While prepping the tower and mezzanine, we also worked on the bedroom eyebrows. It was just too big for one video. More on what “bedroom eyebrows” are after the video.
The Video
Bedroom Eyebrows
Bedroom eyebrows are not some sort of double entendre that only earth sheltered home builders get after a long hard day. They are simply the structures we used to keep dirt off the windows while still having a hilly appearance. You see them in Peter Vetsch earth shelters all the time. However, I suspect (from construction photos) that Peter’s eyebrows are big heat radiators that drastically reduce the thermal efficiency of his buildings. I wanted to avoid that problem, so I needed mine to be thermally isolated from the actual home.
I did this by separating the shotcrete into two phases. After completing the bedroom shotcrete and waterproofing it, I added a saddle of 4 inch thick XPS Foamular 250… This is the kind that can handle 25 psi of pressure and is intended for burial. Above the XPS, I build another rebar framework and put shotcrete over that. Or at least, that is what I wanted to do.
In more practical terms, I used tapcon screws to mount treaded wood 2x4s directly to the bedroom shotcrete. Then I drilled holes in the 2x4s to hold the rebar framework… So there is a little edge all the way around where I sacrificed long-term insulation for a more buildable structure. I have since considered other ways I could have done this and may do it differently if I ever had to do it again, but I don’t think the performance will be too bad. Certainly still better than a more traditional house.
The Gallery
I am tired of typing, you may be tired of reading, so let’s just skip to the gallery.
Various stages of progress
Bedroom south eyebrow rebar
John helping with the rebar above the hall roof
Sherri and I often have end of the day discussions that get caught on timelapse
David was almost 13 and going thru a bit of a goofy phase
Another goofy David Pic
Even Sherri decided to get in on the goofy poses. Maybe it was the heat?
Hunter leaving me an Easter Egg to find. This is the appropriate punishment.
Not to be outdone, Michael also made a number of goofy pics
Michael again
Sherri and David posing for the time lapse cam. They like to leave these little Easter eggs in there for me to find.
Lots of turtles around
Office Apse viewed from the roof of the garage. This big area was going to get a bit water tank, but I ended up deciding it wasn’t worth the money.
Kids playing on the office apse jungle gym
After putting the french drain for the office apse, this time before the shotcrete so we wouldn’t have to deal with any mess
Kids playing on the office apse jungle gym
The eyebrow for the master bedroom apse was the most elaborate
When you are burying a house, one of the tricky bits is to keep the dirt from spilling where you don’t want it… Like into the doorways. I have a number of retaining walls planned for this build, and, just to keep things interesting, I have designed each one a different way. This section is about the “Heavy Stone” wall by the back door/patio. More details below, but first… the Video
The Video
Cost
I had assumed that those concrete blocks were the cheap way to build a retaining wall and the fancy quarried sandstone was the expensive way. Of course, I probably still would have used some real stone… However, when I looked into it, At least for the cost of the stone, the real stone was cheaper. Of course, that doesn’t factor in things like the cost of the mortar, which was about 5$ per level on my wall, so still not too bad. The real cost of building a wall like this is time… Those precast concrete block walls probably wouldn’t have taken me nearly so much time, but no regrets on choosing to do this one the hard way.
Engineering
Retaining walls often fail. Keys to keeping this one from going down included…
Wide heavy stones (heavy stone is actually what they called this size at the quarry) that are substantial and want to stay where you put them.
Leaning the wall back against the earth load. Before the earth can tip your wall over, it would first need to straighten it out. Gravity helps you keep things as they are.
Curving the wall against the earth makes it a lot harder for the earth to tip it over, just as it is harder for a mug to tip over than for a domino. Making the wall concave helps even further because the loads against it are in compression, something that the stone handles with ease.
Behind the wall, I had plenty of drainage. Drain gravel, landscaping fabric and HDPE corrugated/perforated drain tube were working to make sure that water pressure never gets a chance to build up behind the wall.
Layers of carpet were also used in the dirt behind the wall. This “geo-textile” idea is used by highway engineers to keep dirt from shifting under ramps. I would have liked to have used more layers, but some is better than none.
I watched lots of videos online about how to build a retaining wall that lasts. I recommend anyone who is planning to build there own do the same, and don’t be tempted to take shortcuts.
The Gallery
Here is a gallery of pics with detailed captions.
Here is the delivery. I paid 80$ per pallet, plus something (like 120$?) for the truck to deliver all the pallets.
Here are some more standard concrete retaining wall blocks. If you check the top right, you can see how many linear ft you get per block and calculate how many square ft of wall you would get per dollar. When I compared this with the cost of my quarried sand stone, my sand stone was about half the price.
Before I could bury the garage, I needed a retaining wall, but before the retaining wall, I needed some stucco over these fox blocks… This is just the scratch coat.
Partway thru the stucco job, I checked to see if the camera was still on. This is apparently how I look after a couple hours of night stucco work. (after finishing my regular work day and driving out to the site).
To get a gentle curve, I put down a 20ft long piece of 1/2 inch PVC going thru the marks I had made earlier. Then I put down mortar and started laying blocks.
After a few rows, the wall was already looking interesting and I was already learning.
After the wall was a few blocks high, I back filled for drainage. I also covered this all in landscapers fabric to keep the sand out. Actually, I came back later and filled the whole area with drain gravel, it is easy to use too much when you have a skid steer bucket and order by the dump truck.
After dark it starts to get harder to find the right stones. This evening I probably only got 3 layers in.
The 3rd evening, I got another 3 layers in before it was too dark to find rocks…
The rocks were all aligned against the front of the wall, but the back looked considerably messier. To sort that out, I used my mortar sprayer to shoot mortar over the back of the wall and fill all those cracks. I did it at several stages, this was the first. No pics of the actual shooting because I was busy at the time.
More progress… By this point, I had most of the basics down and things were moving along nicely.
Another pic…
Once the wall reached a certain height, I put these “benches” up against it. We had first made these for the ICF blocks.
Sometimes the kids seek out the camera to get a self pic or just wave at me.
Kids love climbing on walls. However, it can be a problem if the mortar isn’t set yet. This day it was before we started on the wall though.
You can see we have extended the platform. I also added wooden blocks to make it easier to scramble up, but I usually used the ladder.
Random pic
We named our dog Sandy to fit in to the site better. She loves getting up high and looking around.
Sandy chilling on the wall while I worked…
This is how it looks from the ground. I plan to add moss, creepers, etc.
I have always been a big fan of Copper roofs, especially when they patina. Copper roofs last hundreds of years and just look so much more interesting than asphalt ones. Problem is that they are just too expensive. But with my earth sheltered home project, I was going to have very few square ft of roof, so copper suddenly became affordable again. Making the tiles myself would also significantly reduce the cost. For this first part, I was really just wanting to put a copper cap on the front and back ridge of the garage. This post is about how I did that. At some other point, I may also make diamond tiles to cover a few hundred feet of regular roof… But first, this video
The Video
Alternatives
I had put stucco on the front and back of the garage and this ridge cap was to cover the 12-inch ridge along the top of the shotcrete wall… Looking back, I could have done it a few other ways. For instance, I could have just wrapped the top of the wall in lath and then just put stucco right up over the ridge. Another option would have been to put tile up along the ridge.
I had planned to use copper shingles for all the skylight caps also, but now that I am older and wiser, I plan to just cap the second skylight on the garage with copper and switch to using large format tiles (that I can get for about 1$/sqft) on the other 5 skylight curbs.
The tools
The Press Break Roll was pretty fun to use and getting it 40% off from Harbor Freight made it even better. One of these days I’ll put more details about it under the “tools” section of this website and maybe make a more focused video. In the meantime, I can put the original crate back on top of it to keep the dust off so it is ready to use next time I am in the mood.
Along with that, I needed a nice mallet for pounding the copper, good aviation snips for cutting it, pliers, etc. Generally speaking, pretty standard stuff.
The Gallery
Pictures help tell the story, so I put a bunch in the description of each image… Enjoy.
Here is my new press break roll. It weighs about 300 lbs and I was taking a break after getting it from the back of my truck to the top of the wheel barrow. Next I would need to get it up onto that wheeled cart I made just for this purpose…
Here I am using the Press function of the Harbor Freight Brake-Press-Roll to cut pieces from the copper coil.
The Brake on the Harbor Freight tool worked pretty well. Here I am lining up the second point in my fold line…
This front cap was my first attempt, lessons were learned as mistakes were made along the way, but I still enjoyed it.
Here is one of the tiles from the first section… Mistakes included that I didn’t fold down the top corners of the tabs, so they got in the way as the tiles started needing to curve back down… I also didn’t make the drip edge significant enough…
Here we are coming up the north west side…
The Go Pro caught this shot of me looking tired but satisfied after finishing the copper cap on the front of the garage.
Here is a close up of the last tile on the front. You can see the rivets used to hold it all together (in addition to the folds)
This section of the FoxBlocks leaked a bit and made an ugly lump that would have shown thru the copper. I chiseled it out and refilled with smooth mortar. Here Michael is troweling it off.
The Go Pro also caught this pic. Not sure why we are both looking at the camera. Maybe it was on purpose. 😉
The copper after it was placed over the smoothed ridge…
