Building My House

81 Tech Support Visit

2010-07-10T16:00:00.001-06:00

It's been awhile, since I've updated the blog. Why so long? This yield problem with the foam, and how to solve it, or whether it can be solved at all is the reason.

After several telephone calls to tech support lamenting my yield problem, and multiple discussions about spray technique, ie gun settings, foam, substrate and air temps, these calls confirmed that I was using correct technique. The next step was to send (at their request and cost) a cartridge of foam back to Soythane for them to test spray. They test sprayed it and reported they got an "overage" on yield; no yield numbers mind you, just an "overage". Okay, the technique is good, the foam is good; so why this yield problem. The only thing left to do was to send me a tech specialist, which they volunteered to do.

I have to commend Soythane for their tech support. We talked on Thursday morning and they said they can have a guy at my house Friday afternoon. Coming from Florida, I'm pretty impressed. He arrives and gives the equipment a cursory inspection and then wants to spray a cartridge himself. He sprays half a cartridge, stops, hands me the gun and says, "you're out of air". Of course I'm baffled because the gun was still spraying when he stopped, not quite as strongly as when he started spraying the cartridge, but still spraying none-the-less. So, now it's time to investigate. Having already looked at the compressor and pronouncing it more than adequate, and having looked over the gun and being satisfied with it, the only thing left in the setup is the hoses. He says they are not big enough diameter hoses to do the job.

Initially, way back when I started the compressor adventure I mentioned that I bought a 5/8" ID garden hose. I used that to spray the first half to two-thirds of my foam. But, then the connection between hose and spray gun started coming loose. I repaired it, but several canisters of foam later, it came loose again. I was very lucky that both times the connection came loose I was standing on the floor changing out canisters. Had it come loose during spraying it might have caused me to fall off the walkboard. Still, everytime the connection came loose the pressurized end of the hose goes whipping all around. Once it whacked me on the back of the leg, leaving a nice bruise. Not initially having any better way to better connect the 5/8 hose to the gun I switched hoses back to my original 3/8" ID airhoses (that did have tight, reliable connections).

So, the tech guy has sprayed half a cartridge on these 3/8 airhoses and said they are too small. I disagree because I had already asked tech support guy #2 (yes they have more than one) what size compressor and airhoses they use at the factory (they use 3/8 airhose there too). So, we start looking at the airhoses, close up. I have two x fifty foot airhoses. The first one is 3/8 ID I know because I had to cut through it and connect a new fitting. But the second airhose has a braided steel liner inside. You can't cut through that one. My tech support visitor looks at it and says it's 1/4 ID, not 3/8. There is one small spot on the hose where the rubber outer liner has worn away exposing the braided steel, and yes, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, it appears to be 1/4 ID.

So, tech support guy says, there's your problem. Wanting to try to salvage the relationship, he says if I need any more foam they will give me a discount on it. I can't fault the guy or the company. They went way out of their way to help me resolve my problem. I commend them for that.

So, the next day, I convert back to the 5/8 airhose. In previous trips to the store I had a lot of trouble finding connectors to adapt hose size to gun size. I know I spent an hour looking for alternatives. They just didn't have what I needed to get the job done. I go back to the store again to try one more time to get adaptors, and of course, this time everything I need is right there on the shelf. It didn't even take 5 minutes to find a workable solution. Life can be so frustrating this way. So much grief and aggravation could have been avoided if only the adaptors had been available. Or maybe said another way, my lack of experience in spraying foam and solving foam related problems may have caused me to choose an alternative that couldn't work. Really, the main problem was not realizing that the steel braided hose was 1/4 ID.

So, I get all the 5/8 airhose hooked back up and test spray a couple of canisters, being very careful to measure exactly how much yield I get with each canister. I did not get the yield the company advertises, but I think the "underrage" on yield is 15-20%, not the 35% I initially thought it was. I'm not happy with the underrage, but I can live with it. So, I order some more foam. It hasn't arrived yet.

80 Foam Spraying Continues

2010-06-21T15:41:00.001-06:00

Well, I've found the part of housebuilding that I hate. Hate might be a little extreme, let's just say I dislike it ...a lot. In that Tyvek suit, sweating myself silly, even if the temp is 80. I don't start spraying until the airtemp reaches 80, which is usually about 9 a.m. By the time I get two cases (12 canisters) sprayed the temp is getting over 90. If the foam temp reaches 92 or 93 I need to be shutting down spraying because the foam will start "exploding" (my term), meaning it expands unpredictably creating big air bubbles, some of those air bubbles pop. It makes for a nasty finished apprearance and I suspect a severly compromised insulation capability.

The first couple of body suits I bought were the cheaper, polypropylene suits. While they breath better than the Tyvek suits, they just don't have the durability. Getting one to last more than one day is tough. The Tyvek suit I'm using is easily 2 weeks old now and still holding up just fine. It just doesn't breath at all, so it feels hotter when wearing it.

Tyvek Suit Tip: When you take it off turn it inside out and hang it up on a hanger. It will dry pretty quick.

Foam Results: I feel like I'm getting about 35% less yield than I should be getting. Or said another way, the foam is going only about 2/3 as far as it should. At this rate I will have to buy more foam to complete the roof. The advertised yield is 200 bd-ft per case (6 canisters). I calculate I'm only getting about 130-135 bd-ft per case. I talked to Soythane and they say that most people get more than the advertised yield, not less.

One possible explanation they suggest, is that since I'm spraying it on metal roofing, it takes extra foam to fill in the "ridges" that occur every 9" of width. I agree it takes extra foam to fill the ridges, but not 35% more foam. So, I drew a cross section out and calculated how much extra to fill up the ridge...4% extra. That's a far piece from 35%.

Soythane has asked me to mark off a known area on a flat surface and spray out one whole canister and measure the yield. I guess I'll do that tomorrow.

Out of my original order of 31 cases I have sprayed 23 and I'm just barely halfway through on the roof. If this yield problem continues it may have been cheaper to hire it sprayed.

Oh well.

79 Foam - Day 3.5

2010-06-05T16:02:00.001-06:00

No, I didn't get any foam sprayed yesterday or today. Sometimes you just need a day off from the heat inside that Tyvek suit. Other days there's other work to get done before you can continue spraying.

Until now I have been doing all my spraying from a ladder. While there are advantages to using a ladder because it is easy to move around, there are also disadvantages. As my metal roof is over 2x4 purlins (that run at right angles to the roof trusses), when you stand on a ladder you can generally only "see" one side of the purlin, the side facing the ridge of the roof. You can't reach the "backside" of the purlin without moving the ladder.

I solved that problem today by setting up stands so I could work from the walkboard instead of the ladder. It's set up with one end higher than the other, such that the walkboard parallels the slope of the roof. Now, as I work my way up the roof, when I reach a purlin I can spray the lower side of the purlin and then inch forward just enough to spray the other (upper) side. I'm thinking this will make for a better appearance and more uniformity in the foam layer.

I should have done it this way all along, but sometimes we opt for an easier, even if less desirable solution. What's that old saying, if you don't have time to do it right, when are you ever going to find time to do it ...over.

78: Foam - Day Three

2010-06-03T18:07:00.002-06:00

Boy, what a difference cooler foam makes. The high today was 90 inside the house. I kept the unused foam canisters in their cardboard box rather than set them on the table and let the fan blow 90 degree air across them. It made a difference as most all day long foam temps stayed 86 to 88 degrees.

The only problematic thing today was it still took what seemed like longer than 45-60 seconds to spray out each canister, but I'm probably counting too fast. Regardless, the foam expanded up nicely, getting about the yield I thought it should be getting.

I've learned to throw my spray sock in cold water before putting it on each time, which makes it much more comfortable (for a little while anyway) when you have to put it back on. I also learned that if you pull the face mask a little bit lower on your face, you can still get a good seal on your face AND your goggles fit much better preventing foam fumes from getting inside the goggles and making your eyes burn. In fact, if you're going to spray DIY foam make sure your goggles and mask can work together effectively. I got lucky and bought Stanley brand goggles at Walmart, which fit much better and have bigger flanges around the outside to better seal out the crud. The cheapo goggles at Lowes have almost no flange at all.

I also learned today that the brass button on the back of the gun that sets the direction of piston travel can get bumped while you move the gun around spraying foam; and if you bump it hard enough you will reverse the direction of the pistons. The symptom you will see is foam stops spraying. Just push the button again (quickly) and the foam won't set up in the mixing tube, you can keep spraying and you won't lose the remaining foam in the canister.

This brass button thing is just another part of the learning curve we all have to go through. Blogging about it, I hope to speed up your results if you choose Soythane.

So, all in all, I have a better opinion of Soythane today than I did yesterday, and my roof is pretty much 1/3 done.

77: Foam - Day Two

2010-06-02T18:00:00.003-06:00

What was so simple yesterday, seemed harder today. I had a long conversation with Soythane technical this morning only to find out that the darker brown color foam of the last couple of canisters was probably not due to moisture in the compressed air, but rather more likely due to the foam reaching it's highest sprayable temp, which I think is 95 degf, but realistically it should be more like 90.

I didn't get as early a start as I would've liked, so by the time I did start I was measuring foam temps up around 92. I sprayed a couple of canisters before lunch and they seemed to take an awfully long time to spray, like two minutes plus. These canisters are supposed to be empty in 45-60 seconds, so I expect the foam temp was the cause of my problems.

So, take a break, eat some lunch, think about what to do. I decided to make a cooling bath for the canisters, but I probably used too much ice in the bath. The water temp measured at 42 degrees, which cools the foam down way too quick and way too much. So, it's warm them back up some, but net result was I seemed to be measuring mid to high 80's which should have sprayed perfectly, only it didn't. Long spray times were still the problem.

Soythane says to shake the canisters to mix the contents before spraying. Maybe I wasn't shaking them enough.

Tomorrow the high is supposed to be mid to high 80's, so maybe that will make for a better day, and I plan to get a much earlier start.

Lessons learned - the head cover you want is called a spray sock, got mine from Lowes. Soythane recommended using Vaseline on any exposed skin, lots cheaper than even Walmart's version of Aquaphor. Oh, and they don't require you install a water separator in your airline.

76: Houston - We have Foam

2010-06-01T18:08:00.005-06:00

Yes, can you believe it, we have foam. After getting the compressor wired in to my circuit breaker panel and getting the regulator plumbed in so I could limit the gun pressure to 100 psi, it came time to turn it on and see if it worked. Sure enough, it did, and boy did it sound sweet, putt-putt-putting along charging up the tank to 170 psi. That was yesterday (Memorial Day).

So, today was let's shoot some foam day. I plugged the gun in to the airline and the atomizer pressure gauge didn't drop at all when I tested the gun. It just sat there rock solid on 40 psi like it was supposed too.

So, in goes canister number one and it sprayed out beautifully, emptying the canister in about 45 seconds, just like it's supposed too. This time I went over all my written checklist items before turning on the foam - tyvek suit on, respirator on, goggles on, hat on, gloves on, temps checked, pressures checked. The foam was 83 degrees sitting in the box - perfect. The substrate (metal roof) was a cool 148 degrees (measured with the laser infrared thermometer). It's been this hot many other days too. A metal roof that hot warms up the inside of the house quite nicely to 105 degrees. Yes, I was sweating freely inside that tyvek suit.

Todays lessons #1 - surgical type nitrile gloves aren't very durable. They tear easily and with your hands being that sweaty the new ones don't go on easily. I had some heavier rubber gloves, but they are a pain too. So, eventually I just put on some leather palm work gloves (cheap from Walmart). They did just fine, and your hands don't get soaking wet inside them, so they go on and off easily.

Lesson #2 - you need a head cover. Though I had goggles, respirator and hat on, there is still too much exposed skin to get foam overspray on. I only did fifteen canisters this afternoon, but that still spotted me up pretty good with foam. So, tomorrow a new tyvek suit with hoody will get used. I talked to a pharmacist at Walmart to ask if they had any "barrier creams" to put on exposed skin (that isn't covered by the hoody). All he could suggest was Aquaphor cream, so I got the Walmart equivalent.

Lesson #3 - I need a water separator. The last canister or three sprayed out slower than the first 12 canisters, like over a minute each. The foam looked a little darker coming out of the gun too. I think it's water that is a byproduct of air compression. Soythane had suggested getting one, so tomorrow morning I will.

Lesson #4 - You want to put a layer of Saran Wrap on the outside of your goggles. After about 4 canisters you will have enough overspray on the goggles that you will want to change out the Saran Wrap. And actually, I used cheap Walmart plastic wrap, not Saran.

All in all, a successful day spraying foam.

75: Adventure – Part IV

2010-05-30T03:24:00.000-06:00

Okay, so how are we going to unload this 600 lb monster without a forklift. Simple, we take it apart and remove one component at a time. The belt guard comes off easily, and weighs maybe 20 lbs. The motor comes off next. It’s about 80 lbs. But that requires me to disconnect all the wires inside the electrical panel. Fortunately, there’s only six wires to remove and I think I can remember where they all go. These first two items are light and I can hand carry them. Now, it’s time for the compressor pump to come off. This thing is BIG and it looks like it’s solid steel. The pulley wheels are about 16” in diameter and about 3” thick. I’ll bet the wheel weighs 100 lbs by itself.

A week or two ago I buried a ½” x 7” lag screw most of the way in a telephone pole in my front yard thinking I would need it eventually. Now, all I had to do was back the truck up to the pole; hook up my homemade block and tackle (see post #68) and hoist away. It’s all I can do to lift it with the block and tackle. Fortunately, my neighbor comes by to help lay it down on the furniture dolly and help me push it into the garage. Now comes the tank. It’s right at 5 ft long and 20 inches in diameter. It’s not as heavy as the compressor, but it’s close and it’s a lot bulkier to maneuver around. The neighbor comes back over and helps me get it off the truck and into the garage. As written here it doesn’t sound too difficult, but all this disassembly, unloading and moving into the garage took about 6 hours.

So, now I’ve got to put it all back together, which wasn’t too hard. The biggest issue in reassembly was having to reinforce the garage roof truss that I would hook the top of the block and tackle too to lift the pump. I did that by wedging a 2x4 vertically under the truss close to where my lift point was. I had forgotten to ask the sales guy how to wire it all up, so I emailed him a picture of the inside of the electrical panel and he told me where to connect up the wires, 10-2 with ground and a 30 amp double breaker.

About $80 later I have wire, breaker, conduit and fittings, so we’re ready to get this thing running. My electrical panel is about 15 feet away from the compressor, so hopefully the wiring will go smoothly.

74: Adventure – Part III

2010-05-30T03:03:00.000-06:00

So, while I’m waiting on parts I talk to an engineer friend of mine who wanted to hear the whole story starting with the manifolding of two compressors idea. I tell him the details and he immediately says. Tony, you’ve obviously forgotten your hydraulics engineering principles. (Yes, I have an engineering degree too, but I didn’t work my whole career in engineering – so yes, I have forgotten a thing or two). Long story short, you can manifold two compressors together, but you have to increase all your hose and air fitting sizes so that friction doesn’t rob you of all your extra capacity. So, I upgrade my airhose to 5/8” ID from 3/8” and make the manifold out of ¾” ID hoses. No, I didn’t buy 5/8” airhose that would have cost a fortune. The same engineer said go buy a new, heavy duty 5/8” waterhose. It will handle 100 psi no problem. He was right.

Fortunately, I hadn’t given back my friend’s borrowed compressor. So, I manifolded them together again with all the larger hoses and try to shoot a canister. It shoots foam and the foam looks good, but with about 25% of the foam left to spray the pressure tanks have run out of volume and both compressors kick on and can’t maintain the needed cfm. So, spraying stops and I pitch the remaining 25% out the window.

So, now I’ve sprayed out about 4 canisters (about $90) and don’t have much to show for it. It’s back to the drawing board one more time. On Monday, when the rental compressor repairs were supposed to be finished they call me to say the repairs didn’t fix it and they have to order more parts. It will likely be another week before it’s repaired. So now, it’s time to break down and BUY a compressor. I check all over town, nobody has one locally that’s big enough to do the job. I check Ebay, nothing. I check Craigslist and they have lots of compressors. After checking everywhere within a days drive I find what I need in Dallas, a compressor company that rebuilds and sells compressors. They have a 5hp 210 volt, 80 gallon, two stage Quincy brand rebuilt compressor with a new electric motor, a reconditioned compressor pump and all for $1100. I’d seen several other used compressors in this size range for about the same price, so rather than take a chance on a used one, I bought a rebuilt one.

I drive to Dallas to get it. It weighs almost 700 lbs and is bolted down to a pallet. They load it in my pickup with a forklift. The drive home was uneventful.

Tomorrow – unloading the compressor.

73: Compressor Adventures – Part II

2010-05-30T03:01:00.001-06:00

Okay, so everything is ready to spray (again). I get all suited up, check that the tank pressure is fully charged at 175 psi, and that the regulator is set for 100 psi. I check the gun operation and it cycles fine, only when you mash the trigger the atomizer pressure gauge drops to 36 psi. It needs to stay rock solid at 40 psi. So, I try to shoot a canister…..it doesn’t work. Foam again doesn’t even make it all the way through the mixing tube. So, now I’m really psssssssd. Fortunately, this time I get the canister out of the gun and outside the house pronto, because it too starts barfing and belching and you can imagine what other colorful terms I thinking here. But, at least it isn’t doing it inside the house.

So, technical support gets another call, or two, or three, or five. We discuss every idea imaginable. Were the gun settings correct, what are all the temperatures, can I hear air leaking out of the gun, the air hose, or the compressor. Are there any kinks in the airhose that would restrict airflow. Am I using a tiny diameter airhose (most airhose is 3/8 I.D., but some is ¼ I.D). Is my airhose too long. I have to commend the guys at Soythane technical because they were right there with me every step of the way and for as long as it took. They even offered to overnite ship me a new gun at no cost so I would not lose any more work time. I said before you do that let me see if I can find another compressor to check my gun out on, so maybe we can isolate the problem to the compressor or the gun. So where in the sam hill am I going to find another big compressor on short notice. The answer just kinda fell out of the sky. My neighbor has a son who just bought a soda blasting rig to start up a side business. I had gone and seen his rig the day before. He said it’s just basically a “huge compressor”, capable of like 230 cfm at 175 psi, slightly more than I will ever need.

So, I drive up to his place and the compressor gods are smiling because he’s at home and happy to fire up the compressor. I reset all the gun settings to their default values and this thing sprays the prettiest canister of foam you’ve ever seen. He’s impressed with how the foam expands, so he got something positive out of it too. So, compressor #2 is dead or dying. I had noticed that all along it kinda sounded like it was loafing at idle instead of that nice, crisp RPM sound of a lawn mower making full power. As it has a governor, I grab the linkage with a set of pliers and goose it and the RPM’s go up, but I don’t have enough hands to hold the linkage and check the gun pressures at the same time, so the rental company gets a call and a request to bypass the governor. They didn’t like that idea and said no, we’ll send you a mechanic. He arrives 20 minutes later and in short order he administers last rites to the compressor. Fortunately he came in the truck with the liftgate so he could take the dead carcass back with him. I follow him up to the rental shop where they promptly refund my money.

So, parts have to be ordered and it will be 3-5 days before the repairs are finished. That’s not really so bad because it looks like rain is coming, and it’s the weekend and we had plans anyway.

There’s more to this story, so “yall come back now.”

72: Compressor Adventures 1

2010-05-29T09:16:00.000-06:00

I have a small Craftsman compressor that puts out about 6 cfm. Okay says self, we need 4 more cfm and we’re all set. So, I google the subject “manifolding (connecting) compressors together” and I get several positive responses. The articles say it’s done all the time. So, I borrow a friends compressor (also a Craftsman , but a littler larger) and buy some air hose and fittings to connect the outputs together. Everything looks pretty slick. My compressor needs are solved for very few dollars. If only it could be that simple.

Long, story short, the foam doesn’t spray. I mash the trigger and the foam doesn’t even make it all the way down the mixing tube before it stops. Needless to say it doesn’t spray. Canister 1 is lost. I’m sitting there wondering what’s wrong (as the two components backflow and start mixing together inside the canisters). Remember this stuff expands when it mixes. I get the canister out of the gun and set it on the floor (bad move) – this is why you need box #2. It keeps expanding and eventually pushes the plunger partly out the back end of the canister. Now the unused part A is spraying all over the place, a stream of stinky, brown goo arcing 20 feet across the inside of my house, hitting walls, windows, window screens, my work table, darn near everything in sight. I finally throw a rag over it and pitch it all out the window, where it finally empties, but not before it has decorated the inside of my house with part A; the resin component that has a medium strong chemical odor.

So, it’s open up all the windows that weren’t already open and then off to the phone to call Soythane technical support. Fortunately, it’s a 1-800 number cause I’ve used it plenty. Tech support guy says he’s never heard of connecting two compressors together and that they use a Campbell Hausfeld 80 gallon 5hp 210 volt compressor for all their test spraying. Hey, that’s a big compressor, lots bigger than my tiny little Craftsman. How do I know this, because while I was looking for airhose and fittings, I also looked at all the compressors for sale at Lowes. Their biggest is an 80 gallon Kobalt for $799, but it only puts out slightly more than 10 cfm at 100 psi. Further, it says peak horsepower of about 5, but running horsepower of about 4. Self says, I don’t want to spend this much money, especially if it is going to just barely get out 10 cfm.

So, I call up the local rental place to see what they have in the way of compressors. Sure enough, they have this big mama; gasoline powered, 11 hp, Honda engine, with a pump the size of a beach ball. It puts out 25 cfm at 175 psi, so self says to self…problem solved. It’s so heavy that I’d never get it out of the pickup truck, so they deliver it to me on a truck with a liftgate. It goes for $215 per week (so much for cheap compressor solutions). I get it delivered that afternoon, expecting to spray foam the next day.

Learning opportunity #1 – the weather forecast the next couple of days is highs of 75 degrees. Shame on me for not checking the forecast first. Beautiful weather to work on a house, but not to spray foam because this stuff needs 80 degrees (or warmer) to cure right. In fact the company says use the 80-80-80 rule. 80 degree material temperature, 80 degree substrate temperature (the surface you’re spraying it on) and 80 degree air temp. Higher temps are okay, lower temps are not, better to wait for warmer weather. Great, the clock is running on this rental compressor and I can’t even use it.

But, somehow the planets align. The very next day even though it’s only 75 outside, the sun shining on my metal roof warms the metal up to a “comfy” 130 degrees. How do I know this, they recommend buying one of those laser infrared thermometers, about $30 to $50 at Harbor Freight or Sears. The roof warms the air inside the house up to about 85. Great, all I’ve got to do is warm the foam up to 80 and we’re in luck. Tech support gave me several ideas on how to warm canisters, but sitting them in the sun is the easiest. Hint: if you set them in the sun, they don’t need to be there very long. Five minutes is plenty, 15 minutes and they are at 95 degrees; too hot to spray foam with, as the foam will both mix and cure in the mixing tube at that temp, clogging the gun and losing yet another canister of foam. Use 90 degrees as a max for foam temp. Above that, cool them before use. Better yet, don’t leave them out in the sun too long. If the canisters are 80 – 85, go for it.

We have a ways to go yet, so I’ll continue in next post.

71: Soythane Foam

2010-05-29T05:37:00.005-06:00

Soythane foam comes in double canisters, pic 1 and is sprayed with an air gun, pic 2. There are six canisters per case (about $140), each case is supposed to cover about 200 sq ft (foam 1" thick), so each canister covers about 33 sq ft. Cost wise this is about 70 cents per sq ft, about the same as method 2 in previous post and cheaper than method 1. The only equipment you need is a compressor capable of 10 cfm at 100 psi. For those of you who have never used anything larger than a small home size compressor, this turns out to be a rather large compressor. More on that later.

As I'm spraying the roof first, let's envision what that will look like. First, I'll be standing on a ladder or on a walkboard on scaffolds. I'm suited up in a full body suit (Tyvek), with goggles, respirator, rubber gloves, ear plugs, hat. The gun and a full canister weigh in at what I've been told is 17 lbs, though it feels heavier. Turn on the air to the atomizer and mash the trigger and spray out the canister contents in 45 or so seconds. Discard canister, load another, repeat.

Initially, I thought this canister idea was a little wasteful, and would likely result in this stuff costing more than it should. But, there are some nice advantages to this method of delivery. Foam doesn't go through the gun and there are no long (heavy) hoses full of foam to drag around or purge, clean up and stow at the end of the day. Unlike the Source of Supply method above, this system has been around for a long time, as this gun also gets used to spray bed liners in pickup trucks. So, this equipment has some history.

The company advises that if you're going for 2 or 3 inches of finished foam thickness, to do it all in one pass instead of three separate 1" layers. This stuff generates heat when curing and more heat means more expansion (thicker foam layer). Since I want about 3" thickness that means each canister will only be covering about 11 sq ft of area. My roof trusses are 4 feet apart, so I'll spray truss to truss by almost 3 ft per canister. Doing that much area, I can realistically do it from a stationary position on a ladder. Spray, move ladder, reload gun, spray next area.

You will want a table nearby with your spare cartridges, so you don't have to bend over and pick them up off the floor. You will use the table to screw the mixing tube on top of each canister before you put the canister in the gun and then attach the atomizer hose. You will also want a couple of empty boxes. The foam comes in boxes so you have plenty of those already. Box 1 is for the empty cartridges and box 2 is your emergency box to put malfunctioning cartridges in. More on this in next post.

70: DIY Foam Alternatives

2010-05-27T05:37:00.001-06:00

After lots of research on the internet I chose Soythane foam for my insulation. Though they advertise it’s “green” because it uses soy as a major ingredient, that’s not why I chose it. So, why did I choose it?

First off – why spray the foam myself, why not hire it done? Pretty simple answer – cost – hire it done and we’re looking at $13,000 or so to do the whole house with 2 pound, closed cell foam. Do it myself and it will run about half that. $13,000 is more than half of all I’ve spent so far, more than a little sticker shock. And since I’ve built everything else, spraying my own foam seems like the right way to go.

For this to work for me there can’t be any really negative aspects related to equipment, delivery method or cost. The “propane tank” companies like Tiger Foam send your foam in tanks similar to the propane tanks you use with your barbecue grill. There is no equipment to buy or rent. You just hook up the hoses and start spraying. When through, throw away the cans, no hazardous waste to deal with. Disadvantage: cost. It runs about $1.00 per sq ft per inch of foam thickness. As I want about 3 inches of foam in my roof, that is more cost than hiring it done. Disadvantage2: your “pressure limited”. The cans come pre-pressured. If you lose pressure for any reason, the foam is lost, and that’s a $600 loss per set of cans. Other alternatives were cheaper on materials, so I ruled out the “propane cans”.

Method #2 - from a company named Source of Supply. They send you foam in 17 gallon drums or 55 gallon barrels. A 55 gallon barrel weighs in at around 500 lbs, so moving one around by yourself is pretty much out of the question. Because the barrel sets weigh over 1000 lbs total, you get into hazardous material shipping charges, which are not cheap. Equipment cost: you have to buy anywhere from $2500 to $3500 of equipment to spray the foam. The higher cost amount is for heated hoses. For my one-time, one-house use of the system, it would not be cost effective. For a home-builder or contractor who didn’t want to have to sub out his foam work, this might be a good system. Disadvantage2: To buy the system, the company requires you to pay for training, about $400-$800. From a safety standpoint I have no problem with the training. From a cost viewpoint, I do. Disadvantage3: This “system” has only been out on the market a couple of months. I wasn’t convinced they had all the bugs worked out yet.

Soythane, the method I chose will be discussed in the next post.

69 Spray Foam Insulation – Why?

2010-05-26T05:57:00.000-06:00

So now it’s time to put the spray foam insulation up in the roof. This stuff is sorta like the spray foam you buy in cans at Walmart to plug holes and keep out water, bugs and unwanted airflow. Why use spray foam at all, or stated differently, why not just use fiberglass insulation like everybody else does. Answer: Metal roofs sweat. That sweat is condensation which occurs when moist air comes in contact with a cold (metal) surface and creates water droplets (same principle as drops forming on the outside of a cold beer can in the summer). If enough water drops form, it rains in your attic, which soaks the fiberglass insulation and dramatically reduces it’s ability to insulate - the same principle as wet socks make for cold feet, even if the socks are wool (a good insulator). I have read that damp fiberglass insulation has it’s R-value cut in half over dry insulation.

It also explains (at least to me) why in most houses the roof has 10 – 16 inches of insulation, while the walls have only 3 to 6 inches and the concrete floor has none (under the concrete). Don’t laugh, in really cold climates they DO put insulation under the concrete. Television marketing has conditioned people to believe “heat rises”, so they need to add insulation in their attic to prevent this heat loss and save money on their utility bills. Actually, heat flows in all directions equally, it doesn’t “prefer” one direction over another. When you condition people to think heat rises, then it becomes an easy sell to add more insulation in their attics where it’s easier to install as opposed to more insulation in their walls, harder to install. Taken to the logical conclusion, your windows (even the really good ones) lose more heat than most any even poorly insulated wall or ceiling. Isn’t advertising great.

So, how does spray foam keep it from raining in the attic? The simple answer is by keeping the moist air away from the cold metal. A longer answer is by insuring that all the surfaces inside the roof stay above the dew point temperature (where condensation occurs). I’m not going to delve any deeper than that into how, why and where condensation occurs. If you want to go deeper, check out buildingscience.com and start reading or get out your college textbooks on physics and thermodynamics because that’s where you are going to end up anyway. And let the record be straight, I barely passed thermo… with a “D” and was proud of it.

This post has veered way off direction, so I’m going to stop.

68: Homemade Block and Tackle

2010-05-17T05:09:00.004-06:00

Building this house I have had to lift many things that were either heavy or bulky (or both). I knew I needed a electric winch or a good block and tackle to help out. All the blocks I've seen for sale were usually 4 wheel models and awfully expensive. Since I wanted the extra mechanical advantage a 6 wheel model would provide, I decided to build one.

So, it's off to the scrap metal yard to find 1/8" flat steel plate. The side pieces are roughly 3" x 6". All the hardware is 1/2" diameter. Locknuts were used to prevent things from coming apart at inopportune moments. The rope is 3/8" poly, rated for (I think) about 175 lbs. At first I thought 100 ft of rope would be sufficient, I have since added another 25'. The pulleys are 2.5" diameter and came from the local welding supply house; they are rated for 700 lbs.

This thing paid for itself the first time I used it. It has been used a lot to lift and move, particularly in lifting and moving those 20 ft tall A-frame scaffold supports used to side and paint the house. Once, I even used it to straighten out a bowed 2x6 wall stud.

Realize, this was not designed by a professional. It has not been tested, so I have no idea what it's load capacity is. Build and use one at your own risk. If you do build one, don't ever stand under a suspended load. Be careful.

67: Porch & West Wall

2010-05-16T17:28:00.005-06:00

While siding the porch was a snap (no scafolds), the west wall made up for it in difficulty (scaffolds everywhere).

The siding went on smoothly until I got up on the garage roof. Since there is an 18" overhang to work under, about the only way to do it was laying on my side. The garage roof is metal also, so unless you keep one tennis shoe bottom flat on the roof, you slide down the roof all the time. Needless to say there was lots of frustration and more than one four letter word mumbled (no, they were pretty much spoken out loud) until I got all the siding finished.

Then came the soffit and fascia. The soffit is the easiest and most enjoyable part of siding a house. I used a big carpenter's square to draw a line on the Tyvek parallel to the bottom of the barge rafter. The top edge of the vinyl J-channel gets screwed to that line. Now we measure and cut the soffit, in most places each piece was 16" long +/- 1/4". I found I could get nine pieces out of each 12 ft long soffit blank. To install it I just slide it into the J-channel and put two drywall screws into the bottom of the barge rafter. Using screws, if I ever need to remove them I can.

Then comes the fascia. My barge rafters are 2x8's and I have metal drip edge and gable trim
already installed so the exposed wood to cover is only 5" tall. I used trim coil to make the pieces and borrowed the bending break at the rental store to bend them. I've found that they are happy to let me use their equipment in the shop (don't have to rent it). I always contribute something towards their party fund.

One last point, where the garage roof ends, be sure to install a kick out flashing so rain coming off the garage roof won't run down the side of the house, get behind the siding and rot out the sheathing. Pic 2 is the kick out flashing.

66: North Wall Finished

2010-03-27T05:45:00.004-06:00

No, I haven’t forgotten about the blog. No, I haven’t given up on building the house. And no I didn’t die. Since last post, we have had an unbelievable amount of bad weather – cold, snow (4 times) rain (too many times to count), wind, and me feeling old(er). Okay, enough whining.

The north wall siding, trim and paint are complete. The Hardie plank went up just as easily as it did on every other wall. This stuff is so easy to work with, I can’t recommend it enough.

I cut it with a cheap diamond blade; from Walmart ($14, though I haven’t seen any there lately; the same blade is available at Lowes, HD, etc, same price). The cuts have a tiny bit of debris hanging on the cut edge, one or two passes of the side of a screwdriver or chisel blade finishes off the edge. Then the edge looks great and is ready to install. #8 galvanized nails from the nailing gun (use about 80 psi) about every 24” secures it. Sometimes the bottom of one board will stand off the wall a little. While I have on a few occasions put one more nail in the bottom edge of the board (install instructions frown on this), I usually just caulk the bottom gap and then paint. Then you can’t tell a gap was ever there. The Hardie has in a few places a little waviness in the finished product, but to see it you have to be right next to the house looking up. Step 3 feet away from the house and the waviness disappears. If I remember, the north wall did the same thing, and over time that waviness has smoothed out or disappeared completely.

Painting Hardie is a snap. A 10’ tall by 57’ long wall with let’s say 5 windows won’t even use a gallon of paint. I brush mine on with a 3” good quality brush (Purdy). And I apply my paint pretty thick, so one coat gets it. I think I bought 3 gallons of exterior latex for the whole project and that’s about what I’ll use by the time I’m finished. Why, you ask, do I use a brush rather than a roller or sprayer? I’m sure both other choices would be faster, but for me painting is relaxing. It gives me time to think and ponder about other things. And I don’t waste (drip, splatter) paint this way. A friend came over while I was painting and was impressed by how I could paint without any drips anywhere.

I’m beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel now, and have started thinking that if I have a good year I might be able to move in next spring.

The porch and west walls are also mostly finished, but I’ll save those for the next post.

65: North Wall Siding

2009-12-23T09:49:00.007-06:00

So, now I’m finally siding the last big wall, the north wall. I call it the last big wall because there is still the small west gable left to side where the house overlaps the workshop. The housewrap went on smoothly, with no problems. As before, it was put on in 9’ wide vertical strips as that way is much easier to install by yourself. Then the five windows went in after sill pans and sill dams were installed in each window.

The scaffolds of course had to be rebuilt for the hundredth time, as they only needed to be 8 to 12 feet tall, instead of the 19 foot height used on the east wall. At first I just built two of the lean-too scaffolds to support the aluminum walkboard, expecting to move the walkboard as needed. That idea got scrapped quickly and enough walkboards and scaffolds were then built so that I could walk down the entire length of the house without having to move walkboards.

Then the siding started going on. It’s amazing how much faster it goes on after having done two walls already.
So, now I’m about ¾ finished with the north wall siding. One day all my wooden walkboards were wet from high humidity, so I started siding the porch. I had worried that the siding bottom edges wouldn’t line up with the north wall edges, but that turned out to be a non-issue. I don’t think I had thought about it ahead of time, so I guess I just got lucky.

64: East Wall Complete

2009-11-16T20:27:00.004-06:00

I finally got everything on the east wall finished. Once the walkboard had been raised all the way up to the 19 foot level (above ground), I could then reach the top of the gable for siding, soffit and fascia installation. I planned to paint everything from the top down as I lowered the walkboard.

An interesting question came up as the soffit was going on, and that was “how am I going to lay the lean-too scaffolds back down.” I had used rebar hooks in the purlins over each scaffold to attach the block and tackle too for raising the scaffold. Now, if I removed the hooks to install the soffit, there would be nothing to attach the block and tackle too. Sure, I could go inside the building and use a long stick to push them over and let them fall back to the ground, but I didn’t like that idea. If I ever needed to again raise a scaffold I wouldn’t be able too. So, I figured the rebar hooks had to stay in place for future needs. Drilling the soffit for the rebar hook to go through wasn’t hard at all.

Pic 1 shows the finished south and east walls.
Pic 2 is the soffit and fascia and some upper painting.
Pic 3 is a close up of the rebar hooks.

63B: One More Time

2009-09-22T21:10:00.003-06:00

When I got my siding installed up to the crossarm on the scaffold I had to find a way to temporarily move the scaffold top away from the wall an inch or two so I could slide that piece of siding in and nail it.

What I came up with was a lever and secondary crossarm, which could be mounted above or below the primary crossarm. The lever is about 40” long which gives me plenty of mechanical advantage, so I can pry the scaffold off the wall just enough to slip in the next piece of siding. Once it’s pried off the wall I just tie the lever to a scaffold leg to hold it in place.

Pic 1 is your standard lean-too scaffold, like originally built.
Pic 2 is with the secondary crossarm in use. Notice the primary crossarm is off the wall about 2 inches.

To put the next higher row of siding on I pretty much had to move the secondary crossarm down “under” the primary to create enough space to install the siding.

63A: Scaffold Addendum

2009-09-13T13:38:00.003-06:00

After posting the last post I realized I hadn’t shown any close-ups of the scaffold, so you could see all the parts.

Here’s an annotated pic showing how the upper end goes together.

The base of the legs sit about 8’ out from the building, so it will take a lot of effort to push the scaffold away from the wall enough for it to fall over. Each leg is made from two 12’ long 2x4’s, overlapped in the center. In this pic the overlap is about 6’ long, so total leg length is 18’.

I also didn’t talk about how I get the scaffolds raised and lowered. To do that I attach my block and tackle to one of the purlins in the roof. Then it’s easy to hoist them up vertical.
To lay them down, just reverse the procedure. When laying them down, it helps if you get in between the legs, and lift the base of the scaffold a little off the ground and set the bottom brace on top of your butt. Don’t worry, all the weight is being held by the block and tackle. Then as you lower away on the block and tackle, just walk backwards slowly. That will keep the top of the scaffold from rubbing against the wall as it comes down.

From a safety perspective, while lowering the scaffold, realize that all the diagonal braces in the scaffold are several feet away from your body, so while it is lowering, if the block and tackle fails for any reason, you are not in a position to get hit by anything on the scaffold as it falls.

63: Home Made Scaffolds

2009-09-13T11:08:00.005-06:00

During this project I have spent a lot of time building, using and then taking apart scaffolds. You have already seen pics of some of them here in the blog. While they did the job they were intended for; they also had disadvantages that would prevent them from being used on other phases of the project. Example: I built scaffolds to allow me to install the 2x8 fascia on the ends of each truss. Unfortunately, that they were directly connected to my outside walls prevented me being able to use them when installing housewrap and siding.

So, I am now in my 3rd generation of scaffold building. Each new generation brings a clearer picture of what will work better. Some may argue, why didn’t I just go ahead and buy a 2nd extension ladder and two “ladder jacks” in the beginning.

At one time I did consider hanging my walkboard from ladder jacks mounted on extension ladders. I only had one 20 foot extension ladder, and it is rated only for 225 lbs (a medium duty ladder). I also didn’t like how the ladder bottom just sits on the ground. I wanted something that I could more firmly affix to the ground. And finally, my gable is 25 feet high and I didn’t think I could get enough extension on a 20 ft ladder to be able to reach the gable when it comes time to housewrap and side it. In case you didn’t know, on a 20 ft extension ladder the max working height is only about 16 to 17 feet. So, long story short, ladder jacks and extension ladders weren’t the way for me to go.

How to move the walkboard up and down by myself, was another big problem. The walkboard is I estimate 80 lbs in weight. There’s no way I could or would try to carry one end of the walkboard up a ladder and then try to set it in the ladder jack. That’s a bad fall just waiting to happen (and then that walkboard comes crashing down on top of you).

I didn’t want to rent or buy scaffolds, too expensive, and time consuming to rig up and down.
So, I had to come up with something I could build myself out of readily available materials. But, most important of all, that they had to be safe. To me safe means stable (it doesn’t wiggle when I walk around on it); solid (no noticeable deflections in any members when I am working on it); portable (easy to move); easily adjustable (in height), reasonably lightweight (so I can move it around by myself).

So, here’s what I came up with. Let’s call then lean-too scaffolds. They are built out of 2x4’s, with critical connection points done with ½” bolts (plenty of shear strength). They lean up against the wall, but they are not connected to the wall. The legs are flaired out at the bottom, six or seven feet apart, so they won’t tip over easily. And finally, there are steel L-angles attached to the bottom of each leg. I drive rebar stakes through a hole in each L-angle 10-12 inches into the soil. This way the bottom of each leg is firmly held in place. The scaffold isn’t going anywhere.

There’s a vertical member (2x4, 12 ft long) that hangs from (bolted to) the upper cross piece. It hangs maybe 4” from my exterior house wall, so I have room to get my siding in there to attach. Where ever I need to place the walkboard I can connect a horizontal brace and then set the walkboard on it. To raise (or lower) the walkboard I just attach my block and tackle to the upper cross arm, lift it up to the height needed, then attach a new horizontal arm.

So far, this system has worked well. I’ve used the walkboard at three different elevations; I still have one more “raising” to do. At the final elevation, the walkboard will be pretty much up flush against the bottom of the upper cross arm.

So, the plan is to side the building, moving the walkboard up as necessary to keep the work at a comfortable height (about mid-thigh to the top of my head). Once I get to the gable top, I will start painting the siding and lower the walkboard as necessary until painting is finished. Then, it’s on to the north wall.

One final tip: When the walkboard was 4’ and 8’ above the ground I was pretty comfortable being on it with no other fall protection equipment. Now, that my feet are 12 feet above the ground I have a ½” rope that is stretched tight from one gable end to the other. Everytime I move around up there I’m holding on to that rope for extra stability. It’s probably not “enough” in the way of fall protection, but enough would be both difficult and dangerous to rig up; not to mention, quite expensive. So, this will have to do.

Pic one is a “shorty” version of the lean-too scaffold I tried to test it’s usefulness. Pic two is the full size version with walkboard at 8’ elevation. Pic three is at 12’ elevation. Notice the cross members are now diagonal mounted. This makes the scaffold much more rigid and stable in use.
Disclaimer: While I think this design is safe for ME to use; I don’t extend that recommendation to anyone else. Build and use a homebuilt design like this at your own risk.

62: Hardie Siding – South Wall

2009-08-26T07:24:00.003-06:00

The south wall is complete. The windows are installed, the Miratech trim is on and the Hardie Plank is on and painted. I used a “ventilated cladding” approach to install the siding, ie there are 3/8” thick furring strips between the siding and the housewrap. This was done to provide for ventilation and drying in case any water gets behind the siding. At the top and bottom of the wall is a window screen covered permeable strip barrier to keep out the bugs, but still allow water and air to flow.

Installing12’ long Hardie Plank by yourself isn’t difficult once you build yourself a couple of what I call J-Hook holders. There are all sorts of commercial products available on the internet, but most of them are pretty expensive. I built mine out of Simpson Strong-Tie metal straps, but any light metal would do. Tack nail two of them on the wall about three feet from each end of the Hardie plank, then slip the Hardie plank into the holders. Now the Hardie is held securely against the wall, allowing you to pick up the nailing gun in one hand, do final positioning of the Hardie with the other hand, and start nailing. My Hardie is designed to have a 7” exposure so I use a wood block with a notch on the bottom to insure that I have a perfect 7 inch exposure.

If you decide to do something like this you will absolutely want to rent, borrow, buy or steal (just kidding) an aluminum walk board. My neighbor loaned me his 20’ walkboard. Without one you will spend the rest of your life moving ladders around so you can place and then nail the Hardie.

My Hardie Panel came pre-primed, so it painted easily. The Hardie is a light gray color, so it didn’t take a lot of paint to make it a light tan color. The south wall is 10.5’ tall and 57’ long. It took right at one gallon of paint to cover. I painted a test patch to insure I liked the color. The paint flowed on so smooth during the test patch that I decided to just do the whole wall with a brush. It took about five hours to paint it. To me painting is relaxing, so I didn’t mind taking the time to use a brush. And a brush makes it easy to get at the lip under each piece of siding.

Pic one is a distant view to show how the siding will look with the green metal roof. Pic two is what the Hardie looks like close up (and painted).

61: Window Install

2009-06-22T05:47:00.003-06:00

After checking around for where I could buy my windows, I came across a replacement window factory. These guys make the windows that people buy (and have professionally installed) when they want to upgrade their old, single pane windows. The factory has a “mis-measure” cage where they store and sell these windows at significantly reduced price ($75 each). These windows are all vinyl, double hung, low-E, argon filled, and best of all Energy Star approved in all 50 states. Comparable windows in Lowes and Home Depot sell for about $250 each (before installation).

I had gone to this window factory once before to look at their windows, and was disappointed to find no two windows the same size, or even same color. However, on the second visit, I found 13 windows in exactly the size and color I wanted. The sales rep accepted my offer of $50 each, so all my windows cost me $650. All the windows were still in their new plastic protecto-wrap, so I feel like I got a real bargain.

One characteristic of replacement windows is that they don’t have a nailing flange like “new construction” windows. You couldn’t install them (with a flange) unless you removed some house siding, which would make the install cost prohibitive. So, with no flange to nail through, you install them by running screws through the window jambs into the wall studs, and then caulk the snot out of the joint between the window and the rough opening. It helps that they make caulk in the same color as the window frame, so you won't notice it's there. My girlfriend had 12 windows replaced this way and the finished work looks good, even though I know there is a lot of caulk on each window.

Still, I don’t like the idea of having to depend on caulk to keep the rain out. Even if you use the fifty year (warranty) all silicone caulk, (like they did) I still don’t like depending on it. So, I needed/wanted a better install method to make me happy. What I “wanted” was a nailing flange like new construction windows.

One of the girlfriend’s windows is a bay window that has a center picture window flanked by two smaller windows. Where the windows join they used some type of “extender flange” to cover the joint. I asked the window factory rep and found out the flange comes in several widths, the widest being two inches. It has a feature on the back that allows it to lock into a groove on the edge of the window frame. I bought some and tried it out on one of the windows. It works beautifully. I am very confident it will yield a good, waterproof joint. Best of all, it gives me the flange I was looking for. It costs about $10 a window, so now I’m up to $60 per window.

I don’t nail through the flange; that would void the warranty on the windows. But, I do use it to seal and waterproof the joint between window and wall. Best of all, I don’t have to depend on caulk.

Pic one shows the flange. Notice how the flange goes “under” the Tyvek at the top of the window. Pic two shows the Tamko flashing material installed on the sides. The top piece of flashing hasn’t been installed yet.

====================
Note:
I have decided to finish each outside wall (housewrap, window prep and install, exterior trim and siding) before moving on to the next wall so that I don’t have to spend all my time moving scaffolds.

60: Windows Sill Pan and Sill Dam

2009-06-21T06:47:00.002-06:00

Now that the roof is on I need to get the outside OSB sheathing covered up and protected. It’s been out in the weather for five months and is beginning to show signs of ageing. So, it’s time for housewrap…pronto.

Back when I built the exterior walls and sized my window rough openings, I had not yet done any research on the “best” ways to install windows. I have studied lots of houses being built over the years, but I’d never seen anyone put in a sill pan or a sill dam for a window. I didn’t even know they existed until a YouTube video pointed out the need and the benefits for both; so I had to lengthen my rough openings by ¾ inch. Fortunately, I didn’t have to adjust the rough opening width.

What is a sill pan and sill dam you ask? After installing the housewrap (some call it the Tyvek or weather resistive barrier) many people then cut the housewrap at the windows, fold the flaps into the rough opening and staple. They then just slide the window frame in and screw/nail it in place. They are depending on the window’s nailing flanges to keep out any rain that gets behind the siding.

But sometimes, rain does get behind the house siding and then the nailing flange of the windows. It then runs down the sides of the rough opening (the correct term is the window jambs) and pools on the window sill. It rots the sill out, then proceeds to soak the insulation under the window, rendering it useless, not to mention providing the moisture needed for mold growth. So, your utility bills go up, you get sick house syndrome and then a big repair bill to tear it all out and rebuild it. You think I’m exagerrating? A friend of mine has a neighbor who is having eight windows rebuilt right now (at considerable expense) for this very reason.

So, the sill pan is a waterproof layer that catches any water that runs down the insides of the jambs and along with the sill dam harmlessly push that water back outside the house siding where it will do no harm. There are several ways to make a sill pan. You can buy then prebuilt, but they are expensive (and none of the local stores stock them, so you have to special order). Or, you can make them using window flashing material. The material I am using is a foil faced, butyl rubber adhesive backing material made by Tamko. The roll is 6” wide by 100 feet long and runs about $13 per roll. Sticky doesn’t even come close to describing how well butyl rubber adhesive sticks to everything (including your fingers). So, if you use it, plan well and in advance of how you’re going to maneuver it around to install it.

59: The Outside Corners

2009-05-29T05:42:00.002-06:00

I have avidly watched houses being built my whole life. Even as a kid I remember going by construction sites and watching the carpenters turn a pile of lumber into something special. I still remember the day we went by a site and a carpenter asked us if we wanted some nails. He must’ve sensed that’s what we wanted but were too timid to ask. He allowed us to take one handful of nails each. When we walked away with that treasure, you would have thought we just found a way into an Egyptian pyramid. Now that we had some nails, we could build something ourselves.

So, in all this construction watching over the last 50 years I’ve seen enough to be able to ask, why did they do it this way or that way. More importantly, I’ve been able to ask why “didn’t” they do this, or do that. So many little things, that would take almost no time to do, and very little (if any) additional expense…but would yield so much more. So, in my house I vowed to DO those little extra things… the outside corners are a good example.

I said previously that my outside corners have 5/8” sheathing on both the inside and the outside; thus making them a form of a shear wall (also known as a diaphragm wall). They were installed to increase the house’s ability to withstand the racking forces of high winds. The inside sheathing was installed when the wall was framed, which left the outside sheathing to be installed after wiring and insulating the space.

I wired the space with two runs of 12-2 (2 conductor with ground) so I would have an extra wire if ever needed. Then I caulked all the seams of the inside of the wall with painters caulk. This is part of the “airtight drywall approach” which reduces the amount of air leaking into the wall assembly. Less air infiltration means the insulation works better. Kraft (paper) faced fiberglass insulation batts came next. Then, the outside sheathing went on and because it is part of a shear wall it was nailed with number 8 galvanized nails at roughly 3” spacing all the way around. In case you’re interested, that’s about 120 nails on each fullsize piece of sheathing. Thank goodness for nailing guns.

Number 8 nails at 3” spacing on 5/8” sheathing provides a LOT of shear resistance. Most contractors use number 6 nails at 6” spacing on one layer of ½” or even 7/16” OSB. That’s not good enough for me; and the cost increase of using more and better materials was insignificant; rough estimate, $25 for the whole house.

While the dollar cost of these modifications is small, there is an increase in the time it takes to build them, sometimes a significant increase in time. So, I can see why most contractors don’t routinely build this additional protection into their product unless required by building code or as a special request by the owner. Since I have the time, including these little improvements in my home is a no-brainer.

58: Stove Flanking Windows

2009-05-26T04:08:00.004-06:00

In acquiring all my windows for the house I ended up with a few extras. One extra window was bathroom sized; roughly 20 x 24. I got to thinking that if I could get the two window panes out (double glass, low E, Argon filled panels) that I could create two windows either side of the kitchen stove, above the countertops, but below the kitchen cabinets. This would bring a little natural light into the kitchen during the day. The bottom window came out easily, but the top window cracked during removal. So, I called up the window company that made it and ordered a replacement panel. When they quoted me $16 for a replacement I knew this idea would work out.

So, here are pics of the finished windows. They are right at 12” tall by 18” wide. Neither window opens up for ventilation, they are just miniature picture windows. I built the window frames out of pressure treated lumber and will do some additional flashing later to prevent rain related problems.

57: Roof Finished

2009-05-20T06:54:00.004-06:00

The roof is on and finished, so I can finally move on with the project.

After getting the main roof panels on, it came time to put on the ridge and rake trim. For those of you not familiar with what the rake is; it is the diagonal roofline along both sides of the gable. All of the roof trim was installed from on top of the roof. Because a slip and fall would (I felt) result in me sliding off the roof I ran a 3/8” safety line along the ridge from one end to the other, tightened it up really good and then ran a little pigtail safety line off the 3/8, tied to my waist. I found that if I wore a relatively new tennis shoes, and stayed pretty much vertical that I could get enough traction to walk around on the roof.

Let’s just say that putting on the roof trim, especially the rake trim was kind of nerve racking. Here you are tied off with a big rope; laying on your stomach or your side, holding the trim in place with one hand and trying to run self-tapping screws into the fascia with the other hand. Take plenty of extra screws with you because you will drop some along the way.

In retrospect, about the only other way I could’ve installed the rake trim, would have been from either a tall ladder, or from scaffolds. My tallest ladder is 20’; not tall enough to reach the roof peak and I don’t have any scaffolds, and didn’t want to pay what it would cost to rent them.

What else did I learn putting on the roof trim? The metal can scratch fairly easily, so touch up (spray) paint is a must. The metal supplier doesn’t stock touch up paint, so I bought every brand of hunter green spray paint I could find (WalMart, Rustoleum, Krylon); and of course none of them match exactly. The Krylon came the closest and has the added benefit of a better quality sprayer mechanism.

Pic 2 is the north side of the roof and the front porch; taken from my neighbor’s yard.

56: Metal Roof Started

2009-02-26T08:18:00.002-06:00

Yes, the metal roof is finally going on. It seems like it has taken forever to get to this point.

From ridge to eave it’s 17.5 feet. So, one piece of metal roofing is 3 feet wide by 17.5 feet long and weighs about 39 lbs. That doesn’t seem too heavy to muscle around when standing on the ground. But when you get up on the roof, it’s a different story. Working by myself I didn’t want to have to try to muscle it around up there, so I cut the long span into two shorter pieces. The metal roof manufacturer said I needed at least a 9” overlap on the two pieces. One piece is 8’10” long, the other 9’6” long. Using these lengths centers the overlap directly over a purlin, making it easy to put the screws in.

I am using what’s known as “K-Panel” roofing. The ridges (four ridges per panel) are about 1” tall and spaced 9” apart. You put a screw right by each ridge, so four screws per purlin and I have 10 purlins = 40 screws, or about 20 screws per piece.

On the first day I only got to work about 2 hours. Between figuring out what was the best way to get the metal pieces up on the roof (remember, it’s a long way down to the ground) and what was the best way to arrange my work platforms (walking boards) that sit on the bottom chord of each roof truss, I only got two pieces of roofing installed. I have a total of 80 pieces to install, so at this rate it would take forever to finish.

On the second day I got four panels installed and did eight panels on the third day. It’s funny how as you get more and more experienced that your production levels go way up. On the fourth day, it misted rain all morning long, but in the afternoon I got seven panels done. So, here we sit at 21 panels done out of 80, or about 25% complete.

Even dry, this metal roofing is slippery. I can’t even lay my leather work gloves down on the metal without them wanting to immediately slide off. I wouldn’t even think of walking around on top of the roof without being tied off. I noticed that I had forgot to put in a row of screws on a previous panel. So, I rigged up a safety rope to tie myself off and got up on top of the roof. Even though I was laying flat out on the roof, the whole time I was sliding toward the bottom. The missing screws went in just fine, but it also confirmed the need for the safety rope.

So, how do I get the metal panels up on the roof? I put them up from inside the building. My trusses are spaced four feet apart, so there is plenty of room to slide a 3 foot wide panel up between the trusses. I just lift it up, lean it against the 3rd purlin up (from the eave) and then set the bottom edge on a nail I drove into one of the wall studs. It’s pretty easy to do, and it puts the panel in a good position to grab and pull up on the roof once I climb back up there.

One final note, metal prices have come down quite a bit. When I ordered my material it turned out a metal roof like I have (K Panel, 26 gauge metal) is the same price as three tab, 20 year asphalt shingles (both are about $80 a square). If you go with the 30 year, architectural shingle; a metal roof is CHEAPER.

55: Addendum

2009-01-24T08:23:00.002-06:00

For some reason today I can only upload one pic per post here on Blogger.com. So, today you get two posts.

When my trusses arrived, the bottom (heel) end was square cut. This is pretty much how all trusses are made. If I left them square cut then all the fascia boards would be at an angle and not parallel to the side of the building. So, I had to make an angled cut on the end of each truss to “flush” them up.

It’s not too hard making those cuts, but it is a little tricky getting all the cuts to line up so that when the fascia board goes on, it looks nice and straight. I built a 16x20 workshop about 12 years ago and I remember how difficult it was to get the truss end cuts to line up.

I was perusing videos about house building on YouTube one day and came across an ingenious method of lining up those pesky end-cuts. It involves running two string lines, one above the trusses and one below. You then align a straightedge just touching top and bottom strings and use that to draw your cut line. Voila, you now get straight, aligned cuts IF you can cut straight (while standing on a tall ladder, with a saw turned 90 degrees to your body, blowing sawdust back into your face).

Using a circular saw that way is neither a good way, nor a safe way to do it. So, about halfway through the job I ended up erecting temporary scaffolding to stand on.

P.S. YouTube has a lot of good videos on most any aspect of building a house. Just type in your subject in the search window.

54: Purlins

2009-01-24T08:15:00.001-06:00

No, I didn’t die…and No, I didn’t quit building my house OR quit writing about the project…

Yes, I did hurt my knee (torn meniscus, the orthopede thinks), and that has slowed down my ability to climb around up in the trusses like a monkey…and

Yes, the weather has been spotty… a good day here and there, followed by several days of cold, windy, wet… and

Yes, I am guilty of thinking I would finish up one part of building the house (like getting all the purlins and fascia on) before writing about that phase into the blog…SO, here is an update.

I have most of the purlins on. What are purlins you ask. Since I am using a metal roof on this house, and since my roof trusses are set four feet apart, I decided to use the same method of roof attachment that exists in my workshop, and that is, “purlins”. Some people call them 2x4 nailers, or 2x4 furring strips. Whatever you call them, they run perpendicular to the trusses along the “length” of the house. They are spaced every two feet from the fascia board at the bottom (of each truss) all the way up to the peak of the roof. The metal roof will screw directly down onto the purlins.

53: The Trusses Are Up

2008-11-20T21:20:00.006-06:00

Originally I planned to build my own trusses, but then I called a truss company and they quoted me a per truss cost of about $56 and a delivery time of less than a week. So, all of a sudden ordering trusses made a whole lot of sense. I could get the house in the dry a lot quicker if I didn’t have to build trusses first.

The truss company sent out a rep to measure and to discuss options. At my site getting a crane in to set the trusses is impossible, so they absolutely had to be hand raised. The rep said my 30’ trusses (with 16” tails) would run about 130 lbs apiece, not to hard for three people to carry. So, it looked like I was going to order 31 trusses, one gable truss and 30 trusses known as a T64 design.

My workshop has 22’ trusses set on 4’ centers. So, just on a whim I asked the rep what would change if I wanted to set my house trusses on 4’ centers. He said it wouldn’t be any problem, they would just have to beef up the trusses a little, specifically changing the bottom chord from a 2x4 to a 2x6. Oh, and the truss weight would go up about 30 lbs to 160 each. Also I would have to put in 2x4 furring strips on the bottom chord because sheetrock for the ceiling can’t span a 4’ distance. None of those things bothered me. The idea of hand setting 16 trusses that weigh a little more is much more appealing than setting 31 trusses that weigh a little less.

One week later my trusses arrived; total bill $1174 (shipping was free). The next day some guys I eat breakfast with found out they had arrived and offered to come over immediately and help set some trusses. I couldn’t turn that offer down. The gable end truss was on top of the stack so we set that one first. It weighed 180 lbs.

Now, let’s talk a little about method. I knew I couldn’t use a crane; too many trees in the way, and too narrow a lot to get the crane down either side. I had done a lot of research and thought on how to hand-set these trusses safely. Remember, safety was my profession, so usual methods used by some builders might not be acceptable to me. I definitely didn’t want to have a man standing (or sitting) up on top of the exterior wall pulling up trusses. It’s 9.5’ down to the subfloor on the inside and anywhere from 13’ to 18’ to the ground outside of the wall. The last thing I wanted is for someone to fall off the top of that wall. Working off a ladder would be acceptable, but NO one goes up on top of the wall. Believe it or not, I actually did check prices of fall protection harnesses with shock absorbing lanyards. The cheapest one was almost $200. I found a hunter’s fall harness at WalMart for $75, but it looked like it wouldn’t work very well. So, we had to find a way of getting the trusses up on the walls while working preferably from floor level.

Okay, next point. Busting your gut man-handling trusses like this is a one way ticket to a back injury; so mechanical assistance is a must. I still had the block and tackle that I used to raise and sheath the exterior walls. But, even better, one of my friends loaned me a really nice block and tackle with 4 wheels and half inch nylon line. Now that rig was nice. I erected a 4x4 column (12’ tall) and braced it to both the outside wall and to the floor. It looked like we were ready for business.

We carried each truss in and layed them down diagonally across the subfloor. The trusses are a total of 34 feet long, so in a 29’ wide building they have to go diagonal. All three of us would get on one end and lift and rotate up until the truss was vertical with the opposite top chord still flat on the floor. This put the truss heel on our side about 10’ above the floor; perfect height to slide the truss over onto the wall top plate (9.5’ tall). That was a stroke of pure luck, not having to lift the first side up on the wall.

All three guys move down to the other end of the truss and pick it up and walk forward about 10 feet until the truss end is next to the lifting column. As you walk forward the opposite end will slide further up on the top plate. Hook up the block and tackle and up she goes. As you clear the top plate and start lowering again, the other two guys slide the truss forward 6-8 inches so it sits on the top plate too. Yes, the truss is now upside down, but hanging from the tops of the walls. Slide both truss ends along the top plate to the desired position and then rotate it up.

I knew we would have to put a temporary brace up near the peak of each truss and that is 15 feet above the subfloor. I checked out 12’ A-frame ladder prices and they were outrageous (cheapest one I found was $180) so I built myself an A-frame ladder out of four 12’ long 2x4 (total cost $12 plus tax). It’s heavy, but it is stout. I have no problem standing with my feet at the 10’ level and feeling secure while I attach the peak brace. We put a c-clamp on the upper brace 46.5” from the previous truss so that when we rotate the next truss up it would give us something to catch the current truss and keep it from rotating over the top. Once the truss was up and in position, we would nail off the temporary braces, a total of three braces on the top chords and two braces on bottom chords. We had 30-45 mph winds forecast for the first night and I didn’t want any trusses coming back down.

Everything went pretty smooth until the last truss. We were rotating it up and the long push stick slipped off the truss. I was on the short push stick and as the truss swung back down it caught my push stick in the webs and then hit me in the ribs with that same push stick. All it did was knock the wind out of me for a minute, but I was lucky; it missed hitting my head by about a foot. In retrospect now, I’m reminded of a very common accident cause from the many accident investigations I did when working. It’s called over-confidence and getting complacent. We had put 15 other trusses up without a hitch and on the last one our complacency almost got someone (me) hurt. Another cause I have identified was that the truss rotated out of the long push stick because wooden “vee” that we had on the end of the long push stick needed to be bigger. Our vee had maybe 5” sides and it probably needed 7” sides. The last pic is the wooden vee that was too small. I include it because I truly don’t want to see anyone get hurt.
It took three days in all to erect and temporarily brace all the trusses. I’m now attaching all my permanent bracing and starting to put on the 2x4 purlins that the metal roof will screw down too. With any luck I’m in the dry by Christmas.

52: Pour the Front Porch

2008-11-19T05:36:00.006-06:00

It’s time to order the trusses. Well actually, the trusses are already up and installed, but let’s try to keep this blog in order. So, I had to pour the front porch concrete first. Why? Because at the corner of the porch sits a column, and on top of that column are two beams. Well, actually they are doubled 2x12’s, but they support two trusses that hold up the roof over the porch. I decided it would be much easier to pour and finish the concrete if the column wasn’t in the way.

Figuring how much concrete I would need wasn’t hard. It’s just length times width times depth. I figured about 20 cubic feet (a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet). I called around to a couple of redi-mix batch plants and they all wanted around $150 for a load this size. Realizing that the concrete truck can’t back up close enough to the porch to pour it directly, I would still have to use a wheelbarrow to get concrete to the porch.

Since I was going to have to use a wheelbarrow anyway, and because I already have a concrete mixer, and because I am pathologically frugal (okay, call it cheap…if you must) and because I like to do things myself, I decided to mix my own concrete. So it was off to buy concrete sand and pea gravel. A yard of each cost me $30 and two bags of Portland cement ran $16. Throw in $5 for gas (gas prices have come back down, now about $2 a gallon…enjoy it while it lasts, cause it ain’t gonna) and all my ingredients for the concrete came out about $50. Humm, one-third the cost of delivered concrete; now you’re talking my language. Or, to put it in terms that women shoppers understand, a 66% off retail sale. Hey guys, there’s bargains out there, but you have to be willing to do a little more than just drive to the store.

Okay, I said I bought two bags of Portland cement. But, it was quite an involved process figuring out how I needed two bags instead of three bags, or four, or even one. There is an old rule of thumb concrete mix out there that I’ve used before. It’s called the 3:2:1 rule; 3 parts gravel, 2 parts sand, 1 part cement. You can use either volume or weight for measuring the 3:2:1 parts, they both work (or are supposed to). To figure how much water you use the water-cement ratio, which should be about 50%, ie half as much water by weight as cement by weight. If you use that ratio you should have some pretty good concrete, but it is going to be very stiff (dry) and pretty hard to work (smooth). Conversely, if you put in enough water to make the concrete easy to work, you end up with weaker concrete. So, you go somewhere in the middle, balancing out workability versus strength. This concrete is for a porch, so it doesn’t have to be as strong as say concrete for a driveway that would have to support the weight of vehicles.

Okay, so you go buy a bag (or two) of Portland cement. It weighs 92.4 lbs (yes, that’s kinda heavy) and you want to know how much concrete that bag will make using the 3:2:1 rule. Well, let’s see. If I go by “weight” I’ll have 92 lbs of cement, twice that much weight in sand (184 lbs) and three times that much weight of gravel (276 lbs) and about 46 lbs of water. So far I have 598 lbs of ingredients, but does that make 598 lbs of concrete, and how many cubic feet of concrete is that (because in the end I still need 20 cubic feet). From my civil engineering days I remember that concrete weighs about 150 lbs per cubic foot, so 598 divided by 150 means this mix “should” yield me just under 4 cubic feet of concrete. At this rate I will need 5 bags of Portland to make 20 cubic feet.

Now this 3:2:1 rule is supposed to work both for weight of ingredients, AND for volume of ingredients. So, let’s do the same exercise with volume. Since the cement comes in a paper bag with rounded corners, it’s kinda hard to figure the volume of Portland we have in one bag. We could empty the cement out and then use the same bag over again for sand and rock (2 bags of sand, 3 bags of rock). But, the bag would never last long enough to do that. So, I dumped the cement into a box and then measured length, width and height of boxed cement to determine how many cubic feet were in one bag. So, you don’t have to do this for yourself, one 92.4 lb bag of Portland is 0.85 cubic feet. Okay, so 0.85 cubic feet plus twice that in sand (1.7 cubic feet) and three times that in rock (2.55 cubic feet) and 0.42 cubic feet of water adds up to 5.52 cubic feet of concrete out of one bag of Portland.

Okay, so by “weight”, one bag of Portland makes about 4 cubic feet, and by “volume” one bag makes 5.5 cubic feet, NOT the same number. This 3:2:1 method was supposed to work for both weight and volume. But, which one is right because they both can’t be. Here was my dilemma. I put the question up on a house building forum I am a member of, and one of the responses was, call a batch plant and ask them how much weight of ingredients they would use to make 20 cubic feet (3/4 of a yard) of concrete. I thought that was a prudent suggestion, so I called my favorite batch plant and they gave me the following: 1490 lbs of rock, 1009 lbs of sand, 285 lbs of Portland cement and 133 lbs of water. That reduces down to 0.6 yards of rock, 0.4 yards of sand, 3 bags of Portland and 16 gallons of water; and from that I should get 20 cubic feet of concrete.

Just adding up the volume of rock and sand you get 1 yard (I need ¾ yard, 20 cubic feet). This bothered me, thinking somehow they gave me the wrong numbers, or I misunderstood what they gave me. So, I called several other local batch plants; and it got even more interesting because they all gave me different numbers. While everyone quoted about the same numbers for rock and sand they were widely different in the amount of Portland cement I would need. I got numbers ranging from a low of 285 lbs, to a high of 500, with several numbers in between. Now, I’m really worried. Needing to make a decision I went with the 285 lb number because I have bought plenty of concrete from these guys and it’s always been good.

I already had the gravel and sand; so I bought a third bag of Portland cement and the girlfriend and I got started. I ran the mixer, and shoveled the wet concrete into the 5’ x 8’ work area and she worked it into a flat slab. It took about 3 hours to get all 11 or so mixer loads of concrete into place and then I took over with final smoothing of the slab. Thirty minutes later I was through with smoothing, so we misted it with water and covered it with visqueen. I left the visqueen on for a whole week while I worked on other things. After maybe four days I could see the slab edges were beginning to turn from the color of wet cement (dark gray) to the color of dried cement (light gray). After a week maybe 1/3 of the middle of the slab still looked wet, so I removed the visqueen and let it finish drying.

I’m happy with the slab. It didn’t turn out quite as smooth or uniform as it would have if I’d hired it done, or if I had been able to bring all the concrete in at once (in a truck). But it still looks pretty good. So, now it’s on to putting up roof trusses.

A note to future builders - If you try to mix your own, either limit yourself to a slab no bigger than this (5 x 8), or get a second concrete mixer going (with an extra person to run that mixer). You need to be able to keep a “wet edge” to ease the working (smoothing) of the slab. And to keep a wet edge you need to keep that concrete coming pretty continuously. Additionally, after three hours of concrete work, even though we both are in pretty good shape (work outs at the gym four days a week), we were still pretty tired. Any bigger slab and this project would have become real tough.

51: Purpose Built Jigs

2008-10-23T12:35:00.003-06:00

When you work alone you have to figure out how you’re going to handle the things that your “helper” would have done. John Carroll’s book “Working Alone” is a great source of information. He shows lots of “jigs” he uses to (for instance) hold the other end of a long board that he is nailing in place.

While I really like his book, and it has helped me a lot, I’ve found other jigs that he didn’t mention that helped just as much. But, my purpose here is not to point out inadequacies. More, it is to highlight the thinking and problem solving process you use to build your own jigs to solve the problems you face in building a house by yourself. It isn't always a smooth process, and sometimes you go backwards along the way, but in the end, you usually get the problem solved.

Here is one example of that process.

When raising the OSB sheathing panels with the block and tackle (some as high as 18 feet) you want to get the top of each panel to line up with the top of the stud wall. But, you’re standing on the ground (18 feet below) trying to eyeball if the panel top is accurately positioned…not an easy thing to do.

A secondary aspect of this problem is that I really don’t want all the weight of the panel hanging ONLY on that one manila rope as I try to position it and nail it in place. I would really like to have some of the weight supported by something else.

My first attempt at solving this was to measure down exactly 8 feet from the top of the wall and put a big C-clamp on the 2x6 stud. Hoist the panel up above the C-clamp and then lower it just enough to where the bottom of the panel sits on the clamp. Problem solved…no, not quite. The panel wants to slip off the C-clamp. What I need is a C-clamp with a “lip” to keep the panel from sliding off. No, I don’t have a welder, and even if I did, I don’t want to go welding on my C-clamps. I needed another idea.

Okay, so let’s nail a plywood lip on a block of 2x4 and clamp that to the wall stud. Humm, my largest C-clamps are only 6” clamps, not big enough to hold the 2x4 block and the 2x6 wall stud. Humm, another problem. Nine inch C-clamps are like $20 apiece; and two clamps are probably needed to do this job right.

I do have some pipe clamps, but 24” pipe lengths are the shortest ones I have (some are 48” long). Yes, I could use the 24” pipes, but all that excess pipe sticking out inside the building really gets in the way of the ladder. So, off we go to the hardware store to buy some 12” threaded pipe for the clamps. Problem solved for $4…well, almost.

So, now we have the 2x4 block clamped to the stud in the right position to catch the panel bottom. Unfortunately, the clamp and wood block stick out 6” from the wall (on the outside) and when trying to raise the OSB panel it hangs up on these 6” projections.

A long 1x2 fixes that problem. Raise the top of the panel almost up to the 2x4 block, then use the 1x2 to pry it away from the pipe enough for it to slip by as you continue raising. Make the 1x2 long enough so you can stand off to the “side” of the panel in case it falls. You don’t want to ever stand UNDER the panel.

Likewise, when holding the rope in one hand and the 1x2 in the other hand, don’t have the rope wrapped around the back of your hand. If the rope breaks and drops the panel, you want to be able to cleanly let go of the rope and step back. If wrapped around your hand it may hold you up just long enough for the panel to fall, hit the ground and then fall “toward” you.

I know this was a long, obtuse discussion of solving what initially looked like a relatively simple problem. But, sometimes what looks simple … isn’t.

I am also sure that later I will think of an easier way to solve this problem.

Work safe guys.

50: OSB Wall Sheathing

2008-10-09T18:50:00.005-06:00

Fall is about my favorite time of the year, especially for outside work. Thinking back on previous years I’m reminded that I seem to get a lot of work done in the fall of every year. Since the torrential rains and winds of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike I’ve finished up the exterior stud walls, plumbed and lined them and now almost finished putting on the wall sheathing.

Because my wall studs are on 24” centers I opted for 5/8” OSB rather than the standard 1/2” stuff. Besides making the wall a little stiffer, I think it will help keep the walls a little flatter.

Pic 1 shows the south and a little of the east wall. My sources recommended that I cover the rimjoist and mudsill with the sheathing as that makes a much stronger wall by making the nails fail in shear (cut in half) rather than in tension (pulling them out). For this to work the sheathing has to be nailed into both the mudsill and the wall sole plate. I used about a 5” spacing on my nails; thank goodness for the nail gun as each 4x8 piece gets about 30 nails.

Pic 2 is the east wall. Because there are so many windows in this wall, I decided I’d get better strength if I ran the sheathing horizontal. If you think of the panels as being 4’ x 8’ you can see that on the east wall the top panels are up almost 18’ in the air. So, how did the boy get those panels up there (by himself).

Pic 3 is the answer to that question. I used a triangle shaped jig and a home-made block and tackle. The jig gets C-clamped to the top of the wall and there is a line that comes off the backside (tied into a floor joist) to resist the load trying to pull the jig off the wall. I came across some really good metal pulleys at the local welding supply store. Engraved into the side of each were the words, max load 685 lbs. These panels weigh about 65 lbs each, so I knew the pulleys would handle it. I started out with 3/16 polypropylene rope (rated for 75 lbs), but it was too narrow and too slippery to grab and pull, so I switched to new manila rope. My block and tackle consists of three wheels, two on top and one on bottom. By my calculations this gives me a mechanical advantage of 3, so the 65 lb OSB panels require only a 22 lb pull to lift.
Having worked professionally in the field of safety, I KNOW that you NEVER get under a suspended load…ever. So, it took a little figuring on how to get the panels raised, and then secured before nailing. Hint: Once you raise them, and tie off the line, then go inside the building to do final positioning. If a rope breaks, you’re safely out of the way.

49: Plumbing and Lining the Walls

2008-10-06T20:53:00.004-06:00

After walls are raised and secured, they need to be straightened. Plumbing is making them vertical and square and lining is just getting them all in a line so they are straight.

All the carpentry books show examples of multiple people doing the plumbing and lining. That’s great when you have helpers to push and pull, and then another man renails the braces in place. But how do you do it by yourself. Actually, it isn’t that hard. You just need a way to make an adjustment (push or pull something) and then have a way for that adjustment to stay put while you renail the brace.
At that same welding supply store where I got the pulleys I came across some large turnbuckles. Humm, I says to self, I’ll bet I can use that to plumb and line my walls. Sure enough, it worked great. I buried one end of the turnbuckle in a plywood sleeve that fits over the end of a 2x4 brace. The other end gets clamped to the top of the wall. Now I can tighten or loosen the turnbuckle and in the process make small adjustments to the top of the wall. All my walls are nice and straight now.

48: Exterior Walls Complete

2008-10-05T09:13:00.005-06:00

Like I said in the previous post, lots of work has gotten done, but not blogged about. Yes, the exterior walls are complete. Since the garage walls are 9’ 5” tall, I built the exterior walls the same height so the roof lines would match up.

Pic 1 is the north and east walls. Pic 2 is the front porch/entryway area. There is no header above the left window because that isn’t a load bearing wall. Pic 3 is my view out the back door. That log floating in the lake is secured down to the lake bottom and functions as the “turtle hotel”. We’ve had as many as 15 turtles stacked up on that log during the heat of the day. They’re a lot of fun to watch.

The walls are 2x6 on 24” centers. Studs were located to the maximum extent possible so they would sit directly on top of floor joists. Likewise roof trusses will sit directly on top of wall studs. This is called stack framing and is a building code approved method of construction.

Walls this tall and built out of 2x6’s get heavy real fast. So, the walls had to be built and lifted in 10’ long sections. I had one spot where I had to use a 12’ long section. I got it lifted but that’s the longest wall one person can reasonably handle unless you’re REALLY strong.

Once they were stood up it was a real trick to get the walls braced so they wouldn’t fall back down. I did this by attaching a 2x4 brace to the floor before making the lift. Then when the wall was lifted I would hold it steady with one hand, pick up the other end of the brace, slide it up into position and then attach a big C-clamp. With the C-clamp installed both hands were free to hammer in a nail between brace and wall before removing the C-clamp. Building and raising walls by yourself can be done easily enough. You just have to think your way through every step of what you are going to do and how you are going to do it ahead of time so you won’t be caught trying to hold a wall upright and have no brace within arm’s reach. Out of roughly 15 sections of wall that I had to raise, I had to lay two of them back down because I forgot to have a clamp immediately available or hadn’t nailed the 2x4 brace down to the floor yet.

47: Subfloor Complete

2008-10-02T19:17:00.003-06:00

Lot’s of work has gotten done on the house. Too bad I haven’t been as productive at keeping the blog updated. As the title says, the subfloor is complete though the pic doesn't show that. Apparently I lost or misplaced my completed subfloor pics.

To keep everyone up to date, the subfloor is 3/4" tongue and groove OSB. It is glued down to the 2x10 floor joists with subfloor adhesive (very sticky stuff). Additionally it is screwed down with deck screws (25 screws per sheet). The hardest part of putting it down was getting the tongue and groove to line up with adjacent pieces, but the sometimes not very subtle use of a 3 lb sledge and a 2x4 wood block coaxed the tongue into the groove.

I noticed that as I got more and more of the subfloor installed, that the crawlspace was beginning to get darker and darker. So, I took a little break and installed most of the lighting in the crawlspace, approximately ten light fixtures, all of which have compact fluorescent bulbs to save a little on electricity. Why ten lights? I want plenty of light down there so I can crawl around to inspect for termites and anything else that might be down there. Every other light fixture has a single electric plug built into it, so I have plenty of places to plug an extension cord into if I need a little power to do something.

I used a lot of mismatched exterior latex paint from Walmart to coat the OSB as it went down for the subfloor. I’ve used orange, magenta, pink, tan, gray and off-white. Some of the floor has as many as three coats of paint on it, the rest two coats. All that painting helped because we had several really drenching rains over the summer and then capped it all off with the downpours from Hurricane’s Gustav and Ike. Surprisingly, the subfloor survived all the rain pretty well, though there are a few rough places.

46: Subfloor Going In

2008-06-08T10:46:00.004-06:00

The subfloor is finally going in. I can actually walk around on it. I didn’t ever think I would get to this point, but I’m here.

I had to temporarily remove the metal siding from the workshop to get the first floor joist in tight. I expected it to be a major hassle, but it came off and went back on pretty smooth.

I decided to put down the floor joists and subfloor together, rather than doing all the joists, then starting on the subfloor; so that I could adjust the location of joists a little if needed (yes, it has been needed). If you just measure out your joists and put them religiously on 24” centers (or whatever spacing you choose), by the time you get the third sheet down (ie 24 foot of length) you will basically be off the joist for your 4th sheet. So, every eight feet I add in 1/8” for better centering.

Where the ceramic tile goes (foyer, kitchen, utility room, bathrooms) I have used 16” spacing for the floor joists. Over the 16” spacing the floor does feel a little more solid than over the 24”, but there is no bounce or squeaks on either spacing. I’ve jumped up and down on it a lot, testing it for bounce.

I’m using ¾ tongue and groove OSB for the subfloor. It is glued down with subfloor adhesive and screwed down every 12” (about 25 screws per 4x8 piece). All the material I read said run the 8’ edge perpendicular to the floor joists and stagger or overlap each row by four feet as you go. Sometimes getting the tongue on one piece to fit inside the groove on the adjacent sheet has been trying. But, the auspicious use of a 4 lb sledge and a block of wood (to protect the edge) has coaxed things into alignment. When that didn’t work, I found setting a couple of concrete blocks on the new piece has held down the tongue edge enough to allow it to slip into the groove.

As I’m doing this by myself, here’s what I’ve found works for me. First, lay out the new subfloor piece to see how well the tongue and groove are going to line up. Next, set your concrete blocks where you need to push the tongue down a little. Then, after everything is aligned, pick up the other end and stick a 12” wood block in to hold the edge up. Then, squirt your subfloor adhesive in on top of the joists. Then take out the wood block and lay the subfloor piece down (gently) on top of the adhesive. Then, pound the edge to insert the tongue fully into the groove. Then, set one screw into that corner. By this time the other end will have come loose, so pound that end back into position and set a second screw on that end. By now, everything is stable, you can stand on top of it, and run in the other 23 screws per piece, all the while sweat running down into your eyes, and then dripping off you nose onto the subfloor. When all that is done, lay down on top of the subfloor piece and look underneath the edge to see how many of your screws didn’t hit the joist; remove and replace accordingly.

At the end of each day of putting down subfloor, I paint it with exterior grade latex paint to protect it from the weather as it will be awhile before I get this thing in the dry. The color wasn’t my choice; it was five gallons of mistinted paint from Walmart (half price). About half the subfloor has two coats of paint on it. The first 5 gallons has done about 800 sq feet of subfloor

There are half inch holes drilled in the subfloor where water ponds after rainstorms.

I put all my spare, black 6mil visqueen down on the ground to start killing the grass and weeds inside the crawlspace. Where there isn’t visqueen down, I’ve sprayed the snot out of it with RoundUp. So, as desired, the inside of my crawlspace is beginning to look like a desert.

As of right now (June 8, 08) I’m about halfway done on the subfloor and about ¾ done with the joists. I hope to finish them both before June is over so I can get on to building exterior walls.

2008-06-08T10:27:00.002-06:00

I found a blog post that I had written back in late February, but not ever posted. So, here it is.

Finally, something to blog about. January wasn’t nice weather to work in like it was last year. If it wasn’t freezing cold, it was raining in downpours. I don’t mind working outside with temps in the forties if it’s not too windy, but temps in the thirties with wind…no, that’s not for me. So, we wait for better weather; one of the advantages of being both the owner and the builder.

So, last week I had nice weather for three days and got the girder beams pretty much “built”; notice I did not say they were finished. Right now they are held together with 3” screws (four screws per 2x10) and I will go back in and nail them with 16’s (two rows, six inch spacing, both sides of each beam) before putting floor joists on.

The girders are three 2x10 thick and the joints are staggered every four feet lengthwise. The distance between columns is 10 feet, so according to my calculations I will have a nice, solid floor with no bounce.

The columns are all concrete block except the one wood column in the basement room. Rebar runs inside the columns and the cells are grouted up with concrete. I will use ¼” Parasleeve bolts (two per column) to anchor steel straps to the column tops. The other end of the steel straps will be nailed with three 16s per strap. By my calculation it will give me 600 lbs of strength (in tension) per strap, roughly twice what the column and footer pad weighs. I don’t like the idea of girders just sitting on top of columns. I want them to be connected, and connected well enough that if a storm comes the uplift winds will have to pick up the columns and footers too. I’m sure lots of contractors would call this overkill, but all the Parasleeve bolts and straps cost about $20; to me it was money well spent. On the ends of the girders they will be bolted/strapped to the foundation walls the same way.

In the basement room I wanted the girders to be as high as possible for better head room, so you will notice that the basement room girder sits on top of it’s cousin. I will use joist hangers to attach those floor joists. Otherwise all floor joists will sit on top of the girders.

The Talking Column

2008-02-11T12:33:00.001-06:00

Finally, a little good weather has allowed me to get some stuff done; namely the columns in the basement. Actually, the girders are already built too, but I’ll save that for next post.

I had a 4x6 wood beam (12’ long) that was in the workshop when I bought it. For three years it sat over in the corner, out of the way, minding it’s own business, just waiting for me to find a use for it. As beams go, it was a good one, nice and straight, about the right size; even nicer, it was free. It sat in that workshop for I estimate 28 years, maybe longer. So, when it came time to build the two columns in the basement room, it said “hey, how about me”. Surprised a little that a wood beam could talk, I replied “hey, why not”. So, now the beam is outside, catching rays on sunny days and feeling good in it’s new role as a column and making a contribution to the greater good.

I used a 5/8” Parasleeve (expanding) bolt to anchor a 4x6 Simpson metal column base to the concrete floor (pics 5 & 6). This bolt is rated for like 7,000 pounds of tensile load, so I was pretty much satisfied it would do the job. If a storm wants to try to carry my house away; I’d just as soon it have to carry the basement slab with it. And since the basement slab is strongly connected to all the concrete footers; of course, they will have to be carried away too. Long story short, that storm is going to have to really “want” my house.

Okay, back to the column(s). On top of the column I have two 2x6’s which form a cradle to hold the girders (pic 4). I’ll lag bolt them well, so that connection stays together.

The other column (pic 1) that sits at the back of the basement room is just your plain-jane, concrete block, non-talking kind of column (at least it won’t talk to me). I had originally poured a footer underneath the basement slab and planned to use another wood column there too. But, I realized if I moved the column back one foot it would be off the slab completely (freeing up floorspace, but still sitting on the concrete footer). So, I drilled and placed my second 5/8” Parasleeve bolt (they come two to a pack). I pondered over what kind of bracket I could attach to the Parasleeve so the concrete grout inside the column would have something to grab too. I have lots of rebar scraps leftover from the slab work, so I took one, chucked it up in the vise and bent an eye around the end of it; something the bolt would fit through. It worked out well. Best of all, the rebar extends about 18” up into the column so there is plenty of length for the concrete to grab (pic 2 & 3).

In the top of the concrete block column I embedded four Simpson LSTA 18 straps. Each strap isn’t quite 1/16” thick, so I doubled them up. There are plenty of holes in the straps, so I stuck three 16 penny galvanized nails through each, something for the concrete to grab. Seems, like I’ve heard each 16 penny nail is good for a little over 100 pounds of shear, so we’ll see how it turns out.
If you have questions about all this, maybe my next post (girders) will help clear them up.

Solving Problems

2007-12-18T10:44:00.001-06:00

I am writing this blog as much to help others build their homes as I am to document the building of mine. Therefore, if I figure out an unusual or innovative way to solve a problem, something that I think may help others I want to post it in the blog.

Just such a thing occurred yesterday as I was building the girder beams that hold up the floor joists. My girders are three 2x10 nailed (and soon to be bolted) together. As I mentioned in a recent post it seems that for me wood warps in storage, even if that storage is nice and dry and the wood is packed tightly together.

Long story short, one of my 2x10 was a little warped and needed to be pulled down about 3/8” to line up with the others. To set the stage here, this girder is up about 5 feet in the air; roughly shoulder height for me.

I tried the standing on a step ladder and mash it down with my body weight method; that didn’t work. Then an idea popped into mind. Could I somehow use one of my many C-clamps to bring these two boards in line and in the process free up both hands for nailing them together.

The pic is what I came up with. It’s two pieces of a discarded bed rail, each about 8” long. I have a metal cutting chop saw, so cutting them wasn’t hard. And as a bonus, the holes were already drilled in about the right spots. So, I grabbed a couple of #12 screws, mounted the angles, put the clamp on and voila, lining up the boards was easy.
This little jig idea might not be that impressive to a professional home builder, but I’m not a pro; so anything like this I think of, I’m proud of, especially when I saw how easy it was to use.

Mudsill and Rim Joist

2007-12-16T12:53:00.000-06:00

Building the subfloor comes next, but the first part of that job is putting up the mudsill and rim joist. For those of you who are not builders, the mudsill is the board that you see bolted down to the foundation walls or to the slab. Houses built with wood subfloors also have a rim joist, which sits perpendicular to the mudsill and goes all the way around the outside perimeter of the house. The regular floor joists “tee” into the rim joist and are nailed or screwed to it.

I’m using 2x10 floor joists so my rim joist is also 2x10. The mudsill is 2x8, which is about the same size as the top of the concrete block foundation wall. With the exception of the front porch area, the mudsill and rim joist are up all around the perimeter.

Every contractor I’ve ever seen toe-nails the rim joist down to the mudsill. It’s a lot quicker this way, but I don’t like toe-nailing because I’ve seen it done wrong too many times. Done wrong the wood splits which compromises the strength of the connection. I like screws much better than nails and am willing to take the extra time they require to use. To connect the rim to the sill with screws required that I build everything upside down, then pick it up, flip it over (upright), carry it over and place it on the foundation wall and finally then bolt it down. Not having a helper, I could do all the steps myself except hold the sill and rim together (properly aligned) while at the same time putting the screws in. For this reason I built a jig to hold the boards straight (Pic 1). Using the jig freed up both my hands which made it a lot easier to put the screws in.

Buying all those screws would be expensive, but one day at the local building supply center I found a drastically reduced price table with a 25# pail of 3” exterior grade wood screws. I weighed the pail to make sure it was full (it was). As these were the same screws I was going to buy inside I felt like I had really come across some good luck.

My mudsill boards are 14’ long, the rim joist are 12’ long. That means there are lots of overlapping joints in the boards. Everywhere there is an overlap I have to do some sort of toe-nailing, but I’m doing it with screws. To avoid splitting the wood at the toe-nail I used a ¾” spade bit to drill a pilot hole (1/4”-3/8” deep). Putting the screw in the pilot hole means there is more wood there for the screw to grab, which lessens the tendency to split the wood. I also drill down through the big pilot hole (on an angle) with a 1/8” bit. This further reduces the tendency for the wood to split. (Pic 2)

It seems most any wood you buy, even if it was straight as an arrow when you bought it; letting it sit stacked (even in a dry garage) for any length of time guarantees some of them will warp. But, I found that using the ¾” pilot hole trick could also be used to connect and align the top of two rim joist boards that didn’t want to line up perfectly. (Pic 3)

Solvitur Ambulando - latin for “finding solutions as we go”. Maybe that’s what this blog should be named. I’m finding “lots” of opportunity to solve problems doing this project -- more than I ever expected.

More About The Porch

2007-12-15T13:14:00.000-06:00

I thought a lot about how to build the front porch. This is what I came up with. Across the back two walls of the porch the block is 4 inches taller than across the front. Three inches of the four is for the concrete slab. This will leave a one inch concrete block splash guard on top of which the mudsill and rimjoist will sit. I’m hoping one inch is enough to keep the inevitable rain off the mudsill. My house siding will come down and cover the mudsill also, hiding it as well as hopefully keeping rain off of it.

There are holes drilled in the block for the slab rebar to fit into. While the slab will also sit on top of the rubble fill inside the perimeter I wanted a more secure connection to that block wall. In pic one you can see rebar pieces are not parallel. This is because I wanted the rebar to be concreted into the block wall where a piece of vertical rebar ran.

The dirt on top is only 3-4 inches deep; the rest of the volume is filled with concrete rubble, broken concrete block and anything else I could find (including one old lawn mower - gas and oil drained) that wouldn’t compact easily.

I will keep this covered with plastic to shed rain as I don’t want the block walls to fill up with water. With all that surface bonding cement, this thing would probably hold water like a swimming pool.

A Little Visitor

2007-12-14T09:14:00.001-06:00

My front porch will be a concrete slab, about 5’ x 7’ and sit atop the block wall foundation, which will be filled with dirt and leftover concrete rubble from pouring my concrete footers.

Collecting all my concrete rubble from around the worksite I came across four black widow spiders. They were in four different locations and were always found under some piece of concrete or inside a concrete block. None of them were found on wood, always concrete.

It was pretty cool the days I was collecting the concrete rubble, like maybe 45 degF, so none of the spiders were moving around very fast. That’s good because it made it easier to photo them.
I always knew that black widows had the familiar red hourglass shape on their bellies, but I didn’t know that some of them have a row of red diamonds down their back. The largest of these spiders I found had a tail bulb 3/8” to a little larger. I’m thinking a widow of this size could put a pretty good bite on you. Yes, I was wearing good leather work gloves when doing this work. I wear gloves when doing most any work. Still, I don’t know if a black widow this large could bite through the gloves.

Surface Bonding Cement - Final Thoughts

2007-12-14T08:16:00.000-06:00

I finally got through applying all the surface bonding cement; 37 bags, 50 lbs each, about $450 for those who are interested. Initial purchase was 35 bags (one whole pallet). Only having to buy two additional bags tells me my first estimate was pretty good.

Each bag of cement has a small chart that tells you how many square feet of surface area the bag will cover at different thicknesses. I used 1/8” cement thickness for my estimate (though I found out later in another document that 1/16” thick is plenty strong). I’m sure in some places mine is 1/8” thick, but thicker (and thinner) in others.

The variation in thickness I think is caused mostly by temperature and by how I mixed it. While I could’ve used the cement mixer to do a whole bag at a time, I didn’t want to have that much material wet at once. If something happened (and it always does) my material might set up on the mortar board; and at roughly $12.50 a bag, that hurts. So, at first I mixed it by hand with a trowel (really slow) and later in a bucket with an electric drill and one of those stirring paddles (much, much easier). If you use the drill and paddle, this stuff is thick, so get a good drill, or you will burn out a cheap one. Ask me how I know this.

It’s not obvious but the same amount of water and cement does not always yield the same mixture density. Outside temperature comes into play, but they don’t tell you that on the bag. And with each batch being slightly different in density, it affects the thickness of application too. One or two batches were absolutely soupy they were so thin. And, troweling on soupy mortar is impossible, you’ve never seen a bigger mess. When that happens, either add a little more cement, or just wait a little while and the stuff will start to set up and become a good mix all by itself.

As you apply the stuff, on a hot day, it starts setting up pretty quick, which makes it hard to trowel. That is solved easily by having a water misting bottle handy (like Windex or counter top cleaner comes in). They don’t tell you that on the bag either. Hit it with a couple of squirts and the mix becomes workable again.

Another tip I learned along the way was on a really hot day, to wet the wall down really well before starting application of cement. The bag instructions say wet the wall, but don’t soak it. No, on a hot day, soak it. Now, if you do soak it, for heavens sake don’t use too much water and end up with a soupy mix too.

Troweling that much cement on to the walls wasn’t hard once you get the hang of it, but it did take up a LOT of time and it also got awfully repetitious. But, it’s finished now; so on to building with wood.

I’ve seen a couple of jobs locally where a contractor applied this stuff to a foundation wall for waterproofing. After looking at his work and then my own work, I’m glad I did my own work. Yes, it took longer, a lot longer for me to do it myself, but getting this house built fast is not the main goal.

2007-11-07T11:52:00.000-06:00

Needless to say I have been remiss in documenting progress on the house. Progress has been there, just not documentation, but it’s coming … soon.

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I had to put a door in my air conditioned/heated room that I built in the workshop. The prehung door and frame that I bought were different than any other type I’ve ever installed before. The frame splits into two halves for installation. This way you don’t have to remove and replace the trim (I like that). Side two fits into side one via a tongue and groove fitting.

I wanted to try to hang the frame with the door attached so my fit would be nice and tight. But, once I removed the plastic plug that they put in the doorknob hole the door wouldn’t stay shut. So, I had to take the hinge pins out and remove the door.

So now, how do we hang half of a door frame so the two vertical sides stay parallel all the way down and at the desired spacing so the door will fit back in nice and tight. I hemmed and hawed around awhile until it hit me, hang the door frame from the top first. So, I centered the frame in the rough opening, which left about ¼” on each side and hung it (from the top) with sheetrock screws. Figuring (more like hoping) the door corner was cut with a nice 90 degree angle, I put a big square on the frame to locate where the bottom of the frame (hinge side) should be. This allowed me to very accurately place the wedges on that side to get it just right. With two sides located properly, I went ahead and put the door back on it’s hinges. Then, I could close the door and figure what size spacers I would need on the other side of the frame to make the door sit right in the frame.

Everything turned out much better than I expected. After mounting side one; side two slid right back in just like it was supposed too. I put in a couple more drywall screws and it was done.

I know hanging a door isn’t a big deal, but I had never worked with a split frame before and I thought my solution was kind of innovative.

Another Detour

2007-08-05T12:59:00.000-06:00

Back in mid-June, after we finished installing ceramic tile in the girlfriend’s house I got some worrisome news. I would have to vacate the apartment that sat next to the building site. While losing the apartment wasn’t such a big deal, the fact that I had drawn all my electricity from that apartment was a problem for me. So, I had to do two things fairly quickly; 1. get electric service to the workshop and 2. build some kind of a room inside the workshop that could be air-conditioned and heated and could provide me a place to escape the summer heat and winter cold.

So, building the actual house has been put on hold until these two other tasks are complete. That has been the reason why there have been no posts to this blog during the interim. But now things are coming to a finish and I can take a break to write.

The room inside the workshop is just an 8x10 room with insulated walls. I guess the hardest thing about building the room was rearranging all the contents of the workshop to carve out enough space to build it. As I am building this house by myself and I can’t both pick up and install 4x8 pieces of sheetrock alone, so I decided to do the interior in masonite (also called hardboard).

Now, as for the electricity, I had to get busy and finish a preliminary electrical plan for the house and workshop. Yes, I could have brought in a temporary electric service pole fairly easily, but then everything in my workshop would be running off extension cords for a long time. I didn’t particularly like that idea. Something more permanent appealed to me.

So, I checked out a couple of books from the local library on residential wiring and started reading. I also visited with an electrician who said he would be willing to work with me as an inspector to see that I wasn’t doing anything dangerous. The particular book I read talked about the electrical code (as in the NEC) being just a minimum set of standards and that in some cases going “above code” was not only smart, but that it didn’t have to be overly expensive either. My electrician also had a few suggestions along those lines, such as pulling two extra 12-2 with ground cables up into the attic as well as two extra 10-3 cables; those to be there for future additions if needed. Run them back to circuit breakers that would be taped to the off position and marked for future use. Another one was how to do GFCI breaker coverage in kitchens and bathrooms less expensively. So that everyone understands this that reads it, a little background is in order. For GFCI protection you can either install a GFCI breaker in the panel (about $35 each) or you can install individual GFCI protected plugs in all locations needing one (about $10 each). They are usually recognized by the push to test and push to reset buttons located on the face of the receptacles (plugs). There is yet another way to do it that is code accepted and that is to use a standard breaker in the panel and a GFCI plug at the first box in the circuit. There are two screws on the back of the GFCI plug that you can attach to plugs further downline in the circuit. Using them makes all the plugs on that circuit GFCI protected.

I asked him about doing the same type idea in the bedrooms which must be AFCI protected, but he didn’t have a cheaper way of doing those.

My electrician listed everything I would need and I got it all for about $300. We went with a 200 amp exterior combination main service panel that contains both a meter can as well as a main service disconnect and slots for 8 circuit breakers. All the workshop circuits will be run off this panel. Also located in the panel are three lugs (attachment points) that I can use when I want to run my big wire to the auxiliary main panel that I will mount in the utility room of my finished house. At first I thought I would not use an auxiliary panel, but my electrician straightened me out on that too. His logic, you have to use big expensive cable (wire) for certain things like ranges, air conditioners, water heaters, etc. If the panel is far away from these things the wire runs will be long AND expensive. If the panel is close to these things; short and less expensive. So, I will go with an auxiliary main panel in the finished house. It also gives us the benefit of not having to go all the way out into the workshop to reset a popped circuit breaker. As an example of this I saw a guy in the checkout line ahead of me buying a whole bunch of electrical stuff for a remodel. One item was an 80 foot length of big conductor three wire (with ground) cable. This stuff was as big around as a quarter coin. The guy said it was for the air conditioner. That cable alone cost $240. There were several other big rolls of wire in his basket, and all because all his loads were quite far from his service panel.

It took about a day to install everything; the panel, the 8’ ground rod (which was quite difficult to drive into the ground - remember I have a shale layer that starts two feet down), the rigid conduit “mast”, the weather head and then get all the 4/0 aluminum cable thread thru it and down into the service panel. Since aluminum corrodes (oxidizes) in air I used anti-corrosion paste on all the connections. That being done I had the electrician come out and inspect everything. He liked what he saw, so the next morning I called the electrical utility company and wonder of wonders, they said I was first on their list, so I would get power that afternoon. The truck showed up at 1 pm and by 2 he was through and gone. So, now I have power.

All my workshop circuits are installed now and I even put in two extra circuits for future use. I did all this because the panel is on one of the walls that will be insulated and covered over with masonite.

If any of you readers have suggestions, I’m all ears.

Something Different

2007-08-05T11:34:00.000-06:00

I was in Lowes one day awhile back and found some really cheap ceramic floor tile. I liked the pattern and bought a bunch of it; like 24 cases of the stuff (16 pieces per case). The girlfriend got one look at it, and she wanted it too, buying 16 cases of it for her kitchen and laundry room. I had done a little research on “cheap tile” in a couple of forums and got opinions all the way from avoid it like the plague to go on and give it a try. We unpacked and inspected every piece after getting it home, and returned about 40 broken, chipped or otherwise unacceptable tiles, which Lowes replaced with no questions. Forty bad out of 640 wasn’t bad, and now that they had all been inspected, we knew we would have enough tile to finish the job. We bought 10% extra, but didn’t need anywhere near that much (at least on this project).

So, over the Memorial Day weekend we put down ceramic tile in girlfriend’s kitchen and utility room. We had bought the tile installation book written for Lowes, but in all honesty, all we needed was the instructions on the mortar and grout bags. In retrospect though, the book did tell us that if the vinyl flooring was stuck down well and that it wasn’t the “resilient” type vinyl we could put the tile down directly over the vinyl (which we did). So, from a time savings viewpoint the book was probably worth the bucks.

Her vinyl was a wood pattern, and according to my measurements had been layed square, so I used her pattern as my layout lines. That helped speed the project along too.

On the first day we got about 80 full sized tiles layed in the center of the room. We probably could have done more, but we “back buttered” every tile before laying them. On the second day we got the rest of the full sized tiles down. So, now we had about 60 edge pieces to cut, some of which were going to be complex cuts as they had to fit around door frames. I asked around and several people told me I could use the diamond blade (see previous posts) that I had used to cut all my concrete block. I chucked it up in the table saw and it cut very well, but it did leave the edges a little ratty. Still, it worked more than well enough as all the ratty edges would be covered by wood floor trim anyway. I still can’t believe it, but we didn’t break a single tile, nor did we miscut a single tile in the whole job. So, all our extra tiles were left over when the job was complete. On the third day, we layed all the edge pieces except the complex pieces that went around the door frames and under the stove and dishwasher, and we grouted all the fullsize tiles .

We chose a bone color grout, which should have come out a shade darker than the tile. Well, it was exactly the color we wanted, when it was wet, but after it dryed, it was the same color as the tile. It doesn’t look bad, but it also isn’t exactly what she wanted either. Still though she is pretty happy.

On the fourth day or so a friend loaned me his Harbor Freight tile saw which I used to cut the pieces that go around the doors. I think my diamond blade in the table saw method worked just as well as his tile saw and it had the added advantage of not spraying and dripping water all over everywhere when in use. Still though, I can’t complain. The job went well.

We had to run six tiles up under the range and dishwasher and in the process found a plumbing leak which shut us down during the middle of the project. I isolated the problem to a leaking water valve on the dishwasher and ordered a part over the internet. It came in four days later and the change-out took about an hour. Now, keeping fingers crossed, we had no more leaks, so the next day the remaining tiles went in under the stove and dishwasher.

As we had never installed ceramic tile before, we are very pleased with the installation. From start to finish, it took about 8-10 days, but a lot of that time was waiting on a plumbing part.

We debated whether to seal the grout or not. Then something spilled and discolored the grout in one spot. Next morning we sealed all the grout. It took about an hour. Here’s a tip for you: If your grout is light in color, it stains very easily.
So now we have some experience in laying tile. And we get to see what the tile will look like in my house when it’s finished.

Update - a month or two later. The tile has performed well. Though we have dropped one or two heavy things on it, none of the tiles have broken. I can't say the same thing for the pyrex dish that we dropped on it.

A Little Dreaming

2007-05-11T17:23:00.000-06:00

Now that the block walls are pretty much finished, and stable enough to stand on top of, here is a view of what I will see out my living room when this house if finally complete. It has helped keep me motivated to continue working, when it seems that everything goes so slow.

Pic 2 and 3 are then and now pics. Though it may not look like it; the block wall (especially on the right side) is 8 feet tall.

An Update

2007-05-11T08:17:00.000-06:00

The bond beam is pretty much complete now. Due to a different way of laying the bottom row of block in some of the north wall, the wall height came out a little shallow in several places. To compensate for that I just made the bond beam a little thicker in those areas. Net result, top of bond beam is at desired elevation (which means my floors will be level). To add that thickness I had to frame up the sides some (see pic 1). This method of framing worked well on the lintel beam, so I just used that method again.

On a different subject, I decided to make my first trial runs using the surface bonding cement. This is the mortar like stuff that contains fiberglass (for structural strength) and a waterproofing agent that is used to coat the inside and outside of dry-stack built block walls. I mixed up two small batches of SBC and troweled them on. See pic 2. It goes on pretty easily and trowels out smooth. I ran out of material so there is a small uncoated area in the middle. The instructions said to feather it out on top of your footers a little to seal the wall-footer contact area. My girlfriend said to go buy her a trowel because she wants to get in on this too. So, I’m off to the building supply store (again).

Tornado Shelter Roof

2007-05-10T08:31:00.000-06:00

I expected pouring the 3” thick concrete roof for the tornado shelter to be a real challenge, but it turned out not to be nearly as bad as I had expected.

Pic 1 shows the shelter before the roof. Notice the top row of concrete blocks have been dished out to act as forms for holding the concrete.

Pic 2 shows the form boards in place. I used 4x8 OSB (3/4” thick) for the base. Pic 3 shows what held up the OSB base; concrete blocks stood on end. I built six pillars of block so that the floor would be supported roughly every two and a half feet in all directions. I did take care to make sure the pillars were vertical (used a level). On top of the pillars sets a 2x4 frame, with the OSB sitting on top of this frame. There were some small gaps around the OSB that concrete could go through so I used 3” wide strips of aluminum (.020” - twenty thousandths thickness) to close those gaps. They overlapped the concrete block by 1/8” to ¼” in most places and so they wouldn’t move were held in place by one dry wall screw on each piece.

I was afraid the weight of the concrete might push down too much in the middle, so I wedged 2x4’s there to help support the middle.

Rebar was then installed in both directions. Each rebar piece had 90 degree bends on the ends so the ends could stick down into the top of the concrete blocks to give the concrete more to hold on too and to better secure the roof to the walls. Unfortunately I don’t have a pic of the rebar installed.

Then came the concrete; I mixed it; girlfriend placed and smoothed it. One piece of rebar stuck up more than desired, so we just made the slab thicker there than other places. My plan was to have 1-1/2” between top of concrete roof and bottom of floor joists (the thickness of the sill), so the slab could be made up to 1-1/2” thicker locally and still not hit the joists.

Pic 4 is the completed roof slab. I left the forms up for three days and kept the roof as wet as much as possible while curing, but I didn’t cover it with plastic (should have). A week later now, no cracks.

When I took out the block pillars the OSB base didn’t want to come out easily, so I have decided to leave it in permanently. It will give us something to screw the lights too and after it’s painted we think it will look nicer than a concrete roof.

P.S. The holes in the walls in pics 1 and 4 are for vent fans and for emergency communication, should a tornado bring the house down on top of us (blocking our escape).

Lintel Beam

2007-05-07T20:08:00.000-06:00

Here is the lintel beam that goes over the basement room door. It is actually part of the bond beam that sits on top of my foundation walls. It has four pieces of 3/8” rebar inside that run horizontally and two pieces that run vertically in either side of the door frame. Two of the horizontal pieces (the top two) continue on into the bond beam in both directions. The vertical rebar terminates in a 90 degree bends inside the lintel beam. Outside dimensions are the same as a concrete block (7-5/8 x 7-5/8).

It was pretty easy to build the form, using just three upright 2x4’s to hold it up and an OSB box built to shape and contain the sides.

The concrete used to cast the beam was a fairly dry mix and the aggregate was pea gravel, so it looks like an exposed aggregate surface finish. It will all be covered with surface bonding cement later, so the small voids won’t show.

Bond Beam

2007-05-03T20:50:00.000-06:00

It’s been a long time since my last update, but while a lot of work has been going on, very little of it would show up well in pictures. So, finally something worth looking at.

The south wall bond beam was finished about a week ago and we filled the east wall bond beam today. I am amazed at how much concrete it takes to fill the bond beam. I finally started buying gravel and sand and Portland cement separately and mixing my own, and boy am I glad I did. Using Quikcrete 60 lb bags was running about $160 a yard and using separate ingredients cut the cost down to about $75 a yard. Why didn’t I go to this idea sooner?

Our local building supply had a 17% off sale on St. Patrick’s Day so I bought all my surface bonding cement on sale for right at $12 a bag (35 bags). Lowes wanted I think $16 a bag. I found an engineering study on the internet that had a recipe for homemade surface bonding cement. I started pricing all the individual ingredients (about 6) and everything was looking promising until I got to calcium stearate, which is the water proofing agent in the cement. I found two prices for it, but it was prohibitive and made the home grown recipe economically unattractive. So, I went with the store bought stuff. But, I at least wanted to try to see if I could save much making it myself.

Pics one and two are the south wall bond beam. Pic three is the east wall. The east wall concrete was still wet in the pics, having just been poured. At the far end of the east wall is the framing for the lintel beam over the basement room door. It will be discussed in my next post.

My girlfriend poured the mud and smoothed the top off while I would keep the cement mixer going. It took me about as long to mix up a batch as it took her to use it up.

Finally, An Update

2007-03-03T12:04:00.000-06:00

Since my last update, the weather has been uncooperative to say the least. We’ve had rain, we’ve had snow, we’ve had cold winds, and then more and more of the same. Oh, I must have forgot, it’s winter. Did I really “expect” to get anything done. I guess I got spoiled in December and January with so many nice work days.

The north wall is now almost complete. Pic 1 shows the north wall, the tornado shelter and about half the front porch block framing. Inside the front porch you can see the beginnings of a rubble pile. After all the porch walls are built and then infilled with concrete rubble and dirt I will pour the porch slab on top. I have a lot of extra dirt around the project (leftover from digging). Well, now I have a place for it. However, before I do that I will probably remove the blocks highlighted in yellow so I can still have access to the building site from the front. After the rest of the bond beam is cemented in place I will then replace the block and finish off the porch.

Pic 2 is a view of the northwest corner from the basement. The four lonely block sitting on top of the wall just represent the bond beam height and were used to measure how close my elevations are to planned. In most areas I’m within 1/8 inch of desired elevation, not bad for a beginner. Where I’m too low, I’ll place a little mortar under the bond beam block to raise them, where I’m a little too high, well let’s just say the diamond saw blade will get a little more use.
Pic 3 is a view from the northwest corner looking across the project showing all the walls built so far.

Bond Beam Problem Solved

2007-01-22T19:22:00.000-06:00

The weather last week was miserably rainy -- 10+ inches -- then it turned cold. So, about all I got accomplished was a solution to the bond beam problem; or more specifically what would I use beneath the bond beam block to keep concrete from going down into the cells where I didn’t want it.
I have a friend that works for a company that rebuilds engine cowls, flaps and ailerons for airliners. They use a LOT of aluminum, in all thicknesses and sizes imaginable. He said they have a lot of scrap that just gets thrown away and that I would be welcome to come raid their scrap bin. I got all I need in one trip…best of all…it was free.

One piece was 4’ x 10’ and .020 thickness (read that as 20 thousandths). I cut all my pieces 6” x 15” using Wiss brand aviation snips and my bandsaw. It took a couple of hours to cut the 80 odd pieces I would need, but it’s done.

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When I pour the bond beam I’m going to have to stand on something so I can get up high enough to work. So, I also build a couple of saw horses this week. I’ll nail a piece of plywood down on two 2x4’s and make myself sort of a scaffold. I only have to get up about 36” above ground level (in some places) to work comfortably, so these should do the trick. I drilled holes in the legs every inch so I could bolt on some leg extensions when needed.

Progress Report

2007-01-12T20:08:00.000-06:00

This week I worked pretty much exclusively on stacking blocks for the tornado shelter walls. I had a couple of hurdles to overcome; such as how to best join two walls when they meet at a “T” as shown in the first pic. At first I thought I would embed full-sized blocks in the exterior wall on every other course. Every time you do that you have to use a half block to fill the remaining void. Using half block isn’t a problem, but every time you do you create three butt joints adjacent to each other, and I definitely didn’t like that. To me all those butt joints just represent weak points in the wall, so as far as I am concerned, the fewer butt joints the better. With all my thinking and cogitating during the design phase of the block walls, this is something I didn’t realize would happen.

So, here’s where we are. The exterior wall (north wall) will be built normally with no half blocks used in it. That makes the interior wall a free-standing wall, not connected directly (with overlapping block) into the north wall. There needs to be a good, strong way to connect these two walls at the T-joint. Rebar comes to the rescue, especially since I have lots of rebar scraps sitting around. I decided to make rebar “hooks” (pic 2) which fit into notches cut in the tops of blocks (pic 3). These hooks extend down into those block 5” on each side, giving lots of surface area for concrete to grab on too. There will be five rebar hooks used in the T-joint, one every other course of block.

Even though the joint is pretty much built, and half-way concreted I'd still be interested in your other ideas and suggestions.

Bond Beam Basics

2007-01-07T07:52:00.000-06:00

Last week I also got started cutting the block for my bond beam. You can buy “bond beam block” already cut to roughly this shape, but those block have solid bottoms, so there would be no way for the vertical rebar to enter the bond beam. So, I had to make my own.

These modified block are pretty easy to make. It just takes two cuts with the diamond blade, a hammer, a chisel (known as a “brick set”) and a little elbow grease. So far I have 16 of them cut (and about 80 more to go). In pic 1, the two yellow lines represent where the horizontal rebar will lay (though I may only use one piece of rebar).

There is one little problem to solve with this home-made block design. See pic 2. I want all of the bond beam block to be filled with concrete. I also want concrete in all the cells that contain the vertical rebar. but no concrete in the adjacent cells that don’t have vertical rebar. So, I have to put something in to block the concrete from falling through and going down into the cells where I don’t want it. I have read about stuffing the tops of those cells with newspaper to block the concrete, but I don’t like that idea. I have also heard about putting window screen material in between the block to act as a dam. I don’t think the screen would be strong enough to hold the concrete while it cured, but I suppose I could make up a test piece and concrete up a test block to see how it works.

I am also considering using thin metal sheets made out of the metal found in “trim rolls” that some siding people use to make metal trim for soffits and around windows and doors. The material has to be thin so it won’t raise the top of the block above my desired elevation. I’m not locked in to this trim roll approach; I’m still open to suggestion. Anybody got any ideas?

The window screen material would probably be a lot cheaper than the metal pieces, as well as being lots easier to cut and handle.

Tornado Shelter Block Layout

2007-01-07T06:25:00.000-06:00

I mentioned last post that I had gotten started laying out the block for the tornado shelter. Here is a closeup of that layout. The left side wall I will call the interior wall, the right side the exterior wall. You will notice all the blocks on the interior wall have been cut down to 3.5” height. Add the 4” slab thickness to that and you’re back to the height of the full-sized blocks on the right side (exterior wall).

Cutting down concrete blocks isn’t all that blog-worthy by itself, but how I got them all leveled and to the same elevation is. There is a stringline over the exterior wall that is used to set the correct elevation and location of everything (footers, block walls, floors, etc). I don’t have a stringline over the left side blocks and didn’t want to take the time or effort to rig one up. So, I just took a long, straight piece of galvanized fence pipe (leftover from another project) and put my level on it. It was long enough to reach all the way across from one wall to the other. I figured I would prop up the end of the pipe with wood blocks until it was level, then use that block height to measure and cut my blocks. I had a 2x4 piece close by, so I tried that first. When I put the pipe and level on top of the 2x4, low and behold, it was perfectly level. I am never this lucky on the first attempt, so something has to be wrong. So, to be sure, I took it all apart and put it back together again. Checking it again yielded the same result. So I cut the concrete block to 3.5” height and moved on to the next one. In the end, all five blocks were cut to this height.

These block I didn’t actually mortar to the floor because, 1.) they were already level (on top) and to the exact height desired and 2.) each block has a piece of vertical rebar in it. When concreted in place, the rebar won’t let them move. In the first block in the pic I stuffed some mortar to kind of hold it in place.

It was only after getting them all layed down that I finally realized why the 2x4 worked as the exact height needed. At first I reasoned that the 4” slab thickness plus the 3.5” block height added up to 7.5”. But full sized concrete blocks are 7-5/8” tall, so somewhere I’m off by 1/8”. But, then I realized none of the full sized blocks on the exterior wall were in fact full sized. They had all had at least an inch cut off them because of irregularities in the surface of the concrete footer. So now, mathematically nothing adds up right or makes any sense. But, in the end, the tops of the blocks are level and to the desired elevation so I’m going to stop worrying about it and leave it up to you, the reader to figure out. As before, you got any ideas, I’m all ears.

P.S. The first diamond blade is about used up. I probably made a hundred cuts with it, but I’m not believing the 200x printed on the side of the blade means it will last 200 times longer than a regular masonry blade. I bought a new Skil brand diamond blade at Walmart for $14. It only says 50x, so we will see how long it lasts.

P.S.2. The two cut down block in the front of the pic haven’t been leveled yet, but that’s where they will go eventually. There are no blocks placed yet which will make up the back wall. That’s next.

Another Update

2007-01-03T10:47:00.000-06:00

I have become used to posting an update each week; so as long as I continue to accomplish something we will continue along those lines. Last week we had rain on Monday (Christmas day), but every other day was good building weather; 50’s and 60’s. It doesn’t get much better than that, so I’m trying to “make hay while the sun shines”.

Last week I pretty much finished the east wall (E) and got a good head start on the north wall (N). Concrete has been poured in the cells containing vertical rebar up to about the 4th block course. Rebar has been installed above that concrete, but can’t be seen in this pic because block has already been stacked and covers it up. I have started laying out the block for the tornado shelter (TS).

I learned something new this week when it comes to filling the cells with concrete, and that is to use a big coffee can. Before, I was using a sharpshooter shovel (long skinny blade to dig narrow ditches), but the coffee can holds more concrete (so is faster) and prevents spillage if the concrete is mixed a little “thinner” (more watery). It’s funny how when mixing bags of Quikcrete in the wheelbarrow I use the same amount of water for each bag, but some loads come out thinner than others. Anybody got an explanation; I’m all ears.

I have a question for those of you reading this blog. Right now I am buying all my concrete in 60 pound bags. That is the expensive way to buy concrete. I figure it is running about $130 per yard of concrete this way (and I need at least 3 more yards). When the big concrete truck brought me concrete it was $68 per yard. I don’t particularly want to buy cement, sand and rock separately because then I have to haul it all separately to the work area from in front of the garage. I also don’t want to have to load and use the heavier (94lb) bags of cement. Bag concrete is 60 lbs per bag. I can’t use redi-mix concrete ($68/yard) because I can’t place the wet concrete fast enough to keep it from setting up in the truck or in my wheelbarrow. There may not be an easy or practical solution to this problem, but I’m throwing it up here for comment anyway, just in case somebody thinks of something I haven’t considered. I do have a cement mixer.

Weekly Update

2006-12-22T20:36:00.000-06:00

The block wall building continues. The south wall is for all intents and purposes complete except for the bond beam that goes on top. I will probably wait until all walls are finished and add the bond beam last.
The east wall is about half finished and I’ve started mortaring in the base course on the north wall.

Back when I poured the footers for the north wall I had some trouble getting the concrete into the form because the chute on the concrete truck wasn’t long enough. With the hot weather we had that day and the concrete wanting to set up quickly I had a little difficulty getting the concrete to the exact level I wanted. Unfortunately, the level was a little too high (too low wouldn’t have been a problem -- I’d just use a little more mortar to bring the first row up to desired elevation). Being too high means I had to cut the first row of blocks down some.

Cutting concrete block is no fun. I had a couple of masonry blades for my circular saw. The first block I cut used up a whole blade. These blades were $3.19 each and I had to cut down at least 17 blocks, so it looked like it was going to be an expensive mistake. I’d heard of diamond blades for cutting masonry, so I checked out the building supply stores. The name brand blades (Dewalt, Makita, etc) ran about $35 each, but one off-brand blade was selling for $17 and was advertised to last 200 times longer than a regular masonry blade. I read that as being good to cut 200 block if necessary (gee I hope I don’t have to cut that many). I bought it and it has worked beautifully. It cuts clean and much faster than a masonry blade, but it still creates just as much noise and dust as the other. If you ever cut concrete block be sure to wear a good dust mask because getting that dust (silica) in your lungs is bad, bad, bad. Besides wearing a mask I set up a fan to blow the dust cloud away from the work area. Right now a good sized chunk of my front yard is covered in grey concrete dust.

Another advantage of having the diamond blade is it makes it very easy to fill in holes where a full sized block won’t fit. That seemed to happen most everywhere my footers stepped down to the next level. I planned for each step to be located at the end of a full block, but somehow, in the construction of the footers the steps didn’t end up where planned. Oh well, it isn’t a big problem; it just means you have to cut a block to fit, or fill the hole up with mortar or concrete. I was using mortar to fill the holes before, but that uses up a lot of mortar quick; much better to cut a block to fit and save the mortar for elsewhere.

Here are a couple of pics of the block walls. Pic 1 is looking east at the south and east walls. Pic 2 is standing at the northeast corner looking roughly south across the basement room.

Block Walls: Continued

2006-12-15T21:39:00.000-06:00

Okay, so basically a week has gone by now since last post. Monday (11th) , it rained all day, so no work that day. But, starting Tuesday we’ve had beautiful weather all week, with no freezing at night, so I was able to get a lot done. It may not look like a lot, but laying the base course of the block wall is tedious and time consuming; especially for a beginner.

The base course for the east and south walls are now complete; that’s roughly 90 feet done and 60 to go.

One thing I have noticed is that as I have gained experience working with mortar, the work looks better and better. I had never done any of this before, so the first 20 or so block look pretty rough. They are functional, but they aren’t pretty. The last 20 blocks, now they’re beginning to look like a mason did them.

Pic 1 is the completed south wall base course. There is an opening where my water supply pipe will come in.

In pic 2 concrete fills up the cells and locks the block wall to the rebar. In this pic the next piece of rebar has been embedded in the concrete and zip tied to the first piece for additional stability during the rest of the stacking.

Pic 3 shows that the second layer of vertical rebar stops about 16 inches below desired floor level, and that each rebar piece has a bend in it to better lock into the bond beam which will be the top most block layer.

Pic 4 shows blocks stacked up as high as I can go right now (8 layers in the south east corner). The bond beam will be the 9th and final layer and will be done in one pour when I get all the walls complete.

Block Wall Test Stack

2006-12-07T05:43:00.000-06:00

After finishing the base course of the East wall, I still had a little daylight left. So, I thought I’d try a little test stack on the part of the base course that was already cured (layed a week ago). I was amazed at how easy it is to build a dry-stack wall. All these block were stacked in maybe 10-15 minutes. I had to stop on this level because now it’s time to fill the cells that have rebar in them with concrete.

When I fill the cells with concrete, at the same time I will stick in another piece of rebar and overlap the rebar by 12-14 inches. Then after the concrete cures I can continue stacking.

Some blocks look dry and some look wet. The wet ones were stacked on the inside of the pallet, the dry ones were on the outside.

This is the southeast corner of the house. This wall is now four courses high. When finished it will be nine courses high. So, this corner is about half done.

Block Walls Base Course

2006-12-07T05:34:00.000-06:00

The base course is the bottom-most layer of concrete block. It sits directly on top of the footers. As the footers are not perfectly flat I will bed those blocks in a layer of mortar, but more importantly to get the elevation of the base course exactly right.

I bought 15 bags of mortar pre-mix. Thinking that it would be more than enough I mixed up half of the first 60 lb bag (in my wheelbarrow) to what I thought was about the right consistency. I had planned on the mortar layer being about 1” thick; so I put down about 2” of mortar, set the first blocks, tapped then down to the correct elevation and leveled the block. Then I noticed the blocks were sinking below my desired elevation. The mortar was too thin. So I added a little more mortar mix, stirred it up again and ended up laying about 4 blocks out of the first mix. The rest of the mixes went much better because I used less water. When the mortar is “right” it doesn’t look wet at all, not even close to the texture I see brickmasons use when laying block. But, it worked out okay and that’s what’s important.

Pics 1 & 2 are what I got done the first day. I let this cure overnight and checked on it the next day; everything was fine, but a week later (after lots of rainy weather) I thought the mortar had shrunk some during curing - but, it turns out my stringline had sagged from the wet weather.

Then, a week later, the real cold weather hits, temps below freezing every night. I read in several books not lay block if it will freeze that night. So another week passes and I get an unexpected warm day. I was able to bed the rest of the East wall, so now we have 30 feet of base course down, and 120 to go.

Unless your house dimensions are an even multiple of 15-5/8” (a full block length) or 7-5/8” (a half block length) you’re going to end up with extra space needing filling. Pic 3 is how I chose to fill the void. Yes, there will be one of these spaces to fill in every layer of block (on this wall).

Humm, I don’t think I’m going make my original estimate of having the block walls built by years end.

Last Concrete Pour & Perimeter Drain

2006-12-06T21:33:00.000-06:00

The footers are finally finished. The last pour was 3.25 yards (3 yards actual, plus .25 yards extra just in case). This pour was different from the others because we had to wheelbarrow all the concrete into the site. How many wheelbarrow loads does it take to move three yards of concrete; I don’t know exactly, but whatever it is, it’s too many. Actually, the job went pretty smooth. My girlfriend helped me with the pour. We had two wheelbarrows in use and she moved concrete loads too until we got to a point where the tops of the footers needed finishing off. Then, she switched to doing that while I moved the rest of the concrete. I think it only took maybe an hour, or a little longer to get all the concrete in place; a lot faster than I had expected.

It was nice and cool that day, maybe 55 degrees, so I thought we could take our time putting in all the vertical rebar. Then the concrete truck driver tells me they added extra cement to the mix so it would set up faster in the cooler weather. I think 3,000 psi “footer” concrete is supposed to be about a “six-bag mix” (ie six bags of cement per yard), but he tells me (after the pour) that they used eight or nine bags of cement per yard (same cost). That about scared me to death because we still had at least 30 pieces of vertical rebar to install and I could just imagine having to use a sledge to drive it into the footers. Long story short - no problem at all. The concrete was still plenty soft to push the verticals in by hand. Another hour and the job was finished, and substantially easier than all the pours we had made during the heat of the summer.

So, now all the forms have been pulled. I bought my perforated PVC pipe for the perimeter drain system. I planned to use 4” pipe, but 3” was half the cost, so I went with that thinking there should never be enough water in this drain to need the larger pipe. In case you don’t remember previous posts about the perimeter drain, this drain system sits right beside the bottom of all the footers to capture and drain away any water that manages to slide down the footer walls or come into the area from any other source. I’m doing this because my crawlspace is being built like a basement; ie heated and cooled and I don’t want any moisture problems down there. Everything I’ve read says that a well drained project prevents moisture problems. The footers also have visqueen on the bottom and sides to help prevent moisture from wicking through the footers. Let’s hope all these extra steps have the desired result.

The Mini-Excavator

2006-09-10T11:26:00.000-06:00

So, now that the basement slab is poured, we can get started on the last of the footers. I call up the backhoe operator who dug all the other footers and he says he can’t get to me for a month; and worse yet, he doesn’t know anyone who has a backhoe as small as his; ie one that can get into and work effectively on my narrow, tight lot. Renting something appears to be the only alternative; and he suggests trying out a “trac-hoe”. I call around town and check out backhoes and trac-hoes; they rent for about the same thing; so I go with the trac-hoe.

I have never had more fun playing in the dirt. The rental place gives you a mini-tutorial on what the controls do, but it took at least an hour of hands-on to get the basics down. Several times I’d get a bucket full of dirt picked up, and be ready to swing the boom left to dump it on my pile. Well, left hand swings the boom, but right hand dumps the bucket. You guessed it, I moved the right hand, and immediately dumped the dirt back into ditch. So, you laugh a little at your own clumsiness and then go do it again.

After the second hour you’d think I’d been operating this thing for years. I was able to use both hands at the same time; ie raise AND swing the boom at the same time, then dump the bucket while the boom was still extending.

It only took three hours to dig all my remaining footers. I’d paid for a whole day of use (8 hours of digging on the hour-meter), so I begin to think of what other trouble I could get myself into with this thing. My building site is not as smooth as I’d like; a few dips and high spots; but not anymore. The trac-hoe has a bulldozer blade which moves earth very effectively, but that earth is on the “other” side of the ditch I just dug. So, now the fun part is how to cross the ditch. I had seen my backhoe operator put the “front” bucket down on the ground and use it to lift up the front end of his tractor so his smaller front tires wouldn’t get caught in the ditch. He would then power forward with his rear tires and use the front bucket as a skid to slide on; making it into kind of a tricycle. So, I tried this with the trac-hoe and it works beautifully. I had previously discussed this with the rental place manager to make sure it was okay. You, the renter are responsible for any damage of an “unusual” nature; such as letting the trac-hoe fall over on it’s side. This thing weighs 5,000 pounds and I could have nightmares trying to figure out how to get it back upright if it fell over on my lot. There is NO room to get a real wrecker in there if you need one, so CAUTION is the name of the game today (actually, it’s the name of the game every day).

After all the lot smoothing was done I still had hours left, so I dug a small drainage ditch in front and used the dirt to fill in two holes. All together; time used; four hours; and three gallons of diesel (you have to return the unit with a full tank). I could have rented it for a half day (and saved $30).

Basement Slab - Second Half

2006-09-10T11:18:00.000-06:00

It’s funny how when you do something the second time, it goes much faster. Such was forming up the second half of the basement concrete slab. It’s also funny how you can get ahead of yourself and maybe create a problem that you won’t realize until the concrete arrives (the absolute worst time to realize you have a problem). Long story short, I didn’t order enough concrete for the second slab pour. I ended up about a quarter yard short. And the pour was going so smoothly.

I got the concrete truck into and turned around on the site; remember it’s a small site with almost no extra room. I mean, like ten minutes after he arrived, we were ready to pour. I don’t know why, but I keep using the word “we”. Here, “we” means the concrete truck driver and me. So, we start the pour and by swinging the chute left and right I get about half the form filled up in like two minutes. Then we take the “come-along” (fancy name for a big hoe) and even out the concrete, pushing it into all the corners. I take my small hoe and make “sure” it’s evenly spread into the corners. Truck driver said take a hammer and bang on the forms lightly, that will help consolidate it into the corners even better.

We then screed off the top with a long 2x4; not too bad; went fairly smoothly. He moves the truck and we do it again; only this time I start to hear individual rocks (aggregate) bouncing around inside the truck “barrel” before we’ve finished filling up the forms. That’s a bad sound as it indicates the truck is about empty.

Houston, we have a problem.

Fortunately, it was only 85 degrees that day; that helped a lot as the concrete didn’t seem to start hardening as quickly as it had on previous pours, when the temp was 95.

So, I use the bull-float to smooth it as much as possible, while the truck driver washes out the truck (there was nothing to wash out); and then use the hand-float around the edges. I get him paid, and get the truck out of the site (it’s always easier getting him out, than getting him into the site). And then it’s off to the building supply to buy Quikcrete; twelve bags, sixty pounds each.

A friend gave me a concrete mixer. I knew the fanbelt had slipped off the pulley. So, I remove the cover, plug it in to make sure the motor works; it does. So now the fan belt goes back on and is adjusted for tension; and voila the mixer now DOESN’T work; can’t get it to run no matter what I do. Give the mixer blades a push to help get them going; no dice. So, it looks like we (there’s that “we” word again) will be mixing this stuff by hand in the wheelbarrow.

The Quikcrete instructions say add about a half gallon of water per bag of mix. Ha, if you do, you won’t be able to work the concrete at all; so maybe ¾ gallon, or maybe even a little more, and it’s wet enough to be workable. One bag at a time, for ten bags, shoveled into the forms, and finally the forms are filled up. Now comes the finishing. I no longer have the bull-float (belonged to the concrete truck), and one person can’t screed this much concrete by himself with the 2x4, so all finishing will be with a hand float only.

It works surprisingly well. The hardest part was feathering in the edge of the fresh, wet concrete, with the now beginning to dry concrete. Fortunately, the now beginning to dry mix, was firm enough that I could lay plywood pieces down on it, and kneel on it to reach far enough into the slab and smooth the edges.

So, at the end of the day, I have a completed basement slab. It isn’t going to win any awards for beauty, but is pretty flat and will function well for it’s intended purpose.

Boy, I’m glad I don’t do concrete for a living.

I’ve had a day or two now to think about how I came up short on the concrete. Long story short, I think I estimated it right, but the concrete company shorted me a little. I took readings of slab width and length every three feet. The ground was a little uneven, so I took a LOT of depth readings (about every two feet), and averaged them. My width and length readings were taken to the "outside" of the forms. All these precautions means there should have been concrete leftover, but there wasn't. The one mistake that I will admit too is I didn’t order “a little extra” like I should have. I’ve always ordered a little extra, about a quarter yard, so why didn’t I do it this time…hummm.

Solo home building; what an adventure. I hope this adventure doesn’t kill me.

Basement Slab - One Week Later

2006-09-10T11:13:00.000-06:00

I planned to leave the slab covered for two to three days. Due to rain and a busy weekend it ended up covered for six days (pretty much what the concrete book recommended). So, off comes the visqueen cover and to my surprise it is still wet under the plastic, something I really didn’t expect since I hadn’t added any water for five days. Only one small crack had formed, and it was located in a spot where it wouldn’t be seen. I was quite happy with the results of my first slab pour. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s plenty usable.

That same day I started removing the forms. Some were easy to remove and some were not. Excess concrete had spilled over on the outside of the forms in a few places. I didn’t notice it during the pour and after six days of curing it was quite hard. So, the excess concrete had “locked” the forms in place. I tried to pry them out, no luck. I had to get the forms out because the form boards occupy the space where the expansion material between slab and block wall will eventually go. Since I couldn’t get the form boards out, I needed a way to at least cut them off level with the footer. After considering every tool I owned I decided to take my circular saw and slice the form boards into thin slices that I could pry apart and break away from the slab. This took a lot of time as I had 16 feet of form board to slice. I know that I totally dulled a Dewalt circular saw blade, but the blade was old already, and more importantly it worked.

Oh the joys of solving problems that you create for yourself by not noticing things that you should have noticed earlier. But, then again, no one said building your own house would go smoothly… or easily.

First Basement Slab Pour

2006-08-04T07:23:00.000-06:00

After getting all the rebar placed, tied and supported on rebar chairs I call up the concrete man and a day or two later here he comes. It was 95 degrees when he arrived. The pour went very smoothly compared to the second pour. We poured the remaining footers first with “thicker” concrete; then added a little water to the mix to pour the slab (this may have caused problems discussed later). The driver helped me screed off the slab with a 2x4, showed me how to use the bull float I'd rented and helped me float the edges with a magnesium hand trowel. It looked pretty good as we cleaned up all the tools and he washed out the truck. He drives away and 30 minutes later I start seeing spider web looking cracks showing up in the slab. First, one, then two, then three, finally five or six. Cracks vary in length from 1 foot to 3 foot and widths of 1-2 mm. All the cracks are in the middle of the slab, none of them are diagonal in direction.

I call the concrete company, it’s 4:30 pm and they've all gone home for the day. I try to look up the name of the manager in phone book, no luck; same for the company owner, and same for the concrete truck driver. I realize I'm on my own.

I hadn't planned to do anymore troweling, figuring I'd just screw it up, but hey, what have I got to lose now. So, out comes the water bucket and magnesium trowel... and hand floating begins. The cracks close up nicely as I rework the slab. I end up re-working probably 2/3 of the roughly 12x12 slab. To get out in the middle of the slab I lay down pieces of plywood to put my knees on. Only one hour since pour it’s already firmed up enough to support my weight (on plywood).

When I'm finally finished I putter around for 30 minutes or so to see if any more cracks are gonna show...none. So, I water it down good and cover it with visqueen and call it a day. Needless to say that night was a worrisome night; couldn't wait until morning so I could go check it, but at the same time afraid of what I’d find.

What a relief...no cracks overnight. I checked under the visqueen several times the second day, and still finding plenty of water there recovered it each time. I’ll leave it covered two or three days (the books recommend three days minimum, but seven is better). I checked it again at end of second day; still no cracks.

Still keeping my fingers crossed.

Basement Slab Rebar

2006-08-04T07:07:00.000-06:00

Now comes the visqueen which goes in between the slab and the ground to prevent moisture from wicking up thru the slab. Then comes the rebar. I used #3 (3/8” diameter) rebar on roughly 12” centers to make a grid of rebar. One of the concrete books I read said when you connect rebar together it should overlap by 30 times the rebar diameter; that is (30 x 3/8” = almost 11 inches overlap).

Originally, I thought I’d be able to pour the whole slab at one time. That caused me to cut and bend my rebar pieces to economically fit the whole slab. Now, I find I’m pouring just half the slab. If I use the original rebar design I’ll have to install ALL the rebar now. That’s not so bad, until you try to finish the poured concrete and in so doing have to step in and out of the rebar holes (of the not yet poured side) as you use the bull float. I could just see myself tripping and falling all over the place, so I recut about 12 pieces of rebar. This way I only have to install rebar in the side I’m pouring and I have plenty of room to move around without falling down.

I made my rebar chairs out of 3/16” steel rod which I have a LOT of. The metal is soft, so it’s easy to cut with bolt cutters and it’s easy to bend/hammer into shape in a vise. I wanted my rebar to sit 1/3 of the slab thickness up off bottom, so that meant roughly 1-1/2” chair height. None of the stores had rebar chairs of this height, so I just built them myself. Why 1/3 of the slab thickness? In my college civil engineering classes (30 years ago) I took a course on reinforced concrete. We learned that the bottom half of any normal concrete slab is in tension and the top half is in compression. Concrete works great in compression, but lousy in tension, so you need rebar to handle the tension loads and the rebar needs to be located in the bottom part of the slab (not in the middle, a commonly held belief). Common sense would say put it in the middle of the tension side (exactly ¼ of the slab thickness off bottom), but then any irregularities of the concrete pour might end up uncovering some of the rebar, which would lead to rust and rebar deterioration. So, I went 1/3 of slab thickness as a safety factor.

Disclaimer: I have a couple of degrees in civil engineering, but I am NOT a licensed professional engineer, so take this explanation for it’s entertainment value only, and NOT as advice for how you should build your house. If you have questions for building YOUR house, please seek the guidance of a licensed engineer. My basement slab will have no heavy loads put on it; ie no cars, no heavy equipment, and the slab is built such that it does not support the weight of the house above it. As such I could maybe have gotten by without rebar. I personally don’t like wire mesh and I am not yet convinced of the benefits of using fiberglass in concrete.

Basement Slab Formup

2006-08-04T06:55:00.000-06:00

I have to pour the basement slab in two separate pours. The concrete truck has a three yard capacity, and that isn’t enough for the whole slab AND the remaining basement footers I have to pour. So, the plan is to do the remaining footers and half the slab; which totals about 2.5 yards.

The slab will sit on top of the footers, it also sits “inside” the concrete block basement walls. Between the slab and the wall will be expansion material similar to that tarry looking stuff sometimes used in driveways. I could build the bottom layer of the block wall and use that as my form, but then it would be almost impossible to get the expansion material in afterwards.

So I built 4” tall wood forms for the pour. I used little wood spacer blocks to hold the form still and to prevent the form from bowing out with the weight of the concrete. I used a screw and zip tie to hold things still. This might be overkill, but when you pour concrete by yourself you really can’t afford anything to go wrong.

On the left side of the pic above is a basement footer and one of the vertical rebar for drystack wall construction. On the right will be the slab, poured inside the plastic sheet.

Rebar Safety

2006-07-12T19:15:00.000-06:00

Imagine for a moment, that you are working on your dream house -- alone -- everybody else is at work, and none of the neighbors are at home. You're carrying something, you trip on a loose rock, fall, and skewer yourself on one of these many vertical rebars. Not a pretty picture; worse, even if you have that cell phone in your pocket and are conscious enough to call 911 you still might die before the ambulance arrives.

I found out the hard way that these cut rebar ends are very sharp; like razor sharp. They will slice you open just like a scalpel (another excellent reason for keeping the tetanus shot up to date). No, I didn't skewer myself, but I have brushed up against them a time or two and been scratched pretty good.

So, I decided to do something about it. First, I tried putting the plastic golf balls on top of each piece (pic #3). That works well to prevent scratches, but it wouldn't prevent the skewering fall. So, then came the 2x2 wooden blocks, drilled halfway thru lengthwise with a 1/2" spade bit. Now, these things work. I've put my weight down on them and they hold me up. If you fall on one, it will hurt like the dickens, but it might prevent an untimely trip to the morgue.

Build safe guys.

Finally Pouring Some Concrete

2006-07-10T18:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, now with this post you the viewer are completely up to date with where I am in the construction process.

First pic is the little 3 yard concrete truck that I must get my concrete in. The narrow access to my site is too small for a standard size concrete truck (which is usually 7 or 11 yards). Thank goodness this truck exists because I am also too far away from the street to use a pumper truck. So, without it I'd have to either wheelbarrow the concrete to the site, or rent a backhoe and use the bucket on front (neither of which would be very appealing.)

Second pic - We poured the south footers first. The pour went very well. The driver even had time to take a hand float and smooth off the tops of the footers for me.

Third pic - is after putting in the vertical rebar every 23 inches. I had to erect a frame that would hold the rebar straight up and in the right place while the concrete cured. In this pic the diagonal cross arms have been layed down (in pic 2 they are up and out of the way while concrete was being poured). The horizontal boards that the rebar attaches too are also now in place. There is a screw in each horizontal board every 23 inches. This tells me where to put the vertical rebar AND it provides something for me to zip-tie the rebar too.

Fourth pic - This is the completed east wall footer which was part of concrete pour number two. The east footer was formed up exactly like the south wall footer was done, so no need to repeat photos here.

Fifth pic - The basement footers (well part of them). In the foreground will be a door (just to the left of the stacked up block). The block stack is a little test to see how well the 23" rebar spacing fits in the block. In the back right corner are the footers for the basement tornado shelter. The left side footers haven't been poured yet as the truck can only deliver 3 yards of concrete at a time, and I can at best only get one load of concrete a day. That's okay for me, because trying to pour, finish and install vertical rebar in 3 yards of concrete is about all one person can do in a day.

The Rebar Adventure

2006-07-10T07:20:00.000-06:00

So, now it's time to start cutting and bending rebar. A couple of weeks earlier one of the local stores had a 15% off sale on everything; so I bought all 200 pieces of my rebar (10' lengths). My original rebar estimate was for about 184 pieces, and it seems I've heard regularly that you should plan on 10% waste; so 200 pieces seemed about right. For those of you with building experience, you're probably thinking even 184 pieces is WAY too many. But remember, this is a dry stack project, so there is a LOT of rebar that runs vertically inside the concrete block.

So, I rent a rebar cutter-bender, which is this big hundred pound jaw-like thing that has a 6' steel bar you pull on to cut or bend the rebar (before it's over you'll wish that bar was 8' long). I picked it up at 4:30 pm and still having a few hours of daylight left thought I'd get a head start on the job. I'll bet I cut 50 pieces of rebar before supper that night. Good thing I did, because the next day I used every bit of my remaining time to get the job finished.

A little side note here for those of you wanting to build your own house. We have maybe five or six tool rental businesses here. Only two of them even had a rebar cutter-bender. But the rental rates for the two stores were drastically different; ie $16 a day vs $40 a day. I rechecked after hearing both prices; they were for the same type and size equipment. And, the cheaper store was kind enough to put in a new set of cutter blades when I rented it from them. So, take the time to shop around; you can save yourself some bucks. These people are also nice enough that if you need to just cut or bend a couple of pieces of rebar you don't have to rent the machine for a whole day; they will let you use it at their shop; just bring your own rebar.

The two pics are the south wall. You can see the double set of form boards in the bottom picture (that weren't shown in previous post). Most people don't put visqueen (plastic sheeting) under the footers, but I did. The plastic keeps water from migrating through the finished concrete via a process known as capillary flow. Most builders put visqueen under the main slab to prevent water migration. To me it seems reasonable to put it under the footer for the same reason (and my "Builder's Guide to Mixed Climates" book (by Joe Lstiburek, Taunton Press) says to do it too). Keeping my crawlspace nice and dry by getting rid of every possible entryway for moisture seems a wise and prudent thing to do. Maybe something this simple will help prevent me from having to buy and use a dehumidifier in the crawlspace.

Forming Up Footers

2006-07-10T06:57:00.000-06:00

Here are the first footers I formed up. I could have just filled the ditch with concrete (and rebar) and put in steps where I needed an elevation change, but then installing the perimeter drain would have been almost impossible (without re-digging); so the form boards go up to leave space for the drain.

This is the south wall form-up. It is 57 feet long and has a total of five step-downs (four are visible here). Though you can't see it because of shadow, the trench to the left of these boards averages 22-24 inches wide. This would make a very nice footer being that wide, but it would also use up a LOT of concrete (expensive). So, in the end I did come back and put in a second set of form boards 16-17 inches from the ones shown. I just wish I had a picture of the double form boards.

How did I choose 16" as my desired width. One of the concrete books I read from the local library had a table that discussed footer width, concrete compressive strength and type of soil and compaction of said soil. These footers sit on the shale layer and it's a well compacted and hard. So, the book said 16" wide would be sufficient. Now, if the soil was loose, uncompacted sand; then 24" would be much better.

Grinding Up the Stumps

2006-07-09T15:05:00.000-06:00

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I would find something that needed to be posted long before now -- so here's another little detour.

The construction site had not only 4 trees that needed to be removed, but also about 14 stumps that needed to go. We have this guy who comes out of Oklahoma; he comes here twice a year to grind everybody's stumps. He puts an ad in the newspaper with a phone number to call. My neighbor had used him before, so we called.

He shows up with this monstrous piece of machinery mounted on a trailer with what looks like a diesel truck engine and a grinding wheel that looks like it could cut thru concrete. Between my stumps and all the neighbors stumps in our little subdivision he did about 25 of them in about 2 hours. This thing grinds stumps so fast he doesn't even get out of the truck. Big stumps (24" diameter) take less than a minute. He drives the truck around and positions the trailer; his son or nephew (can't remember) operates the grinder.

Concrete Footer Design

2006-07-09T13:19:00.000-06:00

So, now it's time to design the concrete footers. This project is what's known as "dry stack", which means the concrete blocks don't have mortar between them. What - you ask? What keeps the wall from moving and collapsing -- rebar, placed vertically, running thru the blocks from footer to top of wall. The rebar is anchored in the footer and for my taste will go thru most every block. To make this all fit the vertical rebar will be on 23" centers. After the wall is built, you come back and pour concrete into all the holes that have rebar in them. This locks everything together and makes for a very strong wall. Then you cover the outside and inside of the wall with about a 1/8" thick layer of surface bonding cement; which is just a fancy name for concrete mortar with fiberglass in it. After it's dry, it looks like stucco. I'm not sure if it's totally waterproof at this stage, but if not I'll make it so with something else.

Dry stack walls are a little more height critical than mortared walls, so the footers have to be at the right height, so the wall will end up the desired height. In the pic above there are five "steps" in the south wall (each stepdown is 7-5/8", same height as a concrete block). I had to make sure they were done right; so I measured, calculated, measured again, calculated again -- must have done this 3 or 4 times until I was satisfied. In the end I know exactly where (how high) to put my forms for the concrete footers. All the walls will be done this way; I just used the south wall as an example.

Another thing I wanted to add is there will be a foundation drainpipe (4" perforated PVC pipe) that runs along the bottom of each footer. For this to work the footer trench has to slope fairly evenly from the high side to the low side, so the pipe will drain well and not load up with sediment.

I know the numbers in the pic are small but numbers across the top are every 10 feet of house length; numbers down the right side are on 7-5/8" intervals. Each row of squares represents one layer of concrete block.

Finally, Some Real Digging

2006-07-08T19:57:00.000-06:00

Now that we've solved all the sewerline problems, we can finally get started with some real foundation digging. Top pic is looking west from the lake; bottom pic is looking mostly east from the corner of the workshop. There are 15 pallets of concrete block sitting all over everywhere; bought when they were on-sale. Frost depth around here is only 2-3 inches, so the footers don't have to go very deep. As the trenches go down to the "shale" layer I'm planning on 8" tall by roughly 16" wide footers; reinforced with three pieces of rebar set about 3" off bottom. The deep hole in both pics is my basement room to be; a 12 x 22 room, and part of the crawlspace. As the house will actually connect to the workshop, floor level will be same as garage (bottom of yellow metal siding). This yields a usable ceiling height of almost 80 inches in the basement room (to the bottom of floor joists).

It seems everything in housebuilding takes longer, is more expensive and is more complicated than originally estimated. In this case my backhoe operator had a very busy schedule, so it took him almost a month to get all this dug. One time he had a hydraulic hose break while digging for me. That shut us down for awhile.

You will notice all the footer's haven't been dug yet. The dig has to be a two stage process so the concrete truck can get in to pour the first footers.

One of Life's Little Detours

2006-07-08T19:30:00.000-06:00

My daughter and I are kindred spirits; we both love doing new and exciting things. So, when I got an email from a workmate at my last job (before retirement) asking me if I was interested in going skydiving...the answer was obvious. And when I asked my daughter if she wanted to go...again, same obvious answer.

So 14 of us showed up at Skydive Houston (Texas) one Saturday morning. When we arrived at 8am there were already at least 50 people there; and all of them jumping from the same airplane (some days it takes 12-15 plane loads to get everybody airborne). The plane is a Dehavilland Twin Otter and can carry about 10-12 passengers (depending on weight).

We jumped tandem (two people in one chute) from about 14,000 feet. Ground temperature was 95 degrees; air temp on leaving the plane was 32; chilly, but the adrenaline rush will keep you from getting cold. This altitude yields a one minute freefall, falling at about 136 mph. The freefall is very noisy, with the air rushing past you and makes really big dimples in your cheeks. You would never hear your instructor talk, so all signals are given by hand taps to shoulders, waist, etc. About the only signal given is just before chute opening; when the instructor wants you to cross your arms over your chest so you don't punch him out. At 4000' the instructor opens the chute and in just a blink your feet swing thru from a belly down freefall position to an almost upside down position. But, one second later you swing back down into a normal almost vertical position. Then things get a lot quieter as you descend for about 5 minutes to the ground. The instructor let me steer the chute some. Turns are easy; just pull the riser in the direction you want to go.

Landings are easy; you just put your feet out (shown in pic) and slide in, first on your feet, then sit down and slide on your butt. You end up sitting on top of the instructor.

We had a video made of each of us. It still gives me goosebumps everytime I watch it.

Now, back to housebuilding.

Digging Begins -- Well, Kinda, Sorta

2006-07-08T15:38:00.000-06:00

Okay, so now we're up to September, 2005. My lot plat drawing (the one I got when I bought the property) shows two 4" sewerlines run across the backside of my property to the "back" manhole shown in previous picture. They shouldn't interfere with my house building. Unfortunately, the sewerlines didn't actually run where the plat showed them. Yes, you guessed it, they run right under where my living room will be. Somebody elses sewer running under your house is a no-no for the city, so they will have to be moved.

So, yes digging has started, but not the digging of the footers.

The ditch dug in this pic puts the sewers back to where they were shown in the original plat drawing. The city was nice enough to draw up a new plat drawing for me (for free) and file it with the county (also for free).

I know what you're thinking (cause I thought it too). That being, since the sewer wasn't where the city said it was; that I wouldn't be responsible (financially) for moving it. Wrong thinking oh wise one. There is a little law (put there for this very purpose) that says wherever a sewer runs, an easement is automatically attached to it, whether it is platted correctly or not. And, here's the good part, once you "know" about it (the easement), you can't knowingly build on it. So, if I hadn't taken the time and effort to confirm the sewer locations I wouldn't have "known" about it and COULD have built over it. Or, at least when the city finally did discover where it really was, then maybe they would have paid or at least help pay to move the two sewer lines. I hope this makes sense. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to confirm things.

You know, they always say building a house costs more than you estimated....yepp.

Sewer Easement

2006-07-08T15:17:00.000-06:00

There is an 8" sanitary sewer that runs down the north edge of the property (by the fence), between the two manholes shown in yellow. Attached to this sewer was a 7.5' maintenance easement (either side of centerline) which would encroach about a foot and a half into my house to be. I talked to the city; they said we could change it to a 5' easement. Unfortunately, getting it changed took most of a year. At times I thought it just wasn't going to happen; which would either be the end of the project; or at the least require a significant design change. But, in the end, and with a lot of patience and persistance it was finally done. So, now we can start digging.

After Trees Removed

2006-07-08T15:02:00.000-06:00

Here is a site view from the lake done the following summer and after three of the walnut trees were removed. The tree on the far left still has to be removed. On the right stacked up is all the big pieces of the first three trees. After the fourth tree came down, we cut up and split all that walnut; got over 2 full chords from it; and then sold it to one of the local barbecue restaurants for enough money to buy my chainsaw, splitting maul and a splitting wedge or two and a nice gift for my girlfriend who split probably a whole chord of that walnut by herself.

Note to self: Never let a woman who can swing a splitting maul get angry at you, especially if she is holding said maul.

You can also see a better view of the workshop, as well as the narrow site access to the right of the yellow workshop. This narrow access will come heavily into play when the footers are poured.

Construction Site

2006-07-08T14:53:00.000-06:00

Here is what the construction site looked like back in late 2004, when this project started. It is a narrow lot about 50 wide by 200 long with 50' of lakefront footage (Lake Hamilton). They normally lower the lake in winter so people can work on boat docks, seawalls and to help kill the algae that grows in the lake.

The four big trees will have to be removed as right now they are all in my future living room.

Also notice the yellow metal building. That is my 22 x 40 garage/workshop; already built when this project started.

2006-07-06T20:10:00.000-06:00

Okay, so where do we start. I'm new to blogging, so bear with me as I try to get past the newbie stage.

First, some info about the house to be. I'm building a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, single story home over a crawlspace. The main floor will have about 1700 sq feet with outside dimensions of 30 wide by 57 long. As the lot slopes down about 7 feet from the home's west to east end there will be a roughly 12' by 22' basement room in the lowest corner.

This house will utilize as many energy efficiency techniques in design and construction as I can afford. I have been researching these ideas for a year from many different sources. A lot of the information came from the website BuildingScience.com. I bought and read one of their books "Builder's Guide to Mixed Climates". Lots of what I am designing into this house came from that book. I strongly recommend that book to anyone building in this mixed-humid climate region (which starts in and includes most of north Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, northern halves of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and pretty much all of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North and South Carolina. Technically defined as the "mixed-humid" region it is a particularly difficult region to build in because it has plenty of rainfall, a fair amount of cold weather and lots of humidity in both summer and winter.

Just a few of the techniques used in this house are:
.2x6 exterior walls on 24" spacing.
.stack framing - where roof trusses will sit directly on top of wall studs, which sit directly on top of floor joists. This creates a continuous load path all the way to the ground.
.a sealed crawlspace - read that as unvented. The crawlspace will be my hvac return. Each room will have a supply duct AND a return. All returns go into the crawlspace. So, the crawlspace will be conditioned (heated and cooled) air.

I don't want this post to get too long, so I'll stop now.