2011.05.04 - Hoping to Close In Soon

I’ve been meaning to write up an update on what we’ve been doing. Rachel has felt an urgency to get more progress done and so although we both have full-time jobs and a lot of maintenance around the homestead to do, we have put forth a major effort in the last couple of weeks towards closing the house in. We’ve framed in the open areas of the exterior concrete walls. We’ve met with various door and window suppliers and taken bids, and Rachel believes she’s found the one that she’s happiest with. She wants to get the exterior doors and windows installed in early June, so that means that we’ve got to have the exterior walls ready for that.

Anyway, progress has been good and we hope to wrap that up this weekend and then be able to put some sheathing over the framed exterior areas. That’ll have us ready.
We still need to address waterproofing on the roof, but it’s been rainy and wet and we’ve just not addressed it. Clearly that’ll be the next step. We plan on waterproofing, and then covering the waterproofing material with old carpet to protect it from the sun. We’ll leave it like that for a while and wait for more rain so that we can verify that our waterproofing job has been adequate. Then we will get the dirt on the roof.

In addition to the basic waterproofing, once we start adding dirt, we will add a liner for additional waterproofing, and grade that so that water will flow off the roof rather than puddle in areas as it does now. And in addition to the liner, we will add some sheet insulation to protect the liner and also insulate in a manner in keeping with the PAHS theory, which will not only provide good waterproofing and insulation, but will also help the house maintain a more constant temperature year round.