Introducing Bruce

[Bruce]

Howdy, I've been lurking for several weeks reading the messages and learning. I feel I already know many of you. I read your stories about how you've never built before and I see your impressive construction projects evolve into a comfortable home.

I'm in the north Dallas area and approaching retirement. Started exploring retirement home options and found this forum and the great communication yall have established here. I haven't located any land for building yet, just getting a feel for what options are available.

I like the 14x24 Builder's Cabin (stretched out to 14x28 with a small bumpout to make later additions easier) and later adding two more iterations of the basic 14x24 - one for the great room and one for the master bedroom. They would be configured in a "U" shape to make an open court yard in the middle. I've never built a house before and part of me keeps saying I'm in WAY over my head - but the helpfulness I have seen on this forum gives me confidence to press on knowing that competent help is ready and able. I think I have a basic understanding of how a house goes together, but I get lost in the details and I still haven't identified the requirements of the local building codes. Like many of yall, I'm looking to get the most house for my hard earned dollars and I'm looking for the best compromise between cost and low maintenance durability. Good looks has to fit in there somewhere, but it's not at the top of the list - structual functionality trumps glitter.

I'm especially interested in the "cool tubes" and would like to communicate with anyone that has incorporated these in their house or had any first-hand experience with their trial and error. I'm figuring that here in the Dallas area, they can be used for a primary source of winter heating and summer cooling. I'm concerned about condensation and potential mold growth. Condensation is also exothermic and opposes efficient cooling.

I'm also interested in adjustable piers. So few houses in the area have an unbroken slab foundation. I'm sure a strong slab can be built, but somewhere along the line, it ceases to be a cost effective option. I'm not sure how much adjustment would be needed or how precisely the house needs to be leveled to keep the sheetrock from cracking and doors jamming.

Bruce

[Amanda_931]

Welcome Bruce.

Jonesey in Australia has put in cool tubes.  Not sure if they are connected, etc., yet.  

check out PAHS for both cooling and heating. (Passive Annual Heat Storage), e.g., here:

http://www.earthshelters.com/sustainable_living.html

Also AGS  (Annualized Geo Solar) is Don Stephen's version.  I'd heard that he hadn't been working hardly at all recently.  But then there were reports of a horrible accident.  From which I gather he is largely recovered.  He is an architect up in the Northwest.  The buildings may be less massive than the Hait ones.

[glenn kangiser]

Welcome to the forum Bruce.

Jonesy's also done adjustable stumps - as they are called in Australia.  We have some adjustable Simpson's here I think.

Sounds like you are well on you way to doing what you want to do.

[PEG688]

Gadday Bruce , any relation to Wallabe Bruce ??

Jeeesh I crack me up  

Welcome to the   asylum / forum  

[glenn kangiser]

Anything I can do to help, PEG -- bring you your lithium?  Just let me know.

[PEG688]

Ya could warm it up here , PNW,  about 20  deg. And bring back the rain instead of this snow

[benevolance]

welcome aboard....

it may have been better to lurk from the edges... than actually have these loonies reply to your posts.... trust me on this

[glenn kangiser]

Sounds like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

[benevolance]

Glenn

I am certifiable...Loonie..People have told me I had something wrong upstairs all my life.

I have never had a problem when people have said I was crazy or foolish...Tell someone that you are going to do something and they will say right off....No, you cannot do it like that...

Best example is when you say you are going to build a house yourself and live mortgage free 99.8% of the people just roll their eyes and wonder when the wack job wagon will show up to drive you off to the sanitarium

best thing about the internet is that you can do a search under google for insane home builders and presto a link to this place appears...

Sorry john not quite, but close enough

Live long enough and meet enough people and there is a place where us Loonie types are normal and the squares who will be 65 and hot have their mortgages paid off are the odd balls....You know the type...They went to college they have good jobs....They have worked all their lives drove new cars every 2 years and  just kept re-financing the house when they needed a new car or wanted to go away on Vacation...

I don't know for sure...But I can guess that when you first thought about building the underground headquarters a few people thought u too were crazy...

[desdawg]

Glenn


I don't know for sure...But I can guess that when you first thought about building the underground headquarters a few people thought u too were crazy...

We still do. The worst part about it is that we can relate and appreciate what has been done. Admire it even. We might even want to do something similar. That is why I am here at least.

[jwv]

I invited several of my friends to my Birthday Plaster Party. Now some of these women have probably not touched dirt, let alone mud in years and one of them looked at me with the most quizzical expression and asked "Now, why would you want to do this?  :-?

There are so many reasons, I can't even begin. (but not having a mortgage at 65 is high on the list)

Judy

[glenn kangiser]

Really sounds like fun Judy.  Sassy and I really wanted to go there and if I had the time I wouldn't mind the drive -- especially if you had a little break for mud wrestling.

Note -- I think I would like to go down in history as the eccentric old man who built the underground complex.  Crazy would be my second choice.

[Sassy]

Glenn

Live long enough and meet enough people and there is a place where us Loonie types are normal and the squares who will be 65 and hot

Peter, I hope I'm "hot" at 65!   may be a little saggy though...  :-/

[benevolance]

Sassy

Well know know what to do....Get some of you and your girlfriends together for a photo shoot....The hotter the better ...I just nominated myself the Country homes  "hotness" judge for all the beutiful ladies that post on this site...

Ladies do not wait for Sassy to take the lead.. send them photos often as you are able...I need something to torment my wife with... Tell her all the ladies from this site were so impressed with my new house they cannot wait to steal me away from her.

Maybe it will make her appreciate me more....I doubt it...But it is awfully fun to torment her

P.S. do not tell Glenn

Why are you picking on my typos?

[glenn kangiser]

I'm also interested in adjustable piers. So few houses in the area have an unbroken slab foundation. I'm sure a strong slab can be built, but somewhere along the line, it ceases to be a cost effective option. I'm not sure how much adjustment would be needed or how precisely the house needs to be leveled to keep the sheetrock from cracking and doors jamming.

Bruce

I guess I better work on another part of your question, Bruce.  
Don't want you to think we're crazy and can't carry on a decent conversation.  

Just about anytime you readjust the foundation there is the possibility of cracking sheetrock.  Depends on how much you go in one place at one time partly.  Slow careful even jacking in small amounts will do the least damage, but uneven settling or earth movement can also cause damage.  

Some slabs will just crack on their own no matter what is done.  Earth shifting or subsidence can cause cracks that grow or change over time.  We have some areas with subsidence that have actually settled several feet below the road from water pumping.  Hard to keep a building stable in areas such as those.  Water pumping (mostly irrigation of farms) or oil pumping can cause large areas of the land to settle and destabilize even the best foundations.

[glenn kangiser]

Interesting article on why your foundation may change levels.  Note that I drilled wells for 10 years and worked in the oil field so have been in areasa where this is happening.

If not for that I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/pubs/fs00165/

[John Raabe]

Bruce:

For a small house such as the 14' wide Little House post and pier house you are contemplating, your need to re-level the house will depend on the degree of soil movement your site will deliver. This is usually a function of freeze depth and clay content of the soil. I expect the broken slabs you are seeing are not down below frost depth and/or are being built in wet clay soils.

The P&P foundations have an advantage in that you can support the beams with an adjustable post base



http://www.strongtie.com/products/connectors/epb44t.html#gallery

[Bruce]

Thanks for the warm welcome.

I had a look at the Hait information. The information on the mb-soft page appears to be more applicable to conventional framing above ground -  my intended application - except I won't have a basement.

We're having sleet and snow today in the north Texas area, it was 78 earlier this week. So no warm weather to export to anywhere.

The Simpson adjustable piers appear similar to what I was intending to fabricate. I was figuring 1/2 inch threaded rod imbeded in the concrete pier would work well with the typical 1/2 inch ply spacer used in the beams. Big washer and nut on top (make sure there is not a joist directly over the pier). Use slotted washers for shims on the bottom. Simpson uses 3/4 inch hardware. I think 1/2 inch allthread or long bolts would be strong enough (just a wild guess). Use something to prevent wood - metal contact.

[benevolance]

glenn

pretty shocking pictures...We are draining the water table in this continent...depleating aquifers and nobody cares or listens when someone speaks up....I think Bush and cronies think think the aquifer is some mythological beast second cousin to the loch ness monster

What is shocking and sad reading the link you provided is that in many areas the aquifer cannot easily be replenished...Even returning the water table will not automatically replenish the aquifer...I suspect it would absorb the water slowly over hundreds of years or some such

[glenn kangiser]

I lived near the place where the pictured man is holding the sign - as I remember, a store there sunk below the level of the road - eye level from the road is near the roof line.

Actually , once the water is gone from these aquifers, very little is able to go back - they do not replenish after consolidating in most cases.  Kind of a natural process accelerated several thousand fold by man.  Possibly in the future after man has gone from the area due to no water, a new aquifer will form on top of this one from increased erosion and runoff as the water can no longer get to it's old aquifer.

[glenn kangiser]

Bruce, I would go with nothing less than the 3/4" that Simpson uses.  A 1/2 inch all-thread is pretty weak without several thousand lbs. on it.  I easily break them off with a pipe if they are mis-placed in concrete.  3/4 is only a bit harder but still much stronger.  The threads give a weak spot for shear to start.

[John Raabe]

Bruce: Your suggested 1/2" rod is probably fine for downward loads if you will be bearing on the washers rather than the bolt or rod. The Simpson hardware uses the bolt itself for bearing. Then you get into slenderness ratios and how high the bolt would be compared to its diameter.

If you have potential shear issues (from earthquakes or high winds) then do what Glenn is talking about and use the heavier bolts even if you have washers to carry the downward load.

[jonsey/downunder]

This is just a flying visit to answer a PM from Bruce, and as it may be of interest to some others on the forum I have posted it here. Things are a bit full on around here at the moment with a number of grass fires out of control and other drought problems. So it may be a while before I get a chance to do a more detailed report on the cool tubes and house.

I have finally finished the hookup on my system and I have to say that initial test runs are not showing the results I had hoped for. While the air exiting the tubes is steady at 24 degrees C there is simply not the volume of air to have any major effect in cooling the whole house.
As you have seen on the web page my system is an open loop with the incoming air taken from outside the house. It is pumped through the system and into the house through floor registers in the bedrooms. The tubes are two 150mm PVC pipes around 40 meters long each, they are buried side by side at about 1.2 meters at the shallow end sloping down to about 1.8meters at the deep end. The slope was there to deal with any moisture in the tubes. At the low end I have drilled some large holes on the bottom of the pipe to let the water drain. This seems to have worked well, as I have detected no musty smell coming from the tubes even though they have been in place for some time.
I have used the 200mm (8") blower through some ducting and a reducer/splitter into my lines.
While I don't hold much hope of this being an effective cooling system in it's present form I think it may well be a reasonable air tempering system for the winter. In any case as I have it up and running I will tinker with it for another season to see what it will do.

Just a note on the adjustable stumps. The threaded rod on my stumps is 1-1/8" and if you were using these for a house stump I wouldn't go any smaller than that. I have posted some photos of my stump tops somewhere on the forum and I would think that our best researcher would be able to dig them up for you no problem at all.  

[glenn kangiser]

I would think that our best researcher would be able to dig them up for you no problem at all.

Oh boy-- that would be Amanda, but she's not here right now--- maybe I'll give it a go.


I forgot about the photo's -- I'll see if I can find them.  Thanks, Jonesy.






and a link to info.

http://www.countryplans.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1140911284/0#0

[Bruce]

Thanks for the response, Jonsey. Your cool tube installation is very close to a part of what I was thinking for myself. I want both an open loop part and a closed loop part. The open loop would be for fresh air intake (I havent figured out the solution for the filter at the distant end to minimise dust, pollen and insect infiltration). I'm figuring about 9 cool tubes for the closed loop with each having a partially unique path - this is to prevent the shortage of air volume, and hopefully the recirculation would mean less tempering required for each pass through the loop. I think I also need a waterproof barrier over the tubes to keep the cold winter rain and snow melt from stealing too much heat.

Your adjustable stumps sound maybe earthquake proof. The wrench must be as long as my leg