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Post date: May 22, 2015 3:25:49 AM
With not much thanks to me, the crew got a lot of walls erected today. Jake spent about an hour just marking out the north wall, which contains the garage door, the main entry door, two windows, and two intersecting walls. Thanks to a lot of preparation cutting boards yesterday, this wall went up today. Or one of them. You see, my house has double walls. The inner wall supports the roof and interior wallboard. The outer wall keeps us dry. The two walls are only connected at the bottom (by the foundation), at the top (with a piece of plywood to act as a firestop plus the parapet), and at the doors and windows. You can see the strandboard box around a window in the pictures.These inner and outer walls are separated to reduce the flow of heat between the inside and outside of the house. It doubles the amount of wood that would have been used fifty years ago, and doubles the amount of labor to build and makes the house bigger on the outside (or smaller on the inside). Below you can see Eli coming out of the garage, where the west wall behind him has no window. The community barn is on the right, across the road.
Yesterday we cut and drilled all the lower sills that are bolted to the foundation. They are made of treated lumber so they won’t rot if they get wet. Between these sills and the concrete foundation is a double strip of plastic foam, both to block moisture and to prevent air leaks between the wood and concrete in case one or both are not perfectly straight. (When is anything perfect?)I saw my Home Energy Rating System (HERS) estimated rating today. Supposedly my house will use only 50% of the reference house, which is designed to some ten-year-old idea of an efficient house. We’ll see when it is built and lived in!
I spent most of today just sweeping, picking up trash, putting short bits of wood in the firewood pile, and fetching. For a couple of hours I picked the foam foundation forms out of the shower stall. This stall has a raised concrete curb (made with part of the ICF - Insulating Concrete Forms). The foam on the inside had to be removed. This form is tough. It includes not only styrofoam sides, but tougher plastic webs running up and down and across. A reciprocating saw cut the webs and a pry bar removed the foam, but it took a couple of hours.The crew may get the rest of the walls erected tomorrow. Note the storm clouds in the top photo. By seven PM we had a minor deluge. I tried to cover the soft ground with a tarp to direct the water away from the building so we don't get everything so muddy tomorrow. We'll see how well that works.
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