Sorry haven’t update this blog in a while. We are dried in as of December 22nd. Just before Christmas. We had some very windy days when they wanted to put on the roof panels. Luckily we also found that when the wind direction is North or East we have less wind at our property whereas when there is a West or WestNorth wind it is cold and almost impossible to do anything. The crew of UnCommon Angles did come out and got the roof on.
Exciting the house is really taking shape. Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) arrived, made out of OSB (oriented Strand Board) with a high density insulated foam pressed between these plates. The walls were put up on November 15th and 16th. This is how quickly these SIPs can be put together. The panels come pre-designed and made with electrical conduit and numbered. They are put into place and are then locked together with a camlock system. A foam is used to make the building airtight. The windows and door openings are already in the panel. This means that straight walls can be put together fairly quickly. It takes some more time where windows need to be supported by extra beams, as is the case in the front where we will have 4 6ft by 7 ft windows, for the spectacular view. The roof consists also of these panels. These will be placed on top of structural laminated beams. The cutouts can be seen where the glu-lam beams will fit / sit in. Walls are done, lets move on to glu-lam beams and roof.
The house slab was poured on November 5th, the garage slab is poured on November 28th. We will only have finished floors and no carpet or wood or tile so it had to turn out beautiful and it did. We also had rebar in both floors. Engineers lover rebar and we had plenty of it 🙂
With so much sun in the Arkansas valley to take advantage of and the opportunity to put the panels on our Barn that faces south we have decided to choose for Solar energy over propane (bad for environment, not clean when burning) as our energy source. This is an investment in clean and renewable energy we feel we need to make. I believe our system is positioned to supply us with around 7 kWatt which should be enough for most of our energy needs as a two person household. There is an option to deliver back to the grid, but recent changes in reimbursement (back to wholesale rates) have made this less interesting. We can see how that works out. And what the pay back time will be. It is somewhat odd that the local energy companies feel threatened by the use of solar, but for us another reason to make this investment. Next week (end of October 2018) the panels will be placed below the prep work that was done.
We have chosen in floor radiant heat (water) as our heat source. The tubing is placed on dense insulation and will be in the concrete slab. We will keep the concrete floors as they are and will just finish them with a sealer. The triple pane windows and the Sips R45 walls should keep the temperature very steady in our house. Cool in the summer and warm in winter with solar gain from the south -sw facing windows. We will not have propane or natural gas and therefor we have also decided to put up solar panels (see separate post). Also because we feel that with >300 days of sun a year we need to invest in and use this clean, renewable resource.
We / the building crew made a lot of progress this week. The soil was backfilled and compacted. The septic was installed and inspected. We even did some work ourselves by placing the conduit pipes for the electricity, because we didn’t want to lose time waiting for the electrician to show up. This would have held up the work on Friday which included compacting, placing the slab insulation and the rebar netting. Next steps, placement of the infloor heating tubes and then the slab (fundering) will be poured. The weather looks good so hopefully the slab is done and dried this week and then SIPs walls and roofing next week?
The pouring of the foundation walls was completed. We hoped the slab (fundering) would be ready as of yesterday (10/15/18) but I will give you the status up until this morning.
Below you see the pictures of the pouring of the foundation walls. The septic tank arrived and was placed. The plumbing is outlined, hooked up and put under pressure. Then sealed for backfilling and foundation (this hasn’t happened yet). After that we (and the builder) wanted the slab / foundation to be poured by last Monday. Last week we had a wet and the a very early cold spell with snow. The temperatures dropped and last Sunday into Monday October 15th were 12 Fahrenheit / -11 graden celsius so seriously cold. Unfortunately this didn’t help our schedule. But that now leaves us with beautiful sunny days and no wind. Perfect building weather! But our site hasn’t changed since Friday… Patience grasshopper, this is difficult for us.
We are now about 3 weeks behind and hope the cold and winds don’t return because after the slab, the SIPs Walls and roof will go up. We would want those to be up and be dried in by the end of October, but we are dependent on other projects of our builder and on the same note we don’t want to lose this window of opportunity with beautiful weather. It is so perfect for building and putting up walls and roof etc. I would almost want to do it myself, instead of waiting 😉 Hopefully I can give you an update on this soon.
This week quite a bit of work has been done. The ground work was finished. The forms where set for the footing. The foundation footing concrete was poured. The forms for the foundation walls are set up today Wednesday October 3rd. And today or tomorrow the builder will pour to prepare for the arrival of SIPs next week – these are the walls and roof panels we will use. SIPs are Structurally Insulated Panels we are using ICS Eco-SIPs these are highly energy efficient, require less framing lumber and OSB is made from the 37% of a tree that is normally waste from making solid lumber. As I know some engineers are following the build as well I will make a separate page on ICS Eco-SIPs.
Immediately after arriving in April we started adjusting our design for local conditions. Lots of sun (300+ days a year, yeah!), altitude, wind- and snowloads, oh yes and rocks (see pictures build). Each can be pretty extreme here, designs are based on 120 miles per hour winds. Sun exposure to the West is not recommended (way too hot), North expect snow and it can be a lot. So no entry on North side… So this is our design, we looked very much at functional space, high end building materials for insulation properties and we will give you more insight into that.
Big Mountain 