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

[glenn kangiser]

Looking great, Jeff and Deb. 

[Bishopknight]

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

[speedfunk]

Thanks Glenn you and sassy always help keep us going  

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.

[drainl]

Oooh - we're a sticky!    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.



The dirt that came out went into our bedroom where the floor has settled a bit.



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



Living Room (you never know when a cow might pass through)





Bathroom



Back Rooms





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!







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.



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.





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 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!

[EcoHeliGuy]

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  

[speedfunk]

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  .  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

[speedfunk]

Eco, Just curious on how your house plans are coming.  I check every once in a while on your webpage.

[EcoHeliGuy]

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.

[drainl]

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.









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.





Our helper taking a break

[devildog]

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

[speedfunk]

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.

[EcoHeliGuy]

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?

[diyfrank]

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.

[devildog]

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

[speedfunk]

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.  

[devildog]

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

[speedfunk]

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

[drainl]

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!



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.





From the outside - a little trimming left to do.



The kitchen end all done




And the best part (which I can’t wait to see in person) - some windows!







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!

[Redoverfarm]

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.

[Squirl]

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?

[John Raabe]

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?

[poppy]

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.

[speedfunk]

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  

[Bishopknight]

Jeff and Deb,

It looks awesome! Great work, especially in the winter!

[drainl]

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.



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.





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.





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.