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!

Last Photos for Today

More Photos

Some Photos

The TerraBrick/CEB manufacture should be complete now; the crew will be placing the door and window bucks and continue stacking bricks. I've been out of town for most of the past three weeks, hence the infrequent postings, but here are some picks I took with my iPhone on Monday on my way to Dulles Airport to catch my flight to Denver.

Powered Up

Since Mike is out of town, I get the honor of posting to the blog. Unlike him, I'm not a natural writer! So, more pictures today than text.
Today was the day on which our electrician, Mark Creager, had a field day. First, the temporary pole (the wooden contraption at the far left in the picture) - after passing its inspection - got turned on by Dominion Power. It is making everybody's life easier to have an electric connection on site. Most of all, it allowed us to run our sump pump and pump the water out of our basement that had accumulated after last week's rain. We hope this was the last time we had a swimming pool in there.


Next, Mark's guys installed the permanent meter. There wasn't a wall yet where the meter will go, so Aaron and Willie's guys quickly built one. Such is the advantage of Compressed Earth Blocks!


And this is where the circuit breaker panel is. When I go for simulator training in the airplanes I fly, one of the instructors' favorite tricks is to make random circuit breakers pop (they're almost always the ones that make your flying life difficult). Hopefully not much will pop on this circuit breaker panel.


Mark, our electrician, is a very careful and thoughtful guy. Just the sort of qualities you want in an electrician. Electrifying a Compressed Earth Block house is new to him, but he seems excited to learn how to work with this new medium. I think he needed a bit of coaxing to believe us that you can screw directly into a CEB wall. By the time he's done with our house, he'll have done all sorts of things to CEBs that he wouldn't have thought possible.
Power's on!

Walled In

The work on the TerraBricks/CEB is going a bit more slowly than expected. The crew definitely is too small for this job, even though our house is not so big. The Green Machine purportedly is capable of making 300 bricks per hour. We should have had the Green Machine for two or two and a half days.The machine's been on-site for three times longer and they're just over half way through the brick making. However short-staffed and slow, they have been making progress making and stacking the bricks - steady and surely. In addition to stacking several layers of TerraBricks around the whole house, the crew set some posts to guide the plumb and level construction as they stack higher, as you'll see in these pictures.


Meanwhile, downstairs, the framing crew worked on Saturday to frame-in the walls for the guest bedroom, closet, and downstairs bathroom. We're concerned about where the sump and ejector pump pit were located, and what impact that may have on the closet, but it's too late to move that now since the concrete has been poured. We will be speaking with the contractor to find out why this is different than expected. There's probably a good reason, just one that, unfortunately, wasn't communicated to us.

Smooth As Silk

While I was in Montreal for work this week, the pressure test of the radiant floor tubing was conducted (we did a great job, the tubes consistently are holding 65 psi) and the folks at Bartley Corp. poured the 4 inch concrete slab in the basement as well as the area way steps. This concrete had about 30% fly ash in the mixture, which makes it much more environmentally friendly and will score us even more points on the EarthCraft House certification.

Several people who know about such things were incredibly impressed with how smooth Bartley finished the slab. That's exciting for us, as the concrete will be the floor - there won't be carpeting, tiles, wood, or any other flooring on top of the concrete, so smooth makes us happy! I didn't get a close up look at it myself yet, since it was raining tonight and our construction site is a mud-pit, but I hope to be able to admire Bartley's work up close and in person on Sunday.

We thought all of the TerraBricks/CEBs would have been made by now, but when I stopped by this evening, it seems like they have a ways to go yet.

Saturday, CEB Demonstration

WOW! What a fantastic day! We were hoping some folks from the green community would stop by to observe the manufacture of the TerraBricks/CEBs during our demo that we had scheduled and announced a few weeks prior. We had well over 100 people throughout the course of the three hour demo period, with some arriving early and others still coming after the end of the demo. The weather was spectacular, friends and relatives were able to come by, and my colleague, Scott, and his wife, Laura, brought cupcakes that folks enjoyed.

The folks who attended were a mix of people from within the green community, including Jason from Amicus Green Building Supply in Kensington, MD, some folks who consult and supply "clean energy solutions" and a whole host of consumers - and even a delegation from the Government of Costa Rica - who heard about CEBs and wanted to check out the demonstration as they consider this technology for their home construction.

The demo was a great marketing opportunity for our architect, John Spears, with the Sustainable Design Group, our contractor, Aaron Holmes with Cornerstone Building Services, and the folks at TerraBuilt who leased the Green Machine to us.

It was also great to show off our construction project to my family members who were in town visiting from Pennsylvania.

We'll have some short videos coming soon in another post showing the Green Machine in action and the crew stacking the bricks.

Our Contractor, Aaron Holmes, talking with a demo attendee.

John Morris from TerraBuilt explaining the Green Machine.

A normal miter saw is used to cut the TerraBricks/CEBs.

City of Falls Church green program leaders gather to watch the crew set some of the TerraBricks.

Setting the TerraBricks.

Our friend, Jeff, ready to video the crew set the TerraBricks.

TerraBricks in place - two levels high.

Friday, 3/20, Brick Making

While we were installing the radiant system below, Willy, John Morris and Aaron were outside manufacturing the TerraBricks/CEBs. During the afternoon, we welcomed a number of Falls Church staff who dropped by to observe the CEB making. While civilizations around the globe have been building with earth for generations, it's now a unique construction process here in the U.S. where the "norm" is construction methodologies designed for quick assembly. Unfortunately that results in a disposable house with a significantly shorter lifespan than expected for our solid CEB house.

Willy on the left and John Morris on the right, ensuring the quality of each and every CEB!

Matt Brown and Jason Widstrom, City engineers, observing the CEB manufacture.

Andreas protecting his hearing and wondering if and when
they'll make a quieter version of the Green Machine!

Our clay soldiers all lined up, ready to be stacked as a wall.

Friday, 3/20, It's Getting Hot

Aaron picked up the staple system early in the morning, so we met him at the lot to start work on the pex tubing installation. We worked diligently for approximately six hours installing the tubing. The staple system made it very easy, as compared to the other method of zip-tying the tubing to a metal grid. We took lots of pictures through the installation process, and the final product. Some of these photos are for our benefit in the future (after we win the lottery) when we install the wine cellar and build out another wall to create a media room. If you see in the photos below we left one area open without radiant tubing (for the wine storage) and a wide area in another section for a wall to divide the basement area to create a separate workshop and media room space.

A note on Radiantec - the company that we purchased our hydronic radiant floor heating system from. These folks there were extremely helpful, supportive, and responsive. We called a few times in advance of the purchase with questions and once since we received the product shipment. They were happy to take our calls and extremely helpful.

Thursday, 3/19, Change of Plans, but Good Progress

We were scheduled to install the pex tubing in the basement for our radiant heat flooring system. But things fell a bit behind schedule on Thursday as there was a last-minute change in plans on how to install the tubing. Our architect learned of a staple system that fastens the pex tubing to the 2" extruded foam board insulation. So that stapler had to be obtained while the plastic staples were sent overnight for a Thursday morning arrival. Well, that didn't go as planned, but it all turned out fine in the end (as you'll see in the next post) and Andreas and I didn't have to work in the cold rain.

Meanwhile Bartley Corp.'s team was on-site to add yet another 4" of stone to the basement, plus the 2" extruded foam board. They wrapped up their work while our contractor Aaron, Willy Obando who oversees the crew for making and stacking the TerraBricks/CEBs, and John Morris from TerraBuilt who was training the crew and managing the operation of the Green Machine, were testing out the machine and the getting everything set for brick making.