Building a CMU retaining wall around the office apse

In order to bury the office apse at the front of our earth sheltered home, I needed to build a retaining wall with a window in it. For this corner of the build, I decided to use CMU’s, Concrete Masonry Units, AKA concrete blocks. We also had to insulate the apse structure.

I may come back and add some detail here.  For now, I’ll just post the video and gallery of pics to tell the story.

The Video

The Gallery

Here are some pics to help tell the story.

Sherri getting a selfie

Sherri and I decided to roughly imitate the “American Gothic” paining.

Sherri and I decided to roughly imitate the “American Gothic” paining.

Couldn’t hold the straight face

And back to work…

Camera caught a block drop in mid air and I thought it looked worth keeping.

Michael’s turn to get a selfie

We put 4 inches of XPS between the apse and the retaining wall. This first 4 feet were easy because of the simple curvature.

My mother faithfully working on the insulation dome.

Here Michael is cranking away on the dome. You know this process is decent when an 11 year old kid can crank it out.

Posing with my subway vinyl. In theory, you are only supposed to use these with the image downward, but I couldn’t resist.

We glued the vinyls together with HH-66 vinyl cement. It basically melts them together with a chemical bond.

Perspective…

Here you can see that the insulation layer completely separates the inner and outer walls. The rebar and lath were covered in concrete, ferro-cement style.

It was getting dark by the time I got that concrete up on the eyebrow.

The insulation mosaic was rough looking, but functional.

Go pro caught this fun one as I drove by… I guess I was looking at the camera to avoid driving over the tripod.

David pondering life from his new thinking spot.