Steve’s Ingenious Dome Home

My parents sent me this link a few weeks ago, knowing I would appreciate it.  At first glance, it was interesting.  A guy built a pretty cool dome home (in Thailand) from cement blocks.  He only spent ~$6000 for the basic structure and got it done in about 6 weeks…  The home looks nice and organic, but it is not earth sheltered and it didn’t have to deal with our cold weather.  Not a lot of lessons that I could apply in North America…

But then I saw this…  And I realized that someone on the team, maybe Steve or one of the guys he was working with, was quite brilliant.

This pivot arm is key to the whole thing...

This pivot arm is key to the whole thing…

Instead of working with complicated geodesic shapes, he is just using regular concrete blocks. Before starting the construction, he placed 3 of these posts, each with a pivot arm.  Then he could just swing the arms to mark the footings.

StevesDomeHome_02

Then he placed each row of blocks using the end of the pivot arm to set them exactly to form a sphere.

StevesDomeHome_04

 

You can see more pics on his site, but eventually, he had several intersecting concrete domes.

StevesDomeHome_25

 

Then he just coated them, inside and out, with stucco for  a nice smooth finish.

Brilliantly simple.  I probably still can’t apply it directly to my build, but I sure do find it interesting.  Maybe I will experiment with building something else this way…  When I have time ;^)

And here is a video tour of the completed project… (and some practice embedding youtube video)

Will do paperwork for money…

Bank Paperwork

Over a month ago, we took on the challenge of getting our finances rolling.  First we filed our taxes early so we could beef up our bank balance a little.  Then we filled out the pre-approval paperwork.  My net worth was up by over 40% of my annual salary since last summer when we had last applied for pre-approval, and my credit score is almost perfect (in the 820 range), so we were surprised when it came back (a week later) and the bank had not approved us for enough to get the job done.  I resisted the urge to panic (because we had qualified for more last time) and contacted my loan officer instead.  It took a bit to get a hold of him that week, but we eventually found out that the loan amount had been determined by the max he could sign for without extra “underwriting” paperwork (I guess even loan officers try to avoid doing paperwork).  I told him we needed the full amount we had asked for and he said he would get on it.   It was another week later before we were sufficiently pre-approved…

With the pre-approval in hand, we set to finishing the arduous “dwelling description” and “sworn statement” paperwork.   These would be used to determine the value of the home.  The home would need to appraise for at least 125% of what we were being loaned or the bank would need to reduce their contribution.  The dwelling description asked strangely detailed questions like the finish on the closet doors, the brand, position and color of the microwave and 8 pages of other detailed questions.  It took a couple evenings for Sherri to make her final selections in these areas and then several more hours for us to sit and fill it all out.

The sworn statement took much more effort.  I had already figured out most of my budget as it was attached to my gantt chart (chart of the building process).  But I still had to finish off a few more cost calculations, tweak some of the build process to save a bit extra and then add it all up.  The number was still too high so we looked at ways we could save money.  An easy one was to factor in the amount of a Federal Tax Rebate that would come in during the build year.  We also decided we could save money on rigid insulation and vinyl waterproofing by buying second hand (I updated my insulation page and my umbrella page with some info on that.)   The electrical quotes we had received were high enough to justify me doing the electrical myself.  We replaced some of the earth moving costs with the assumption that we would buy a used compact tractor with a bucket on the front.  We can sell it at the end (if we want) for almost what we paid and save some money in between, plus it will be useful for unloading trucks, dragging steel around, etc. We decided to drop the surveyor and site the home ourselves (I could put together a whole post on how I plan to do that), etc.  Finally, we decided that we needed to do our own ledge stone work to save the last chunk we needed to get things safely under budget.  I felt like my time was tapped out and Sherri agreed to do that last masonry task.

After we had the total down to the right level, I still needed to adjust the format from the gantt budget to the groupings that the “Sworn Statement” required.   For instance, in the gantt budget, I had steel framing costs spread over a dozen separate steps, but I needed to aggregate these for the sworn statement.  The sworn statement also included details about which contractor had provided each quote, etc.

Of course all this happened during a week when I needed to get a paper done for my MBA class. 

Once all that paperwork was filled out, we realized we couldn’t print it (technical difficulties)… We ended up printing part of it at my in-laws, but they ran out of paper.   Mean while, the USB I had carried it on was corrupted and messed up the formatting on the dwelling document.  I had to waste a bunch of time fixing the formatting and then try to print again.  We also realized that it needed to be notarized before we could send it in.  Since Sherri and I both needed to sign it in-front of the notary, that required some more scheduling, but we got it done.  Then we drove to Ann Arbor to drop it off at the bank.

Now we wait.  It could be up to 2 more weeks before the appraisal is done, then another week before closing.

In the mean time, we are trying to do what we can without spending any money.  I am shopping for a compact tractor, Sherri is getting all the permit paperwork ready to go, etc.

Grand Designs

Bored of whats on TV?  Considering building your own earth sheltered home? Check out these episodes of Grand Designs…

The host, Kevin McCloud,  is usually a bit pessimistic, and some times the home owners do struggle.  But it is certainly one of the best TV series on the challenges of custom home building and they have a number of episodes on underground homes.

You can find even more examples if you just want episodes about homes with green roofs, or eco homes.

Mid March Update…

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.

VirtualBuild_14-3-15

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 March

Eye Candy

After that last boring budget post, lets take a look at some fun eye candy.