1st course

The first course of Flexcrete is done! This course got the mortar joint underneath so required the extra step of mixing mortar.

This is the same short wall from the "Corners Post." As you can see, we cut a small block to fit the space.

Basically how things look at the moment. The first three courses have the most cutting and fitting to do because of all the electrical outlets. After that, I'm hoping the middle courses go faster.

Pulling wire

So here we are at the main panel. Above my head is a spool of aluminum wire which will carry power to our house. The smaller cable is the ground.

Kristi and Bill at the sub panel. This is over 200 feet away from the main panel. The way we did this is as follows. First, we use a shopvac to run jetline through the conduit. Jetline is a lightweight, but very strong cord. Once that is through we cut it and tie a rope to the jetline and pull that through. Now that the rope is through, we attach the wire and cable. This is where the equipment comes in. The wire is very heavy, so Kristi would pull about 5 feet at a time as I guided it through.

 Conduit at the sub panel after pulling the wire

Installing the sub panel. 

So 2001

Corners

It all starts with laying the corner blocks first.

The first course gets mortar underneath the block. This ends up being about 3/4". The shopvac was to clean any debris off the stemwall before applying the mortar. 

We use the level on top of every block. The tripod has a laser to make sure that every block is set at the same height. We can adjust the blocks on the first course due to the mortar joint underneath. After the first course, the blocks get a thinset which is a much thinner joint. This is why it is critical to get the first course right, any small error here gets magnified as we get higher.

Here are a couple of finished corners. 

Flexcrete Delivery

Well, we got our first two trucks of Flexcrete. 

This truck had 16 pallets on it, plus thinset. We unloaded down on the flat area you can see in the photo.

Here is the forklift we got to drive. It was ok, but the tractors are a lot funner.

It took about 45 minutes to unload the truck, but a couple of hours to get everything up the long driveway.

That is what it looks like with 32 pallets. 48 blocks per pallet = 1536 blocks. Each block is 8"x12"x24" and weighs about 54 pounds. Still more to come.

Plywood Floor

We have been very busy lately, which has made it hard to keep up with the blogging. We now have a plywood floor! This was a pretty fun job as we got to see a lot of progress as we went. Here are some photos.

Here we are in the beginning. We cut the boards to fit with a skilsaw, then applied glue to every joist. Once it is in place we screwed it down with approximately 32 screws per sheet. I'm guessing we used about 38 pounds of screws for the entire floor.

Here we are making sure the floor will come out flat and level. I am using a planer to take down a high joist. A couple of joists were low, we solved this by gluing a shim down before the plywood. Using the level and a string running from end to end you can get a very accurate measurement of anything that is high or low.

Here is a shot of the finished plywood floor. It came out great. Unfortunately we have had a lot of rain to deal with since this photo. Our original plan was to stain and seal the plywood and use it as our regular floor for awhile. We were not able to get a stain on in time, we have a sealer on it now. We will see how it goes, but by the time we get the walls up and the roof on, our floor will have taken a lot of abuse. It is possible we will still be able to finish it to look nice, but we might have to get a real floor sooner than we expected. 

Supply Lines

This is PEX tubing. We are using this for our plumbing supply lines. PEX is great stuff.

This is a sleeve for the PEX. One thing that is bad for PEX is UV rays so it must be shielded. Also, the blue designates it as a cold water supply line.

All those lines are connected to a manifold and go to sinks, showers, and toilets.

Under floor electric

We installed conduit along the stem wall under the Ledger. Underneath every outlet in the house is one of those boxes.

Here is the wire that we pulled through all the conduit.

This is a point where everything comes together or crosses. Our main panel will be where the grey conduit is sticking up. The white PVC is the sleeve for the propane line. The black ABS is a drain line. The black coil on the wall is our phone line. This area is all filled in now. 

Septic Tank

If you remember way back to my first blog entry about the Perc Test. Well, this is what that test was for. We got our Septic Tank. 

Here it is in two parts on the truck. 

This is the bottom half of the tank in the hole. 

Here is the top after being joined to the bottom and some back fill. 

This is the leach line it is 68' long. We had rock left over from the rock we had delivered for under the house. This was a good thing as it was perfect for leach rock. 

Gas Line

We don't have natural gas in our area, but we can put in a propane tank. Here are the gas lines.

This is a tee in the line. The PVC is just a sleeve to help protect.

Yep, They came all the way from Thailand.

Underground Plumbing

We got to start on plumbing last week.

An assortment of fittings. 45's, 90's , couplers, tee's, reducers, and more.

Drains and vents from above.

Here it is from below.

Floor

The lumber has arrived and we have been busy getting started on the floor.

Glulam beams on the far left in the wrapping. The shortest was 16' the longest 32'. Next pile over are the joists. Truss joists on the bottom, up from that are the 2"x10" and 2"x12" joists. The green pile is treated lumber for the ledgers, 3"x12" and 2"x12"

Two days to put all the Glulam beams in. Kristi operated the excavator and lifted them all into place. Every beam needs to be cut and shaped to fit. Holes need to be drilled for bolts.

The build team. We have hangers nailed on the beams. The ledger is still missing from the back wall, you can see it on the left. Some of the truss joists are in.

Rocks

We are building a house with a passive underground climate control system. There are actually many different ways of doing this, all with their own unique features. Our system is pretty simple. We dug down three feet into the ground. Our stem wall extends two feet above the ground. This area was filled with 24 inches (290 tons!) of smooth river rock. We built vents in the stem wall on all sides of the house to allow fresh air into this space. The air is cooled under the house and pulled up through floor vents as the hot air is pulled out through exhaust vents in the ceiling. As I said, there are many variations to a system like this depending on your homesite, climate, materials available and so on. Operating our system will take a little trial and error, but should be pretty easy. It basically comes down to opening and closing vents to adjust the temperature in the house. Anyway, the rocks got here a few weeks ago thanks to the guys from Cemex. The rocks we got are a byproduct from the production of cement. A cement plant is basically a mining operation. As they screen material they are left with rocks about the size of a tennis ball to a small football. The cement company has no use for these rocks and they just pile up. These rocks are perfect because of the small air spaces they create together. I expect the majority of our cooling to come from our passive system, however we are building a home in a very hot climate and it is likely that we will need air conditioning for some additional cooling. We will see how the passive system works and go from there.

The rock arrived via dump truck. 300 tons total, 19 loads.

A gargantuan loader with a skilled operator.

Grout

It was another early morning of pouring concrete. We got to the site at 4:30 am and set up lights. We were pouring by 5 am.

When we poured the footings, the concrete was poured directly from the truck to the form. In this situation, the concrete is poured into a pump, which you can see on the left. The pump pushes the concrete through a tube and then into the block wall. Every cell needs to be vibrated to make sure there are no air pockets. The rebar leaning against the wall gets stabbed into the freshly poured grout every four feet.

Here we are installing the hangers for the beams which hold the floor joists.

Kristi stabbing in the rebar.

There it is, freshly grouted stemwall. We poured about 39 yards of concrete that morning. The grey conduit with the yellow tape on it is for our electrical outlets, these were put in the night before. There was a lot of cleanup to get the grout off the side of the walls and level. All of this had to be done before the concrete got too hard. Overall things went very well. Just a fun fact, at this point, I estimate our house to weigh close to 450,000 lbs!

Stem Wall pt.2

OK, the Stem Wall was such a big job it gets two entries...

Kristi is cutting rebar with a mini grinder. All the rebar needs to be just below the top of the stem wall. I am using a skillsaw to cut an opening for a doorway.

Here we are both cutting rebar in the footings.

These are completed and ready for the wood forms to be set on top.

Stem Wall

Soon after the concrete was poured, our blocks arrived.

The first blocks to be laid! You can see the forms are still on the concrete. Kristi and I stripped them over two days. The first day we got all the easy ones. The second day we worked on the tough ones with sledge hammers, stakes as levers, and jackhammers for the really tight ones.

The first course is coming together here. My job was to bring all the block off the pallets to the interior. We hired professional block layers to set the block.

This is the finished height of the stem wall. It looks taller now than it will after we backfill. Our floor will sit at this level. You can see vents in the wall here, this is for a passive cooling system. I'll get into the details of this in a future post.

This is taken from the inside. The white lines on the wall are to mark the location of the rebar, the dots are where we need to drill for installing hardware to hang the floor. The wood columns are forms that we will pour concrete in for interior footings, they still need more reenforcement.