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Moving In
August 2004:
- Once we had our hole dug we were able to get the final house design made up with the help from the kit company we'd hired. Also, we were able to have the concrete for the basement poured. The process began with pouring the footing (see footing forms, poured footing, all forms) which at one point had to go over a piece of ledge that we decided to include right into our basement wall. After the footing was poured, the walls were formed. After the walls were poured, I remember going to the site to check out the work. I had to work on the day when the pour happened so had missed it (see photo). Seeing the basement walls up was a really cool feeling because it felt like the house was already halfway done! I'd later come to learn that this was not yet the case. Anyways, with the basement walls in place, we then had to crack off all the metal nubs sticking out of the wall by hitting them with a hammer (see photo), tar the outside surface to prevent moisture from coming in and finally add the insulation.
- Tarring concrete is one of the messiest and most tiring things I have ever done. I'd bought a cheep broom to do the task at a distance, but the broom didn't hold the tar well, so at all so I ended up using the shirt off my back as a rag to do the entire process. I wore rubber gloves to keep the bulk of the tar off my hands, but it still got everywhere! The game was pretty much, dunk my balled up shirt into the bucket of tar, and smear it onto the outside surface of the wall and over the top of the footing. My excavator guy had told me that I only had to tar up to where the basement wall would be burried underground, but that was still a lot of wall (see photo). Added to this equasion were legions of daddy-long-leg spiders tht kept waltzing onto the tar and getting stuck. It was all I could do to just keep removing them so they wouldn't die a horrible sticky death! Tarring the walls took all day and when I got back to the trailer to see Dawn-Marie (who had been working at her restaurant hat day and had no idea what I'd gone through) I was covered in tar. All over my arms, my legs - merged with the hairs - awefull! I had no idea how to get it off as a lot of it had already begun to dry, so I got to thinking... tar is a petroleum product, what type of solvent could I use (that we had in the trailer)? Some sort of liquid petroleum... jelly? Yes, vasoline. I tried it and it worked really well. I had to scrub it into the dried tar, but it dissolved it away and all without harmful fumes that would have come from using some other petro-solvent. Sorry - I have no photos of that.
- The laws in my area suggest that you should have foam insulation from about 4 feet below the surface of the ground, to just even with the surface. This is a rediculous idea - the bulk of the heat loss would occur above ground (where the cold air is) in the winter, so despite the recommendation, I ran 2 inch XPS pink foam from the top of the footing, to the top of the basement walls (which were just under 8 feet at their heighest).
I used XPS as opposed to white EPS foam because the pink foam is water proof whereas the more environmentally friendly white foam would have soaked up water in the ground and have basically been useless after the first year. My take on this quandry is as follows: The earth CAN handle some pollution such as the waste gasses from creating XPS foam. I knew that the foam would allow me to prevent countless tons of pollution from going into the atmosphere by saving energy used in heating, so I accepted the trade off. If everyone cut back their pollution to sustainable levels, we wouldn't have to worry so much about causing a little ourselves now and then.
Anyways, I bought the foam at Home Depot in 8x2 foot sheets. I had to rent their truck to haul it all back to my place, but the truck only cost $25 - a lot cheaper than owning one full time just for the occasional times I'd need it! With all the foam panels, the price came to about $500. That seems like a lot to spend on foam, but as I'd find out later, It was money VERY well spent!
September 2004:
- On the very first day of September, our first of 3 kit deliverys came (see photo). Now up to now, i've referred to our house as being a kit - and it was. But when I say kit, what I'm referring to is a pile of raw lumber in generic factory lenghts (see photo) and a small 40 somthing page instruction manual with sketches and directions. Nothing came ready to "pop up" with the exception of the windows, doors, and later the cabinets for the inside. All the rest of the house was straight up carpentry work. And at the beginning, we didn't even have electricity! It was all Amish all day for the first few weeks!
- We began work wit the sill plate bolting down to the foundation on the pins that the foundation pouring guys left sticking out of the top of the walls (see photo), and then began cutting up the wood (see photo) and assembling the first wall in the basement (see photo) per the instruction manual's advice.
- Once the basement was built, my dad (who'd had carpentry experience) and I assembled the center beam that would hold up the floor, walked it into place (see photo), affixed it (see photo of center beam or my father living dangerously). From there, Dawn and I began assembling the floor beams (see photo) and she began nailing on the decking of tounge and groove boards (see photo).
- This went on for weeks, we cooked at the site (as you can see in this photo). Often slept in a tent in the basement. One day, we finally had ELECTRICITY! Work sped up and in no time, we were erecting our first truss (see photo). The first was the hardest as it had nothing to brace or fall against had he dropped it, but it went up ok and then we got the rest up (see photo). Very quickly, the house began to take shape with the addition of wall boards onto the trusses (see photo). We kept sheathing up the walls and onto the roof (see photo). Then we were able to begin adding the housewrap and then the urethane foam insulation fro the giant pile that had been sitting on the side (see photo).
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