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.