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.