Barb Lutz' Green House

Long Overdue Update

2010-07-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been 3 1/2 months since I've written on my blog. I just got worn out from working full-time, taking care of my mom, and trying to finish things up around the house, especially the landscaping. There were just so many things left undone when we moved in.
One of the biggest things holding me up has been the damned cistern. I couldn't fill in the hole over it until I had connected the drain pipes from the south roof. Alex and I dug out trenches for the tubes in early May. Then it rained and rained, and rained so much that the trenches, which were dug in hard-as-a-rock clay, collapsed. I had temporarily set the tubes in the trenches to catch the rainwater, but hadn't glued them together because it started raining when I was ready to do that. Then it rained every weekend for six weeks or so. The picture below shows the trench I dug from the downspout to the cistern. Alex is working on the area where the overflow tube is going to go from the cistern along the south side of the house to the front yard rain garden (one of the last things which will be finished).
Alex got about halfway, working with a pickax before the rains came.

I bought two peach trees from McKay Nursery in Wisconsin. This is called the McKay peach tree and it's meant for zone 4. I had to use a post hole digger to dig holes to put them in, to loosen up the dirt so the roots would be able to spread out. The tree in the foreground never got any green on it, and I think it's dead. The one near the porch is thriving, though.

My goal for the summer of 2010 was to get all my perennials in, both fruit, vegetables, and flowers. I wanted to get the yard landscaped, all the raised beds in, and put a living fence put along the driveway to block out Olson Memorial Highway. I wanted to get walkways put in, especially the one from the front sidewalk to the front door, the porch built, and the patio and pergola done. Oh, and put in the living roof on the main house and the porch roof. And I wanted to be sure to have a full vegetable garden so I could do my canning this year. Also, I scheduled about 7 quite large social events at the house. Did I mention that I work full-time in a demanding job and I take care of my mom, who lives with me?
I got two asparagus beds put in. I planted strawberries along the retaining wall, and they should produce a good crop next year. I did get a garden in, but it hasn't been doing too well because it rains every weekend I have time to work in it. So the weeds totally took over and nearly drowned out everything.

I have four or five rhubarb plants, and quite a few raspberry plants, and a couple blueberry plants, all holding space in the back garden, awaiting transplant to a permanent location. I plan on putting them in some raised beds in the back, if I ever get the cistern hole filled in. I have about six or so grape vines, waiting for the pergola to be put in, so they can climb up it. I have about 8 lilac trees growing in pots, waiting for the front to be landscaped. My friend Jan gave me two great hostas about three months ago, but they are still in pots.

The cistern is still making a mess of the back yard because there's still a hole there messing everything up.

Pictures of Inside; back temp ramp completed

2010-04-14T20:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, the first picture below shows the living room before, then the third below shows current. The picture below shows the "before" view from the living room to the kitchen. The fifth picture down shows the current view.

Front bedroom/office. My sister was visiting, and we were doing things around the house.

Current view of kitchen from the living room through the dining room.

Mom's setting the table for a family get together.

The back deck at the start of the project. It rained the night before, so it's just mud. We're putting together pipes in the foreground for the railing.

My brother Cliff and sister-in-law Rosa. Cliff is sawing off a piece of cement that was in the way of where the pavers would go. I laid fabric on top of the soil, then we put some rock on top of that.

Then I put more fabric on top, so I could put sand on top of that. The stacks of pavers are VAST pavers, made of recycled tires. They look like bricks, but are very light. You buy them in 1 foot square grids, at $7.99 a square foot. Even though they are made here in Minneapolis, you have to buy them through a dealer like Natural Built Home, which is where I bought mine from. I just laid them down the way they came, but later I'll pull the bricks out of the grid and mix the colors up and lay them in a pattern that I've made up. These are permeable pavers, so my ramp is just temporary as built. I needed to get something in ASAP for my mom. The step off the deck (without a railing) was just not good for her. Later, I'll pick up the brick grids, and dig down 12-18" and put in a proper drainage base with a permanent edging.

Below is the sand on top of the top layer of fabric, ready for the pavers.

Half done! Everyone is taking a break.

Finished with the railing installed. Safe for Mom, and now my friend Teddy can come and visit me.

It only took the three of us five hours to put this in, so it wasn't too bad. It will take a lot longer to dig it out and put the proper base in, though.

Hot Water Problems

2010-03-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

I have a super-duper high efficiency on-demand hot water heater that is a backup to the solar hot water. After it was hooked up, but before we moved in, sometimes the hot water didn't work at all. It turns out there was some problem with the gas line being too short, so gas pressure didn't build up, so it didn't always work. Or something like that. So Steve Carlyle of O.C. Mechanical added a loop in the gas line to make it longer. Then it worked fine. Then, a couple weeks ago, my morning shower was warm, but not hot. That continued, so I emailed Steve, but he was out of town. I talked to him when he got back and he came over to look at it, but couldn't find anything wrong. Then I figured out the luke-warm showers started about the same time I installed a Waterpik Ecoflow Showerhead. I like Waterpiks and always have had one in every place I've lived. I like being able to hold the showerhead and rinse off more easily.
There were two problems with this Ecoflow, though. Number one, the shower spigot was way up near the ceiling, and when I installed it, I could barely reach it standing on my tiptoes. When I complained to Jeffrey (who is like 6'6" or something) that the plumber was an idiot for doing that, he admitted he had marked the spot for the spigot. Well, I've shrunk to 5'51/2" now, and I'd try to put the showerhead back in the holder, and wouldn't quite make it and twice if fell and banged on the tub, and the third time it fell and hit me on the head. The next day I went to Home Depot and bought and extender. I bought it right before I had a dinner party, and put it somewhere to get it out of sight, and then I lost it. But I found it tonight. Oh, the second thing that was wrong with the Ecoflow was that it said on the package it had a "pause" button. I like that, because, being green, I don't like to waste water. So I like to turn off the water while I wash my hair and lather up. If the water's on, it washes everything off while you're trying to lather up. Anyway, the pause button lowered the flow considerably, but didn't shut it off. Pause means stop temporarily to me. When I read the fine print, it never said it stopped the flow. It tapped danced around what the pause button really did. So when I bought the extender, I also bought a real pause button to hook on it. Then I figured out the third thing that was wrong. It was so "lowflow" that it wasn't triggering the water heater to come on. So I was getting the heat from the storage tanks, which has been about 104 degrees early in the morning, but the water heater wasn't kicking in. That's why the showers were warm, but not hot.
So tonight, I took out the Ecoflow, seen here below (see how close it is to the ceiling!)
and put back the Delta lowflow with an extender and the stop button. I'll get a different Waterpik that's not so lowflow. So I have this beautiful Waterpik Ecoflow I can't use. I'll give it to my sister Cathy; I remember the last time I visited her, she had such a lowflow contraption that it took five minutes just to get wet.

Then another problem with the hot water is that I keep the tank capped at 110 degrees. This is lower than even the LEED certification requires (120). But my mom doesn't want the water really hot because she's afraid she'll burn herself, that's why I keep it at 110. When the storage tanks are hotter than 110, though, the hot water heater won't kick on, it just lets the hot water pick up heat from the storage tanks, which are getting up to 160 degrees now in the afternoon, on a sunny day. They'll get even hotter as the sun gets hotter. So that's a problem. I need to let the tanks get hot so the heat lasts all night, which it has been doing. I'll need to talk to IPS and Steve of O.C. Mechanical to see if there is a fix for that.

Back Again Blogging!

2010-02-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

The months of October and November just wore me out and I needed to take a break from house things. Unpacking during the holidays was pretty stressful; it was difficult because this house is actually smaller than the one we moved from and doesn't have nearly the storage space. It's a good excuse to get rid of things we don't need.

I was so exhausted from trying to finish the house enough to move in, the move, and the unpacking that I couldn't work on any of the finishing until recently. I had a large dinner party last weekend, and used that as a motivation to get a few things started again. There is still so much finishing left to do that the thought of it was overwhelming. But in getting ready for the dinner, I was able to get motivated to accomplish a few things that I had been putting off, like getting most of the boxes out of the spare bedroom so it actually looks like a bedroom instead of a storage locker, and finishing the basement steps, which until two weeks ago were still raw wood protected by three layers of construction paper.

I have a few pictures to post, and will take more showing the mostly finished inside of the house. Pictures turn out very well when taken during the daylight hours, but I'm never at home during daylight except on weekends. I was so busy working on things this weekend, I forgot to take some pictures.

Below is my green shed, which can be used as a garage. I could put my Prius inside, as it will easily fit, but I'm using it mostly for storage right now. It doesn't have too much stuff in it anymore, but there are some furniture items I need to take to a charitable organization to get rid of. The garage, from Duramax, only came in green in this size, 12 by 20. Actually, it matches the roof quite well.

View from the front of the house.The porch railing that Jeffrey did. You can also see the cement steps. I'm putting in permeable pavers, VAST Pavers, instead of a cement sidewalk. I just ran out of time before the snow came.

Stuff stacked up in the basement. My mom can't handle clutter, so anything that doesn't have a place upstairs gets dumped in the basement. I'm working on putting in more shelves in the basement where I can to create more storage.

For a while, the main living area in the basement (my living room/kitchenette) and the office area down there were totally filled with furniture and boxes from floor to ceiling, front to back. It's getting better, but it will still be a long haul to getting rid of things to open everything up.

More soon.

We Are Moved In!

2009-12-01T17:52:00.000-08:00

A couple pictures first:

The kitchen countertops installed. It's Ceasarstone. Space for where the butcherblock countertop will go.

The sink and stovetop installed.

Better view of the sink.

A working sink!

My mom and I didn't get moved in until November 17th, a week later than planned. The house just wasn't ready. The interior woodwork took way longer to install than planned, and then had to be stained and finished after installation (my job). We didn't even come close to finishing the woodwork, even though I had taken a whole week off work. Most of the main level has stain and one coat of finish, but that's it. The basement woodwork is complete, but no stain or finish. I'll do that over the winter, I hope.

Right now, I'm just working on unpacking. Because I had so much to do at the new house, I did nothing to prepare for the move. Now I've moved many times in my adult life, having been in the Army and working for the Army as a civilian. I counted them up, and this is my 16th move. It was the worst one, just because I didn't have time to prepare. Also, we had two complete households in one house, and we moved both into a slightly smaller house with no garage. But enough complaining about the move. I couldn't have done it without the help of my family. My sister Cathy and husband Ned came for five days to start packing up the house. They would have stayed longer, but they had sold their house and were moving the week after I was. My brother Cliff and wife Rosa were real troupers. They worked on the house helping me stain for 7 straight days, and then helped pack things up and get moved for another two days. I couldn't have done it without them. My sister Pat took care of my mom in the hotel while we got the house stuff moved.

I had hoped to put in the front sidewalk before winter. The only way I could do that now is to put it in temporarily. Use the permeable VAST pavers, but not put in a full bed underneath. Just put in a few inches of gravel, put the pavers on top, and redo them in the summer. I have a contractor who will do it for $1000, but that's way too much money when I could do it myself for the cost of the aggregate. I really need to put in a sidewalk in the rear, so my mom can get in and out of the house/porch easily. Really, if I don't do something this weekend, the ground will freeze too hard to do anything.

The solar thermal is up and running as of yesterday. It was supposed to be operational a week ago, after weeks of IPS messing around with minor problems causing major delays. One of their technicians came out last Tuesday, did some work, and declared it operation. Unfortunately, she didn't turn on the switch that activated the entire system. So as the sun shone and the panels got hot and the tanks warmed up, the house got colder and colder over Thanksgiving weekend because the water in the tubes in the floor wasn't moving through the nice, hot storage tanks. On Sunday morning, when the house was 62 degrees, I called IPS, who said there was nothing they could do, it was an HVAC problem. That kind of pissed me off, since the HVAC (the boiler back-up system) worked FINE for three weeks until IPS activated the solar. Steve Carlyle of O.C. Mechanical came out and disconnected the solar on Sunday so I could have some heat and not let my poor mom freeze to death. More on IPS and the solar later.

The PV solar (the electric part) isn't active yet, though everything is in place. It takes ExcelEnergy a while to get going, and since I don't have battery storage and am connected to the grid, I have to wait for them to do their thing.

True Blue Electric, who did the electric for the house as well as the solar PV, has done a great job. I would recommend them to anyone who needs electric or solar PV. Same with O.C. Mechanical. Steve Carlyle has been a true professional and very competent. The guy who installed my bamboo flooring, Rob Haas, was also awesome. He said he did tile, too, and I had him do the bathrooms and kitchen (all but the floors). Now I think I did one heck of a job myself picking out the tile and making up the pattern I wanted, but Rob executed the plan in an outstanding manner. I'll post his contact info on the next blog. I don't have it handy, but he was really great.

Jeffrey Swainhart has been my project manager throught this project, and I couldn't have done it without him. I'll talk more about his contributions later. He's still working on some projects to complete everything I want done, like the rainwater cistern, the back porch, the pergola, and the garage.

Two Weeks to Go!

2009-10-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

I'm in a relative panic, as the move date is set for November 9th and many things still have to be done. Current status on critical areas:

The electric is about 85% completed. True Blue Electric has done a great job, and I would recommend them to anyone needing electrical work. It will take them one more day to finish things up, and I want to wait because of all the ceiling fans which are left to be installed. There are still too many contractors on site carrying ladders and other long objects which could easily smash the heck out of a ceiling fan.
All the floors are in and just have a little finishing work to be done (like sealing the grout in the kitchen and bath, and putting in transition pieces after the doors are installed).
Speaking of the DOORS, the interior doors were ordered through Home Depot. The order has been delayed twice by two weeks each time. I'm kind of running out of time. I'm promised they'll be here by the end of this week, but in the meantime, the carpenters hired to install them aren't available after this week.
The window finishing has been coming along. Jeffrey hired two carpenters to finish the windows, since it was taking so long. Paul and Bevin have been doing a great job, and are nearly done. I have all the finishing work yet to do (filling in the nail holes, staining, and varnishing).
The back landing and garage slab may be done this coming week. I need the back landing put in; the yard is a sea of mud.
I have the VAST Permeable Pavers for the front walkway, but it's been raining and is too muddy to dig the foundations out for them.
All the appliances have been ordered and are here or will be this week. The kitchen countertops should go in this week. I'm staining the new cabinets to match the old this weekend.
The boiler and hot water heater are in and working. Innovative Power Systems, who is doing the solar thermal, has had the panels on the roof since spring. Hopefully, they'll get them hooked up and working this week. They had to wait until the boiler and hot water heater were in.
The clay plastering is coming along. The upstairs level is done except for compressing the clay. The lower level has the first coat on in the bedroom and office, and both coats in the living room.
Landscaping is going to have to wait until next summer.

Below are the boiler and hot water heater (on demand), all hooked up. With all the valves, it looks like the mechanics in a sumbarine.

The bamboo floors upstairs.

Four Weeks to Go!

2009-10-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, things are really moving at a fast and furious pace! It looks like we'll get done by the move-in week of November 9th, if I can last for another 4 weeks. In the next week, the bamboo floors are going in, the boiler and hot water heater will be installed and WORKING (the house has been in the 40s the last four days), the electric will be nearly completed, the interior doors will arrive and get put in, the solar heating panels should be working, and the solar PV panels for the electricity should be on the roof and working.
I took the week off from work to work on the house this week. I wanted to finish the clay plastering, but it's too cold in the house! I had to stop plastering today, and will work on some other tasks until the heat gets turned on Thursday morning (my fingers are crossed).
It's been an interesting week so far. Jeffrey nearly impaled his thigh with a piece of wood caught in the table saw. I'm telling you, construction equipment is dangerous! Luckily, all he has is a really bad bruise. I took a bad fall today, the fourth one since I broke my wrist in May. I was outside in a sea of mud (my yard is bare dirt, and it snowed four inches Monday). My boots were caked with mud and I stepped on a wet plastic tarp, and that did it. Construction sites are dangerous! I've tripped over power cords snaking all over the floor, over sawhorses, and construction material strewn all over everywhere. I have made it a habit to put on my heavy work boots as soon as I get to the construction site, even if I'm not planning on doing any work. Just walking around there is hazardous to my health. My chance of tripping over something is a lot less when I have on heavy boots.
Here's a picture of my new stepladder that Jeffrey picked out for me. He wasn't satisfied with any at Home Depot, so he went to a store that had a much larger selection, and got me this one.
Quite a step up from the one below, which sent me flying backwards onto the basement floor when the ladder collapsed.

Here's the gypcret bathroom floor, painted with sealer before the tile floor was put in.

The kitchen floor was painted with sealer, also. You can see the cabinets a little better.

Below is the bathroom floor, tiled, but not grouted yet.

Here's the kitchen floor (porcelan tile from the ReUse Center) ready for the grout. Porcelan tile is very hard and can be used outdoors. I have enough left over so I can tile my 3 season porch, when it every gets built.

Here's all the boxes of bamboo flooring, ready to be installed. You have to have it in the house for at least a week to acclimate. The installers are coming tomorrow morning.

Okay, this next picture is amazing. This little tiny thing is the boiler. It will heat the whole house (easily!) should the sun not shine for days on end and the temperature go way below zero. It's about the size of a carry-on suitcase. It's called a slant fin boiler.

The water heater is even smaller. It's an "on demand" heater, very efficient. It reminds me of the hot water heaters in Germany. Since it's "on demand", it doesn't keep 40 or more gallons of water hot, day and night. The hot water will be mostly heated from the solar panels. The water heater won't go on unless it's needed.

This pile of snow proves how insulated my house is. This morning, I didn't see snow on any of my neighbor's houses. My north roof was still covered with snow, and late in the afternoon, it slid off and made a snow pile.

Week of September 14th

2009-09-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Bottom Line Up Front

I took a week's vacation time the week of September 14th to work on the house. I had planned to get most of the clay plastering done (wishful thinking!). I had put the first coat of clay plaster on nearly all the walls, upstairs and downstairs. That took me a good eight days or so (maybe ten?). I hadn't quite finished with the first application of Loma (the base coat), but was getting tired of no color. The color can be added to the finishing coat only (which saves money; some of the pigments cost more that the clay). So I decided to put on the finishing color to the upstairs office. Imagine my surprise when I came back the next day and the clay was cracked and falling off the wall where I had applied the second coat. Long story short, the cement wasn't sealed properly and the clay wouldn't stick. All the clay had to be scraped off all the walls, the walls had to be sealed, and I had to start over. That's why it took me so long to write this iteration, it was just too depressing to write about. Now, for those of you who know how long-winded I can get, skip down to the pictures if you don't want to hear the details.

The outer envelope of the house is made of Faswall. Faswall looks like a big concrete block from a distance, but is actually made of 85% wood chips and 15% portland cement. The mixture is pressed into forms 2' long by 1' deep by 8" high, with two square holes, just like a concrete block. Here's how they look:

You can see that they have quite a rough surface. I wanted to use clay plaster on the inside of the exterior walls. There were a few reasons I wanted to do this: I didn't want to use conventional sheetrock because of the paper and glue; clay is a green, natural product; and clay helps keep humidity levels more even by absorbing humidity when it gets high. At first I thought I could use the clay directly on the walls, but after getting the Faswall blocks, I could see that wouldn't work. I would have had to use 10 times as much clay to seal the holes in the walls as I would to just cover a normal, flat wall. Compounding that wass that the contractor who put up the walls, RockSolid Concrete, did such an awful job at putting up the block that I didn't have anything close to a smooth wall to work with. Some of the blocks were missaligned by 1/4 to 1/2 inch to the blocks above and below. (Now in the contractor's defense, I have to say that the Faswall blocks are difficult to work with, and I was forced to buy "kits" which did not have the right combination of blocks I needed. But he still did a lousy job.) I had to put a browncoat of cement on the walls 1) as a cheap way to fill the holes and 2) to smooth out the wall surface so I could apply the clay. Clay plaster is not a cheap way to go, and is quite labor-intensive, and that's on a perfectly smooth surface.

I hired two guys to do the browncoat. Neither had any experience working with cement, and neither did I, so all in all, it wasn't a very good job. I should have hired a professional. I was trying to save money, but the browncoat ending up costing me way more in labor costs than if I had hired a high priced professional, and that extra cost was before disaster struck with the clay application.

First of all, the walls still aren't close to being flat. They look flat from a few feet away, but if you lay an edge up against the wall, you can see how "not flat" they are. Again, that's what I get for trying to cut costs and not using a professional. The other problem is that when Alegandro, one of the guys, found out I was going to put clay plaster over the cement, he kept telling me it wouldn't stick unless he raised up the rock in the cement. I knew that wasn't true, because I had already tried applying the clay onto a very smooth portion of the cement and it stuck just fine, and I had taken an all day class on clay application (twice, I'm a slow learner) and I knew the clay didn't need much to grab onto. Despite my assurances that he didn't need to do this, he raised up the rock in the cement with a sponge and the clay had a hell of a surface to grab onto. Way too much of a surface, it turned out, as the Loma is only applied the thickness of a credit card. The raised surface came right through the clay.

So I took a mason stone and scrubbed off the too-rough surface. This proved to be a rather arduous task (since I only have one hand I can use), so I hired Heidi next door to do a couple rooms. Since I know nothing about concrete, I didn't realize we were removing the seal by scraping off the surface. Then I had a hard time applying the clay, because even though I sprayed the cement wall with water before I applied the clay, the cement immediately sucked the water out of the clay and dried it out right away. The clay was very difficult to work with, because it dried out so fast, and I couldn't merge the edges. It wasn't until I applied the second coat, though, that the first coat started falling off the wall.

I immediately called American Clay in New Mexico to try to figure out what the problem was. They were extremely helpful and immediately diagnosed the problem. They recommended that I use a sealer over the concrete and explained what the sealer was and how I could identify that I had the right product. It took me a couple hours of calling around to find a dealer that had the sealer I thought was right (there's no national brand of this sealer, I guess--it's called something different depending on where you live). The guy from American Clay said it had to look and smell like Elmer's Glue. There was only one dealer in the Twin Cities that had something, and I bought a five gallon bucket. The first thing I did after I paid for it was open it up and take a whiff. Yep, Elmer's Glue.

By this time it was late Thursday afternoon, and I was having the rain catchment cistern put in on Friday. I tested out the bonding agent (TK Tribond), let it dry, and applied the clay. It stuck. Then I had to go back to the walls with a putty knife and strip off all the clay, brush the walls with a dry scrub brush to get the last bits of clay off, clean the walls of all dust with a brush, and roll on the Elmer's Glue. And start all over again. It's just not very satisfying to put clay on a wall that I already put clay on, and took clay off, and cleaned and dusted off, and rolled bonding agent on.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that I'm much faster applying the clay, that the sealer stops the cement from sucking all the water out of the clay, making the application easier, and after five full work days, I'm pretty much caught up to where I was before. But that five days doesn't count all the time and money (paying others) to get the clay off and re-do everything. The other good news is that before I scraped the clay off the walls, I cleaned up the floor, and then swept up the clay to re-use. That's one good thing about dried clay--you just add water and it becomes clay again (a good reason not to use it in the shower or kitchen).

Moving on to another subject: the Cistern

Because I'm having so much of my yard as garden, I wanted a rain catchment system. I did a lot of research on line and came up with zippo in terms of trying to find a local contractor to put it in for me. So I just went out and bought a 1,400 gallon cistern and figured Jeffrey and I could figure it out. My brother Cliff and his wife Rosa came over to do the digging. Cliff is a master with a Bobcat. At first, he didn't think he would be able to dig a deep enough hole with a Bobcat, but it turned out he was able to do it. Here's Cliff in the Bobcat with Rosa in the bucket, lifiting the cistern up.

He ended up dragging it over to where the hole was going.

Digging the hole. The dirt went to fill spaces around the house which still didn't have enough dirt.

Rosa and Alegandro in the pit digging out the last part by hand.

Getting ready to drop the cistern into the hole.

Here's a picture of Gene Marault, who wanted to learn about clay plastering, and helped cover a wall in the basement. This was before I knew about the seal problem.

This is a couple days later. Gene is applying the bonding agent.

More Progress, but Time is Running Out

2009-09-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

So, the house is looking more like a real house. I'm not real thrilled about how it looks from the street, however. With such a huge roof and gable, there's too much empty space on the front. It's fine from the inside of the house; it's the outside that looks a little bleak. It will look better when the dumpster is gone and you can see the lower level windows, and when the door and extension between the upper and lower bay windows get painted dark green. Even though I didn't get the garden planted until mid-July, it has grown like crazy. I guess planting in pure compost really makes a difference. I think my dozens of butternut squash will ripen okay, and I can store them all fall and winter in the cold room, so I don't think I'll have to do a lot of freezing. If I do, though, at least I'll be able to do it in the new house. My mom's kitchen is smaller than most bathrooms. I've been canning corn and tomatoes from my brother's garden, and it takes twice as long because I have no counter space to work on at the old house. The tomato plants in my own garden have hundreds of tomatoes. The question is, will it stay warm enough for them to ripen? A few are starting to turn orange, so maybe there's hope.

The next four pictures are in reverse order. My first attempt at clay plastering. Shown below is the north wall of the lower level bedroom completed. The clay plastering is a nightmare compared to the class I took. In class, we applied the clay to wallboard. I'm applying it to a brown coat of cement over the Faswall bricks. The Faswall bricks are not uniform. Even if I had had a competent contractor to build the Faswall block walls (which I did not), the imperfections in the bricks would have still caused problems. I made a big mistake in hiring amateurs to apply the brown coat to the Faswall. First, because of their inexperience, it cost over 50% more to get it put on, since I paid by the hour instead of the job. So instead of saving money, I lost money. Then, the parge coat was very uneven and it's taking me forever to apply the clay so it's somewhat smooth. I'm spending twice as much money (at least) on clay, because I'm having to put it on way thicker that I would on wallboard. The thicker it goes on, the harder it is to smooth out evenly without leaving trowel marks. Then the other thing is that the cement base just sucks the water out of the clay. Instantly. So the clay dries immediately, and it's difficult to get adjoining sections to blend together smoothly. I've been spraying the heck out of the cement right before I apply the clay, but it still dries out immediately. The only good thing about the clay is my labor is free.

Starting my first clay plastering with a small section. You can see how I wet the wall down underneath.

Before plastering.

Wow, the front steps are finally in!

The south yard is a mess!!! Heidi and Devin next door were putting in my retaining wall, and Eberhard Construction was pouring concrete to fix and raise the window wells, and build the front door landing and stairs. The easiest thing would be to put a cement sidewalk down to the street, but want to use VAST pavers instead. VAST pavers look like regular brick, but they are made out of recycled tires. They are installed spaced apart, and are a permeable surface to decrease rainwater runoff.

Heidi and Devin next door are finishing the wall.

Wall is almost complete.

Close-up of the stucco wall pattern.

View of the house from the southeast.

Kitchen cabinets installed. Jeffrey had to assemble some matching ones to fill in the gaps and custom make holders for the wall ovens and the dishwasher.

My Chaska teaching buds, Lucy, Janelle, and Ann, came out to the house to see it and then we had a picnic.

Time is Running Out

My construction loan was initially for one year, which ended September 1st. I was able to get a three-month extension, but I can only get one of those. So December 1st is my drop dead date to get most everything completed. My construction loan turns into a mortgage at that point, and I can’t get any more money from the construction loan.

Jeffrey and I did an assessment of where we are at in terms of completion of what is left to do, and it wasn’t pretty. Although things have been progressing at a pretty good pace for the last couple months, we lost time while I was injured, and we never made up for time we lost last fall and winter with contractor problems. We’re both going to have to put in some serious time to finish up. I had hoped to move in by November 1st, but I doubt that will happen. There are only a few more things which MUST be completed to get a certificate of occupancy, and we’ll focus on those. The main one is completing the HVAC. White Bear Mechanical went bankrupt in June. The former owner promised to complete the job, but hasn’t come through, so we’re looking for a new contractor to finish the job. We must have one working bathroom, and that won’t be a problem. The sidewalk from the front door to the street has to be in. That’s one of my projects, with VAST permeable pavers.

Before my mom and I can move in, though, the main level must be totally completed. The lower level, where I’m going to live, doesn’t have to be 100%, but my mom’s area must be 100%. She couldn’t’ take the disruption of ongoing finishing work. Moving out of the house she’s lived in for 40 plus years will be disruption enough. So Jeffrey and I are focusing on the interior window framing, the interior doors (both Jeff’s), and the bathroom tiling (mine), as well as the clay plastering and painting (both mine). I’m taking a week off to work on the house next week, so we’ll see how the progress moves along.

August 19th Update

2009-08-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the kitchen cabinets being stored in the dining room. After 18 months of storage in my garage, I was finally able to move them over to the house. Jeffrey has temporarily taken off his Construction Management hat (http://www.swainhart.com/) and put on his carpenter's hat, and is going to do the kitchen for me. Buying the cabinets used from the ReUse Center saved me a ton of money, as new "greenly made" cabinets are quite expensive. The preliminary estimates I had gotten were between $20,000 and $25,000 for the kitchen. The used cabinets I bought, which are oak and in very good shape, cost about $1,600. Jeffrey is having to do quite a bit of cannibalizing to make the cabinets fit properly into the kitchen. He's having to build sections from scratch to house the wall ovens and dishwasher. He's a very smart guy, and very creative. He's making everything fit together really well, and saving me a bundle in the process. Finally, we were ready to do the tubing for the radiant in-floor heating on the main level. Below shows the tubes installed, looking from the living room back through the dining room to the kitchen.

Below are the tubes in the living room, and below that, the finshed poured Gypcrete floor.

Below are the tubes looking back through the bathroom hallway to the back bedroom, and below that, the Gypcrete floor over the tubes. One of the very last things I'll do is put on a bamboo floor over the Gypcrete.

I got my garden in very late, as I was planning on doing it the first week in June, but because of my injuries, didn't get it in until mid-July. I'm amazed that everything grew so fast and I'm actually going to get a full crop of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, and cantelope.

One of the best things to happen was the start of the stucco. Although the manufacturors of the FasWall say stucco can be applied directly to the FasWall blocks with no wire mesh, my stucco contractor, Everlast Stucco, didn't want to do that. He would have had to put the wire mesh on the wooden gables, but he also put it on the blocks, which was fine with me. The two pictures below show the wire mesh installed.

Finally, the brown coat (yes, I know it's grey in color) is on. I had just sprayed it before I took the picture. I'm spraying the entire house every day for 10 days to cure the brown coat so it won't crack. Everlast Stucco will come back next Monday to apply the stucco finish. The outside is actually looking like a real house now.

Progress for July

2009-07-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

Finally, the roof is completed and the 9 solar thermal panels are installed. Most of the basic landscaping has been completed and there are no piles of dirt anymore. There's still quite a bit of work to be done on the outside. The stucco job should begin next week or the week after. The front step landing and steps will be done soon. Some work has to be done on the south side window wells, which have sunk because they weren't installed properly by RockSolid Concrete. I'm putting a short retaining wall on the south side, near the property line, since I had to lower the side yard by about 2 1/2 feet due to errors in elevation by the architect. Otherwise, my basement windows on the south side would have been buried 2 1/2 feet below grade, letting in no air or light at all.
I finally was able to return to work at the end of July after my injury working on the house. I will be in physical therapy for another two months, and won't be able to do a lot of the finishing work I had intended to do. I'm still hoping to do some of it, but it will be difficult with only one hand.
I was going to put in a porch roof over the front door, extending to the bay window, but scaled that down due to budget considerations. Here's the mini-roof over the bay window.

I used Dens-Armor sheet rock, which is paperless, instead of the conventional stuff which has glue and cardboard on one side. It costs about twice as much, but is very mold-resistant, and has nothing to attract bugs. It also doesn't burn. It's a very green product.

This view is looking up at two of the three skylights in the stairwell, which will let in light as well as provide venting for hot air out of the house.

This is the view from the living room looking back towards the back bedroom, with the upstairs bath in the foreground.

Below is taken pretty much from the same spot, but looking through the interior window, which lets in light, through to the rear door.

The front bedroom/office, which will have glass french doors to open the living room up.

The inside looks a lot different with the walls in. Hopefully, the next update will be sooner than later.

A Slow June

2009-06-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

June was a slow month. I was severely injured when I was in the basement nailing foam insulation to the basement ceiling and my wooden stepladder collapsed under me. I fell backwards, bouncing off the wall, and landed on the cement floor with my hands behind me, instinctively trying to break the fall. My left wrist and lower arm were literally shattered. The surgeon used bone cement to glue the fragments back together, as well as inserting a long plate holding the bigger pieces together with a dozen screws. There are also three pins which hopefully will be removed soon. The cast presses on them and it hurts when I move my arm too much. I'll permanently lose some mobility in the wrist, but hopefully will get back most of the use of my fingers. I still feel very lucky. It could have been so much worse.
Some pictures: my brother Cliff removed the driveway running through the back yard, and this picture was taken after I had started filling in the hole. I was just starting to get the hang of the Bobcat before the accident.
Here's the asphalt waiting to be picked up to be recycled. You can see the work Cliff did backfilling around the front window wells.

Here are the solar heat storage and heat transfer tanks.

Finally the sheet rock has been started! This is standing in the living room, looking towards the rear. The kitchen is on the right, the master bedroom windows on the right.

This is a view from the kitchen to the living room on the right. The office/guest bedroom is on the left, behind the dining room.

The front before backfilling. See the second picture above and current view to see the backfill.

The north window wells being installed.

The north window wells installed. I did the backfill myself with the bobcat.

The pots contain all the plants I ordered, mostly fruit plants. We are WAY behind on the landscaping.

More plants. Many I planted from seed. and they are still sitting there, waiting to be planted. The garden behind the pots is my neighbors'.

This is the wooden stepladder. If you have one, get rid of it. They are not safe! When I tell people how I was injured, everyone has their own horror story about stepladders, many worse than mine.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2009-06-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

Although this is the same date as my last published blog, I wrote that one on May 15th, while I was in New Orleans on business. I was waiting for more to happen, but it never did, and time got away from me.

So today is June 5th, and I guess I should talk about the ugly. I've done a lot of light construction work in the past, and lots of work on ladders. I've never been seriously injured that I can remember. But that changed when I had a wooden stepladder collapse under me last Saturday at the house. Alagandro and I were nailing solid foam insulation on the underside of the first floor, to keep the heat from the radiant in-floor tubing radianting upwards. We both were on 5' ladders, standing between the rafters. I was on the fourth rung or so, and when I took a step down, the ladder collapsed. It shattered, and there wasn't time to do anything but fall. I fell backwards from about five feet up, landing on both wrists and my rear end. My left wrist was shattered; the surgeon said the bones looked like corn flakes. My right wrist was badly sprained, but not broken. My back hurt pretty badly, but turned out not to be broken, either. Overall, I think I got off pretty easily. I hit my head pretty hard on the wall. I could have broken my neck or back, or both arms. The wrist is pretty bad, but things could be a lot worse.

One good thing is that all the pain medications have helped my back pain. I'm hoping I'll be able to go back to work next week.

Progress on the house has been moving along. The basement floor has been polished, the sheetrock will be hung this week and next, and we have a contract for the stucco.

My brother, Cliff, and his wife Rosa, are going to help me with landscaping this weekend, and I can finally get some plants in. My injury will cause things to slow down, but not stop.

May Progress from May 15th

2009-06-05T03:13:00.000-07:00

The problem with the roof and solar panels hasn’t been fixed yet, so I’m still unhappy with that. I’ve been assured this is going to be fixed, so stay tuned.

I’ve been away for the past two weeks on business, but was home for last weekend. My brother Cliff and his wife Rosa came over to the house for a few hours to help me with some landscaping. I have Cliff’s bobcat there temporarily. He moved some pallets and equipment around which were in the way, and finished filling in the place where the driveway had been. When my lot was adjoined to the Quinces’ lot next door, the owner put in a large horseshoe driveway which went around the perimeter of the property. I took out the part of the driveway which cut through my backyard, and will use what’s left of the driveway along the north side of the property. Part of the driveway was taken out when we dug the hole for the basement, and the asphalt driveway as a whole is not in that good of shape. It was old anyway, and all the heavy equipment on it didn’t help. But it is still a useable driveway, and eventually I’ll replace the asphalt with permeable pavers.

I’m told that Innovative Power Systems (IPS) is busy installing the solar apparatus in the basement mechanical room. The schedule for now is that Concrete Treatment, Inc. is polishing the basement cement floor. This will give it a finished look and make it much easier to keep clean. I’ll put area rugs on top in some places, I’m sure. But I won’t have the problem of stepping out of bed onto a cold cement floor, because the floor will always be warm in the winter, due to the radiant in-floor heating.

Once the basement floor is done (hopefully Monday or Tuesday), we will begin hanging the sheetrock. I originally was going to use magnesium oxide (MgO) board, which will not mold. There were a couple things that made me forgo the MgO board in favor of paperless sheetrock. The cost was the big item: MgO board costs about 4 times as much as conventional sheetrock. Although the U.S. has plenty of gypsum mines (that’s what sheetrock is made of), it has no magnesium oxide mines; they are all in Asia, mostly China. It’s not very “green” to use materials shipped halfway around the world. Instead, I’m using DensArmor, a paperless sheetrock. It’s the glue and cardboard that make conventional sheet rock undesirable, because the paper burns, grows mold, and it and the glue are food for bugs. DensArmor has a fiberglass mesh to hold it together instead of cardboard. It’s more expensive than conventional sheetrock, but I’d rather not have the VOCs from the glue, and the potential for mold.

Last weekend I finished filling in the north side of the house, where new window wells had been put in. One of the things that were left out of the building plans were the window wells. RockSolid Concrete put three cement window wells on the south side, but since they weren’t properly set on footings, they sank when the ground thawed (they were poured in the winter) and have pulled away from the house. Two of them aren’t too bad, but the third one has pulled away from the house quite a bit. RockSolid Concrete won’t fix them, and I won’t pay for them, so I guess I’m stuck with trying to fix the problem. The metal window wells on the north side, next to the driveway, look really good. Jeffrey Swainhart ordered them and installed them. They are close enough to the house to leave enough driveway there to use for my car. I built the house as far to the north as I could, to take advantage of the sun on the south side.

I’m still hoping to be able to get the house finished by the end of the summer. There are some big projects which still need to be done. I will be applying the clay plaster to the walls, and need to take a couple weeks vacation time to do that. The radiant in floor heating has yet to be installed on the first floor, mostly because the sheetrock hasn’t been hung yet. Once the sheetrock and floor are completed, we can start doing things like hanging doors, installing kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and doing the finishing work around the house. Although the house is wired and has plumbing installed, all the fixtures will need to be put in, and that can’t be done until the sheetrock and first floor are done. Nothing on the outside of the house is finished except the roof. The outside has to have stucco put on and I’m not sure how I’m going to finish the gables yet.

I’m hoping to accomplish a lot of landscaping this weekend. My sister Cathy, the landscape architect, is in town, staying with our mom while I’m away. I’ll have a full day with her to lay out the landscaping plan. I already bought quite a few plants, perennials, because the nursery’s stop selling things by the end of May. So I wanted to get my asparagus, fruit trees, raspberry canes, etc. before they disappeared, not to be seen until next spring. I have containers all over my mom’s yard and porch, full of plants. I’m hoping to get some of my plastic lumber soon and start laying out some raised beds. I still have a big pile of dirt in the back, but I think I can start putting some things in on the south side and work around the pile. Another thing to do that I have forgotten: I need to put a retaining wall along the south side, since I had to lower the elevation there. It’s about a two and a half foot drop from my neighbor’s yard. I lowered the elevation because the basement windows, which were supposed to be at ground level, are two feet below the ground.

More updating later…

Landscaping, Solar Panels

2009-04-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

The solar panels are finally going on the roof, which was just finished last week. There are eight panels here, but there are supposed to be nine. Right now, nine don't fit. Unbelievable as it may seem, with all the planning that went into this roof design, and all the tens of thousands of dollars I've paid to designers, consultants, roof framers, and solar providers, my custom roof isn't the correct size for the solar panels it was designed for. I don't want to use this blog to name names and place blame, but I am extremely unhappy about this. How could this have happened? It's a custom designed roof!

I now realize why I couldn't find a builder to build this house. Builders who build houses have a limited number of plans they will use. They've made all the mistakes, and have these plans down pat. They won't deviate from them because too many things can go wrong, so they stick with what they know. I've tried to keep the negative out of this blog, but this is just one more thing in a long line of mistakes which have happened on this project. It's all a matter of people not paying attention to detail, and not double and triple checking figures. Unbelievable.

The problem is supposed to be fixed, so we'll see what happens. The mistake occured when we had 4 foot wide panels, and there is more space between the panels than the designer allowed for. Plus the roof framers were not given a figure that said, "you must allow this much room for the panels," so they took some liberties when framing the roof that took a few inches away, when there was absolutely no margin for error.This is my brother in his bobcat, backfilling the holes around the front window wells. It was supposed to rain, but luckily, it held off. A backhoe would have been better for this job, but the bobcat was free.

Here Cliff is taking out a little more of the side yard. I'll put a short retaining wall in along the property line with my neighbor. I had to bring the side yard down a bit when I realized the elevation on the drawings was incorrect and the tops of the basement windows were not at ground level, as the drawings showed, but a good two feet below ground level. I want light and air to get into the basement.

You can see below where the retaining wall will be--off the to the left.

Here's Cliff breaking up the driveway.

All the asphalt is piled in front for now, and will all be recycled. Old asphalt is melted down and mixed with new. After all, asphalt is mostly pure petroleum, and doesn't deteriorate for hundreds of years.

New Roof, Masonry in Front, Interior Wall Work

2009-04-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

My green roof is nearly completed. A close up where you can see the seams. The solar panels will be clipped to the seams.

This is how the roof was delivered.

Parging the inside of the exterior walls. A brown coat of cement was applied to seal the walls and provide a smooth surface for the clay plaster. You can see the obvious difference when the Faswall blocks are covered.

The front walls nearly completed.

Below, the walls and window wells are complete except for the porch under the door. I need to fill in the part under the door with dirt, halfway up, to provide stability before Eberhard puts the cap (front porch) on the top to complete it.

Eberhard Construction put in a small retaining wall to hold the hill up to the front door, and put in one large window well in front of the two front basement windows. Eberhard had a great crew and did a very professional job.

Here, the blocks were delivered and readied for the walls.

Windows, Interior Framing Complete

2009-04-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the view from the basement bay window. To the right in the middle window, you can see the black silt fence in front. The pile of dirt to the left of that will be no higher than the top of the silt , so there will be a lot of light coming in from the front. This is why I wanted the hill dug out in front, to expose the windows in front. I have been living in a basement with tiny windows for the past four years, and will be in heaven when I will have natural light and be able to OPEN the windows for fresh air. Mom will be living on the handicapped accessible first level.

This view shows the installed bay windows in front. The windows to the right of each are bedroom windows upstairs and downstairs. Below is my pride and joy, the cold room, which is along the back of the basement behind the laundry room. There are no heating tubes in the floor underneath, and the walls will be insulated. With no heat, and outside walls on 2 sides, I'm hoping to keep it under 60 degrees in the summer, and 45 to 50 degrees in the winter. I'll store root vegetables, squash, and apples there in the winter, as well as all my home canned goods.

This is the view from the front of the basement to the rear, looking through the bathroom and laundry room to the cold room. The black pipes are the plumbing. You can see that there is a lot of natural light coming into the basement.

Below are the two large heat storage tanks for the solar heat. Innovative Power Systems (IPS) is ready to start installing the solar heating system, but we still have to do some work on the inside, and the metal roof needs to go on. The roofer was supposed to start a month ago, but has come up with various excuses for the delay, which I'm not happy about. Hopefully, we'll have a roof (and it's GREEN, for the green house) in the next two weeks.

Here, you can see the upstairs front bedroom framed in, looking through the kitchen and dining room.

Below, the basement bedroom framed in. This photo doesn't show it, but the windows have been put in and let in just as much light as if it was above ground.

I thought I had more up-to-date photos, but I found I didn't, so I'll take some more this weekend. Most of the rough-ins have been done for the electric, the air exchange system and AC, and the plumbing.

Today, Jeffrey picked up a small electric cement mixer I had bought. Devin, my neighbor, is going to do the majority of the parging of the interior walls, which has to be completed before I can apply the clay plaster. It's a hard, messy job. The parging is just a thin application of cement to smooth out the walls and fill in the holes in the surface of the FasWall. Because it is cement with a rough surface, the clay plaster can be applied directly to it. If I used the plaster on the interior wallboard walls, I'd have to apply a special sandy surface first to get the clay to stick to the sheet rock. I will probably paint the interior walls, and just have the clay plaster on the interior of the outside walls. Clay plaster is expensive, and a lot of work to apply.

We are planning on having the rough-in inspections next week for the electric, plumbing, HVAC, and framing. After that, we'll get the sheet rock hung, and then finish the first floor radiant infloor heating installation.

Radiant Tubing, Basement Floor, Upstairs Framing

2009-02-22T22:33:00.000-08:00

After making some changes in the contracting, progress is being made. Jeffrey Swainhart of Swainhart Construction Services has been my right hand man on this project, and he has lined up some great contractors to finish this project. Lon Lichliter of Lichliter Plumbing has the plumbing roughed in, and Gardner Construction stepped in to pour the basement floor and will be doing some other work on the outside. White Bear Mechanical has started installing the radiant infloor heating. The two pictures below show the plumbing rough-in.

The two guys in the picture above are from Gardner Construction. I'm facing the rear of the house, where the bathroom and laundry room will be. The plumbing is there, and the guys are preparing the basement floor for a gravel bed. The truck below is full of gravel.

The guys are shoveling the gravel down a chute through the basement window.

After the gravel was put down, 4" foam insulation was laid down on top.

The foam floor and the temporary propane furnace above it.

The tubing in the front basement bedroom.

All the tubes are hooked up to a central point. There will be two heating zones in the basement, and two or three upstairs (I can't recall right now).

This shows the north side of the basement, looking to the front bedroom.

The family room in the basement.

The upstairs bathroom framed in.

The front upstairs bedroom framed in.

The concrete floor poured in the basement, covering up the tubes. This view is from the front south side, looking back through the bathroom to the laundry room. The "cold room" for storing canned goods and produce from the garden, will be at the very rear and under the steps. There are no tubes in the concrete floor where the cold room will be.

Below is the other side (north) of the basement, looking to the rear. There will be quite a large mechanical room there, which will hold the boiler, hot water heater, and the two 200 gallon tanks. The tanks will store heat from the solar heating panels on the roof.

Below, I'm standing at the rear of the mechanical room looking east, to the front of the house.

Here are the ends of the tubes, with the rest buried in concrete. The tubes were tested for 48 hours with high pressure to make sure there where no leaks (this was before the concrete was poured, of course).

The next step will be repeating this process of laying tubing upstairs, after the framing upstairs is completed, which should be this week. A type of gypsum floor underlayment, Gyp-Crete, will be poured on top of the tubing upstairs, and then a finished floor (bamboo, most likely), will be installed on top of the tubes.

January Progress

2009-01-31T20:38:00.000-08:00

January was a long month. I had problems with contractors and contracts and I was pretty discouraged for a while. But I think Jeffrey and I have things pretty much figured out, and we have a schedule for getting the rest of the work done. Here it is February, and the house is still not closed in, which is frustrating. Although many things have held the project up, the weather has been the worst single factor for the past six weeks. It has just been too cold to do a lot of the work to close the house up. In spite of the cold, though, the skylights were put in the last week in December, and most of the windows are in. The front has no windows installed yet, but that is because the front of the house hasn't been backfilled and there are forms in place for concrete for the front window wells and retaining wall. It's been too cold to pour concrete. The forms are interfering with the ability to use ladders to assist in installing the windows on the main floor, since it's a second story in front. I'm also very hesitant to put a bay window in where concrete is going to be poured and large metal forms will have to be removed after the pour. Having a large expanse of glass only a foot or so away from a pour boom and the metal forms just doesn't seem like a good idea. We'll get the windows in when there is no danger of them getting smashed by equipment.

The next three pictures show the skylights being put into the roof. The three 3' by 4' skylights are in the roof above the stairs to the basement. These will let natural light into the center of the house, and interior windows in the stairwell walls will let that light into the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. The center skylight is operable, so I will be able to open it and a fan in the stairwell will draw warm air up the stairwell and will vent it out the roof, acting like a whole house fan.
Here's Jeff cutting out the roof to put in one of the skylights. The roof framers, Jim Klem Construction, did a very professional job in putting on the roof, and made it easy for Jeff to cut the opening for the skylights. Not a good shot, but below is Jeffrey and Devin (shown) placing the skylight into the framed opening.

Jeffrey and Devin from a distance.

One of the skylights in place.

A view towards downtown Minneapolis. Almost exactly in the center of the picture, you can barely see one building in the skyline. The rest of the skyline is behind the two pine trees on the left side.

Heidi and Devin's chicken coop, next to their garage.

A view from the roof to the west. The big pile of dirt is there to backfill the north side of the house, which is still all dug out waiting for forms for concrete window wells.

The temporary propane furnace hanging from the ceiling (so the floor can be finished) in the basement. It thawed out the basement floor and the plumbing has been roughed in. Jeffrey is going to get the basement floor insulation in this week, and then White Bear Mechanical will come and set the tubes for the radiant in floor heating. Hopefully, the concrete floor for the basement will get poured by the end of next week (by Friday the 13th)

Here are the windows on the north side. The kitchen is to the right (rear), the dining room window in the middle, and the guest bedroom/office window in front.

The rear (west side) of the house. The two windows on the right are the master bedroom windows. The double-hung window on the left is in the kitchen.

Not Much Progress During the Holidays

2008-12-30T20:54:00.000-08:00

The pace of this project has been slower than I ever could have imagined. From when this project started in August, I would guess that I've averaged one full workday per week of actual work from my contractors. Every week, I've gotten promises on what is going to be accomplished, and most of the time it doesn't happen anywhere near the timeframe I was given. I don't understand the contractor mentality. I've heard the same story from every single person I've spoken to: contractors NEVER do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it. Period.

Jeffrey made a door jam for my back door, the one I bought last winter at the ReUse Center. I bought the door for $100. I didn't realize what a good deal I had gotten until I priced entry doors. Entry doors with glass windows, especially fancy ones like this one, cost around $2000 new. It's perfect for the back door, as the stair tower is designed to let in a maximum amount of light. Here it is:
I didn't have my camera on site today, but Jeffrey and Devin have been busy putting in windows. The windows arrived on Monday, December 22nd. Jeffrey got them into the house, but the weather turned extremely cold (minus 19 on Tuesday), and it was just too cold to work outside. Then came the Christmas holiday weekend, which I didn't expect anyone to work on. But they got busy yesterday, and got 5 of the 19 windows in. They did a couple more today, and I think they are working tomorrow, also.

Joe Haaf of RockSolid Concrete has the basement floor covered with commercial electric blankets to get the basement floor thawed out. We need that done to get the floor leveled, a bed of sand put on top of the dirt, the pex tubing (for infloor radiant heat) set up, and the plumbing in before we can pour the basement floor.

First, though, the roof has to be finished. The roofers were supposed to put a waterproof covering on it last week, but it was too cold. This week, they gave their workers off. So we have to wait until next week to get the roof closed in. There are very large gaps everywhere due to the design of the roof, and even though we had tarps on it, it was letting in streams of water from the rain and melting snow last Saturday, when it was so warm out.

Everything is dependent on something else. The metal roof can't go on until the skylights go in. The solar panels can't go on until the metal roof is on. The basement floor can't be done until the house is closed up, which means the finished roof has to go on and the windows and doors all have to be in.

Joe is still working on the cement work as best he can in the winter. The three south window wells are done, and he's working on the front ones and the front retaining wall this week. It has to be above 10 degrees above zero to pour concrete, and it's supposed to be pretty cold this week.

More Progress: Some window wells, water/sewer hooked up

2008-12-15T23:13:00.000-08:00

This was taken on the morning of December 14th. Plastic has been put in the windows, and the driveway has been cleared for the first time since the groundbreaking.

Joe is operating the backhoe and clearing the dirt from the front. The final result will be the the two windows in the lower level will be exposed. A retaining wall goes between the front door and the bay window. This will allow the grade to go up to the front door, and still leave the two front basement windows mostly exposed.

Above and below: Joe shaping the front.

Below, the official site for the water hookup.

Rudy is in the back backfilling up to the house. We needed to do this so we can easily access the back door.

Below, Joe is taking some of the dirt from the front and backfilling the south side around the window wells.

Below, the window wells after the forms were removed. Instead of putting the top of the windows over a foot below ground, I'll take the grade down a foot or so on the south side yard. The window wells are really good and much better than metal ones which I could have installed. There are drains in each one which go down to the foundation, where a drainage system takes the water away.

Below, Pete's Water and Sewer at work digging out the ground for the installation of water and sewer pipes. The ground was frozen solid and they had a hard time digging the trench from the house to the water and sewer hookups.

It was a deep hole for the sewer hookup.

Below is a smaller hole for the water.

The water and sewer pipes go under the foundation. You can see the plastic grey sewer pipe and the copper water pipe on the right.

Taken about a week ago, the concrete forms for the south window wells. The concrete had been poured. Stuff (chemicals) can be added to concrete to make sure it cures in weather down to 10 degrees above zero.

So things are progressing. The temperature dropped from 37 degrees yesterday morning to minus 7 this morning. It's supposed to get down to -18 degrees tonight and stay cold all week. The windows will be delivered end of this week or early next week. Once we get the windows and doors installed, we can bring in a temporary heater and heat the basement enough to do the floor. Everything is uphill from there.

Finally, a Roof!

2008-11-28T21:34:00.001-08:00

This was on Monday, November24th. The final pour had been done on Friday, and the house is ready for the roof. A better view of the roof trusses below.

The roof is actually going up! This was from Wednesday. The trusses are all in place, and the front and back gables are done.

A view from the south shows the roof line. The thermal solar panels will be at the top of the roof, then there will be a 5 foot wide living roof, and the the PV solar panels will be at the bottom.

Different angles on the roof due to the different solar panels.

The picture above and below show the south roof lines. The solar thermal panels on top will provide the hot water for the radient in-floor heating system (as well as the hot water for the house) and the solar PV panels at the bottom will provide most of the electricity.

Jim Klem and crew are putting on the plywood sheeting.

First Floor Walls Nearly Completed

2008-11-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

When I last wrote three weeks ago, I was frustrated with the progress. I still am, but things are starting to take shape. It looks like we'll be putting on the roof next week. Joe is planning on putting in the window wells and backfilling the foundation next week also. The ground is already pretty frozen because of the cold weather we've been having. Any hopes of landscaping I had are long gone for this year.

The waterproofing below ground is complete here, and the first floor walls have started going up.

This is the Platon dimpled membrane which goes on the outside of the house, below grade. The dimples go next to the wall, creating an air pocket which lets the walls breathe.

Another view of the waterproofing.

The dimpled membrane applied, and the backfill started.

It's starting to look like a house.

The basement stairs.

The last pour for the Faswall. Next step is finishing the backfill and getting the roof on.

Waterproofing Below Grade

2008-11-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

The waterproofing of the house below grade is in progress. A parge coat of sand and cement was applied to fill in the holes in the Faswall and provide a smooth surface to apply the Thoroseal, the waterproofing coat. Thoroseal is waterproof but vapor permeable, allowing the walls to breathe. A dimpled membrane, with the dimples next to the wall to provide an air pocket, will finish off the waterproofing. Then we can backfill. Joe has gotten a late start on the parging, and the pictures below were taken Sunday, October 26th. It actually snowed in the morning, and was sleeting when I stopped by the site at about noon. There were three guys working on a Sunday. Joe said he was trying to catch up.

Hard to see, but it was actually sleeting when this was taken, that's why the tarps are there.

All in all, though, it’s been a frustrating two weeks on the house. It has been absolutely beautiful weather all week, and very little progress on the house. Combined with last week’s lack of progress, nothing looked that different from my blog two weeks ago. The rest of the first floorboards were put on, and the outside walls had a parge coat of cement applied, which needed to be done before waterproofing. Otherwise, the site looks the same. I stopped over the past two days after work, and Joe Haaf was there, starting to build up the walls himself. He had a day laborer pre-position the blocks on the first floor, so that will make the stacking easier.

My worry is that the waterproofing coat has to be applied twice, and both times the weather must remain above 40 degrees for the next 24 hours. It’s already November!! We’re going to run out of warm nights.

We can’t backfill the dig around the house until the waterproofing and window wells are completed. We can’t do the water/sewer until the backfill is completed. There’s a sequence to everything. First, the water/sewer goes in, then the plumbing rough-in, then the roof has to be up on and the windows and doors installed to completely close in the house. Then we’ll prepare the basement floor for the cement pour, lay down the pex tubing for the radiant in-floor heating, and then pour the basement floor. Once the basement floor is set, we can start working on installing all the items in the mechanical room which will make the solar heat work. Then we can work on laying out the pex tubing on the first floor and pouring the gypcrete over it. Next will be the framing of the walls, the hanging of the magnesiacore (green substitute for sheetrock), and I can start working on the walls and kitchen. Man, there’s a lot of planning that goes into all this. When one phase doesn’t get completed, everything else has to go on hold. Even with the late August start, we had planned to have the house closed up by November 1st, but we’re a month away from that if all goes well from now on. Since nothing has gone according to a schedule thus far, I can’t see that it will in the future, either.

I’m not happy about the slowness of the progress, but I’m not losing any sleep over it, either. I really try hard not to get worked up over things I can’t control. Overall, I’m pleased with Joe and the quality of his work. I’m just so anxious to get working on the inside! The interior will take me the entire winter to finish, and I want to get going.

My sister Cathy, the landscape architect, will be visiting at Thanksgiving, and I’m anxious for the backfilling to take place so that all the mountains of dirt and clay will disappear and I can get an idea of what the yard will look like. I’ve done a huge amount of researching on gardening and landscaping.

My neighbors, the Quinces, are as green as they come! I am so lucky to have gotten neighbors who care about the world, the environment, their community, their schools, the less fortunate, and limiting their imprint on the earth. Take a look at their website, The Quince Urban Homestead, and see what they have done, mostly in the past year. At this point in time, we’re kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. We’re both green, but I’m doing a new, invasive, expensive green (building a home where there was none), and Devin and Heidi are into modifying what they have into something much more useful, at minimum cost. At the end, though, we both want a yard and house that are used in a sustainable way. We’re not big on grass, and we’re very big on gardens. I’m really looking forward to gaining knowledge from them in helping me to shape my landscaping.

Because I have the steep little hill in front, I’ll want to terrace it in order to grow things on it. Besides, it’s hell to mow. It’s too steep to stand on unless you’re a kid like Simon and Everett next door. I’m taking out part of the hill to expose the front basement windows. There will be a gradual pitch from the house to the sidewalk on the north half of the front. Then there will be a retaining wall to keep the hill intact under the front door. But I plan on terracing the south half of the front hill, so I can plant indigenous flowers and plants on the hill instead of all that grass. Along the south side and to the rear of the house, I’ll have a number of raised beds. Some will have perennial fruits and vegetables, and the others will rotate the annual crops. I have not had luck with blueberries, but I am determined to grow a small blueberry patch. In fact, I’m storing up oak leaves and pine needs in a separate compost pile just for the blueberries. I’ll also have raspberries and strawberries, which I’ve never had trouble growing, and an asparagus bed. I haven’t grown asparagus, but know a lot of people who have. I’ll get grape vines and other vines to grow up onto the pergola, to shade my bedroom windows in the summer. I’m also planning on planting three dwarf apple trees (Honey Crisp, Haralson, and one other, whatever will help pollinate the other two). All these things take 3-5 years to get going. I was hoping to get some things done this summer and fall, but the house got started months later than planned. I’ve resigned my self to the fact that I’m not going to get everything done in time for spring planting. I’d like to get all the perennial things planted in the spring, as I can only get those kind of plants in early spring (rhubarb, asparagus, blueberry bushes, etc.). So I’m going to have to have a detailed plan to make sure I get the perennials in for the future, but also get a good annual vegetable garden going for the summer. The landscaping and terracing may not take place until later. Lots to do!

Some Days Are Better Than Others

2008-10-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

I posted a bunch of photos last time, but didn’t have time to write much to go with it. My trips to the ReUse Center the past week have been…eventful. It started a week or so ago, when I was up at the Maplewood ReUse Center looking at granite. I noticed the pallet of pavers, which I bought for 30 cents a piece. I had driven up there in my Prius, though, so I had to come back with my pickup truck to get the pavers.

I bought this 1996 Dodge Dakota back in March. I thought we were going to break ground in April, but due to a lot of unexpected problems, we didn’t break ground until the end of August. So the truck has been pretty much just sitting in my driveway. I knew I should have driven it every few weeks, but I didn’t. So the battery was dead as a doornail when I went to start it. I called AAA, since I’ve never used the service in the years I’ve had it, and a guy appeared in less than 5 minutes. It cranked right up, and he told me to make sure I let it run for at least a half an hour. No problem, since I was driving up to Maplewood, about a half hour’s drive. I had a heck of a time getting out of first gear, though, because the gears freeze up when you let it sit for 6 months. But I got them going, and when I went to get on the Crosstown Highway, it was a parking lot due to the construction going on. So I thought I toddle down to 66th Street and get on 35W instead. As I was driving along 66th, I looked at the dash and saw the engine was all the way on HOT. I immediately pulled off on a side street, remembering to not turn off the engine, and looked under the hood and saw the coolant reservoir was empty. Not low, but totally dry. If the freeway had been clear, and I had started driving 55 mph, I would have burned up the engine. I had to drive about six blocks to a gas station, and I pulled in and turned off the engine without thinking. I bought some antifreeze, dumped it into the reservoir, and then had to scrounge in the gutter for a plastic pop bottle to get some water to mix in. Gas stations these days sell food and gas, not service. After numerous trips to the bathroom to fill up a 20 oz pop bottle, I was ready to go. That’s when I noticed my rear tire was flat. And that the car wouldn’t start, of course. So I paid one of the attendants $10 to jump my truck, paid another 75 cents to fill up the tire with air, and I was on my way again. Did I mention that the air machine was on an incline and my parking brake doesn’t work? So the only way to keep the truck from rolling is to keep it in gear, which I can’t do when it’s running? I took my old leather Army gloves, wadded them up into a ball, and shoved them under a wheel. It held up long enough to fill the tire.

The guy at the Maplewood ReUse Center had told me to come back on Sunday, which is what I did. But when I got there, there was only one guy (another guy) working, and he couldn’t help me because he was too busy, being the only worker in the place. Their forklift was broken, so I had to unload the bricks from the pallet to a cart, haul them out to the truck, and load them into the truck myself. I’m old with a bad back, and it wasn’t what I should have been doing. I got about half loaded and realized that was all the weight the truck could take. So I left the other half there for another time. It was late, so I drove home, and left the truck parked in the driveway until the next Saturday. I made sure there were some pallets available at the site, drove over there and unloaded the bricks from the truck to the pallet. My back was killing me. Then I drove up to Maplewood to get the rest. The two guys were both there (at the same time), and they helped me load them onto a cart and then onto the truck. I did about half of them myself.

While I was at the ReUse Center, I saw a brand-new kitchen sink, cast iron with a light green porcelain finish. I bought it for $40. It probably won’t look good with the color scheme in the kitchen, but I can use it downstairs in the kitchenette or in the laundry room. I need a sink in the laundry room, but I don’t want a big tub. This double sink would work just fine. What a deal.

There’s no way I could lift this sink myself, so I had the guy put it in the front seat, since the bed was filled with pavers. I laid the seat back all the way, and if fit pretty nicely, laying there at a slight angle. I went back to the site to unload the rest of the pavers, driving slowly and very gingerly, as the truck was totally maxed out in weight. After unloading the last of the pavers, my back was really killing me. I tightened up a lot as I drove home and could hardly get out of the truck when I got home. Some leftover prescription painkillers and a heating pad helped, but I sure had a hard time getting out of bed the next day.

This past Sunday, I stopped over at the Minneapolis ReUse Center. I’m still looking for porch windows for the porch. There were three good ones there, but when I started hauling them to the front to pay for them, some lady started yelling at me that they were her windows and she was buying them. So I left them and walked out, kind of pissed off, because I didn’t think she was really going to buy them. I had planned a vacation day yesterday anyway, so I went back to see if she had bought them, and she hadn’t, so I bought those three and found two more.

For me, going to the ReUse Center is like sending a kid into a candy store. There’s so much neat, old stuff. A big part of building a green house (for me) is to reuse things that are perfectly good, as well as use excess materials donated by construction companies. So when I was there yesterday, they had just gotten in a load of brand new Schlage locks, and I bought 4 deadbolts and 9 regular doorknobs for hardly anything. Then there was a beautiful unused bathroom sink, with an invoice for $650 on it, that I bought for $100. I need two bathroom sinks, what the heck. I also noticed two pallets full of boxes of wall and floor tile. They were all very dark colors, and I didn’t like them. But I had been meaning to start picking up tile for the bathroom walls and floor, so I scrounged around in another area, and ended up buying 11 boxes of wall tiles for $35 total. They are all similar colors, crème or beige, and I can have fun using them to arrange patterns for the shower stall. Most of them are 4” by 4”, but one box had eight 12” by 12” (or thereabouts, I haven’t measured them). I got that box of 8 for $5. I looked online and the going rate for those is $30 to $40 each. The smaller ones are all more than 28 cents each at Lowe’s and Home Depot, and there are about 40 or 50 tiles in each $3 box that I bought. Quite a deal. This is what I’m going to be spending my winter weekends doing—finishing the interior of the house.

That is, if the house gets closed in before the snow files. Which, at this point, is a big IF.

Oh, I almost forgot one of the most exciting events with the truck. I was at the ReUse Center in my Prius yesterday, because I hate driving a gas-sucking pickup unless I absolutely have to. Which is why I didn’t drive it for six months. I got everything loaded in the Prius, the sink, the locks, all the cases of tile, and two of the windows. The other three windows were about an inch too long for the back seat. So I had to go home and get the truck to pick up the other windows.

Of course, the cast iron sink was still in the front seat because I can’t move it by myself. Besides, I need to clear a space in my way-too-full-already garage to put it. I loaded up the windows, and it started pouring rain as I was driving home. The “check engine” light came on, and the fan belt started squealing because the weather got cold and the belt must be loose. I’m driving along, and some idiot pulls in front of me and jams on his brakes. I jam on MY brakes, so hard that the law of physics moved that sink from laying down to upright to smashing right into the windshield. I tried to grab it, but all it did was smash my fingers into the dash. Oh well, there’s a really pretty pattern now in the windshield. I actually felt pretty lucky that the safety glass held and the sink didn’t go flying through the windshield down the street.

It smashed my cell phone, too, but it still works.

All in a day’s work.

Good News and Bad News

2008-10-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Above, work is progressing, but it sure looks like a mess!

It’s been a wild week. I stopped over at the site on a Monday morning two weeks ago, and enough progress had been made so that the basement windows had the window bucks in. This gave me a good perspective on exactly where the basement windows were going to be and I was NOT HAPPY. The tops of the basement windows are at least a foot below ground. All the drawings had indicated that the tops of the basement windows were at ground level. Since the windows are two feet high, that puts the window three feet below ground with a window well 3 ½ to 4 feet deep. That’s halfway down to the foundation! Since the ground is pure clay, there’s going to have to be one hell of a drainage system to get rid of water in a heavy downpour, or the window wells will fill up and water will come in through the windows. I put a stop to the work for a day so I could think about what I wanted to do. If I raised up the windows, I had to raise up the entire first floor. It would have been a huge additional expense. The two front windows in the basement will be mostly above ground, and will let in light to the family room and bedroom, so I guess I can live with the side windows being below ground.

Above, you can see that the south basement windows are definitely below ground. Below pictures, the walls are up high enough so that the floor trusses can be put in.

These pictures were taken Saturday morning (October 18th). The floor trusses are in. You can see one of the guys has just laid the first piece of floorboard.
At the end of Saturday, not many floorboards had been laid. The whole floor was supposed to have been finished.
Here are 278 pavers I got at the ReUse Center. Not sure what exactly I'll use them for, but I have a few possibilities. I got a good deal on them. I almost broke my back loading and unloading them, though. First, I had to put them on a cart at the ReUse Center, then unload them from the cart to the truck, and then from the truck to the pallet at the house.

Below, just the finished floor trusses first thing Saturday.

More Progress on the Walls

2008-10-02T20:27:00.000-07:00

These first three pictures are from earlier in the week. The walls have gone up considerably since the first pour. You can begin to see the basement windows.

Joe (whom you can't see behind the hose) and Howard are waiting for the cement to come out.

Joe is starting to pour.

Joe and Howard are hard at work. I left early to head over to another job site where Jeffrey Swainhart, my Construction Management Consultant, was helping on another project. He wanted me to see the Inline Windows I'm getting, which were installed on his other project, and the homeowner was putting a living roof on his house as well. I really wanted to see the living roof being installed, as I'm going to be putting one on my house.

Hopefully, we'll be moving along a little more quickly with the pours. I'm anxious to get the walls up, the roof on, the doors and windows in, and the house closed up so the utilities can be installed and I can start working on the inside. We're making progress.

1st lift completed, 1st pour completed

2008-09-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

A course of blocks is one layer all the way around the perimeter. Friday morning (the 19th), there were 3 courses done (above). By Friday evening, 6 courses of block were competed. 6 courses equals a "lift." For Faswall, a lift is 4 feet high. Once the walls are 4 feet high, the concrete can be poured into the holes. Below shows the completed first lift. The empty space in front is the start of the opening for the basement bedroom egress window. As the second lift goes up, you'll see a lot more openings for windows appear. (Don't forget, you can get the picture to enlarge if you double click on it.)
Below is a view from the rear of the property.
Below, a view from the hill in front.
Here's Joe Haaf pouring cement from the boom into the walls.

If you look carefully in the close-up above, you can see the cement flowing between the blocks from left to right. As the cement is poured down into the block, it needs to flow between the blocks, as there is rebar placed horizontally every third course.
The photo above shows the cement truck operator moving the boom, the bottom shows the boom extended its full 55 feet.

Joe's worker is using a vibrating snake to get the cement to move down and fill up all the holes. the cement level dropped about a foot after he used the snake. Shelterworks, who manufactures the Faswall here in the U.S., recommends against using a vibrator, but this is a small one especially made for ICFs.

First lift is finished and ready to cure!

Walls are going up!

2008-09-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

The two above and below pictures were taken Friday morning (Sep 12th) before work. The forms for the footings are mostly in place. Rocksolid Concrete had to have a city inspector come out and inspect before they could do the pour.When I stopped back after work on Friday, the footings had been poured and the first two courses of block had started. They put as many pallets of blocks in the hole as would fit, so as few blocks as possible had to be carried from pallets outside the hole. The walls looked plumb. You can see the wool inserts (for insulation) in the block holes and also rebar sticking up out of the holes. The blocks are stacked offset on each course. The first course of blocks (the bottom layer) was set directly onto the still-wet cement footings. The second course was stacked on top of the first, offset by half. It's hard to see from the pictures, because the blocks have a vertical "dent" in the middle of each side, but when the second course is stacked on the first, the blocks are shifted over so the middle of the block in the second course is centered over
seam betweens the blocks in the first course. It's no different than the setting of bricks or regular cement blocks; you always offset each course.

A Big Hole

2008-08-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

People have been asking me since March when I was going to break ground. I kept saying "soon", but soon never happened. It finally happened last Wednesday, but it was delayed so I wasn't even there to see it! I had waited at the site for about two hours Wednesday morning. The dump trucks were lined up, Joe Haaf was there, the backhoe operator was there, but no backhoe. I finally left and went to work, and I guess the backhoe got there shortly after I had left. Oh, well. I had waited so long for that day and I missed it!

I'll post some pictures here, so people will really believe me. No big hitches in digging. There was a large pipe coming out of the ground which was embedded in concrete and rebar. It was meant to be a very sturdy pipe. There was a lot of speculation as to what was on the bottom end. Was it a well, or and underground tank? I was convinced it was a post for a carousel or merry-go-round. I'm not what it was for, but the good news is that there was nothing at the other end. Another small hitch was that there was a small dump in the middle of the lot that had a lot of building rubble; big hunks of concrete and some other junk. I'll have to pay extra for that to be disposed of. The third thing was that the ground is clay, not sand. There was a couple feet of sand under the top soil, but clay underneath that. The soil borings I had done, which went down 8 feet, showed just sand, not clay. I'm not sure exactly how that will affect things, but I guess sand is more stable than clay, so we would rather have had sand. Lucky I decided against a sand pit under the house, or I would have had to haul sand in for it.

Here are the dump trucks, all lined up and ready to go, but no backhoe.

Starting the dig.

Before digging.

Concrete rubble.

We're Finally Breaking Ground!!!

2008-08-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

I’m assured that the trucks are lined up for tomorrow morning and the ground breaking will happen FOR SURE. I know I’ve said we’re going to start many times before, but the money and permit are in hand, and Joe Haaf of Rock Solid Concrete Services, who is doing the excavation and much of the building of the house, says that Tuesday, August 26th, is the day.

It's Final! Closing on August 7th

2008-08-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

The appraisal came in at an amount I can live with, and the closing will be on Thursday, August 7th. So I'm finally going to get started. I contacted Joe Haaf at Rock Solid Concrete this morning to let him know I'm ready to go next week, and hopefully he'll be able to work me into his schedule pronto. Joe is doing the excavation, the masonry, and a lot of the work inside. He's kind of been "on hold" since May, when I thought we'd get started. But I had delays with the building permit (not being submitted in a timely manner), and then I didn't push getting the financing through as fast as I normally would have, since I knew it was going to take 6-8 weeks to get the permit. That was a critical error, as the bank suspended all construction to perm loans a few days before I was supposed to close, and I had to switch to yet another bank for the construction loan.

Now the pressure is on. There is a LOT of detail work that has to be decided (by me), things like exactly where the windows are going, where each electrical outlet will be, colors for the walls, the roof, what kind of wood for the floors and the color, etc. It's kind of overwhelming, but it will be worth it in the end.

I hope to have the actual date for the groundbreaking soon!

Financing at Last!

2008-07-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

It looks like we're actually going to close on the construction loan next week, and get started the week of August 11th. The appraisal has not been completed yet, so that's still a concern. The last appraisal came in at only 83% of the estimated construction costs. This was mostly due to the neighborhood and the high number of foreclosures there, which were used as comparable properties. I'm hopeful that the new appraisal will focus more on the construction costs than comparables.

Actually, the new loan is a better rate with better closing costs than the one I had (or almost had) before, so maybe it's all for the best. I hate getting started so late, though. I had planned to break ground in April, and now it's not going to happen until mid-August. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping nothing else goes wrong and I actually close on the 7th.

Mortgage Meltdown Hits Home

2008-07-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

Things have been going fast and furious the past few weeks. My stress level has been way up, because my mom fell and broke her wrist a month ago, and two weeks ago had to have surgery to put in a plate because it wasn't healing correctly. So I've had to take 3 1/2 days off work in the past two weeks to take care of her and get her to doctor appointments. My full-time job keeps me very busy, and I've been getting behind with all the time off I've been taking.

The issue that has me the most upset is the call I got Friday from Contractors Capital Corporation, where I was getting my construction loan. This 45 day process has been ongoing for 3 months now, not due to any problems on my part. I am absolutely the perfect candidate for lending money to, in every respect. So what's the problem? First it was the loan officer got pneumonia and no one else could help me for the two weeks he was out. Then he sent me a slew of papers to sign, which had all the blanks left empty. I don't sign blank paperwork. That took another week or two to straighten out. Then there were problems with his appraiser, and the appraisal took an entire month. It finally got to the title company, and we were supposed to close this week. Until I got a call on Friday telling me the underwriter had withdrawn permission for CCC to write construction loans, effective immediately. So now I'm back to square one after three months of working with CCC. The only positive thing is that the bank that was underwriting CCC has taken over the construction loan business from CCC, so much of what has been done so far will transfer over. The really bad news is that MI Bank will NOT accept the appraisal that CCC had done, which I paid $450 for. So now I have to pay for a new appraisal with the same underwriter-now-construction-loan-lender, and have to worry once more about the house appraising way under the construction costs due to the neighborhood it's in. This is all related to the mortgage meltdown; after banks and mortgage companies spent years lending huge amounts of money to people who couldn't pay it back, now they are skittish about lending money to anyone. So this new development wasn't aimed at me, it's part of the overreaction by banks trying to cover their rear ends for their past irresponsible practices.

Adding to the stress are continuing conflicts with Richard, the architect. He has not been at all happy with changes Jeffrey Swainhart, my GC Consultant, and I have made. Some of the changes have been minor, but the major ones have Richard in kind of a snit. I am having Innovative Power Systems (IPS) do the solar, and most likely White Bear Mechanical will do the radiant in-floor heating. Richard has been set all along at having Norm Tesmar do both, but the guy can't give me any references, even though he supposedly has been doing this for 20 years. He isn't licensed, either, so he can't do it himself anyway. I have been unhappy with Norm and his complicated solar system with both tanks and an under-the-basement sand pit for heat storage. IPS is an established company. If I have problems, I'll know who to call, and I know someone will be there to answer the phone. In addition, I'm taking out the sand pit, as both IPS and Bob Ramlow (who wrote the book, literally, on solar heat and sand bed heat storage) have recommended against it in this case. It's also saving me about $5000, and now I don't have to worry about living above an oven in the lower level. The other issue is the skylight over the stairwell. Richard had initially designed a cupola over the stairwell, with an elevated roof with widows around it to let in light and ventilation. That turned out to be quite an expensive addition. Then Richard decided a large skylight, 5 feet by 20 feet, would be better. It wouldn't open, so he proposed adding a window in the rear gable, near the peak, to add the ventilation. I loved the skylight proposal, but it was going to be around $6000 just for the plastic skylight. There were many seams in it, which I didn't like. One seam goes bad and the whole thing starts leaking. I wanted to put in some regular skylights instead. Jeffrey came up with a good plan putting in three 3' x 4' skylights, with one being operable for ventilation. I feel more confident that this system will be less likely to cause problems (with leaking) over the long term.

So the bottom line on the project is that the new bank said it would be 2 to 3 weeks at a minimum to get the construction loan approved, so my plans to break ground this week have been put on hold.

I know that all projects have things go wrong, and I'm just hoping that I'm getting all the kinks out before we even start, and that once we start digging, everything will go relatively smoothly.

Update on solar and other things

2008-07-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, my theory on using PV for electric heat didn’t work. One of my assumptions was that using an efficient electric boiler to heat the water for radiant in-floor heating would use about the same amount of electricity as the rest of the house combined. This was a faulty assumption, as it would use way, way more. By using solar for thermal, I’m able to use about 80% of the energy from the sun. PV only is able to convert 10-15% of the energy from the sun into electricity, so it’s really inefficient. IPS estimated that I’d need about a 13kW PV array just for electric heat, so that’s way too inefficient. We’re back to thermal solar after a short detour.

I’m pretty sure I’ll go with IPS and their thermal solar drain back system, with a separate HVAC contractor doing the floor.

As I mentioned in my June 9th entry, cost overruns are killing me, and I was speculating on what I could cut to meet budget costs. I was just providing examples of the extra cost of building green; I’m not actually planning on cutting out any of the green features, like the solar, living roof, or metal roof. So far, the biggest cost cutting measure has been to buy the used kitchen, which gives me way more kitchen that I could have afforded new. My original estimate on kitchen cabinets was about $20,000, which caused me to scale back and reduce the number of cabinets (uppers, the lowers stayed) by about 40% to cut costs. Now I’ll have all the cabinets I need.

I’m definitely going to have to do more of the finishing work than I had planned, especially indoor and outdoor trim. I’m handy with tools, and I have a number of real carpenters as friends and acquaintances, so I’m reasonably sure I can get someone to show me what to do and I can do it myself. I own and have used a router saw, and most every other kind of saw needed for trim. I have friends who have volunteered to help some on the house, so if I can get everything ready myself, I have people who will help me with things that need more than one pair of hands.

I’ve temporarily cut out the back porch and pergola. We’ll lay the slab for the back porch and put in the footings for both the porch and pergola, but delay those unless I have more money left over than I think I have. The pergola I can do with help from friends; the back porch will need to be done by someone professional.

The other thing that I’ll probably do to save money is do the finishing on the MgO board, the green alternative to sheetrock. If it’s hung properly, I’m not supposed to have to mud and tape it, just use a filler. You can see how this is done on the MagnesiaCore website. I may have a hanging party (to hang the MgO board) to save even more money. MgO board is much heavier (and way stronger) than sheetrock, so there’s no way I can do it myself. I remember hanging sheetrock by myself in college (I rehabbed apartments for my landlord to pay for college), but I don’t know how I did it then, and I sure as heck couldn’t do it now. At my age, I don’t even think I could pick up a piece of sheetrock. Anyway, there’s only one job I detest more than finishing wallboard, and that’s plumbing of any kind. But finishing the wallboard would probably save me $10,000, so I may not have a choice.

The longer I take on this, the happier my mom is, since she does not want to move. She’s 84, and has lived in her current home for over 40 years. She doesn’t want to move, but knows she can’t stay there by herself when the house is completed. She’s the principal reason why the main floor is handicapped accessible. The other reason is that this is my retirement home, and I’ll need it that way eventually.

I’m hoping to close on the construction loan this week or early next week, and hoping to break ground next week (week of July 14th) or the week after at the latest.

Jeffrey Swainhart, my General Contractor consultant, has been more help to me than I could ever say. What a great guy, too! He’s nailing down the contracts, and has saved me at least $30,000 in the process. The most important thing, though, is that I’m not having to worry any more about contracts and how this house is going to get built.

Jamie Queissar, an architect student from Germany who is the nephew of a good friend of mine, is helping with the project, too. He’s done a cool 3D diagram of the house using Google’s Sketch-up. Hopefully, the house will be well underway before he has to go back to Germany to school.

Things are looking up. Looks like we’ll be breaking ground very soon.

The Heating System

2008-06-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

The good news is that I finally have a building permit in hand! The bad news is we aren't ready to start yet.

The biggest obstacle is not having decided on what heating system I'm going with. Since one of the options has a below-the-basement heat storing "sand pit", I can't start digging until I decide if I want this hot sand pit below the house.

When I started the project, I knew I wanted radiant in-floor heating with solar panels providing the heat. I didn't know exactly how that was done, but I thought there would be a pretty standard way of doing this and there would be companies who did it. It really isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Innovative Power Systems (IPS) is a Minnesota company that specializes in solar energy. They've done quite a few projects in Minnesota are know as the leader in installing solar and wind energy systems, both commercial and residential, in this area. They did the big PV solar array at my local food co-op. I figured IPS would probably do my solar system. Richard, my "design/builder" architect, installed his own system in his house and studio (much smaller than what I will have). I thought it would be relatively easy for him to recommend a good system and find someone to put it in.

He came to me with one heating proposal, from a guy named Norm, who had supposedly done dozens and dozens of these systems. Norm proposed a closed-loop system with 2 or 3 large (120-200 gallon) hot water storage tanks. He also proposed a 2 foot deep bed of sand with pex tubing under the basement. This sand pit would store heat from the sun all summer and then I would draw it off through the fall and early winter. There would be a heat exchanger which would warm the pex tubing in the floors, and a heat exchanger to warm water for domestic hot water use.

When I first met Norm, I wasn't impressed. There were misspelled words all over his proposal, and the grammar was terrible. It just didn't seem to be a good sign that there were so many errors in the proposal when there can be no errors in installing the system. I would have pex tubing filled with liquid, a third of which will be buried below the basement floor, another third will be embedded in the concrete basement floor, and the last third will be sealed under the first floor hardwood floors. There can't be any mistakes. Once the system is complete, mistakes can't be fixed without ripping up the floors. But Richard was absolutely sold on Norm; he'd have Norm install his heating system if he were building a home.

I told Richard I wanted a bid from IPS. I wasn't going to give a huge hunk of money to some guy named Norm without comparing it to something else. Richard never showed me the bid from IPS, just said it was a "drain back" system that was inferior to Norm's. He also told me that the water going up to the solar panels to get heated up was the same water that came out of my shower, which I didn't exactly like. (It turns out that isn't true, so either I misunderstood him or he misspoke.) We met again with Norm, as I was still having great reservations. Norm had some fancy graphs and flow charts and assured me I'd get 90% of all my heat and hot water needs from this system, it was that efficient. He presented a system that was going to total $45,000, but assured me "it would probably be a lot less." Richard kept pressuring me to go with Norm, because his was the best. No one else could do it. At one point I even said "Do you mean to tell me there is no one else in the Twin Cities who can do a solar heating system in a residential home? I don't believe that."

By this time, Richard's time was being taken up by another project, and he recommended a General Contractor to help me finish. The first time I met Jeffrey Swainhart, he stayed for a meeting we were having with Norm. With all the fancy charts Norm had, he still couldn't explain to me how the system was going to work in terms of the sand pit and storage tanks. I can understand some pretty complex issues, but he totally lost me with his explanations. I became convinced he didn't know how the system worked. Jeffrey wasn't overly impressed, either. That night, I went online and found an article by Bob Ramlo on the very kind of system Norm was proposing. Bob has written a book on soar heat and I had seen the book just a week or two before. The article Bob had written was clear and easy to understand, so I finally understood what Norm had been trying to explain. It wasn't a difficult concept, and I took it as a bad sign that Norm couldn't explain something that was pretty simple.

We asked Norm for references and actual projects he's done, and got the runaround, another really bad sign. Apparently, Norm works with a relative, Tom, on the solar heating project. Tom is the brain behind the business, and actually hooks everything up himself, while Norm makes the sales and does the grunt work of laying the pex tubing out.

Jeffrey got a hold of the bid from IPS, which had been given to Richard in the fall. IPS just bids on the solar energy hookup, they don't install any of the radiant in-floor heating itself. You have to get an HVAC installer to do that. So Norm's bid was about $45K, and the IPS drain back system plus an HVAC bid I had already gotten came out to about $48K. So the prices are close, but there are differences, the main one being how to store the heat. IPS doesn't have a sand pit under the basement (the sand pit raises the cost of excavation and masonry work by $3000 or so).

When I had a chance to look at the IPS bid this weekend, and saw the solar broken out separately from installing the heating tubes and overall heat system, it got me thinking.

Radiant in-floor heating is supposed to be the healthiest (no hot air blowing around, drying the air and spreading germs and dust), warmest, and most energy efficient. I still have to have a boiler for backup, as well as a hot water heater (for backup). The solar will still probably only provide 60-70% of the heat/hot water needs, on the average. When the sun is low and weak during the coldest months in Minnesota, the gas boiler will be on a lot.

It is going to cost about $26,000 to add the solar thermal heat. This includes heat exchangers, heat extractors, very large storage tanks, maybe a sand pit, and nine 4' by 8' solar panels on the roof.

What if I took the $26,000 and bought PV panels and used an electric boiler and tankless electric hot water heater? Shouldn't $26K worth of PV panels power a boiler and DHW heater year around, 100% of the time?

I did some research on that. My house will be incredibly energy-efficient. If I bought a 5kW system of PV panels, it should be enough to power all my electric, including an electric boiler. I could get a 5kW PV array for about $40,000. I get a $2000 rebate from the feds, and a $11,250 rebate from the state. Also, from the state, the $40K worth of PV panels are not part of the assessment for real estate tax So I'd save a few hundred bucks every year in taxes.

So do I want to spend $26K on thermal solar, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it (heat exchangers, 200 gallon storage tanks, etc.), which will provide about 60-70% of my heat and hot water (I'll still be paying for the other 30%), and I'd still be paying all my electricity? Or should I spend $27k ($40K for the PV array minus the rebates equals $27K) and get 100% of my heat, hot water, AND electricity? Unless I'm really missing something, this seems like a no-brainer.

Stay tuned as this gets fleshed out.

Budget Cuts

2008-06-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

The project cost has escalated and is now more than twice what I originally told Richard, my architect, what I wanted to pay. I do have a finite ceiling, and since I brought Jeffrey on board, he’s been working at trying to get an accurate cost estimate. Our meeting last Thursday left me with an estimate of $62,000 more than the max I can pay. About $25,000 of that is a built in cost overrun. Even if we don’t run over cost at all, we still need to come up with $37K in cuts. We discussed a number of options to cut costs. We could put on a conventional, asphalt-shingled roof, which would save at least $5,000 over a metal one. I’ve already cut out the back porch and pergola. Cutting the skylights and interior windows into the stairwell, and building a more conventional roof, would cut another $5K. Cutting the solar radiant in-floor heating system would probably save at least $20,000. It would have cost far less to build a traditional wood frame home, well-insulated, but I’ve already bought the Faswall ICFs and they are sitting on the property.

Our estimate on the interior and exterior trim was very high, close to $30,000. I can do nearly all of the interior trim myself, and a lot of the outdoor trim also. So we should save some money there. I also decided to pursue buying a used kitchen cabinet set from the ReUse Center. Most I’ve seen leave a lot to be desired, but when I stopped over there last week, a really nice one had come in.

One of the most fun things has been planning the kitchen. I cook and bake everything from scratch, and spend a lot of time in the kitchen. It’s been very satisfying to put everything exactly where I want it. Kitchens, though, are very expensive, and my kitchen had been running about $30K. I had already scaled it back considerably, but it was still a good hunk of money.

After our meeting, I headed over to the ReUse Center to see what they had, and if the one I had seen was still available. Not only was it still there, but it was marked 40% off. It was a large set, and they were kind of overwhelmed with kitchen sets and wanted to move them. So I bought it. I would guess that the set was around $20-$25,000 new, and is still in excellent shape. I got the whole ball of wax for $1,560 plus another $100 to have it delivered to my garage for storage.

Here's how the set looked at the ReUse Center. There are a LOT of cabinets there!

Here's a close-up view. You can see the cabinetts are in pretty good shape. The wood looks lighter in this picture that it really is. The picture above shows the true color.

Here's the truck that delivered the cabinets. I was able to haul the other cabinets in the pickup truck, but these ones were way to big and heavy.

The cabinets packed into the garage.

Here are the cabinets I bought earlier for the basement kitchette. The corner unit is to the right, and tilted.

The three in the middle are brand new upper cabinets. You can kind of see three 3-drawer vanities stacked on top of each other. They are brand new also, and I'll use those in the bathroom.

These were moved to the back of the garage to make room for the cabinets above.

So I have a garage full of kitchen cabinets and it has saved me a bundle.

Getting a construction loan and mortgage

2008-05-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Most banks only market conventional loans. Since the mortgage meltdown, things have gotten really tight. I thought with a substantial down payment and an excellent credit rating, I'd be okay. NOT!

The first hurdle I ran into was that banks did not like me being my own general contractor. I understand why now, months later. Everything I read said, don't be your own general contractor, and I should have listened. My architect, Richard Venberg, told me I could save a lot of money being my own general contractor, and he would help me. Back in February, March, and April 2007,I had tried to find a builder who would build green, and dozens of builders and general contractors turned me down. I was convinced that if I wanted to really go green, I would have to manage the project myself. I just didn't look far enough, because there were a small handful of green builders and general contractors in the Twin Cities area. I had obtained the property in December 2006, and I was anxious to get going and get the house started in the summer of 2007. I took on the responsibilities of general contractor without pursuing other options to the maximum extent, and I really regret it. I have not saved money doing it myself, because I've had to hire a licensed general contractor to help bail me out. It turns out Richard, though he was good at design, really didn't know that much about the execution phase. If you're thinking about building your own house, hire an experienced general contractor.

I've learned an enormous amount over the past year. If I ever decided to build another house, I would know a lot. But I still would hire an experienced general contractor. I hate to think what kind of a house and project I would have ended up with without Jeffrey Swainhart. It's all in the details. An experienced general contractor knows how to take a blueprint and do all the things it takes to turn it into a real building.

So a couple of banks sent me packing because I was acting as my own general contractor. I found a few banks specializing in construction to mortgage loans. Everything seemed fine, at first. I had a great FICO score, the banks were willing to lend me as much money as I needed, and I qualified for a good interest rate. The last phase in the process, though, was getting an appraiser to appraise the construction plans.

Building green has more up-front costs. The house will not cost more in the long run, as building green will create huge savings in energy costs and longevity. A metal roof has a 50 year guarantee, while asphalt shingles come with a 20 year guarantee. A metal roof may cost 30-40% more, but it saves money in the long run. Solar powered radiant in-floor heating costs 2 to 3 times as much as forced-air heat, but the energy savings will make up for the increased costs in 7 to 10 years. Using green building materials is good for the planet and my health. None of these translate into a higher appraisal. Business does not care if you build green. If I build a $250,000 house that would have cost $190,000 with conventional materials, the house will be appraised at $190,000, and my mortgage will be based on $190,000, not the $250,000 it cost to build. I've lost $60,000 in equity before I even move into my new home.

Here in Minneapolis, the Star Tribune has weekly articles about how great it is to go green. I agree. But the building and banking industries still have their heads in the sand. There are no special allowances for residential homes when they are built "green". Because of the neighborhood I'm in, and the uncompensated costs of building green, the bank told me my house would be appraised at 1/3 to 1/2 of what it cost to build. Where is the logic in that?

I'm now scrambling to come up with a larger down payment to compensate. I did some research on the internet, and even spoke to some appraisers who hold office in one of the national appraiser's professional organizations. The bottom line I found everywhere was that the banking and appraisal industries are way, way behind when it comes to building green. Hopefully, as more people go green, and there is more of a demand for LEED certified homes, this will change.

The Faswall ICF System

2008-05-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

ICF stands for insulated concrete forms. These are used in place of concrete blocks or poured concrete walls. ICF can be used for the entire envelope of the house. Mine will go from the basement floor all the way to the roof. I don't think I will have enough to use for the end gables, though, or I would. I maxed out on a truckload full. If I had shipped more, it would have had to go on a second truck, which would have cost more in shipping costs than the extra Faswall would have been worth. I got very good service from Shelterworks, the company which produces Faswall in Washington State.

Until I attended Oram Miller's lecture on green and healthy buildings, I had no idea material like Faswall existed. Unfortunately, the only two materials like this, Faswall and Durisol, have to be shipped from far away (Washington State and Canada, respectively). So making building materials out of post-consumer recycled wood is good, the green properties of those materials is good, but not being able to obtain the product locally is bad. The amount of diesel need to ship a huge truckload (it was exactly the maximum load limit) makes me cringe. I try and rationalize this by thinking that when there is enough of a demand, a factory will open up nearby. My promotion of Faswall may help spur demand, who knows?

Here is some background lifted from the Faswall website:

"After World War II amidst the rubble and destruction a way was discovered to take the huge volumes of wood waste, grind it into chips, mineralize the chips to neutralize the natural sugars that cause rot, and bond them to cement to form a building block. This is the genesis of the Faswall™ ICF Wall Form. Since then, tens of thousands of homes and commercial buildings have been built in Europe and Asia and North America with this remarkable material. This remains one of the preferred methods of building in Europe. It has been available in North America for close to 30 years. In 1987 Hans and Leni Walter of K-X Faswall International Corp. advanced the state of the art with a patented mineralization process that allows virtually any wood or cellulose fiber to be bonded to cement. The wall form blocks are manufactured in 24" long modular units to aid the designer. They are designed to be under 30 lbs to aid the installer. Simply stack the wall forms on top of one another without mortar. The interlocking end design keeps the wall forms in place. Rebar is set both horizontally and vertically within the stacked forms prior to filling the cores with concrete. This creates a "post and beam" grid effect which makes the wall exceptionally strong. Essentially, Faswall™ is a efficient method of building a reinforced concrete wall with built-in thermal, acoustical and fire protection. Our wall-forms can be used above-grade, below-grade, for commercial or residential applications."

Here are some pictures of Faswall from the Faswall Website:

My truckload of Faswall arrived recently.

There were 30 pallets of Faswall. Each pallet weighs over a ton.

Unloading the Faswall from the truck to the street.

The Faswall safely deposited on the lot.

May 24, 2008

2008-05-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

The Design Plan

Richard is the architect who designed the house. I already had a detailed floor plan in mind, and we haven’t deviated from the basic 30 ft by 40 ft design. I found there is much more to building a house than a floor plan, however! Click on each drawing to enlarge.

The Front:

This is the front of the house. The existing hill in front has been cut away to expose the basement windows in front. This will give the living area in the front of the basement a "first floor" feel. I'm leaving the original hill intact on the left, where the front door is. I'm putting in a retaining wall, then will cut away the hill from the retaining wall to the existing driveway on the right. There will still be a gradual slope from the house down to the sidewalk along the street in front, allowing for drainage away from the house. I would have liked to have had a front entrance out of the basement in front, but it was just too expensive.

The First Floor:

I put the living room and master bedroom on the south side of the house, as there is a busy street along the north side. The Faswall acts as a great sound barrier in addition to being an energy-saving building material, but I still wanted the quiet rooms on the quiet side. I have a bay window in the front and on the south side of the living room to bring in light. The kitchen and dining room are open with no barriers above the countertop, and the dining room opens into the living room.

The South Side:

The south side is unusual. The front of the roof looks normal, but then the roof is cut away at a steeper angle to accommodate the 9 thermal solar panels. The roof then flattens out for 5 feet, where a living roof will be planted. The bottom 5 feet are at a normal slope, where the PV panels will be installed (when I get enough money to buy them!). The awning windows in the bath and bedroom are up high, providing privacy since this side faces my neighbor's house. The basement windows are below ground in window wells.

The Rear (west side) of the house:

This clearly shows the unusual slope of the roof on the south side. It also shows the footings for the pergola above the master bedroom windows, and a living roof over the porch (which will be built later due to budget constraints). The window at the peak of the house may or may not stay; at first, we were going to put a stationary skylight on top of the stair tower and needed a window for whole house ventilation. Now we're looking at a couple of window skylights (much less expensive than a 20 ft by 5 foot single unit), one of which will open.

The North side of the house:

Here, you can clearly see the 20 ft by 5 ft skylight, which may change to 2 or 3 flat skylights (due to cost). It also shows the slope of the existing asphalt driveway, which runs along the north side of the property, and then cuts through the rear of the property. There is an egress window in the basement bedroom. Not a lot of windows on the north side, due to it facing a busy 6-lane street. The roof on the north side is a seamed metal one. I haven't picked a color yet.

The Basement:

The basement has a bedroom, a full bath, and a family room with a kitchenette. I plan to live in the basement living area while my mom lives upstairs. There is quite a large "mechanical" room in the upper left. Solar, radiant in-floor heating requires some BIG tanks for hot water. More on the heating system in a later blog. There is a laundry room in the basement, but there will also be a laundry connection in the first floor bath, where there is room for a single unit washer/dryer. That's so my mom (and me when I get to be her age) doesn't have to navigate the steps to the basement to do laundry.

The Stair Tower:

It's kind of hard to see from this picture, but the roof trusses in the rear are separate, with the stairwell walls loadbearing with their own footings. This was necessary to keep the stair tower open. The stair tower will act as a huge skylight as well as a whole house ventilation system. Note the raised ceiling over the kitchen. There will be indoor windows along the south side of the kitchen, the north side of the master bedroom, and the west side of the living room. In other words, there will be interior windows on every side of the stair tower to let the natural light flow from the skylight into the house.

Background on the Project

2008-05-13T23:23:00.000-07:00

I finally found a place to post progress on the house so friends can follow along. Thanks to Jeffrey Swainhart, who connected me with this resource! Jeffrey is a licensed General Contractor who came in a couple months ago as a consultant to help me with my general contract duties. I just wish I had met him six months ago to manage the entire project from the beginning!

A little background: I moved back to Minneapolis in 2005, having lived elsewhere (including ten years overseas) for 23 years. (I mention the ten years overseas because Europe is decades ahead of the U.S. on green, sustainable, environmentally-friendly design.) My mom had been in ill health, and I moved back to help her out. I wasn't sure I would stay in Minneapolis, but after a year or so, I decided that Minneapolis was home after all, even after all those years away. I looked around for a house to buy that would accommodate both my mom and myself (i.e., two separate living spaces under one roof), but couldn't find anything I liked. I got the bright idea to buy a lot and start from scratch. As I started thinking about the design I wanted, it was a natural progression to decide to go green. I've been very environmentally conscious my entire life, and am concerned about global warming and sustainability.

I heard about a new store in Minneapolis, called Natural Built Home, which was the first store in the area to sell green building materials. I went to their website, and saw that a Building Biologist, Oram Miller, was giving a seminar on green building a couple days later. I attended the lecture, and it opened up a whole new world for me. The only thing I knew about building green was that I wanted solar. I knew that meant solar panels on the roof, but that was about all I knew. I hadn't realized there were many, many other ways to support sustainability, nor did I know about all the green building materials that are available. More on those as we go along.

Oram recommended a couple green architects, and I interviewed them and one other I had found on my own. I ended up working with Richard, who specializes in green design. I had a pretty good idea of the floor plan I wanted, and that hasn't changed at all. Richard has had some great ideas on how to design the south roof, which will accommodate the solar panels and a living roof. He has also incorporated many passive features to assist with both heating and cooling the house, and providing a maximum of natural light.

Here is a synopsis of where I am today:

Estimated start date: July 2008

Description of Project: A single family home, one story, with a half-finished basement. First floor is 1200 square feet with living room, dining room, kitchen, bath, and two bedrooms. First floor handicapped accessible from the rear entrance. Basement living area is one bedroom, bath, and family room with kitchenette. Unfinished rear area of basement includes a large mechanical room (for solar apparatus and water tanks), laundry room, storage room, and “cold” room (i.e. root cellar). Rear of house will eventually contain a screened porch, a pergola, and a detached garage.

Green Features Planned:

Envelope of house will be Faswall (insulated blocks made from 85% recycled wood chips and 15% Portland cement); walls “breathe”, won’t mold, and require no vapor barrier above ground (either inside or out); are highly insulating and sound resistant

Radiant in-floor heating powered by nine 4’ by 8’ solar panels

Passive solar design features (lets sunlight in during winter; blocks during summer)

Energy-efficient triple glazed windows

Interior walls built with MgO board; outer walls plastered with clay (no sheetrock in the house) Stair tower skylight which lets in light and acts as a whole house ventilation system

Use of FSC wood and re-used wood only

Countertops made of recycled glass and bamboo

Metal roof on north side; solar panels, PV panels, and living roof on south side

Living roof over porch

Front landing and pergola timbers made from 80% post-consumer recycled plastic

Sidewalks and walkways made of permeable or used pavers

All flooring will be reused hardwood or new bamboo (renewable wood)

Tiles for bath floor and shower stall made from recycled glass and porcelain

Windows for porch and indoor lighting bought used from ReUse Center

Landscaping will maximize fruit and vegetable growing for self-sustainability; grass will be kept at a minimum and native plants and flowers will be maximized

Rain barrels will catch and store water for garden use

Eventual driveway replacement will use permeable driveway pavers

Garage will be small, metal, and one-car

All appliances will be efficient EnergyStar; water appliances will be water-efficient

House will be wired for PV panels, some of which will be added later due to cost

During construction, recycling bins will be kept to recycle wood, cardboard, cement, and any other building material excess

Ceiling fans in all rooms to minimize air conditioning needs

Home is two blocks from bus stop and a 10 minute bus ride from work