Small, Incremental Changes

We’ve got a thermometer set up to read in the house (ground level, north side) and the garage.  The upper temperature reading is for the garage, and the lower is inside the house.  A gradual climb in temperature from week-to-week indicates that the house is warming from the below-freezing temperatures we experienced before it was buttoned up with all the gaps sealed and insulated.

Readings are from January 4th, January 14th, and January 20th. RJStegora uses a couple of small space heaters and a dehumidifier to help with drying mudded gypsum walls and also the ongoing concrete drying.

 

Buttoning-up materials:

“rod” insulation between window and door frames and walls. It’s a flexible, compressible foam material.

This white cotton material was blowm into the attic ceiling, the exterior cavities on the 2nd floor, and the garage, mudrom, and breezeway ceilings.

This blue cotton insulation is made from old denim. It is made into large felted mats.

Here is an example of the felted cotton in interior ceiling cavities.

 

Gypsum board and joint compound may seem less exciting than concrete or framing.  We do want you to be impressed with this work:  Some of the walls are 3 stories tall – from basement to second floor ceiling. The crew which put the walls up worked fast, and the “mudder” was a lone fellow, who worked all weekend.  Insulation, taping, sealing, and glass siting are all critical parts of keeping the indoor temperature stable.

 

House and breezeway after “rocking” and “mudding;” much cleaner looking lines.

 

 

Garage has interior walls, and doors!  The interior temperature will be warmer now that the doors are on.

 

Supplies and tools

Tools of the trade, empty boxes

Tape. For seams.

That’s it for the  moment.  We’re looking at finishes for floors, and pulling together the details like tile and cabinets and shelves.

Getting Even More Concrete

RJStegora’s team smoothed the garage floor with sand and reinforced it with steel rebar.  Pipes were laid to help track the slope of the concrete; it needs to slope downward toward the front of the garage.  Under the slab are conduits with electric lines, one ready for the solar panel’s electricity, and water drains.

Can’t you just smell the ozone coming off the grinder as it cuts rebar?

Once the concrete was poured, the edges needed a bevel, and it is worked first with a power float (bottom photo, resting after a hard day), and then by hand. When finished, the surface will be smooth and the bubbles will have been worked out, and larger gravel and sand moved below the surface.

The garage floor was poured on a Friday, and kept above freezing over the weekend.  By Monday, it was being used for staging, and by Friday after, there was a west-end sidewalk to keep the mud at bay.

Concrete cures better at warmer temperatures, giving it more time to “set.”  There are additives which can accelerate the process, but keeping it above freezing can be accomplished with low-tech methods like a clear canopy to let light and heat energy in, and space heaters can help.  Below is the canopy over the garage’s back sidewalk.

Concrete is a versatile material, and has been around at least as long as 6500 BCE.  Examples of the early use can be found in southern regions of modern day Syria and Jordan, as construction material for houses and underground, water-proof cisterns.  Much of modern concrete is Portland Cement mixed with water. A chemical reaction occurs, forming a hard matrix of durable, stone-like material.

After the garage was done, the next concrete project was the front retaining wall and steps.  The retaining wall got blankets to warm it, as it set over several days.  The step needed the plastic canopy and heat over a weekend.

 

There we have it. The concrete at the edges, and the edge of our 2017 building season.

We’ve got tons of wiring to talk about coming up soon.  All our personal advisors suggest we should make conduit or wire run into any and every potential location, including low-voltage lines for communications systems.  Oh, and the house is warming up, making it nice to work in shirtsleeves.

On a last note, here is what we’re looking forward to in the spring:  tapping the sweet maple trees for syrup. Until then, sweet winter dreams!

Glass+House=Warm (Late November)

Ancient structures for living needed some fresh-air;  the English “windows” is based on the ancient word roots:  Wind-holes.

Sweet Tree Passive House has a lot of windows, especially on the south walls, letting in generous light and heat energy, and almost no air when closed.  The glass has a low iron content for better light/heat energy transferring into the house.  The windows are triple-paned, with argon between panes.  We can expect values of U-0.118 (heat loss rating) and R-8.5.  (link to definition:  http://www.efficientwindows.org/ufactor.php)

In comparison, good double-paned windows may have U ratings of 0.30; lower is better.

The weather has turned very cold in Minnesota, dropping over 30F overnight.  RJ Stegora’s construction team buttoned-up the window-to-wall gaps with a foam tube and calk.

“rod” insulation between window and door frames and walls. It’s a flexible, compressible foam material.

Seeing all the steps which go into making our home a tight, functioning structure helps us to understand what finishes and lights work best in a passive house.  Some selections need adjusting now that we know more.

This material keeps insulation up in the rafters, and moisture out of that insulation. It has about a dozen languages printed on the instructions!

This white cotton material was blowm into the attic ceiling, the exterior cavities on the 2nd floor, and the garage, mudrom, and breezeway ceilings.

The attic has Intello holding up the insulation (see the yellow bales).  The stud wall will be a small closet, and also permits us to have a utility chase.

Next:  a little more concrete.

Doors and Windows

November 11:  Veterans’ Day, and St. Martin’s Day.

It was a tradition to sign peace treaties on St. Martin’s Day, as Martin had been a soldier-turned-monk.  Celebrations were harvest festivals preceding the cold of winter, and ending battles before winter hit makes a lot of sense.

Our battle with mud had a temporary peace, as winter’s cold froze the mud solid, making it much easier to get the machines around the house to deliver windows and doors safely.

The ground floor is glassed-in with doors and huge windows.

Here are outside views of the ground-floor installations:

East, Front Door

North Wall

West Wall

South Wall

Here are inside views of ground-floor installations:

DocOc/2 from the inside view

Installation of a west wall door

South/Breezeway blue front door

Adjustments to the hinges

Blue breezeway door from inside.

Now that we’ve got window frames to see in place with concrete, we have a better idea what fits our concepts of flooring and trim materials.  The very clean lines of the clear-finished fir window frames makes for a bright contrast to the texture and color of the concrete.  We hope to play up the contrast in other finishes.

 

Below are the screws which hold the door and window frames in the concrete.

Next week:  Second-floor windows, garage windows, more ventilation, plumbing, and electrical work.

Truck-in! 8 November

We’re truckin’ now! After days of waiting, things are moving fast.

Windows and doors arrived on Wednesday at about 1:30.
Original estimate was last week, secondary estimate was noon.
The address was mangled, as well as some names “corrected” to non-American spellings, so maybe the driver had a challenge in finding the site.

The truck license is Minnesota.
The trailer license is from Maine.
The container hails from Barbados.
The material inside was manufactured in Germany.
The driver had a Spanish accent.
Truly, the village of our planet is involved in daily living. Our builder’s crew is locally grown, each with experience in many areas of the country and the world.

It can be tough to track the connections in a day, the paths crossed and intertwined. Sourcing materials for a life, or maybe just a house, is complicated and is inter-related with culture and economics.  (We could discuss coffee, as an example!)

The windows and doors are secured inside the container by clever framing fastened to container walls.  This prevented shifting of the materials, and requires the team to unscrewing each fastener before removing a pallet.

Stemmed glasses were not in the order:
we can hardly wait to find out what is in this box.
Not a precise translation. 
VORSICHT GLAS! (beware/be wary of glass!) 
NICHT WERFEN!! (No throwing!)

Hand-carrying in mud!

The lift got it most of the way

This window barely fit through its future home.

The most expensive door in the whole project gets special hand-carry treatment through the mud.  Its frame follows, with a mechanical lift taking it to the back porch, and humans take it inside. There was very little space to clear the frame, and concrete does not have any give.

Left edge shows fasteners

The red frame window will face east

The attic gets one window per gable

Here’s an attic view

 

 

Close-up of suction-cup tools for glass. The reflected images show 3 glass layers. 

Yes, it is!

Shed impediments to carrying windows and doors

Just before the container arrived, we got delivery of some insulation panels for the garage parapet.

Local delivery of garage insulation panels

Close-up of the lift’s works.

Small, but significant side note:  electricity arrived!  The site is notably quieter, as RJStegora’s team no longer needs to run a generator.

Autumn Joy Sedum continues to share its blossoms, despite the cold.

Busily Waiting

Things are getting crazy busy.  We are starting rough-in for plumbing, so suddenly we need lots plumbing fixtures on site so that the in-the-wall pieces can be installed accurately in the proper locations. But we’ve had a few snafus. The list of fixtures from our initial supplier was supplied to our plumbers about a week late, and then it was not at all accurate. So we’ve had to use plan B to obtain the things the plumbers needed first.

We’ve also been anxiously tracking the progress of our window and exterior door construction and delivery, since they’re being made in, and shipped from, Germany.  For about the past 9 days, they’ve been shipboard, crossing the Atlantic during the last 6 of those days.  We’ve been tracking the progress of “our” ship, the YM Enlightenment with the help of the MarineTraffic website.  The ship conveniently avoided Hurricane Ophelia fortunately, but it rather appears to my inexpert eye that it did have to take a less than optimal route to go around it.

As of this moment, the Enlightenment is about 10 miles off shore from Virginia Beach, heading to make port at Norfolk.  Once the container is off the ship, it will somehow get loaded on a railroad car headed towards Minneapolis.  That journey is estimated to take another 9 days  Our container of windows and doors will then be required to clear customs in a Minneapolis rail yard.  Once it does, we can get it trucked to our building site.

We very much look forward to having the house “buttoned up” with windows and doors, both to keep the weather out as well as for the security.  We’ve already had someone steal some lumber; we’d hate to have more theft occur.

Vegetable & Mineral: wood, concrete, steel.

The garage has wood rafters and decking, so more wood can be stored inside and on top.  A green roof is heavier than a typical roof, so Sweet Tree’s garage has a significant support structure.

The Electric Power box arrived!   Soon, there will be lights inside without needing the gas-powered generators. (Hint, hint, Xcel Energy, it’s your move). We’re eyeing a Power Wall, and looking for good placement for plug-in spots for future electric car charging.

Looking SE from under garage

Looking NE from under garage, mudroom door in center

There will be a nice south window in the garage

It’s a power thing

I-Joists stand out from the second floor and the gable ends.  There will be insulation between them, and steel covering the second floor walls and the roof.  The steel will have a standing seam which can serve as an attachment point for solar panels.

Inside the attic space will be an office with a great view to the East.  The man standing near the window gives a sense of proportion to the space.  It should be a good size for a small office.

I-joinsts being screwed to the ICF structure.

The west balcony and attic, with i-joists to hold the insulation.

Seeing an adult for scale shows the nice size of the attic spaces

West window from the attic, looking at the future sugar bush and orchard

Looking down south from 3rd floor attic

Looking into the east bedroom

Not quite infinite trusses

North window from the closet

The great amount of concrete forming the shell of the house will be left open to see where ever possible, but the inside structure uses wood and steel to support and define the rooms.

West Bedroom

Kitchen Rafters

Stairway to heaven (attic)

Future bed, bath, and closet

East Bedroom, stair well, bath above the east entrance

Attic roof rafters are tape-sealed and bolted firmly in place.

These steel brackets are just about everywhere something needs to be held up.

There is a spectacular view from the attic to the ground floor, through second floor and ground floor windows.  The light from those south windows should flood the open space, and reflect up to make the attic bright as well.  We expect this to be a house of light and warmth, with windows and stairwells strategically placed for best views, illumination, and heat gain in winter.

We had a lot of rain again, and at first that produced prodigious mud ruts.
After the rain came mushrooms.

Rain ruts

Mulch Mushrooms

 

Topping it off and Closing the Moat

Roof decking was lifted up to the rafters, where pieces were slipped into place and secured with nails.  Once the decking is in place, the seams will be taped for air and water tightness.

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A glycol loop runs around the base of the house.  It will help pre-heat or-cool the fresh air system, using the soil temperature from the base of the foundation. It will change very little during a year’s time, and this helps the fresh air system regulate the temperature of our home.

Bollig & Sons filled the moat in with our small mountain of soil, then packed it down.

North side, basement with glycol tube

Flying rock shoots into the moat before the soil was replaced.

Bollig & Sons used this to flatten our moat!

The mountain of subsoil is now a molehill

Graded soil at the front

Back yard graded

Taped roof decking

Breezeway covered

Rafters look like boat framing upside down

Plywood stack

Wood is used is so many ways in homes, even when the walls are concrete.  Floors, rafters, beams, and finished surfaces rely on wood for strength, versatility, and beauty.

 

EIFS: (Ee-fuhss) A new Acronym. Mid-September 2017

Sweet Tree Passive House is getting an Exterior Insulated Finish System (EIFS) exterior for basement, ground floor, garage, mudroom, and breezeway.  It is a layered water-proofing insulation. Sweet Tree Passive House will get a white stucco finish for the ground floor, so much of the “look” will be similar to the white of the unfinished ICF.

Here’s the progress view just before the EIFS team got started:

The house is up to the second floor, almost ready for floor joists. RJStegora places re-inforcing lumber at critical points to prevent stress on the forms. The forms are sturdy, braced and secured (and inter-laced with rebar) to withstand the impact of the heavy, wet concrete.

Here is the beginning of the EIFS installation:

The new foam layer brings the exterior out further, making for deep window sills.

EIFS layer one in bags

Application on North basement wall

More North basement wall

3-high finished North basement

Basement from the East

Closer basement East

Basement East

South basement wall: note sanding on right to even the surface.

SW Corner, with EIFS

8″ concrete, 2″ ICF…

…plus even more insulation with this layer of EIFS

Creeping charlie getting dramatic.

Here is the second stage for the basement and garage.

Blue mesh gets applied with a grey sealing adhesive.

House-breezeway corner, half-EIFS sealed

Dimple-mat: a non-porous textured material used to guide any water to the gravel and drainage pipe outside the foundation area.

Dimple mat on House side, Mesh and sealant on breezeway (same corner as above photo.)

House and garage, ready for next step.

The link below goes to a web site which explains EIFS systems.

http://www.eima.com/eifs

Autumnal wanderer

Ground-Floor Reveal: Windows to the Future

We’ve got eyes on the future with this house, and plenty of windows to see it coming.

Revealed new concrete shows a rhythm of textures and subtle color shifts.

These hold things together

East Picture window. Young man indicates scale.

2-story stairway window on right, house venting ports

Mid-day sun, August

North; lilacs out the Atelier

West: swing door left, slider on right

West wall: will be the largest wall section on 1st floor

South window/door wall

8″ concrete goes inside this space

See the top edge’s off-set tooth joints?

The teeth interlock with the next panel.

Stabilizers hold corners steady when the concrete is poured. (concrete is VERY HEAVY)

This is a volunteer ground-cover, holding back the soil piles. Yes, it’s a weed.

 

Dandylions are still blooming and seeding.

The leaflet-branches all around this flower are shoots from a storm-damaged locust tree.

 

Sometimes things look different from a long view.  We won’t see the North side rooms like this after the walls go up.

Bridge/combs ready for 2nd floor

Looking at East Wall

North-West Corner: Kitchen & Atelier

West Doors

South Window Wall

Simple tool for significant impact

Whole clans of nails

Looking down to the East

Looking down to the North

Looking in from the West: golden morning light

South window/door wall

Autumn brings ripeness and rot

 

The creeping charlie makes a lovely, deep-green backdrop for a interesting boulder.