Here are some renderings. I love sketch-up.
(https://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/speedfunk/house/house_Aug_codedrawing_2008_3doutsid.jpg)
(https://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/speedfunk/house/house_Aug_codedrawing_2008_3dout-3.jpg)
(https://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/speedfunk/house/house_Aug_codedrawing_2008_3dout-2.jpg)
(https://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa8/speedfunk/house/house_Aug_codedrawing_2008_3dout-1.jpg)
A bit of background: Our thought is that we can design a house that is as efficient and simple (lack of electric powered adaptions, ie water pump, pressure tank, furnance etc). We are 29 now and we both work part time so we will build it ourselfs . I work 2 days a week (10 hours) in IT and she works 3 days in programing. . We have land all ready purchased and paid for in cash. We owe a bit of cash still on our current home but no other debts. The land we are building on has 14 acres of wooded land, very close to a city in southern tier of NY State. The land was picked b/c we be attempting to build a completely passive solar house. There is a great southern exposure. The land has a spring above where we are building that flows 20-25 gpm.
The house will basically be a earth-bermed drystacked block house, think one story basement with roof. Due south has windows and there will also be passive solar collectors ( not PV) outside the house that will attach to dry,insulated earth below our house. This will allow us to harvest the solar rays of dead summer OUTSIDE the house so we won't over heat but can still use that energy ( an attempt to fix the flaw i see with conventional earthships). John Hait has written about energy storage in the earth around your house and this is the system that we have adapted (and twisted a bit Wink. Again simplicity and low maintenance being key! No pumps or furnaces if we can help it. We will also have a wood stove as a back up.
Power is tricky, we have a spring that connects with another spring and runs down the hill around 180 ft drop. So there is really good potential for a water turbine. this will most likley wait till after house is built. Also an option becuase we are on top of a hill is wind. We have a high spot of the top of our land that sits in bedrock that would be perfect for a tower. The wind maps also say it's good site ..I think it averages 12-14mph winds . So one or the other, or maybe both down the road.
We are currently in the permit process! We have an excavator scheduled to start the end of the week (although you know contractors esp chill ones like we have) leveling the spot for the house and making a small pond.
Look forward to sharing the project and getting feedback... peace
jeff
I have read the preview of John Haits PAHS book. Lodestar (Bruce) used his techniques in Montana I think. There is info here on it somewhere.
John Hait also wrote a book on Rust Batteries - decomposing metal in a safe manner for power.
Nice renderings - good for getting ideas going.
There is an earth bermed house here in the Hot Springs, AR area. The side that faces the road is exactly like the backside of your design. I drove down the driveway once, but it looked like they had a lot of company (lots of cars in front) so I didn't stop.
Still, the earth bermed concept intrigues me (and I used dry-stack blocks for my foundation).
I hope you take lots of pics and even consider documenting your build in a blog. I did a blog on my project, and yes, it does take up time away from building to write it all up, but it's a really effective way to communicate your thoughts to those you want to know about it.
Good luck with the project.
Yeah Glen, I've heard about the rust batteries . It seems cool and being that I think he's a very bright guy I can't see why it wouldn't be worthy of purchasing. Finding Haits book was VERY helpful. I've always wanted to use the earth as a sink but found very little data on it. Like the fact that heat travels 20' out in every direction (in dry earth) during a 6 mo period. my thinking was to build an insulated box below the house at that time. I understand that idea of using gradual temp gradients to slow and store the passage of heat. The thinking before was the barrier insulation mindset. I'm excited to start however being that my planning has been going on for a while I'm somewhat somber about it now d* . Just trying to deal with code and get the permit so I can have electric installed on property. We used a generator for the last project and I really got tired of listening to it.
The code guy had issue with that main ridge beam i'm using. I went to a building supply and we speced out a 8" x 5 1/5" x 30' glu lam to work for the spans. However I don't want glue holding my house up. I'd rather use old barn beams , however this would require an arcitect to "approve" it. He is even aware there are barns standing now 200 years later using barns. So he said as long as it's up to code . NYS goes by the International building code. So i'm thinking of submitting a drawing of using 4 8" x 2" rough cut boards (not sure about wood type) staggered seams as the main beam. With bolts thought all of them. I mean it's only 10' spans. We will see what he says to this.
Meanwhile I'm waiting for the excavator guy to come. He is a really good guy that has big equipment but also has a 40 hour a week regular job so I understand lol. The goal is to fix the driveway. The drive way of the property is ballastic. It was a 30 acres subdivision with the culdesac at the end, we own this peice that no one wanted. Well the end peice was never built on but it had a road put in that goes into the middle of my property ( I can't see anyone!) . The road was built to town specs so it's really wide 25' and very strong. So really all i need to do is reditch and add some crush and run and some pipe ways to drain the hill water. I'm very lucky to have such a nice driveway.
The hill needs to be terraced . Quite a large amount of dirt and rock will have to be moved. The insulated skirting around the house goes out 20' in every direction so simply digging some footers is not enough. The hill is steep and above the house I want to make sure I have the property well drained. Water seeping into my insulated earth would not be good so I want to REALLY make sure this doesn't happen
I'll do a search and check out bruces postings :) Thanks Glen.
N74tg:
Yeah i'm going to keep this page as a blog and some one our own webpage . I like the idea of keeping everything hear b/c alot more people will find it compared to my own blog. I will defiently read yours. I very much enjoy house building blogs it inspires me to keep keeping on ...
Jeff
E
This will be worth watching. Thanks, Jeff.
I have the Rust Battery e-book - just need to actually try it.
Nice looking concept and renderings. :)
Quote from: speedfunk on November 22, 2008, 11:50:08 PM
...small holding tank to increase the pressure ( only 20' drop to house),we will have pressurized water for our home with no need for any electric powered system.
However, I'm not sure you'll be happy with this. If there is only a 20 foot fall the water pressure would be less than 9 PSI. :( The formula is to multiply the distance from the top surface of the water to the outlet by .43. [20 ft x .43 = 8.6 PSI] It makes no difference if the tank holds 20 gallons or 20000 gallons; if the distance from the surface to the spigot is the same so is the pressure. I just wanted to point this out as anything less than 20 PSI is generally not satisfactory to most folks.
There are also frictional losses, which are mainly going to be noticed over long distances or with too small a pipe diameter.
Mountain Don,
I don't mind if my pressure is low as long as I have GPM. My thinking is I need water coming out and enough to not have to wait 20 years for it to fill. You bring up a good point about the resvior, the only thing that's going to do is provide me with the volume of water without depleting the spring box. This make scense?
Beam Question. I have a 30' span from side to side with 2 8" concrete posts every 10' in the middle. Is there load caculators you all know of that should be excepted by my code guy . IBC is the code. This is the part i'm not good at PROVING to him. I know I can see examples where it works but they of course don't want any liabilty. I don't have money for arcitect to prove it good. Idea's would be great!
Quote from: speedfunk on November 25, 2008, 01:32:09 PM
Beam Question. I have a 30' span from side to side with 2 8" concrete posts every 10' in the middle. Is there load caculators you all know of that should be excepted by my code guy . IBC is the code. This is the part i'm not good at PROVING to him.
It's not clear to me if you are talking about a roof beam, floor beam... ?
Here's what i did this weekend: NOT BUILDING LOL
I'm the guy beating mylar skins and shinny discs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FClXzQq2ROI
roof beam.
Roof Beam; as in the ridge beam? If so that normally requires an engineer or architect. Or if you're lucky the inspector may have a less expensive solution/suggestion. MTL, he will not, but you never know. :-\
Calculator for joists, floor and ceiling, and rafters...
http://www.awc.org/calculators/span/calc/timbercalcstyle.asp (http://www.awc.org/calculators/span/calc/timbercalcstyle.asp)
but not beams of any kind. Thiose are more complicated calculations.
Quote from: speedfunk on November 25, 2008, 01:44:09 PM
Here's what i did this weekend: NOT BUILDING LOL
I'm the guy beating mylar skins and shinny discs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FClXzQq2ROI
Cool, Jeff. We're in the presence of fame. :) I'm too lazy to go to a concert anymore and wrestle with the throngs of people.
glenn: Famous .hahahaha . Why do you think i need the passive solar house!!! Can't afford the heating bill d*
Mountain Don: Thanks that will definitly help some. I ;'ll have to do some REAL digging on the net and see what I can find. Talking to him should help as well. I just kind of get confused by all this beacratic type stuff. I just want to be able to build
will your place be a 1 bedroom? Will you expand or modify the layout as your son gets older?
I like the look.
soomb:
Yes, it's technically a one bedroom 8). all though if you look at pic 4 up top you will see where there are 3 bays to the back of the house. One bay (far right) is taken by the bathroom. This leaves the option to wall in 2 more rooms that could be used for bedrooms :) Expansion would have some consequences and would have to be done carefully to not mess up the insulated skirting. We also have a tiny cabin on the property,maybe my son will move out there when he is craving independence. When they move out though and we are old and grey the walls can be taken back out to open up a bigger living area. Interior walls would be made from pine
thanks for pointing that out. What is the width/depth of the main body of the house? What is the rough size of the bays (bath and others)? The tiny cabin is the one from your blog?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Just browsed through your blog - guess I didn't notice the link at the bottom of your postings - looks like you guys are having fun! Cute kid :) I'm really impressed at all you have accomplished at such a young age [cool] I'll have to look at the blog periodically for updates...
I'm excited to see how your project goes. I wish I could see the pictures but I'm viewing from work and they block everything except google picasaweb.
When im home I'll check out your project and update this response. Keep us updated!
- Sean / BK
Interesting for sure!
BTW: Nice job on the 122! I've restored/rebuilt an Original, an 86, and a 1200. Great little tractors.
Soomb: The width and the depth are 30'8 inside ( 32' outside) x 24'8" (26' outside) . The bedroom bays are 10' along the rear wall and 9' deep. Master bedroom is 15'4 inside x 9'4" inside. Yeah the Tiny cabin is the one we built. I'm going to post some pics of it now (just took them). It's funny how it's easy to start off posting everything but by the end of the project we always seem to slack a bit lol.
Sassy: Thanks :0) Yupper things are going good can't complain, kid def changes things a wee bit :P
Bknight: being that I'm a network admin, one easy way to navigate through content filters is to use btunnel.com or some other tunneling web app. The kids know it lol, of course they have an abundance of time to find this stuff . There won't be much happening during this winter though but if I get the dirtwork and the electric oh..and finish up the spring box for water for concrete I'll be happy and ready to go come spring.
Listerd: Actually it's a 102 , The hood we had was badly beat so b/c my old man LOVES cub cadet tractors he search around and found one from a 122 cheap so it has wrong stickers on it. Neat stuff, tractors are so much quicker to restore then cars. The dune buggy my dad and I built it took 2 or 3 years . The tractor a couple months of LOTS of breaks. What I love best about the thing is it's meant to work, that transfer case is BUILT SOLID. I'd like to see someone damage it. When kids my friend and I had a "brief" firewood business, and we used a 102 to haul 2 or 3 small trees at a time ..try that with a craftsman ride mower :)
peace
Jeff
Surely built like a tank. My 1200 out does the JD we have hands down.
Just like everything else the older models of the cub when built by International were jems but since MTD took them over there quality has deminished considerably. I bought a JD older 316 rather than a newer verson just for that reason. The older had Onan engines and everything was built heavier. The newer have Kaw motors and everything underneath is stamped metal rather than cast. Vintage is better if you can find one in good shape.
Finally got to see the sketchup pics now since work blocks them. Looks very nice. I can't wait to see how you progress with it.
Quote from: speedfunk on November 30, 2008, 03:25:34 PM
I'm going to post some pics of it now (just took them). It's funny how it's easy to start off posting everything but by the end of the project we always seem to slack a bit.
I know the inclination is to slack a bit as time goes on, but I implore you to fight it! I am very detail oriented and the more you post the better. I am impressed that at 29 you have done this once already and are on your second go at it (impressive at any age really). Keep the detail and background coming.
Thanks
Soomb: I'll do my best. I have learned ALOT from projects people post so I feel I should return the favor and maybe someone will get something out of it.
BK: I can't wait to see how I progress with it either... balancing the money and time thing. This summer looks to be very busy indeed.. between work, building this house, spending time with my son and the esp the band. The summer is busy time, lots of festivals , outside parties etc.
I got my building permit!!! HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY. ;D
There were a couple things holding it up. The main ridge beam , which I went to a local glu-lam seller and they had software to figure out what I needed and printed out some specs that were good enough for my inspector. So I am NOT doing trusses :) and I did not have to have an architect charge me for designing my roof :) So I've been in contact with Tim who has an excavation business and he's finishing up a job and I need to call him this friday to set time for work to be done on the driveway and ALOT of dirt moving. This is getting old but I know he's good and reasonable I will just have to keep pushing. Now that I got permit I can call and get electric service installed. I'll do that monday and find out about costs and different options. I need one pole to get across a road above me. From there I will have a meter installed and Breaker Box. Underground conduit from there will get electric to the house. Having the meter away from the house will also aid in any net metering setups I might do down the road. That is all for now. It's nice out today...snowing.. :) I took my boy tucker out and we went tubing. I love the snow.
peace
c*
Ahh Ren & Stimpy: HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY.
Congrats. I am going to follow both you and BK closely as I have always wanted to earth berm and did not know of SBC until reading CP.com. I am 2 years away from any starts, but that is plenty of time to watch and learn.
Ahhh snow.... not so much here in AZ (Phoenix) and I miss it as a NJ & WV boy.
Congrats again and best of luck... Post a ton of pics!
2 years...perfect amount of time to figure out what you really want. We redrew ours quite a bit over that time.
Thanks Soomb, I will def post as many pics as i can
Awesome congrats Jeff!
I know the feeling you had. I got mine about 2 months ago :)
Questions: In the sketch-up renderings of the home, are the gray areas concrete and the green framing? Will the hill slope past the house or will you add retaining walls to increase the outdoor living space (like off the kitchen door)?
Thanks
soomb - as speedfunks significant other, I'll try to answer your questions since he is obviously slacking...
On the exterior of the house we plan to do a few feet of rock (the gray part) along the bottom and then painted stucco on the top half - probably a green to blend in with our surroundings. No camo though. ;) The rock will most likely be a slate. There is an old quarry on the neighboring property, which is owned by a business for their water tower.
I'm pretty sure we will have a retaining wall on both sides of the house. Our future plans are to put a green house/sun room connected to the kitchen side plus an overhang for car storage. I look forward to not having to get snow/ice off the car! We're also doing a screened in porch in front of the master bedroom.
The excavation crew finally left us a message last week saying they're ready to move the equipment up to our property. Not sure when they'll actually begin work (it's below 0 and we've got about a foot of snow now), but it'll be nice to see the equipment there and know we're first on their list. We really wanted the digging done in the fall so we could start first thing in the spring without anyone else holding us up.
We're also still waiting on electric - we have our work request in & need to hear back from the company.
Drainl: Slacker? me? ??? You must be confusing me with another husband you might have.
Soomb: There will be no wood framing besides the roof. It will all be dry stack block.
Thank you both for the information. Do you plan to leave the block hollow or fill it in (sand, foam, other)?
Hey soomb. See what I tell ya I'm a slacker . Actually I've been working on something fun besides building houses so maybe that's a good excuse?
So yeah i'm going to leave them empty. I'm going to have a massive amount of thermal mass i don't think i was to spend the extra time filling the cores with sand. If anything maybe that gives the wall a bit more contact with the air i'm trying to regulate the tempeture of? Who knows but one core fill every 4 cores with concrete is it :)
Right now the project is at a bit of a stand still . The weather hasn't really broke to the point to get machines in their quite yet ( without making a huge mess)
NYSEG the electric company. Has tenativly marked the lines for the power to go. There's a bit of a hang up with they need to get approval to set a support cable on someone elses property. If he says yes it's a go , if not that I need to run the electric a kind of weird way that will cost more. As long as it's not the neighbor who called code on me for camping on my own land >:( >:( I'm sure it will be fine!
jeff
We may finally break ground on the new house this week. Woohoo! Jeff and I have been talking about & planning for our house for several years. It's going to be great to finally start working. I probably won't feel that way once we get to hauling blocks. Those suckers are so heavy! Because I like to document everything with photos, here are some before pictures of the building site. Once we move some earth around we'll have a better idea of where we want the house.
Looking up from driveway
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_up.JPG)
Looking down onto the site
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_down.JPG)
From the side
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_side.JPG)
Further away from the same side. Our cul-de-sac is going to get uglier for now since it's a good flat storage area. We hope to have a nice firepit, picnic area, small barn, etc. here at some point. This and another nearby area are where kids partied for many years - we've found some people as long as 40 years ago. Maybe it was the Makeout Point of our town. Sadly that comes with many years of littered bottles.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_cds.JPG)
Looking back down the driveway (building site on the right)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_driveway.JPG)
And finally our spring cover Jeff worked on last fall. He needs to drain the box before he can finish patching all the holes at the base. Once that's done the water will come out of the big hole in the center. Should look pretty neat! This will supply our water for the house eventually also.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_spring.jpg)
Hopefully we'll have some nice dirt filled pictures next time. ;D
drainl it might be a worthy investment to put a locked gate on the road leading to the house if it is not a right-of-way. Doesn't have to be anything great just sink two post and put a chain and lock. Tools and other things find legs while you are not around and just walk off. ;D. As a added note make it as far away from the house as you can get by with. Heavy stuff don't like to walk that far to the car.
We'll be looking forward to more pix. :)
We actually have a locked storage shed and plans to put up another. We have a little 8'x8' cabin on the property which had our brand new Mr. Buddy heater in it - dissapeared after about 2 weeks. We've learned!
I HATE thieves.
Day 1! Jeff was busy cutting trees up and I'd pile them into the trailer and stack them in our wood pile. We'll have a woodstove in the new house so we're saving all the useful stuff. The brush, roots, trunks, etc. are going over the bank. The guys made good progress today and we are having a good experience with them so far. (We used a different crew for some work a few years ago and had some problems/frustrations.) The driveway has been grated with a new ditch cut. Lots of tree trunks were removed. It looks odd without the trees. Lots more light which will be great for our passive solar house.
Looking down onto the site
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_19_down.jpg)
Looking back down the driveway
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_19_driveway.jpg)
From the cul-de-sac
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_19_cds.JPG)
Looks good. :)
Days 2-5
We've still got the excavator and bulldozer at the land. Jeff thinks there's about two days left of work there, then another day at our current house to put in a new driveway. Saturday we cut up trees and stacked wood. From the photos below you can tell who did all the hard work. ;) Sunday we poked around and made some final decisions on the house and driveway locations. The leech field for the septic is playing a big factor in where the house is going to end up. Today they dug out most of the area for the house and then quit a bit early since it was in the 30s and windy. Besides a few cold days, we've timed the work pretty well. It hasn't rained for about a week, which is unusual spring weather.
Friday 3/20
Looking up from driveway
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_20_up.JPG)
Saturday 3/21
Our son, who decided only he could do the job right.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_21_tuck2.JPG)
Me tossing around some wood. No big deal.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_21_wood.JPG)
The dumptruck ready for action
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_21_dump_truckjpg.jpg)
Holy cow - look at the size of that dozer!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_21_dozer.JPG)
Monday 3/23
No great photos from today - here you can see part of the house site.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_23_housesite1.JPG)
great to see things rolling along
All the digging is done as of today. We also had driveway work done on our current home (20+ loads of fill from the land. Sweet!) I've started a spreadsheet to give us a good idea of what we're spending on this little project. Here's the totals so far. We bought the land a few years ago and I can't remember the exact price, so I'll add that later.
Miscellaneous $69.81 (boots, chain saw repair)
Septic $1000.00 ($1k for engineered plan - damn NY!)
Site Work $4671.00
Total: $5,740.81
If only we wanted to live in a big muddy hole, this would be a great price on a home! We used over 40 hrs on the site between the excavator and the dozer. The plan is for them to come back in the fall to backfill, probably some driveway work and anything else that may come up.
Tomorrow we're off to get materials for running our electric underground from the pole (still to be installed by electric co.) to our house. We'll have the meter on a board along with some outlets so we can use it as soon as we're hooked up.
Looking good. :)
The more detail the better. should we follow you here or will your blog have more detail?
Jeff's the details man. I'm the accountant, photographer, blogger, and grunt worker. ;D
We spent lots more money today on a trailer full of electric supplies. We still need to order phone wire (no one in town had it in stock) and get some lumber for the meter, breaker box, and outlet to sit on. It's costing us a bit more to run the wire underground from the pole, but I think it'll look nicer. Less trees to clear and trim too.
Electric supplies:
300' Electric Line - exterior: $558.50
Exterior Conduit (200' schedule 40, 50' schedule 80, +other small parts): $178.44
300' Coax Cable: $32.00
200A External Box: $169.77
Miscellaneous: $108.49
Tax: $82.90
Total: $1,119.10
Yikes! It's been an expensive couple of days. We also have a new interior breakerbox we bought off a buddy for $10. So here's the grand total so far.
Electric: $1,129.10
Miscellaneous: $69.81
Septic Engineering: $1,000
Site Work: $4.671
Total: $6,869.91
And some pictures from the other day...
The hole for the underground electric. Unfortunately a big excavator makes a big hole and we'll be spending a lot of time filling it back in (or wait until they come back in fall if it takes forever).
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_24_electric.JPG)
Looking down onto the site. Water already and it hasn't rained for several days. Jeff's got the info on his plan to keep the water away.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_24_down.JPG)
Looking back down the driveway
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_24_driveway.JPG)
From the cul-de-sac. On the right side is where we'll have the driveway go up to the house. They dug a drainage ditch after this photo was taken. We have some old thick metal pipe a friend gave us that we'll put under the driveway section.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_24_culdesac.JPG)
Thanks for the financials!
I will be watching the progress closely as the earth bermed is of great interest to me. best of luck.
A quote from another posters signature:
"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have" - Thoreau
Thanks again for the numbers - always helpful. :)
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*
Sounds good. We'll be looking forward to seeing your progress.
We've been working on electric lately. 8)
Here is Scooby hauling the 300' spool of service cable and 2" conduit.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm1.JPG)
Setup the spool with a piece of rebar through the middle. From this vantage point the electric goes downhill.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm-2.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm3.JPG)
I built this pedestal from pressure treated 4x4 x 12' and 1"x6" 's
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm4.jpG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm5.JPG")
Installed meter box
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm6.JPG")
Installed main Breaker panel that will go to sub panels in the house and eventually garage/shed/workshop/temple of mountain worship /etc
(http://"http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm7.JPG)
Close up of the meter panel
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm8.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm9.JPG)
that is it for now. I'm sure deb will come in with some money details (hopefully if were lucky :)
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
BK, possible thimble board - or Mira Drain on the outside draining to a
French drain below the floor grade could help?
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.
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.
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.
(https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d184/glennkangiser/P1000705.jpg)
(https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d184/glennkangiser/P1000710.jpg)
(https://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d184/glennkangiser/P1000709.jpg)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Today deb and I got a bit more done at the land.
Here is Deb Laying the cable and the telephone in the trench!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm10.JPG)
Deb then carefully covers the cables with cleanISH dirt. Avoiding most sharp rocks and large ones that might heave when frozen
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm11.JPG)
Here Deb is covering the 2 inches of dirt on the cable with old rugs to protect it when it's backfilled.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm14.JPG)
I pounded in the other grounding rod and attached them with a cooper cable . Then attached that to grounding bar in distro panel.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm12.JPG)
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
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm15.JPG)
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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm161.JPG)
Here are the 2 of them set where the driveway will eventually go up to the house.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm17.JPG)
That is all for now!
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.
The game is afoot! How exciting!
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 :)
So here we are now. This was from early last week.
Starting by staking out the middle of the block wall.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm20.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm22.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm241.JPG)
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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm251.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm26.JPG)
This was probably 10 hrs worth of work last week. Everything is level and secure.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm28.JPG)
This weekend I started the inside of the forms. Debbie had been wrapping the in plastic and duct tape which takes a while.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm29.JPG)
A close up of my "system" of formwork
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm30.JPG)
Rear wall , with the drainage ditch working nicely!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm31.JPG)
Over view of work this weekend
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm32.JPG)
This is the our master bedroom.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm34.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm35.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/earthberm36.JPG)
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 :)
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*
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.
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!
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
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.
When the code officer showed up did they say anything about your shed? I was a little worried about the one I am building.
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
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm53.JPG)
Here's the electric company hooking up the new line to the pre-existing electric pole.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm54.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm55.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm60.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm62.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm64.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm66.JPG)
Our system of moving the stone. Go cubby and debbie
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm65.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm67.JPG)
We then ran the horizontal rebar by tying it to the vertical stub rebar.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm68.JPG)
Tuckster helping out, he can say tractor now too
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm70.JPG)
Over view of work as of today
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm72.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm71.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/earthberm731.JPG)
Thats all for now :)
Wow, looks great! I like the pics of the electric company hooking everything up! How exciting!
Basically when I built my shed, it was under 200 square feet so technically ( in maine ) no permit was necessary. ;D
Thanks! Yeah the electric is good to get going. Can charge stuff on site now! Also need cement mixer. Debating on weather to use redimix concrete or buy sand, peebles and mix it custom. Not sure what would be cheaper or would it be worth the added time. I have a bunch of cores to fill in the block and a bond beam at the top and some window headers that all need to made from concrete. d* So much stuff to think about lol.
That would be nice to have that under 200 no permit nessecary. From what the code guy said EVERY building needs a permit. It's a very simple permit process i believe for sheds and such..they just want to know where it is on your property. Probably so they can get a bit more money out of ya :P
Copied from our blog... more updates to come!
Cement day (5/16/09)! After some late night calculations, Jeff was confident 7.5 cubic yards of concete would be the right amount. Since it cost about $100/cubic yard, it wasn't something we wanted to go way over on. On the other hand, being short concrete would stink too. We also ran out and got a bigger wheelbarrow. We arranged for our friend Ron to assist, since he's done several footers himself. The truck showed up promptly at 8am. The driver was able to get up the hill to the house on the first try. The downside was he couldn't hit all the footers with his shoot, so the guys put the wheelbarrow to use.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4359.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4362.JPG)
Once the footers were full, we had about 1/2 cubic yard left. The concerete guy said that was a pretty good estimate.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4373.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4367.JPG)
They got everything smoothed out. The walls bulged a bit in spots, but never burst.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4370.JPG)
When we were all done Tucker and Grandma June came up to check out the progress. Tucker went straight for the wet concrete!
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The total cost of the cement was just under $800. Another expensive day!
drainl I must apoligize for not posting when I saw your original footer forms. I thought to my self that you needed some extra exterior pins ( About 1 every 4 feet) but I got sidetracked by something and never got around to it. 2X forms will hold well and is probably the choice when forming a footing but they are not much in the way of strength. Sorry but it looked as though it all worked out. A little wider will not hurt but too narrow gets you into problems. I might pass something else along. I always have a reserve area for over-run concrete. Just think where you want something else and have the form ready and make stoops, sidewalks, shed floors and the like. I had several pours on my house and I managed to pour a 12X36 shed floor just out of over -runs in a two year period. It looks like the work is about to begin.
Wheel borrowing is no fun. I had an area that couldn't be reached as well. I had some rather large tinbers which I managed to make a bridge over the footing to allow the truck access to the back. Once he was out away again I removed the timbers and poured this area last. If your timbers are higher than the forms and fill the forms with timbers as well it will not hurt him driving over it. Just a thought but you are already over that bridge.
Good Luck
Hi Redoverfarm - we actually thought about both the things you mentioned - adding some rebar 1/2 way through the boards and making forms for extra concrete. Obviously we didn't get to either.
If we do a concrete floor (still trying to decide) we may make more of an effort on making some sort of form for the extra. You're right - it's a great way to put the over-run to use!
I forgot to mention a nice side effect of wrapping the footer boards in plastic - the side of the footers came out super smooth. Doesn't matter much since it'll be underground, but I thought it was interesting.
It's always nice to get some footings down and have someplace positive to start from.
Wow awesome! Great job guys! [cool]
Jeff,
I am going to be working on my back berm within the next month or two and I'm starting to research french drains. My local farmer supply sells 3' x 300' of typar landscape fabric for $79.99. I thought it would be a lot more expensive for the fabric!
Since I have a moat around my house but its 4' from the perimeter, I'll probably have 2 french drains around my house, just incase. I figure its better to be safe than sorry. One drain will be in the moat and another will be upclose to my house around the perimeter with drain pipe connection to the lower drain at a few places.
I'll probably do it similar to this picture.
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Yes it is Glenn ;D. However now that I'm setting block and trying to work out the rest of the plan in my little melon here it's just a part of the large process. I'll post pics soon but I finished getting the spring fixed up so now I have water to spot (170 foot from spring) where we are mixing concrete! woot. Won't get much done this weekend as we have a barbeque and the band has 2 shows.
BK: Yeah man , I don't think you can be careful enough when it comes to water. Esp with an earthberm you NEED to make sure water doesn't sap away the heat you intend to store there. We are doing a horizontal skirting membrane that goes out 20' to a curtain drain that we be at or below the footer level and drains all around the house. I'm erroring on the side of overdoing the water management 8).
Updated pics to follow.
Jumping back in time a bit...
On May 21st we got our first shipment of blocks. The block company is local and it's nice to get these supplies actually made in our hometown. 9 pallets total - I think about 1/3 of the total amount we'll need. We were optomistic that since the cement truck got to the site pretty easily, the delivery truck would as well. We REALLY didn't want to have to haul the blocks up the hill by hand or a trailer full at a time. Jeff pushed the driver a bit and after a few tries he was up. Phew! He put most of the blocks inside the footers.
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Jeff took the footer forms off. They came out great! A funny side effect of the plastic wrapped boards was the glass smooth concrete. It's real pretty, but eventually will be under a few feet of dirt.
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I removed the plastic from the boards. Only a few were really dirty and some are damp, but definitely useable! We're happy we took the time to wrap them up so we can re-use them instead of tossing them. They'll just need some cleaning. We moved the boards back to our house so we could store them in a dry spot.
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Another expensive day. Don't I keep saying that!? Over $1800 for the block delivery bill. It was good to look at the bill again. I thought we had a whole pallet of surface bonding cement. It seems there should be some concrete mix bags in there as well. I'll have to check with Jeff.
$900 720 8"x8"x16" two hole concrete blocks
$189 180 8" half blocks
$251.10 18 50# surface bonding cement
$98.75 25 80# concrete mix
$126 9 wood pallet deposits (refunded $12 each if returned soon)
$135 9 pallet delivery charge
$138.22 Sales Tax
Our two top priorities were getting the electric in and get the spring water to the building site. Now we've got both!
Jeff started last fall(?) on building a box around the spring. He got to the point where he needed to pump out the water so he could cement the inside (with surface bonding cement). Too much water in your spring isn't a bad problem to have! So in the end of May he finished up most of the spring work. Here's a photo of the spring in 2006.
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With walls built and pumping out the water...
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Jeff put in the cool keyhole with some rocks bordering it. The idea is for the water to go through the keyhole, but we've still got some leaks, so it's not making it that high. Even with the leaks, we have awesome pressure!
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Jeff was having a hard time finding the pipe he wanted in town. He finally heard about a company that had what he needed, just didn't typically sell to home owners. Jeff said they were very helpful and great to work with. The plan is to run a 2″ pipe from the spring 100′ towards the house. Then we'll split with a 1″ 100′ pipe down to the building site (and further down the hill where our gardens will be) and another 2″ (?) pipe going to the house for water. Jeff got the 2″ 100′ line and the 1″ 100′ line run. He got some expensive but heavy duty brass connections. We'll be burying these pipes eventually and wanted quality items that'll last.
Our trailer has been a huge help while building
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2″ to 1″ joint
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2″ pipe running down the hill from the spring
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So now we have water at the building site which is needed for concrete work. Woohoo! Another bill with the piping of course - the total was over $400.
$179.36 2"x100' 160 Poly Pipe
$42.68 1"x100' 160 Poly Pipe
$185.86 Brass fittings, ball valves, and clamps
$32.64 Sales Tax
5/30
On to the block laying - yay! The footers are nice to look at but we can't live in them. My motivation for getting the walls up is to get some shade. We bake in the sun on the site. Good southern exposure for a passive solar house, but not good for my sun hating body. The plan is to first get all the corner blocks level, square and set in morter. I had to move a bunch of blocks so we could measure the diagonals for sqaure. Just warming up my block moving. After a gazillion measurements and movements we finally got everything in place. Jeff is the morter man, and set the corner blocks.
This photo must have been late in the day, because I sware there is rarely shade on the site.
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Morter man hard at work
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Tuck and I were busy building our own house. It's since become a cement bag house. Maybe one day we'll reclaim ownership.
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Receipts for today? None! Unless you count our takeout dinner order. It's hard to cook after a day of working.
Here's a panoramic shot of the building site from the driveway that Jeff's mom did for us.
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Good progress drainl. There is just something about kids and construction sites. I have several of mine at various stages of their childhood on different projects I did. When they get older they just end up eating your lunch when you are not looking.
Thanks Redoverfarm! As we get the walls up the house is like a giant muddy pen. ;D
Here's our progress for the first couple weeks in June. Jeff's continuing to work on setting the first row in morter. I've been doing the dry stacking. I can only go up to 4 rows for now until we mark out the doors and make adjustments for those. Both jobs can be frustrating - maybe we're being too anal. We bought a new level (to replace a crappy crooked one)which is helping, and Jeffs favorite new toy - an electric cement mixer. It was pricey - $391+tax, but so far is working great. It can do up to two bags and is the same type the store rents out, so it should hold up well. Renting a mixer was $40-50/day. We'll use this for the first course and core filling, plus any extra stuff we need to build around the windows, doors, etc.
Old school mixing...
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And the new way... You can see in this photo the 4 rows done on the front of the house. Ground level is actually going to be 2-3 blocks up. It's hard to picture that now.
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We have some gaps that we'll probably fill with cut blocks, but for now we're using cement. We need to get the right size blade for our saw.
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We had our 32′ beams delivered last week. The store we ordered them from is closing and Friday was the last day of delivery, so we had to get them a little sooner than we wanted. Hopefully it'll do OK covered in plastic.
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We're going to try to sand it down and leave it exposed, but if that doesn't work we'll try to figure out some sort of wood to cover it with.
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Here's how it all looks as of today.
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Jeff left yesterday with the band for a 10 day trip south to Alabama. The band bought a new (1993?) van just last week so I'm anxious to hear what sort of issues they run into along the way. Jeff's the most knowledgeable on cars in the group, so he may be busy! Unfortunatly the trip means little will be done at the house unless I can get some free time.
I'll update with finances soon!
by having ground level up at 2-3 blocks will the interior floor be poured or built up (floor joist) to that level?
soomb - we'll be filling the inside of the house with dirt (probably in July?) and then will most likely do a cement slab. Jeff may do something different in the bathroom area to make plumbing easier.
cool. So will you have to dig under the footer for plumbing or just punch thru the block?
We'll be going through the block for plumbing. Hopefully it won't be too hard to punch through. A reason to buy more tools I'm sure!
Wow it looks great guys! I love all the pics. Thats the same way my blocks were dropped on my pad.
I don't miss this phase, its a lot of hard work, thats for sure! I'm glad I hired help laying the first mortar course. As far as water drainage. I have to be more careful because I'm on grade slab. No water has ever gotten inside my house but the concrete has gotten moist in some areas.
I'll probably take my time backfilling one area to test drainage and see how the french drains perform and how moist the footer gets. You're absolutely right about water robbing you of stored heat so I'm going to take all steps to avoid that.
Good luck with your road trip!
BK: Yeah that first row is taking it's toll on me. It's quite time intensive! Maybe if your a mason it would go quicker. I am getting quite a bit better though. I've come to the conclusion that the best way is to keep a level on the block as you lay it and constanly keep checking each direction for level. Don't forget to keep it close to the string without going over or you will have to move it again! Completing this stage will be very good. The machine was cool to watch becuase it has that neat knuckle and allows the pallets to be placed in almost any spot! Nice idea BK, there's no rush before backfilling, once that's done it's alot harder to fix a water issue.
The concrete mixer has really made the job easier. I'm not sure but it seems like when I hand mixed it was curing as I mixed it. So when I was done it was semi-cured and did not apply very well. The cement mixer makes a much more uniform batch and stays malleable much longer before setting up. The amount of concrete work we are doing should pay for the mixer.
Taking a break right now from working in the 3:00 heat with the black flys trying to suck the sweat out of me. I have 1/2 of the eastern side now done and hopefully will compelete it today when I go back.
Trip to alabama was quite the adventure. We blew a tire in Alabama and in Tennesee the car refused to start. Turns out the solinoid had failed. Then on the way home I felt tranny slip and discovered one of the lines to the radiator was leaking. Keep an eye on that till we got home. Alot of driving but the band did well and kept an optimistic outlook on the trip which says a lot!
Alabama was over 100 with almost 90percent humidity. Very cool people who helped along the way though, good peeps. I would have to say that tenessee is one of the prettiest places I have seen south of NY. The hills the fields...very gourgous. We will be visiting again, maybe to hike and camp.
thats all for now.
What kind of car/truck did you take?
The band has a 1993 for Club Wagon inline 6 8)
hopefully it will be a reliable!
Here's how the house looked as of July 3rd. Jeff and the little guy were gone for a couple days so I had hoped to put a lot of block stackin time in, but rain slowed me down! I could have used the time to add up bills, but that's no fun! ;)
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Here's how things look as of today - July 12th
9 days later and the house is really starting to take shape. We're high enough on the walls that we've started leaving space for doors. We also need to make final decisions on locations of the taller windows. Jeff cemented in PVC pipes for incoming water and outgoing septic. Now that he's done mortaring the first row, he's flying with the dry stacking. We've got around two pallets of block left, so we'll need to make an order soon. First we need to SBC the walls so we can have the dirt filled inside the house to bring it to ground level. Then we'll have the pallets put inside the house again like last time.
Exterior door from our bedroom and interior door from bedroom to living area
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[cool] That's a lot of concrete block :D
Thanks don for the words of encourgement!
Were almost done with our current order of block (more to come). Deb is over at the land now stacking the remaining block then I'm off stacking while she watches tuck. This is what seems to work. I feel like we are pro wresters in a tag team event. One were done with all the blocks we will parge up to at least 3'. Next up then is pouring concrete sonatube on the pier footers, where we will most likley use a couple oaks we have on the property to support ridge beam and get the pvc earthtubes intakes up to floor level THEN dirt backfill
Jeff
Looking REALLY good guys! The pics are awesome! 8)
Looks Great.
Yes great job!
I noticed you're forming alot of the smaller concrete pieces yourself. Just fyi, I used a diamond blade on my 6 amp Black & Decker Rotary saw. It created a lot of dust but was very easy, safe and fast. I highly recommend it.
Also, i just bought 4 more bags of Quikrete bonding cement from Lowes for $16.23 per bag , then used a 10% off coupon. About 8 months the price for this stuff was $18 per bag, its come down a little. Conversely, Conproco makes a similar "Structured Skin" for $29 a bag, but I believe thats 80 lbs to Quikretes 50 lbs. However, Conproco is easier to apply. If you know a septic installer who can buy for you, they can usually get all products at 30% off list. Like well tiles, septic tanks, infiltrators, cement ect...
More block laying today and Jeff started to parge the walls with the surface bonding cement. We've got all the lower windows placed now as well.
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In this photo, the kitchen door is at the left. Front door is front center. Front left is an 8′ window , then two double hung windows in the front right. One more double hung window is on the right wall. Our woodstove will be to the right of the front door.
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Jeffs parging work...
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That's it for today!
ThX Dog and Squirl!
BK:
Yeah we are forming quite a bit. It's something we just ended up doing . I originally had a circular saw masonary blade (not diamond) more like a corrugated material. I use this when I NEEd to cut. Sometimes i'm not there though and deb needs to do the fills of the voids left from block and she did not want to deal with the saw and the dust . That's something that i really hated , inhaling all that :-\
A good friend also told me about what you mentioned. I'm def going to be getting it b/c in the end i'll need it anyway to cut squares in the block for the electric boxes. He said what you did that it works pretty awesome.
Nice man... your good at digging out deals lol. I'm very lazy when it comes to that , I hate going to lowes etc. Deb on the otherhand loves home improvement stores and such. Go figure?
I relate to the dust/inhaling factor! I always wear a mask. I can't stand inhaling dust. It just seems like it's not a good idea. :P
You guys are rockin' the project!
The earthbermed stuff is so interesting!
Nice project Jeff!
I wouldn't expect much help for seasonal storage of solar heat into the soil under the house.
My experience with solar thermal mass storage is that you want it inside the insulation and exposed directly to the sun (such as a dark colored floor slab). Even then your ability to use that heat will depend more on your insulation strategy than any magic transfer with the soil. Only wet soils have decent conductivity and wet soils are guaranteed to be cold soils in your climate (mine too :D).
Now if you are in AZ or NM with lots of longer day winter sun and warmer soil temps you can do lots of impressive solar earth berms and tubes. But then solar there is very easy as the sun comes up again tomorrow morning ready to go to work for you. Unfortunately, it's not the same in the Northern climes like NY and WA.
If you already have those tubes in place they will likely work well for cooling in the summer time. My own earth tempering in my house works great for cooling - we are using it now.
You can easily add Passive solar heating if the windows are to the south. Lay a stone or cultured stone on a walls parallel to the window face instead of the convientional drywall. Of course in the summer you would not really need it and a good set of blinds and curtains will keep the house from getting hot. Just a thought.
Great job!
How did you like parging it on?
Wrist sore today? ;D
Thanks John,
Actually I am expecting seasonal storage and have a design I believe will reach this goal. If it doesn't achieve the goal 100 percent I have some modifications in mind that I could add. I'm aware area's like ours are not typical in a setting for a home like this. in fact I have not found an example of seasonal storage in our area.
The design is based mostly on Passive Annual Heat Storage design by John Hait. The insulation layer will go out 25' horizontally in every direction from our home. I've added an additional 5' to the 20' that hait used b/c I'm changing the way the heat is collected. I've just recently decided to use 2 layers of bubble wrap tekfoil instead of 2" rigid polystrene. I believe the it will provide a better thermal break on a uneven dirt surrounding. Instead of relying solely on south facing glass (of which we do have some, but not too much) I have in the plan external solar collectors OUTSIDE the house (see begging post for render of it)but connected ( no insulation break) to the same earth below the insulation and the house.
I want to fully take advantage of ALL the summer sunshine we get. Now if my solar collector is the same space i'm living in (read earthship or other common solar designs) I have to shed any heat in the summer that's above my comfort level. So you then run into the standard issue of shading so that you don't overheat your living space. Thats a lot of heat your wasting, prime summer heat. By having external (outside the house) solar collectors ( just a series of insulated boxes protruding from the ground with glass on top of it, with insulated covers for winter) I can now withstand and store tempatures to that similar to a solar oven, while keeping a comfortable interior house temp. The solar oven I built i believe if I remember right got up to 160 degrees. There's others out there that go to 300 or so.
This coupled with some dense mass like your saying john can be set inside the solar collectors (ie water bottles) which would allow that 200 degrees or whatever it might be to moderated so that the dry earth, which has mass but like you said john has some resistanse as well and is slower to absorb and release the heat could then store and pack away that heat for when I need it come winter. The system can be fine tuned in time with additional water bottles.
I've also decided to use vertical glass instead of 40 degree tilt on the windows in the house which is going against the grain for full solar houses. The reasons are overheating, the possibility of leaks (it rains a lot in upstate ny esp this year) and the added complexity of building were the main factors. The floor will also be dark stained concrete. There will be shades or (internal )storm windows lol, that can be drawn over the inside of the windows. This will create 8" of dead air space at every window in the winter. The windows were also staggered so that they will cast light on different parts of the floor (mass) so as to allow the floor to soak up as much as possible with as little windows as possible and so that through out day different parts of the floor will be hit with the sun.
The earth tubes are really just to help moderate incoming temp and keep fresh air. So many people now believe that they have to make a house air tight which is unhealthy. In a conventional house where heat is store mostly in the air it's a bitch lol, you almost have to? The mass here should allow me to swap out air for a better indoor environment without losing my heat. There are 2 incoming 4" tubes and will be 2 tubes going out the back for exhaust with fans setup on them. A great resource for earthtubes is the http://www.thenaturalhome.com/earthtube.htm. He had some good tips on cleaning and maintenance. I'm not sure about a few of the details but overall it's a great site and where I first found out about drystacking as well.
I hope it's fairly clear how I hope to achieve full solar heating. Any questions feel free to as b/c the more I think about the design the better it will be. There is also going to be a wood stove in the house for at least the first 2 years while the earth below heats up ( it takes that long for that much mass,based on hait PAHS book).
I'd to to hear more about your tubes john! There's not much info on them in this big intraweb.
BK: actually not bad so far :) I'm like parging ... it's nice and quite . Working with saws and hammers gets old for me anyway so I enjoy the contrast. I see you still got the back of the wall yet lol. Do you think you will have that parged by winter?
I've just got done talking with TIm the excavator dude and he's stopping by sometime next week to fill in the floor so everything has to be done by then. Nothing like a deadline to get ya moving. To bad it's raining today :(
peace
I have an earth bermed passive solar in my future. I love the naturalhome.com website! Depending on my budget, I might consider dry stack too. I am watching you and BK closely ;)
Thanks, I'm pretty frugal unless its for food or entertainment. As for the back wall, I'm hoping by next month I have the rest parged.
After that I need to waterproof everything. I've been doing research on products that will allow me to backfill with my native clay soil. Heres 2 places that carry the specific products I'd need. I called around and got prices.
Sterling Building Supply Prices ( Waltham, MA )
$128 - CCW 702 primer, 5 gallons
$306 - CCW MiraDRI 860, 600 sq ft (.51 sq/ft)
$534 - Dow Blueboard Polystyrene, 600 sq ft (.89 sq/ft)
$348 - CCW MiraDrain 6000, 600 sq ft (.58 sq/ft)
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$1316
Kamco Building Supply ( Portland, ME )
$140 - CCW 702 primer, 5 gallons
$360 - CCW MiraDRI 860, 600 sq ft (.60 sq/ft)
$480 - Dow Blueboard Polystyrene, 600 sq ft (.80 sq/ft)
$420 - CCW MiraDrain 6200, 600 sq ft (.70 sq/ft)
----------------------------------------
$1400
Heres the technical data on the CCW 702 primer which is used in conjunction with CCW MiraDRI 860 bitumene sheet membrane.
QuoteCCW-702 PRIMER
CCW-702 is a quick drying, solvent based, high-tack primer specifically designed to promote maximum adhesion of
CCW Sheet Membrane Waterproofing products.
Apply by long nap roller or brush in an even film at 300 to 350 square feet per gallon. Allow Primer to dry for 1 hour
minimum at 75o F. Primer has a satisfactory cure when surface is tacky, but will not transfer when touched. Prime
only areas to be waterproofed the same day. Reprime if area becomes dirty or wet.
What you explained about the ventilation was helpful. I think that is a major consideration. Air quality matters. It seems like it depends on how far back the berm goes.
BK's home has windows on the both sides which seems good. Only one room w/o a window.
I've mentioned the details of all the bigger purchases we've made in the last couple of months. Luckily since the block order, we haven't had to buy too much and it's given us time to save up $ again. We're trying to push off getting a loan for as long as possible. Here are the current totals.
Electric $1,513.80
Materials $3,348.51
Miscellaneous $720.14
Paid Workers $30.00
Plumbing $487.29
Septic $1,000.00
Site Work $5,311.17
Total $12,410.91
Our excavator guy is scheduled for next Friday. That should give us plenty of time to get ready. Then we'll probably have another block delivery scheduled for early the week of August 3rd. A local building company is closing and having an auction this weekend, so maybe we'll find some deals there.
Dog,
I actually put a basement sliding 2x1 window in the back bedroom so none of my rooms are without ventilation, unless you count the bathroom :)
Those earthtubes sounds very interesting. James Kachadorian recommends a slightly different approach ( in his book "Passive Solar House" ) where he lays cement blocks on their sides so you have a channel for air to circulate through and then each side is vented. I considered it but felt it was too complex and might be over my head for a 1st home builder.
We had some success at the auction yesterday. We got 8 Anderson basement windows (4-31"x18", 2-35"x23", 2-31"x14") for $35/window. We priced them out $60+ each for no name brand, so we're pretty happy with the price. We should be able to use 6- 7 of them and have someline who may buy the last one. I'm bummed that I was too slow to bid on a lot of PVC, furring strips, and cedar shakes (for our 8'x8' cabin siding). Darn fast auctioneers!
Wow nice scores Deb! ;D
Want to hear the opposite end of a deal? Grace and I went to a beautiful waterfront wedding this weekend that cost in the ballpark of $35,000 for the pavilion, menu and open bar alone. Sadly, thats about what my house will cost to build.
Homeschool mom: Cool I hope and I know BK does also, that people do watch and learn from our mistakes and triumphs. The drystack is more labor intensive obviously. It does have some advantages though.
1. running wiring/plumbing in the block cores with out the needed for sight to pour in conduit.
2. I feel it's more flexible then forms. Maybe people with tons of form experience would differ on this opinion though. I like the idea that I can think as I build and change things as we go up.
3. It's a hell of alot easier to drill through a block if you need to add something in the future then 8-10 inches of concrete
4. Allows us to keep building on a budget where we would still be saving for a poured wall.
Drainl and I feel that it's a bit finicky though. The blocks have small variations in them that you need to constantly keep and eye on and sometimes that can be a pain. You have to let your self be a bit UN-anal lol. Focusing instead of overalls and averages.
These reasons are why it's a good DIY building method IMHO c*
Something I've thought about lately is the fibers in the cement and how long they will hold before the cement degrades them. This could be easily remedied though when that eventually happens by adding another layer (depending on how you finish your interior) ??? I know that certain types of surface bonding cement have different fiber types. I did not really look into this though.
BK:
Good luck man! I hope you can beat winter lol. We did the parging on our firstday cottage in the winter and I'm sure you prefer to finish it before falls end.
It is crazy what people spend for one freakin' day! I hope you got your open bars worth! We have a friend that just decided to buy a 4 thousand dollar trailer and put it on his land. I'm so happy for them! They had an offer that they backed out of that would have had them paying 30 years from now! This options allows them debt free living while they slowly accumulate money and maybe eventually build.
Update: More parging lol
Quote from: Bishopknight on July 28, 2009, 01:04:25 PM
Wow nice scores Deb! ;D
Want to hear the opposite end of a deal? Grace and I went to a beautiful waterfront wedding this weekend that cost in the ballpark of $35,000 for the pavilion, menu and open bar alone. Sadly, thats about what my house will cost to build.
Not disparaging the people whose wedding you attended, but odds are the house will last a lot longer too.
Waggin,
I actually called the place they had it at. I was floored at how expensive it was. This is the view we had exactly as shown on their website.
http://www.longwoodevents.com/Venues/BelleMer/Default.aspx (http://www.longwoodevents.com/Venues/BelleMer/Default.aspx)
----------------------------
Definitely Jeff,
All very good points. The well installer had to drill through the block wall this weekend and he was glad it was only 2-3" to drill through instead of 12". As far as parging, I might hire a local kid to help me this weekend, especially if the weather is nice. I have 5 bags of SBC itching to go on the back wall :)
I'm also going to update pics tonight of my place. The well is finished. I'll go into more details on my thread.
Note: I have split off the discussions on earthtubes. Click here to read that thread:
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=7457.0
Thanks for creating an earthtubes thread John. Seems like a hot topic with little information on the web, so it's good to make it stand out more. I'm copying a couple updates from the other day back in that relate specifically to our house...
(Speekfunk)
The earth tubes with have an overall downward slope from the house. Both in the front and the back. The slope should be pretty substantial , maybe 20 degree's in the front and 15 in the back. We will do the weep holes and the string so we can pull the cloth through just like natural home which seems like a very good idea. We will also have fans setup to control the air. Natural convection is supposed to work but it's the one part of the house that I'm making "Active".
There is little to no info on earth tubes that I've found so if you see something send it my way!! I'm guessing on the amount of tubes also but I think it scales well lol. we will see.
One thing I didn't think made sense with natural homes way of running earthtubes is that they ran them right next to each other. The PAHS book I read on them did not recommend that. I've separated mine so we will see. BTW if you do want more info on earthtubes, this is by the far the best book I've found! I cannot plug this enough, just a very unbiased, logically way of looking at passive heat storage.
http://www.earthshelters.com/PAHS_Improving_ch_1_intro.html
(Speekfunk)
I'd like elaborate on the goals of this setup for me. B/c I think each of us has a different climate and needs for earthtubes. First off I'm in cold upstate NY so to be honest cooling is not really that big of a deal. I know the system will cool a bitin summer but I'm really not designing for that goal in y mind. I'm also not expecting earthtubes to completely heat my house. The mass around my house will moderate (heat/cool) our house and provide the storage of heat for the earthtubes to use to warm incoming air and retrieve some of that outgoing heat. The intakes for me are just taking the chill out of the winter air in the most passive way I can, and keeping us happy and healthy, while also trying to recoup as much heat as possible on way out.
Condensation: something that is usually brought up, but for me personally winter air tends to be dry and warming it up will not add any moisture (I BELIEVE!). In the summer here in NY which can me humid The reason to pitch the tubes downward makes sense also. Why invite water (run off or condensation )to drain into your house. So this is why I"m doing that. This will also allow me to clean the tubes using alternative methods. I could run a hose temporarily to them when I want to clean them and follow that with the rag on a string and a good chemical free cleaning that will dilute and drain any bad stuff that MIGHT grow in the tubes.
I'm kind of stuck with 4"s though lol. I'm ok with that though, it's what I decided on. My thought is our house is not all that big and wouldn't need that much air exchange. I never sat down and figured out "real" values though. So it is what it is.
July 30 - August 3
It feels like we didn't get much done in July for various reasons, but I feel a little better when I look through our photos from the month. Jeff finished up July getting the inside of the house parged so we could bring it up to floor level with dirt. There's been a lot of rain this summer, so timing has been tough. My main job is still stacking blocks, which were getting hard to lift onto the wall, so I'm happy the ground is higher now.
Here's our supervisor checking out our work from our lovely front stairs.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0282.JPG)
We got the two sonotubes filled with concrete for the posts.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0312.JPG)
Photos of the two earth tubes (which I know nothing about so I won't add to that conversation!)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0310.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0311.JPG)
All ready to go! Jeff had to move a bunch of materials inside and outside the house to make room for Vinny and the excavator.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0314.JPG)
First he filled in the ditch for the electrical lines.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0316.JPG)
Then the inside of the house got filled. I had fears of one of my walls getting knocked down, but I had nothing to worry about!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0319.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0320.JPG)
And then on to the biggest project - Jeff decided it'd be best to put in the two posts (aka trees) while we had the machinery. They were successful as you can see. We'll debark the trees and poly them eventually. Until we get the roof on we'll need the extra bracing. It'll be interesting to see what our inspector thinks of the trees. They look impressive when you drive up to the house. They're 2-3 feet taller than they need to be, so we'll trim them when we get to the roof. You can also see we left area open in the bathroom for a crawlspace.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0322b.JPG)
Total bill for the day was $708. Now we need to place an order tomorrow for more block (6 pallets were thinking) and a pallet of SBC. That and installing windows will keep us busy for awhile. We really want to get the roof on before the first snowfall. Last year we got 8″ mid October. Fingers crossed!
Lister yes we are pouring the floors. The Mass will not just be the walls but the floor connected with no insulation break to the ground below the house, oh and the earth around the house. So I should be ok on mass lol
So just wanted to comment on above pics. They day went really well. We managed to get all the parging on the interior done before they came. So the concrete had to time to setup before the INFill. The dirt that Vinny moved was from the top of the hill and need to be move eventually anyway so some of that cost will be saved in the future. We also had a drainage ditch cut in by the driveway up the house that will help that area from getting saturated with runoff.
Because sometimes i don't think ahead with EVERY detail, the idea came to me that I have to get these massive tree's on the post footers at some point. Then i think self , "those tree's are freakin' heavy and I have machine here now". So as a last minute detail , Vinny and I picked out some white Oaks that were straight and of similar thickness (ones a bit smaller). We cut to 15' foot with finished height being around 12' . We set the tree's with a chain wrapped around them and tied to the excavator. It worked out well. The arm had enough reach to safely set the tree's on the concrete. The first attempt though we had the chain get stuck kind of high up, so it took a bit of playing but we managed to get the chain off the tree without knocking the tree over. I even to to ride the bucket up to 15' woohoo!
In one of the pics we have the space for the crawl space which we will pour interior retaining walls with conduit through for piping and electric. If we didn't dig this out the crawlspace would be around 2' foot under floor joists. Learning from past , that is not a fun height to work in.
Next is more parging and like drainl said getting more block delivered, hopefully today is rain free and we can get some parging done. Allready have one of the exterior bedroom walls (western) done.
that's all for now.
Wow! Moving right along! The trees are a great idea. [cool]
Considerations has a beautiful tree and stair railing in her home.
Thanks Dog. We are trying. :D
I will def check out considerations posts! We looked at barn beams that someone had for sale and thought about having someone come over and saw some trees into dimensional lumber. However, this was the easiest option , cheapest option and given that the house is very square we thought it might add more character to the home to have the raw tree in the house. We have some really neat idea's for AFTER we get the Certificate of Occupancy. Our strategy for code has been keep things as simply as possible , tell them only what they need to know (no solar heat, no earthtubes , etc etc.) Keep it simple get the paper THEN do some neat organic type add-on's modifications!
Will you have trouble with codes and inspections using trees as they are not stamped store bought posts or beams etc. ?
Great job Jeff and Deb!
You guys are really doing great. Jeff, I'm intregued by this insulation watershed umbrella thats in that book. It sounds very interesting.
Glenn: We will find out! I will install some temp solution if need be, then remove after I'm done. I would hope common sense would prevail. So far the code officer has been much better then the firstday cottage we built. He let me nix some drainage pipes that were not needed. I think he realizes that I assume the risk and that I plan to live there not sell it.
Is it a town or county inspector? Is it the same inspector that you had dealt with before?
A reasonable inspector will often consider if the post or beam would be sized sufficiently if it was graded at the lowest standard structural rating for the application. If the answer is yes then it is unlikely that it would sag or fail (assuming it to be solid).
Thus the rule would be to err on the side of over-sizing (as you have done). ;)
This time is the town code enforcement. The firstday was the county ... they same people you will have to deal with ( I believe) :( They were very unfriendly. Issued a stop work order on me for the drystacking of the firstday. I finally found where it was in the code and they didn't care , he wanted someone from binghamton to approve it. His name was Mike, his boss Neil was a pain too. b/c he originally approve the drystack and then didn't remember and could not find the paperwork that we submitted and he APPROVED! Squirl, Keep copies of everything you do with them!
BK: I'm thinking about your situation, I'll comment on your thread
Cool Jeff. The whole idea sounds intreguing, just like earth tubes.
I just think anytime you can swing a 100 tons of thermal mass to your benefit, it is definitely worth consideration.
Yikes! I guess when you get through the first 7-8 pallets of block it doesn't mean your done. Good thing it's not a bigger house! We got 6 more pallets of block delivered today along with more bags of SBC. We lucked out and happend to pass the delivery guy as Jeff was dropping me off at work - the delivery was 2 hours early. Jeff stayed behind to let him know where we wanted the block.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0410.JPG)
Jeff has been busy parging the outside of the house up 5-6 blocks. He's getting pretty quick and only has the back wall left. Right now he's the cement guy and I'm the block stacker. It's working so far.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0411.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0412.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0407.JPG)
I'm going to keep plugging away on the block. Once Jeff is caught up on SBC, he's going to do some core fills and work on the bathroom crawlspace.
Awesome Deb, I love it! [cool] You guys are kicking serious butt!
Do you enjoy stacking the block? I kind of liked it because it was like working with huge legos and you can see it take shape so fast! Plus it was a good workout, as long as I was lifting them correctly.
I feel bad for Jeff and all that parging though. That part is not fun!
Quote from: speedfunk on August 11, 2009, 11:20:29 AM
This time is the town code enforcement. The firstday was the county ... they same people you will have to deal with ( I believe) :( They were very unfriendly. Issued a stop work order on me for the drystacking of the firstday. I finally found where it was in the code and they didn't care , he wanted someone from binghamton to approve it. His name was Mike, his boss Neil was a pain too. b/c he originally approve the drystack and then didn't remember and could not find the paperwork that we submitted and he APPROVED! Squirl, Keep copies of everything you do with them!
Actually, you motivated me to go looking to see if Neil would be the inspector for my building. I found out that I am in the only other town in the whole county that has it's own building inspector. His name is Bruno. I will let you know how it is. Did you find any town regulations that differed from the counties?
BTW good luck on the blocks.
Jeff, I really like your "trees." It will be interesting to see how you incorporate them into the design.
I was going to guess that they were white oaks, before you informed us. ;) I have a ton of white oaks on my land and some will definitely make it into the cabin.
BK: Thanks Sean! The surface bonding cement seems to take me around 30 mins to mix (in cement mixer) and 30 mins to apply. We bought a nice lightweight trowel, so i'm not sure if that makes it easier on the wrist, but usually i'm ok. I can do about 6 bags of 50 pound sbc in a day before I'm tired. I look at it like it's a task on my way to independence, that always motivates me. I have about 5 bags left to do the back wall and i'm done for a bit. Then like deb said core fills ....they go quicker though.
squirl: Sweet!!!!!!!! I'm so happy for you... bruno sounds a get it done type of a guy. I hope he is good to work with!
Update: Just got back from working in my mud pit aka "crawl space" . After using shovels and buckets I ended up getting dirt of out the hole by using my hands making balls of the clay/stone/mud mix and throwing it out. Sometimes you just have to get primative :) I have it squared and am thinking of making a square form and pouring walls and then pouring floor to "pin" the walls from going in. This could possibly change though, we will see what tomorrow brings 8)
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=4752.80 (http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=4752.80)
I had a thought this morning about controlling the humidity gained in the earthtubes. This may hel cut down on a great deal of the condensation in high humidity areas like ours in Missouri. Rough guesstimate is this would add ~$1100 to our building costs.
Jeff,
I was wondering how you could do 6 bags in one day by yourself. d* I think because I had the bags of SBC sitting around my (currently humid) house, they clumped up a bit and made working with them much harder. But ya, the fresh bags I bought for last weekend mixed fast and went on incredibly easy. Needless to say, from now on I'll just buy what I need when I need it.
So the floor pour is next? Thats pretty exciting! Did you mean that you're going to drill holes in the wall, put rebar pins in and then pour the floor so they grab onto the pins?
I've noticed quite a difference as well with surface bonding cement. We have gotten them from 2 sources a local block manufactor and home depot. The home depot stuff seems to apply better, although it's hard to say , some days it goes right on...other days it's a bit more difficult. I'm sure like you meninoed bags sitting with moisture would def screw things up. I bet the cement is half set. I'm glad it went better for you the last day there! We have to learn to love sbc, bc it's def work :)
Actually the floor or the house is not going to be poured for quite some time. The floor i am refering to is the floor of the crawl space. I'm a bit nervous about the post footer that's not that supported at this time. I'm keeping an eye on it , I would just hate to see that log fall. I'm fairly confident it will be fine. But the sooner the crawl space is done with concrete the better I will feel.
LiserD : I looked over your idea, I would imagine it would work , but you would have to weight how much energy it would take to dehumidfy vs just installing a fresh air heat exchange unit. Since both are going to be fairly active and use electric?
Keep us posted!
Speedfunk
QuoteLiserD : I looked over your idea, I would imagine it would work , but you would have to weight how much energy it would take to dehumidfy vs just installing a fresh air heat exchange unit. Since both are going to be fairly active and use electric?
Our plan is not to have A/C or Central heat in the home so I don't think a heat exchanger will do us any good in that type of situation. If I'm missing something on the exchanger functions please let me know.
Having lived in a "sick home" before (recent construction apartments that were far too tight, was nice on the bills but really bad on our health), I'm hoping to achieve around 2-3 exchanges per hour in the summer and 1 in the winter. A .35 is the minimum recommendation for "modern" construction which is far too little IMO.
Quote from: poppy on August 13, 2009, 01:43:59 PM
Jeff, I really like your "trees." It will be interesting to see how you incorporate them into the design.
I was going to guess that they were white oaks, before you informed us. ;) I have a ton of white oaks on my land and some will definitely make it into the cabin.
You know trees better then I then! Vinny who works the excavator and dozer also did alot of logging so he has a good knowledge of trees! My knowledge is getting better but still has a bit to go!
Look forward to seeing how you use them too. I noticed on your thread you mentioned alot of white oak.
So Jeff and Deb,
Forgive me if I missed any of this information in a prior post but....
What do you guys have planned to get done before winter rolls in?
What kind of material were you planning on using for the south side walls?
Are you going with an earth roof?
So you are using heat exchanger tubes, correct? You're going to have them run through the earth berm behind the house and exit somewhere?
- Bk
P.S: Its costing me a lot to berm the walls!!! It better be worth it! d*
Hey BK - I'll answer the first question...
We want to be closed in before winter - so windows in place and roof on. Probably all the SBC done as well. Jeff's thinking of making the exterior doors in his friends wood shop over the winter, so we may have tarp doors for awhile. I'm starting to get a little nervous, but we'll just keep plugging away. I'll probably take some time off work soon.
You asked awhile back if I liked stacking blocks. It is my favorite job so far - especially after digging through the mud in the crawlspace yesterday! I can go at my own pace and the progress is very visual. I'm think I'm only a little over 1/2 done though. The frustrations I have with drystacking are the inconsistencies in the blocks - some have little feet on the bottom that need to be chiseled off. Our 8"x8" blocks are about 1/2" smaller than the others. All the things that would be no big deal if using mortar. I keep raiding my sons piggy bank for pennies!
Lister : Nope, I think your correct. I honestly don't know much about your situation , you are certainly the best quailified to make that decision.
Thanks for sharing that info on the air exchanges. That is some data I did not know. I know it's good to swap air out but a recommended amount is very helpful!
Our mudpit crawlspace we dug out for the bathroom was washing away a bit , so we decided to get the floor and walls up sooner instead of later. It had filled up at least 18″ with muddy water. Instead of renting a pump, we got this shopvac (http://www.shopvac.com/vacs/detail.asp?ID=180&HdnSource=index&StoreID=). We weren't sure how well it'd work, but it was pretty impressive! It took over an hour to get the water out (you had to suck the water in, then let the water out of the hose). It should come in handy next time we want to drain our spring. Jeff also cleaned out the car - woohoo!
Here I am working hard getting near the bottom of the mud pit.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0512.JPG)
Then on to the shoveling. Fun stuff!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0513.JPG)
Finally we got it all raked out and put some stone down.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0517.JPG)
Next was the plastic. Then Jeff hauled a couple loads of sand and stone from our piles so Jeff would be ready to pour the floor the next day. It doesn't look like we did much, but we were wiped out!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0530.JPG)
Yesterday morning Jeff decided to do the floor in two pours. Partly because he was worried about getting all the cement down before it started to dry.
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(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0534.JPG)
And here's how it looked today. Much nicer than the mud! We should get the inner part poured by Friday. Then on to stacking block for the crawl space walls.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0541.JPG)
I put in a little time tonight stacking block. It was too rainy out to attempt finishing the floor pour. Here's how the site looks now.
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(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0539_2.JPG)
We did end up getting a diamond tipped saw blade and that is much nicer than pouring the gaps. Especially since Jeff does all the cutting for me. I'd probably lose a limb. Jeff's only got one show this weekend with the band so hopefully it'll be a productive one. He's been busy this summer and September looks hectic too. We'll cram in work time when we can - the benefit of building 4 miles from your house!
In the first image there looks to be a hole in the wall right behind you, what is this hole for?
Most of the pictures are broken for me. Could be my setup though.
Edit Fixed!
I've noticed that our hosting company is slow. Hit f5 if you don't see pics.
One hole is for the incoming cold water from spring. The second hole is for the hot water to come in. Between spring and house there will be a T off main water pipe so that the water can gravity feed through solar collector and into water heater to heat up rest of the way.
BTW debbie I don't believe "mud pit" is the correct term, its more like our in house swimming pool! Ahh the good life!
I also wanted to add the reason for pouring the floor in the manor we did.
1. make sure the floor was level , by using first leveling the 2x4's and then leveling the concrete from there
2. give me a space where I could trowel and smooth out the concrete.
Jeff and I spent the day stacking block. He worked on the crawlspace and I got the whole house up to 9 rows. It's nice to see it all one level and it feels good to clear another pallet. We took a little time to dry fit the double hung windows and all looks good. I'm estimating 6 rows left. That doesn't sound too bad!
Before we stack any more, we're going to core fill around the entire house and finish the crawl space floor. It'll take some time mixing and pouring all that cement.
Here are a few photos from today...
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0542.JPG)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0553.JPG)
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(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0551.JPG)
What are you going to core fill with?
Looks great and you're coming along a lot faster than I'd thought.
In your crawl space I see you have cut part of the center of the blocks out, why is this?
Bond beam is why you normally do that.
Lister: Concrete ( 1 part portland cement, 2.5 part sand , 3 part rocks and horizontal rebar. Is that the answer your looking for? Thanks , that's good to know, were trying.
EcOHeli: Its what lister says, a bond beam. It takes the pressure from the surrounding earth and distributes it along the whole row to a stronger corner.
Update: I really like this diamond saw blade, it was not cheap ( 60 dollars ), but it cuts like butter compared to the 3 dollar blade for concrete :o
Added up a bunch more receipts. The biggest ones were the delivery of blocks and SBC ($1324.89) and site work ($780). Other bigger things we got were the windows from the auction, a ladder, and shop vac. There were also a lot of small trips for the SBC. I noticed it's $1/bag less at Home Depot compared to the block store (where we also get charged per pallet and delivery), so it'd be best to just take the trailer to HD from now on.
Electric $1,513.80
Materials $5,385.66
Miscellaneous $1,238.69
Paid Workers $30.00
Plumbing $507.77
Septic $1,000.00
Site Work $6,019.17
Total $15,695.09
The roof (and school taxes!) are probably going to get us to the point where we need to get a loan. Plus we'll need a woodstove once the roof is on. I saw a great deal on Craigslist, but the stove was a bit big for our space. We want to get as small a stove as possible.
We spent the day working on the crawlspace and core-filling. Tucker is getting easier to have around the worksite as he gets older, which has been a huge help on the weekends and weeknights. It doesn't hurt when the tractor is around to play with...
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/img_0744.jpg)
Looks great Jeff and Deb! ;D
I would suggest a bigger stove, growing up in a house which used wood heat primarily. It was always easier to build a little fire in a big stove, then to build a big fire in a little stove. Also if you want to use the stove to cook the larger stove with a smaller fire regulates heat better. the small stove will make large temp swings.
We had a large old style cook stove on the first floor in the kitchen (was build in the 80's even though it looked turn of the century), we had a large stove in the basement. the large stove in the basement was all we needed in fall and spring at night. Out in the work shop we had a small stove, and the building was insulated well, but we could never get a big enough fire going for mid winter.
I sympathize with the mud this past week. It seemed to rain everyday. I was caked in it and worst of all a logger came through and destroyed my road.
Speaking of costs, I spent a day this week shopping for materials for my spreadsheets and two areas that I tried to cover were roofing and heating. Maybe this will help you. Most of the $ are off the top of my head but pretty close. It seemed that the best price I found for wood stoves and equipment was tractor supply (on rt. 23). I was looking at the smallest glass front wood stove. I think it is rated for 1000 square ft. It was $425 new. It is just slightly smaller than the ones at Lowes and Home Depot that sell for $700. I don't know if this is the stove you are referring to on craigslist. They also have a smaller box stove for $170 that has been discussed every few months on this forum. The chimney kit was around $200 and black pipe was $7 per 2 ft. piece. I calculated for the entire system new from tractor supply would have been $650.
For metal roofing the best price I found was pickett's building supply. It was $2.29 per ln/ft. ($76/square) painted. Plus they have a dozen colors to choose from and cut it to length. Lowes only has 2 colors (white and green.) They also only have it in 8 and 12 ft sections at 3.47per ln/ft. ($115/square)
If I am missing anything or you found a better deal, let me know.
Speaking of taxes, did they change your assessment this year? They assessed mine at almost double what I had paid 1 month before.
Congrats on the diamond blade saw. Having the right tool is 99% of the battle IMHO.
You guys are rocking the house! :)
Thanks for those local prices Squirl! That's a big help. We're thinking of doing some stove shopping on the next rainy day. Did you happen to check the specialty stores (one on rt 23, one on rt 7). We'll let you know if we find anything cheaper, but Tractor Supply sounds pretty good!
Thanks for the stove feedback EcoHeliGuy. I've only heated with wood for one winter, so I don't know much about it. Just remember being freezing cold because we always let the fire go out. Jeff grew up with it though. I like the idea of a smaller stove since we have a small space. If all goes well, in a couple years we won't need to use the stove too much. We'll see what we find!
You could always surround the smaller stove with some sort of thermal mass. One of the sites, it may have been Dancing Rabbit, showed how to turn a conventional wood stove into a thermal mass system (kachelofen).
I'll see if I can dig up the link.
Lister: That is something I've been keeping in the back of my head. We will see , we also just found some stoves on craigslist for 450 with all metal chimney accessories. So maybe that might be something we end up getting .
BTW Dancing rabbit has some neat stuff on it doesn't it. I can't help but admire the groups of people that get together and experiment with different ways of living and document it so we can all learn. The sharing of knowledge is such a powerful thing. It allows us all to be less dependent on money and the trappings that come with it. I'm not sure I could live in one though, like most of you all I like privacy and space to be me :D
Squirl: Sorry to hear about your drive, It's supposed to be nice for the next week so maybe it will dry out and be better ??? Thanks for those prices very helpful!
Our assessment has not changed. We pay like 800 in taxes on the land. this multiple property stuff sucks , b/c you can't claim star on the "other" property. If they do change our assessment I'll start pursuing a 2nd business , an auto salvage yard ..bring that back down :)
Thanks Dog: If were basically building this whole house then we need the right tools ( the way we figure it anyway) I wan't this to be a pleasant experience 8) I just hope that is doesn't wear out EVER!
I did not check the specialty stores. I checked HD, Lowes, Tractor Supply, and Picketts. Let me know if you find anything better. I decided to not install a wood heater right away. The heating device inspection issues and the fact that it cannot be a primary heat source for code put the breaks on that.
I noticed a few signs on Rt 7 in the town to the west and complaints from my neighbors. I heard your area was higher than some to begin with. $800 for your acreage is pretty good. I was paying $300 for half the acreage. Not sure what it is going to be now.
We will squirl. There is also a buy and sell yahoo group for the area that's active.
I can't believe you can't use wood for primary heating. That's just insane, I've not heard of that in this area.
Update: were another row up and I finishined round one ( 5' up on the house all around on inside and outside) of the surface bonding cement.
Pics when more progress occurs.
Quote from: speedfunk on September 05, 2009, 07:47:50 AM
I can't believe you can't use wood for primary heating. That's just insane, I've not heard of that in this area.
That is NOT uncommon. Some building depatments demand you have a "reliable" source of heat, like natural gas, propane, oil, electric. Ditto for your insurance companies. Their reasoning, I believe, is that those sources of heat do not require requent filling of the stove to keep the heat going and the pipes fromfreezing.
There's no real reason you can not use wood as the primary heat source as long as you also have the "backup" source that is more "normal"; fas, electric or oil. That could be baseboard electric in many places.
That is what I meant. In practice you could obviously turn down or off the fossil fuel and use the wood stove, just on paper it needs to be different. You are in the only other area in the county that has it's own inspector, but I believe the wording from the county for a Certificate of Occupancy it has to be an "automatic" heating source. It may not apply to you because of your location. In addition to what don said, non-fossil fuel (ie electric baseboard) heat increases the required insulation to R49 roof, R24 walls, R30 floor. Checking the insulation guide it is only set up for fossil fuels and electric, not wood. I cannot find the reference where I had originally found the wording, but it changed the planning for my house, so I researched it pretty heavily at the time. I am not from the area and you have built a house here before. If I am mistaken, please let me know.
BTW thanks for the Yahoo tip. I didn't know that one. I am just happy to see that they added a local craigslist 2 weeks ago.
In SC, you have to have central heat capable of keeping the house at or above 68 degrees (not hard to do in that mild climate). It doesn't specify 'automatic' though. For right now, a wood stove meets their criteria. Personally, I don't like being told I have to have central heat, but then I'm like that.....
I know your just stating the code Don. But in my case the "normal" heating options all depend on electric in some form (thermostats, fans, Automatic ignition,or batterys that will expire). When the weather is really bad what has the greatest chance of going out? Wood is the simplest and has been proven far longer then any other way of heating. This nothing much more reliable then using wood you have stacked to heat your house, unless you live in a desert lol.
I believe strongly this should not be up to code to tell you what's best in your situation. Now if you leave for a time then in your situation then you would want to have propane or oil something that didn't have to be monitored so closely but they should have no right to tell you what would work best for you. Now in the case of the bank , if you using their money you have to play by their rules.
I love this permitted freedom that people say we are always fighting for (aka expanding our global empire) off topic...sorry just really don't like being told how to live. I'm quite capable of making informed decisions for myself.
Quote from: speedfunk on September 09, 2009, 11:21:34 AM
I love this permitted freedom that people say we are always fighting for (aka expanding our global empire) off topic...sorry just really don't like being told how to live. I'm quite capable of making informed decisions for myself.
Amen
Squirl we went to Tractor Supply, Lowes and the stove store on rt 23 today. The guy at the stove store couldn't bother to help us so we didn't stay. Cheapest woodstove was over $1300 anyway. Jeff talked with the guy at TS for quite awhile. Now Jeff's leaning towards a bigger stove so we don't have to get up during the night to stoke it. He's looking at one off Craigslist tonight too. We'll see!
We also went to our bank and started the application for the home equity loan. :-[ Hopefully we won't dip into it too much.
Thanks. I kind of expected that at the specialty stores. I have never been to those particular ones, but I have been to specialty stores before and everything was really beautiful and REALLY expensive. I always was treated poorly by salespeople because they knew they weren't going to make much of a commission off of me. I knew I was looking for a plain stove and didn't want to waist my time. Thank you for the update.
Good luck tonight.
I hope you find the perfect stove to meet your needs.
We had a wood burning stove when I was a kid and my dad had to get up 2-3 times a night to stoke it. That was no fun!
This stove you can buy today, and then down the road build a brick surround to convert it into a masonry stove. once you have the brick surround you won't need to stoke it at night.
http://www.vermontwoodstove.com/vermontbunbaker.htm (http://www.vermontwoodstove.com/vermontbunbaker.htm)
Quote from: EcoHeliGuy on September 11, 2009, 11:52:12 AM
This stove you can buy today, and then down the road build a brick surround to convert it into a masonry stove. once you have the brick surround you won't need to stoke it at night.
http://www.vermontwoodstove.com/vermontbunbaker.htm (http://www.vermontwoodstove.com/vermontbunbaker.htm)
I see the soap stone add-ons, but did you speak with someone about building a surround?
I found this over a year ago, and can't seem to find the link where i originally found the mod done, I'm sure if you contact them they can offer there input. I'll keep looking for the link.
Also I would like to note that this doesn't make a true masonry stove, but Its still better then a regular stove at holding heat.
Good call Squirl lol. We try to support local businesses first but I think Tractor Supply had better local people working for them lol.
The situation is that we will need the wood stove for this year when the house has no insulation and the 2 years that follow and from then on, depending on outcome of solar design intermittent use after that or hopefully we get to take it out and sell it. So price is a huge consideration and so is not loading it 3 times a night.
the stove we are looking at used burns for 8 hours. Here's a link to it for sale on amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Vogelzang-Defender-Wood-Stove-Epa-Blower-TR001-B/dp/B000KKO5LA (http://www.amazon.com/Vogelzang-Defender-Wood-Stove-Epa-Blower-TR001-B/dp/B000KKO5LA)
Seems like a better made stove then the one at tractor supply and is 550 obo. However it's a bit smaller, says it heats 1200 sq ft.
Here's tractor supply one
http://www.tractorsupply.com/home-improvement/heating-supplies/wood-heaters/wood-heaters-coal-heaters/united-states-stove-co-2015-magnolia-wood-burning-stove-with-blower-3173129 (http://www.tractorsupply.com/home-improvement/heating-supplies/wood-heaters/wood-heaters-coal-heaters/united-states-stove-co-2015-magnolia-wood-burning-stove-with-blower-3173129)
Then of course, we factor the tax credit for new stoves in..... my head hurts d*
Eco: Thanks for that link....way to much money for our budget and situation however mass could be added (local bluestone slabs instead of soapstone) if needed. Thanks for link.
Dog: I had a stove as a kid and for a short bit of time after high school with debbie in that same house and your right loading it 2-3 times does not sound like fun >:(
Any thoughts on either of the stoves?
The tax credit for new stoves is , with a tested efficiency of 75%.
"(e) A stove that uses the burning of
biomass fuel to heat a dwelling unit or to
heat water for use in such a dwelling unit,
and that has a thermal efficiency rating of
at least 75 percent as measured using a
lower heating value."
I am still having trouble figuring out the requirements. But there seems to be some guidance here.
http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/protocols.htm
http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/taxcredit.htm
All the ones I found that were certified were well over $1000 close to $2000. Even with the tax credit, it wasn't worth it. Don't' forget the tax credit is part of the $1500 maximum which includes the windows, doors, roofing and alternative energy systems over a two year period. I would look at what else you plan to buy. If it is over $5000, you may max out and it would be wasted anyway. The positive side of the new stove is the tax credit seems to be on the entire installation. Tractor supply used too sell the Vogelzang stoves and just switched to Magnolia. They have about the same BTU output and they used to sell the Vogelzang at around the same price. Seems almost identical.
If it is not a permanent addition you may want to add some thermal storage around it for over night. Water tanks maybe? Also could help protect it from children.
I know that money doesn't grow on trees, so If you can't afford a top of the line stove, then you can't afford it. But you shouldn't base not buying a good stove because you have maxed out your tax credit. Thats like saying Henry ford shouldn't have bothered spending money on R&D after he sold his first model T because it was a car, and today we still drive well a car..... Todays cars don't exhaust black thick smoke, and are able to pull trailers up hills at highway speeds. Same is true for a stove, sure you can build a stove from an oil drum, but its going to burn lots of wood, and it will make lots of black smoke. I'm not saying you have to go out and buy a Lincoln, but buy focus, not a 1980 pinto.
Nice stove Eco! That's cool with the oven too. If it motivated me to cook more, Jeff just might agree to buy it.
Jeff forgot to mention that for the one year we had wood heat, we froze our butts off. The thing was out more than it was heating. No fault of the stove. ;) Makes me a little nervous about wood heat.
Squirl I hate when salespeople don't bother when you actually want help. I like supporting local businesses and will even pay a bit more to do it, but once they piss us off, we won't be back!
Well we finally made the final decision on our wood stove 8) . Thanks everyone for sharing your input! This morning we put down 100 bucks after seeing the used vogelzang stove. It was one year old. After talking to owner I felt comfortable that it would fit out needs.
He said he would fill it with dry wood at 10:30 at night and around 7:30-8:00 in morning get up rake out coals and throw on some kindling and it started. So this is huge , I really don't want to get up at night, we are not built like that ;0) :P
He had a 1500/sq foot house if memory serves me correctly and he said it heated all but very back room, which was through a maze of small doorways. The house was an older farmhouse and their floor plan had a lot of small rooms. Ours will be much more open and will be 900/sq foot. So I am comfortable it will be enough heat for the sq of our home. It's nice to talk to someone who used that same exact stove. He had some nice tips to share as well on using the stove . I'm happy we bought used, I'd much rather deny the gov't their fee on a new stove and give money to someone local who needs it.
We settled on 500 which I feel was a fair price. It also has a fan on it which was kind of nice :) So now just the chimney stuff :( $$$
Squirl: Thanks for that info!!! You make a good point about other things we could use the credit for. What was interesting was that Tractor Supply had a sign saying tax credit eligible on ALL of their stoves even the inefficient ones. I guess no one really understands that tax credit stuff. Hopefully since our house will be ALL mass that will help hold the heat for the morning as well.
EchoHeliGuy: I'm fairley confident we got a good stove . You make good points though. A cheap stove will require more trees to cut, more wear and tear on chainsaw, more gas , more oil, more time for hauling, more storage space for wood, more loading, and that 200 bucks you save would be quickly gone even over the 3 years we plan on using the stove. It's 75% efficient so it's def a ford focus!! :)
Great choice :)
I'm a firm believer in buying used, and keeping cash in peoples wallets as well, remember its not because people paid in real cash that the economy fell apart. [cool]
Every store that sells woodstoves seems to put that sign up. I think most stoves could pass, just the U.S. never required testing so most aren't tested. I would ask for the certification with any new stove. Congratulations on the purchase.
I've been slacking - three weeks since the last photos! We've been trying to put as much time as possible into the house lately. We're almost done with the block - woohoo! We finished up the blocks we had today and need one more pallet to finish up. 14 rows for the front of the house and 16 for the back. Four walls are completely done. Stacking is slower and harder on the back the higher we get. Until we get more blocks delivered, we're going to concentrate on core fills and SBC. Here are some photos as of yesterday...
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It's peak hawk migrating season here, so it was fun to see all the hawks passing by. One even buzzed the house.
You're making good progress - bet you've built up some muscles ;D
Thanks Sassy...
You bet ya...deb is RIPPED..... she flexed for me the other day and WOW :o
my back just hurts lol.
I just looked over your blog, I've said it before but you place is just awesome! I would love to see it someday. 50 dollar underground house was the first book I bought when starting my interest in building. YOu both have done an amazing job. You both should be very proud.
Update: GOt some more SBC done today. More tommorow then core fills which don't show up in any pics :(
Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum and very interested in this project. Earlier someone mentioned a blog about this build, any chance someone could post a link? I plan to start a similar build next spring and am very interested to see how the umbrella insulation system works in NY's winters. I've read that it will, but being able to talk to someone who actually lives in a place with it would be great.
Hi Captin Mav..
I'm glad your intrested. We (wife and I ) keep this thread the most upto date. We have a blog but it basically just mirrors this thread. So you will find the most info here. I'm intrested also...unforntually by the time you are able to build (1 year) I probably won't have any positive feedback to give you get as from what I've read it takes a couple of years to heat that much mass up to sustain through the winter. But I hope you get something out of it!
There are two other PAHS (passive annual solar ) houses that i've found on the internet ..one in the rockies and one in virgina. I've deviated from their methods quite a bit. But the umbrella (in my case I like the term skirting since it's not compeletly burried) is similar to others, with the exception i'm taking a change swapping out the 2" poly strene insulation for tekfoil (bubble wrap type insulation). It's considerably cheaper and I think will work better on uneven ground without as much cracking (hurts r value). We will see kind of in un charted territory .... 8)
Look forward to hearing about your project ..please share when you do build it.. so as to pass on the knowledge and help make these type designs a bit more mainstream.
No new exciting pictures... we did some core filling yesterday and Jeffs been working on more SBC when I'm not there. The core filling is slow but we've come up with some ways to be a little more efficient. We have a delivery of block, rebar, and portland coming tomorrow morning. We've also written out what we've got left before we're ready for the roof and have wrapped up some decisions, so now we just have to do the work!
I've been keeping an eye on craiglist and found some 3" insulation that'll work for the roof - $10/4'x8' sheet. No foil on it, but Jeff still says we saved a bundle. We need to put 4" total on the roof, so we'll get 1" thick sheets. I think they're around $20/sheet at the store. It was quite a family adventure hauling a huge stack of insulation in the trailer over an hour. Jeff did the 2nd trip on his own. ;)
We've had some awesome weather lately - fall is so nice for building too - 60s and sunny. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 80s!
I think I know the houses your talking about, and they have helped me in planning things too.
I'm no expert and have no experience with it but I have a concern with the foiltek, the r-value listed for foil faced wraps is generally a 'equivalent' r-value not and actual value. They use these equivalent values to adjust for the radiant barrier of the foil, but this only works if exposed directly to an air space, as soon as something touches it radiant heat flow stops and conduction becomes the primary flow.
I talked with a HVAC engineer and he said when doing his calculations (albeit for traditionally build structures) he de-rates foil faces because even as dust builds up on them they loose effectiveness. Not trying to step on your toes, but I'd hate to see you guys waste any time/money. Maybe the manufacturer would answer some questions? If I can find where I read that I'll post a link.
CaptainMav: I know exactly what your talking about. R value is a funny thing. I've read pretty much that same things you have and up until recently was NOT going to use tekfoil. Until when doing the dirt digging Tim our excavator dude reminded me about. I then basically told him what you just told me ... Then I got to thinking. Even though the R value might not be quite as high as advertised it's still dead air space.
I got to thinking about ease of installation and poly strene rigid boards (which John Hiat used in his underground as well as pretty much anyone i've found on the internet) vs the tekfoil which I had previously discarded. to
The rigid foam cracks when installed. You put a whole bunch of mass on it (dirt) and it will crack if not perfectly flat. You add 3 layers of plastic and 2 layers of foam in alternating courses. The plastic keeps the membrane when the foam cracks , so while the r value of polystrene is around 4, my thinking is that if it has cracks all over the place from uneven ground then that's not a true uniform installation and it would negate some of the R value. To get perfectly flat ground , esp corners and the like would seem like an exercise in fultility lol. d* . Not to mention the cost of getting the ground that level.
The advantages of the tekfoil start to show them selfs. I can probably safely remove 2 layers of membrane plastic from the underground "skirting" by laying the tekfoil down and a shingle like pattern. The tekfoil has one side of the surface that is meant to place against the effects of concrete so it's fairly thick and waterproof. My thought is to install as follows.
1. rake out all rocks and junk
2. put down a good layer of straw ( this will be dry so it should not decay and will cushion the tekfoil from anything I miss and will add very cheap R value at the same time wooott)
3. put down tekfoil layer
4. put down 2nd tekfoil layer
5. put down 6 mil black plastic (first layer of defense against water)
6. put down old rugs I have to protect plastic membrane from backfill
7. install round less the 2" rocks (aids in give space from water to drain once it hits the plastic)
8. put down more straw to aid in keep dirt out of rocks so drainage will occur..
9. Hope I don't have to dig this shit up EVER!
I'm mostly concerned with function , but like I said this will save considerable time installing and save materials (mostly plastic) and tekfoil is cheaper (by quite a lot) then rigid board.
Polyisonite will be used on ceiling of house. Polystyrene will be used on sides. Tekfoil underground. Divirsty...each has the own set of properties that make them best in certain applications.
Sorry for long post.. thanks for the concerns I certainly don't need to wreck my design with a bad insulation choice so thanks !
Do you have anythoughts as to how your going to build?
peace ;D
Editing to add that it's Speedfunk writing this... I always forget to log out of my wifes name... d*
Jeff,
You're absolutely right. I put some blueboard ( on the ground ) in front of my house that wasn't flat and its cracked considerably.
I'd love to see pics when you get a chance :)
working on the pics. We are up to the bond beam level in front of the house and in the back up to the rear (north) windows . Deb did core fills which are not that exciting pic wise lol. I worked on stacking some of the block.
We made a bit of an error putting in the rebar on a few of the walls a couple of weeks ago. Luckily we stopped . So there are sections of the wall that the block has to go over the 10' rebar and on the wall. This job Debbie has outsourced to me d*.
Now to bank to get some credit line. We still on cash but we can dip in as little as possible into our current home.
We've been continuing to work on getting the house ready for the next stage - a roof. Roofs are nice - no sunburns in summer and no indoor snow forts in winter. It'll be very exciting to have a roof. But, we've got some more work until we get there...
Most of the bond beams (which Jeff cut from regular blocks - they cost about double the price pre-cut) and all of the core fills are done on the front half of the house. The rear of the main part of the house is a little higher, so we're going to tackle that section separately. We need to finish up some bond beams, and then build forms for the windows. That'll take awhile - we'll use our scrap wood and will need to buy some. Depending on weather and illness (Jeff's been feeling a little sick) hopefully we'll be able to pour on Monday.
We had a death last week - our old corded Skil saw. It was about 10 years old and was working on house #3 with us, so it led a good life. Come to think of it, it may have been our first power tool. Aww...
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Jeff planned to use duct tape to cover the holes we didn't have core fills in. It was too cold the other day when he tried to apply it so he used plastic. This week has been warmer, so he did get some of the tape on. You can also see where he did some more SBC recently.
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Earth tubes on the back wall
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It’s getting cold quick! We’re making more progress towards pouring the bond beam. We had to buy some wood to use for forms over the doors and windows since we didn’t have enough scraps. It hurts a little to buy something we’ll just waste. One of the best things about this house is the tiny amount of waste we’ve produced so far. Mostly it’s just been the empty cement bags. Here’s the start of our forms. We used blocks to support the forms.
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We also bought the last window we needed this week - a 48″x48″ for the bedroom. It’s nice and big - I love it! Jeff found an old door with a big window for free that we’re thinking will work great down the line for our greenhouse/mudroom. We also saw some pvc, electrical boxes, and used masonry tools for cheap the other day. The place having a $3/car load sale this weekend, so we may stop by. Even if we find a few useful items it'd be worth it.
Jeff and I will get a full day in on Thursday and should get the front half of the house ready to go. Hopefully we’ll make some progress on the back half as well.
It looks great. Congratulations on the window.
Looks like you are doing great.
We've finished the forms for the front half of the house. For the forms we used 3/4" plywood. Jeff screwed the plywood into the bottom boards, and then put some bracing on the top. We're just about ready to pour the cement for the bond beam - there's some rebar work left and we need to move more materials for the portland cement mix. Thursday is the big day! The weather is much nicer this week - 50s and sunny. Hopefully it'll stay that way for a few more weeks!
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We made a decision yesterday morning to take advantage of the weather and do the cement for the bedroom bond beam. Since the bedroom has a different roof system, our thought was if we got the cement poured their first, we could work on the bedroom roof on days we didn't have good weather for mixing cement. Make any sense? Plus we should be able to do the bedroom roof ourselves, while we'll need some help for the main roof. So, we preped the area by taping the edges of the forms with duct tape, and taping in PVC pipes in case we want to run any wires down them. Then we had a big lunch and came back at 1pm to start. I was the mixer and Jeff took care of the rest.
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All covered up for the night
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We finished up at 5:30. So in four and a half hours we did 10 batches of concrete (2.5 bags of portland). I could barely stand by the end and Jeff was pretty wiped out too. This work is really hard on the back. We were very optomistic in thinking we could get the whole front section and bedroom done in one day, but now we have a good idea of what we can get done and how much material we need. The forms over the windows and doors took about 2 batches to fill. Jeff had the most success with layering the cement in the forms (instead of working from one side to the other). Here's how one of the forms looked tonight.
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Not bad! So now we've figured we need 5 nice days for the two of us to work to complete the cement for the entire bond beam and some remaining core fills. Problem is it's nearly November, and we have limited baby-sitting time. The other alternative is to have a cement truck come in with a pumper truck. With about two days work, we'd be ready for everything to be poured, so that would mean next week we'd be done with the bond beam instead of a couple weeks out. Jeff's going to call in the morning, get some prices and then we'll decide what to do. If we continue to mix the concrete ourselves, we'll probably split the remainder of the front half of the house into two days of work. Tomorrow morning should be exciting! Does anyone know what a pumper truck costs?
The bond beam looks good. Lots of hard work there for sure.
Well, we got our answer on the pumper truck - $950 for a minumum of 5 hours of work, plus the cost of concrete. Portland cement here we come!
Good Luck Guys! The house looks like it's coming along nicely :)
I was about to complain about the use of the word cee-ment for concrete when you corrected yourself in the last paragraph of the post.
Nice pics. and good looking concrete work. :D
Glad youall discovered that layering concrete makes it easier to tamp in.
Have you considered moving your mixer up the hill behind the house and making a chute to deliver the mix to the forms? Might save some of the back breaking part.
thanks all for the good words :) Helps for sure!
Today was a great day we finished the front bond beam completely!! I believe it was 23 concrete mixers full. It was a marathon day but we got it all done before dark . Deb did amazing, working hard non-stop from 10:00 til 6:00, so proud of her. Had my buddy ron who helped with footers stop by and help for a couple of hours which picked the speed up for sure. We will post some pics soon.
Poppy .. I think is was useing a stiffer mix then most . When Ron was with us he seemed to prefer a slightly wetter mix then we were using ...which also sped the process up a bit. I dont think it was to wet though , just wetter then what I thought was a good mix.
Cold beer time :) mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Quote from: drainl on October 22, 2009, 08:38:01 AM
Well, we got our answer on the pumper truck - $950 for a minumum of 5 hours of work, plus the cost of concrete. Portland cement here we come!
I think I would check into one of these http://www.contractorsdirect.com/Crown-Concrete-Buggy before I would try to hand mix the amount that you need. Not to buy of course but to rent. But you will probably have to round up up a few more "buddies" as this is a little slower. In that I mean that alot of concrete redimix companies only allot a certain amount of time to unload. Here it is 10 min per yard.
Neat, I didn't know such a device existed. That being said being that all rock/sand/portland had to moved anyway and that I could not keep up with that machine I"m glad we used the concrete mixer. It's a really nice mixer. It goes at a predictable pace. We also paid money for it so being that I'm pretty frugal/cheap I would probably not rent something unless absolutly nessacary.
Found a bathroom sink (of smaller size, perfect!) in really nice condition on my way back from dropping deb off at work ...FREE :) It's it's a bit boring of a design but does your bathroom sink really need to make a statement ? lol.
i'm not sure what their unload time was. Did not get that far. i know that when we did the footers though we were will over 10 mins a yard and he didn't seem to mind.
Some do and some don't have limits. I would say if they have a lot of rural area to cover it might come into play.
The buggy would be worth it's weight in comparison to hand mixing that amount of concrete. I don't think you could keep up with the pour. The alternative would be to do so in sections and then you would have joints which I don't really care for in slab for numerous reason.
The sink. The only person that you have to please is yourself and Deb. Who cares what your friends or relatives say. ;D
You would have to ask. Here in the city they watch the clock as a rule, but may not nit pick over a few minutes.
Don: I like the "spam hunter" ;D , I thought you just peeled of the lid on the can. Is there a season for spam hunting? How much does the permit cost?
Redover: We are still debating how we are going to do the floor . It's going to be either concrete or earthen we are not sure which yet. If we do concrete we most likely will get it delivered for $90/yard. The thought did cross my mind to pour the floor in stages with smaller forms that made a kind of puzzle look. I thought it would be cool. What is your thoughts on not doing this. I am on the upward part of learning curve with concrete just trying to do it right. I didn't like the idea of joints and dirt getting in cracks etc. Also I can see that if the ground settles the mini slabs could shift making the floor uneven. However if done right with different color stains etc...it could be pretty neat.
I think most friends and relatives are proud of us no matter what we do. This area does not look down on recycling. People around here are pretty resourceful as a whole. I'm more wondering what Deb will think lol. I love stuff with character ...just like us :P.
Quote from: speedfunk on October 23, 2009, 09:56:45 PM
... Is there a season for spam hunting?
It's more a time of day than being a season. ;) Late late at night or early in the AM. Most that come here seem to be on the other side of the planet, Russia, India, Phillipines...
I was just looking into this issue for my floors. I was looking for something with good thermal mass (1-2 in. thick) and a nice finish. I didn't like the hassle of a myriad of small tiles either. I decided to try this.
http://www.diynetwork.com/videos/handmade-pavers/37670.html
I figured I could make them 1-2 inches thick. I can make them any color (dark for passive solar). They will have a smoother finish than poured concrete. I can make them larger (1.5-2 feet square) I don't have to worry as much about cracking. I don't have to hire a truck and can do it with a home mixer. (A truck can't get to my location) And I can reuse the molds. Also if I get practice on the floor, I will be better when trying to pour a concrete counter top.
It seems to be the best fit I have found for me so far. It sounds close to what you are looking for.
BTW, do you have to worry about cracking or strength in pouring now? I have held off on my project because of the close to or below freezing temperatures at night.
That is pretty cool Squirl . Thanks for sharing. For all those reasons you mention is a very good option. I'll have to show deb. I bet she will like the clean polished type look.
Am I worried? NAH :)
As long as it doesn't go below freezing were ok. I think it's curing time is longer when colder. Concrete gives off a bit of heat as it's reaction takes place, so we threw some plastic on it to maybe help a bit. They also make additives to add to concrete when it's really cold.
Hopefully we will be pouring last bond beam within next week or two.
That is a cool floor Squirl. Would you grout between the sections?
I've been keeping an eye on the weather and it has been above freezing most nights. Maybe not much above though.
We took advantage of the good weather last week and got the rest of the front half of the bond beam done. On Thursday we powered through (over 20 batches) and got it all done in one day. Our friend Ron came over for a couple hours and was really helpful, filling my buckets with sand, gravel & water, and Jeff's buckets with concrete so he didn't have to climb up and down the ladder. On Sunday we spent a couple hours taking off all the forms, cleaning up and stacking all the blocks back up that we were using as support for the forms. Not all the forms were perfect but they are solid. There are two pieces of rebar in each form. We'll also SBC over them all at some point, which will fill in any small gaps we have.
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Jeff started finishing the back wall this week. It'll be 4 blocks up from the bottom of the windows (including the bond beam). We hope to get the core fills done by Friday and then we'll need another full day to fill the bond beams. We're trying to figure out the best way to move cement to the back wall. Most likely we'll be working with the mixer from above and running a walkway from the hill to the house.
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It's really exciting to see it all come together! Jeff found a pedestal sink the other day for free for the bathroom. We'll probably build a cabinet under it. We're also going to look at some door lock-sets from Craiglist. Hopefully we can get some good deals there. We picked up another wood door for free recently too. We were thinking it'd work for the bathroom closet. It's fun gathering up all these free/cheap items while we have the time.
Jeff and Deb,
It looks fantastic! Well done! You both have a lot to be proud of so far.
Ugh, I hate to say this, I know you mentioned sbc. I tried doing some around this time of year last year and it didnt come out so well. I had to redo those areas last spring. I'm not trying to dissuade you from doing it, and I'm sure you probably already know this, I'm just weighing in with my opinion. ;D
So whats next? :)
Wow! Looking good 8) Seems like the block walls like that are a lot of work - do ya think they're a lot more work than regular stick built?
Thanks BK, We are most likely going to wait to finish the exterior Surface Bonding Cement til the spring. Right now getting the concrete poured and roof on is top priority. I'm thinking the inside I can parge with the woodstove running to help keep the temp above freezing. Once roof is on , Fixing the spring and getting windows in are next.
Today I'm working on doing the rear core fills it's supposed to be a bit chilly but only quickly dipping into the high 20's which as long as it isn't for to long should not be a problem.
Sassy, The walls are quite a bit of work. Mostly due to the heavy nature of everything. I'm not even sure how many tons of material we have moved but our stone and sand piles have a MAJOR dent taken out of them. Also as we go higher, things are slowing down a bit. Esp since deb has decided she will let me have any job up high lol. I had a ladder kick out on me the other day while working setting block at around 12' above ground...luckily i grabbed onto the wall and climbed up and got down.. I think this is why she doesn't want to do it.
It feels like we are moving slow, but despite being right next to the site we are busy schedule wise and can't devote as much time as we woiuld like. I do see some people popping a cabin up in a month.. It looks like it's done but there is still a lot of finish work left. An advantage to the concrete block and SBC is that the walls are basically done when you parge the interior. Instead of all the time consuming finish work that stick frame in tails. We will have SOLID walls so if little tuck decides to ride his bike into the wall , no worries. So it's tough to compare Sassy, I guess it all depends. It's phiscial work for sure though, but you can do it alone if need be. 8)
Deb and I talked about it last night. I usually put in 2 to 3 days on average and deb usually 1 - 1.5 . Right now my band commitments are less. All though this is the 2nd weekend free in the whole summer and fall I think. So usually weekends are shot . Almost there..I'm looking forward to getting done with concete for a while though, it's nasty to inhale and burns the skin a bit. I like the workablity just would prefer something more "natural" that was more pleasent to work with.
off 2 the land...
Poppy, we took your idea of using the cement mixer above the landing . We have all stone,sand in piles above the house and 2x10's to the window openings on the house. Today I ran material trips for rebar and more portland to get ready for last stretch. I got everything ready to go for saterday and sunday so HOPEFULLY (have to give ourselfs an out) finish core fills sat and sunday maybe bond beam. we will see It's an ambitious plan. A bit chillier today , but pleasent...
And I thought I was working hard! I'm only throwing wood around and you're lifting earth. Big weight difference. I thought I was sore at the end of the day but you probably a bit more aware of you're muscles than I am!
I can't wait to see how those tree poles look when you're done. That's going to be a fantastic feature!
Thanks jdhen,
Lol. I'm not sure...wood still weighs too!! This skinny vegetarian needs the muscles :)
I hope the tree's will look cool . I think they will, we will see.
We are wiped out, but we made great progress this weekend. The weather was sunny and in the 60s during the day, above freezing at night. Perfect for finishing up the bond beam. Grandma Wendy took Tucker to visit family, so we were kid-less as well! Tuck is good on the work site, but we keep him away when we're mixing cement or working up high.
We got started around 9:30 Saturday morning. The core fills on the back wall and short wall by the kitchen needed to be done. Each hole took 1.5 batches of concrete. I think I mixed close to 20 batches. Jeff put together a nice plank system for getting around the house. Much quicker for him then going up and down ladders. We finished with the concrete right around sunset. Unfortunately we went through most of our sand and gravel that Jeff had moved, so we grabbed a couple beers and a flashlight and spent an hour or so moving more materials for Sunday. After that we cleaned up and treated ourselves to dinner out. ;D
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Today (Sunday) we got an earlier start - around 8:30. With the time change it gets dark a little after five which really cuts into our working time. Once we have the roof on we can set up a bunch of lights and work at night - with the woodstove going. Anyway, our first task for today was to get all the forms in for the windows. We were able to reuse all the plywood from the front windows. There wasn't much cutting to be done, but it still took forever to get it all set up! About four hours for the forms and laying rebar, plus other miscelaneous stuff. We ran home for a quick lunch and got started mixing concrete at 1. Four hours before dark was making us a little nervous, but luckily we again wrapped up right around sunset. This time we did 12 batches. Jeff really enjoyed working from above instead of below on a ladder. I got less downtime since he was moving quicker. Our average batches/hour went from 2 to 3 since we first started these big mixing days. We're both barely able to move, but are really excited we finished what we had hoped to this weekend.
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Jeff decided he'd like to finish up the concrete work before we move on to the roof. We need to pour under the windows to bring the sills up to the right height for each window. Setting up the forms will probably take longer than the actual concrete. If all goes well, we'll wrap that up on Friday. I'm pretty tired of messing with portland cement (the skin burns and the dust!) and look forward to moving on to the next stage. It's going to be awesome to see the roof on!
Wow, looks awesome Jeff and Deb!
Ya, i think if you had a wood stove going, you'd have no problems.
Very fasinating project. I spent the entire morning yesterday reading this one thread and will keep following it to completion. My hat goes off to the 3 of you. Too bad Tuck isn't a little older to help lift those blocks. I have 7 acres of rough ravine and scrub oak with about an acre of flat ground with a lawn that looks better than my lawn in town and plan to build in the next few years. I have been looking at earth tubes also but am still confused on how you convert the approx. 55 degree air from the ground into 70 degree heat for the winter.
1. I have read some about the air to air heat exchangers but their sure isn't much out there as far as costs. Not a lot about HRV sytems either. The post I did read explained that most local heating and cooling places don't know anything about them.
2. Heat pumps aren't recommended for central Iowa because of our winters but my idea was to possibly installing the unit in a atatched garage with the heat tube outlets being vented in that area for the heat pump to work with that air rather than below zero weather outside. The same of course would be true for helping with the very humid hot conditions we have in the summer. I read somewhere that you need a minimum of 10' on all sides of the heat pump outdoors but if an insulated garage could help with both the heating and cooling with the earth tubes, it seems like this would be a pretty effecient way to go. Does this make sense?..... any ideas. I plan on eventually dabbling with some hydro power from the creek in front of the house, a few small wind turbines and some solar panels to provide 50 to 75% of the electricity.
3. I want to incorporate a berm on the north side of the house and like the dry brick approach to a foundation and back wall and a lot of glass on the south side with concrete slab floors for some thermo mass but concerned about the interior design for the passive solar heat to optiminally flow through the two story home. Like the idea of pouring a slab over cinder blocks that are layed so that the holes are aligned to flow into register vents but would the cost and benefit be worth the time and money?
4. Also like the idea of a wood stove in the middle of the house with a block and brick surround with plenty of spaces for the brick to vent the heat from it's thermo mass but can't find anything about making such a surround for a typical steel fireplace. I suppose you could just allow some room around the sides, back and top for an air barrier and convection would take care of the rest and allow the thermo mass of the bricks to provide heat long after the fire goes out. (another dry stack project maybe)
5. I like the idea of a forced air back up system of some kind and once again the heat pump seems to be the most efficient (don't want to mess with a big propane tank in the yard). My big concern is how to begin to plan any duct work when the house will be on a slab.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I don't have a lot of time to dive into your questions, but I will tackle the first one.
In your house the temp would be 70 degrees, out side would be below 32, and as you said the tubes would heat up this air to some number around 55.
IF you did not have this earth tube, your house would draw air in through cracks, seals, and all other imperfections in your walls, doors and windows from the out side (which is below 32). this air is drawn in by fireplaces, exhaust vents, and exhaust fans in your house.
Its a whole lot better to heat the incoming air from 55 degrees instead of 32.
hope this helps :)
Hi Rickey Lee and welcome. I hope when you do decide to build you share it with us.
Eco hits it on the the head. The best air temp you can possibly get entering the house through the tubes in the temp of the earth surrounding your home. In my design I hope to raise the ground temp surrounding my house. This will allow me to raise the temp the air enters at above the standard 40 degrees the our ground is in upstate NY. Even with a different design ... 40 is a lot better then 0.
1. I briefly looked into a HRV (heat recovery Ventilation system). I like you found very little to go on. I decided on the earthtubes as it's more passive of a system. Not so dependent on electric. This was my choice though, there is certainly some benefit to plugging it in and it's ready to go. It just didn't fit what I wanted to do.
2. A bit confused on this one. Are you talking about an in ground heat pump? Pumping heat from the cold outside wouldn't do much for you. I'm not big on heat pumps personally, although others seem to like them. From my reading , the electric is cut down to a 1/3 of standard electric heat. So while that is certainly an improvement the cost and the complexity of the system did not fit with the Passive Living home that we are trying to create. Our design I feel is a much more simple,cheaper and less maintenance compared to a heat pump.
3. I think you bring up a good point about multi-floor passive solar houses. Ideally you want to allow a convection cycle. I guess this could be accomplished in a variety of ways depending on your floor plan. Keep it open as possible. Maybe to the rear of the house use pvc tubes that connect the highest part of the house and the lowes ( this is just my idea of something that might work though). The concrete block idea I have some concerns with. Warm air tends to drop moisture when hit with surfaces of a cool nature. When it does how will you be able to clean down below your concrete floor. The real advantage to the pvc (or any other dense plastic with no corrigations) is that is easily cleanable with a rope and a rag.
4. The high mass wood stove is something I gave a bit of thought to as well. Depending on the material you choose to build with and it's denisty (thermal mass) a quick to heat up stove might work as well. Just as an example my house will use a reg steel stove for a variety of reasons but with the amount of insulated mass we have I feel that I would rather have something that heated up the air quickly. Once the air is warm the cooler mass of the brick walls etc will absorb some of that heat. This accomplishes the same goal of storing that heat and releasing is back into the room. Now if you have a straw bale with no mass then a high mass wood stove would be a great idea I think. Given that storing heat in air is a inefficient method.
5. I'm not a big fan of forced air . I'd recommend being that you state that your using a slab to use radiant tubing in the slab. This allows you in the future to possibly hook it up to a solar water heater and run it through the slab. Storing heat in mass is a much better way then in the air IMHO!
I hope this helps some. I know i was in the research stage and saw all these options as well. Sometimes though trying to combine to much just makes for a overall more expensive system that will cost more in the long run. Simple is best :) These are my opinions as it's hard to get an idea what would work for you. Your on the right track after a bit longer you will figure it out in your head.
GL...and we just finished up with our last blocks for a while today. So tuck will have to wait till the retaining wall before he can help stack! :)
Update on House Finances
I had about 3 months of receipts to add up. Luckily there weren't too many! We didn't have any major purchases. We got our wood stove ($500) and 3″ 4×8 foam insullation sheets ($320). We got a great deal on a display model shower door - $10 marked down from around $250. For freebies, we found two interior solid wood doors, one wood framed screen door, and a sink for the bathroom. Here's our current totals. This will jump quite a bit as we begin to buy roofing supplies.
Electric $1,513.80
Materials $6,444.10
Miscellaneous $1,907.28
Paid Workers $30.00
Plumbing $518.57
Roof $609.89
Septic $1,000.00
Site Work $6,019.17
Total $18,042.81
All the blocks have been stacked (for now) and all the window are framed out. Phew! We've had some pretty great weather considering it's November. We might just get this roof on afterall! The last house we built we started building in November, so we know what working outside in the winter is like and we don't want to repeat it.
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Jeff trying to avoid buying another stick of rebar...
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Jeff putting on a batch of SBC in the bedroom. This is where the roof line of the bedroom will hit the wall, so he wanted to get the SBC up first.
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We're excited to be done working with the blocks and concrete for now. On to the roof! We're going to try and get the bedroom roof framed out tomorrow. Jeff will place an order for the 2″x12″ wood for the larger roof on Monday. We're hoping to have friends over next weekend for framing the big roof out. We're putting up 1″x6″ T&G pine for the roof sheething. Can't wait to see the roof line!
drainl are you not worried starting in the roof before the SBC has been applied? Structurally I mean.
Hey Redover.
Nope we are not worried. The reason being is that there are vertical columns of concrete and rebar every 4' and then the bond beam . I feel it's plenty strong to keep working. Of course backfilling is a different matter.
We wanted to have the surface bonding cement done but it is what it is. :)
We (mostly Jeff) started the bedroom roof on Sunday. First thing to do was put the sill plates on (non-pressure treated 2″x8″), along with the foam barrier. Drilling out all the holes for the bolts took a little time. I worked on sanding the boards, getting the writing and stains off. Everything will be exposed, and it’s much easier sanding it on the ground then above your head.
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Jeff rigged up some boards to hold up the main beam. He’s basically done this whole roof by himself, so he didn’t have me to hold boards up for him. Makes everything go a little slower.
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The angle of the bedroom roof is similar to the back of the main roof. Once he got a template figured out, he started on the rafters.
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Then he trimmed up the ends and started putting up the T&G. We ended up with 1″x8″ boards from a local lumber yard. They were just put on the pile when Jeff got there so he had prime selection.
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Jeff finished up the boards and got Typar on yesterday before it rained all night. Finally - a dry room in the house!
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This board is for support on the outside wall.
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Today Jeff hoped to finished the outside wall with the T&G along with each end. Then we're wrapping it up tight and leaving it to move on to the bigger roof. We're borrowing scaffolding from a friend and will hopefully have some help this weekend to get the main beam up along with the 2″x12″ rafters. We've really lucked out with the weather, but today it was beginning to get cold again.
Making great progress - dry rooms are good :)
Looking really good guys! Those boards are beautiful.
Happy Thanksgiving~
Yup turkey day is coming. To honest I've almost forgot. Trying to get someone here thrusday to help finish up the main ridge beam which we have now partially done. Ron said it's thanksgiving thursday... Oh YEAH....lol.
Thanks!! The pine boards too will be left open like that . There will be no insulation put in the bays. It will go ONTOP of the typar. I love pine :) to bad it yellow a bit b/c when it's fresh it looks and smells awesome.
happy turkey days!!
Speaking of pine. Is there anyway to treat it (besides poly) so it doesn't yellow. something like a wax maybe? Something that you can rub in rather then brush on?
The only thing I know of that does not yellow are the clear coats like Minwax Polycrylic. They're water based and milky when wet. Everything else I've used over the decades yellowed or had other problems. I haven't tried everything, maybe someone knows of something else.
i only use linseed oil (wiki) it made from flax, and in 100% natural, it penetrates the wood, not coats it, so with soft woods you need more coats, I have not tried it on pine, but it is yellow by nature, it really brings out the grain on the wood, and no fumes.
thanks Don and Eco for your thoughts on treating the pine
;D
We have left the pine un-treated in our First Day cottage. It's not bad mind you. I like it ..I just REALLY like the fresh,white look of the pine.
I found this I'm not sure how it works though
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http://www.wood-you-like-diy.co.uk/acatalog/Fitting_&_Finish_Materials.html
We're not quite where we'd like to be with the roof, but we keep plugging away as we have time. The weather is colder (30s) but we haven't had too much rain. We have made some progress though - the bedroom roof is finished up to the Typar and all taped up. Dry storage is great!
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The sill plates are all up and bolted on for the large part of the house:
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The trees have been notched and the beam is in place. Our friend Ron came over to help get the beam started and Jeff's brother Ben came over to finish setting it. I say beam, but it's actually two 32′ LVLs.
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T enjoying dinner on his new chair and table
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Here's the beam bolted together and sanded down. We wanted to leave the beam exposed, but it wasn't looking too pretty. Jeff put a stain on it tonight which should do the trick! The trees will be trimmed down to be flush with the beam.
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We've got all the 2″x12″ boards for the rafters at the site and about half are cut and ready to put up. Jeff went to the lumber yard to hand pick them, but they aren't all great. I'm trying to get them sanded down before we put them up to avoid having to sand overhead. I'm only about a third of the way through the pile though.
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So that's all for now! We'll have at least one full day with both of us at the house this week (and no little guy). Putting the rafters up is a two person job and finding days with us both able to work is tricky.
We got our first snow fall last night - our main roof isn't quite leakproof yet so we spent some time cleaning up before we started working. About 1/2 of the rafters are up and tacked in.
The first rafters (and first flakes)
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The roof line
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Jeff used the thin board to slide the 12′ boards on the back side of the house. Worked well for a one man job. The 18′ boards take both of us.
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The East side of the house
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Brrrrr! Looks like you were working in some pretty cold weather! Great progress 8) I'm looking forward to seeing those big log posts when you get the roof on that part - that will be a nice feature in your house.
Thanks Sassy!
We keep on plugging away on the main roof - most days at least one of us is on the site. 35 and sunny sounds like dream working conditions right now. Instead we've had cold (20s or less) and sometimes wind and rain. The joys of working outside in the winter!
All the rafters are up. We started off just tacking them into the beam, but with high winds a few pulled out, so we got them bolted together at the top as well.
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A couple rafters hit our trees, so Jeff had to trim them out with a circular saw and chisel.
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Then the front of the rafters were nailed in, trimmed and sanded clean. The T&G along the front helped keep the rafters straight.
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After double checking all the rafters, we started with the T&G - woohoo! It's always nice to see a new part of the project start. Especially a highly visible one like the sheathing! After some bearable sleet and snow, the cold rain (and soaked clothes) finally convinced us to head home for hot showers. The T&G went up pretty quickly with the two of us. We're hoping to get some more up tomorrow.
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Thanx deb for posting!
Things are going really well. As we went along installing the rafters we kept a couple tongue and groove pine boards (approx 8' or so) so that we could constantly check to make sure that the decking was level. Tip. When cutting the rafters boards from the template focus more on the top part of the board then the bottom. I didn't do this at the beginning of the rafter cuttings but adjusted by the end.
The boards for the rafters were the best we could get but some were twisted a little. So by first tacking the down the rafters to the sill plate and then using a level on the rafter boards to make sure the were perpendicular to the sill plate. We used the T+G pine board on the side of the house rafters in place before nailing on decking.
The top pic of this post shows the rear part of the rafters . I just wanted to add that they are not nailed down on the north (back wall) sil plate yet. So if they look uneven they are! ;D
Edited to add that I have a shit load of respect for all the amazing woodworking some members have done! Wood requires patience and understanding of types and grains of wood. I try my best to make things clean but sometimes it looks like a first time house builder wackin' on some nails lol.
Looking good Speedfunk! [cool]
I really like the exposed rafters. How are you going to put the insulation on top of the T&G ?
Sorry if you already explained this, and I missed it.
Wow! You guys are really moving right along. The wood looks great!
I'm not sure if I have meantioned to be honest. :-\ It's going to have 5"'s of rigid sheet polyiso insulation on top of typar covered decking. This will connect with the 4"'s of rigid insulation on the walls. So in theory there will be no gaps in the insulation envelope. There will be purlings (I think that's the spelling ) to screw the metal roof to. We are leaning towards a standing seam roof. This will allow the roof to overhang the the walls a couple/few feet with no/very little support.
THanks for the kind words beavers. :D I really want to make sure the rafters were exposed. It goes with the way we are building to keep the construction details exposed and "celebrate" the way it was built and the materials used . d*
Thanks Dog too! (editing to add!)
Hey man, you guys are earning a lot of respect on this forum. You walk the walk man.
Looking great, Jeff and Deb.
WOW!!!!
Absolutely amazing job Jeff and Deb! I have to give you credit for working in this cold. Seeing the snow on those rafters brought back memories from last winter! You're nearly there. I hate to say it but keep going ( carefully )!
I bet your as excited for Spring as I am. I can't wait for the warm weather to get back. I'll have to make a trip up there next summer with Grace.
Hope you guys have a wonderful holidays,
Sean & Grace
Thanks Glenn you and sassy always help keep us going ;D
Thanks Rick...that means a lot!
Sean: It is what is is ..you know that lol. At this point I believe you were removing 4"'s of solid ice. I give you credit.
For certain jobs 20 degree's or 8 the other day isn't to bad. It keeps you from hanging your head on the shovel.
HOHOHO>>>> happy holidays all!!
We got some more pics to post soon just saving them up a bit.
Oooh - we're a sticky! ;D Here's what's going on with our project...
Another important job we need to get done is the drainage in the back of the house. Picking dirt isn't much fun when it's in the 20s. Or at least that's what I hear because I'm leaving that "fun" up to Jeff. He got about 1/2 dug out the other day.
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The dirt that came out went into our bedroom where the floor has settled a bit.
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Tuck and Jeff spent some time cleaning the inside and removed the branches (yay!). It really opens up the place and gives us a better idea of the space we'll have.
Kitchen
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Living Room (you never know when a cow might pass through)
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Bathroom
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Back Rooms
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As for the roof, Jeff put some boards along the top to help keep the rafters in place as we installed the T&G. He started on the back while I continued to work on the front. Installing the T&G is fun and gratifying work. Looks real pretty on the inside too!
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Today we tackled the back roof together and moved pretty quickly. Here you can see we had to run some 2″ boards on the outside of the back rafter to keep the edge in line with the front half.
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When we got near the top Jeff started to trim the rafters. We're about out of T&G so we'll do another run tomorrow for the roof and the two ends.
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We're getting there! Nearly closed in on the top. Then we put in the windows and a couple doors and the snow won't find us. We looked around for stove pipe since we'll be ready to install the woodstove soon, but couldn't find the right parts locally. Jeff ordered this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009SQG3I/ref=ox_ya_oh_product) tonight so we should have it by next week. Finishing the roof, drainage, windows and stove are all that's on our mind these days. Once that's all done we'll probably take a few days off - we're tired!
Nice work, I wanted to point out a couple things before you get to far ahead, incase you missed them.
on photo #5 you have 6 layers of brick where they all line up together, your wall will very likely crack along this line.
same around the windows on photo's 6 and 7.
I understand that you have cemented the tops in and it might be to late, but I would rather look into it now, then in 5 years when your walls start cracking.
Other then that I'm of course jealous c*
Thanks eco for the concern :)
While building the walls I gave the points you made some thought before going ahead. I came to the conclusion that it would be okay and I'll try to explain why.
On pic 5 where the 6 courses line up there is a core fill in one of those ( i forget either left or right ) The other is left open for a chaseway (conduit ). In the case of the front part of the house there is no lateral pressures just vertical. So being that all the weight of the roof is all ready on the block its all ready loaded d*. So if it's allready moved to where it wants to then when I parge the interior and exterior it's where it wants to be allready so no stress on any joint.
In the back part of the house I decided to not alternate the joints b/c of the trimming of the block. . This has more chance of moving then the front however giving that I have core fills every 4th row. The way the dry stack is constructed. The blocks in between the core fills act more like in-fill. The surface bonding cement helps distribute (in this case hydrostatic) lateral pressures to the stronger core that are pinned to the footers and the bond beam. If it does ever crack...i can add more surface bonding cement, but i don't think this will happen.
I hope that makes sense Eco? lol... it's tough to explain these things.
thanks!
jeff
Eco, Just curious on how your house plans are coming. I check every once in a while on your webpage.
Well economy down turn, and an engagement ::) has hampered the house plans right now.
I still can't afford the land in the area we want to move, so we are in the market for in term home to buy, to build our assets.
Where I am looking, I can only take a loan out for raw land with atleast 50% down, or land with utilities at the property line at 25% down, neither of which I can come up with yet. The area I'm looking you can buy a house on land, cheeper then just buying land. And I can't afford to buy a house and land, and then build the dream home in its place.
Congrats on the engagement Eco! We got a land loan when we first bought our property. Horrible interest rates and we had to put a lot down like you said.
We haven't had much time to work on the house lately. Today we could be working but with windchills of -15, we're not very motivated to head over!
The top of the roof is finished. We need to finish up the two ends and then wrap it up. It's snowed every day for the last week, so it'll be tricky to find a day to get the typar on.
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We had a couple of warm days so we tackled the drainage. Not a fun project but we got it done. Jeff dug out the ditch, put down old carpet to protect the plastic, then 6mil plastic, 4″ drainage pipe and 2 inch round rocks. Finally we covered it up with landscaping fabric. It was pretty frustrating because the wall kept crumbling down.
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Our helper taking a break
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drainl, In the 2nd and 3rd drainage pics it looks as though the pipe is covered with plastic,which would stop ground water from entering the pipe. maybe its felt cloth,but it looks shiney like plastic. Or maybe you pulled it back and then added rock.I read how you did it over the pic it just looks different.
I only point this out,because, your trying to quickly remove excess water from the groundaround the footers. I work for a landsccape co., and we usually use silt cloth on bottom w/ 2-4" of rock in bottom of ditch w/sockpipe and then cover w/ silt cloth
plastic doesnt allow water to pass thru.
Im not saying what youve done wont work, and im not trying to be critical, Im just trying to help.
Darrell
Darrell...thanks for your concern
I think the pic might have u confused ? The layer on the bottom is the only plastic. The top layer of black that you see in last drainage shot is permeable landscaping fabric. The plastic toward the footer that overlaps (covers) a few inches will be taped against the rear block wall and over laped with more plastic that will climb the wall as our vapor /water barrier ,once we finish surface bonding cement.
This footer drainage will really be a backup to the REAL curtain drain that will do most all the work. The curtain drain will be 25' above house and will have a "cape" (layers of tekfoil laid like shingles and above that more 6 or 8 mill plastic) that will drain any water to above curtain drain.
Any water that sneaks through hits rear wall . The Plastic on rear walls stops it. Drains down through "2 round rocks down into the plastic "trough" and out through the pipe. Wall will be backfilled with round rock. Fabric will stay where it is to stop drainage rocks from filling up with sediment.
Does this still give you cause for concern. I've tried to think about this the best I can , thinking as if I was water lol!! Looking forward to your responce. Right now my main concern is stopping water from getting below footer and freezing (why i went with plastic)
*edited to add that we made sure that the pipe is not pressed against the lower plastic , basically it's not sealing the holes in the pipe. Some of these pics were taking during process. Example the 2nd to last pic there's the dirt falling into it that we cleaned out before added more stone etc.
It was a really crappy job that took a couple long days of hauling mud out from the ditch adding stone , breaking 3" thick ice that had built up (reminded me of BK last year), hauling more mud and rocks that had fallen back in the day before out . I'm just happy it's done. Our tractor that we were using ran the tire off b/c it's winter and tire pressure was low. So we used the suburu and many many trips of stone from stone pile. Putting them into spackle buckets and dumping
It sucked.
I'm no expert on drainage, but what you did sounds better then needed, which is always better in the end.
Only thing is I never knew you place plastic below the pipe. I always looked at it as water attacking from above and below, with this plastic your limiting how much ground water you can remove. maybe I'm looking at it wrong?
Hey speedfunk, you have an interesting project going.
I do a lot of foundation backfill in wet environments. Ive never used or Seen plastic used in the bottom of the trench before but that doesn't mean its a bad thing. Fabric in the bottom is the normal way. After reading your water control plan I think you got things pretty well covered.
Your water looks like it moves through the ground easily by what I can tell from your pictures. What water the plastic will block will be below the footing. The pipe and gravel should handle the water thats above. Your trench is below the footing and tapers away from it which is the right way to do it. The water should find the gravel, that being the path of least Resistance.
speedfunk, that does sound better than what I thought I saw. But like diy and eco have already mentioned you usually would/could only use plastic against the foundation(along withsome other type of water sealing).
Youll have ground water under the pipe that will have ahard time getting to the pipe because of the plastic.
But,depending on soil type it may not be that big of an issue. the soil here in florida has a high water table and this place is flat, so theres not much natural drainage, even though we have alot of sand.
I wouldnt want to say that you need to redo it. but at the least I would try to poke a bunch of holes thru the plastic.
darrell
Thanks for the input guys.
There's a guy named Tom in Virgina who has all ready built a Passive Annual Heat Storage home, using a cape of insulation and plastic membrane. This is a quote from him when asked about a footer drainage.
RL wrote: I plan to add a small drain one foot below the bottom elevation of the footing, one foot around the outside of the home. Then, I think I may have to add a small drainage system to the bottom inside of any parapet along the south edge of the home."
Tom Wrote: Certainly won't hurt anything. My second PAHS here the owner insisted on installing a standard perimeter footing drain, as I had. I assured him he'd never see a drop of water. Five years later, he hasn't. A drain at the uphill side of the umbrella will be even less beneficial. It's really better to plan for a successful umbrella. Belt&suspenders is fine, but installing waterproofing on the shell is certainly adequate. Putting in drains where you won't have water if your umbrella-covered mass is successful makes little sense. If you've got enough water there to drain, you've failed in your PAHS attempt. That was one of Hait's primary points. Bruce's paper spells out the effect of more moisture in fill, but that's far removed from the effect of moving ground water, which Hait was (correctly) specific about.
Me typing now :
So really this drain I really could have skipped. However being that it's winter I wanted to stop the water from getting underneath the footer, also it's allready approved and I feel it's cheap insurance. This drain will also let me know if there is some water getting through some how so I could fix issue in the future. This is why I mainly used plastic . We don't have any high water table here so water coming from underneath won't happen. With a water table that's high I could certainly see what you are talking about Darrell. The water you see in the pic is mostly run off from the hill behind it.
speedfunk, What youve done is probably sufficient. Im an overkill/perfectionist guy sometimes and Im just trying to help.
After looking thru pics again, I noticed you have the pipe at least a foot below the top of footer which is good and should keep water from gathering and trying to enter.
I wanted to mention as well, I think you'll are doing a great job, and you must be some super self motivators. You just keep pushing forward.
Darrell
DevilDog: Thanks man...thats nice to hear :) We try to keep pushing we have slowed a bit b/c the house we live in right now has some issues that need to be addressed before we can sell in the spring. This is very important as once it sells we will finally be debt free. Also the weather has slowed us down. We should get Thrusday and Friday this week to work on it though with both of us :)
I appreciate any thoughts and so would other readers who now know that way we did it was not the "conventional" way to do it, but now has more info to go on. I just try to think through what I want to accomplish, the environment at hand and match a material and an application method that would reach that goal. Not necessary knowing the normal way ;) like in this case (although sometimes normal doesn't fit the desired goal)
Eco: I'm sorry to hear about the delay in your plan. I guess that's life huh. Having a dynamic plan that can be adapted. It seems as If you really want something though you can make it so. Wish ya the best in the future.... maybe find a house that has great solar potential :)
It was beginning to look like it’d never stop snowing! It’s been a beautiful winter, but the persistant snow & cold is frustrating when you’re trying to finish a roof. Instead of freezing our butts off on the really cold days, we’ve been working on fixing up our current house to get it ready to put on the market. We have 3 bedroom closets, a wall & door and a linen closet to build along with other miscelaneous stuff. Then lots of cleaning!
We have made some progress this month on the new house this month. We’re loving how the pine is turning out.
Our driveway/walkway in. We’re still debating how we want to manage the driveway next winter when we’re in the house. For now we haven’t bothered to find a plow guy. Makes me miss my Wrangler Willy - he’d drive right through it!
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The triangle section is an opening into our bedroom. We’re planning to put a stained glass piece here, which Jeff will design and my mom will put together. It’s handy having creative people in the family! We plan to have the window to swing up if we want more air circulation.
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From the outside - a little trimming left to do.
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The kitchen end all done
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And the best part (which I can’t wait to see in person) - some windows!
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The weather is supposed to be in the 30s with some sun later this week. This is awesome because it'll give us a chance to get the typar on the large roof. We have gotten a little water staining on the beams that we'll have to clean up - any suggestions for the best method? We were thinking bleach or sanding. Along with getting the rest of the windows in, we'd like to get the woodstove going. Ahhh - heat!
drainl you were talking of heat and the woodstove. Maybe you posted earlier and I overlooked but what are you planning on doing for the interior wall treatment? Stucco, insulation and the like. I realize the concept in Passive solar but you will have a lot of cold penetrating the block walls when there is not ample enough heat from solar.
You have done beautiful work. I have been traveling for work and have been away from the area. Thank you for the pictures, they remind me of what I am missing. How many feet of snow is there?
For solar heat storage the outside of the block walls should have at least 2"-3" of foamboard insulation (extruded polystyrene or equal, typically about R-5/inch). Perhaps there is another strategy for insulation?
Thanks for the photo update; you are making great progress.
Really like the stained glass window idea. Most people don't think of interior wall windows, so it will certainly add to the uniqueness of your build.
Hey Redover, Deb told me to answer your questions.
The interior is going to be either an earthen plaster or something similar. Insulation ( 4''s of extruded polystyrene) is going to be glued on the outside of the block , then parged with surface bonding cement and then painted for final exterior look.
Thx Squirl ,We are trying very hard to make the woodwork nice, I really don't have the paintence for it but am trying to slow my self down a bit, even allow myself to redo something if it didn't turn out how I planned. We also don't have a lot of tools for woodworking, circular saw and chisel seems to be the ticket. I'm really pumped how it's coming out.
I would say around 10" to 12"'s. It just seems to keep snowing (slowly). A very awesome picture perfect snow. Not bad to work in either.
From thrusday on temps are supposed to near thaw so that might help us get rid of the huge block of ice in the crawlspace . :) It will also allow us to get the tractor to move more material for crawlspace floor concrete pour.
Thanx poppy. Unique is what we strive for :)
Jeff and Deb,
It looks awesome! Great work, especially in the winter!
Thanks BK! We have a slab of ice in our bathroom crawlspace that you'd appreciate. ;)
As I said before we've been taking some time away from the house since it's no fun working in the cold. Here are some photos to catch up to where we are now.
All but one of the windows is in. The big 8′ window isn't actually screwed in yet - we can't open the windows because the cranks broke off. The downside to auction purchases I guess. I don't think we've come to a decision on sealing the windows. The options are foam (board or spray foam), then SBC, or all SBC in the cracks.
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We had a break in the weather and the roof was dry so we tried to get it covered. Jeff wasn't happy with the roll of Lowes housewrap we got - lots of holes in it. It was pretty different quality than the leftover typar we used for the smaller roof. So that went back to the store and instead we used a roll of 6mil black plastic. We went back and forth on whether to keep the plastic on or get the right typar to put on later. Jeff decided he wants the typar, so we'll have to find a store that carries it. It was really a pain getting the plastic up. It's not easy to stand on without sliding. Since the sheets were so big (20′ wide I think?) we didn't have any wood exposed. But we got it up without killing ourselves.
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The bad news is after a wind storm this week half of the plastic on the back tore off. Once we get the roof dry again we'll put it back on and hope it'll stay until we're ready to typar it.
We also got our woodstove in. It's really close to the front door, but we decided to make the front door smaller - the door hole is 40″+ so we'll fill in the extra space on the woodstove side. Jeff said the stove wasn't drafting well (I think?) so we'll add another 3′ section to the chimney and see if that helps.
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We picked up some 1′x1′ slate tiles for the bathroom floor. They should go nicely with the rest of the house. We also have been looking around for wood exterior doors. Who knew afordable ones were so hard to find?! We found some for <$200 but they aren't pre-hung. There's a couple of other places locally we need to check out. We just want simple pine doors with 9 little windows on the top. Kitchen cabinets are another challenge. Jeff really wants solid wood throughout the cabinets, which is impossible to find affordably. We may end up making them.
That's all I can think of for now. We've slowed down this month, but should get moving again once it warms up a bit.
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
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!
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 ;D
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!
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
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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1947.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1948.JPG)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1975.JPG)
Here's the slate tile we got for the bathroom floor.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1953.JPG)
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. :)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1964.JPG)
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.
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!
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.
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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1977.JPG)
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
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3_17_up.JPG)
And a similar shot from 3/12/2010
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1979.JPG)
I'm curious and may have missed something in your prior posts. Are those concrete blocks hollow or did you fill them with something?
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
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.
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.
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
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? ???
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.
Here is the listing of our finally complete firstday.
(http://mediall.rapmls.com/nyst/odbrmls/listingpics/bigphoto/004/76254.jpg?tsp=20100415140556)
http://odbrmls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Nyst&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail&ARGUMENTS=-N890324078,-N34850,-N,-A,-N3680761 (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.
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! )
Nice cottage Jeff:
You added a lot of nice touches.
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 .
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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_2490.jpg)
This one we decided to leave because it wouldn't do too much damage.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_2442.jpg)
Unfortunately the bird had a run-in with a window. It ended badly.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_2495.jpg)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_2493.jpg)
One of the trees has been debarked. It's going to look great when we're done!
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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!
Looks great folks!!! c*
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.
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
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.
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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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_2623b.jpg)
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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!
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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!
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. :)
Looks great! Can't wait to see the roof go on!
[cool]
I really enjoy the updates. Thanks for sharing.
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.
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Then we moved to the back outer wall.
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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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_2770b.jpg)
Our little guy hung out with us today. He was not disappointed in the rain – he loves to run around in it!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_2767b.jpg)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_2741.jpg)
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.
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?
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
More parging at the house. Luckily we're really close to being done!
The back wall is finished-
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2811b.jpg)
The bottom row on the side wall is done and the small window is installed-
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2812b.jpg)
And the front window is installed (it's been propped in there for awhile)-
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2796b.jpg)
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.
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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.
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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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2789b.jpg)
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.
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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.
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Tucker is very proud of the hole he dug out this morning with Tim-
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2826b.jpg)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2857b.jpg)
Looking really good guys!
More posts heavy on photos, light on words. ;)
July 14
Continuing to work on the drainage before the house can be backfilled
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Meanwhile the septic tank was getting placed in its new home
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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.
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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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_2859b.jpg)
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.
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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.
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Can you spot the kid?
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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.
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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
Really interesting - am enjoying reading about your progress & seeing all the pictures! Looks like the little guy is having a ball!
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.
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Some of our mud
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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.
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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.
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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
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Fresh Typar
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First layer of insulation
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Typar again, then furring strips
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The wood was put in with these screws. We also have horizontal wood, I just forgot to take a photo.
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A dry run on the ground
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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.
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/
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.
Nice update and excellent photo journal. [cool]
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.
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!
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!
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.
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It's going to be an awesome day when this place has an actual roof! 8)
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? ???
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 d*. 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 d*). 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 ;D
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.
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+.
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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.)
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Insulation makes me so itchy!
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Ben came over for the day and got our fallen in plastic out of the ditch – it was a huge help!
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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!
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Half way across!
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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!
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?
You bet ya Glenn!! Thanks Glenn for checking on us and keeping us straight! d*
The horizontal purlins (4" furring strips). Will be screwed onto the vertical furring strips (3"). I've seen people just put the horizontal purlins on then tack the metal to it. This to me seems like an awful idea. I know the idea of "thinking like your rain" gets mentioned on here and for good reason. Why put a wall in the way of draining water? I called the synfelt sales rep, if I recall right I think it was 6 gallons of water can form underneath a metal roof , depending on sure on many variables such as roof color and the temp differential between the home and the air. So giving the roofing membrane under the tin and easy way to shed water that may accumulate seems like a good idea ( per firstday design)
Misc detail that we learned the hard way. The piece that attaches to the panels (LOOKS like angle iron) ( which are the edges that the metal roof butts up to) are supposed to "float". They have slots in them where the screws need to go. If you are doing a standing seam make sure that the first layer of vertical furring strips have no screws sticking up where the strapping purlins (as glenn puts it) are going to rest on. Luckily we had to do the roof over anyway on our first attempt b/c I didn't like the tyvek being the outer membrane. ah the learning curve...
I been thinking of the really neat parallel between most of you that build a small structure first then a bigger one. In our house incidentally we have the small bedroom and then the big rest of the house. This allows us to do that same thing others do. Learn first on the small structure , figuring out the details with trial and error then applying what we learned the bigger roof. If gives us both a system and an idea of how long the rest of the project should take. Just something i felt worth sharing...
back to fixing computers.
Jeff
I figured you had it covered but thought I'd ask. Like a rain screen wall - then I assume you will have some kind of vent or open ridge cap at the top for a bit of air flow.
Good job. :)
I try to have it covered but a lot of this I'm kind of making up , trying to make sure to keep good design principals in mind ? I am kind of nervous about the metal part esp the edges being that the book gives instruction based on solid decking. It has purlin details but they wont work with the gutter etc.
I just realized I explained the rake part with the wrong terms... this is why I prefer pictures lol. Fixed now.
Yeah glenn, the top of the roof has a vent with 4 foot sections of plastic acting to stop / slow water from getting in the top. On the bottom I am really not sure the detail we are going to use. It will probably involve framing out the sofit ( i think thats the right term aka under the roof edges). Adding a screen to allow the roof space to breath in the framing. This will also support the gutter which could have substantial weight on it. Im just hoping it works its self out. Other parts of the project have so far so who knows.
Thanks again glenn, your thoughts are always regarded highly. c*
The rake trim I have used goes over the outer high rib of the sheeting and as you say - rather floats in or out to allow squaring it at the outside edge. We just fastened it down with self drilling fasteners or stitch screws (like wood screws) as necessary - nevermind their slotted holes if they are in the wrong place. :)
You do have to be sure to stretch or shrink your roofing to get it into the space that is covered by the rake trim - or else it is mickey mouse time with various caulking and other things that are not as good as doing it right.
That is if I am picturing what you are telling me correctly.
Deb and Jeff, thanks for sharing all this.
I'm just starting a PAHS home in France.
I wanted to ask if you plan on putting temperature and maybe humidity sensors under the umbrella? Would be nice, in view of the absolute unavailability of any such data.
Thanks
Bruce
Hey Jeff and Deb,
You guys are doing an amazing job. Good luck with finishing the roof!
We had some wet days (and another typar repair), so we did some more SBC. It was nice to change things up. We probably only have 2 days left of SBC. Of course, after we're done, we have to put the blue board up and do the outside all over again, but with 1/2 the house bermed it won't be quite as painful.
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After a short trip, we got back to the roof. 3/4 done with the large one! I priced out insulation today, which we need to finish the last section. Yikes – we really saved a ton of money getting most of it used! If all goes as planned, the insulation will be finished by the end of this week. There might be some metal on there one of these days! The roof work hasn't been all that gratifying. It's something that needs to be done and doesn't add much appearance wise to the house. Plus we've been working on it so long we're really ready to move on!
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Life should be slowing down a bit, so we'll push working on the house. We don't want to be doing the exterior SBC and interior flooring in the cold. Idealy we'll spend the winter cozy inside doing fun things, like wall paint, kitchen and bathroom! I think that was our plan last year too. ;)
With a couple of days of heavy rain, we had to move inside to work. The moat was working well!
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It was a good time to pour the floor in the crawlspace. Working on this section isn't high on the priority list now, but it's great for those days we can't work outside. We used pea gravel this time for the mix and it took some getting used to. After a few batches we were in a rythmn.
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Today the floor was mostly dry. It's not perfect but good enough! While Jeff did some roof work I started roughly laying out the blocks for the wall. It's great seeing the pit finally taking shape! It'll be awesome once we can backfill. Then we'll have a much clearer idea of the floor space in the house.
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The little guy has a new pet at the land – a worm. He even took him for wheelbarrow rides!
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Congrats on the moat. Nice vapor barrier below the slab you poured. [cool]
Also, I thought you might like to know I finally attached the 2" blue board to the block walls. I used 4 inch long 1/4" blue tapcons w/ an inch & 1/2 washer to hold it down. In some cases I did it over the MIRADRI. I'd take a pic but you've done it on your roof so there's nothing to it. 9 out of 10 have held well so far. 1 stripped due to over tightening.
Glenn: Yeah I think I am using the wrong term. The piece that floats on the purlins looks like angle iron. It will be much much clearer in the pics when we get there lol.
Bruce: There is a bruce at the paccs/pahs forum is that you? Anyway.. I have giving little thought sensors. I think I need at least one , most likely two. One temp sensor about 4 or 5 feet off the back wall under the insulation and the same up front on the south side. I think I would just like an overall of how the temp is going so I can moderate the input of solar input through the external collectors. Moisture sensors I think i will pass on. The north bermed wall footer drain will tell me that. I could even get a reading from back there if needed through the conduit for the incoming water pipes.
Can you think of any other reasoning for putting moisture sensor in? BTW when you build I can wait to follow it.. hint hint ;) c*
BK: that is really good to know it worked for ya. It seems to be the most secure way to fasten the styro on. I think we might use a combination of glue and tapcon concrete screws. We are actually fast approaching where we will be putting on the blueboard to the outside. B/c of our roof rafters not sticking out per convectional roof we have to have the blueboard insulation on first so we can fasten the roof framing to.
thanks all for the nice words :)
Update: Just got done today and had to jet to work. Deb and I had to pickup some extra insulation b/c we ran out of poly iso. As lucky would have it one of debs co-worker/friends are also building a really cool home and had a bunch left over in 4x4x2". In a perfect world it would be 3" so we are having to get creative with peices that somehow bridge that divide and overlap the best we can.
This stuff was 1/2 the price of new and had no nail holes which was nice but still needs be trimmed piece by piece, which like the rest of the used insulation adds time. :P Time vs Money, so true. But we have saved a lot of money by using the used polyiso and think its worth it. Itchty though d*
The concrete pad we poured came out pretty good I think. We batch mixed it and it took 5 or 6 hours I think. The crawlspace walls are now drystacked and parged and backfilled. Pics to follow , we lost our camera.
Quote from: speedfunk on October 10, 2010, 05:56:53 PM
Bruce: There is a bruce at the paccs/pahs forum is that you?
Yep, that's me.
QuoteAnyway.. I have giving little thought sensors. I think I need at least one , most likely two. One temp sensor about 4 or 5 feet off the back wall under the insulation and the same up front on the south side. I think I would just like an overall of how the temp is going so I can moderate the input of solar input through the external collectors.
I'm hoping to put in a series of sensors to check out the reality of the way heat is moving seasonally through the earth around the house. There is little data available about PAHS performance, so I will try to make a real effort in this area. The original Hait house had a lot of sensors but I've seen no reference to follow-up data from them except Hait's occasional references. I like the look of the 1-wire system used by Phil & Lisa Malone in Maryland. See http://www.ourcoolhouse.com/scada.htm
QuoteMoisture sensors I think i will pass on. The north bermed wall footer drain will tell me that. I could even get a reading from back there if needed through the conduit for the incoming water pipes.
Can you think of any other reasoning for putting moisture sensor in?
I have clayey soil and the rate of conductivity of clay is directly dependent on the humidity content (completely dry clay has very low conductivity). It might just be TOO dry under the umbrella. It will be interesting to see what happens to moisture content under the umbrella over the years and how this affects temperature changes. So I'll need moisture sensors too.
QuoteBTW when you build I can wait to follow it.. hint hint ;)
Yes I must get that off the ground. This board seems a pretty good place to do it judging by your well-illustrated efforts.
Bruce
[/quote]
Work on the roof and pit continue!
The back side of the roof covered –
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As we said, we were short on insulation for the last part of the roof, but luckily a co-worker who's also building a house had some extra to sell – perfect timing! The sizes were different, so it took some extra time and layers to get everything matched up with the rest of the roof
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It's also been great seeing the pit take shape! First the corefills were done and the walls were parged. Then the wall was backfilled with the pile of dirt we had loaded in the doorway this summer. Makes the place a little roomier.
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Sill plate
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Then on to wood for the sub floor! The top of the 2″x12″ plus plywood will be level with the concrete flooring in the rest of the house.
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All framed out! We just need to add 2×4's under the floor joists.
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The view when standing in the pit – not a bad work area! We'll get all the plumbing in before putting on the plywood.
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We have a lot of we want to get done before the weather gets too cold. Luckily these days we have tasks to do both indoors and out, so we can be flexible. Being knocked up again, I'm better at napping in the gravel pile than helping Jeff, but my energy level should improve soon!
Wow guys! Looking really good! 8)
It's so nice to see the great progress you're making and seeing your son growing up. What awesome memories he will have of this life experience :)
Thanks Dog! Our son likes to help us work so we try to give him little projects to do. Usually we just end up with a mess to clean, but he has fun and stays occupied!
Once the roofing insulation was done we cleaned up and shipped out all the leftovers. It's nice not to look at it anymore! We put some plywood temporarily on the bathroom floor so we can move items out of the way and prepare for the flooring. It's always better working in a clean work site!
Before pouring the floor, we need to run our electric, which will go under the floor and up into the block. We took some time to mark all the outlet & light locations. The trick is making sure they go where there are no corefills. Sometimes it took a few tries. ;)
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We had to use underground wire which cost a bit more.
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Jeff ran some empty conduit too just incase we need to add anything down the line.
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We're making good progress! Can't wait to have a floor. ;D
The roofing has gone pretty well as weather permits. We started with the little roof, so we could learn from any mistakes before doing the big section. First we put on the 1x4 horizontal strips and then squared up the bottom one.
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We doubled up the bottom 1x4 and used a 2x4 for support behind the gutter.
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After lots of manual reading, we started with the metal! The gutter goes on first. It took a few tries to figure out the pop rivet tool for the straps. It's easy though and makes a real nice finished look.
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Then the offset. This is the part the roof panels slide onto so we don't need any exposed screws.
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There's some prep work to be done on each panel, but once we got into a rythmn it wasn't too bad.
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Panel #1!
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The panels are the quickest part - and most gratifying! It was fun to stare at the roof.
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Jeff tackled the front half on another day. It's really best to do with at least two people since there are so many steps.
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Some panels could be pushed right up and others needed some encouragement. The 20' panels should be interesting!
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We decided to hold off on the trim and cap, which would probably take at least a day for the small roof. We'd rather focus on getting the large roof panels up first and then go back to the trim. Big roof is more of the same - horizontal 1x4s went on first.
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The large roof was tough to square up with no straight edge to work from. It took us the better part of a day with lots of cursing. Reminded me of squaring up the footers last year. Finally we got it figured out and put the bottom row of 1x4's on.
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We've got some more wood work left on the front and side before we can get to the metal. Depending on time and weather, the roof should be in good shape by the end of this month before the weather gets too nasty!
Sweet ..deb posted all these great pics.
Concrete block and electric: b/c of running the electric in the block i believe we have to have it inspected before we pour the floor (although I might just pour it and ask forgivness later). I tried several different ways of making the holes for the outlets. First I tried drilling holes with an hammer drill along the outside...well...yeah not so good. The concrete did not really break that well and on a couple of blocks I actually cracked the surface bonding cement by pounding on the outlet with a hammer. The next attempt was with the small (4") circular saw. This works pretty good and is how I ended up doing all the inlets at the bottom of the floor. HOWEVER ..its not clean b/c it does not go in deep enough. Then I tried the full size circular saw with the diamond blade ...oh yeah. That worked the best. After I cut it , i would tap it out easily with a hammer without damaging the block.
We used the underground cable (called UF ) 12 guage (thicker) for outlets and 14 guage can be used for lights. I was concerned that this would be harder to work with however I think i prefer it. It stays pretty rigid which made eaiser shoving it up the empty core to the outlet hole. On a few I had to drop a string with a nut on it down and use that to bring the electric cable up but it worked well and I did not have to do that to often.
Like deb mentioned we ran some conduit for future use. We had a tarp garage that degraded and blew down that I repurposed the metal poles for. The lets had nice 90 degree bends that worked well for bringing it up next to a wall ...very cool.
Roof:
The metal roof has lots of pieces and I have to admit intimdated me b/c I did not see anyone else attempted to install standing seam on here . I think most hired it out. Between deb and I though we managed to figure it out and actually it went farily well.
The little roof was nice and easy b/c we had the wall where it meets the big section of the house to square against. The big roof ...ehh...
THe issue was with all the insulation that floats on the roof , its very difficult to find anything that is true. everything is off by a little bit. I did not want to have it unsquare at all. I had to remove one piece of tin (the long panels) b/c I forgot to put clips on, on the small roof. It did not seem to want to snap off , so i had to pull it off . This was not so bad on a 10 foot panel ..on a 20 foot panel it would not be fun. Not to mention a whole bunch of them :( .
The way we did it was to use a plumb bob and drop it next to the footer on both the corners . We then measured 4 feet in from that marked point on the overhanging furring strips, so that it was on the roof not overhanging (where the furring strips are all bendy). So from that point we hung a string suspended slightly b/c the furring strips go up and down, from the one corner to the next and marked. From there we did the 3/4/5 trick to square the sides of the roof. It worked well. we then measure outward and marked the furring strips. Then added the horizontal 4" board and trimmed the excess. I am happy its done and ready. whew...sorry for the book, I just want to share what worked and what did not.
You guys are a Rockin' team!!!!! [cool]
woohoo..... thanks dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some possible good news. We have a contract on our firstday cottage that we are currently living in. Its dependent on the seller selling their house BUT they are past inspection so I think its fairly safe bet. They have 50G down so I don,t think banks will give them any grief. They want to closed by jan6th. [cool] cheers to being homeless ;)
Keep our fingers crossed
We had a four day roofing marathon last week. The 3/12 roof pitch is nice for walking around on, but it's rough on the back. By day 4 we were pretty tired.
We chose to shorten the long 20′ panels by 6″. Originally we went with a 3′ overhang so we'd have a nice walkway in winter but got concerned it'd block too much sun. So Jeff and the sawzall took care of that. We also decided to prep the gutters on the ground. It made the whole process much easier and faster. We tacked down the bug screening first to get a better seal. Next were the gutters, rake and offset cleat like before.
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Then we were off with the paneling! Jeff was worried about sliding the long panels up. Even some of the 10′ were a bit hard. So this time we just snapped in the bottom few feet. Much easier!
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We'll do some temporary bracing on the overhang before the snow comes and then do it right after the exterior walls are finished.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_9498b.jpg)
Getting the last few panels and rake on is tricky, so we rigged up a roof ladder.
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Now on to the backside! We did the front first so we could get the worst part over with. Now the back with 11′ 6″ panels and only a 4′ drop seems much simplier. Squaring it up took no time. Then we added the lower 1×4s, screening and gutter. A little more work and we'll be ready to slide on the panels!
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Our assistant took a picture of the "crew".
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We should have some time and good weather this weekend to work on the back roof so hopefully we can get it up quickly. Then we need to move back inside and finish getting the floor prepped for cement before it gets too cold. After the floor is in, we'll finish the roof trim as weather permits – we just need a few more nice sunny days!
In other news, our cottage was inspected for the potential buyers yesterday. We should hear more in a couple of days, but our realtor who was present for the inspection said there were no major issues. We'll see!
Looks great. Good luck for the weekend. It is supposed to be clear but cold. Low of 25. I will be working in it too.
Good luck to you too this weekend Squirl. If only we could stretch fall just a little bit longer!
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 ;)
Congratulations. Must be a great feeling.
Jeff and Deb, that is great news. You two worked so hard on all of this - the First Day and this one. You deserve it. Congrats. :)
congratulations! that must feel like a huge relief.
hope you put enough aside to pay uncle sam his pound of flesh!
Better hurry up and spend that $45K before it's only worth $10K. ???
Just saying. c*
Exciting on all accounts!!!!! [cool]
Quote from: speedfunk on January 23, 2011, 02:45:08 PM
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!!!
Congrats!
There is no tax on the sale of a primary residence, provided you have owned it for two years. Enjoy the cash.
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.
Quote from: archimedes on January 24, 2011, 10:42:00 AM
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.
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!
Quote from: archimedes on January 25, 2011, 12:42:12 PM
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.
Thanks all for sharing in our excitement ;D ;D ;D
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.
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. :)
Thanks so much Glenn, coming from all you have done that means quite a bit [cool] 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
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
true...i should look into that...thanks for that idea.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The progess is coming along. Heres some pics'..
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Got the subfloor for the batroom sheathed. Used 3/4" plywood. Some were old sheets and two new ones.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Welcome to jungle
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In order to do the tile work this little peice of floor got filled with concrete.
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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.
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You're making good progress! Good job on scribing the boards. :)
These two little girls and their big brother have been keeping us busy!
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
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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!
hiya-
just found your thread! I'm looking forward to going back and reading the whole thing! looking forward to hearing more about it!
Quote from: drainl on May 02, 2011, 09:30:15 PM
These two little girls and their big brother have been keeping us busy!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/3w.jpg)
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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1010.jpg)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1025.jpg)
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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1013.jpg)
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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!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1325.jpg)
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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.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_1035.jpg)
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!
They just turned 4 weeks old yesterday I think! I wonder if they are ready to haul rocks yet? Hmmm....
Wow. Congratulations. It must be a real handful. I can't believe you got anything done at all with all that is going on. Fortune certainly seems to be smiling on your family this year. It is very nice to see.
Lookin good, Jeff. It's all starting to really to take shape! The door looks great and I really like the tongue and groove pine wall.
Congrats on the new little ones!
Growing your own crew, Jeff and Deb? Time for another room. :)
Great job on the log fitup too.
I like how you got the nice fit with the t&g boards against the tree, I need to do something similar and your finished product came out great. Will be borrowing that, thanks.
Congratulations! The twins are beautiful w*
You guys are doing an amazing job. It's great seeing all the progress you're making.
Hey Jeff and Deb!
Congrats on your new addition! Have you been working on the house at all this summer? :)
We (mostly Jeff) work when we have time - there's just not a lot of spare time these days! ;) We also don't have internet so posts are tough, but I'll try to post a bunch of photos soon!
We got most of the roofing done last fall, but had to do the trim pieces before we could do the ridge cap. We were never motivated enough to go on the metal roof with snow and ice.
We started with the little roof. The trim pieces have been frustrating because they don't fit quite right. We excluded some pieces later on because they weren't actually doing anything.
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You can see all the parts involved in the ridge cap – it's challenging getting them all line up right. Metal Sales also doesn't provide end caps, so that's something we'll have to make at some point.
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We've still got the ridge cap on the big roof to do. We're waiting for a couple of cloudy days.
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The drainage on our driveway needed some work, so we rented a machine for a week (32hrs) knowing we'd find plenty to keep busy!
Where the spring goes under the driveway kept backing up with a lot of rain. We couldn't see a pipe underground so we weren't sure what was going on. We decided to get a new 20′ long 18″ pipe. Weren't sure how that'd work moving on our 8′ trailer, but it was no problem!
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Turns out there were two pipe pieces – and they were very clogged. They also weren't long enough. So we took them out to be used again elsewhere.
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Jeff built a cool rock wall too -
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He also made a path on the back hill to the spring. We anticipate doing a lot of planting on this hill, so getting the tractor around will be helpful.
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We dug the ditch for the electric and punched a hole through the wall. We're trying to hide the electric line to the panel in the bathroom wall. Might be tricky!
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We decided to tackle the leach field. That's been a lot of work (moving mega gravel) and may have been worthwhile to hire out. It's almost ready for inspection though!
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Hey, I'm going to be renting that in a few weeks. Did you get the 27 or 35 hp one? How did it work? How was the service?
Thanks for the pictures of the leach field.
Everything looks great.
Hey Squirl -
We got the smaller machine. Jeff would be the better one to give feedback, but I know he really enjoyed working with it. They dropped it off/picked up right on time. I think we actually had it for 6 days, which we needed to get the 32 hrs in.
Wanted to add he was able to move some larger rocks so the machine seemed powerful enough for our purposes.
Awhile back we got a bunch of slate tiles on sale. Time to install them! The floor came out great. Can't wait to get some color on the wall so the slate stands out some more.
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We did some more work on the vanity. We'll put a curtain underneath. On the top right will be shelving and/or to hide the vent pipe.
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We originally planned to have a seperate shower stall and got a nice display model door super cheap ($10?). We're now going to try and make the bathroom door using the glass piece with wood framed around it.
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We have a friend doing the plumbing, which is nearly done. Running water may be in our near future!
Thanks for the quick reply. I was going to get the larger one for the weekend rate of 12 hours. If you needed it for 32, it makes me wonder how much I will get done. Only one way to find out.
The tile looks great.
Our bedroom is nearly finished! It was a great boost to see one part of the house looking how we envisioned. We may make our own plaster in the future, but we wanted a quick victory, so we got Enjarre from American Clay. The product was great to use – non-toxic – we didn't even need gloves. We can re-use the dried up left over plaster by re-adding water. Wall repairs should be very easy when needed. The main downside is the cost. $55/bag and we ended up needed 3+ bags. Plus the color packets and mud glue are all extra.
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We tried to use a paddle mixer with our drill, but it wasn't powerful enough, so after a few failed attempts, Jeff ended up mixing it with his feet. Then we'd put the plaster in a smaller bucket and used a flexible plastic trowel to apply it.
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Beautiful! After the walls were done we tackled the flooring. Jeff had already sanded it down and applied the poly. We installed it with screws so we can pull the floor up if ever needed.
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The photos really don't show how great it looks!
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We are putting in a sliding door. Living in upstate NY, barns are everywhere and we figured it'd be easy to find some old barn door parts. Not the case! They cost a fortune! We found some heavy duty clothes line wheels that we're going to try and use.
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Wow, everything is looking great. Nice job.
Wow, you guys have done a lot of work! Looks wonderful [cool]
Good job!
love the walls, and floors!!
Squirl: Yeah we rented the small one. Munsons was good about service. Machine was solid and ran well. Honestly I think the machine was plenty big. Deb mentioned we moved large rocks. There was one I was moving around that was 5' x 4' x 1' deep. Deb did not post a pic but we also did driveway work and dug those trenches for the septic with it. A lot was done with that machine. You should have no issue accomplishing a lot with a few hours. We ran into a time issue b/c of having a packed life , but I worked into the nights and the morning before they came and used all the hours.
Airloom: Sweet, the sharing of stuff on here is awesome.
Thanks all for the nice words as well, they help for sure as we push. Just now I moved some stuff b/c the house we were staying in has been rented. Ah camper living, we joking call it the "solar convection oven".
Water is bathroom is still our focus. We would love to be able to have showers on site. Other then we are using a sawdust toilet, and that works amazingly well. Just living though takes away time from building. Deb has went back to work part time and my schedule is pretty open but there are days when I am just watching the kids and not much gets done, there are also band commitments coming up in august that will require me to gone for days.
Walls look awesome. Keep up the great work!
It has been a pleasure reading your construction progress. I appreciate the details in your writeups and your good pics. I am interested in the PAHS system and am moving forward to building using that technique in Oklahoma near Seminole. Eight months away. Keep up the good work and congrats on your accomplishments so far. Peace.
Roban
I haven't check this site in a while but laying in bed last night I got to thinking about your build. I was so happy to find new pics this morning! The roof is beatiful (can you say a roof is beautiful? LOL) and the walls look amazing!
Thanks roban and welcome to the forum :) I hope that if you choose to go foward with your house you will share it with us :)
Homeschool: That is cool our build is that interesting :) thanks for the good words
UPDATE:
Things are going very well. The season is closing in on us for sure. Winter has way of letting you know its coming.
We have not been able to post any updates b/c its been 8 weeks we have been waiting for timewarner to hook up our internet :) We have also been insanely busy just keeping things going. Kids fed and clean. Jobs maintained. House progressing. I could go into details but to sum it up there is very (read almost none) time where we are not working. We are both at the end but see the light at the tunnels end. I am very proud of my wife for being tough and getting through this (not that we have an option)
The temps are dipping into freezing. Last week I managed to insulate some exposed pipes ( our main water feed) so it hopefully wont freeze. Family has been helping lately...not anything crazy but everyone just showing up a day to help has been awesome.
Last night we finished up putting the chimney through the roof. Before this we used rocks with mortar in beween them as the floor for the woodstove. We also just finished up the roof ridge cap LOL WOOT , of course we pick a day where its snowing to do this.
We have learned to be a great team over these 2.5 years. Adjusting to constant attacks to any rhythm we might have had or set backs we have faced.
We are currently running low on funds. We are roughly 1 week from being able to move in (with no certifcate of occupency BTW) We maybe decide to hold off moving in to avoid the pitfalls of living in the place , we shall see. The house has electric throughout with the exception of the kitchen which deb is going to be picking up stuff for at ikea. The plumbing is also done with the exception of the kitchen. The on demand electric water heater works great. The septic I did by myslef seems to working so far. The gravity feed water system works good so far also. I was a bit worried that the heater needed a certian gpm to work but this seems ok. Things are falling into place and visual change is happening as fast as possible. We only have really 2 days a week to work and those are also with kids so we are just trying o to utilize our time as best as possible. We will post the backlog of pics we have when we get internet.
Tomorrow I can put in the woodstove and we will have heat. This should get our family from worring we are going to die.
Great build!
Very unique
I really like what I'm seeing.
The color combo looks easy on the eyes
Multi-light door looks good
I hope the season goes well for you and this great little house feels snug and cozy soon. You have done a fine job - something to be proud of. Lots of memories already and many more to come.
Man o man what an awesome place you have carved and built!!!!
TT
I just joined and read thru your whole saga over the past few days. I really enjoyed it and look forward to your move in day. Thanks for including all the details and pics, it really looks great.
Thanks for all the positive comments! Now that we have internet at the house I can get up to date with our progress! I'm sure Jeff will chime in with more details. Here's August...
It's always nice to look back at photos and see how much progress we've made. The year has kind of been a blur!
We decided to utilize the space in the kitchen/bathroom wall to make a little medicine cabinet. Great way to get a little extra space!
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Jeff did lots of work to get the septic tank & distribution box hooked up to the house and leach field. He put buckets of water in the box to make sure everything was flowing the right way and that there were no leaks.
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This is a junction on our water pipe about 100′ from the spring. We want to be able to access this if needed, so we built a rock wall around it – here's the start of the wall.
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A few batches of SBC and the outside of the house is parged! Nice to finally check that off the list. :)
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We used the old school chalkboard we had to tile where the tub meets the wall. Jeff put it in with white SBC.
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Machine rental time! We created more planting beds along the driveway. Possibly fruit trees here.
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Covering up the leach field and septic tank – Jeff was very happy to wrap this project up. The septic was a lot of hard manual work!
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Next we worked on getting a road up near the house. This will be our driveway as well, but we needed it now so we could get a concrete truck within 15′...
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Did you run the 4" sanitation type of pipe from the house to the distribution box? I was wondering if I could run that or if it had to be schedule 40 pvc. Is that a pond in the last picture?
I am not sure what you mean by sanitation pipe to be honest. We did run the thick walled PVC schedule40 from bathroom to the septic tank. From the tank to the distribution tank we also used the same stuff. From the distribution box to leach lines we used the thinwall no perforated pipe. The leech lines were thinwall perforated pipe , I believe made from a black poly center that is ribbed to increase its strength and covered with a pvc like material. I tried not to put the excavators weight on the leech pipe as It does not seem to strong. When I did have to cross it I did it at an angle to distribute the weight so it was not all on the pipe.
B/c i have little faith in this stuff , I tested the distribution box to leech lines by filling up the d box with buckets of water and adjusting the 5 pipes that went to each leech line. I wanted to make sure each of the 5 lines got equal amounts of water. I then discovered some leaks at the joints of the non-perforated pipe that i added more nasty chemical pvc glue to and fixed. filled under the non perferated pipe with crushed stone and covered with soil.
One thing I was warned about was the settling of the pipes after you back fill (the house to dist box pipes). All the pipes are sloped down the entire system. The perforated leech field lines have a 1/16th to 1/8th pitch. To make sure the pipe going from the house to tank to distribution box did not settle I placed them on No 2 ( 2 inch and below) crushed stone. The crushed stone is very stable. I hope this will guarantee no settling b/c these lines go under umbrella/skirting/cape insulation so would be a pain to dig up and fix.
BTW , thanks for all the encouraging comments :)
September Part I
We decided to use white SBC on the bathroom walls. It's very different than the gray SBC – much smoother. We put some concrete stain on it afterwards then installed the mirror and sink.
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Next is the kitchen floor pour! We decided to go with a concrete floor with the color (brown) mixed in. Given how messy kitchens can be it seemed like the best flooring choice.
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We had to reschedule the pour a few times due to heavy rain. The chute reached the kitchen door as planned. We used a wheelbarrow to get it to the far sides of the room. The mix was a little dry so we tried to work quickly! Luckily we had a friend helping out.
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They drove in a stick of rebar in the center of the floor to help keep the floor level.
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The finished product! At first the color had a purple tint but after a few weeks that went away. We later etched the floor and put a low gloss finish on it. It's got some character, but we love it!
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Good to see you back - how's the baby? I see your little guy is getting lots bigger... nice progress! Looking forward to seeing more pics :)
Thank you for the more detailed description of the septic. You were right I was asking about where you ran the schedule 40 pvc vs. the thin walled pipe. I believe they market the thin walled at the big box stores as "sanitation" pipe.
What did you use for the low gloss finish on the floor?
I hope you are staying warm. I'm done for the season.
September – Part 2
I forgot to include this photo – Jeff found this old drain which was perfect for the earth tube in the kitchen floor!
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Next project is the woof floor on the back wall. We got more red oak like we have in our bedroom, but this came from a different mill (closer) and the boards are various lengths.
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We initially put the boards tight together but then had some problems with squeaking, etc., so we spaced them out some.
We'd been planning to create our own earthen plaster for the rest of the interior walls, but wanted to take the time to experiment with different mixes and materials. We don't have much time these days, so we thought a quick fix would be to cover the walls with a concrete stain.
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It didn't look too bad at night, but daytime was another story. We started second guessing our decision. We took a road trip the next day and came home with this...
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More American Clay! While it's not cheap we really enjoyed working with the product in our bedroom. We decided it'd be better to get the walls done right instead of the temporary stain. Plus it looks much prettier!
The kiddos are doing well sassy! Luckily the twins aren't mobile yet. Besides the challenges of chasing them around, we are far from baby proofed!
Squirl - on the floor we etched it and then put a Benjamin Moore finish on - I can't find the can, but I'm pretty sure it was this.
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They said at the store they knew a contractor who always finished concrete floors this way. So far so good!
October progress...
We decided to get three colors of American Clay for the rest of the interior – one for the kitchen, one for the lower back wall and one for the upper back wall and living room. Choosing colors is always so tough. After looking at the options for about an hour we went with Nantucket Sand, Chesapeake Bay, and Bluefield (I think?). We'd already used our favorite color – Jasper – in the bedroom and didn't want to repeat it elsewhere.
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In various stages of drying – it lightened up quite a bit!
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Electric and hot water-
Notice the light and switch above! First thing we did when we started building was get the electric to an exterior panel/outlet. We've run extension cords ever since. Jeff had already run most of the wiring at this point, but we didn't wire outlets or hook anything up to the interior breaker box. With some help from both sides of the family we've got the majority of the interior electric done and hooked up to our exterior box. What a luxury to have lights! The absolute best part was hooking up the hot water heater. I tried to be tough and take cold spring water showers, but ended up nearly hyperventilating. :( It's super cold - maybe on a 90 degree day it'd feel good! We love the hot water heater by the way. We got the Stiebel Eltron Tempra 20 Plus (electric). Right now we're gravity fed from the spring – no holding tank or pump – and it has been working out great! The pressure is a little low for showering, but we'll play around with different shower heads down the road.
Anyway, back to plastering...
The next color was the Chesapeake Bay for the back upper wall and living area.
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On the display the color looked dark green/blue. It didn't look so bad when it was wet, but sadly it dried to a shade darker than our SBC. I've got nothing against gray, but when you've been staring at it for the last three years, it's the last thing you want to look at. We stopped before doing the living room and decided to try a different color. We did use only 1 color packet/batch instead of 1 1/4 packets, which probably contributed to the color difference. For the record, it was not my color choice. :)
I have had that water heater. You will love it
if you dont put a water softner on it scale builds up super fast tho.
Yeah so far the water heater works excellent!!!!
I have heard people say that on-demands then to build up junk with hard water. Is that what you mean by "scale"? I think my water is pretty soft. Its not well water and I dont see any stains on anything UNLIKE our firstday cottage where we had well water.
You don't have to see any stains to have hard water. The water from our city water leaves an incredible amount of white mineral deposit behind when evaporated. Even from just a few gallons of water there is a lot of minerals. Not sure what all is there as I've never had it tested.
We have a humidifier we run in the house over the winter. It it the type that heats the water to produce steam. If I do not clean the heating chamber every week, more than likely it will stop running near the end of week two. It's easier to have a weekly clean out schedule than waiting till we notice it has stopped functioning.
The place is looking really beautiful! I'm so impressed with the folks on here that can do what you guys are doing. Nice job 8)
Wow the American Clay looks sooooo good!
You guys are an inspiration!
Amazing amazing job guys! I am so blown away by everything! ;D
This is Drainl . I accidentally posted under wrong name
Thanks for the compliments! We're still here and plugging away. Trying to get caught back up on photos... Here's what we did in November/December.
Next up was the blue plaster for the back room. We love the color!
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In this photo you can see how close the gray plaster is to the SBC gray. This is where we stopped the gray and decided to get a new color.
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And here's the new color – Amber Grain.
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We made some coat hangers and shelves with leftover oak. The lower hooks are for our little people. You can see how great the plaster looks after it dried. We're going to go over most of the gray plaster with the Amber Grain eventually.
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We had to get the floor under the wood stove set so we could get it installed. What better than rocks from our property!
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And after much deliberation, we bought a Kubota! With the mild winter, Jeff's put a lot of hours on it already.
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Nice looking Kubota, I think I'm going to borrow one when I do my footings and electrical run from the pole.
What a beautiful home! I'm a big fan of the blue wall too, and love the calming colors you guys chose. Concrete floors are awesome, and the plaster walls give a cozy old world feel (along with the fabulous wood stove).
It's been fun watching your little boy grow up in this thread.....he's such a handsome guy, and I'm sure he has learned a great deal in his few short years.
I have to hand it to you guys.....that is one labor-intensive home you've constructed, but I am sure it will outlive many future generations! I applaud you guys for tackling the site work....clearing and establishing property is a J-O-B. *NICE* Kubota.....you can't go wrong with one of those. :-)
Beautiful job!!
The place is looking wonderful, Deb and Jeff. So much work and you two just keep plugging away at it. Nice job.
Congrats on the Kubota. That is a real beauty. :)
Just wanted to post a post I made on another thread. Explaining the experimental floor stuff we are doing.
"Floor details. I can only say that I'm playing and that its not really set in stone HAHAHA ;) 8)
The bedroom seems to working well with rough cut 2x4 set in pea gravel. The "joists" are set 2' on center. The floor boards (oak) were green when we put them in. This floor seems to be good so far. There is a gap between the boards which allow the floor to breath a bit.
The kids rooms in the main section we did with 2x4's as the "joists" from home depot b/c it was sunday or something and I needed to get it going. I think the crappy wood from them hurt the floor a bit. We bought kiln dried red oak wood for the decking. When we originally set it we put it in nice and tight (board against board) thinking it would be fairly stable and should not move to much plus deb wanted it without gaps. We did not use a vapor barrier on this. We had the floor buckle a bit as the decking boards expanded . I guess it absorbed moisture ( which could have also been cause we were experimenting venting dryer inside (trying not to punch a million holes in the super efficient house) and there still is not vent for bathroom area. When I removed boards to reset them with a gap like the bedroom I found some growth on the bottom. Its interesting to note that the green lumber seems much more resistant to growies! We cleaned and put back. Its been fine since. All though when I put my nose to the floor it smells a bit musty still. I might end up putting a vapor barrier down which wont be to hard b/c its all screwed down. I can just remove a couple of deck boards to get the plastic under them. I'm not sure though b/c once the rear cape/umbrella/skirting that goes behind the house is on it should take care of all the water/rain that is come off the gutters and getting behind the house. We are currently still getting some water in our crawlspace below the bathroom. The cape/skirting that goes around the house should take care of this b/c its only after hard rains not all the time. I guess i'm interested in trying to make it work without a vapor barrier.
As far as good quality 2x4's as "joists" resting on the ground it been plenty strong. 2 ' on center seems to support the 1" oak well.
I hope thats not too much for ya :) The floor has been an experiment. I (we) did not want a concrete floor everywhere like you. I'd be interested to see what you do. I know conventional wisdom says vapor barrier on everything however when we were building I left a piece of black plastic down and there was water droplets on the underside when the pea gravel next to it had no moisture. So in a way the plastic gave the moisture somewhere to hide behind. In my head I also have the idea that in the winter when we lack moisture I'd like to be able to "pull" moisture from the ground lol ? When the gravel floor was still everywhere moisture issues were never an issue, the ground mositure was unable to wick its way up the pea gravel. Still playing on this one but the floor is functional and has no remaining issues all though might be tweaked in the future."
Thanks guys for the awesome compliments :) We have since gotten the living floor done will post pics soon!
The purchase of the Kubota was a great decision!!! We spent quite a bit of time doing the math. This puts us in debt but we have allready saved up half the cost and could pay it off quickly if need be. I can not be happier, the thing this machine does is amazing :) . While in retrospect it would have been good to purchase it long ago I at that time did not know that it would be the best tool for the job , which it is :) For the longest time I was thinking to get a backhoe like BK. That did on his earth-shelter would have been a huge fiscal mistake b/c I dont think the backhoe would be very useful on this steep terrain. Not to mention it does not have a dozer blade which is awesome for land shaping. The one thing that the machine does not do to well is MOVE earth from one location to another. I'm working on some type of skid to drag. For now though I just take a lot of trips back and forth.
The renting of the mini works but when you have a busy schedule just setting the machine to be dropped off , hoping it does not rain and finding consecutive hours to work is a real challenge. The mini has allowed me to re-sculpt the land around the house much better then the way it was left when the original earthwork was done by Tim and Vinney. Renting allowed me to learn that this machine is bad ass and learn on something I didn't own :0)
Am going to be starting on some of the solar stuff soon, so that is exciting. We have also built some new raised beds for plants. Deb almost has the stove in the kitchen hooked up.
I think that's it..pics will follow soon.
:) c*
Quote from: speedfunk on April 29, 2012, 04:11:15 PM
Thanks guys for the awesome compliments :) We have since gotten the living floor done will post pics soon!
The purchase of the Kubota was a great decision!!! We spent quite a bit of time doing the math. This puts us in debt but we have allready saved up half the cost and could pay it off quickly if need be. I can not be happier, the thing this machine does is amazing :) . While in retrospect it would have been good to purchase it long ago I at that time did not know that it would be the best tool for the job , which it is :) For the longest time I was thinking to get a backhoe like BKNIGHT. That would have been a huge fiscal mistake b/c I dont think the backhoe would be very useful on this steep terrain. Not to mention it does not have a dozer blade which is awesome for land shaping. The one thing that the machine does not do to well is MOVE earth from one location to another. I'm working on some type of skid to drag. For now though I just take a lot of trips back and forth.
The renting of the mini works but when you have a busy schedule just setting the machine to be dropped off , hoping it does not rain and finding consecutive hours to work is a real challenge. The mini has allowed me to re-sculpt the land around the house much better then the way it was left when the original earthwork was done by Tim and Vinney. Renting allowed me to learn that this machine is bad ass and learn on something I didn't own :0)
Am going to be starting on some of the solar stuff soon, so that is exciting. We have also built some new raised beds for plants. Deb almost has the stove in the kitchen hooked up.
I think that's it..pics will follow soon.
:) c*
Might look into something like this. Was used on the farm behind a tractor or horse. Pretty inexpensive.
(https://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd161/redoverfarm/scenes/country%20plans/images-dragbucket.jpg)
that does look like it would work good..Tough to get an idea of scale . Is there something its called? Something I can google search for?
Thanks John.
Quote from: speedfunk on April 29, 2012, 08:07:11 PM
that does look like it would work good..Tough to get an idea of scale . Is there something its called? Something I can google search for?
Thanks John.
They are still sold at most tractor impliment dealers.
Tractor Supply has them. Doesn't look that difficult to make an attachment to the hoe bucket for a Class I -3 point hitch. Know anyone who has a machine shop?
http://www.tractorsupply.com/countyline-reg-dirt-scoop-2131514
Quote from: speedfunk on April 29, 2012, 08:07:11 PMIs there something its called? Something I can google search for?
That's called a pond scoop or a dirt scoop
Quote from: speedfunk on April 29, 2012, 08:07:11 PM
that does look like it would work good..Tough to get an idea of scale . Is there something its called? Something I can google search for?
Thanks John.
The ones pulled behind a horse were called a Fresno Scraper.
http://www.farmcollector.com/equipment/fresno-scraper.aspx
check craigslist, you can often get old dumptrucks that are no longer road legal cheap..
not sure where in NY you are, but there should be a bunch like this one around, I see them regularly.
http://plattsburgh.craigslist.org/cto/3008454000.html (http://plattsburgh.craigslist.org/cto/3008454000.html)
hrmm though how high can that bucket lift, would it even work with a dump?
Update: Up to 130 hours on the machine and I got the lower (South facing) earthtubes set and buried and they work!!!!! Not that it should be a big deal that pipes connected to the lowest part of the house should drain air but after a lot of mental exercises its VERY nice to see and feel air moving [cool]
I got a bunch of pictures to post. I ended up doing 6 100' foot runs instead of my original plan on 6 150' length of runs. Its kind of expensive doing this piece of the project so I figure I can always extend it further down the hill if needed. Their were 2 in the large room and 1 in our bedroom. Also I think it would be real challenging fitting 150' x 6 under the 25' from wall insulated PAHS skirting/cape. I ended up using PVC schedule 40 and long sweep 90 degree elbows (and some 45's). Dry fitting and screwing each one together (NO GLUE).
There were 3 options for pipe that through extensive search i have seen used.
1.The corrugated roll black poly 4" pipe usually coming in long 50' lengths?
2. The 10' pipes that have a black poly ribbing then covered in pvc.
3. The 10' or 20' Schedule 40 standard issue 4" pvc foam core pipe.
Option 1: I've seen being used online. They run a circular saw down the pipe to create "weep holes" allowing any condensation to drain. This pipe when I visited seemed way to wimpy. I might still play with this option in another project. Back fill with pebble gravel would help also. Being that this is UNDER skirting/cape and very difficult to re-excavate , I would very nervous about the pipe getting crushed. Thus negating my time and labor. The ability to clean this pipe would be also be limited compared to other options.
option 2: we used this pipe for draining the footer and for leech field lines and its just not something that is strong enough to handle being crossed with a machine w/ the weight of earth. When I was digging up the front part of the house I accidentally hit an example of this pipe and it just shreds. Seeing first hand a profile of the pipe being misshaped badly under casual in ground use! This is not acceptable. This stuff is cheaper but I wont be using this for any more projects.
Option 3: Old skool pvc schedule 40. You cannot break this stuff. Its easy to clean. Weap holes reserved for the joints so no processing it. The one thing I didnt want to the nasty smell I get when I cut this stuff messing my air up. I have rationally come to the stance that this PVC type of pipe is relatively inert. As long as its not crazy hot or out in the sun it does not have any smell or anything really.
Deb has been working on the electric in the kitchen. She got some outlets finished we hooked up a range/stove.
Deb also got me a birthday present. Loyld Kahns new book!!!!! I have the most awesome wife evar!! It was really cool to see some of the projects here in it. He gave a nice overview of this site which i thought was awesome. Pretty excited about it :) :o :o :o
Its really great sharing this project with you all and being a part of this awesome online community.
TECHIE TYPES: I know of few that want to see proof of the pahs concept in action. People have requested I bury a temp sensor in the ground to measure the stored heat. The thing is I really don't care that much , i figure it will become easy to manage and seems UN-nessacary. HOWEVER, I would like to contribute an example of passive annualized heat storage and numbers seems to help? SO long setup short. If you want a sensor buried PM me and I will take the time to bury whatever you want to donate/send me but if not I'm going to skip it. Okay thats all for now. Pics following.
[cool] WOW! So impressed with how things are moving along. The house looks beautiful!
Thanks dog! Here's some shots from our winter project... the stone floor.
Jeff had the idea to use stone from our property for the living room floor. With the little ones getting mobile and putting everything in their mouths, it was time to cover our pea gravel floor. I’ll admit it took me some time to warm up to the idea, but I’m happy we did it. It took us quite awhile to do (these photos are from a three month span) and it’s still a work in progress as you’ll read…
As we unearthed flat rocks (2″ thick +) we’d throw them inside. We worked at night fitting it together. I like puzzles, but these pieces were heavy!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_3516b.jpg)
Once all the pieces were in their final location, Jeff went through and leveled them all out. Then I cleaned (most of them) up.
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We talked about many different materials to use as a grout, and since we were looking for the least chemical option, we started with plain stone dust from our local stone place. We got it moist and pushed it right in the gaps.
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The stone dust was difficult to get a smooth top on and it took awhile to dry. Once it did dry, it chipped away easily. We decided to add some portland to our next section of grout.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_3666b.jpg)
As you can see the portland mix on the right was a lot easier to get smooth. It dried quicker and didn’t chip too easily. We continued to do the rest of the floor this way.
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(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_3672b.jpg)
All grouted!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_3745b1.jpg)
Next was a poly. But first we had to get the floor really clean. I didn’t do a good cleaning on one section of the rocks pre-grout which caused problems here. The dirt from the rocks got on the grout when cleaning, so it took some work to get it all looking decent. Again trying to do less chemicals we went with a water based semi-gloss poly. It went on easy with brushes. The glass scared me at first but it has dulled down since.
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Victory! This was about two months ago. It's been great having a solid floor and utilizing all our square footage. Unfortunately the grout isn’t holding up well. All the parts where we did a stone dust/portland mix are chipping. Funny thing is the stone dust section hasn’t been a problem at all! We figure since the stone dust was porous, the poly soaked in making it stronger. The stone dust/portland mix was much less porous. So, we’re tossing around ideas for what to do next. Stay tuned!
hate to say it but with the stones just set on pea gravel and not on a bed of morter i dont think any grout will last too long
That is fantastic.
I have been dreaming of a floor like that for a long time. I am very jealous.
Cjal: In Debs post you'll note she said that the stone dust/poly between the rocks is holding up great. The issue is not the rocks or the gravel or the solidness of them. They are set good and dont move. The surface of the grout (only the portland/stone dust mix) we did is wearing away. I thought by getting it smooth it would be more durable that just stone dust , instead however because of its smoothness did not absorb the poly. Now that the surface is rough again I think maybe some type of natural oil might be good or we can try poly again and see how that goes.
she first said it wasnt holding up then said it was so i dont know. i think its just a matter of time before any rigid grout cracks. unless i am mistaken pea gravel is not compactable so even though it feels stable it more then likely has some movement and any grout would need to ne somewhat flexible.
im not bashing it, it looks great in the finished pic and i wasnt so sure when i saw the first pics so good job. just giving an opinion which someone who knows more can support it or say why im wrong.
I think the floor looks great, nice job.
I did a similar thing using dry mortar right out of the bag, jamming it into the spaces between and under the stones, then wetting it down. The mortar set up fine, smoothed it a little to get a nice finished mortar joint and I was done. This was an outdoor location (kinda messy) so not the same as yours. Mine never cracked and it's been 10 years - but I'm in FL, no freeze/thaw.
Love the way the house is coming out. d*
Update: 5 out of 6 earth tubes done and burried. Hopefully this weekend get knock the last one out. Also have done loads of grading behind the house. This has involved much earth to be moved. I am much happier though that I think I have a nice topology that 1. takes rain water away from rear wall where its currently been hanging out :( and 2. gives rain a path of least resistance to far away from the house on the sides. All ready I can see improvements.
Deb mostly with me helping when needed, have finished up all the electric stuff, besides kitchen counter outlets and outside the house mounted outlets. The last thing she did was install the smoke/carbon monoxide detectors . One in our bedroom and one in the great room.
Time to start getting ready for the winter. Get some firewood delivered. Next year we should have time to cut and dry our own but we need all the time we can get to finish earthtubes/get rubber membrane on at least the rear of the house . In our climate the cold rains that penetrate the soil seem to be a bigger issue then the ambient air robbing heat from our home. Also the rigid insulation on exterior block and furring strips to hold them are next. We also have to build the window frames and fasten them around the exterior of the windows.
Deb has also been working on ...very when there is some free time is window curtains. When we get one setup on the wall we will post pics..i think they will look pretty cool. You just cannot ignore the biggest loser of heat in your home the windows. We have double paned but compared to the walls of r20 it is a major thermal bridge to the outside.
All the above mentioned complete would give us a comfy winter this year :)
archimedes, That's a good idea stuff it in dry and wetting! Thanks for the good words also.
Squirl: Thanks man!
Update: Upper Earthtubes done and buried! woot.
It works (really REALLY quick observation need MUCH more to gain full understanding). Two nights ago when the outside temp had dropped (say 60ish) the interior temp was still warm (75ish) I went outside to where the upper earthtubes end. The air coming out of the pipes was considerably warmer (I would guess close to the 75) then the ambient outside air. The windows in the house were open. So its chimney effect is working.
Next is to get the back part covered up with pond liner and insulated. If we can get the back done before years end that would be good with me. The front could wait but I really want to stop the rear of the house from absorbing water and putting pressure on rear wall any more then what I have allready allowed d*
When its winter these effects should be maximized and I can gain better understanding of the forces at work.
Here is a video I shot of questional video skills ;D. I thought it would be a good time for this b/c each side of the house was at a different stage in the transistion of block and soil to insulation skirting and the two meeting up. So it nicely shows the whole process in one quick trip around the house.
I also have a quick shot at the passive inline water pre-heater (black poly pipes) and a quick shot of the top 3 runs of pvc pipe that is the fresh air earthtube section.
Dont worry we got tons of pics backlogged that I feel are important to post also. Esp of earthtubes which is what I have focused on mostly this summer.
The house in its current state is the most comfortable its ever been. c* We will keep on the house insulation and first 4 feet of ground insulation/rubber roof membrane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWhsr8_hDhY&list=UUTVLCuKizLEYTxbrGARNMVw&index=1 (//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWhsr8_hDhY&list=UUTVLCuKizLEYTxbrGARNMVw&index=1)
Wow! You guys have really done a nice job. The amount of work you have done is astounding. 80% done is a good number :) Will you be living there this winter?
Thanks Dog! It feels good to be wrapping things up. I don't know Jeff, but my hope is to have our CO (or at least a temporary one) by March 2013. We broke ground in March 2009. Four years seems like a good number! It's funny looking back at the posts - our son was about the same age when we started as our girls are now. A lot can change in life in four years!
As I mentioned in a previous post the experimental grout we used on our stone floor was slowly chipping away and making a mess. Our temporary solution was to put a bunch of throw rugs on it to keep the dust down. That sort of worked for awhile, but a do-over was needed.
Jeff had used surface bonding cement as a grout in the stone area under the wood stove. This had held up very well over the past year, so that's what we went with. First we removed the old grout and exposed the stone sides (at least an inch down). Next the new SBC went in. The whole process took about 5 days. It's a couple of weeks later and it's holding up great! The water based poly we originally applied is still on the stones. We'll leave the SBC untreated for now. Hopefully the house (and kids!) will stay much cleaner now.
Finishing up!
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(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/IMG_6855.jpg)
Looks great.
What kind of stone is that.
Acrhimedes: Thank you!! Im not sure how to answer. ok , so there is def a good amount blue stone in there. There is a old quarry higher up on the property. The rest is mostly rocks that had flat edge. Some were picked cause they just looked cool, like one that looks like outerspace with different space debri in it :) Some have just a cool deisgn in them.
There seems to be a large variation of colors and shapes which is kind of fun.I have been steadily putting rocks in piles. These rocks were in those pile. I believe rock will be a large part of shaping this landscape/property. I like rocks lol.
Update: Just wanted to add that I used a pointed trowel to fill between the rocks, that seem to work the best. I am now mixing surface Cement with gloves by hand in a concrete mixing metal thing . It seems the best way really. By using hands it:
1.keeps the dust down
2.mixes just as quick as hoe/cement mixer
3.gets better mix by using fingers. With a Hoe or cement mixer the stuff tends to ball up. Use your hands anyway
4.Easiest to judge how much water is the right amount. Esp with cement mixer it seems I always had issues with correct amount of water/sbc.
I kept the grout(surface bonding cement) mostly above the rocks this time. Learning from the first time where it was a bit lower then surrounding rocks. This made it difficult to sweep up, being your dirt is in the lowest place and it collects it.
Quote from: speedfunk on November 30, 2012, 06:04:01 PM
Some were picked cause they just looked cool, like one that looks like outerspace with different space debri in it :) Some have just a cool deisgn in them.
That works for me. ;D
I live in FL, if you want a rock here you have to go to the store and get it.
Just went through your build from the start....Wow, what a lot of work! And good job documenting it too while you're going. I'm a bit envious of your flat rocks---we have very pretty stones out here, but they don't come with any flat surfaces
Yeah.. The mountains here are not rocks that were ever pushed upward rather a "plain" that got eroded/carved into mountains. So most all the layers are stratified (think thats the right word). The are all level layers of said time period. There is also rocks that were moved here that are roundish too. The glaciers left different rock types?
I am no expert but that is my best explanation. A lot of the rocks in my piles were found while digging
Merry Christmas/ Winter Solstice everyone !
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Yeah---when I've travelled east all the geology feels very old. here, the mountains are all sheets of stone turned up while the pacific plate collided (and continues to collide) with the North American plate. Hard, sharp stones. Galciers shaped Yosemite and other areas but the Peninsular Range that runs from our neighborhood South, forming Baja California and ending in Cabo San Lucas, are pretty much a single ridge with little room for big glaciers. We ought to set up a cross country stone exchange for building, or just scatter them around to confuse the geologists
Jeff and Deb,
Just a word to say thank you for sharing your project over the last four years. You guys were quite the inspiration for me - I got my building permit last week.
I am hoping to see how you finish the outside of the house - I've not seen it mentioned but are you going with 4" of EPS with an EIFS finish?
HWS
Paul
Have a few minutes of quiet, so I'm trying to get caught up a bit on posts. This was from fall...
Before we could start the exterior insulation, we needed to build frames around the windows. We discussed a few different ways to do this, and ended up with a simple solution – cypress boxes attached with L brackets. The lower edge of the frame has a bit of an angle on it to help water run off. The boxes were treated with an exterior poly. It was really nice to see some changes to the exterior of the building. Just a little wood is exciting when you've been looking at grey cement for so long!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_6385b.jpg)
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_6389b.jpg)
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The last photo shows the beginnings of prep for our ground insulation. Lots of this ground work will just get covered up, but it takes so much time and labor to complete!
Before the kitchen cabinet work could begin, we needed to install the counter outlets. For the exterior wall, these are installed with 1/2″ conduit on the outside of the block. The bathroom wall will have T&G, so we were able to install the outlets in a more traditional way. There's also a run of wire through conduit for the exterior outlets. Once they are installed, our electrical wiring will be complete – yay!
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We also added a ceiling light. Running the wire required more conduit – this time up the back of one of our trees. We put the light on a chain so we had some flexibility on it's location. I found the old schoolhouse light on Ebay.
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The kitchen cabinets were something I really wanted to try and tackle myself. I like building with wood, but don’t have much experience. Every project gets me a little more skilled. I’m going slow, trying not to screw it up too much!
We’re only having base cabinets – most of which are on the exterior wall side. The 24″ electric stove will sit in the corner at an angle. Angles always mess me up! You’d think with the many years of college math I’ve taken, it wouldn’t be so difficult.
Jeff thought it’d be easier to build one large cabinet instead of three separate ones. First we built the toe kick/frame. Jeff scribed this against our floor since it’s not totally level.
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We decided on maple cabinets. This is 3/4″ maple plywood.
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I used scrap pieces for the bracing. It’s starting to take shape!
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Next up was the face frame. We picked up maple from our local lumber mill and ripped it down with a table saw. I picked up a couple of clamps, but could have used a few more.
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For the doors, I got 1×4 maple from the mill. I didn’t want to rip these boards, since I’m not very comfortable with a table saw. Instead I decided to use whatever size was available. I thought the 1×4 frame would look too chunky, but I really like how it came out. I wanted the 1/2″ maple plywood panels to be flush on the back, so I bought a new rabbet bit routed the backside.
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The (almost) finished mega base cabinet! They need some more tweaking and poly. I bought some really cool knobs off Etsy I’m excited to install!
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We dry fit the sink in. After having it laying around for over a year, it’s great to see it in the right place!
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It’s really starting to look like a kitchen! More to come…
[cool] Cabinets. Looks like you used a Kreg pocket hole jig?
Freedom Quest: That is a great thing to read. Please put a thread on here on throw me a link at some time in the future. It will be great to see what your planning on building and the process.
Rick: Yes I do believe that is what she used to join the cabinet boards together.
As for the exterior we were planning on doing a concrete based stucco initially. For quite a while now plan has been to do horizontal seamed siding, either a novelty pine or a ship-lap spruce. We will cover it with a nice opaque green exterior stain.
Reasons: (some personal taste)
1. I see houses/cottages in this area where the stucco has a kind of moldy look that I dont like.
2. Applying stucco on foam was not that much fun on our previous firstday cottage build. It also do did not come out that good.
3. We really like wood.
4. Picked a stain b/c we want to keep it low maintenance. We dont want to chip it off just re-apply
5. stained wood looks better with age. The best paint looks is the day its put on.
Deb and Jeff,
I just joined this site and have spent about three hours reviewing your project posts and pictures. WOW! Gives new weight to the word "amazing!"
Do I understand correctly that your first course of blocks on the foundation is mortared in place but all the other courses are just dry-stacked?
Thank you for taking the time during your work to take and post pictures. Very instructive!
Wishing you well,
Bj Wilcoxson
North Idaho
:D Wow! That's all I can say! I found this thread randomly, and have skimmed it from beginning to end. I would love to go back and read all the details later of your build, but had to tell you how impressed I was! Great job you two !
Thanks so much BJ and GAHOPEFUL!
BJ - yes, the first row of blocks was mortared, and the rest dry stacked. We core-filled about every 4th hole and each side of every door and window opening. Then parged the SBC on the interior and exterior walls.
Looking awesome Jeff, really like the new cabinets. We're getting ready to grout our concrete chunk floor how you did your stone floor. Got my clear coat and surface bonding cement all ready to go, hope it turns out as well as yours.
Those are really great things to hear GA and BW thank you very much.
Airloom: Thanks so much man! :D
Just a heads up I hope ya check this. The Surface Bonding Cement worked great. The poly like all poly wears and has micro chips (best way I can think to explain it). We only have the poly on the rocks not the grout. There are spots where it did not stay on the rocks. The more I see what your doing on your build the more I think that oils makes more sense. The same reasons I prefer stains over paints. So Im thinking you should consider using whatever oils you have been using on the concrete w/sbc . I hope ya read this in time to consider things a bit .
Deb and Jeff
Phenomenal job on this house! I wish i knew about this thread earlier.
I have gone through the thread twice picking over every detail for when i am ready to build. Pretty much everything your doing is what we want to do, and we are in upstate NY as well along the southern tier. I can't express how appreciative we are that you have laid it all out as you have. and kept this record alive as you have progressed. This thread is a treasure trove and your house is beautiful.
PAHS is very intriguing, and i was wondering...when you can spare a moment, if you could explain (or point me to where i missed it) what your plans are regarding the envelope and the sun collectors that will warm the earth in the dead of winter.
Will any water running underground, down the hill behind the house be entering under the umbrella? or have you made a vertical water proof barrier that i missed? or is this just not how the water will be flowing? it looks like you're going to insulate the top of the earth behind your house?
You guys are an inspiration!
Hey Zen! jeez..thanks a bunch for those kind words :) Thats very cool your so close. PM me if you want to stop by and take a look/meet up.
The envelope is most likley subject to change. Im not exactly set on the locations in the umbrella where the heat collectors will be. I have a few options but most likley will decide when Im doing it. Which will be soonish. We just finished the house insulation and house wrap today...woot! Next is wood siding..who would have thought we would ever get to this point .. :D
Water from the rear hill hits a 9 foot deep curtain drain with vertical water proof barrier that takes care of a couple of small springs that were coming out of the hill. GL trying to find a spot with no water running out of our hill. I did my best to get all the water and its flowing non stop usually to both sides of the house AROUND soon to be dry and insulated earth.
I am very excited to see others in our area are building cool thought out homes.
peace jeff
Here was the final wall needed to have rigid foam and housewrap on.
We would first dry fit the rigid foam insulation. It has the great ability to stay where you want it for the most part.
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Then stuff any small cracks (maybe say over 1/16 or so ) with scraps of cut insulation or scraps of typar. I think we managed to get it good and tight without using any spray foam. Then unrolled a 2' section of typar , put a furring strip in place then attached it the top first (where there was wood)then climbed down and did the 2 or 3 remaining concrete screws to secure furring strip to wall.
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woot...
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Over here in the Binghamton Area it got up 90+ degrees. :( It must have been so nice and cool in there!
Congrats on insulating, can't wait to see the wood siding make an appearance!
Gracious of you to invite us. Some day, Aimee and I will have to take you up on it! it would be great to see a cool, well thought out home like yours in person. I am hoping its a trend in home building. The Berming just makes so much sense... especially in climates like this. Did you consider an Earthen roof at first? what pulled you away from such an idea if you did? Are your windows fully shaded by your eave in the front during the summer?
If you had the Backhoe you have now... had it back in the beginning, would you have had a need at all for the guys you hired earlier? or would you have been able to do all of the excavating yourself once you got the hang of it? Basically, were there any jobs that absolutely required the power and large bucket of the bigger machines? Please say no, so i can tell Aimee its a requirement in the process ;D I would love to be able to justify buying one.
Do you have any gardening plans? ideas on a greenhouse? earth bermed greenhouse? If i had a Backhoe i would be digging for no good reason. Ponds, buried solarium... tunnels, recessed courtyard, sunken garden... divert a creek, perfect drainage.
I have a million questions, but i am going to take it easy... read this thread over again, spread the questions out, and grow more jealous.
Thanks for the interest Zen!
Jeff probably has better info than me, but early on I think we needed the big machines. Jeff had cut a large amount of trees on our site, and the big machines got all the stumps out, knocked down some more large trees and pushed everything around. I don't think our Kubota could have done that. It might have struggled a bit with some of the large rocks they pulled out too. After the initial site work, I think Jeff and the Kubota could do it all. We rented a similar sized machine a few times before deciding to buy one. There are many more uses planned for the machine beyond the house. Lots of gardening, water management and earth shaping. Once we have most of that set, we plan to sell the machine. It'll be greatly missed though!
As far as heat, the house is like stepping into air conditioning on a hot day. It's great! It's never been uncomfortably hot inside.
While Jeff was working on his cabin project, I tried to get some indoor projects done.
Since the kitchen cabinets are pretty simple, I wanted to do something neat for the knobs. I found these great railroad spike knobs on Etsy. Since we live in an old railroad town, they are fitting.
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I made doors for the bathroom vanity with various scraps. The stain helped hide the differences in wood species.
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Most of our landscape is still in construction zone. Slowly we're getting perennials in. We've planted strawberries a few years in a row. This year was definitely our best, with 2-3 quarts/day at the peak. Hard to say since while I picked I usually had three little ones tagging along eating. It's been interesting to see how they grow in different locations. The dampest, sunniest area did the best. We're winding down on strawberries now. I'm planning a trip to a u-pick place to stock up our freezer. Our raspberry and blackberry bushes are looking good. The blueberries had a rough year last year. Most are recovering OK. I picked my first from a wild low brush bush today.
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Back to the house, we had a tough decision to make - siding style and color. I won't tell how much we spent on wood and stain before we made a decision!
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Completing each step of the building process has been visually very exciting... blocks going up, parging, insulation, house wrap. Then after awhile you get very tired of seeing gray cement or gray insulation or white house wrap that's coming loose in places. Time for some color - siding!
Originally at the beginning of the project we had planned to stucco the exterior. After all the cement work, we knew we wanted to do sometime different. No way we'd do vinyl, so wood it is! Our last house we used a semi-transparent stain and 7-8 years later it still looks great, just faded. On the other hand, the trim we painted on the house needed repair within a couple of years. We agreed on either a green or red exterior. Finding the right color is very tricky though. We started off with a gallon of green on hemlock channel boards. Then I vetoed both. So we picked up a barn red - who knew it'd be almost purple! Then we went all out and got lots of different samples. Finally we chose Redwood. It's a redish orange. I love it! We went with a solid color stain. We'd prefer a semi-solid, but Behr didn't have it. It does seem thick like a paint, but hopefully long term it'll preform like a stain. For wood, we switch from channel to novelty siding from our local mill. It feels very solid up on the walls, and if one board needs replacing in the future it'll be very easy to take just that board out.
Here's the bedroom corner before we started.
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Jeff wanted to add an extra layer of rubber membrane. If we did not add this there would only be typar and 4" foam. This would get sunbaked and degraded very shortly. We tucked it up under the furring strips. It also does a great job cleaning up the bottom and hiding the house wrap.
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The first board!
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The Hitachi lineup. Love these little guys!
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A typar free shot.
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On to the front! We had to trim the furring strips since they were various lengths. Only way was to loosen up the lower Tapcons.
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I feel like when I tell someone we're putting up siding, they think it'll be done in a couple of weekends. It takes lots of time and this is a single story house! We don't have room to store the boards indoors, so we get a little at a time from the mill. Staining is weather dependent and slow. Next cutting (plus staining the fresh cut ends) and attaching each board with pre-drilled holes and screws. After it's all up we'll go back through to add trim and touch up the stain where needed. But boy is it gratifying! Blocks and concrete are hard and uninviting, but this beautiful red wood really makes it feel like a home.
The color you guys chose it beautiful! Looking great~ [cool]
What a difference some siding makes. Looks great. d*
Been awhile since we've updated - be prepared for a bunch of photos!
The staining continues...
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South facing wall almost done.
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Here is the rubber peice 2′ ish that goes from under the siding to overlap the ground rubber. It also protects typar from damage when we eventually backfill. This is the east facing wall.
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East wall siding done...WOOT
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Another wall done with the south wall we previously finished-ish ;)
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We have some plans for adding trim, but for the most part we plan to keep it simple.
Floor re-do:
The way I choose to try to do the floor plain did not work. The gravel I layed out ended up in reality not being a vapor barrier like I had in mind but instead being a way to capture and condense moisture in the air. The metal pipe i ran for conduit ended up being a drain . The cold pipe condensing further and drain said moisture to our crawl space. During this making the boards have varying amounts of growies. When it was humid out / long periods of rain you could smell below the oak plank boards and it was funky....when it was dry it was not bad.
This had bothered me for a while so while I knew it would be a hell of a job (and it was) it was time to do it again. I removed all the gravel...with a pick and axe took out about 9 inches of packed dirt covering 200sq ft area. Wheel barrow it out... it was very labor intensive and that was just the prep. After getting things clean I layed 6mil thick ,black plastic on the floor and the sides completely sealing the extremely shallow crawl space..more like a void between floor joists and ground. Concrete screws held the joists against the wall.
We ended up using rough- sawn hemlock 2×8s. This how ever was the same direction as the floor boards but rather then spanning the 20′ the other way was the best way. I then took hemlock 2×4's and filled the gaps so that the oak boards with holes already drilled would line up. There used to be gaps in between the boards which would collect junk so i decided to shiplap each boards with a circular saw to get a "sealed" floor. That was also a lot of work.. still got our room to do ..but for some reason that room is not as bad so it will wait while I build up the motivation to do it again :D This house will be right..just might take a few tries sometimes :D Pictures.
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finished and stained
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The last of the plumbing/electrical:
The plumbing has been mostly done for a while know besides the kitchen sink. Our friend Ron had the pex tools we needed and he had done most the indoor plumbing so far so I was waiting for him. He had some time so we rocked out the last of the plumbing. Check . One step closer to final inspection.
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The electrical is another thing that has been 95% done for a while now. We just needed to do the siding so we could mount the last exterior outlet and light.
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Exterior behind house - water membrane, and solar collector
(from speedfunk)
So as of before these pics we had none of the insulation umbrella/skirting/cape of PAHS system done. The rear section had been absorbing some water and putting pressure on the rear wall a bit in the previous years so this year I wanted at least the back done. The was the goal before last winter too..lol. We currently have the first 4′ all around the house down. That is the 4′ that is going along the ground horizontally outward.
The problem is there is a list of things that needed to get done..this was one. So as a spur of the moment thing I had my friend Ron and his brother in law Ash help for like 2 hours. We managed to get insulation on and it covered temporarily. As this stage in the project where movitvation is a bit low (actually getting better the more progress we make) its nice to accomplish something that had been taking mental space and at least get it started :D
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Here is a nice shot from behind looking down. The circle you see is where the solar collector will go. There is no insulation there so that that ground can absorb the suns energy and tuck it away for winter. The pipe you see Is my attempt at making a completely passive solar water heater. I am hoping to avoid the possibility of freezing without using any complicated heat exchanger. By tucking the tubing against the warm earth I think i can keep it so it does not freeze. If it did for any reason though its ABOVE the water rubber membrane so would not get to dry heat storage area!
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At this point we coverd with the rubber membrane which was nice with 3 people! We left it a night . The next days I have peeled back the membrane and am filling up the void in the circle. With no dirt fill it would be a low point and would collect water.
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Its now completly covered, but the camera battery died so I can't get the photos!
We passed our final electrical inspection this weekend. Woohoo! ;D Always good to see another signature on the building permit.
How is the temperature in the house doing without any mechanical means of heating and cooling. I expect well but would like confirmation.
Thank you, Mike
This is why I asked the question about temperature in your house. We are building a larger version so to speak. I was talking with the guy who has the http://www.drystacked.com/ website. His house is doing very well in Florida. His house is all electric and I think he said his electric bill is averaging between $30-$45 per month. He is very pleased.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Our-Passive-Solar-House/574553319301282
Mike, well here is my attempt at answering your question.
So today we woke up to -11(f) outside temp! . We woke around 8:00am to the interior temp of 52 . Fire was tended until we went to sleep the previous night ( 8-10pmish) I noticed that this is the lowest the temp as its gotten so far inside the house . It seems to hover more near 54 on most winter mornings in the am when we wake though (we always let fire die at night) Its Jan 22nd and we have went through 3/4 cord-ish of misc wood from our woodlot. some shimmering aspen/a bit of shargbark hickory and scraps from building. This might be the first year ever that we have heated our home from our land, that will feel good.
The small woodstove usually takes the temp up 10-15 degrees? This makes for a comfortable habitat :D
(interior temp feels comfortable at 62 , 65 if we want to keep it toasty). The house on windy days is tight. Humdity is good now most all the time, if to high can be vented through the higher elevation rear earthtubes/opening window/running the fire. This does not seem to be to much an issue unless its one of those days where is foggy and damp outside of day. The insulation umbrella is not done yet so extending that should have a major impact of THOSE type of days.
The biggest weaknesses thermally is the windows and doors, surprise d*.
We have vinyl double glass windows with a low/e coating on most windows. These windows were from old projects and auction. These are the points of radical extremes meeting. From the moist and warm of the inside to cold dry outside. when conditions are so, creates condensation and freezing on really cold dry nights. Some windows we have stuffed a 2"inch piece of insulation in (north windows). This helps a bit but is not a completely solid air seal.
The doors are even more challenging! I tried to be super tight when building them. So much so that I've had to shave them down like 3 times. Wood moves, its just way it is. So i've tried :-[ .
The conclusion at this time is that we need storm windows and doors on exterior of current doors and windows. All the way round!!
I have two re-purposed sliding glass doors for the main doors I hope will work. This will allow us in the summer to remove our current wood doors and just use storm doors of glass? OR to open the interior door in winter when sun is shining and get gain then when sun then when sun moves interior door door can be shut retaining gained heat.
For the windows I am thinking build a lightweight wooden frame holding a clear poly/vinyl material that is fairly thick . This should be able to be mounted very tightly against wooden exterior frame with some form of threaded screw or bolt. Duct tape as a gasket if needed. The materials we have in the "resource center" so it should be negligible on costs. [cool]
This should also increase solar collection being point of collection is not tucked 5" in the window frames anymore. The interior windows ( our current mounted ones)all are operate-able can be used to create beneficial convection currents when open and sun shinning. Or a tight seal against outside environment. At night put down the tight insulated curtains. Maybe a magnetic tape and a nice thick felt? So that would make a total of 3 "layers" spanning a distance 13.5"s and a variety of surface types creating wave changing properties? ( the last one i'm guessing on but it makes some sense).
Its 9:00am here and the house currently sits at 58 degrees and 78% humidity. Outside -10 and still. There is a semi clear sky so some solar collection also happening a bit .. Some reflective gain from sloped "front yard". A small fire of a few small chunks and some coals in the middle.
So overall i'm really happy... caustically optimistic with tweaks it can be taken to a new level and finishing the skirting insulation/membrane layer make it better still.
Ill comment later with how much electric we are consuming. Its inline with the high end of the florida house $ you mentioned.
Update: its now 1:00pm and the temp inside temp64 degrees. Its been slowly climbing.The wood stove has been going ..burned 10-12 sticks of 2" x 16" wood.
With the colder weather we’ve taken a break on siding to finish up some projects inside the house. In November we passed our final electrical inspection! We had been waiting to close up the T&G walls in the bathroom and kitchen until this was done. We had made a few additions since the rough-in electrical inspection we thought he might like to see. So nice not looking at wires anymore!
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We’ve been trying to be creative with storage using space in the 2×4 walls. It’s worked well for our towel and medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and the spice shelves in the kitchen. In the kitchen we had talked of putting windows in the horizontal space above the wall. We decided to T&G the whole wall to get it finished up, leaving the possibility to add a window above the bathroom door later on. I’ll probably build some tall upper cabinets in the kitchen. We’re likely going to extend our storage space over the bathroom, but the details are still up for debate.
We had planned to use a recycled shower door as our bathroom door by building a wood frame around it. Until one day the glass shower door just exploded. Luckily no small people were hurt and we hadn’t installed it yet. Guess it flexed too much while being stored. So, out we went to buy a new wood door. Adding the frosting to the windows was a bit of a pain, but I really like the 10 window look. We stained it with one of the rejected siding color samples and ordered a gate latch. Surprisingly the frosted window is actually a code requirement. Seems silly and would bug me if I hadn’t planned on frosting it anyway.
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Our remaining tasks to get a temporary CO are kitchen countertops (we just have plywood now) and the water test. Pretty short list! Once we get the temporary, we have 3 months to finish the siding. We have a bunch of siding stained and ready to put up, so we just need some nice spring days. I’ll be very happy when the whole building permit part is complete!
Here’s a view of the fireplace and brick wall as it looks now. I’ll add a couple more feet to the brick wall eventually so all the area with uninsulated pipe has brick behind it. Cozy!
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Quote from: speedfunk on January 22, 2014, 12:53:16 PM
Update: its now 1:00pm and the temp inside temp64 degrees. Its been slowly climbing.The wood stove has been going ..burned 10-12 sticks of 2" x 16" wood.
Did you consider building a rocket stove instead of using the wood burning stove? The rocket stoves are much more efficient and wood usage is considerably less. Use kindling instead of regular wood for a fireplace or stove. I intend to have one in our house. Interestingly, there is commercial version called EcoFirebox at http://ecofirebox.org/. Not advocating buying one especially since the plans for building them are all over the internet and can be made into whatever style you want. I intend to build my first rocket stove outside for use as a grill but also to get the experience before I take it inside.
Anyway, thought I'd mention it.
Quote from: speedfunk on January 22, 2014, 10:09:17 AM
Mike, well here is my attempt at answering your question.
Thank you for your response. I am very interested in your experiences for obvious reasons. Your thread is very informative and causes me to think even more about what I'm trying to do. If you looked at my facebook page you understand what I'm trying to do.
Sounds like the performance of your construction is doing well in such a harsh climate. I'm curious about something. Didn't see any explanation in your thread but probably missed it. Apologize if that's the case. Why didn't you pour a monolithic concrete slab as opposed to the crawl space? I suspect the temperature of that crawl space is pretty low right now and sucking the heat out of your house through your insulation. That will certainly be improved after you get the umbrella installed. But anyway, just wondering.
I will be using sloped glass on the south wall to increase winter solar gain and shading in the summer to prevent overheating. Also will be using commercial grade glass for that south wall. Will construct the window box myself and will have double panes with 5/8" dead air space between. I think it's 5/8". Can't remember for sure. Too wide or too narrow aren't good. Regardless you get my point. The only reason I have any windows at all is because bedrooms must have direct egress in case of fire. So, I will only have 3 vertical windows and in fact I think I will only have 2 if I work it right. I would only have the south facing glass if I could get away with it.
Thank you very much for you response and awesome job documenting and sharing your experiences.
Mike
Hey...the comment you made about door and windows and losing heat as you say is an obvious issue. Got me to thinking beyond what I have in my current plans. For doors, install a double door. That's not a complete solution because normal double doors share the same framing. What if the second door has it's own framing that is sealed to the walls. This would cause the second door to stick out from the wall a bit but that might create a desired effect of minimizing heat loss. I'm thinking the space between the 2 doors could be big enough that it could be kind of a mud room. Just a thought.
Mike:
RocketStove: If I remember right ??? we bought the wood stove before I knew what a rocket stove was. That being said its a fairly efficient small stove. I'm not sure how it compares but i would say pretty close! Might use rocket stove type setup for a maple sap evaporator in future. Well i all ready own a small one from stove tec but it was to small for how many trees i'd like to tap (50ish). Thanks for the heads up though!
Double Doors comment: Sounds like a great idea.... I know that direct jam losses are there however I think the big thing is to keep the seals tight. Every point where something exits your house is a point where your going create a thermal weak spot...so minimizing those will REALLY help in the overall performance. coupled with layers of a mud room would make the extremes on each side less extreme which reduces the speed of transfer of warmth.
Facebook page: I did look at your facebook ..it looks heavily influenced from natural house which i'm sure will work great. Ours is as well in to a great degree . A lot of his ideas are great and give him credit for sharing all that great info to help folks like us. :)
Egress: This is a big challenge I think to earthberming. I kind of skated around the issue ( legitly) but not "closing" in the sleeping spaces in rear of house against the north bermed wall. There will be large openings at ceiling level and massive open spaces where doors would normally go. More "partitions" then walls. The "great room" has all required De-tectors with an open air path so thats cool. After I get Certificate then I will put up those partition walls and then the liability is off of said inspector which is all they really want , I know if I had to though I could make a case for those as well its just not been an issue and likley wont be..but others as well if you put bed"ROOMS" in the rear they wont pass egress. You could put a loft in one of these rooms though ..there are creative ways to deal with this piece of code :D
Where are you also? That should play a large part. Even the earthship brand changes their base model around depending.
Look forward to seeing it if should decide to go this route.
Thanks!
Jeff
Jeff,
Thanks for the reply. Yes I understand the egress issue and have made adjustments to address that. I'm in Lubbock Texas. So, I don't have the weather extremes like you have. My big issue now is putting a roof on the silly thing. The spans between support walls is a problem that I haven't solved yet. I talked with an architect today and really didn't get a good feeling about it. Still working on it. It's really frustrating because I get something finished and move on to another part of the design and then have to revisit the previous part. Just haven't been able to get significant progress done. But, I keep plugging away.
Thank again,
Mike
Liability off inspector? hah they always disclaim any and all liability from anything.
As for the leaky windows, get the cheap clear plastic and double sided tape, it really works wonders.
thats a good idea tallguy on the doublesiding tape. The thing is I kind of want to build a setup that is a bit less throw away. Like we can take it off every spring and mount it every fall. Right now my motivation is low to go outside and do it plus i would need to get more furring strips to use for frames....but one of these weekends :P . Next weekends goad is to get our repurpsed blackboard counter tops on then we only have water test and some siding left for Cert. of Occupancy
Right now an issue we have been having is at night we are getting a varying amount of condensation on windows and doors (depending on outside temps ...the lower the temp the more condensation) Over time if we dont keep up on it it creates a mess thats probably not that healthy. Venting through earthtubes helps . We had kept the earthtubes closed when really cold but latley have been leaving them open. I think I want to add a bit more 4" pipes to the upper earthtubes to create more draw. Right now there is estimated like 5' height difference between where the tubes exit our rear wall (lower) and where the pipes come out outside (higher). I dont think thats quite enough. It should be easy b/c we can just follow the hill upward till we get what we want draw wise. We can then install some form of valve/cover in the house to regulate the draw. Right now we are just stuffing in shirts and socks or whatever to close it off when needed.. The lower level (floor level) earthtubes are working well so far. The have a much more slanted path away and drop below the house ( drops about 10' vertically).
On one of the wood doors(kitchen) where it was the worse I just layed/set a sliding glass door on the outside of the door. Its not hinged yet just dry fit. Over the last two nights its quite impressive what a difference it has made with condensation on that door. Its not even really that tight. Theres a gap at top of door of 3/4" air space. I really like the deep walls b/c it just gives you so much options vs a conventional wall. So mounting these storm doors and windows should help a great deal in both thermal retention and condensation avoidance :D lol.
Mwinfrey: The roof is the most important part. You seem to be designing from a different direction then we did ...we first designed a box that we could use standard lumber for ( a couple boxes really lol but you get the idea). The longest rafter span is 19ft ( 20' regular 2x12's from anywhere would work). That determined how the roof worked out. I kind of always just try not to limit options when we were building this. its so permanent with the concrete walls. My thought was to make a self supporting shell and we could configure the inside how ever we wanted (obviously kitchen and bath that's not that case) BUT keeping space flexible as possible and actually we did end up making the bathroom smaller and building the kitchen area into the bathroom space. Very much along the lines of a commercial build where they don't know what store will come in next. We didn't plan for 3 kids but b/c there's no load bearing walls so I can kind of move the partitions around. Not having trusses allows us to build into that area for sleeping lofts/storage areas etc. So while foot print is 900sq that normally unused area can be used. I'm not sure if that helps any ? The roof is one of the most important things. Keeping it simple while maybe not as interesting (subject to opinion) will pay off huge with time savings/material savings/better chance of a seamless insulation barrier. If you follow the natural house design though thats a simple roof but does really mess with the way a floor plan works out. I guess personally Im' just not a fan of the earthship/naturalhome type way of using block walls on the interior to support roof b/c it makes that long hallway out front and really limits how the interior space is used and the change-ablility of it.
Thanks @speedfunk
I have solved my roof problem I think. I won't be using wood at all but steel SIP. I can actually save a bit of money using them and still be able to achieve the look inside that I want. Using steel SIP also saves a tremendous amount of time. They are light enough that 2 people can lift them and I don't have to be a craftsman to install them.
Mike
It's been awhile since we posted about the house! Moving back in time....
In March we decided it was time to upgrade our 3/4″ plywood countertops. As nice as they were we had a couple more sheets of chalkboard from a local school to use. The existing plywood was a great template and backing.
It all started with the angle grinder. Effective but messy work.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/IMG_0963.jpg)
Then we glued the slate to the plywood. I can't remember what we used – maybe liquid nails? We clamped and weighted down all the pieces.
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A little more drying indoors...
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And installed!
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We sealed the countertop with a food-grade beeswax polish. I've also used it on wood projects.
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Now it just needs some maple trim along the front. The counter has held up very well over the last several months!
I've got a section of our bedroom – about 6′x3′ for crafting space. I have a lot of sewing supplies alone – not to mention everything else! The first step was to build cabinets for wall storage and get some stuff off the floor. I went budget with pine face frames and door frames. The stain was Olympic Elite Fog. It was much more like a paint than stain – I don't think I'd buy it again, but it worked OK for this project.
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The finished cabinets. They're jammed full of fabric. Guess I should do some sewing!
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Quote from: drainl on November 29, 2014, 11:42:03 AM
It's been awhile since we posted about the house! Moving back in time....
In March we decided it was time to upgrade our 3/4″ plywood countertops. As nice as they were we had a couple more sheets of chalkboard from a local school to use. The existing plywood was a great template and backing.
It all started with the angle grinder. Effective but messy work.
Then we glued the slate to the plywood. I can't remember what we used – maybe liquid nails? We clamped and weighted down all the pieces.
Now it just needs some maple trim along the front. The counter has held up very well over the last several months!
I used real Slate blackboards on my countertops in Tulsa and edged it in floor tile. In my case I used thinset over over the 3/4" plywood so I could level the different thicknesses. more than 15 years latter it looked great and all i did was seal it with mineral oil every couple of years.
The only potential issue I can see with a liquid nails type product is the way it cures...in the absence of oxygen it may never fully cure unless you pull the pieces apart for a minute or two after initially joining them.
onkeludo2: Thats a great tip from your experience... thanks for sharing. :D There are spots where the pieces are not completly level so your idea was probably better then ours.
Water Wheel: Have been thinking about a water wheel even since we purchased this property. It was even a tick on the checklist of things the land needed to support. Water energy is by far the simplest most dependable energy source our area has.
When i started researching water wheels the ones that were most highlighted by books and internet pages were the high speed pelton style wheels. Where you divert water from your stream run it down the hill in 4″ pipes and then run it slowly down to a nozzle which creates high pressure and spins rapidly the enclosed waterwheel to generate electric. So at first I was thinking one of these BUT after a bit of time (probably years) keeping these thoughts in back of head some of the draw backs seem to come to the for front.
Keeping water under pressure and not leaking seems to be a constant maintenance issues. Pipes will leak …possibly settle..have to bury them under 4′ (frost line) of dirt. The nozzle itself wears out and needs to be replaced. B/c of the reduction of pipe size will trap sediment and eventually clog. This is more of an issue with an open stream where as ours comes out from a spring however it would still happen.
Another thing that kept coming to my mind was that I was diverting all this water from feeding land and the animals. It just seemed like to generate electric did not have enough merit alone.
Cost: The pipe and complexity of a closed system like this is high. I could dig it but I still needed the pelton wheel and pipes for 170′ of run that is not cheap (relative to my monies). Another issue was b/c of the way our electric pole lies in relation to where the electric generation would happen. If I collected at the bottom of the hill electric lines to get it back (300′ ish) would be very high.
The final was I decided the i wanted get mechanical work done with out even using electric. Effective with out batteries and without the efficiency losses of converting to electric/battery/inverter/tool.
The long winded conclusion .. low tech wins :)
Well i could go on about plans to build one which were way in the future basically b/c you need to buy axles and bearings (300-400) .plus all the time and energy and material wood wise to build a true wheel of significant height to do some real work. So I (very) periodically would check various sites such as ebay and craigslist. The other day i found it. It didn't look like much..rusty bent up..so I had a had a chance! I watch with no bids happening and some people watching. The buy it now price of 1500. I bid and got it for a very descent price of 100 dollars! A 9′ steel 12″ wide old skool waterwheel located in Vermont. So 100 bucks…another 100 for gas..another 60 voluntarily paid to have him and his wife load it with a bucket loader and two days to load and unload. It will be a bit before we get it installed but now at least i know how to build site to fit it. I was very excited and still am. It needs so work pushing a few things true again but the metal was much more solid then the pictures led me to believe so that is good. Come to find out when his grandfather purchased the land it was powering a wood mill and most of these did back in the day … ( and could again). I hope to use it for everything (maybe hook it up to pto shaft for an easy adapter to get to many attachments?) and when its not being used for that it will run a electric generator to lessen our electric bill.
Also in the picture you can see part of the new drive way i have been putting in.
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Over the summer I finally purchased a pressure canner – my first try at canning. We made blackberry jam, blueberry jam, black/blueberry jam, peach jam, hot pepper jam, salsa, and tomato sauce. Most of it is gone already, so I need to amp up production next year! We hope to grow many of the food needed instead of buying from local farmers. We gave some canned goods to family as gifts.
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Jeff and I both worked on some fun woodworking handmade gifts this year. This tree puzzle was for our nephew. I used leftover oak from our flooring.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/familyblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IMG_2676.jpg)
Jeff made me these awesome cross bars for my car. It has much more character now!
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I made this dollhouse for our girls with cherry from the local lumber mill. It's hard to make beautiful wood look bad!
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To the right of the tree is a balance beam Jeff made our son. One of his favorite gifts!
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In early summer we got back to work on the siding.
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It's so nice not to see the house wrap anymore! There are still a few red siding pieces to put up in places and then some trim. That'll wait until the warmer weather is back!
The lawn was mowed.
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Jeff worked on moving our giant mountain, which was put there when we cleared the space for the house initially. He set aside nice stones for future uses. We have a few. :)
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Our new driveway is headed right where the mountain is. It'll give us a much shorter and flatter drive. It will also free up lots more flat space on the east side of the house. Here's how the driveway is looking approaching the house.
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looking good speed, it's coming together great!
I just discovered your thread yesterday and have spent quite a bit of time looking through your posts as well as looking at the pictures on the blog link. You both have done an AMAZING job! It's really inspiring! I have two small sons so I also really enjoyed the pictures of your son on the construction site. It's amazing how they can be entertained by anything =]
I did have one question though (if you already explained and I missed it I apologize), what made you decide to go with a different design on the second house? I'm asking because I live in a rural area of TN and that tall narrow style is one of the most common builds in older houses around here, and I always assumed that was because it was easier and cheaper to build. I'd be interested to hear about anything you did or didn't like about the design.
@Kinshollow: Appreciate the nice words a lot :D Just a warning that while kids can go along with the process they SERIOUSLY slow things down. NOt to mention just another thing you need to keep an eye on while being surrounded by a construction site. Do it if you need to (we would again) but be aware that their tension spans are short lol and that it takes communication (depending on age) to keep track of them.
What made us go with the one story house? I gave this a bit of though so here goes.
1. Easy of maintance (safety). When building that tall building I found out how scared of heights I am. I just think its common sense to not want to roof a 12 on 12 roof pitch 30' in the air. I might be able to do it now (which I had friends with more bravery then my self do the 2 story with walk out firstday) but what about when I'm 70'. This house is our retirement plan...everything.. Im not playing money games investing..this is the investment. A house that uses next no resources to maintain and help us flourish without having to work like dog our whole lifetime. A cottage that will out last me and provide land and a low cost of living for any or all of our kids to live on. We are pretty tied to this area ..even multiple generation and we LOVE this area. I've known two older guys with grand two 1/2 stories who were DIYers. They had both fallen of their roof in their older years and caused real damage to themselfs. I can easily clean this chimney...the biggest fall I could possible take is 10' which is at gable end . I can bounce a bit so that won't hurt. We also keep thinking about what we do when / if their was ever a fire in our tall skinny house. There is no easy way, your trapped up there. We used propanein the firstday spec house and really wood which would be much cheaper and local/self made, but would be a more dangerous\risky proposition.
2. Price. I would say the price would be close to identical? While you save on the roofing and foundation costs the walls require more material. Specialized crew to install and maintain the roof. The stairs take up a large part of the useable space so your floor plan suffers(imo). Anything inside the insulated envelope is very expensive space, not just in initial costs but mainteance. IN our firstday cottage 16 x 30 per floor. 4' x 10'ish ( the footprint of staircase) x 3 (the floors in the house) thats 120' foot of space. Times that by the $90'ish that the firstday end up costing and the constant heating and maintaining of thats space for LIFE ..and u can see some ways in which it chips away at the illusion thats its cheaper to build up. i also believed this when i designed fistday b/c i was under the illusion that people wanted square feet and i was trying to do that as cheaply as possible and make money to put toward this house.
3. floor plan/ flow of daily functions. i found after living in the firstday storied house it was a pain b/c we had bedrooms at the top floor and washing machines at bottom. So every time you did laundry it was this epic 3 staged affair getting it down there THEN bringing it back up..over and over and over. Over a lifetime how much of your time would be wasted...we only have time..so that to me is a reoccuring expense.
Now a lot depends on your lot. Our current land we have 15 acres so there's no need to build up like in villages ( although my mom build a really nice 800/sqft , single story house right in town). Up on the hill like we are We also get high wind gusts, so being lower to the ground decreases surface area exposed to forceful winds.
Our goal was to build a super insulated /high mass/ super efficient/ healthy / quality /passive home. Two or 3 stories (our firstday with walkout) temps tends to stratify. The higher rooms getting the hot-est and lower floors the coolest. So fans running on 2nd floor in summer is not passive and I think of that as bad design (just my opinion related to our goals) .Our earthberm has much more contact with the earth ...which allows it to moderate the temp by the increased surface area. Have much higher percent (3x's that of our firstday) of mass exposed in relation to the volume of interior space. Storing more warmth from sun and regulating/moderating the temp much better then a storied house.
Sorry it was not a quick answer (a good question and one that many people probably have) but i hope that helps with why WE choose to do a one story. The "standard" farmhouse and colonial and victorian designs are everywhere...but of course they didn't even insulate them/familys were bigger, so I think their frame of mind was in a much more different space they ours. We can choose to design out most of the heartaches and stresses of life. Its really about the design and flow of your day to day/seasonal functions as they relate to the structure you surround your self with.
Good luck and no matter what you choose your thinking about it so you will probably come to a good conclusion that works good for YOU. :D
Jeff
Anyone reading this thread should go check out KVR's place!!!!! Its a great earthberm built much quicker then ours on flat-ish terrain using drystack. He also runs a pretty kick ass web forum for homesteading.
(http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1081/4730559253_1715a6a93c_z.jpg)
Here is a link to his WHOLE build where he lays out it out in great detail!!!
http://thehomesteadingboards.com/forums/construction-and-diy-projects-1/our-earth-sheltered-home/ (http://thehomesteadingboards.com/forums/construction-and-diy-projects-1/our-earth-sheltered-home/)
KVR: THANKS man..steady as she goes.
We’re taking advantage of the cooler weather and focusing on inside projects for the house. The china cabinet that was in the corner of the kitchen has been re-purposed as my dresser. Much fancier than the cardboard box I was working with before! It allowed us to get the chest freezer out of the living room and into the kitchen.
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Originally I had planned to hang pots in the corner behind the stove, but now that the wall cabinets are up we saw it’d look a little odd. Instead we’ll remove the metal shelves from the left of the window and continue the cabinets through the corner to the window. After the new cabinets, adding doors, and finishing up the slate trim, the kitchen should be in great shape! Already it looks much cozier with the upper cabinets.
kinshollow Given the landscape of the First Day lot, I think a one story + walk out basement would have been good. The stairs would have still taken a lot of space though. I wasn't a fan of the two story+walkout. I really liked the open ceilings of the second floor. That helps our current house feel bigger.
Our first house was a single story ranch with a full basement. One thing I miss about that house was the storage/workshop area in the basement. Plus the basement allowed easy access to all the plumbing, heating, etc which I think is important in a house design. And no frozen pipes!
Building with children is tricky! When we started this house our little guy was under 2. Then the surprise twins took me out of the game earlier in the pregnancy than expected. Jeff did a lot of solo working in those early days. We're lucky to have lots of family in the area to watch the kids and free us up. Otherwise it was typically one person watching the kids and one working. With the kiddos getting older (twins are almost four) it's getting easier all the time. If we had started building years ago pre-kids, I don't think we would have had a good idea of what we wanted or needed. We can design things now knowing we're a family of five. Living in a couple of different houses and doing work on them really helped prepare us for this one as well.
Well..i got some time after a crazy busy/fruitful summer of working. I still check on everyones projects!
The goal this summer was to get the umbrella done and we did it. It took a bit of money (stone and rubber add up when your covering this much surface area. The umbrella ended up going out roughly 23'
I don't have any pics but we also made some great progress on the driveway..which is starting to fell like its getting the way i like it..i'm picky i really want it to feel nice on the land. Making a new drive though the woods though is def some work. We now got the car down in and able to be turned around. Most friends and family still walk in though .hahah....softies :D
Feb 13 2016:
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Looking at our house...man it feels so nice this year to have this filled in. The umbrella is now complelty done and back filled.
I need to add more backfilling (deeper) in places but its not getting blow around or at risk of getting punctured....meaning its all covered.
The umbrella is making a HUGE difference in temp this winter. Its tough to say exactly b/c we had a easy winter so far compared to last year.
But last year with the umbrella only 4' out the temp bottomed out with no wood stove heat at 48 to 50. This year the coldest its been in the house with no heat was 56.
Im interested to see what happens next year. We only had the umbella on barely before the winter so I don't think much temp was stored from summer 2015.
Its supposed to take 2 to 3 years to find its new equalization. We still have some drafts to sure up around doors so i'm hoping for even better next year.
So far this year we have went through roughly a 1/2 chord of a blend of oak and popple.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2016_west_grade_house.JPG)
This is the current grade at west end of house. This will be filled in more from fill from lowering the driveway. On the far hill is a path I cut in that took a lot of energy.
The trick is that the upper path had to connect with old logging trail. So until this wasy connected with our driveway the lay of the land would never be set.
Took me a couple months ....lots of rootballs 4' etc to move to get it close to where i want it. Its starting to feel nice now. Needs a bit more work this summer.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2016_feb_Woodstove.JPG)
Fireplace
Changed the direction of our fireplace. Really worked out well. It angles towards the living room/great room now. It also stores wood to the side of it much better now.
If we have a long stretch coming up we can even stack out a bit of the floor but it stays stable. Dries nicely before burning. To the left the axes chill with a bucket for kindling.
Okay..so these pics are from 2015 (going a bit back in time)
Fall 2015:
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2015_fall_big_rock_girls.jpg)
Giant Rock in the way of where upper path is going. That little kubota has met its match!!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2015_fall_rubber_membrane_nothwest_ready%20for%20stone.jpg)
The NorthWest Side of House. Covered the rigid insulation with the rubber membrane. Getting ready to start covering with 2" round rock.
Everything lapped like shingles on a house
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2015_fall_westend_insulation_plastic_rug.jpg)
Fall West end umbrella
Rocks keep foam from blowing away. Plastic was used here b/c we had it and were running low on money.
We put it where we thought there was least chance of having it get penetrated. It will get alot of fill ontop of it.
Rugs are put on first THEN the 2" stone 4"s or so...THEN the native earth. We double plyed the 6 mil plastic.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2015_fall_eastend_backfill_stone_rug.jpg)
Here is covered up. You can see the old rugs ..then the stone. Under the machine is the dirt. Moving the dirt to create a path over stone. Again..and again! woot!
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2015_fall_entyway_stone.jpg)
The rock patio in front of house. We built a retaining wall of dry stack rock then filled that in with #2 rounds.
Okay now going back again to summer of this year (2015)
Summer 2015
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South of House
This is in front of house. Covering up a rubber membrane. Trying to make it 5"'s or so.
(http://oursideofthemountain.com/pics/2015_summer_south_stone_backfill_umbrella.jpg)
South Backfill
Here we are back filling over the stone which covers membrane. This pic gives good idea of the process i used over and over.
Btw if anyone has comments or questions I'd love to talk about this stuff :D c*
I'd like to add that behind the house there used to be rugs covering the rubber...we took them out. So everywhere around the house if its got rubber its just got stone on it no rugs. The pieces where we used plastic we put rugs on it to protect it. The rubber really doesn't need protection its plenty strong. Putting rug down seemed to just stay damp and smelly (when not covered with earth that is).
One other thing thats cool this year is we payed off the mini excavator. About a year early. So.... woot...DEBT FREE again! Lets see if without the overhead of building a house from scratch we can keep it that way :D Things are starting to fall into place...little by little.
Really inspiring build.
My wife and I are planning to start ours this spring, in Chenango County. The dry stack walls/patio looks awesome. We've got a bunch of old farm walls made from the that same shale-stuff.. hope to put it to good use.
Thats cool Nathan...its nice to have a good collection of rocks to build from. Dry stack is old stuff, and it doesn't build up hydrostatic pressure which enables a long life span. Look forward to seeing your build. Spent lots of time riding the back hills of chenango county....nice country.
saps starting up again after lots of cold...
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I've spent my entire morning reading this thread from start to finish. Simply an incredible job. You both must (I hope!) be so proud of your accomplishment.
Way to go!
Gary
Thanks Gary! I'm looking forward to progressing on the stonework and greenery/landscape this year.
Waterwheel Install:
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