I'm hunting for a plumber

I'm frustrated at the lack of progress, and wanting to get a construction plumber in to take care of the stuff that will be under the floor. I had a lead on a construction plumber, but the guy never got back to me with a name.

I'm hoping to find someone that will come out and do the job (at least in the garage) so that I can do the electrical work and get a slab contractor in to get the pour done.

Needing Utilities To Be Done

I'm getting frustrated with our inability to get utilities to the house. This is hampering our ability to continue with other work in the back of the house. For instance, until we've got the water line and propane lines completed, we can do no more berming on the east side of the house, and none around the corner in the back of the house. That's why I was working behind the garage today.

Getting the utility lines run isn't so simple. If it weren't for existing other structures and irrigation on the property, it would be simple. As it is, we have a water line, an electric line, and a phone line running to the garden shed. To run a propane line or water line to the house, we have to cross over (or under) those lines.

To run an electric line to the house, if we do it from the pole we're currently getting power from to the building we're living in, we will essentially be cutting roots to a wonderful old oak tree (the best on our property)(essentially killing it) in order to trench to the new house.
We've entertained the idea of getting an additional pole installed so that we can avoid the tree and trench from a different location. However, that location has issues.
If we trench from a pole at the southwest corner of one of our sheds, we will have to trench through a slab we have next to it, in order to get a line to the house. We could do that, but then we have an issue of never being able to put a bigger shed in that location.
I'm now entertaining the idea of locating a pole in yet a different spot which might avoid either issue. However, it will then mean that we will cross a phone line to the building we're living in. That's not the end of the world, but it's just another hassle.
We would also be crossing an irrigation line too. I think though, that if I manually dig up the area where it will cross it, then the backhoe could just avoid the line in that location.

This would greatly be avoided if we could get someone out that has the trenchless system (directional drilling (boring) equipment). They can run these lines, drilling horizontally, not having to trench. We wouldn't have to worry about any existing lines. It's a much more elegant solution. However, I'm sure it costs more. The contractor I spoke with a week ago hasn't gotten back to me on costs, so I'm still waiting.

One thing the guy told me is that his equipment will handle the sand stone that we have on our property, but it might pop out of the ground. He said there's a limit to how much control they will have, depending upon the conditions on our property. He indicated that he was willing to try, but I haven't heard from him in a week or more.

I hope to call the guy tomorrow, although I'm going to be very busy at work and might not be able to call him until later in the week (and then he might be too busy to call me back). That's how it goes.

I do know that I can't allow this to hold us up much longer. If I can't get them out here, I'll have no choice but to get someone out with a backhoe and get the lines done once and for all. This will mean having to dig up existing lines so the backhoe can avoid them, and it might require getting someone from the phone company out to repair a phone line unless I can locate that line with a shovel and we can avoid it as well.

What a mess. It seems like nothing we do is easy. Nothing is "off the shelf". Everything we do is off the aisle. It takes a long time, but in the end, we will have a real nice house.

Got a little bit done this weekend

We've been busy. I didn't get as much done this weekend, but I got a little bit done. We went to a home and remodeling show yesterday. It was free (the best kind). We took the opportunity to meet with the siding company since they were there at the show. We have a bid for getting them to cover the parapets. We need that soon because of the foam insulation. We want to protect it from the sun, and it's overdue for being covered.

The cost to cover the parapets is more than that I figured. In fact, it's about double the amount. It has to be done though, and so we'll probably be scheduling the work soon.

Today, I spent half a day working on the house. I actually got a little bit of help from our son (he's broke and way in debt to us, and car insurance is coming up that he needs to pay). I put him to work with a paint brush applying the Ecoline-R in spots that were missed due to imperfections in the concrete. I took a roller and applied and additional overall coating.

I then spent an hour moving some of the limbs from trees that had been damaged during the ice storm. That was more of an ordeal that I thought it would be, but it's done now.

I spent an hour or so finishing the french drain in front of the southeast retaining wall. Besides the corregated pipe that has a filter sock over it, I also placed filter fabric over it and dumbed gravel around the pipe, and then folded the fabric over and overlapped it, and then dumped some dirt on top of it all to secure it. If we're going to have people working to put up siding on the parapets, I don't want them messing up the work I've done already. It was hard enough the first time.

My 3-Day Weekend Wasn't Productive

I'm in the 3rd day of a 3-day weekend. I'm working at a place that is the first place I've worked at that lets employees off for Martin Luther King Day. So this was a 3 day weekend for me, and I hate letting 3 day weekends go without working on the house. This one wasn't very productive, in my opinion. It was cold and windy, so the windchill gave us temperatures well below freezing. The actual temperature never got above freezing on Satuday, and it only got up to 34 on Sunday. It was about that today, but there was swifter wind and we had freezing rain off and on.

I had dirt delivered on Saturday, but never moved any of it. I did retrofit a couple of Y connectors into the french drain at the southeast corner of the house. We needed the Y connnectors for a perforated hose from in front of the house, and then one from the upper portion of the east berm.

Today, I worked ont the french drain a little bit and then moved behind the garage and finished the french drain next to the garage. I moved dirt from the hill back there (from the original excavation that was pushed up back there). Then it began to rain hard so I put the tractor away and quit for the day.

Turnkey Systems

I've had a number of people ask about turnkey systems for earth homes, as opposed to doing the work yourself, which we chose (and sometimes reconsider).

• Earthlog Equity Group (http://www.earthshelteredhousing.com/)
• Ralph Smoot at Earth Sheltered Homes (http://www.earthshelteredhome.com)
• Earth Sheltered Technology (http://www.earthshelteredtech.com/)
• Davis Caves (http://www.daviscaves.com)

There are probably more turnkey systems, but these are the ones that we're more familiar with.

Siding and Electricity Plans

We've been feeling an urgency to get the insulation on the parapets covered. We'd talked with a siding supplier months ago and finally called them out for an estimate. The guy will give us two bids; one for the parapet, and another for the exterior walls, which we're not ready to do anything with because there's work to be done first.

The salesman liked the house. He and his trainee asked lots of questions and they were impressed. Because we're just a little different from the type of house they usually work with, he couldn't give us a complete estimate yet, but he took plenty of measurements and even took some pictures so he could take it all back to the boss and talk about it. We're expecting the quotes within days.

I also met with an engineer from the electric company this afternoon. He said that they can run a "secondary line" from the pole 200ft (not 100ft like we'd originally been told) to the breaker box. There are options from here and that's what I will need to talk with the trenchless drilling company before we will know what we want to do.

Because of the 200ft limit, they can run the line from the pole we currently have a meter on. They can also run the line underground for us, but if they do, it'll be with a backhoe and that would drastically tear up tree roots from one of our prize oaks (in fact, it's the best oak on the property). We don't want to do that.So if we want them to run the line underground for us, we'd want another pole added that would get the line away from the roots of the large tree.

If the trenchless guys can run the line for us, we might want the new pole anyway, just to avoid having to deal with the electric line to the building we're living in now; and we have a septic tank over there too. A new pole gets it all away from that. However, if the electric company brings in a backhoe, we'd be tearing up part of a concrete slab in the new location. From either pole, there's a phone line and a water line that we'll be crossing.

All around, I'm hoping we can go trenchless. I'm also hoping it's not too expensive.

So our next thing to do is to get one of the guys from the horizontal drilling company out here. They both live in our little community, but so far, we haven't gotten them on-site yet. I'm feeling the urgency to get this done so that we can get the work done and move on. It's time to move on.

Terra-Dome Updated Their Website

Normally, I wouldn't say anything about it, but I noticed this morning that Terra-Dome updated their website. They've done a great job and there are a lot of pictures of finished earth homes that they've built, as well as pictures of various stages of construction.
Probably the only reason I discovered their changes, is that I didn't go to work today. I'm sick. Rather than go down the list of ailments, I'll just say that I don't feel good and that it might not be good for me to be around other people at work. I'm frustrated at being home and not feeling well enough to work on the house. It's like this is a full day I could be working, except that I can't.
Maybe I can make a few phonecalls and make some house-related appointsments though. At this point, I'm not even sure if I feel like doing that.

http://www.terra-dome.com

There was a question in the guestbook, about why we chose Terra-Dome as opposed to another company that does earth homes. Simply, we liked the domed roofs, which provide much greater strength. We like the ability of having the wide open floorplans, as opposed to having support posts and beams across a room. Open floorplans allow flexibility for quality living space.
The downside, is that there are areas on the roof that don't slope, so water doesn't run off. You have to engineer ways of getting water off the roof. Companies like Davis Caves have the sloped roofs, but their roofs are flat and so they require a support beam across the middle of a module, and you are more apt to require some kind of post in a living space. However, apart from that, the two systems are similar. You just have to do the research and decide which you prefer. Terra-Dome was our choice.

The people at Terra-Dome try really hard to provide you a quality product at a low price. I have no experience with the other companies, so I can't comment about them.

And if we had more money and were interested in a full solution rather than a company that would only put up the super structure, we'd have probably gone with Earthlog Equity Group or a company like them. They do the same thing as Terra-Dome, but they also provide other services and seem to be more of a one-stop shop solution, providing finishing services. You get what you pay for though, and so Earthlog costs more per square foot (but you get more).

Do the research for yourself and decide.

I ran out of dirt this weekend

We are in the midst of our annual January thaw. We had a temperature over 70 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend, so working was comfortable, although it was quite windy.

The wind was further tearing up the garden shed that had been damaged months ago by a rented backhoe. Rachel, Jeremy and I made repairs on the shed that should make it stand up to the wind, but it doesn't look good. I think it'll hold up though.

I moved as much dirt to the east berm. So far, it's been 6 loads of fill dirt at $75 a load. These loads are approximately 15 tons. We need more fill dirt, and we'll likely get top soil for the top layer.

A Repeating Theme: Progress Is Slow

I worked all day moving dirt from the piles where the dump truck left them, to the east side of the house, building up the berm. I added insulation, and probably would've finished that side of the house, but it was a windy, windy day and I had to fight the wind and keep the insulation up against the wall, and find things to prop it into position without the wind ripping it apart. It really was a two man job, but I had to do it on my own.

Josh, the kid we had working for us, hasn't been seen or heard from in a month. He might've decided he didn't want to do this kind of work. I'm not sure what the issue is, except that for the last couple of weeks, he was preparing for a school band trip to one of the bowl games. It was a big deal for him and they practiced on weekends, which is when I work on the house. So he wasn't available. I'm not sure why he wasn't available today.

The wind is tearing up our garden shed. After I sideswiped it with a backhoe back in the summer, it no longer had structural integrity. With the winds, the shed is being torn apart. I'm hoping it'll hold today and that maybe I can get some help tomorrow and do some repairs to make the shed stable again. It'll never been weather tight like it was, and it wont look good, but I hope to at least make it hold up to the wind.

The Nature of Home Building (Delays)

I wanted to reiterate something about the nature of home building (or any kind of construction). I've touched on it a few times during the process of building our house, and we experienced these things since before excavation. I'm seeing this now with a friend who is building another earth-home (specifically a Terra-Dome) nearby.

I wont mention names, because I'm not sure he'd like that. I will say that this guy and his family paid a visit to us to look at our house and to ask a load of questions. They've bought property about 45 minutes away from us. They had planned to build and should've gotten started by now, but buying the property and getting easements has taken a lot longer than anticipated. This is the nature of buiding. There are delays that you can't count on.

Evidently, as best I understand it, the people developing the area where my friend is building, haven't created the easements yet, so they really can't get trucks in to do a lot of work yet. They had hoped to have this done so that the could start, but the delays are hampering progress.In addition, they were holding off on buying some equipment until after getting this stuff resolved, but were approaching a deadline of when the price would go up and there'd be finance changes. So they've ended up buying now and will be storing equipment off-site. What a mess! And it's all because of delays.
There will be delays due to inspections. For instance, you might have pipe or electric work in a wall, and you want to due drywalling next. The problem is, you can't until the work inside the wall has been inspected. If the inspector doesn't get to your site for a couple of days, well, you can't drywall for a couple of days and so you have to work on something else.

If you plan on building, plan on delays. There will be delays because of weather. There will be delays due to illness (your's, a family member, or a contractor). There will be delays due to a death in the family (a family member, a friend, or that of a contractor).There will be delays due to bureacratic red tape, depending upon where you intend to build. There are these easement delays.

There are delays due to poor planning. This poor planning could be your poor planning, or it could be poor planning on the part of a contractor. Either way, you're going to have to deal with it.

Most of the delays are things you can't control. Get used to it.

Thanking Ceilon Aspensen

I want to thank Ceilon Aspensen for posting a link to our site on her site.
http://www.ceilon.com/earth_berm_house.php

I went through that site and there are a lot of good resources about bermed and underground type homes building

Rain water collection

In an entry in the guestbook, someone asked about rain water collection. We do plan for it. Basically, water runs downhill and so you just need to provide an easy path for it to go where you want, and away from where you don't want it.

Water from our roof (or any roof for that matter) will have dirt and/or other debris in it. So when we provide runoff of surface water on our roof, we plan for there to be contains that the water can be routed to, and the containers will have filters so that the water runs in, but we want to minimize the dirt and grit that enters. If the containers overflow or if the filter gets clogged, the water should continue running further on down the line to other containers or to the woods. Our woods need water during drought, so we have the ultimiate destination to be places in our woods.

The stored water can be used for the garden or to wash the car. I should point out too that our driveway will have a drain or two, so if we wash cars there, the water will run to the woods.

We have a well, so our water supply is very good and the water is clean and great to drink. It's better than the water in the city. I've never tasted better water.That said, if anything were to ever happen to that water supply, we might dig out part of our berm and put in a cistern for more water collection, and then invest in the right kind of filtering and purification so that this water supply could be potable. For now, collected water will be used for gardening and livestock.

More Berm On the East Side of the House

It was cold and windy today. I'm not sure what the windchill temp was, but I'm pretty sure it was below freezing. The wind was strong and the temperature never got above 37 degrees Fahrenheit. I took frequent breaks to warm up.

I had a couple of loads of dirt delivered yesterday so that I could move them next to the house today. I moved one load today and I have the other to move before the weekend.

This dirt is a little better than the last dirt I had delivered. The last stuff was much rockier, and on top of that, had big rocks in it. I took a photograph of the two piles, so that you can see the difference. Essentially, the rocky stuff is good for building the berm, but I want less rocky stuff next to the house itself, as I want to protect the waterproofing layer. The insulation helps with that.

I haven't been able to post the photographs yet, but I will. These were taken with a film camera. I was given one as a door prize at a recent hockey game, and I haven't had a chance to get the photos developed yet. When I do, I'll have digital versions posted to this site.
Anyway, around 17:00, I put the tractor away. It was time to either refuel or put it away and since I was cold and the sun was going down. It was nice when I got inside. Rachel had a fresh batch of Hoppin' John that she'd cooked up. We only get this stuff about once a year, and probably should do it more often. This being New Year's Day, tradition states you should have some black-eyed peas. I'm not sure why, but they're good, and as an ingredient of hoppin' john, the dish is great. She put sausage in it too, so that added to the flavor and it warmed me back up.My toes, ears and nose are still frozen though.