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

Started by speedfunk, November 22, 2008, 11:50:08 PM

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speedfunk

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.

speedfunk

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*


soomb

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!
Live- Phoenix, Relax- Payson

speedfunk

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

Bishopknight

Awesome congrats Jeff!

I know the feeling you had. I got mine about 2 months ago :)


soomb

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
Live- Phoenix, Relax- Payson

drainl

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. 

speedfunk

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. 

soomb

Thank you both for the information.  Do you plan to leave the block hollow or fill it in (sand, foam, other)?
Live- Phoenix, Relax- Payson


speedfunk

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

drainl

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


Looking down onto the site


From the side


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.


Looking back down the driveway (building site on the right)


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.


Hopefully we'll have some nice dirt filled pictures next time.   ;D

Redoverfarm

 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.

glenn kangiser

"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.

drainl

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! 


glenn kangiser

"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.

drainl

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


Looking back down the driveway


From the cul-de-sac





glenn kangiser

"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.

drainl

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



Saturday 3/21
Our son, who decided only he could do the job right.
           

Me tossing around some wood.  No big deal.


The dumptruck ready for action


Holy cow - look at the size of that dozer!



Monday 3/23
No great photos from today - here you can see part of the house site.



soomb

Live- Phoenix, Relax- Payson

drainl

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. 


glenn kangiser

"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.

soomb

The more detail the better.  should we follow you here or will your blog have more detail?
Live- Phoenix, Relax- Payson

drainl

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).


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.


Looking back down the driveway


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.

soomb

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
Live- Phoenix, Relax- Payson

glenn kangiser

"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

Please put your area in your sig line so we can assist with location specific answers.