Started insulating and berming the east wall

I took off work a couple of hours early yesterday so that I could work a little bit on the house, knowing that the weather this weekend would turn cold with a possibility of rain and/or snow. I ordered some more dirt to be delivered and was assured that it would be on site this morning. It didn't make it.

With the two loads of dirt I had already, I put up insulation, starting where the retaining wall meets the master suite. The insulation needs to be an inch thick (on the buried walls, but 2 inches thick on the roof, which we're not ready to do). The sheets of insulation need to be staggered so that the seams are overlapped.

After I had insulation up, I began putting dirt up against the house, which would hold the insulation in place. I also used some lumber to prop the upper portion of insulation against the house until it can be fully bermed. We're not there yet. It'll take much more than just two loads (approximately 15 tons per load) of dirt.

Jeremy helped me a little bit and we did quick work. This morning, I resumed, but did it mostly on my own (had a little bit of help from Rachel).

I put in a 100 ft roll of water line, extended into the house. On the outside of the house, a portion of this will be buried by the berm, so it was important to have this in place before resuming insulating and dirt work.

I put in about 8 more feet of insulation and partially bermed it, and then propped the upper portions with lumber.

We did get some rain this morning, and the cold front came in. As of 15:00, the temperature sensor in our car port read 32° Fahrenheit, and we were getting sleet.

The dirt never came and I ran out of dirt to continue putting up insulation and berm. That was frustrating. I have this four-day weekend, and I'm not going to be able to do this kind of work. I really wanted it done.

I have a mountain of dirt from the original excavation, and I could put that behind the garage, but I don't like driving the tractor back there when the ground is soggy (like it is). So I was hoping that I could work on the east side of the house with purchased dirt.

I suspect the reason the dirt guy didn't deliver, is that it rained a little bit. That would weigh down the dirt and make it weigh more. The trucks are only rated for a certain amount on our roads, and it would be illegal for him to be driving with a full load weighted down by rain. However, I've noticed that the big construction sites still get their dirt on days like this.
It's frustrating, but I did get work done that you can actually see. Progress is happening. I figure I'll piddle around a little bit during this four day weekend, and I'll likely have photos to post.

I do plan to put in about 8 hours at my job some time this weekend, to make up for time I took off this week on the house. It's worth it.

PS. Ten minutes later, the temperature in the carport was almost a degree lower. So I'm not sure how much colder it is expected to get. I'd work in it though, if I had the dirt.

They knocked down (or took down) some fence!!!

I called home and spoke to our son and found out that the dirt was delivered today. I was happy about this. However, I was infuriated when I got home (in the dark) and found that part of the fence was down. It was either taken down on purpose or knocked down. Either way, I was mad that there wasn't even attempt to put it back up after delivering the dirt.

I worked hard to get that fence in. The fence posts were hammered into sandstone. They weren't easy to get in.

I managed to get the fence back up with the help of our son, but it'll never be as good as it was. That's a bit frustrating.

I think this guy (the dirt guy) is giving us a good deal. I hate to complain. However, the next time that I ask him to deliver dirt, we're going to talk about the options with regards to the fence, and I hope that if it needs to be taken down for some reason, that I'm the one doing it. I just can't believe he just left it there on the ground, and even drove over it. That fence is bent up now and will never look or function the same again. I just can't over how inconsiderate this guy was.

Anyway, it was dark. I didn't get a real good look at the fence, so I don't know if there are more repairs needed or not. I do have the fence back up and hope that it'll function for us a while longer (at least throughout the rest of the construction process).

Redid some waterproofing

I didn't go to work today. I wasn't feeling well, and I figured I could work on the house and vomit in between (as needed), but I couldn't really do that at the office.

So I managed to apply Ecoline-R on the east wall of the master suite module. I found out the major difference between the Ecoline products and the Blackjack stuff that I was experimenting with. The blackjack is great as far as it goes on really thick, and it stays tacky for quite some time. This allowed me to stick some insulation on top of the footings and it would stick. That was good.However, the blackjack stays tacky for over a day (so far). This is nice for adhering insulation, but I like the way the Ecoline products dry and go on thinner and more easily to work; and they don't stay tacky. The Ecoline products are more expensive, but easy work is a good thing.

I think the blackjack stuff is great for the tops of footings, and the bottom of the walls where they meet with the footings. I'm sure there'll be some other places where this material will be a good solution to use. However, I've learned that you get what you pay for, and overall, the Ecoline products are better (in my opinion).

I was frustrated that I had called a dirt and gravel company. This was the guy that had done some work for our firestation, and the mayor of our community (he lives across the street from me) recommended this guy. I figure I'd help the guy out, but I was frustrated because he said he'd be here first thing this morning. He wasn't. First thing was after noon.

I wanted to get one load of washed gravel, which I did get delivered. I also wanted two loads of fill dirt. I didn't get those. So I was off work today, but didn't get my day maximized as far as things that could only be done with me home. I sure wanted that dirt.

This other company isn't as reliable as the company I had been using, but I was trying to help this guy out because he was an older gentleman and he was a minority (I wont say which). I figured I was doing a good thing, but this guy isn't reliable. I'll give him another chance. His son made the delivery today, because he was taking his wife to the doctor. I figured that maybe the son doesn't do this full-time and so maybe the dad is more reliable.I'll give him one more chance.
I got tired today and so there was a limit to the physical labor I could do, but I did apply the Ecoline material to the entire surface of the east wall, including the retaining wall. After that, I was moving dirt with the tractor for a while, because I could do that and ride the tractor. It was less strenuous for me (since I wasn't feeling all that well).

I had originally hoped that I could take off work this Friday, but since I was off work today, I kinda figure that I can't get off Friday too. I'm behind at work.I had hoped though, because according to the weather forecast, it's expected to rain on Saturday.

PS. I added a subscription page (Click).

2007.12.16 Not much done

I didn't get much done (again) this weekend. Rachel & I spent the afternoon cleaning up tree limbs from my parents' roof and backyard. The neighbor's tree did it, but the guy was unwilling (inconsiderate) to help a couple of elderly people out. You'd think that he'd at least have helped clean up, but he didn't. So we did.

The fence is torn up and will need to be replaced. There was roof damage as one of the limbs went about 4 feet through the surface of the roof. It's been temporarily patched until it can be repaired by a carpenter.

We got a truck load of firewood out of all this work, but it's green and therefore wont be usable for this winter. By the time I got home, I was pretty tired.

I'm a bit frustrated about the house. I went out lastnight to put some waterproofing (Ecoline-R) material at the base of the walls so that I can insulate and bury them. I noticed cracking in the waterproofing that I did already, and I think this is because it's been exposed to the UV rays too much. Too much time has passed and I didn't get it covered, and now I'm going to have to do it again.

This is not a one-man job, but one man is doing it.

2007.12.15 Put in Half a Day

I put in approximately half a day of work today. It was snowing most of the time and cold and windy. I moved some more gravel around the french drains on the east side of the house. I put down some filter fabric on the gravel, and then started backfilling with dirt.

Due to the wet ground, the tractor got stuck. It took me, with Rachel's help, probably about 30 minutes before I got unstuck.

I had to take frequent breaks because of the cold. I had two jackets on, with a hood, plus my hat. My feet and my face froze just the same, so the breaks were important.
I would've had dirt and gravel delivered this week, but the ground was saturated, and so that wasn't an option. Hopefully, I'll get several loads delivered next week and we can get some real progress made.

I don't feel good that I didn't get more work done. It's only me working and there's a mountain of work to do. This is so frustrating.

Put in a couple of hours

I got off work and put in a couple of hours before dark. I moved some dirt around back to give the footings a bit of protection from the frost. There's moisture out there. I also moved some gravel around in places that I'd previously started putting gravel.

I want to thank the visitors to this site that have signed the guest book. It's nice to see who all are interested in what we're trying to do. We'll eventually get the house built.

2007.12.11 Still no Electricity

There's still no electricity at the homestead. I can't work on the new house in the icey rain, and I can't work in the dark. I wish I could.

It's the second day without electricity. I did see a service truck from the electric company in the area, and he was near some downed power lines, so hopefully we'll have electricity soon.

Lastnight, I couldn't get our generator started, so we couldn't put minimal power on things like the freezer and the refrigerator. That gave us an excuse to clean the refrigerator out and put that stuff in the carport, where the temperature was around 32 degrees and certainly wont get above 40 for a day or two.

I got out today and took the generator to a mechanic and he was able to get it started for us. So we'll have at least minimal power this evening, even if we don't have power to the whole house. I'm not sure yet how to wire it up properly so that things like the well pump can run. It's hardwired, rather than something that can easily be plugged in. I've heard rumors of being able to rig up a plug from the generator that can go into the dryer electrical outlet. Supposedly, you cut off the input power (from the grid) at the breaker box, and this prevents any "backflow" of power to the grid. Supposedly, this will power the house.Even if we don't do that, we'll at least be able to string a couple of cords from the generator to the freezer, refrigerator, and maybe one or two other items in the house.

Needless to say, without power, we'll not be doing much with the new house.

Update as of 20:18, the generator is running. We had the network router and two computers running this evening, along with the refrigerator and the freezer. So we're not roughing it, except for water. I had to fill 5 7 gallon jugs of water and haul them from my parents' house in Tulsa. Their house is fine, but there's a concern about the roof as trees from their neighbors disintegrated and part of the debris fell into their back yard and partially on their roof. I'm hoping there's no serious damage.Oddly enough, the one tree left in their yard actually didn't have any broken branches. Go figure!

No Electricity

Power is out at our place. We got an ice storm yesterday and lastnight. At around 5:15 or so this morning, the power went off at our house. Evidently a tree either fell on a power line or a power line just fell fro the weight of the ice. Either way, we have no electricity at the house. This means no lights, no electric clocks, no water (because we're on a well), no television, and no phones except for a couple that are directly connected rather than the cordless phones.

We have a generator, but it's only good for connecting extension cords into it, and the well pump is directly wired so I'm not sure how we'd get electricity to that from the generator. We should be able to keep the refrigerator and freezer working enough though. We're keeping them closed and figure the generator only needs to run for about 15 minutes at a time, about every four hours (if the power doesn't come back on by then).

The roads were a hazard too. The weight of the ice had trees either broken and in the road, or else hanging down over the road so low that you couldn't drive under them. A couple of hours later, we tried again and were able to drive out of the neighborhood and get to work.

Not much this weekend

I didn't get much this weekend because of cold weather and rain. I worked a few hours yesterday. It was misty and cold, but not like the freezing rain we got today. And it was rainier today so we mostly stayed inside.

We took time yesterday to go to the annual Farm Show they have in Tulsa. It was free and I wanted to see what types of third-party add-ons and gizmos they have for our tractor, as well as some of the other things we might need for the homestead.

We bought a nifty work table that folds up nicely and stores in a small space. It's got 11 gauge steel and has wheels, so it's sturdy and heavy, but easy to move around because of the wheels.We figured we'll need it for working on the house. We rigged one up when we built the current home, but that wasn't so easy to move and it wasn't very sturdy. It worked, but I'm glad we'll have a better set up this time.

There were vendors selling sprayed foam insulation and other products of interest. There was a vendor selling steel framing, which is what we'll use. There was the insulated concrete forms (made of foam). There were vendors selling fence and gate products.

Mainly it was free and it got us out of the house.

Would I do it again?

Someone asked me today if doing it again, would I have Terra-Dome put up the shell. My answer is yes.

This person was asking because he and his wife are planning to build one of these homes in the spring.

I said I'd still have Terra-Dome do the work, but that if I didn't mind paying more money to get more finishing done, that Earthlog Equity Group is more of a one-stop shop sort of business. They finance. They put up the structure. They help with waterproofing. And, I might be wrong, but I believe they also finish the home out if that's what you want. It just costs more to do it.

Like us, this guy says that he plans on doing most of the work himself, rather than getting it all done by someone else. He's done the research and found Terra-Dome to be less costly than anyone else building one of these types of buildings, and so he'll probably contract with them.

I will definitely say that building your own home is not for the faint of heart. If you want to do it, you can. If you don't mind taking out financing or if you're afraid of doing so much work, then my advise is to check with Earthlog Equity Group. Since I haven't done business with them, I can't say how good they are. I just know they provide more services than Terra-Dome, but that it comes with a price. Their website is very informative, and they seem to be very customer-friendly. I have been impressed with them in this regard.

Worked some this evening

We got some productive work in this evening. It wasn't as much as I had hoped for, but there were three of us instead of just one, so it was the man hours.

A friend just recently bought property an hour from our place, and he and his family plan on building a Terra-Dome style house. Their's will be bigger and a bit more grand. Currently, they're planning to do the footings on their own, and save some money.

The Encouragement Helps

We've received several messages of encouragement today. It feels good to get that. There are highs and lows and I've been going through some lows. There'll be highs again.
I feel a bit awkward feeling sorry for myself. The coach of our hockey team resigned today. I don't know if he resigned on his own, or if he was asked to resign. Either way, that guy sure can't be feeling good right now, and he's one of the best human beings I know. I wish he and his family the best.

One thing I'll say is that when I'm struggling at my job, no one heckles me or boos. I'd hate to be a professional athlete. Their highs are greater than mine, but their lows are too.
I'm sticking it out at my job. It's not a bad one and they treat me well. Plus, the pay is pretty good (not as good as when I was a contractor, but I get more benefits now).

I wish I made enough money to hire some professional help on the house, but I can't. So I guess I'd continue to work my way through it slowly. The cold weather is here and I'll be working in the cold. It could be worse. At least we live this far south. Working in 40 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures is much more comfortable than just a hundred miles north of us.

Rachel says I should consider working full-time on the house

I've been depressed that there's so much work to do on the house, and I'm doing it virtually on my own; and getting very little progress done. I look back at where things were a few months ago, and we've certainly made progress, but we're way, way, way behind from where I hoped to be right now. And there's so much work to do to get to that point where I wanted to be.
So I've been depressed and it's been getting worse.

This weekend, Rachel suggested a couple of times, that I should strongly consider quitting my job and working full-time on the house. The thing is, I remember when I was unemployed before and it didn't feel good not having that income. We did fine, but we had to cut out all of the frills.

I was able to finish the house we're in now, so being able to work full-time on it was a good thing. But when I was ready to get back to work, I had a difficult time finding a job. And when I finally did find one, it was for approximately half the pay.So the idea of taking off and working on the house full-time appeals to me, but then I wonder how hard it might be for me to find a job months later when I'm ready to go back to work.

So I'm not ready to quit my job yet. I'm going to ride it out a while longer and see how things go. For one thing, there's been an idea passed around at work, suggesting that we might be able to go to 4 10 hour days. That would give me every Monday or Friday off work. I could get more work done on the house, and maybe that would be enough for me to feel progress being made.

Maybe it would be enough for me not to be so depressed like I am now.

Still, Little Progress

The weekend started off to be productive. I got in about 6 hours of good work on the french drain system north of the garage. I had an early hockey game so I scrambled to clean up and changed and drive to Tulsa for the game.

The game was the poorest performance I've seen in a long time. This is to contrasted one of the best performances of the home team in probably 3 seasons. I'm hoping improvement though, as I saw what they're capable of last Tuesday. They were great.

Anyway, today, it rained off and on. We had church this morning. It looked like it was going to clear up and be nice, but then the cold front hit. Meanwhile, instead of working on the new house, I was busy working on a plumbing issue with the current house, which consumed the bulk of the afternoon.

By the time I had a lunch/supper, it was getting dark and it was colder.
So, with the whole weekend, I got about 6 hours of work in. That's not enough. It's depressing. I'm just not getting enough work done, and there's so much work to do. I'm going to have to start working in the evenings, which I've done before, but this time, it's a lot of outdoor work in the cold. I'll have to set up some lights so that I can work, and try to get a couple of hours of work every evening.

Working in the dark

I worked for an hour or so in the dark lastnight after getting home from work. I'm going to a hockey game this evening, but am planning on working most evenings this week. Bad weather is expected for Saturday, and so I'm feeling like I need to work in some hours during the week, while we still have decent weather. However, it's dark when I get home so I'm working in the dark.

Lastnight, I got home, quickly ate dinner and then changed clothes. I went up on the roof and worked with a flashlight and a brush, applying Ecoline-T to select areas on the roof. I want to get those areas taken care of better before the freezing rain comes.

One bit of good news is that we had areas where I had waterproofed previously, that have held up well. No water has gone through. The bad thing is that not all of it drained away and was still on the roof. So I'll need to provide more slope so that water has a way to drain better. All of this takes time.

Thanksgiving Weekend 2007

We just finished up Thanksgiving weekend. We didn't get much done on the house. We spent two days of it visiting relatives, which was a good thing. In fact, it was a very good Thanksgiving. We just didn't get much done this weekend, as far as the house is concerned.
On Saturday, instead of working on the house, we worked on the existing building, since we live there and have been putting off tasks that could no longer be put off. We cleaned the chimney. It needed it. There was a creosote build-up, although not nearly as much as we'd figured. Also, it wasn't nearly as big a job as we'd figured. We just pulled the pipe off the top of the stove, and disconnected that section from the chimney pipe above. I ran a brush up through the chimney pipe several times and it got all cleaned up.

We cleaned up the inside of the stove and then put it all back together. We vacuumed around the stove and cleaned up inside the house.

I cleaned the glass on the front of the stove. That was a job but it wasn't a big job. It just took time.

In the afternoon, we put up Christmas lights along the top of the parapet walls around the house. We ran out, so we bought more lights and finished the job today.

Josh didn't show up to work, so we didn't get anything done with gravel in the garage or with the french drains out back. It was cold and so without help, I wasn't motivated to do anything with it. I'm hoping to try to work in an hour or two after work this week. According to the weather reports, Tuesday through Thursday are likely to be the best weather for it, although it starts getting dark by the time I get home from work. I'm hoping I can just set up a light and get the work done.

Working north of the garage

I decided to focus on getting the waterproofing completed on the roof. However, to do this, I need to get the paraseal down. The paraseal, to be affective, needs to be put down just before being buried. It needs the pressure of the dirt to be preserved (in case it gets moisture soon after being applied; it needs the pressure). So we can't just put the paraseal up there, because it might rain and ruin it. Paraseal needs the pressure of the dirt.

So we can't finish the waterproofing until right before we're going to bury the roof.

So, I'm focusing on the north side of the garage, so that we can get the french drains down, waterproof the footings and the walls, insulate the walls, and then begin backfilling.
We figure that once we have that north end of the garage bermed, it'll be much easier to get onto the roof with dirt and we'll be able to put down the paraseal, the insulation and then put 3 feet of dirt on the roof.

So it's a cascading list of things to do, just to get what we want done, which is to complete the roof work.

To understand our plans for the roof, please refer to the following diagram.



The diagram shows the domed roof and the cold seams between modules. This is where the Paraseal and a liberal application of Ecoline-T go. We will spread Ecoline-R everywhere on the roof. Paraseal on the overhangs and up the sides of the parapets. We'll cover it all with 2 inches of insulation and then backfill.

The diagram generally shows the PAHS layer, which is a passive annual heat storage layer of insulation. They call it an "umbrella". The idea is that it will store heat or cool in the 2 feet of dirt between it and the roof. it will also keep that 2 feet of dirt dry, and it extends out over the berm, which will also cause any moisture to drain away before even getting deeper to the roof itself.

And then one foot of dirt goes above the PAHS layer. The PAHS layer is referred to as the "umbrella" in the diagram.

We worked hard this weekend. Click here to see.

Slow Progress

I titled this entry "Slow Progress", but it should probably be "Working Slowly, with Little Progress". It's difficult to stomach working every weekend (and some evenings) and not having much to show for the effort.
This is a 3-day weekend for me (although there are chances of thunderstorms today and not sure how much work I'll get done).
Josh was over to help for a couple of hours yesterday. He's barely 16 years old (in fact, I'm not sure he's 16 yet) and he just works slow. However, he did a good job. It was just slower than I would've worked.
He applied more of the Ecoline-T, patching spots previously missed. He only got the east side of the master suite in a two hour period, and it was only the stuff that was 6 feet high or less. The upper stuff will have to be gotten with a ladder.

While he worked on that, I was on the roof apply hydraulic cement to the base of the western parapet above the great room.

All of this work is stuff that most people will never see. There's nothing to show that progress is being made. I visited my parents yesterday and my dad asked if we had a slab in yet. It was depressing to say that we don't. We don't have utilities to the house yet. We therefore don't have utilities in the floor yet. We don't have all the gravel we need in the floor yet. We have gravel to redistribute and level out in the garage.There's so much work to do before we can get the utilities in the floor, and we have to do that before we can get the slab in.
So it was depressing to say "no, we don't have the slab yet".

Progress is slow. I'm working, mostly by myself. Rachel helps where she can, but she's got the current house to keep up too. I have to pull off and do some maintenance there too. We had a water pressure issue, so I had to charge the pressure tank (and I think I've upset the equilibrium(sp?) between the air pressure and the pump, so this is another issue to resolve)(the pump cuts in and out) and there's more tweaking to be done.. And I have to repeatedly walk between the shed and the house to check the pressure and make adjustments back at the shed (where the pressure tank is).

I also have to clean the wood stove pipe, to get the creosote out for the coming season when we'll be wanting to warm the house. That takes time too.
All of this is time taken away from building the new house, but it has to be done. These are things that we knew ahead of time would be an issue, but I had hoped I'd be further along with the house than I am.

Little by little, the house will get built. Progress is being made. It's just sooooooo..... . . . . ssslllllowwwwww!!!!!

Waterproofing the back walls

We did church this morning and then we had visitors for a couple of hours, so this wasn't as productive a day as yesterday, but I still managed to get some work done.

I opened another 5-gallon bucket of the Ecoline product (the thinner material) and resumed applying it to the back walls. These are the walls that will eventually be buried. This is the first coat and there will be a second coat.

I used a paint roller with an extension pole for hitting the higher places on the walls. With the paint roller, I poured some of the Ecoline material into a paint tray and then just applied it to the walls with the paint roller, just as if I were painting a wall. The roller had a high nap to it, so it worked well with the material, able to get into every little nook in the concrete.

I've still got a considerable amount of work to do on the roof with the hydraulic cement, and then I've noticed that at the base of the exterior walls, I probably would like to apply some kind of slope at the bottoms of the walls, just as I'm doing at the base of the parapet walls on the roof. This will get water away from the house.So with all of the progress that I made this weekend, there's still a tremendous amount of work to get done before we can start backfilling the north end of the house. I'm feeling an urgency.

2007.10.28

We got a little bit of work done this weekend, but one of Rachel's brothers was in town and so we were preoccupied with having a visitor. And we were out of town last weekend. So it's time to get back to work.

Rachel and I did finish the second application of Ecoline-T on all the form straps. I mixed up some hydraulic cement and filled some of the voids where the concrete didn't settle in the forms as it should have. I also started using the hydraulic cement at the base of the parapet walls, to create runoff there. This will carry any water away from the parapets so that it can drain off the roof, rather than to pool up at the flat area at the base of the parapets.

We'd already put the Ecoline-T on all of the straps, including at the base of the parapets. So getting hydraulic cement there to get water away from those areas, is additional protection. Then, when all the hydraulic cement is applied, we plan on putting Ecoline-T on top of that, and then the Paraseal membrane will cover all that too.

We are taking extra care to do overkill on waterproofing.

I wish we were progressing faster

I wish we were progressing faster, but we can't. We both have full-time jobs and there's a lot more work than people realize. I've had a lot of people tell me they think we should be moving faster, and still others wanting to build that think they can move faster. I would urge anyone planning to build, to please heed warnings by people who've done a lot of this kind of work.

Rob Roy has repeatedly written in his books and articles that building a house is very stressful. It's stressful on an individual. It's stressful on a marriage. And it's a lot more work than people think it is. Please don't take this warning lightly.

Rachel and I are going at a pace that is comfortable for us. We've built one house already and we know what we're up against. We're not moving as fast as we wished we were, but we are not rushing the job either. Some of these tasks that we're doing right now are critical tasks and we want them done right. These aren't tasks that we can leave for someone else to do. We can't trust that people we hire will be as diligent as we would be. For them, it's pay by the hour. For us, it's our home. We want it done right.

I've read recently of someone that hired some of this work done, and although he gave specific instructions on what needed to be done, he found out that the workers didn't do as he required. Since the job was covered up with dirt, I guess they figured he'd never find out that they didn't do as he asked.Well, because they didn't work according to his instructions, the waterproofing failed and he had to dig all of it up and re-do the job (which ended up being much more work than if the job had just been done right in the first place).

Needless to say, we prefer to do these critical tasks ourselves, trusting our own vested interest in having the job done right, as opposed to trusting someone that's just getting a paycheck out of it. A year later, the guy with the paycheck isn't going to come out and help fix the problem for free. So we're doing the job ourselves.

Once we're beyond the stuff below the slab, and the waterproofing and backfilling, we definitely plan to hiring help to finish the house. Those remaining tasks wont be nearly as critical.

In summary, because we're working on these critical tasks ourselves, progress is slow. Cold weather is fast approaching and we don't have the house closed in. This is frustrating. However, paying for labor and not getting the job done right, is equally frustrating.

Please don't rush the job if you ever build your own home. Please don't assume that the job of getting the house closed in is just a matter of weeks. Although I think it's possible, I fear that anyone attempting this is likely to be faced with big disappointments. The rushed job will likely become apparent later. Take the time to do the job right and have the assurance that you wont be digging things back up to make repairs later.

Stretching our dollars

Part of being able to build a house, especially when trying to be as debt-free as possible, is either making a lot of money or else being able to stretch the dollars that you have. Rachel is stretching our dollars and she has surprised me with the extent of her success.

Without even a lot of experience at it, on her first attempt, we saved over 60% on a visit to the grocery store. On a second trip to the store, just to buy a few things, I didn't pay attention to what her savings would be, and just pulled my credit card out to pay when we reached the cashier. The cashier looked at me funny, and then ran the charge. The charge was for something like $2.75. We had around $30 of stuff that we were buying, and I didn't realize how much savings we had. And this wasn't even counting some of the rebates on items we purchased.

We've had times where we bought items that in the end, we were getting paid about a dollar to walk out of the store with the item. This is really a good thing. It's stretching our dollars on things that we were going to buy anyway, leaving these dollars to purchase other things that we need.

We usually watch our budget and are careful not to get crazy eating out very often. We don't want to get in the mode of wasting money the way we did a few years ago. We do work hard and need to treat ourselves from time to time, so when we go out to eat, we order one of the huge meals, and then split it between the two of us. It ends up being more than enough food, and we are buying one meal instead of two. So we treat ourselves, but we are limiting our spending.
The big savings on eating out though, is in drinking water instead of tea or soda. It's amazing how you don't realize that they are charging close to 2 bucks on a drink, when you're just as well off having water for free.

So we're budgeting ourselves, but not killing ourselves in the process. We feel that this savings is helping us to have a little extra money for the tools and/or materials we need in building the house.

2007.10.14 - Waterproofing Began

I did a little bit of work on covering up the northeast french drain this weekend. It's still pretty rocky and so I'm having to carry out rocks and try to get the dirt back in the trench. I had to leave the area open where the broken waterline crosses the trench. The water line goes to the garden and I need to repair that line before covering the remainder of the trench.

We began applying the waterproofing to the house. We started with the Ecoline-T, which is the thicker material. We applied it on all of the form straps in the areas that will be covered up with dirt later. If there's a leak, it'll most likely get through where the form straps are exposed, since these metal straps go from one side of the concrete to the other. They're the straps that were used to hold the forms together before the pour. Once the concrete was poured and the forms were removed, the straps were embedded in the concrete, and the ends of the straps were broken off flush with the surface of the concrete. However, water can get through there with hydraulic pressure, and so we will be applying a couple of coats of the Ecoline-T, and later coat the entire house with the lighter weight Ecoline product (which if I remember right, is Ecoline-R), with a bentonite membrane at the most critical places.

I also made a simple test of applying the Ecoline-T alone the seam between two of the modules. I know it's not enough, but I was curious of how well it'll work with just one application in the seams. Ultimately, there'll be two applications, then the bentonite membrane, and then the membrane will be stuck on with more Ecoline-T.

With all the work we got done this weekend, we also managed to shock the well. It was time again. We charged the lines with the bleached water and left it all for 24 hours before flushing all the lines. The water smells much better now and we have the assurance that our water is cleaner and better tasting than the water in Tulsa (or even bottled water).

We need to do some work in the garage. I think I put too much gravel in the garage, because we now want the floor lower than the rest of the floors in the house, so we need to lower the slab. So now I need to level out the gravel, and possibly get some of it back out so that we'll get a four inch slab, still have room to insulate below the slab, and get our utilities buried in the gravel. There's still a lot of work to do.

We worked on the northeast drainage trench

Rachel and I got out and worked early, before it got hot. We worked on the drainage trench northeast of the house. We got all the pipe in and then I covered it with a layer of gravel, and then some top soil. The pipe has a "sock" over it, which will keep dirt out of the pipe, but small holes in the pipe will allow water into (as well as out of) the pipe. This allows good drainage away from the house. Now the east side of the house is well drained. The other french drains that we need done, will be easier, I think.

Rachel climbed the ladder and started grinding down some of the exposed sharp edges of the form straps that are sticking out from the concrete. We want these as flush with the surface of the concrete as we can get, so that they'll be easier to waterproof. We pay special attention to the straps, because if there's a leak in the walls (after we backfill), the straps is where it will happen.

Rachel couldn't take climbing up and down the ladder for very long, so she kind helped me with the trench, and we got it all done. There's a little bit of dirt work left to do, and I still need to fix the water line that I accidently broke. That water line goes to the garden and it needs to be fixed. I broke it with the backhoe when I first dug the trench. (As I recall, that was a horrible day, as I damaged that water line, as well as damaged the garden shed; which still isn't fixed).
We'll get more work done this weekend.

Site Work: Finished Fencing the Site

I finished fencing the site today. I had Josh's help. It was a lot of work. I don't have all of the property fenced, of course. That would've take a lot of money and a lot of effort. We have neither at this time (even with the extra help). However, we now have the job site fenced. We took the dogs out this afternoon and let them run the fences. We're not going to leave them unsupervised yet, because there's still a lot of elevation changes along the fence, where there are gaps at the bottom and the dogs could go under. I plan on putting some rocks in those areas to fill the gaps.

There's a 3 feet opening between the carport and the current house. I plan on putting a walk-through gate there, but for the meantime, that's just closed off to keep the dogs in. I'll buy a gate on the way home from work one day this coming week, and I'll install it.

We also managed to put the "sock" over the french drain flexible pipe. This will allow water into the pipe, but not dirt. Having this pipe prepared, we'll be able to clean out the trenches and install the pipe, then backfill. It'll be good to finally have that stuff done. And keeping the immediate area of the house drained, is a good thing. There's still more french drain to put in all around the house itself, but at least we're closer to finishing those tasks, than we were.

I still need to get someone out to get our utilities run to the house. Just saying it doesn't get it done. The fact is, more trenches have to be dug, and unfortunately, we have to avoid hitting lines we already have in the ground. So it's a bigger job than it sounds like. We've had plenty of free "advise" telling us what we're doing wrong, but the way I see it, we're not on a schedule, and so we can't be doing it wrong. If we rushed and hit one of our existing lines, that would be doing it wrong.

More Site Work

The weather permitted work this weekend. Josh and I ran some more fence. I would've done more, but we ran out of fence.

I should point out that the storage unit is gone. The company I was renting it from finally came and got it late this week, so that got it out of the way and we could continue the fence. I'm pretty sure that another 100ft of fence should finish the job.

I did a little bit of mowing. Unfortunately (and this is the story of my life), I discovered another how down by Rachel's garden. I discovered it with the mower. I mowed between the two gardens and found another hose, but luckily, I was able to drag it out of the tall grass and continue mowing without any problems.

I'd sure like to get beyond this site work and back to working on the house. However, the reality is that this work needs to be done. I need to finish the fence for security (so the dogs have free access to the site). I need to finish the french drains, including backfilling those trenches after the drains are finished. And then, the biggie, is that we need to get utilities up to the house. We can't backfill next to the house until that is done.

Not Much This Weekend

We got rain this weekend. Not having work for Josh to do inside, we called Friday night and left a message for him not to show up. I did do a little bit of work Saturday morning. I was on the roof peeling the cardboard sonotubes off the chimneys. I noticed that even with the sweeping and maticulous cleaning that Rachel has done up there, that after a rain, more debris is washed down to the low points. We'll be doing more cleaning up.

Since we couldn't do much work, we went to the annual Tulsa House Beautiful Show (http://www.freewebs.com/stocktonunderground/homebeautiful2007.htm). It rained on and off all day. The jobs that we need to work on, were outdoor jobs. We wouldn't have been able to work on the house even if we'd stayed home.

I feel compelled to get some work done this weekend, and so if there's a break in the weather on Sunday, I'll be moving gravel into the garage or working on fence or something like that. If there's a big break in the weather, I might work on a couple of things like that.
All this rain is what's left of a hurricane that swept through the gulf coast. We're really getting more rain than we need, although the trees were drying out and could've used an inch or two of rain. We got more than that and I'd like for it to quit now. We've had enough for a week or so.

Cascading Issues

We have a number of tasks to accomplish in getting the house built, and it feels as if most of the next ones are complicated with cascading requirements. For instance, we'd like to get the house waterproofed and bermed. We can waterproof for sure, but to protect the waterproofing, we've got to put down the insulation layer, and then that's vulnerable from the sunlight and from wind, so we'd need to backfill and berm. And of course, we can't backfill and berm until we do something about the french drain. We also can't backfill and berm until we've addressed the issue of getting water, propane and electricity to the house. These utilities need to be buried, but we have issues with digging a trenches. The main trench that is an issue is the one to pole where the electrical supply line will be. Our current driveway is in that path. there's also a water line to the pasture that is in that path. There's also the phone line in that path.

We'd like it if we could use directional (horizontal) drilling equipment to run these utility lines, especially the electrical line. This would allow us to run these lines trenchless. However, I'm told that with our rocky ground, that this might not be possible. However, I've called around and haven't yet found a company that will do the work for us. The equipment exists, but not for rental, and I haven't found someone yet that will do this for us. They do it for big industrial jobs, but so far, not for individuals.

Okay, so until I resolve that, can I get an electrician in to get started? It's preferable to get the plumber in first, because the drain lines that he runs have to take priority over anything else under the slab. These lines require specific slope for the proper flow, and so we can't have anything in first that would require the plumber to detour around (such as an electric conduit that the plumber would have to route a drain line around).

So we need to get the plumber in before an electrician. However, I feel I need to get more gravel in first. If the plumber comes in, he'll tell us that the gravel isn't required and that he can work without it. In fact, he can work more easily without it because he wont have to dig trenches in the gravel for the lines. However, once his lines are in, then we will still have to bring in the gravel, only then, I wont be able to do it with the tractor, because I wont be able to drive over those lines. So the gravel needs to be in first... but, we need to secure the site from sightseers (for their protection and our's), so that has to be first.
What a mess!

See the cascading issues. It's not as simple as it sounds. And bear in mind, we're doing all this as well as keeping full-time jobs.

Our Progress Is Slow

Owner-Builder links:

• http://www.thegormleys.com/index.html
• http://www.build-yourown-home.com/new-home-construction.html
• http://www.build-yourown-home.com/index.html
• http://www.motherearthnews.com/Homesteading-and-Self-Reliance/1973-09-01/The-Owner-Built-Home-Homestead.aspx

I felt a little embarassed when someone recently viewed our website and decided that we're slow. The guy suggested that we don't know what we're doing, and that we should be "much further along than" we are. And of course, this guy has never built a house before, but he knows how better than we do. I also was a bit amused that he gave no consideration to the fact that Rachel & I both have full-time jobs, plus a 28 year old that wont help. We have the current house to maintain, plus we need some down-time every now and then.

To tell the truth, I get a bit depressed that our progress is so slow. However, how much can a person do when they also have a full-time job (that they put in over 40 hours a week)? I'm changing jobs in a few days, and I was hoping that I'd have some time between jobs to work full time on the house. It didn't work out that way though. It's good to be employed.

I can mention that it bummed me out a bit when I first heard of the criticism of our progress. However, I think that overall, most people just don't realize what's involved in build a house, and assume that they have all the answers. So, knowing what I know, I'm not going to let it bother me. Besides, we're building our dream home, and we're not on any particular schedule. We're paying as we go, and so if we dally, it's not the end of the world. (I would like to be working out of the cold wind this winter though).

Labor Day Weekend (We Labored ... a Little)

We worked a little bit on this 3 day weekend. I put up more fence with Josh's help. I stopped at the storage container, because I'm hoping to get the company we're renting it from to come and take it away next week. Because of that, I also had to get all of our stuff out of it. It made sense to have the storage container when the Terra-Dome crew was here, but now that they're gone, this is where we can save some money.

I found out that the guys broke some things on our generator. They didn't bother to tell us, but they had to have known when they did it. Because they didn't bother to tell me, I didn't know until it broke the rest of the way. Had they told me, I could've avoided breaking it the rest of the way. I'm talking about the handle. It borke off from the frame. So I had to essentially drag this monster across our property. The guys had let the tires go flat, and didn't bother to tell me about that either. I did get the tires aired up too, but I had to drag the thing to where I could air it up.

I can tell you that the generator is heavy. I ended up having to lift the thing about 6 inches in order to get it over something (I wont say what) in order to store it away (out of sight, out of mind "from the thieves").

Rachel Rachel & I bought an angle grinder. We had an old one a couple of years ago, but it was used and it died. In fact, we're not sure where it is anymore and so we needed one. Despite the cost, we bought a cordless grinder so that we wont have to fight with an electrical cord when we're using the thing.

We bought the grinder primarily so that we can grind off rough areas of the concrete surfaces that we have to waterproof (so the membrane wont be vulnerable from being punctured). In addition, we want to grind down any of the form straps (what's left of them after the ends are broken off) so they wont stick out from the concrete. We need to waterproof those strap ends and it would be better if they're flush with the surface of the concrete.
I moved more gravel into the subslab area of the garage. We need to get back on a schedule of getting some work done (even just a little bit) each day. We're behind schedule.

Not much this coming weekend

We wont get much done this weekend, as we have other plans. This has made me feel an urgency to get a few things during the week to make up for it. And of course, I didn't do much this evening. I had planned to put up some fence, but then that's tough to do on your own, and it was hot.

I did pull the IP Cam down and get it inside to work with it. I got it working. Now I just have to see about getting it working outdoors. Our son got the network cable (even after we told him to be careful) with the string trimmer. I spliced it back together, but those wires are so tiny that it's almost microsurgery to get the cable working again. It was so tight getting through the port we have in the side of the house, that I really want to avoid pulling it out and running a new cable through. Plus, it was a 100ft cable and that would be somewhat expensive to replace. So I hope to use the existing cable, but I might have to do some more repairs on it.And of course, this is when I can get more time to work with it. I'd like to get that camera running outdoors again. I do plan on running it on a different port though, because Rachel wasn't able to view it from her job. I had no problems from my work, but she couldn't view it. Hopefully, I can find a port that will work for both of us.

The port-a-john company finally came and got their port-a-potty unit. It doesn't look like we'll need it for a while, and we were paying for a service that we weren't getting. They were supposed to clean it weekly, and for the 3 months that we had it on-site, they came out twice to service it. That's not worth the money, but we needed something for the Terra-Dome crew when they were here.

I'm going to have to take some time away from work (I'm sure I can work it in during a break) to call the gravel company and explain that they've invoiced us for a different grade of gravel than the 2 loads they last dropped off. They're wanting to charge $265 for the crappy gravel, and that's supposed to be at $250 a load. The $265 stuff is the washed rock. I like that rock, but didn't want to pay for it this time, and so it was frustrating to get the invoice and see that they charged us as if we'd gotten the good stuff.And the dirty gravel is expensive as it is.
If you're building and doing a lot of the contracting yourself, then you have to endure this sort of thing. You have to watch costs and you have to review every invoice to make sure you're getting what you're paying for, and that you're not paying for something that you didn't want (or that you didn't get).

We finally got around to paying the final Terra-Dome bill. That was a chunk of change, but we reviewed that bill and found some errors. We corrected the amount and reviewed it with Jay over the phone. After the review, he agreed on the final number and we sent the final check.
We wont be making the fast progress that we were, but it wont be costing us nearly as much either. The great thing is, we're not under any time schedule, other than a self imposed schedule of closing the house in before winter.

Rain

It rained today, so no work on the house was done this morning (we usually work a little bit before church, but because of rain, we took a break). I can't complain about the rain, because it's the first real rain we've gotten in a month or more. The trees were drying out and it was time to either hand water, or receive rain. So we're glad for the rain.It does mean there'll be more mowing, but overall, we're glad for the rain.

Yesterday, Josh came over and he, Rachel & I worked. We got another 50 feet of fence up. We could've done more, but we ran out of fence. Later in the day, Rachel & I bought 100 more feet of fence, and had intended on putting it up today. That didn't happen.

Around the house, I moved more gravel in and Josh leveled some of it out. Rachel and Josh (and I) picked up more nails, sharp objects, debris, etc around the site. Rachel cleaned off the roof. It's clean up there, but I still figure that before we apply any waterproofing, we'll take the shop vac up there and clean out the grit (especially at the base of the parapets and the cold joints between modules).

We need to get an angle grinder for grinding off the tops of the form straps that are sticking out from the concrete. We want these flush with the concrete before applying the waterproofing compound.

My hope is that I'll have time this week to get a plumber out to the site to talk about what needs to be done. There's a lot.Likewise, I'd like to get an electrician out to talk about getting electricity from the pole to the house. I'm hoping we can use some trenchless equipment (directional drill) for running the water line and the electricity, and while we're at it, I'd like to run a line to the propane tank. I'd like to get all this done so that we can backfill the excavated around around the house.

We figured out that we should only work Josh about 3 hours. He worked 4 yesterday, but he was dragging during that last hour. He's too young and inexperienced to work as long as we do (and we were only intending to work him about 4 hours, not 6 to 8 that we usually work in this heat). In cooler temperatures, we'll work 12 hours, but a kid that age just can't handle it. Josh is barely 16.

Rachel spent more time on the computer today, planning the patio area. We've figured out that we'll extend the retaining walls another 5 feet, because with the slope of the berm, the earth would be coming around the end of the retaining wall and back about 50%. That would've cut into the usable patio area, so by extending another 5 feet, we'll giving ourselves more room of usable patio area. If the retaining walls are to be extended, it'll be easier early on, than after we berm up on the north side of the house.

2007.08.12 - Still lots of work to do

Rachel & I did a lot this weekend, and yet there's still a whole lot left to do before we can begin waterproofing, berming, and covering the house (as well as getting utilities started (before we can pour the slab)(before we can close the house in with windows and doors).
Rachel worked on the roof today picking up debris, rebar, tools, trash, etc left behind by the Terra-Dome crew.

I put some gravel in the garage, but there's a lot more left to do in there. I mowed, because we needed it. I also moved some of the boulders (not the largest though). I had to use the tractor, but the largest boulders couldn't be lifted with FEL (the tractor's front-end loader). We do have a number of nice landscaping rocks that are set aside in an area more convenient than where they'd been left when the septic system was installed. I was finally able to mow in places where some of those rocks had been, and we finally have a path from the driveway to the middle of the pasture, rather than having to walk all the way around the sprinkler system (from the septic water treatment system) trench.

I started stringing fence at the west side of the house yesterday. I had Josh's (he's the kid we hired for a few hours each Saturday) help. Josh also moved the trash and scrap lumber left behind, and its now in a more orderly place for us (out of the way).
I've still not posted photographs lately, but hope to do that by this evening. I'm tired of putting it off.

Lazy

I had intensions of driving some more t-posts in the ground this evening. I guess I was a little bit lazy. It was 101 degrees today and I just wasn't in the mood. However, I don't feel we can afford to put things off for very long, so I'll be driving posts tomorrow evening. That's almost for certain. I want to be stringing fence this weekend.

Work in the evening

I put a few more t-posts in the ground last evening. It was about half as many as I did a couple of nights ago. I made it to the southeast corner of the house and hope to do more this evening (unless I have to work late at my job)(big deadline is close).
A teenage son of one of the neighbors came over and introduced himself this evening. He'd heard that we might be looking to hire someone to do odd jobs around the property on Saturdays. I'm not sure of his age, but estimate that he's probably 14 years old. He seemed anxious to work.
I was really hoping to hire someone a little older, but since we don't have a better offer, we told him to show up at 7 on Saturday. From his demeanor, I'm figuring he'll be on time. We'll get him to work on some of the cleanup so that Rachel and I will be free to do some of the things we need to be doing

The IP Cam Is Down

The IP Cam is down. This is a bit frustrating. We've had a technical difficulty and I haven't had a chance to figure out how to fix it. The network cable got cut last Friday. I fixed it, I thought, but it only ran for another day or so and now it's not working (again). With quality time, I'm sure I'll be able to get it running again

Progress will be slow for a while

It's been almost 2 weeks since the Terra-Dome crew finished the job and left. We've made very little progress since that time and it's frustrating. We've spent the majority of this 2 weeks going around the site and picking up trash, debris, broken tools, left-over lumber (from the forms), nails, form pegs and wedges, form straps, rebar, rebar wire ties, and much more. I've moved some gravel into the house, but there's more to do, obviously.
We've done very little on the roof. We've done no waterproofing yet. We're still cleaning up the site.and, we still have normal maintenance on the property, as well as the house we currently live in. There's just so much to do, and only Rachel & I to do them.
We've had recent autmotive issues to deal with, which were unexpected. There's just so much to do, and not enough time to get it all done.
I was reviewing my list of things to do before the slab can be poured. I posted that list a week ago. It was "A Mountain To Cross Before the Slab Is Poured". With all these maintenance and cleanup issues, we're thinking that in order to make progress, we need help. So (when we have time), we'll check around and see if we can find someone in the area that needs a few extra bucks to work 4 hours or so every weekend. We'll hopefully find someone that is willing (and able) to do some labor, and that we can afford to pay.I can tell from experience, that this is not going to be easy. Most adults already have jobs. Most young people aren't willing to work. They all think their time is work $20 an hour, but they wont actually do any work for it. They put in an hour or so, and think that it's time to be paid.
Anyway, I think that's going to be an additional task. We need to get help in order to get moving on this project.
I should add, that the reason we're thinking we need someone 4 (maybe 6) hours every weekend, isn't that we don't think we have more work than that. It's mostly an issue of this is an amount of time we feel comfortable with keeping someone busy during that time. It give us time during the week to plan for the following weekend, and come up with the best list of tasks for this person to do. That, combined with the financial impact of paying someone for this labor; we figure that 4 hours or so is a safe way to start hiring labor.

Beginning to fence the site

Despite the 100 degree weather, I got home from work (it was a tough day) and I changed clothes and got to work outdoors. I started on putting in fence posts so that we can fence the construction site off. We need to keep spectators and curiousity seekers out, as well as being able to let our dogs patrol the place.
I put in a dozen t-posts, which doesn't sound like a lot, except that in this sandstone ground, it was a feat. I'm proud of what I did, but it sure wore me out. A few years ago, I couldn't have done it, but I'm in better shape now and I drove those things into the sandstone and moved on to the next, and made it from the northwest corner of the house around the southwest corner and up to the west end of the storage container.
I'm hoping that I can do this same thing a couple of more evenings this week and then maybe string fence next weekend.

No Passive Solar Heat (for now)

I wanted to mention the issue of passive solar, since I've had so many inquiries into "are we planning to do passive solar". Yes. We are planning passive solar, as well as a pv array eventually. The pv array will be expensive up front, and since the budget wont support it at this time, we're putting that off for at least a few years. Eventually, we do want to be on pv, with the grid as merely a backup source for electricity.
As far as passive solar for heated water (including heat for our radiant floor), that's going to be a year or two after the house is built. Here's way:
I spent a considerable amount of time working with a vendor in Tulsa that markets passive solar water heaters. Typically, the put them on the roofs of houses. It seemed like a good idea to me, and I liked the product I saw (I first saw them at a local home&garden exhibit).However, after spending all that time with them, explaining that this was an earth home, and that our annual ambient temperature wasn't going to deviate that much, and that I'd only need enough btu to raise the temperature about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit), and probably not even that, they came back with a bid for nearly $30,000.
$30,000!!!! ?????
I couldn't believe it. The thing is, the salesman assured me that "their engineer" had calculated it out, and based on the square footage of our house, this is what it would take.
"Square footage". That was a key phrase. I realized, that just like almost every vendor, craftsman, etc that we've dealt with in the building process, they assume you're stupid and you don't know what you're talking about, and they have these books and formulas that they've been given (books written by engineers and formulas put together by engineers).As it turns out, their "engineer" wasn't an engineer at all. He was just a relatively smart guy that could use the formulas and calculate what was needed. Either the salesman didn't give him the information that I gave, or the guy didn't realize that the information I provided would affect the formulas and that they needed to take that into account.
Those formulas are based on annual temperatures for the region, plus the average heat loss (or gain) for the average (traditionally built) house. An earth home or otherwise energy efficient house like our's, would not match with that data. Without new data (that I provided) the formulas wouldn't provide the answers for our home.
After explaining this to the salesman, and working out one of the formulas myself, I saw his eyes glaze over. I realized that I was going to get nowhere with him.
Rather than be impolite or rude, or nasty (like I was tempted to be), I decided to smile, shake his hand and thank him for his time (despite the fact that he wasted a tremendous amount of my time), and left.
I figure that at some point in the future, after the house is built and we're living in it, I'll return to the topic of passive solar.I might even build my own panels and forget those guys. Or maybe by then, there'll be some competition in the area and I might have better luck with another company.As it is, I'm confident that I can build a passive solar air-based heater that can provide heated air through the house, and take colder air in the exchange (to be reheated). These types of heaters are fairly easy to build and there are plenty of designs on the internet that are free. The thing is, the air doesn't retain the heat as long as the liquid in a radiant floor would, but I'm not going to worry about that at this time. Eventually, the radiant floor will have warm water going through it keeping it warm (and the air above it as well).
It could turn out, that we wont need much heat. Jerry told me that when he was growing up, they only heated their house with a wood stove (like the one we have now), and it heated a house bigger than the one we're building. And he said that they didn't burn wood all the time.
Considering that they lived in the Kansas City area and we're further south, it seems to me that our heating needs wont be as great.So I'm willing to wait to see what we're really going to need.
I still plan on putting the pex tubing in the slab, so that it'll be there if we really feel we need radiant floor heating. Putting it in ahead of time isn't nearly as expensive as trying to retrofit (which would be cost prohibitive).

I bought new magnets

I called around several stores that I hadn't already checked with, but they didn't have magnetic sweepers and/or any kind of magnetic pickup tools. Ace Hardware had a magnetic sweeper, but it was an industrialized product that costed about $160 and I thought that was more than what we needed to spend. I'll pick the nails up by hand for that much money.
I thought of the Re-Tool store (http://www.re-tool.com/) since they have a lot of tools, new and used. I went over there during my lunch hour and they had 2 kinds. They got a little plunger type of magnet with a handle and a nice little release lever so it'll let go of what you pick up when you pull the lever. Rachel will like that. The other was a nice roller sweeper magnet, even better than the good one that the Terra-Dome guys took off with. Together, I had to pay $68. I hate having to spend that money, but even if we could get the other tools back from Terra-Dome, it would take weeks and we need to get to work with those items now. So these new tools will come in handy.

They took off and took some of our tools

I got home after working late. I noticed that the dome trailer was gone and so where the forms and other equipment that had been left behind by Jerry and his crew. Tracy and his guys took them, just as I expected. What I didn't expect was that they'd take our magnetic sweepers that we'd bought because we knew that they'd take their own magnet. They took their magnet and the two that I bought this weekend. I only got to use one of the magnets one time.

It took me a week to find those magnets and I had to search stores in 2 counties to find them. One was a $20 job that was barely adequate. The other was about $30 and was a good magnetic sweeper. It's so frustrating. I wanted to use that this evening to start cleaning up the nails and sharp objects from the garage now that the trailer is out of there. I couldn't do it.

So tomorrow, I have to start over, searching more stores until I can find a good magnet like the second one that I'd bought.

What's really frustrating is that those guys know what types of equipment they've used previously on these jobs. Those two sweepers were obviously not what would be used. One was even so obvious that it was for household use. The other was a shop magnetic sweeper, but not for the kind of use that Jerry and his guys were using their magnet for.

So it was frustrating for them to take off with our tools. They didn't take our broom. It's interesting that they knew they don't use brooms on these jobs, but for some reason they didn't figure out that they don't use the magnetic sweepers (and certainly not 2 brand new ones)(They have to have seen that those two items weren't in the condition of tools that have been haulted around on a trailer or on the back of a truck for months from job to job).

On top of this, our son's car broke down on the way home from work, so the majority of the evening was dealing with that. Somehow, he hasn't figured out that cars need oil in them to continue running. Hopefully, the car can be repaired well enough to get him to and from work.
And I get to be the one that gets up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning so that I can haul him to Bartlesville for his job, and then still get back to Tulsa to my job before 8:00.
And then I have to do this same thing again after I've put in a day at work. I'll have to drive back to Bartlesville.

What a mess.

And I also had to move about 1200 pounds of Paraseal to a better place. The stuff is supposed to be kept dry until it's installed, so I didn't feel comfortable leaving it where the guys dumped it off their truck this morning.
I had the pleasure of moving this stuff in the dark.

Well, I guess I've done my complaining for the evening. Hopefully, I'll have something good to report tomorrow. I had plans for this evening that were pretty much dashed. My time is valuable and I was hoping to get some progress made this evening. Without the magnets, I don't think I'll be able to do much. I wont be able to move gravel in there without risking the tires on the tractor. This is why we need the magnets.

They came for the dome early

It's 20:00 and we just had visitors. It was 3 guys from Terra-Dome. Tracy Allen (Jacki's husband) was one of them. It was nice to meet him. He and the other guys are here to pick up the stuff left behind by Jerry's crew, but they said they wouldn't do it until tomorrow morning.

I'm glad they're not taking the jacks down for another night, because we're barely at the 7 days that the concrete gains 80% of it's strength. I will say that Jay committed to leaving the jacks up for the 7 days, but he also committed to calling me and giving me warning before they'd come down for the jacks and the dome trailer. We never got that call.

To verify that the guys were who they said they were, I called Jay and verified that someone was supposed to be down for the equipment. He verified it, but never mentioned forgetting to call me and warn me they were coming.

No big deal, at this point. I just wish that the communication were a little better, but in building a house before, we learned that few of these guys communicate as well as in our lines of work. In construction, it just doesn't work that way.

They said they'd be back tomorrow morning and pick up the equipment left behind, the dome trailer, the forms, etc. I'm grateful for another 24 hours of the jacks holding up the garage overhangs.

Tracy complimented us on the house, saying he really liked the layout and the size of the place. He and the others gave us a few tips about waterproofing, and they also brought down several rolls of the Paraseal, which is the bentonite membrane that Terra-Dome recommends for part of the waterproofing.

I spoke with Jay about the jacks supporting the overhangs

I called Jay today because I was concerned that he'd send someone down for the stuff that Jerry and the crew left behind. This would include the jacks holding the overhangs up, and I'd like to see those jacks in place for a week or so. Concrete gains 80% of its strength in that time and it would be good for the overhangs to have that time to strengthen up.
Jerry left the dome trailer in the garage, the jacks supporting the garage front and back overhangs. There are miscellaneous small forms and other stuff also left behind. A truck will be down for these items later. Jay said that it would be at least a week before he'd send the truck down, and that he'd call and warn me ahead of time.
This is a relief. I was worried that the guy would come for the rest of the stuff this weekend. Tuesday will be 7 days, and Jay said that the earliest would be Tuesday, and it would likely be longer before he'd send the truck down.
By the way, that truck will have our bentonite rolls.

They Poured the Garage

We heard the concrete pump truck arrive at 5:30 Tuesday morning. They usually arrive 30 minutes prior to work, so that the driver can set up and be ready when the first concrete truck arrives. We rushed to get ready too. I decided to take off work for half a day to watch this pour from beginning to end. It would be my last opportunity to do so, as this is the last module of our house to be poured.
They were started at 6:00. I took lots of pictures, some much like from previous pours. Still, I wanted to be there. Things went smoother, for sure, with the 4th guy there (Lewis) working. It was a big help.
One truck came right after another, so they were rushed to work the concrete as fast as it could be pumped. When one truck emptied, the driver would pull that truck away to wash out the excess concrete, while another drive backed up to the concrete pump to get work resumed.
The last truck took 45 minutes to arrive, so the guys had a bit of a breather, but the existing concrete was setting up and it would've been nice if it had only been 15 minutes. That was enough of a break. While they waited, they smoothed out the surface of the concrete that was already poured.When the final truck arrived, the mix was very wet. So after pouring the front overhang of the garage, they had to wait before they could pour concrete into the parapet walls (because it was so wet that it would just pour out below and overflow the overhang. They must've waited an extra 20 or 25 minutes before they could pour the parapets. Even so, they used as small pressure as the pump would allow, so that the concrete wasn't moving so fast (hoping that it wouldn't push out beneath the parapet forms and into the overhang). It worked out.
One nice thing about the wetter concrete is that it mixed into the existing concrete better, which meant for there to less likely be a cold joint in that location.
They finished around 11:30 and began putting a few things away and wanting to go back to the house they'd rented (they rented a house in Okmulgee, rather than getting apartments. It was better living conditions, and cheaper for the entire crew).I went back to our house, took a shower and went to work.
I'll say that I'm concerned that they already have another construction job lined up, and that there's going to be a rush to remove forms (as well as jacks holding up the overhangs) so that they can move on to the next job. I was told early on, that the jacks that support the overhangs need to be there for about 7 days. Removing them sooner doesn't seem like quality to me.
I also know that Jerry is in a rush to go on vacation with his wife. He's supposed to drive and meet up with her in the northwest somewhere. I think it's in the Seattle area, but I can't remember for sure.
Anyway, I do know that Jerry isn't going to the next construction project, but that the other guys are. I also know they only have 2 trucks here, and they have 3 trailers (the 2 they originally showed up with, plus the dome forms truck). Jay says he'll send down a truck for the extra trailer, but that still means that Jerry will have to pull one trailer to the next construction site, before he can go meet up with his wife. So he's going to be in a hurry to wrap up things here and move on. I believe he deserves it, but I don't want it to be at the expense of quality on our project.
Jerry and the guys have done a terrific job on our house. I want it to stay that way.

They'll probably pour on Tuesday

Jerry said they'll probably pour the garage unit on Tuesday. They have most of the rebar in place. I got a few pictures before they put up the inner parapet forms, and I'll post as soon as I have time. We also had a brief rain, and so this gave me the opportunity to take pictures of any places that might allow water to puddle. I'll take care of those areas prior to covering with dirt. The goal is to create paths for the water to flow, so that it'll flow off the roof.
In a week or so, I'm sure the Terra-Dome crew will be gone. Jerry, Jason, Justin and Lewis have done a great job on these last two modules (we've got 4 modules in all).
I started moving more gravel into the house to be situated below slab (of course). It was notable that the modules are large enough, that I was literally able to drive a tractor into the house, spread gravel from the loader and then turn around and drive back out. I did it in the first 3 modules several times today. How many people can do that in their living room or bedroom? (No big deal, really, but Rachel was a bit amused when I turned the tractor around in the master suite.)
I want to apologize about only having the one ip-cam. I have a second but had trouble with configuration and haven't had a lot of quality time to devote to getting it set up prior to this pour. Technically, it's an indoor cam, so although I likely wont have it operational and on the network by this pour, I will get it running and will have it mounted somewhere inside the house so that work going on inside will be visible.

Comments on recent rainfall

For the amusement (or bewilderment) of family in Kansas and Colorado, who rarely see much water in the Arkansas River, I thought I'd remind everyone of the unusual amount of rainfall we've gotten recently. Check out the YouTube video of the Arkansas River. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6jadD358g)
I'm also including a link to my friend, John's photo album documenting recent flood stage of Keystone Lake, which is on the Arkansas.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jhall218/KeystoneLakeFloodingUpdate

The mystery visitors mystery is solved

We poured the 3rd module this morning at 6:00. It went smoother now that it's a crew of 5 instead of a crew of 3. In visiting with the pumper truck operator, I discovered what the deal was with the mystery visitors that our son couldn't tell us anything about.
It turns out that the operator had stopped by and wanted to contact Jerry. Not being able to contact Jerry, he hoped that I might be able to leave Jerry a message and so he wanted to contact me. He told our son that he was going to leave a business card on Jerry's truck (parked on our property). Our son evidently was so out of it that he failed to mention that to us. Also, we're not sure where our son got the notion that the guy wanted to do any drainage work on the property. We suspect that was something he dreamed.
The main thing is that now, we know who the mystery visitors were, and it doesn't seem to be an issue to worry about. No one was on the property to steal from us, although the thought of getting some volunteer help in draining the property appealed to me.
Luckily, I dug the final part of that northeast trench on Saturday and the site drains fine. Once the house is bermed, that drainage will be less of an issue because of the umbrella (look up PAHS (passive annual heat storage) to learn more) that we're planning for over the house, extending out over the berm. That umbrella should keep things beneath fairly dry (and a fairly constant temperature).

The mystery visitors are still a mystery

We still haven't determined who the two guys were that showed up claiming to know Jerrry and I. I wish our son had bothered to notice more about them, but he didn't even get the company name on the side of the truck.
It's the beginning of a weekend and I had planned to finish digging the northeast trench. I had a minor surgical procedure this afternoon and now have an open wound that I have to keep clean and protected over the weekend. So how am I going to get the work done? Our son wont do it. He hasn't even mowed the dog yard that his mother has been begging him to do for over 2 weeks. I'll have to do that this weekend too. I have to. It needs to be done and we can't get him to do it.
Oh... and I need to put in 8 hours at work this weekend too.
I need a vacation.

Rain

Thunderstorms moved into the area this morning and dumped rain on most of northeastern Oklahoma. The guys had showed up and had started work just about the time the rain hit, and since lightning was going on, they had to get in out of the rain, and weren't able to work. (After all, the forms are metal. The rebar they're working with is metal). It's not good to be out working in a thunderstorm.

They're back to work

Jerry returned this morning. I joked because I saw he had 2 new guys with him, and Jason and Justin weren't there. I asked, "Did we scare them off?"
He said that they'd be back in a day or two. These other two guys are here to keep on schedule, and probably help move things a bit faster on the pour of these last 2 modules.
Rain is in the forecast tomorrow and Friday. I hate that.
I called Joe, our neighbor (the mayor of our small community) to see if perhaps he'd referred those two strangers that appeared yesterday. He knew nothing about them. So it's still a mystery as to their identity or their motives. At least Joe knows and will be watching out. We also notified the sheriff and he said that he's got us on a list for his officers to stop by here every time they're passing nearby. That, along with the fact that we have a son living on-site and home during the day.

The guys will hopefully return soon

I spent the weekend breaking up rock. The northeast trench needed to be finished, and I had to do it by hand. As luck would have it, I left off just inches from a boulder that was a foot to two feet thick and about five feet across.
I wish I'd had a machine to get it out of the ground, because it would've been a fine landscaping specimen. However, without the machine, I had to get it out somehow. I spent a lot of time beating the thing with a large iron spear-like tool. It takes anywhere from 35 to 50 hits before the rock would crack, and then I'd have to work on it a bit longer to wedge the iron bar into the crack and work it apart from the rest of the rock.
Wedged in with all the dirt and smaller rocks around it, it would take me a while longer to get it to the point where I could get my hands under it and lift it out of the ground.... and then I'd start over with another piece of the rock. These smaller pieces were around 200 to 300 pounds apiece, but it was workable. I was exhausted afterwards, but I didn't hurt my back like I did when I worked on larger pieces.
We're waiting for the Terra-Dome guys return. They've been off for a few days.
One bad thing that happened today, is that two guys showed up in a pickup, telling our son that they were here to see Jerry (they asked for him by name, and then asked for me), saying they were here to "drain the job site".
It took all day, but we finally got a hold of Jerry and he didn't know anything about it. So what were those guys here for? It's a bit spooky. It's spooky to know that there were strangers on our property, and they knew Jerry's name and they knew my name, but we don't know anything about who they are or why they were really here.I'd open to free help, but I honestly doubt that someone was showing up to help out (while we were off at work). It's spooky.

The guys took off for a few days

The guys took off for a few days, here at July 4th. The footings for the garage were poured yesterday, and after the guys got them taken care of, the took off to head home. I'm told that they'll be gone for a few days, but I'm not sure when they'll return. I'm hoping it'll be by Monday, at least.
In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on drainage of the site, but this time, I'm having to do it by hand. I resumed work on the trench at the location of the water line to the garden. As luck would have it, digging a little more I found one of the boulders. So I'm having to break it apart and pull it up in pieces. I kept hitting it until I broke it in half, and then the remainder was still too big to handle, so I started breaking it down further. I managed to pull two large pieces away from the rest, but they're too large for me to lift out of the trench on my own, so I left them for later. Maybe when I'm not so tired, I'll be able to get them out of the trench and can continue to work on the rest of the rock to finish the drainage trench.
On another note, the mayor is angry at us because the concrete truck drivers cleaned their trucks out with a hose after the pour, and dumped concrete on the side of the road. This messes up drainage of the road, and also makes it difficult for the county maintenance workers to grade the road from time to time.
The mayor wants us to do something about it, but I don't feel that I should have to. I dug a hole for them to dump the concrete into, and it's not my fault that they chose to dump elsewhere. I did due diligence and don't feel responsible for the concrete in the road.
Hopefully, the mayor wont push the issue further. I'll just stay home from work on the next pour, and make sure that they don't dump any more concrete where they're not supposed to. However, people have got to realize that they have to dump the left over concrete somewhere. They can't just leave it in the truck, or it hardens and makes the mixer useless. So they dump whatever is left after the job. I dug a hole for this purpose, and am hoping that I'll get a free slab out of the deal.

Rain: 21 of the last 23 days

It rained again. As if the ground can hold any more water. We've had rain 21 of the last 23 days and I havne't seen that there's any end in site. The guys were wanting to pour the garage footings today but held off until tomorrow so that I could get gravel put over swampy areas, in hopes that we can get a concrete truck or two in tomorrow. Even with the gravel, the earth just moves around just walking on it. I'm hoping that even though the concrete truck will sink into it, that they wont get stuck and that we can get the job done. I know the guys are wanting to take a few days off and go home, and that they'd like to get the footings poured before they leave.

Solve one problem; create two more

One thing that I've discovered, is that if I could do this all over, I'd "drain the site" before any construction began. As it is, we had a wetter than average summer (so far) and so the rain has swamped the job site and the rain isn't stopping. There's more to come.
I made one step toward solving this problem today, but I created two new problems in the process, and I'm particularly upset about it.
I rented a backhoe and dug trenches to allow water to flow away from the house at 3 points that were problems. We still have a problem, which I hope to solve by shovel tomorrow, near Rachel's west garden. It's swampy there right now, as we've drained water from the job site to that location. The backhoe got stuck, and it took 3 of us to unstick it. I was finally able to drive out with a wide turn, and with fear of stopping and getting stuck again, I kept on going. Unfortunately, the hoe was positioned to one side of the tractor, and so I side-swiped the garden shed, tearing out a corner of the building. That costed me time and money (probably near $500).
I dug another trench at the northeastern corner of the site, hoping to drain water past Rachel's east garden (the orchard) to the woods. I was careful to avoid the water line (and phone and electric lines to the garden) by digging carefully with a shovel to locate them. I still managed to snag the water line and so that'll have to be repaired. The phone and electrical lines are fine, but it's just frustrating to have this new problem, and I'll have to dig the rest of the trench by hand. So I have all this work ahead of me, and it feels like I just don't have the time or the money to solve these new problems.
I dug a trench (within view by the IP-cam) at the southeast corner of the site (at the end of the retaining wall there) to drain the site to the pasture. We got great flow from the site at that location, but the trench is across our driveway to the building we're currently living in. This means that I have to finish this job this weekend, so that Rachel can get out and go to work on Monday (although she hates her job and wishes she could retire from it)(I hate my job too, by the way, but it pays too well to quit. We need the money for the house).
So tomorrow, I've got to put the drain pipe in the ground (with the sock around it, of course). I'll need to put what little gravel I can scrounge up (I'd have gravel delivered, but we've had so much rain that the dump truck would get bogged down in the mud if they tried to bring it on our property).
As a side note, I should mention that we've had this property for over 10 years and have never had these kinds of problems with wet ground. However, we've never had this much rain combined with this much traffic on the property. And the driveway is new since the old established driveway path went through the area where we're building the house. Even so, the driveway out near the road is also bogged down, and that's a part of the old established driveway that never had this problem in the last ten years.
Anyway, tomorrow, I'll be finishing that french drain so that I can cover it up so that Rachel will be able to drive over it Monday morning. I bought six bags (I'll likely need more, but if so, I'll buy more tomorrow) of concrete, and I plan to cover the top surface above the pipe, so that driving over it wont crush the pipe. I'll have 3 inches of dirt atop the drain pipe, but that's not enough to distribute the weight, but the concrete should span the trench and distribute weight to both sides of the trench, protecting the drain pipe. That's the goal, anyway.
My advise to anyone doing this, is establish your drainage of the site before building (regardless of your average climate and conditions, as they can change, as we've noticed). In addition, if you ever rent a backhoe, make sure to always reposition the hoe to point straight back before driving around with it. Having it to the side really hurt us. I'm sick over it. I've worked so hard to build this house for my wife, and then I've created these new problems to solve, and it makes it tougher for her. That was her garden shed, and she stores her tools in it. And now we have to pay someone to fix it. We'll be paying with money that should've been going toward the house.
By the way, I should add that after all this turmoil, I got ready to return the tractor (so that I wouldn't have to pay an additional $200, since the rental place isn't open on Sunday and so if I kept it past 5pm, I'd be keeping it another day and couldn't return it until Monday morning). Anyway, I had to stop and park the trailer at the town hall (not far from our property) because I noticed that one of the tires on the trailer had gone flat. So I had to park the truck and trailer and walk back home (probably half a mile home).The rental guys said they'd come and get the trailer, and so on my way back to the truck, it started to rain. By the time I made it to the truck, I was fully soaked. It was reasonably pleasant to walk in the rain though, but I would've preferred to have stayed dry. This experience just topped off a fairly miserable series of events related to that backhoe today. I helped the guy change the tire (while it was raining, although he had a raincoat). I was happy to see him drive away with the trailer behind his truck, and I returned home.
I don't believe I'll ever feel good about today's work. It was a miserable day. It was a job that needed to be done, and in fact, was well overdue. However, the experience is one that I will not relish. I can't remember a time when I had a worse day.

A mountain to cross before the slab is poured

We're looking at a mountain to cross over before we even get the slab poured. The Terra-Dome guys are gone, and there's so much to do.
This is a short list (for the immediate future) of things to get done on the house. Bear in mind that some things can be done in parallel (if we have enough people to do them). So far, it's just the wife and I, and so this is going to take time.

• Clean up the job site. There is an enormous amount of debris, trash, nails, form pegs and wedges, rebar tie-wire, tools, etc. strewn all over the job site and surrounding area. I can't even mow until some of the grass is inspected for pieces of rebar, tools, etc.
• Utilities to the house
  This involves:
1. trench for the water line (avoiding the well, the slab by the shed (where the pressure tank and other well water pluming is), as well as the water and power lines to the garden shed.
2. trench for electrical line (avoiding the phone line to the quonsit, and an irrigation line to the pasture).
3. trench for a propane line
4. finish the trench to the waste water treatment system (the storage container sits in the path of this today, and I'll have to pay extra to get the Mini-Mobile company to drive out and move the container).
5. At some point in time, I need to repair the water line to the garden shed. I damaged it when putting in the french drain at the northeast of the house. I worked so hard to avoid that line, and still managed to damage it.
6. Phone line to the house (even if we don't immediately hook up phone service, we still need to provide for a way of getting the line into the house when that time comes. Otherwise, the guy that the phone company sends out to do the installation, will want to run his phone cable on the outside of our house, stapled in some fashion to the exterior surface, and then he'll drill into a wall to get the wire into the house, and then he'll want to staple it along an interior wall to get it to a phone. I'd prefer to provide a conduit that he can get it into the house from, and then I will have conduit to each of the phones in the house. That way, no staples and no hassles later.
7. I want to provide a fresh air intake for our wood stoves. It'll just be a small pvc pipe that will bring in outside air so that when the stoves burn oxygen, they'll have their own air supply. A tight house must provide oxygen to anything with a flame or else we'll have to open a window in the middle of winter (which defeats the purpose of the stove). We'll provide an air supply for our kitchen stove too.


• gravel distributed below slab level in preparation for sub-slab utilities
  sub-slab utility installation




• I'll likely bring in a plumber first, because that work needs a specific slope (for flow) and it's easier to make electrical conduit go around a waste water pipe, than it is to get a waste water pipe to go around something else. (the bad part in having the plumbing roughed in first, is that the workers that follow usually need babysitting, because they don't care about anything but their own work, and will totally trash anything done before them, giving no mind to the fact that they're ruining other work. For the cost, I'll need to babysit to protect work as it gets done). I'm hoping that while the plumber is doing his work, that I can be working on some of the waterproofing tasks (so we can have two things going on at the same time).


• 
  We'll get an electrician to install the main breaker box and bring in electricity from the pole, but once that's done, Rachel & I will run all the electrical circuits throughout the house, as we have done in the current house. Of course, all of the sub-slab electrical stuff will need to be done first.


• The central vacuum lines and electrical circuit will be installed sub-slab.


• The propane lines will be brought in (maybe by the plumber) and roughed-in.


• I'll be installing security wire lines to all of the windows and doors, so this will need to be set up below slab as well.


• We'll be setting up all phone, computer networking, stereo and television lines sub-slab. The network lines will include lines for surveillance cameras (probably ip-cams). (We might not install all of these things up front, but if the conduit is in place, then it's easier to add later)


• 
  The television cable is a little tougher for me to know what to plan for, so I'll just have to size well for future cable. With the transition to high definition, I'm not sure what cable to run for video (I'm most familiar with coax, which is definitely old technology).


• Waterproofing the exterior:


• 
  All of the areas that will be buried must be waterproofed first.


• Waterproofing involves more than just slapping petroleum products on surfaces. Whenever possible, the ideal thing is to create paths for moisture to flow, so that it will flow away from the house. The best waterproofing system is one that doesn't get wet (or that doesn't stay wet very long). Water is an unstoppable force, so if you don't create the paths for the water to flow, then it will find its own path and that's rarely a good thing.


• Jerry recommends using some hydraulic cement at the bottom of the inner surface of the parapets, where they meet with the tops of the overhangs. He indicates that rounding this corner out will cause water to flow away from the base of the parapets, rather than possibly collecting in tiny cracks there. This recommendation seems like a good idea to me, so I plan on doing this. It's a bit of additional engineering (as with most waterproofing).


• Before any of the waterproofing material, we need to wash the loose grit off the roof. We've already been up there sweeping some initial stuff off, but there's much more to do. After sweeping, I'm hoping to hose it down (with some pressure) and then once dry again, I want to take the shop-vac up there and see if I can pull up the dust with that. Waterproofing material sticks best to a surface that is clean; not covered with grit, dust, etc.


• The current plan is to use the Ecoline-T (it's a thicker substance) on all of the steel "straps) that go through the concrete walls (these straps are used inside the forms, to tie the exterior to the interior so that the forms don't buckle from the pressure of freshly poured concrete).


• The Ecoline-T will be used in the "valleys" between dome modules
  Any bubble holes in the exterior concrete will be filled with Ecoline-T.


• Ecoline-R will be spread over the roof and the exterior walls (the ones that will be buried), including the back sides of the retaining walls. It'll be rolled on with a paint roller (with a good nappy roller). We'll likely do a couple of coats of this messy stuff.
  I should point out that there's an Ecoline-S material that can be sprayed on. The thing is, it would take special equipment, which I don't have and don't want to buy. For someone that is willing to do that, the Ecoline-S might be a better choice than the Ecoline-R, but I'd check to make sure the thickness is the same (or better).


• Paraseal (it's a membrane) will be rolled out and cover the valleys between domes, as well as the overhangs and up the sides of the parapets (all this area will eventually be buried).


• The next step will likely be to protect the waterproofing with 2 one-inch layers (with overlapping seams) of extruded polystyrene (rigid foam insulation), although Royce Hamer in Canada (Drayton, Ontario) suggests to me that I should be using a sprayed foam insulation (which will have no seams) instead. I'm going to get more information on this, but I'm going to have to figure out it rather quickly to get this work done before winter. The insulation not only insulates, but it also provides protection of the waterproofing layer from pebbles and other somewhat sharp objects.


• French drain flexible pipe (like http://www.flex-drain.com/) will be run in the valleys and along the overhangs to provide space for water to leave the roof. I plan to make sure that there is a bit of grade beneath the pipe to insure that there'll be a way for the water to flow away. A "sock" (filter fabric) will cover the drain pipe to assure that dirt will be kept out of the pipe but water will be allowed in.


• I've toyed with the idea of a sump pump at the southwest corner overhang, just to help any water that collects there to be pushed to an area of the overhangs that it can flow off the roof. I'll likely put in some casing so that it'll be there in the event that I want to inspect from the surface to see if water is collecting there later, and I will always be able to install a sump pump there if the casing is already in place.


• We'll put in a couple of feet of dirt (probably cheap fill dirt above the insulation and french drain pipe. I'll use the dirt to create flow paths for water to flow away from areas most vulnerable (valleys between the domes, and the overhangs).


• Once the two feet of dirt is in, we'll employ a PAHS (passive annual heat storage) ( http://www.primedesign.us/self_heating_houses/pahs_article_1.html ) "umbrella" system , which will add a membrane (possibly a pond liner or four) to make water flow off the roof, as well as another inch of insulation to allow for heat storage (or cool storage) in the two feet of dirt. We'll protect the umbrella layer with synthetic fiber carpet. We'll get this for free as it's going to be buried, so there's no need for brand new carpet. We'll get throw-away carpet that would end up in a land fill. It'll just be on our roof protecting the umbrella layer from rodents.


• Above the umbrella will be one foot of top soil, which will then be planted with grass. (Rachel wants an herb garden on the roof, but I don't know if we'll have that off the front or if it'll come later. We might just have grass at first to get a root system that will keep the top soil from erosion problems. I'm hoping we can get a grass with a great root system, but that doesn't grow very high very fast, so that we don't have to mow it so often. I'll be picky about what we allow to grow on the roof, because I want to protect the umbrella layer and the waterproofing. There'll be no "woody" plants allowed on the roof.


• Did I mention that the PAHS umbrella system actually extends out into the berm? Before we can put dirt on the roof, we're going to have to berm up the north and east sides of the house. This will require the service of a bulldozer, as well hauling in more dirt (we don't have nearly enough).


• Luckily, the Terra-Dome guys already insulated the overhangs and parapets.


• We will need to put sheet insulation (2 inches) on the front (non-buried) walls of the house. There's a glue made for this insulation.


• There's a lot of work to do on the roof, but once it's done, I'll never have to deal with it again. Tornados wont tear it off. Hail wont damage it. The sun wont wear it out.

Bear in mind that I haven't even written anything about getting the slab poured, or putting in doors and windows to close the house in. There's so much to do with the waterproofing and utilities, and I see no reason to even write about anything further until these are done. Building a house takes lots of labor; lots of time; lots of patience; lots of determination; lots of engineering; ... and lots of money.

Oh, and somewhere in all this, Rachel & I still have to keep the current house up, keep up the garden, go to work Monday through Friday, keep the place reasonably mown, and somehow work in a life. This is gonna be tough.