in this credit driven world.  Imagine staying out of debt and building wealth.  And how stinking cool would that be!!!   

[archimedes]

Congrats! 

There is no tax on the sale of a primary residence,  provided you have owned it for two years.  Enjoy the cash.

[Squirl]

Congratulations.  About 2 weeks ago, I was looking at houses and properties for sale in the area and I saw the place still on the website, but it didn't say it was under contract.  I'm glad the deal didn't fall through.

[mldrenen]

Congrats!  

There is no tax on the sale of a primary residence,  provided you have owned it for two years.  Enjoy the cash.

they built it as a spec house.  capital gains taxes are a possibility, so i thought i'd mention it.

[archimedes]

There is no capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence owned for any 2 of the the last 5 years.  There is a $250,000 per person, $500,000 per couple limit,  but based on what the house was listed for on Realtor.com they shouldn't have any problem with that.

Enjoy the cash!

[mldrenen]

There is no capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence owned for any 2 of the the last 5 years.  There is a $250,000 per person, $500,000 per couple limit,  but based on what the house was listed for on Realtor.com they shouldn't have any problem with that.

Enjoy the cash!

i understand the tax code.  i just don't know if they lived in the house for 2 years or not. i do know that it was originally built as a spec house to be sold upon completion.  if they lived in it for two years, awesome!  if not, i just wanted them to be aware of capital gains taxes.

[speedfunk]

Thanks all for sharing in our excitement     

We hope to never be in debt again.  Its a change in mind set because when we have taken these financial risks in the past we have used loans as a way to pay BUT it was all in an attempt to get debt free and build an efficient home for us.  Playing those money games gets old,now working on making things more efficient and self sufficient. The money system has to many middlemen lol.  Everyone wants their cut.

As far as the Capital gains tax b/c we had it as our primary residence for 3 years ( need to have it for 2) we do not have to pay any.  Which works out well b/c we got less money then we initially listed it for. 

[glenn kangiser]

You and Deb are a great example of where we would all like to be, Jeff.

I'm proud of you.  When I first saw you two working on the" First Day" I thought it was a massive undertaking but you followed through all the way.  Nice to see it actually happen. 

[speedfunk]

Thanks so much Glenn, coming from all you have done that means quite a bit    I hope when we are finished its as organic and funky in its own way of course as yours and sassys.

Yeah it was an undertaking  and we learned a lot.   We had much more help on the firstday, much more.  I had friends helping all the time, it turns out though we still put a lot of manpower into it.  Its just a nice feeling to close on a chapter  Its kind of neat house as well..it has its quirks as a building system but its a solid home for sure.

Update:  Found a pretty good score on some insulation for the outside insulation skirting.   I needed roughly estimate 380 sheets of 4'x8' x 2".  I found a guy on craigslist with 400 sheets of 2 " blue and pink board not 3 miles from our house.  Sweet... I emailed him and nothing, again nothing..then I posted WANTED YOUR BLUE BOARD.  Turns out he did not get the emails.  We settled on a price of 18.50 per sheet based on the volume I needed.  A couple weeks ago I got quotes from 2 box stores and 2 local stores for that volume and the best I could get on 4x8 sheets were 28 dollars.  HD came through with 2x8 sheets at somewhere around 9500 or so , plus tax of course for the total order.  The stuff on criagslist is new factory seconds so its pretty nice stuff ( I have only seen pics).  I think the total i am paying is 6700 dollars.  This is just awesome b/c the foam is a HUGE cost in this project so to save thousands is really nice.  I am going to pick it up tuesday and spend all day plus shutting foam on my little 5x8 trailer.  very cool  

Deb was really wondering why we needed to spend 12000+ on foam.  I keep telling her all the benefits  Her big want is the mudroom addition

[umtallguy]

FYI, uhaul trailers are like 30 buck a day for a rather large size even, up to the car hauler size. Depending on the trip length that might be cheaper then gas

[speedfunk]

true...i should look into that...thanks for that idea.

[brucel]

Hi Jeff,

When you say skirting I suppose you are talking about the buried passive annual heat storage (PAHS) umbrella all around the house. Wow, it's a major investment! Glad you got a good deal through perseverance.

Can you give us some details about the shape and size of the umbrella and your plan of attack? I imagine that will be a major job. Will you be using black poly sheeting over the insulation?

How about putting a few thin pipes down through it vertically so you can occasionally drop thermometers down them on a string to monitor the workings of the PAHS phenomenon? You could seal them with some horrible sticky stuff like black windscreen sealing compound. I reckon I'll do it that way on mine rather than getting into any high-fallutin technical stuff.


Bruce

[speedfunk]

BruceL:

Yeah I am refering to the umbrella all around the house.  Its just b/c it does not go OVER my house it seems like a silly word to use.  A cape like some refer to it also seems silly b/c it's not just in the back.  So I like skirting or a Kilt for a male house.

The plan of attack is to first start digging with a rental mini track-hoe the ditches for the pipes for the fresh air and additional ditches for the pipes that will connect the solar heat boxes (two seperate systems). 

Then build the solar heat boxes that will protrude from the skirting.  These I am leaning toward creating out of a formed concrete or block filled with cement and rebar .   As glazing most likely glass from sliding glass doors.

Once these pipes are in do a nice job of smoothing everything out.  I might add a layer or 1 or 2 inches of pebble stone.  Ontop of this the standard PAHS.  Only thing that might be different is that I have seen people using 20mil pvc sheets from billboards to save money and recycle a waste product.  We will see , everything is dynamic as to what I can get for a good price etc.  But this is the basic idea bruce.

[speedfunk]

Update:  All the foam got delivered.  It took quite a few trips.  The guy whom sold it to me helped deliver it for the cost of gas.  He was a really great guy.  In general I find the people I am dealing with on craiglist just awesome.  So it took 5 or 6 trips of 2  to 3 trailer loads a trip ( 34 peices a trailer load)  to get it all there.  Its there now! woot.

We had a really bad wind storm so lost about 30 or 40 sheets down the hill.  GOod news is that I manage to recover all but 15 in almost perfect shape.  Bad news is that 10-15 were broken into chunks ranging from 1/2 sheets to 1/10 sheets.  I can use them somewhere ...it is what it is. I even had concrete blocks on top of them!  Wind was around 40mph i guess....  transition from winter to spring

Currently working on inside of house while weather attempts to warm up.  We have a bunch of little concrete/sbc things we need to do as well as tile bathroom floor but without consecutive warm days we cant.  Deb and I spent last night re-prioritizing our plan of attack.  It seems good to do this every now and again and circumstances keep changing as we are about to enter a new season.  We hope to be moving to outside work AFTER we get the inside done.  We have a deadline to get out at our current residence so having a functional  interior of our home is priority 1.  The expected goal is to have whole interior of house complete by july.  Electric/water/and functional septic included in this.  This gives two months for exterior dirtwork/insulation/pahs/solarheat towers.  Sept into winter would then be spent finishing exterior wood siding and trim details. 

I got pics to upload but b/c of dead camera batteries and no convenient internet we have not yet.
that,s all for now..just checking in.  Hope everyones projects are going well.

[Squirl]

Spring?  Where?  Just got a few inches of snow up there last weekend and it is still 4 ft deep on the road up to my property.  I am not originally from there and my definitions need a little adjusting yet.  Sorry to hear about the foam board.  Best of luck with the deadline.

[speedfunk]

Squirl:
You must be in a shaded property.  I just bought a piece of land (in process of closing) in Hartwick and was really surprised to see 3 foot of snow when the land with the house only had like 2 inches. 

[speedfunk]

The progess is coming along. Heres some pics'..



Got the subfloor for the batroom sheathed.  Used 3/4" plywood.  Some were old sheets and two new ones.




This is the bedroom.  Playing with a floor system using 2x4 rough cuts set in pea gravel.  The pea gravel kind of acts as a vapor barrier as well as a sturdy and easily levelable support for the 2x4,s.







For some reason I cannot get this large but here is the "Hatch" door used to access the crawl space.  It does not have hinges just sets in.



I think the term is scribe.  Used a rigid plastic square from tuckers play construction set with a hole drilled in it to keep the contour of the tree and transfer it to the t+g Pine.  Then used a jigsaw at an extreme angle so that from the outside view it fits snugly to the oak post.



Welcome to jungle


We tried to find a used tub locally but some yuppie salvage place wanted 1000 for a used cast iron so we ended up getting a tub from home depot I think.  Trying to used recycled/salavage as much as we can but unfortunately we are also under time constraints.  Its a nice tub though.

[speedfunk]

We mounted the breakerbox in a spot outside of the bathroom b/c it makes things a lot more tricky if you put it IN the bathroom.  Used some OSB to pad it out so it will sit flush with the T+G sheathing.  We got this from a friend for 10 bucks.  I don,t think we will need near this many breakers.



We put hardibacker board down.  I am not sure if this is worth it ..maybe yes maybe no.  I know that most people generally put concrete board of sorts below tile so that it absorbs the movement of the wood sub floor.  However I was debating skipping it b/c I found tile adhesive that adheres directly to plywood?  I play this one safe.



Heres a shot of the joint between the tree and t+g.  I am pretty pleased how it came it ...it looks cool.  Took me a bit of time but looks cool.



This is the top of the closet that will store bedding/linens/broomes/hotwater heater/maybe water manifods.  I thought it would be cool to put a window on top to allow natural light in so we dont need a light in there.  I framed out the window with scraps.







In order to do the tile work this little peice of floor got filled with concrete.



We added the on demand electric hot water heater to the wall.  You can kind of see the t+g Pine roofers and hardiboard (concrete board) on the sides.  

[Sassy]

You're making good progress!  Good job on scribing the boards.   

[drainl]

These two little girls and their big brother have been keeping us busy!


Jeff's been fitting in time to work on the new house here and there. The weather is wet, but we're above freezing. I haven't had the time to help, but at least I'm physically able to help again!

The small concrete section in the bathroom is all set and the closet is framed in. Next step for the bathroom is plumbing.




A lot of progress has been made on our bedroom. All the SBC around the windows is finished and the slate sills are in place. We went with rounded edges on the windows and love the look!







We bought a nice used wood door, cleaned it up and cut it to fit our doorway. The frame was made from scratch. It's exciting seeing our first door in place!







The ceiling pine was sanded and got a couple of coats of satin finish. The oak floor has been fit into place. It's since been removed again, sanded, and finished. Not sure if we mentioned the flooring before, but we got rough cut lumber from a local mill. It took a lot of time and work to get it from rough cut to finished, but the wood cost was $185.



We're trying to use finishing products with less chemicals. I don't recall the brands we used on the wood. We purchased American Clay for the bedroom walls. We may make our own plaster for the rest of the interior, but wanted something quick so we can wrap up the bedroom. We'll report back on how it goes!

[duncanshannon]

hiya-

just found your thread!  I'm looking forward to going back and reading the whole thing! looking forward to hearing more about it!

[Sassy]

These two little girls and their big brother have been keeping us busy!


Jeff's been fitting in time to work on the new house here and there. The weather is wet, but we're above freezing. I haven't had the time to help, but at least I'm physically able to help again!

The small concrete section in the bathroom is all set and the closet is framed in. Next step for the bathroom is plumbing.




A lot of progress has been made on our bedroom. All the SBC around the windows is finished and the slate sills are in place. We went with rounded edges on the windows and love the look!







We bought a nice used wood door, cleaned it up and cut it to fit our doorway. The frame was made from scratch. It's exciting seeing our first door in place!







The ceiling pine was sanded and got a couple of coats of satin finish. The oak floor has been fit into place. It's since been removed again, sanded, and finished. Not sure if we mentioned the flooring before, but we got rough cut lumber from a local mill. It took a lot of time and work to get it from rough cut to finished, but the wood cost was $185.



We're trying to use finishing products with less chemicals. I don't recall the brands we used on the wood. We purchased American Clay for the bedroom walls. We may make our own plaster for the rest of the interior, but wanted something quick so we can wrap up the bedroom. We'll report back on how it goes!

Congratulations!  When did you have the twins?  Cute little ones!  I'd say you've been busy - things are coming along very nicely!