Progress Update
Well, according to our Gantt chart (schedule), my wife started getting permits last week… Except we are not actually there yet. Instead we will be filing banking paperwork on Monday. I don’t want to bother with the permits until the loan is approved. And we were waiting on a tax return and an extra paycheck to beef up our funds before we applied for this year. So, its a good thing I padded the schedule a bit so this delay shouldn’t affect the date we hoped to break ground. I am still nervous about dealing with the mortgage company though.
Virtual Build
Things have been a bit busy at work and I am working on a paper for my “adult onset MBA”, so progress on the virtual build has been slow the past few weeks.
I did manage to get the Skylight curbs on. They look like industrial chimneys now, but they will be mostly covered in earth and that should soften them up. I may need to adjust their elevations a little. Originally, I had them over the showers. I installed skylights above the showers in my current home and I really enjoy showering in the sunlight. Of course, it would be a lot easier for someone to just walk up and look in the skylights of an earth sheltered home, so I will need to use frosted glass. The architect moved them to the middle of each room (for symmetry). But the virtual build revealed that I would need to cut central steel arches, so I moved them back.
I also worked a bit on the front of the house. I got the steel structure up in the front wall and added the concrete sun shade to the front of the house. It still has a long way to go. For instance, I need to put the steel structure to support the concrete shade, add a bunch of roof structures and the front door is still missing.
One thing to note is the way the foundation dips on the right hand side… This is the cost of having a basement that comes closer to that corner.
Sourcing
As we get closer to the build, I have been getting updated prices on things like the steel arches. The price has actually come down some what. Also, since I get charged “by the bend”, regardless of how long the bend is, I have adjusted the order so that pieces of the same radius can be bent as one long piece and then be cut to length. That will save me some money.
I did find that the 5/8th inch thick steel support plates that the engineer specified in many locations are somewhat difficult to find. All the steel suppliers I called said they would need to order that specially for me. I had only needed a few square feet, and special ordering has some minimum area requirements which will raise the cost for me significantly… Not sure what to do about that yet.
Do-it-yourself Electrical?
The biggest change to my sourcing plan was due to a conversation I had with an electrician two weeks ago. He is out of the business now, but still licensed in my state. He looked at my pictures and said he could understand why the bids were so high. Electricians don’t want to figure out how to do my unusual house when they can just get regular jobs. The FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) translate into a high bid. But there were also real reasons why it would cost more. They would need to use more conduit, need to more carefully secure the boxes, etc.
He suggested that I should just do it myself. I told him that I was already planning on taking on too much of this build myself. I have wired a few outlets and lights, but never something as serious as an electrical panel or a large as a whole home (or even a whole room)… He said he thought I was smart enough to take care of it and I could save 3/4 of the bid price. Anyway, I am seriously thinking about it and got several books on wiring and the electrical building code this week. I do know some home builders who did their own electrical. Perhaps, I will do most of it and hire someone to come out and give it a once over…? At the very least, I can handle my own “finish” electrical.
We also attended a local building show this week. It cost us $10 at the door, plus we bought some of those roasted nuts for $6 more… Those shows are never really worth going to, are they? We talked to a few people, but nothing really changed.
Website
Well, I am up to about 2700 visits a month (over 5000 page views), which isn’t bad even if half of those are robots or mistakes. This past month I had a couple interesting encounters on the web.
Comment on other sites?
First, someone on the the Malcolm Wells Yahoo group posted a link about Earth Tubes. I jumped on it right away and found it was my page on Earth Tubes, but on another site. It was the sort of site that has a number of revenue generating adds and the writing at the top of the page said “Written by David”. They had done a full copy and paste, so the images were actually still on my site, but hyper-linked into place. The site had no contact information anywhere on it, but using some Google search, I found a video related to the site. Scrolling down in the YouTube chat, I found where “David” had a conversation with someone and ended up giving his email address. From that I was able to find his google+ page and his LinkedIn page. Eventually, I even found his mailing address (in the USA). I emailed “David” and asked them to give credit where it is due.
While waiting for a reply, I looked around the site and found that pretty much everything was just copied from other sites, but all claiming to be written by David. About 2 hours later, he wrote me back to say he was sorry and had added a line at the top with my name and a link to my website… Oh well.
I saw another website (in Czechoslovakia) had also linked to my site and described it as a “very long, but detailed, overview of Earth tube design”. I guess I need to work on being more concise ;^)
Comment on my site?
Of course, the opposite also happens. I had referred to Larry Larson on my page about Earth Tube design. However, while I gave him a “nod of the hat” as an expert in the field (literally since he professionally installs earth-tubes out in the “field”), I disagreed with his opinion that the tubes need to be corrugated and laid in a serpentine path to generate heat exchanging turbulence. I also made some generally disparaging remarks about the use of corrugated HDPE pipe ;^).
Larry contacted me.
Actually, nothing too dramatic. He just wanted to discuss my concerns. He writes even longer emails than I do, but we had a number of back and forth email exchanges. It may not be quite over yet, but I am still pretty certain that his serpentine layout is detrimental to performance. However, I have softened on my critique of the corrugated pipes in general. He argues that they win in terms of “bang for buck”, and perform well if installed well. When I have the time, I will go back and adjust my text a little.
One good thing that came out of our exchange is that Larry is going to post some earth tube performance data on his site. The data (which I am privileged to have already seen) shows the inlet and outlet temps and humidity of the earth tubes in his own home (in Iowa) over a 10 year time frame. He showed me some graphs and they were pretty interesting, but the samples were taken by hand. He said that my soil temperature experiment inspired him to get some small data loggers from Thermoworks and install them in his home and in some of the other homes that he installed earth tubes for. Including one that has better performance than his own home. He plans to publish the graphs of the inlet and outlet temps for each home every 3 months or so.
I also plan to adjust my plans a little and have a corrugated earth tube come into my new home “for experimental purposes”. If it causes any problems, I will just block it off. The delta cost will be small since I plan to use my drain tile for the job.
Eye Candy
After that last boring budget post, lets take a look at some fun eye candy.
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Anyone who is planning to build their own home can appreciate a humorous to do list.
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An Xray shot showing the status of my “virtual build” on Feb 20th
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X ray shot showing the status on Feb 26th. I think the only thing I managed to add was the monstrous retaining walls on the North side (shown here in green)… I will put in a separate post about that.
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I showed other pics of this Pines Calyx earth shelter, but now I am looking at how the ceiling was tiled…
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I got this from blocklayer.com. It shows how to cut the exact stairs I need for my basement.
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I got this from Houzz. It is a door with a slider that opens up the little holes so air can go thru it. Very clever.
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Storage ideas
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These are the costs per 2′ section. My quonset hut is an S type, 40 ft deep, so 20 sections… Not a bad price.
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I liked this wood wall. I would like to do something similar for the hall ceiling and the spiral stair shroud.
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Gorgeous stone work. Possibly from Houzz.
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More gorgeous stone work. I also liked the lighting where the roof meets the walls…
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Nice sliding closet
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Interesting lighting fixture. The backs of the sticks were routed out and rope lighting installed.
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This is a detail showing how the Quad deck spans across the tops of support walls. It allows the concrete to rest on the wall.
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I thought this drawer seat was a great idea.
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This made me think of Kramer (Sienfeld) and the episode where he wanted to redo his apartment with “levels”.
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Crazy stoage
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This house put laser cut “Cor ten” panels outside the windows for privacy and shade. The shadows look pretty great.
I have been quite busy since the last update, but lets talk about my biggest stress… The budget!
I will try to follow with an eye candy post later in the weekend.
Budget
If I had a million dollars, this whole thing would be a lot easier. But as it is, I will need to borrow to make this home a reality, and that means carefully counting the cost. I finally got in enough quotes that I could complete my budget and get a pretty good total estimate. It was pretty high, at least relative to my early hopes. I got a bit depressed about it, but we crunched the numbers with the 4.25% interest rate that my loan officer says is likely, and it is still affordable on my salary, so we press on… But I will be looking to save money any way that I can.
Some people are really against having a mortgage… I don’t mind it too much as long as it is my only long term debt (credit cards and other bills are paid off each month) and the mortgage payments are better than rent would have been. It probably helps that my job (and income) is relatively stable.
Possible Budget cuts?
Windows?
The fancy eyebrow windows came back as about half my window cost. I could reduce that dramatically if I was willing to replace them with hand cut poly-carbonate (Lexan). 1/4 inch thick poly-carbonate sheets have a decent R value (considering they are transparent) and I can buy a 4×8 sheet for less than 100$, cut and install it my self… I have had this idea for a while, but seeing how everything has added up has really convinced me that it may be a good idea.
Poly-carbonate is fairly flexible, so I could actually curve the windows to match the curve of the walls. My only concern at the moment is that they are more than 8′ wide, so I will either need to find someone selling larger sheets or break each window up into segments, which will mean more difficult installation.
Basement?
Could I get rid of the unfinished basement? I have been tossing this idea around in my head for a while.
While it is true that a basement is a relatively inexpensive way to gain square footage, mostly because it is square footage that doesn’t need an additional roof, it does still need its own walls, floor, and ceiling. Even an unfinished basement needs electrical and plumbing and that also adds up. The suspended floor over the basement costs considerably more than the slab-on-grade floor that would be needed without the basement.
A basement also complicates the construction process with a much more difficult excavation, deeper drainage pipes, a more dangerous construction site, etc.
My specific design only called for a partial basement. I thought that would contain the extra cost to just the area of the basement, but because I have a sandy site, the engineer specified a slope of 1/2. This means that my 10 ft deep basement will effect the construction for 20 ft around. I will need much more expensive “step footings”, taller stem walls, two levels of french drains, and probably other things that I have not thought of yet.
The egress window on the North side of the house is causing difficulty with earth sheltering because I need to be a lot more careful about retaining the earth. It looked good in 2D, but now that I am looking at it in 3D, I am a bit more concerned about the scale and cost of the retaining walls that will be required to keep earth from spilling into the basement.
My wife was mostly wanting the basement for storage, but I could more cheaply add a few feet to the length of my garage to make up for that. I wanted the basement for the placement of the mechanical room. If we got rid of the basement, we could use the location of the basement stairs as a main floor mechanical room, but the central location under the rotunda was important for my passive HVAC design. And after many years without a basement, Sherri and I both liked the idea of extra “unfinished” space down there to grow into…
You can’t come back and decide to add a basement later. You need to make that decision from the start of the building process. On the other hand, as Sherri pointed out, the storm room at the top of the tower is pretty superfluous and we could just decide to leave it off if we ran out of money. We could also come back and add it later if money became available, so maybe that is the best place to cut?
For now, I think we are going to wait to hear what the banker says about how much they will loan us and then decide what to do.
Sweat Equity
It seems like a number of the tasks are coming in with only ridiculous quotes… Some, like the precast ribs, the garage Quonset hut and the insulating “umbrella”, I always planned to do myself. But as I get quotes back, I am picking up more and more of the other tasks. I now expect to do much of the steel work myself (hopefully with a little help from my friends and family), along with a number of finishing tasks. Sherri is very concerned that I am taking on too much and that this could stretch out the build and wear me out… It could also be a great exercise program (I spend too long sitting and typing at my “computer job”). I also feel a bit like a kid who is getting a new giant sand box, I can’t wait to get out there and play… But it could get old after a few months, and I am not as young as I used to be… Something to keep in mind.
Smart little improvements to the plan
There are a number of smart little ways I could improve the plan to save money. For instance, The people who bend my steel arches charge by the bend, not by the length of the material. Instead of ordering a number of 90 degree bends for my apses, I plan to switch to ordering half as many 180 degree bends that I will cut in half.
I also noticed that there are a few spots where I can make a small layout adjustment and save a lot of structure. I will talk about that more next time I show pics from my virtual build.
Water isn’t very expensive
I had liked the idea of buying a 1000 gallon water cistern and installing it between the house and the garage. It could catch the roof run off and be used for watering the garden. The problem with many “green” ideas is that they don’t actually make financial sense. As I have mentioned before, I live in the Great Lakes basin where water is always plentiful (we have more than 20% of the worlds fresh water in our basin). At current electric rates, it only costs me about 25 cents to pump a thousand gallons from my well. See the calculation here. The thousand gallon tank costs nearly $800, but it would be double that by the time it was installed. There is also the risk that it would break down or become polluted… I would hate to look at my investment and know that, even full, it was only worth 25 cents, so lets skip it.
I also liked the idea of solar hot water. But I checked my current bills and I only pay about 20$ a month to heat my hot water. A decent vacuum tube solar array with the storage tank, pumping station and other odds and ends easily comes to $6000, plus installation. At 20$ a month, it would take 25 years to pay off that investment. Plus, it is not exactly attractive on my green roof.
I will set things up to install a solar hot water system some day, but not as part of the construction cost. Perhaps I will eventually be able to build my own for a lower cost.
As for the urinal in the boys bathroom… It may not have a rapid payback due to our cheap well water, but the total cost is not high, so I think I will keep that one ;^)
HVAC is expensive
My HVAC quotes came in. I knew that Geothermal was expensive, from the buried heat exchange tubes to the unit that goes in your house, they are expensive. But I had a nice back up plan to use the electric (in demand) mini boiler instead. With its much lower cost and much easier install (no loop field required), I thought it would save enough money to justify the higher operating costs. Due to the Federal Tax Rebate for Geothermal, it didn’t turn out that way. I put some info about my HVAC sourcing here.
However, the quotes are still very high, so I may take on the easy parts of the job myself. For instance, I may be able to save money if I install the radiant floor tubes myself. I am still thinking about it.
