State of the Build
Well, I wish I were more than half way done by now, but instead, I am looking ahead to the new year. If all goes well, I will actually be building this year and this website will get a whole lot more interesting. I plan to get the 2014 build season rolling on Monday by calling contractors who had been too busy to get back to me during the building season. Hopefully their pencils will be “sharper” now.
I did try to to get a few quotes in December. I found that my window person (who we really liked) had moved on from the company (so I will need to start over with her replacement), I found a potential new electrician and tried again to get quotes on the Electro Mini Boiler install. The only one who wants my business seems to be the steel Quonset hut people, they call me every month to tell me the latest specials.
The budget is very tight and we are trying to build a lot of house for not so much money. I am hoping that my low cost finishes will help me keep costs down. Based on previous quotes, I am now planning to pick up more of the work myself, perhaps hiring some teachers/students during the summer.
The architects drawings are “done”, but my “virtual build” is revealing even more problems than I had originally known about and small changes are on going. (separate section below and last week).
The website is now up to nearly 1800 visits per month, which isn’t bad considering how rarely I am posting and that I don’t spend any time on the SEO. Google sent me a card for 150$ worth of free advertising. Maybe I will use it once things get rolling. I don’t plan to spend a penny past the free stuff though ;^) If you are interested in this project, please “subscribe”, so that you will get an email next time I post. I also appreciate comments.
Virtual Build
For the virtual build, I am essentially building the house piece by piece from the plans trying to guess where I will run into problems. The idea is that if I find a problem virtually, I can take steps to avoid running into the same problem during the real build. I am keeping a list of errata as I go.
Last week, I found a problem with the mezanine windows overlapping a rib and a sun tube, so I moved them along the wall by 18 inches. The window buck on the other side looked fine in terms of lining up nicely with a steel stud, but once I put the steel arches between the ribs and covered the vaults with concrete, it became apparent that the earth may bet a bit to close to the western Mezzanine window.
I was just about to go and sort that out, when I noticed a much worse problem. The kitchen door is supposed to tuck under the arch on the bottom right of the above image. It was clearly not going to fit. I started checking all the measurements related to that corner and found a few oddities. 
For instance, the radius of the outer wall was listed on the drawing as 4 inches larger than the scale drawing was actually made. I had build my model based on the listed dimension. I also found that the architect had drawn the arch in the kitchen view as 4 inches wider than in other views, although he still labeled it as 16ft. Those two errors added to 8 inches, but that wasn’t enough to explain the problem. It turned out that the bigger discrepancy was the span and elevation of the rib in the drawing that showed the position of the door.
I had explained this to my architect a number of times… The radiating vaults needed to be placed at a constant slope so they could maintain a constant peak height. When the kitchen and dining room ribs were moved radially outward by 7’2″, they needed to lowered by 20″ in order to maintain that slope. The architect had eventually repaired this in other views, but apparently not in the kitchen view where he worked out the door placement. The door was always going to be clipped a little, but nothing like the problem I now face.
(correction, the rib in the above pic was not 20 inches higher than it should have been, it was just a few inches due to the whole thing being a larger scale; perhaps from an earlier iteration? The architect had lowered it as I asked)
So, now I will sleep on this problem (and probably also think about it in the shower) and see what solutions I can come up with. Early candidates include moving the rib another 2 ft out radially, it would be technically possible, but would ruin the look. Optionally, I could move the basement door and stairs 2ft west along with the kitchen door, but that may cause problems on the other end of the stairs and probably would ruin my kitchen layout… Maybe a single unique Rib without the lower spandrel, but then I may need to contact the engineer to get the design approved.
Eye Candy
And now for most people’s favorite section… The gallery of random things that caught my eye.
I see I have quite a few from the humor site “9gag.com”, as well as a few from houzz.com.
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Here is the current state of my virtual build. It was just going to be about the basement, but I think I will need to continue, at least with the main part of the house.
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Big problem…
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The architects drawing had a few issues that hid the fact that we had a problem with the door fitting under the rib.
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Here is the kitchen door if I raise the rib to the same height as the others (that would be wrong though).
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One possible solution for the kitchen door problem.
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I plan to buy something like this to polish the sides of the concrete ribs before I erect them into place…
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Another possible pattern I was considering for the sides of the rib form…
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Brilliant, I plan to access the space under my stairs this way…
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Gorgeous mosaics…
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I thought this was taking that penny tile idea to a new level. Genius.
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We plan to use steel grate like this to let light from the storm room down to the central rotunda.
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This is how posh english estates kept wild animals away… I like the idea, although I am not sure I have anywhere to put it.
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I have heard of this happening to earth sheltered homes since they are basically an upside down swimming pool. In extreme cases, the pool (or earth sheltered home) may “float” and pop up out of the ground.
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This wouldn’t be right for my home, but I appreciate it anyway.
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I love this style of stone work. Very authentic.
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I thought this was a fun idea, probably not easy to change the sheets though.
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Mazes are fun
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Nice looking garden, lots of trim work though. From a Houzz article about using greens.
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From Houzz.com, this is the kentfield house. Personally, I felt they did things backwards. The other side of the house had a gorgeous view, why put the pool on the back?
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Gorgeous stairway… Very expensive to do though.
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I kind of liked the look of this basement with the rough brick openings.
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Cool bird house, on the other side is a viewing platform for the bird watcher to sit in.
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Gorgeous floor, out of my price range, but I can still enjoy the pic.
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Liked this coffee table.
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Bonsai Tree house?
So the year is over. It didn’t exactly go as I had hoped, but we are definitely in a better position to build next year than we were a year ago, more on that in my January kick off post. It is a bit frustrating as I put off doing other things because we expected to build, but such is life. This past month, I took things pretty easy. I only called one person for a quote (a very reasonable sounding plumber that I will bug again in January), and I put some time into building the home virtually.
Virtual construction is a way to run thru the process of building without the huge expense. I individually model each stud, track, buck and ICF piece and then assemble them as I would in the actual construction. Along the way, I am thinking about sequencing and other assembly problems. I try to build to the plan, but make notes when I need to make changes so things will fit. Of course, the computer could make things a bit too easy, for instance, I could just array my studs along and have perfect spacing. Instead, I tried to build things more manually by inserting and positioning each piece.
The below image shows the first steps of my basic construction plan.
I would start by pouring the footing, which includes a lot of precise layout, rebar, form work, etc. Actually, once that footing is done, I will be much more relaxed for the rest of it. I would then set the track (curved or straight) for my steel studs into the top of the footing with Tapcon screws. Then I would place wooden window and door bucks to guide the spacing of the studs. The Marinoware steel studs and steel frame jambs would be set (plumb) and screwed into the tracks. Flat straps are screwed to the outside of the studs to increase the rigidity of the assembly. Metal lath is screwed to the inside of the studs and track, partially to add rigidity, but mostly as a curved backing to catch and form the shotcrete.
- Basic construction detail
Along the way, I spent a lot of time figuring out steel stud placement. I am planning to use “balloon framing” so that load bearing walls will line up and I won’t need to spend as much time or money on laying the curved track. Since the steel studs will just be fancy integral formwork, I don’t need to follow strict structural guidelines. Instead of 2ft or less spacing, I can go a bit wider and not need to cut as many studs for windows, etc. I can vary the placement of the studs to line up with windows and doors across the various levels. For instance, there is an opening directly above the basement opening (shown above). If I shifted the main floor opening by a few inches, I could use one long steel frame jamb instead of needing to place two. I could also align the guest bathroom door with a mezzanine window buck and simplify the framework there also.
After all the steel studs, rebar and conduit are in place, with metal lath to keep things stiff and catch the shotcrete, we would shoot the basement walls 8 inches thick. Since the steel studs are 4 inches deep, this would leave 4 inches beyond the studs. The rebar, just outside of the steel studs, would be nearly in the middle of the wall.
Even though many of the steel studs go thru 3 floors (balloon framing), only the basement shotcrete would be applied in this phase. The top of this shotcrete wall would be cut/troweled roughly level six inches below the floor level. We may even be able to set the column base plates in before the shotcrete sets completely. We would then setup the steel columns and ring beam (I will need a crane of some sort) that will later support my concrete arches. I may do a little MiG welding to tack things in place at this stage.
This assembly looked fine at first, but I later discovered that the ring beam intersected the door buck by several inches. This was a mistake I had not caught earlier. I decided the best fix would be to notch the ribs… These thumbnails illustrate.
The floor system I have chosen uses ICFs (Insulated Concrete Forms) to support the concrete (instead of the wooden subfloor the architect/engineer specified, so yes, I will need to get this stamped by an engineer at some point, I was quoted $800 for that). These QuadDeck ICFs have light steel joists built-in to reduce the number of temporary supports needed. The ends will rest on the shotcrete walls with an inch or two of polystyrene overlap (roughly cut with a hotwire) and be tied in with bent rebar pieces.
This next image is a detail of the rebar (shotcrete and other details are not shown for clarity). Horizontal rebar is wire tied to the outside of the steel studs and should increase the stiffness of the formwork. I considered threading it thru the holes, but that would probably be quite a hassle. The vertical rebar is wired to the inside of the horizontal rebar, but with 8 inches of thickness, there is some flexibility here if needed. Rebar is placed before the shotcrete, and then some pieces are bent down into the ICF channels as needed. More can be added later and bent upward if necessary. I anticipate some issues in certain locations where the QuadDeck spacing clashes with the steel stud spacing, but it should be manageable. I also considered/modeled rebar placement between other ICF sections.
After the ICF forms are placed, they can be walked on. The electrician and plumber should appreciate how easy it is to set conduit and piping into the ICF decking. The ICFs are about 7 inches deep and we will be adding 5 inches of concrete on top of that, so there is plenty of room to work. We also plan to lay radiant flooring across the top of the ICFs. There are little plastic clips that screw into the polystyrene easily to support the radiant tubing. We will screw a form to side of the wall to contain the poor. It will only need to support 12 inches of concrete, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Some of you may need a cross section vertical to understand the quad deck floor properly… Here it is. Basically, the ICFs form the “negative space” so that the concrete forms a nT (like a single or double-T, but continuous) beam across the spans. Where we meet a wall, the ICF is cut away so the concrete rests on the wall (tied in with rebar not shown here). On the left side of this example, I have cut away some of the ICF in order to create a concrete cross beam above the stairs to the basement. After the concrete is poured, the ICFs remain to provide insulation against heat and noise. They will ensure that my radiant heat goes up.
Now that there is a floor to walk on, additional studs, conduit, bucks, etc. are added in preparation for the main floor shotcrete. Since many studs penetrated from the floor below, this additional work is just incremental. I have not modeled it all yet, but it will include the fill walls under the ribs, the walls around the spiral stairs, etc. Once these walls are up, I will want to model the arches across the donut vault, the hop across the basement stairs, etc.
Here is a final look at how far I got during my Christmas break…
This process has been interesting so far and has resulted in a number of small changes. For instance, I noticed that the original plans placed the mezzanine windows such that the east one was right up against the east wall. When I built the 3D model, I placed the stud so that it would be at the surface of the 8 inch thick wall, but realized that one of the 12 inch thick ribs actually intersected the studs supporting the window. If I wanted to build the balloon wall before placing the ribs, I would need to move the stud by at least 4 inches to clear the rib. I also planned to put in a 14″ sun tunnel thru that corner to bring daylight to the guest bathroom, and that would also have passed in front of the window… So I decided to move all the mezz windows over by 16 inches. Since the steel studs were also framing main floor and basement doors, those would also need to move (to keep the steel stud layout simple). In the computer, this was much much easier to fix than it would have been if I had discovered the issue during the actual construction.
Similarly, I decided to lower the basement egress windows by 6 inches, I added a door way in the basement, etc.
Earth Sheltered Links
Here are a few new links to look at. There have actually been a few in Houzz lately, but I lost the specific links… Maybe I will find them again another time.
Kentfield House from Houzz.com
Messy Nessy Blogs about offbeat and unique things, including Earth Sheltered Homes. Here are two articles that were shared recently on the Malcolm Wells Yahoo group, but I think you can find more on the site if you dig around a bit..
This first one is about Englands abandoned Rock Houses. It appears that these homes were abandoned after hundreds of years of continuous use due to shutdown of the local industry. Many believe this underground villiage inspired Tolkein to include them in The Hobbit. The very old homes are still in great shape, although some are inhabited by endangered bats.
And this second one is about a hand-dug underground home and garden in California known as the Forestiere Gardens. The owner dug subway tunnels in NY at the end of the 19th century. He found the surface of Fresno to harsh (this was before air conditioning), so he started digging in his spare time. On his own, and without power tools, he dug out an estate of nearly 100 rooms, passageways and courtyards covering 10 acres.
This one is for a partially built earth sheltered home in California… This typical Terra-dome home is more bunker than beauty (to each his own), but the site is still interesting for seeing the construction process. Its also for sale, if you want to live in that area.
For instance, the radius of the outer wall was listed on the drawing as 4 inches larger than the scale drawing was actually made. I had build my model based on the listed dimension. I also found that the architect had drawn the arch in the kitchen view as 4 inches wider than in other views, although he still labeled it as 16ft. Those two errors added to 8 inches, but that wasn’t enough to explain the problem. It turned out that the bigger discrepancy was the span and elevation of the rib in the drawing that showed the position of the door.
