Thanks, Jeff!

On Saturday, the rain continued for most of the day. It's good to have a stream at the back of the lot for the water to flow away. Here's a pic I snapped.

Our friend Jeff offered to help with anything that needed to be done on the lot on Sunday afternoon. I said the only thing that was on my immediate to-do list was manually moving the heavy, wet clay (dirt) behind the tree preservation fence. No machines can go back there to grade, so everything has to be done by hand. Jeff agreed to help with that back-breaking work. I had a dinner plans with another good friend, Quay, who was in DC from Colorado on business, so we stopped working after a few hours and noticed that it hardly looks like anything was done. There's a lot more dirt left to move. But my muscles are sore today to prove I worked! The photo below doesn't do a great job showing the pile of dirt that remains to be moved.

Wrong Windows Removed, More Flooding

At long last, our construction manager, Aaron with Cornerstone Building Services, finally had a framing crew out to remove the wrong clerestory windows and prepare the framing for the new, correct, windows. Well, the day they finally came to work it rained (they were supposed to start last Friday, then delayed to Monday, then delayed to Tuesday, then delayed to....you get the point - they finally came on Thursday to work). And it poured. And there was a huge thunderstorm. The lot was a complete mud pit (as you see in another post) and that made it very challenging work for the crew. But all of the windows appear to have been successfully and safely removed. However, during the process, they clearly were not being careful enough, as there was some damage to one of our sliding doors on the south side. The picture isn't clear, but there's a dent in the metal frame. Ugh. 

To add insult to injury, during our early morning call with Aaron, Andreas gave explicit instructions that the crew needed to be 100% certain that the sump pump was plugged in before they left. You guessed it - they didn't ensure it was plugged in. I know it was plugged in last time we left the lot, so someone from that crew must have unplugged it (either intentionally or unintentionally does not matter as they had instructions to ensure it was plugged in). So the basement completely flooded again. Hours and hours of cleaning up dirt from the last flood was completely wasted by simple laziness, idiocy, or both. I was not happy when I discovered that on Thursday evening and I'm still unhappy about it. The last picture below shows the water draining from the basement several minutes after I plugged the sump pump back in.

Puddles, Puddles everywhere

This rain is driving me nuts! Bartley returned on Tuesday with the repaired machine to continue the grading work. The clay dirt was too wet for them to complete the job, so they'll have to come back again after 4-5 days of no rain, which will give the dirt time to dry out. At this rate, I don't think we'll ever have that kind of dry spell! 

While doing the grading, the guy from Bartley drove right into the corner of our house, completely destroying three of the extruded foam board panels. Hopefully when the EIFS installers come, they will be able to easily add new foam board there and make it like new. You can see the foam board we cut away in the fourth picture below. 

On Thursday, when I was in an important all-day meeting, I received an email from my neighbor to the South stating that our silt fence needed attention. You will see in the final picture where the torrential rain storms that afternoon, following days of steady rain, were just too much for any silt fence to handle. I went that night and put up an extra layer of new silt fencing, hoping that holds in the future. Once the grading is complete, hopefully this won't occur again. If it does, we might be forced to incur even more water mitigation expenses (which we cannot afford) in terms of draintile to prevent water run-off. 

Prepping for EIFS Installation

In order to secure the best possible price for the EIFS installation (that's the extruded foam board and synthetic stucco system on the exterior of the house), we agreed to attach the basement extruded foam board to the house using TapCon concrete screws. That saved time for the installers, which saved us money. Andreas did the work, which took a few hours, about 100 TapCon screws with large washers, and five concrete drill bits to pre-drill the screw hole. Doesn't it look great? Now the EIFS installers will be able to nicely match their foam board with ours for a professional installation.

The bottom foam board will be a dark grey and the top foam board will be a very light grey, kind of like concrete. The clerestory part of the house (above the CEB wall) will have beautiful stained shiplap cedar siding.

Grading in Progress

When I was a kid, like most boys, I enjoyed playing in the back yard with big toy trucks, pushing earth around, and having a gay old time getting dirty. Well, I would have loved to have been on-site yesterday as the crew starting moving piles of dirt around as they started on the final grading for the lot.

Bartley Corporation is doing the grading for us. They brought a Bobcat like machine, but one that has rubber treads, instead of metal treads, due to the rain and wetness of the dirt. Unfortunately, they didn't get very far when the rubber tread ripped and the machine became disabled. The machine still sits at the back of the house, waiting to be towed away. It's questionable as to when they'll be able to get a truck back there since the lot is a mud pit right now. At least the grading is now going away from the house which should prevent some of the water from coming in the basement. I checked the basement tonight, after last night's rain, and while it's still a bit damp in the basement, I didn't see any new water. That's a very good thing.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Those reading the blog in the DC area probably have figured out already that the final grading has not been done, since we've had too much rain each day this week. The folks from Bartley were set to do the job, but it is not ideal to grade our clay soil when it's wet. So we're waiting until we have a dry spell - perhaps Monday morning. I know I'll feel better about the house project when the lot starts to look much better. I am fully aware that we've probably overstayed our welcome using the back yard of the house next door (that's on the market for sale) to store a lot of the soil that was excavated. I'm in a hurry to get our grading done and her yard cleaned up!

We're receiving quotes for ceiling and wall insulation (the wood-framed clerestory wall, not the Terrabrick wall). Closed cell spray foam is the best choice, but it's the most expensive by far. So we're considering a hybrid which will be a closed cell spray foam application that would be about 2-3" thick and then a zero formaldehyde blown in fiber (it's called the spider system, since a web holds it all in). Combined, we will have an R50 insulation value for the ceiling and R23 for the clerestory walls. That option is several thousand dollars less expensive than 100% closed cell spray foam, which would give us about an R41 insulation value. We're still receiving quotes, so if anyone has a good company that's experienced in spray-foam insulation, please let us know.

Importantly, all of the quotes we received also include a foam sealant or high-grade caulking to seal all penetrations in the thermal envelope. This will be a very tight house!

Welcome Back Aaron

Our contractor, Aaron Holmes, was on vacation over the past week. We'll be glad to have him back so construction picks up pace. Last week we expected the plumber to come to start rough-in plumbing work. No show. The good folks at Bartley were going to do the final grading. Rain prevented that. Andreas was able to caulk the interior edge of the sill plate, which sits on the foundation, to prevent air flow. We cleaned around the house/lot as well. Other than that and the shopping mentioned below, it seems like there isn't any noticeable progress, but we certainly worked on various aspects of the house each day. 

With Aaron back in town, hopefully he brings good weather with him since Bartley will be on-site Wednesday morning to start the final grading. We also will sit down with Aaron to review the next details of the construction, to ensure everyone's on the same page, and we will go through the EarthCraft Virginia green building worksheet to verify that we're meeting the required sections and earning points as we planned at our first meeting with Chris Conway, our EarthCraft Technical Advisor. It's better to spend time reviewing the standard/requirements on a regular basis than to miss something and not get certified as a result. Details, details, details!

We enjoyed meeting a few folks on the lot in the past week as well. Jes and Jody are using the same house designer for a planned renovation of their home in Arlington, so we showed them our house and exchanged war stories. Chris Conway came by yesterday morning with some folks from the Environmental Protection Agency who are involved in developing the EPA's new green home program focusing on indoor air quality. It was great to get their perspective on the house. 

Shopping Spree

If you're ever in need of plumbing fixtures, just give a call to Abdess Fedlan at Ferguson in Chantilly, VA.  We first met Abdess last August as we were preparing our preliminary budget for the house. We picked out some super high-end items as a bit of a splurge. Then the reality of construction costs set in. We refused to settle for "builder grade" plumbing fixtures so we sought advice from Abdess who graciously guided us through their gorgeous showroom and several catalogs. We shaved our plumbing fixtures budget by about 35% while maintaining a high-caliber selection of fixtures from Duravit, Hansgrohe, and Kohler. Thanks, Abdess, for your guidance and patience with us! 703-375-5800 is Abdess's phone number.

We're now searching for a kitchen range hood. This needs to be purchased soon, in order for the subcontractors to prepare the venting and for Piedmont Roofing to come back to bring that venting through our beautiful standing seam metal roof. Andreas spent a good part of the day seeking range hoods that strike a balance between effectiveness (exhaust in CFMs) and quietness (as measured in SONs or decibels). Oh, and price too. We considered Miele (super expensive but beautiful and they are quiet by reputation), KitchenAid, and others. It's amazing how expensive good quality range hoods are.  We think we've narrowed the brand choices to Haefele or Kobe. Does anyone have any experience with these?

On a related note, the folks at Wittus in Connecticut have loaded our Bodart & Gonay Optifire fireplace on a truck and it is headed our way. The fireplace chimney also will need to go through the roof. 

We also did some more research on wood choices for the exterior clerestory area siding, and the interior ceiling. We dropped by T.W. Perry in Leesburg since we weren't far away and got some ideas there. More fun to come!

Recycling Dumpster, Window Update, Pranksters, and Thieves

About a month ago, I asked for suggestions from readers of this blog on where we might find a recycling dumpster for our construction materials. Sat Jiwan responded with some recommendations, Andreas made some phone calls, and we ended up choosing Environmental Alternatives, Inc. in Clarksburg, MD, which was one of the companies Sat Jiwan had recommended to us. Believe it or not, their pricing was less expensive than traditional dumpsters that just drop off at the landfill, and they'll also provide us with a detailed report of what we placed in the dumpster for recycling. That report is important for the EarthCraft House Virginia premium certification we're pursuing.

I'm dismayed that over three weeks after the great window fiasco was identified, we still do not have a resolution. Another meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday between Quality Window & Door and Sustainable Design Group. I'm hoping everything will be resolved to our satisfaction by the conclusion of that meeting. The windows are so important to the house and these companies advertise as professionals. I truly hope they live up to their word. A few folks have emailed me noting they are considering doing business with these companies but are awaiting the resolution of this window mistake before proceeding. I'll be sure to post on this blog when this issue is resolved (or not).

The final grading was supposed to have been done Wednesday and Thursday of this week, so the weekend was spent moving supplies, sorting through some leftover wood from framing to keep good pieces for other projects, and to recycle the remainder of it. Lots of manual labor, dirt, sweat, and general hard work. Just in time for the rain, which will delay the grading. That's OK though, now the lot is ready and the grading can happen when Mother Nature's ready for it to be done. In other news, the electrical rough-in work has been completed. The plumber will be on-site soon to start the plumbing rough-ins. Our contractor, Aaron, is on vacation this week and I'm heading out of town for business, so not much will take place on the house.

We know the quantity of signs in our front yard is a bit much, but once we had a couple signs from key vendors/partners, like the bank, the EarthCraft Virginia program, and our contractor, many other vendors jumped on the bandwagon adding their signs to the bunch. For a while, we thought perhaps the signs were mating and having babies when no one was watching! Well, someone had a bit of fun on Saturday evening at our lot. Someone, perhaps a group of kids, rearranged all of the signs, grouping them together and turning some around so they couldn't be read from the street. That actually was kind of funny. 

What was not so funny was the theft of about 150-200 leftover Terrabricks (Compressed Earth Bricks) that disappeared from our lot on Thursday night or Friday during the day. We didn't need them for the house, and the theft saved us the time and energy moving them out of the way so the final grading can be done, but we were planning to use those for a wall at some point in the future. It's never a happy time when someone steals something from you, but it's a good thing for us that we don't leave anything of significant value on the property sitting around. With technology as it is today, I wouldn't suggest anyone try to steal anything else, unless they'd like to risk the chance of being caught on video in the act. 

Community Outreach

I've written previously how much we're looking forward to moving to the City of Falls Church. Arlington, where we live now is great, and I've loved living here the past twelve years, yet there's something different about Falls Church that makes it feel more small town, more "homey," more connected from a community perspective. That was proven to us again today when we attended the City's Village Preservation and Improvement Society (VPIS) meeting.

VPIS works to preserve the City's natural and built environment, historic structures and landmarks, and promotes cultural activities. The topic of today's agenda was green construction. Patty Shields, sole proprietor of Metro Green, a local green construction & renovation firm, spoke about her new construction house located in the Westover neighborhood of Arlington, VA. This house, just last week, was awarded LEED Platinum. It is the first residence to gain that certification in the Mid-Atlantic area. (The home currently is on the market for $1.195 Million. We toured it during an open house a few weeks ago - it's quite nice and, if I lived there, I'd spend most of my time on the top level enjoying the green roof!) Doug Fraser, the building official for the City of Falls Church, spoke on the City's new green home program, from which our house is pursuing recognition (in addition to the EarthCraft House Virginia program). Doug asked Andreas and I to attend the meeting and give an overview of our house, which we were happy to do. I was impressed with how many people were attending this meeting on a Spring Sunday afternoon, but even more so with the passion exhibited by these VPIS members for their city (...our city) and their genuine interest in learning about green construction.  They asked some great questions and we were happy to share what we've learned along the way. It also was fun to meet some of the folks who have been following this blog (thanks!) and also some new neighbors over off of Lincoln Avenue. It was an enjoyable afternoon.

Also, today, we spent some time cleaning at the lot, giving the shop vac a good workout upstairs while Andreas pulled some nails out of perfectly good (reusable) board the framers had thrown on a scrap pile. Even though we'll be recycling any leftover scraps, we don't want to waste what we can reuse ourselves.

Weekend Summary

I truly was hoping to have positive news on the "Window Worries" post by now, but despite multiple conversations, our house designer, John Spears, and the folks at Quality Window & Door still have not come to any resolution. As happens so often, each side made mistakes and no one's willing to take responsibility. Hopefully continued discussions next week will lead to a quick resolution. We'll be in the third week of discussions. Enough talking, time for action!

Piedmont Roofing finished the installation of the standing seam metal roof. It looks awesome! Well, except one piece of metal on the North side fascia at the very back of the house, which looks severely dented. I was told by the roofers that it will be fixed when the drip edge is completed after the EIFS is installed. Piedmont Roofing's been a great company to work with - honest, helpful, responsive, quick. But I think we need to hold some money back from the final payment until it's resolved to our satisfaction.

Speaking of EIFS, we're chomping at the bit to get the extruded foam board and stucco installed. But that can't happen until our contractor, Aaron, caulks around all of the doors and windows as required by the EarthCraft House program. There are a host of other items that need attention over the next week in order for us to stay on track with Tier 3 certification, which is the EarthCraft Premium level.

We had an extremely informative meeting with Chris Conway (the Green Gobbler) with Conway Construction. Chris is our technical advisor for the EarthCraft program and he is worth his weight in gold! We don't need a psychologist while building a house, since we have Chris! Andreas and I went to DC on Friday morning and toured my friend Mike's townhouse which is in the final stages of a complete renovation. His house is absolutely beautiful and I can't wait to see the finished project. From there, we went to our construction project and met up with Chris. On the way out to our project, Mike asked what the value was in pursuing a green certification for the house. Most folks think we're getting tax credits or something similar. My answer to Mike was that EarthCraft is giving us peace of mind, since it's another set of eyes looking at this project and comparing the on-going work to an established, vetted standard. EarthCraft is our construction conscience ensuring the right thing's being done at all times. That's not to say that mistakes won't be made, but someone else is looking out for us to ensure they're not covered up in a way that would be harmful to us or to the environment. 

I'll interview our EarthCraft technical advisor, Chris Conway, and write that up for the blog in the coming weeks.

 

Roof, Roof! (And an update, or lack thereof, on the Window Worries)

Roof, Roof!

I'm pleased to report some positive news! After work this evening, I stopped by the house to see what progress was made on the installation of the standing seam metal roof that's being installed by Piedmont Roofing. The crew made a lot of progress today. Most of the metal roof has been installed. The metal is produced by Englert, which is located in New Jersey. They have an entire line of colors that have achieved EnergyStar ratings. The color we selected, matte black, is an exact match for the obsidian windows & doors from WeatherShield. I think the roof is looking great and it will be very attractive for many years to come. 

Last Friday afternoon, Tim Reed, the owner of Piedmont Roofing gave me a tour around the Middleburg, VA horse country where his company has done numerous standing seam metal roof installations. On the drive we were chatting about various roofing options. Englert's product has a 35 year color warranty and the roof will last even longer than that. If we had chosen an environmentally-unfriendly option, like asphalt shingles, the roof would last 10-15 years and cost 50-60% of the price. So we will have a much more attractive roof that will last many years longer, and is only a few thousand dollars more money. Take a look:

Window Worries Update:

I sincerely believed that we would have had a resolution to the window problem by now. It's been more than a week since the window issues had been identified. As you'll recall from the last post, Window Worries, I noted that there were problems with the clerestory windows (wrong size) and problems with the sliders on the Southern side (wrong glass).  I've spoken with our architect, John Spears, each day and he continues to follow up with Quality Window & Door. We still don't have a definite resolution, although John's been told that Quality Window & Door is working on a resolution. 

We greatly appreciate the comments that were submitted by you all, as well as the personal emails and phone calls on this subject. I remain optimistic that this will be resolved to our satisfaction. No one said construction won't come without its headaches, but this is a big one and we need it to be resolved very quickly.

Window Worries

ACTUAL

VS.

PLANNED

I was so happy last week when the windows & doors were delivered, but when I saw them, something didn't seem right. I thought the clerestory windows seemed smaller than I expected them to be. Then our architect, John Spears, stopped by the house early last week and also noticed that. He looked into this and the found that the salesperson at Quality Window & Door did not quote or order the proper clerestory windows. Instead of 3' x 3' windows, as specified in the window & door schedule detail, he ordered 2' x 2'. John had reviewed the quote in detail and did not notice that mistake. The right sized clerestory windows is extremely important as they are an integral part of the passive heating and cooling of the house. These smaller windows won't work from that perspective.

As if that wasn't enough of a problem, the hours and hours of discussions between John Spears and Quality Window & Door sales rep, with regard to ensuring the correct glass is used by WeatherShield in the manufacture of the Southern exposure sliders, seemed to have been forgotten as well. The standard glass was used, not the Cardinal Glass as specified by John. That means that all of the Southern sliders do not have the proper glass for the necessary solar heat gain co-efficient. 

There's not much point in building a passive solar house if the glass isn't right.

We all make mistakes. I probably make more than my fair share of them. But I try to catch them before someone else does and fix it. And if someone else catches my mistake, I apologize and work to get it fixed. 

So far, no apologies and after days and days and days, no answer as to what the fix will be (if any). I learned Friday evening that the owner of Quality Window & Door has been out of town and he'll be back on Monday, which is why they haven't been able to solve this problem. I hope we'll have a resolution identified on Monday. 

Here's the fix: 

1) replace the incorrect clerestory sized windows with the correct sized ones. 

2) replace the incorrect southern sliders with new factory-made sliders with the correct glass.

    -- NOTE: replacing the glass on-site with the correct glass is not an acceptable solution. We paid for factory-new windows with the quality control that comes from that environment and that's what we need to have installed in our house -- with the correct glass.

3) expedite the order with the factory so we do not have to hold up progress on the rest of the house for another five weeks while these windows are being made. It doesn't take five weeks to make/ship windows and doors. 

We remain optimistic that this can be accomplished. It's not that big of a deal in the overall context of a window & door business, but it's a huge deal for us and our house. Without the proper windows & doors, we might as well stop the project since the house won't be able to do what it was designed to do. 

Readers, do you think our expectations are too high? 

Shielded from the Weather

It's amazing what can happen in one day! Several key projects were completed (or mostly completed) yesterday. 

The crew from Piedmont Roofing installed the felt underlayment for the standing seam metal roof. So if the rain comes, as forecast, the house should stay nice and dry!

Quality Window & Door delivered all of our....you guessed it....our WeatherShield windows and doors. And there are a lot of them!  All of the windows, with the exception of the basement windows, have been installed. The basement windows will be installed on Monday morning. We still need to buy a double door for the basement area way entrance. We looked last weekend at Community Forklift, but they didn't have any double doors in their inventory. I'll try to get to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore in Alexandria this weekend to see if I have better luck there.

The framing crew also built out most of the interior walls as well. I am a little concerned about some of the door/entrances that are supposed to be framed for pocket doors, since I don't see how a pocket door could possibly work the way they framed it. And the closet along the North wall of the master bedroom is so narrow, I don't think a suit could hang in there. So that's not good at all. I'll be heading out to the house this morning with a suit (on a hanger) to try to closet on for size, so to speak.  I couldn't possibly live with a closet like that as it would be a daily reminder of one of the worst hotel stays I've had recently - the Radisson Hotel in the Stapleton section of Denver -- which had a closet built the same way. All my clothes had to be pushed back on an angle in order to close the closet door, resulting in wrinkles. (I'm not that tightly wound -- the closet wasn't what made the hotel so terrible, there were a host of other negative things, but I've digressed from the point of this post, so I'll stop my hotel complaining now.) Our contractor, Aaron, will be on-site Monday morning with the framing crew to ensure any mistakes or problems are promptly corrected.

Finally, the folks who will be doing the EIFS on the exterior of the house supposedly dropped of a sample of a smoother, lighter grey finishing since the one they did for the Renovation Nation filming is a bit more course and dark than we'd like. I couldn't find the sample and didn't want to get in the way of the framers, so I didn't poke around too much looking for it. I'll see it today.

Run for Cover!!

And that cover could be under the roof of our house! Yes, there's a roof! Amazing!

Wow, what a relief to have a fast, professional crew back on the job! Hector and his framing crew were back on-site today and they have the entire roof decking up! The forecast for rain throughout the day didn't come true - instead we had grey skies, which were perfect for working outside. The crew will continue work early in the morning on some of the clerestory window framing on the South side and then start interior wall framing. 
The doors and windows are scheduled to be delivered and installed tomorrow, so the house will be completely different looking then!

Before work this morning, I talked today with the folks at Piedmont Roofing who have been very helpful as we've worked through the standing seam metal roof color options and different styles for the related metal items, such as the drainspouts. They'll be on-site this Friday as well, to install the tar/felt underlayment on the roof deck.

And it was great to get back in touch with Abdess from the Ferguson Showroom near Dulles Airport. We spent many hours with Abdess last August picking out plumbing fixtures. He will order those for us and we will have them ready for the plumber to install next week when he's on-site to do the rough-in plumbing in the main level.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Bond. Bond Beam's the name. This week marked a significant milestone for the house construction project. The bond beam forms were completed, they passed inspection, and the concrete was delivered/poured. Now the Post & Beam construction of the house, which is the code section that the plans were approved under, is complete. We have concrete columns, a continuous bond beam across the top, and the structure is in place to support the roof. The TerraBricks technically are in-fill for the walls, although they certainly are strong enough to have been a structural component of the house. Obtaining approval for the TerraBricks to be structural would have been a significant hassle and expense, which proved unnecessary with the post & beam option.

Now that the bond beam has been poured, the contractor for the CEBs & pouring of the concrete (Willie is the guy's name) just needs to replace some FSC lumber they used and clean up after themselves. Once that's done, we can settle up and put this contractor experience behind us - for good.

Even though we're a few weeks behind schedule, our primary contractor, Aaron from Cornerstone Building Services, thinks much of that time will be made up on the roof installation. I hope he's right - Mother Nature has other plans as it rained all day today and showers are in the forecast for the next five days.

Falls Church City Green Home Award Program

The City of Falls Church has created a "Green Home Award Program" to highlight residential construction projects that have been monitored by a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Certified Rater and have shown to conform to one of several approved residential green building certification programs. The EarthCraft Virginia program, which we've selected for our house certification, is an approved program.

Rather than re-inventing the green wheel, the City staff smartly decided it would be more effective and efficient to point to other rigorous programs and recognizes those as qualifying for the City's program. Homeowners and developers who choose to participate in the Falls Church City Green Home Award Program will be awarded for doing something positive to improve the sustainability of the environment and the community. We were the first house to submit an application for this program and we hope our construction pace picks up so we're the first house to be awarded under the program!

The City hasn't yet announced what the award will be. We'd love it if it were exemption from real estate taxes, but that's highly unlikely! From our perspective, we're not doing this for any recognition or award; green construction simply is the right thing to do.

Here's a picture of the City's sign in our front yard.

Interesting, Quick Read Article on Planet Green's Website

I just read an article by Steve Thomas, host of Planet Green channel's Renovation Nation TV show. The article, entitled "Steve Thomas's Five Bubbles of Green Building" is a quick-read and it nicely summarizes the key components of building green. For me, it's yet another good validation that our house is green. Here's the LINK to the article.

Dumpster - Recycle

Since this blog is receiving several hundred hits, I thought I'd pose a question to the readers, hoping someone might have some thoughts on this, which you could offer via a comment.

We were trying to avoid getting a dumpster, since we don't want to add to local landfills. However, it seems that this may be inevitable, particularly since we promised the owner of the house next door that we'd clean up her back yard since she allowed us to use it to store the dirt from the basement excavation while we made the TerraBricks. (Thank you again!) The two weeks we anticipated using her back yard is now over two months, so we want to ensure we do a fantastic job cleaning up the lot which includes a whole host of items (junk furniture, a plug-in heater, old paneling) that are sitting behind her house, as well as the dead tree limbs, brush, etc. that's located at the back of the yard.

Here's my question for you: do you know of any company that will drop a dumpster for a few weeks, then haul it away and go through the materials to recycle as much as they can? Or, do you have other thoughts on how we can handle this in an environmentally-friendly manner? Any and all leads are welcome. Obviously we are very price sensitive as this is an item we have not budgeted for.

Please comment below. Thanks!

Timeline Until We're Under Roof

I just received an email from our contractor, Aaron Holmes with Cornerstone Building, providing a revised time line to get the house under roof and interior framing completed. I thought I'd share it here:

- Complete stacking of TerraBricks above window and door headers & create Forms for the Bond Beam - this week
- Inspection of Bond Beam by City - Monday morning
- Pour Bond Beam - Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning
- 2 days for bond beam to cure before removing forms
- Framing for Roof & interior first floor - April 30th & May 1st
- WeatherShield Doors & Windows delivered and installed May 1st
- Electrical & Plumbing Rough-ins in first floor - Week of May 4th

As you may recall from the house plan post (see post entitled For Larry M.) there is no second story of the house, so the list above is a substantial amount of work to get the house closed up so interior projects can be initiated. Very exciting! Let's hope everything stays on track!

Earth Day DC

On the eve of Earth Day, I'm catching up on my blog postings. It's been a week since my last posting; a lot has been happening, which you can read about in the new blog entries below.

On Sunday, we enjoyed the morning and early afternoon on the DC Mall attending Earth Day, visiting with exhibitors, including the Sustainable Design Group - the firm that designed our house. There were a lot of people there by the time we left for the day, which was a good thing.

Forms, Concrete, Oops (I told you so!)

For the most part, this house project has been a positive and rewarding experience. And when we've had minor issues, I've kept a positive tone (well, most of the time). This post isn't one of those times.

The subcontractor whose crew made and stacked the TerraBricks has been challenging to work with (I'm being polite right now). When the owner of the company is there, the crew works quickly, efficiently, effectively. The second he turns his back or leaves the job site, they're the slowest, least motivated people in the entire world! When we all were on-site filming for Renovation Nation on Thursday, they got a ton of work done -- more than three times the amount of work they got done on Wednesday and on Friday put together. The difference? The owner was there and our contractor was there.

For the most part, their quality of work has not been an issue, it's just the speed of their work (or lack thereof) that's been the challenge. That, combined with rain over several days, now has us about two weeks behind schedule. There's a lot of work to do yet on the concrete and TerraBricks before the framers can come back and install the roof, frame the interior of the first floor, and then install the windows and doors.

I wrote above, "For the most part, their quality of work has not been an issue...". Well, on Saturday it became an issue. The crew was late to work in the morning. They were supposed to be on-site by 7:30 to complete their work on the concrete forms. They didn't come until after 8:30 and then several of the guys ate their breakfast before unloading the tools and ramping up to work. The concrete was scheduled to arrive at 9:00am. So they put everything behind schedule. To make up for it, one of the geniuses on the crew decided to take a short-cut with a column and did not use the required wire reinforcement to hold the column forms together. He trusted his 2'x4' external supports that were still resting in settling back-filled clay dirt that people were walking around.

You can just guess what happened! The weight of the concrete busted the form, the supports fell away, and the concrete went all over the outside of the back of the house. They got it cleaned up (in a half-assed sort of way) and now they have to do that work over again. Ugh. It wouldn't be such a big issue, except that puts us further behind schedule and we had a long conversation with the owner of the company about our expectations on the concrete forms and he assured us everything would be done to the highest standard. We knew something like this was going to happen, and it did. While I generally like being right, I would rather have been wrong on this. It's a good thing the work crew was still there when this happened, and it's a good thing the Renovation Nation video crew was not still there, or the end result would have been even messier! You'll see the fouled form in the last pic below.

The crew was able to get most of the concrete work done, but not all of it. They still had some window headers to form and three columns to form, then more concrete to pour. The only reason they got as far as they did is that Andreas worked his tail off carrying extremely heavy buckets of concrete from the concrete mixer truck to the various parts of the house where the concrete had to be poured. He carried at least 100 buckets - that likely was more than any of the paid crew!

There are several other jobs this crew could do for us on our house, but they won't be given the opportunity. I'm counting the days until they complete their work so we can be gone with them!

Lights, Camera, Action!

They didn't say I couldn't tell people. And I think it's good promo for the show, so hopefully I can post this.

You, my dear readers, are some of the first to know that our home construction will be on TV! Planet Green Channel's show, Renovation Nation, filmed several projects on our site this past Thursday and Saturday.

It was a fantastic experience - the crew was a lot of fun and very talented, and the show's host, Steve Thomas, was super nice and great to interact with. The three projects they filmed included: - Making & stacking of the TerraBricks - Forming and pouring concrete columns - installing the EIFS system on the outside of the house The first two were real projects. The third was a bit early in our construction sequence, but we had the sub-contractors who will be installing our EIFS system come early to demonstrate, on our house, how it's done. That told the whole story of how the TerraBrick wall system works in the Virginia climate.

In addition to interviewing Andreas and me, our architect John Spears, our contractor Aaron Holmes, the concrete sub-contractor Andy Bartley, and a whole host of other folks who have been instrumental in our house's design and construction success thus far may appear on the show too!

And as you'll see in the next post(s), some work actually got done while the show was being filmed, which is a good thing!

The show was a great experience and we look forward to our house being on TV this summer. I'll certainly post here when we know which date it will be on so you can tune in to Planet Green channel to see for yourself.

In the mean time, if anyone has any contacts at Dwell Magazine, please let me know. In all the years I've been reading Dwell, I can't recall their publishing a Compressed Earth Block house and I would be very interested in their publishing our house (after the construction is completed, of course).

Here are some photos from the Renovation Nation video shoot.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel....

....was a close-out sale at Amicus Green Building Center in Kensington, MD.

We spent many hours on Friday searching for energy-efficient lighting at Dominion Electric in Arlington, VA and at IKEA in College Park, MD. With the exception of IKEA, contemporary-styled energy efficient lighting is not easy to come by -- at least not on a budget. In particular, we were shopping for recessed LED lights and LED "step lights" to go on the exterior of the house, in the interior hallways, and lighting the stairs into the basement. We received preliminary pricing from Dominion on several products -- none were the LED lighting we had hoped for as that was all too expensive or the sales rep felt the light would not be bright enough. They had none of the product in stock, it all would be special order, so we had to take her word for it. We had compared prices on-line, letting the Dominion rep know that we were "educated" customers and while we'd like to give our business to a local company, we are very cost conscious. By the end of the day on Friday, we were exhausted and feeling like we were compromising on design and, to some extent, energy efficiency, in order to accommodate our budget constraints. But we had narrowed down our choices and we were prepared to move forward with those options. Dominion offered us a contractor's discount and the pricing on the lights were more competitive than what we could find on-line. Stay tuned for more on the lighting.

Before meeting a friend for dinner, we went to the lot to sweep and tidy things up. Andreas also wanted to ensure the contractors who are doing the CEB walls plugged the extension cord back into the sump pump, since the weather forecast overnight and on Saturday morning was for thunderstorms, high winds, and heavy rain. There's one extension cord from the temporary power to the house and the crew has been using that instead of the generator to power their miter saw. It's a good thing we went to the lot -- we discovered that they not only didn't plug the cord back in, but they took the extension cord with them when they left for the weekend. I ran to Home Depot to buy a new extension cord while Andreas swept the dust from the basement.

As predicted, Saturday morning was wet and rainy in DC. We stopped by the lot to ensure the sump pump did it's magic (it did!) and the only water in the basement was what was dripping through the first floor decking. (We can't wait until the house is under roof!) From there, we went to Amicus Green Building Center since they were offering free workshops on sustainable landscape/gardening practices, which featured their own in-house expert and a representative from the National Wildlife Federation. The classes were interesting, Andreas won a door prize (The Best of Backyard Habitat - from the Animal Planet) and we spent much of the afternoon speaking with the owner of Amicus about various needs we had. Well, as it turned out, he had many FANTASTIC lighting options, including the exact step lights we wanted -- and they were LED!!! Even better, they were on close-out sale, substantially less money than the list price, and almost 40% lower than the non-LED, less desirable option we settled on at Dominion. We bought most of what they had left in stock. Amicus also stocks LED recessed lights, which we'll buy there, as they were at a very attractive price as compared to Dominion.

All in all it was a wonderful Easter weekend!