Posted in FYI

Footings Day 1

Today was the first day of installing the footings on our Earth Sheltered Umbrella home. You can find the video here.

PlanCAfter the initial excavation, we tried to stake out the basement but the hole wasn’t big enough and we had to call back the excavators to dig a little bit wider (see the last post).  When I showed up on Friday (after a nearly a week off the site), I found that it was excavated well enough most of the way around, except on the north east side. On the west side, they had to excavate past the side of where the garage footing would have gone. The plan B had been to setup the footings for the basement and garage at the same time, but the over excavation cut into dirt under the garage, so we will need to save that for after the excavation. Plan C was to just form the basement footings and consider that practice for the rest later.

The crew from Dysert Concrete arrived on site around noon. There was a range of experience from one who had worked with Doug Dysert since they were both children, to the new guy who had started that week. No one on the team had ever done curved forms before, but they were all up to the challenge.

At one point, Doug sent the new guy to get the majibulator from the front of his truck. The new guy scrambled up out of the hole and got half way to the truck before Doug called him back and told him that there was no such thing as a majibulator.

 

FormLumberDoug had brought 12 inch lap siding for the curved portions of the form and 2x12s for the straight parts. My computer model had made it pretty easy to estimate how much of each material we needed, but due to the change of plans (not doing the garage), I ended up with some extra materials on site. The lumber yard was out of stakes Doug bought 1x4s and sharpened them on site.

The team decided that Sherri and I had done a good job on the stakes (within a quarter inch and enough extra ones to capture the shape) so they used them directly and started forming within a few minutes.

Doug had brought his copy of my plans and we referenced it regularly. It was a bit of a hassle because the plans incorrectly showed the footings as 1.5 ft wide in the main view (the more detailed views correctly showed 2 ft). This caused at least one mistake where we made one of the piers 6 inches wider than it needed to be. The plans also did not include the extra footing bits that the building inspector wanted, so we had to remember to add those.

FootingPlan
Doug had to leave part way through the afternoon for another appointment (so his crew will have work all summer), which left me responsible for the layout. Along the way, I made several mistakes that I realized right after the boards were cut and nailed into place. Some could be easily undone (such as the east pier where I just cut a board too long for where I intended it, but it still fit perfectly in the next spot. Other mistakes were not worth fixing and just added a little volume to the piers. The other guys (Baudillio and Jose) were pretty patient with me and only chucked a little when I would say, “No, wait, thats not right.” When I slowed down I made fewer mistakes. In total, I figure my errors only added about 4 cubic feet to the 18 cubic yards needed for the footing. That is less than 1 percent. (total concrete volume of the basement footings is 18 cubic yards (486 cubic feet) or about 73000 lbs).

I was very careful to place the inside boards so that each would only have 1 side and 1 end against concrete. This will make it much easier to remove them later.

 

The north east side of the site (top right corner of the scene, mostly off camera) was not excavated far enough and the guys had to dig it out manually… They ended up re-digging it numerous times because they didn’t throw the dirt in the right place (twice) and because the sand wall behind kept caving in and dumping more sand in the area. In the hot sun, it became a “laugh so you don’t cry” sort of thing, but we managed to get that last footing in and everyone left by 5:00 PM.

I noticed that when the guys wanted to keep their water jugs cool, they buried it in the cool earth. They didn’t build a little wooden box around it. Just sayin’

I also noticed that a couple of the guys put oats in the bottom of their water bottles… I wasn’t sure if they were eating those as a snack while they drank or had some other reason. The “new guy” asked about it and the others laughed and asked him if he ever had oat meal. “Same thing”, they said.

 

The laser level Doug brought was not working, so we just put the forms in for now and will need to come back next week to level them and add the ton (literally) of rebar.

When it was done and the guys were packing up, they said, “At first we thought the curves would be harder, but it all went pretty easy.” They all took pictures. I assume they don’t think most of their jobs are photo worthy.

If I did it again, I would use a saw table to make straighter cuts for the boards. The free hand cuts were pretty sloppy and made it harder to get the 90 degree angles for the piers. I guess it was good enough for footings work, but I don’t think it would have been any harder to make the more precise cuts and may even have made it easier to assemble and level. The hardest part would have been getting the table and power down into the hole.

 

Monday is rebar day, and hopefully I can get the building inspector out there on Wednesday so we can still pour this week… Now I need to think of what to do with the extra concrete. Any ideas? I am thinking a bucket rocket stove could use up a little.

 

 

Staking out the Basement

Saturday, our kids each had soccer games, one after the other.  Each of my boys won their games (3 to 2 and 5 to 3). By the time the games were over, it was mid afternoon, we dropped them off with their grandparents and headed out to survey the basement.  We were using a builders level that I rented, again.  We had to do the job again because all the previous stakes were dug up during the excavation.  Well, I should say most were dug up.  Sherri had run some extra stakes further out so that we could re-establish the location of the center of the house.  The excavators had been careful not to disturb those markers.

When we got there, it was kind of cool to be able to drive up our new driveway…  Its the little things ;^)

IMG_2252_Basement_SitingWe started with the long line that Sherri had marked out before the excavation.  We tied some masons line between the stakes that she had placed 50ft on either side of the center (the excavation was about 60 ft across).  We tied a plumb bob to the mason’s line at the middle point and let it hang into the excavation.  The sand was also very soft and rough, so I spent some time flattening the area, especially around the hanging plumb, with my 10” tamper.  I then positioned my marked concrete paver (90lbs) centered under the plumb and lined its etched angles up with the mason’s string overhead.  Then we setup the builder’s transit over the paver (I finally have that setup process figured out after three rentals).  Again, I used the overhead string (and the lines etched on the paver) to orient the transit.  It took us about an hour of setup before we placed our first stake, but once we did, the rest went fairly straight forward.   Since most of the key points for this design are positioned radially from the center, we just needed the transit for the angles and a measuring tape for the distances.  This marked out the centers of the edges, then we offset these stakes by one foot (half the width of the footing) to get the true outer corners.  In one corner, we use some Pythagoras (3-4-5 triangle) to square things up.  We also put a lot of “extra” stakes in to make the curved shape clearer and topped it off by tying string along the perimeter of the footings.  We actually had brought surveyors paint, but it didn’t work well on the sand.  

The pit had not been excavated far enough and I had to do some manual digging along the way.  The soft sand was easy to dig (I did all the work barefoot and pretended I was at the beach) but as I dug, the sandy wall would cave in and give me more to dig.  I couldn’t throw the dirt out of the hole, so I tried tossing it “out of the way”.  But I didn’t put it “out of the way enough” and I had to dig some of the same dirt again when I got to the next stake.  Sherri thought that was funny.  There were a few areas that had so much sand I just gave up and stuck the stakes in about where they would be.  We called the excavator to come back and widen the excavation.  That was a bit disappointing because it meant we would need to delay the start of the footings.   Anyway, we got it all staked out by 9:20 PM (just before it got dark), but it was probably closer to 10:30 PM before we completed the long drive back and picked up our kids (an hour and a half later than planned), so we appreciate that my in-laws were merciful and hope they will still help us out next time ;^).

TotalStation_BuildersTransitHopefully the Excavator will go back and take care of the over-dig without disturbing these stakes or the centerstone marker (paver) too much and we can get to work on the footings.  I found out that my footings guy uses a “Total Station” builders transit.  It has a computer that does all the trig for you.  We will let him stake it out next time.  I just need to figure out how to transfer my drawings into the right format.

Excavation Day 1

Contents
  1. Excavation, day 1

Well, it has begun!  I will finally be telling my friends about this site so they can follow along.  I also created a parallel Facebook page for those friends and family who always stay in Facebook.  It also lets me have this cool “like” button on the right hand side of the screen.   Since I plan to record and upload videos, I also started a channel for “Simon@HomeInTheEarth.com” on Youtube.  I uploaded my first video here…


Excavation, day 1

Excavation, day 1

We still have not closed on our loan, we don’t even have a closing date (we have had 3, but currently don’t have any).   On the other hand, construction season is passing us by,  so we decided to go ahead with the excavation.

We ended up going with Roe Brothers Excavation.  I liked them personally, I liked that they met with me when they said they would and they got me a quote like they said they would.  I also really liked the quote.  I liked it so much, I was a bit concerned about what I would discover from the references. I was quite relieved when all the references came back very positive.  I asked each reference when Roe Brothers had worked for them and they all said, “just a few weeks ago…”  It actually took me a week to getting around to calling them, so that is a really good sign that they weren’t cherry picking their references.

Roe Brothers showed up right on time, actually, I got Marty, not sure if he is a brother or a nephew. I’ll ask him next time I get a chance.  First, Sherri took care of the initial paperwork and payment. Then we reviewed the bulldozer plan, we discussed which area to level, how deep, and where to push the soil and dirt.  They only had a bulldozer on site and said they wouldn’t actually be getting the excavator in that day.  It was busy on another job, presumably with another brother?  Most of the home is slab on grade, so we still needed to level the site today.   But we would need to wait to excavate the basement portion until next Thursday.  However, this backed up my schedule because the footings guy was scheduled for next Thursday…  I called and canceled the footings, but then at the end of the day, we found out that the excavator will be available by noon tomorrow, so maybe we are back on track?  I won’t call the footings contractor back until I know for sure.

On the one hand, my lot is sandy, so it was pretty easy to work with…  On the other hand, there was a lot of sand to work with.  There was a dip in the middle of the site.  We need to go down to undisturbed earth for the footings, so we couldn’t just fill in the dip.  Instead, the bulldozer had to get everything down to that lowest level.  They setup a laser level at a certain height and then a device in the dozer would tell Marty if he was too high, too low, or just right.  I think it took longer (and more work) than Marty was expecting, so it is a good thing that I was on a fixed bid.  But Marty was good about it and went out of his way to do a great job.  He even cleaned up the driveway slope at the end of the day.

While the bulldozer was busy doing his work, I was busy putting in a couple hundred feet of silt fence. I don’t expect any erosion, but it is a requirement of my “soil erosion permit” and the 60$ worth of silt fence and a few hours of manual labor are better than the $2500 fine for not putting it up.  The boys helped a bit.  They spent most of their lives hearing that this house was coming, so we took them out of school for the day so they could see the ground breaking.  I got some pics of them helping with the silt fence, but it is on Sherri’s camera and I am too tired to upload them now. Instead, here are some fun ones I snagged with my cell phone.

BoysExcavating2

My younger boy is a bit of a Ham.

BoysExcavating3

They really enjoyed playing in the dirt pile during a break.

BoysExcavating

 

Stakeout

Contents
  1. Building inspector…
  2. The Stakeout
  3. My Email

 

Building inspector…

ApprovedThe building inspector left us a message saying that the plans were approved (pending the zoning permit which should be completed on Monday).  That was really much faster than I expected.  When I was in his office on Wednesday, I saw lots of sticky notes in my plans.  The only one I was able to read said something about making sure that my under slab ducts drained toward an accessible point (my mechanical room).  That was my plan, it just wasn’t specified in the drawings.  I expected lots of discussion with him about that or other issues before he approved the plans…  But now I expect I will just get the plans back with lots of notes that I will need to comply with in order to pass inspections.

Of course, now we need to pay more than $2000 to get the actual permit.  On the whole we have saved about 500$ in permit fees (as I mentioned last week).  So we are ahead of our budget… for now.  I expect we will start to get behind again later when we need a few extra inspections due to our unusual build.  For instance, we will need at least one extra rough electrical and rough plumbing inspection so we can shotcrete the basement (another extra cost associated with the basement) before erecting the walls above it and doing some more rough plumbing and electrical.

The Stakeout

The last thing we need for the building permit is the zoning permit.  The zoning inspector’s primary concern is that our property is setback 60 ft from the road.  It is a little bit silly because the plans clearly show the house is more than 90 ft from the road and the stakes we put in tonight were temporary (not actually used to build) because we still need to level off the property…   But anyway, it was part of the process, so we did it and it was pretty interesting.

CenterStoneThe home is based on a circle and uses lots of angles, so I will definitely want to use a proper laser transit for laying out the footings.  But at this point, it didn’t need to be very precise.  Instead, I used a 2 ft paver and diamond cut the important angles in based on a paper print out (it cracked when I dropped it into position).  We knew the distance from two stakes to the center of the house, so we used two ropes measured to the right distance and placed the paver, oriented to North, where the ropes overlapped.   Once positioned, the large 90lb (41kg) paver will stay put.  Then we measured out from the center and I sprayed my arcs with surveyors spray paint.  We put stakes at key corners based on the length of the measuring tape and the angle on the center stone.  My younger boy didn’t get excited about it until I sprayed the “S” for South next to one of the key points…  Then he got the concept.

The final result was that we could “walk through” the rooms and get a sense of the size and flow in 1:1 scale.  On that big hill with the big evening sky, the rooms felt small.  We had laid out individual rooms before, but this was the first time we had really laid out the whole house and been able to walk through it.  Later, standing on the far west corner of the garage and looking across the field to the far east corner of the bedroom, it looked bigger.  My wife was starting to doubt that beds would fit in the rooms, but I guess we need to trust the numbers and doubt our perceptions over rough terrain (or maybe it was my rough survey skills).

Staked

I didn’t like the final position of the house.  I really wanted the back window of the playroom in a certain location where the view is good and the topology of the site dips for the basement egress windows located below.  In order to get that without moving a lot of earth, I think we will need to move the house north and east by ~15 ft.   Next time we site the house, I may even start with the location of that window and work backward to the center of the house and then out from there.

My Email

email-overloadWhen I setup this website, I also got an email address.  Actually, it was the address that helped me pick the final website name.  I liked the idea of telling contractors (or whoever) that my email address was “Simon” @ “home in the earth” dot com.

Unfortunately, things have been slow to get started and I did not end up using that email with any contractors.  Since I didn’t expect any email, I haven’t checked that account since late 2012.

Well, I checked it last night and there were lots of nice comments and questions there.  If you wrote to me over the last year, sorry I didn’t get back to you.  I will try to get through those emails over the next few days and I will try to check it more regularly from then on.

 

Actually I have not told many friends about this site (Other than my wife, I don’t think anyone I know from real life has subscribed (top right column) yet.  If you subscribe, you will get an email each time I post.

You can also leave comments on each page.  If you just come in to the home page, you may not see the comment window.  You need to click on the header for a particular post and then you will see the comment section at the bottom.   If you leave an email in a comment, it will not shown on the site, but I can use it to reply.

 

Signed, Sealed and Delivered…

Contents
  1. Permits…
  2. Loan?

Permits…

We got all the permit paperwork, including the tedious residential energy code compliance paperwork, done.  In the end, the inspector said that due to the unusual nature of the home, he would like the plans to be “signed and sealed” by the architect.  I assumed that this would cost me a pretty penny, but it didn’t.  The architect just charged me for the cost of the prints ($2.25/page).

This may not be as momentous as it feels, but it sure felt great to drop off those plans and permit applications…

 

 

 

Tomorrow night, I need to stake out the property because the zoning guy is going to go out and check the setbacks this weekend.  The lot is pretty large, so we are at least 25 ft past the setbacks.  I already bought the stakes and paint, it will be interesting to lay it out and then walk through it… Certainly a lot more fun than paperwork.

Part of the residential energy code compliance paperwork was asking if a number of key features were explicitly shown in the construction documents, including things like the outdoor air supply for the wood stove and the insulation on the footings.   I had plans and sketches already worked out for everything they asked for, but my architect had not included most of them in the actual construction documents.  When I dropped off my plans, I saw a few other rolls from my architect (he has a distinctive logo) on the building inspectors desk.   I asked and they said they work with him a lot.   I guess that means my architect knows what it needed by my inspector, I just hope he put enough into my drawings and I don’t have to go back and pay him to add it later.

Loan?

I called my loan officer today.  He was on vacation and is still trying to catch up.  He said that he thought the poor job done by the appraiser was unacceptable.  On Monday, he asked the appraisal company to fix the errors I pointed out.  It may not make a difference to the final $ amount, but at least it will be “more right”.  In the mean time, my wife sent the “bad” appraisal to the insurance company to put the insurance quote together.  Having the site insured from the start is a condition of the loan and the proof will be needed at closing.  My loan officer thinks we will book the closing date next week.