Installing thermal wrap...insulating our thermal mass!

To
Here is the beginning of our thermal wrap, installed on the east wall. Essentially we increase the thermal mass of the tire walls by wrapping them and 3-6 feet of dirt with rigid insulation and poly. During winter, the insulation traps the thermal mass of the tires and dirt and slows down the heat transfer into the rest of the bermed wall, allowing our house to remain warmer longer.

We decided to match the R value of a traditional basement wall, which is 12. This piece of blue styrospan is 2.4 inches thick and is suitable to be buried. Earthship Biotecture recommends doubling the insulation using two, two inch pieces, mostly for added rigidity for backfilling, but also to gain a few extra R values.

We decided to stick with one layer of R12. The original earthship designs did not even include a thermal wrap and as we intend to heat with an auxiliary source, we made the call to stick with a single layer. This picture shows the 2x8 sheet of insulation with the 6 mil poly that will run on the outside of the insulation, into the edge of the drainage system.

Here it is with the second and third piece attached. As each piece is placed, we are leveling them individually and to each other.


















Chris and James extending the insulation along the north wall.


















Here's the insulation (again on the east side), next to the cleanout for the drainage system. The insulation takes a 45 degree turn around the first U (our bedroom!)
















Here it is from the opposite direction with the poly tuck taped to the insulation. Our next layer of poly will overlap by 6 inches. We will take the insulation up to about six feet (as we continue filling tires) and then the rigid insulation will slant inwards to the roof, creating a "ceiling" for the thermal wrap.













Looking east to west. As we turn the corner we add more poly and attach it to the piece already sloping into the drainage system (not shown here).
















We are holding the insulation in place by means of these small wooden "cradles". Made of scrap wood, each is intended to cradle the ends of two adjoining pieces of rigid insulation (thereby necessitating the bare minimum of cradles). Where the insulation turns, we use a dedicated cradle for the end of each piece. We are also tuck taping the joins of the insulation. This also helps keep it aligned. To answer an obvious question: yes we will bury the wooden cradles. Who cares if they degrade down the road. The bermed walls will more than hold the insulation in place over time.


We only set the thermal wrap to about half of the north side of the walls. We need to feed our services through the conduits we placed under the first round of tires and we still need to figure out what some of those are (including the proper gauge wire for renewable electric)! Alvin brought in his amazing excavator to help us with drainage and backfilling, so we had him backfill oh-so-carefully around each side of our thermal wrap. He has a delicate hand on the controls; it's the hours he's spent with kids and grandkids, playing Nintendo since the 80s! Here's a video of him doing the backfilling. We sent him away until Monday when we hope to have the thermal wrap set on the remainder of the building for backfilling.




Tomorrow we lose James. He's been here just over a week, having made his way across Canada from Newfoundland with the intention of settling in Victoria. Before getting himself set up there and looking for work, he decided to make a stop and help us with our home. He's been taking carpentry and has lots of insightful questions for Chris about the construction. At first he worked only with us, before Sean and Anna made their way back from Victoria to rejoin us. They brought Josh last Sunday and the four of them have worked in concert since then. Josh is a story teller and always sees the humour in situations. Despite having very little construction experience, he has been digging in with fervor since arriving. He's headed to Calgary tomorrow for a wedding and then will return to Victoria to his work. Chris and I hope both James and Josh will come back again and help with another aspect of our project. Together with Sean and Anna I will always think of this group of 20-somethings as the "Fab Four", they are relentless workers and were the first ones to sign on to the Darfield Earthship!

We are looking forward to welcoming other volunteers in the coming weeks!

Frugal Finds

My best frugal moment of the last few weeks: Shopping the kids' clearance racks at Sears for camping clothes and racking up $200 for swimsuits, rain jackets, rain pants, and a whole bunch of other stuff, then discovering it was scratch n save day on clearance items. Helen scratched a 40% off ticket, Katie a "pay your GST" ticket. Wow! We never win anything! It was like Christmas in July!!!! No, it was like...STEALING!

Phenomenal Progress Today!

Today we made great progress. I hung around for the first few hours helping Alvin and then took off for Kamloops for an appointment and to pick up more of our materials.

While I was gone, Kim, Curtis, Josh, Anna, Sean, James, Chris and Alvin filled half of the fourth round of tires. And, when it was stinking hot this afternoon (I wasn't going to work), they went back at it and now have only one "U" of tires left to fill! Wow! Every Earthship should have a tire press and great volunteers.

Yesterday I phoned the building inspector to find out if he had a particular schedule of inspections or whether or not the building authority would defer to the engineer for all inspections. Since 2005 inspections by registered professionals (engineers and architects) are becoming the norm on non-Part 9 buildings in our regional district and inspections by the regional building authority on these buildings are being phased out. This is also true for our earthship and Chris will be responsible for ensuring that the work he has specified is carried out satisfactorily, according to his stamped drawings.

Mind you, the building authority reserves the right to inspect if it so wishes, even if there is an engineer or architect on the project. We actually welcome this as we feel it's important for our building authority to become familiar with alternative designs. If all earthship projects went through the permit process--we think we may be one of the first permitted earthships in BC--then they would shed their "alternative" status and eventually earthships may not require the services of an engineer. This can often be an added cost of $5-7000!

I've questioned the value of our building permit cost- $1500-- in the past, but for the pave-the-way factor alone, it may be worth it!


Here's the west perimeter drain with the top layer of filter cloth. Next step is to start backfilling and install the thermal wrap. The second photo is the north (back) wall showing the perimeter drain partially backfilled.

Ongoing activity!

The last five days have been very full!

Since Wednesday, James has been here helping us. He arrived just in time to help us with the perimeter drain; I don't think he was expecting to help sort rocks when he offered to build our tire house! He's been a good sport and it was only a few days before we moved back to filling tires.

We took a break on Saturday to celebrate Gail's retirement from nursing. We spent the afternoon and evening at my brother Tom's cabin near Bridge Lake. It was nice and relaxing and Chris and I took the tandem kayak out together for the second time ever. It's been a long time since we've paddled together without kids.

Despite good intentions on Sunday the day meandered with odd jobs. Mid morning a family from Kamloops came to visit and ask questions about the house. Sunday evening I took the kids to weigh in day for the lambs and dropped Helen off at Dad and Gail's for a few days. Stephen and Katie and I returned home to find Sean and Anna returned with Josh. Alvin brought his big excavator in anticipation of faster work on Tuesday. Monday evening was a flurry of packing for summer 4-H camp in a very chaotic house!

This morning we tidied the house, hung laundry, fed lambs, vacuumed our rug and swept the floors and then two very wired kids and I left for Stump Lake and five days of 4-H camp. Upon my return through Kamloops I dashed about picking up supplies and trying to figure out pex hose and propane lines.

When I returned on Monday evening, the Robinsons were here (see their blog at http://canadianfamilyrobinson.com) and Nikki and Monica came to help. It was the biggest group of like-minded people we'd had here yet. We planned a potluck and by 7:00 or so everyone stopped working (we're on the 4th round of tires!)

I took the Robinson girls, Sierra, Ocean and Indigo to feed lambs (what an adventure!) and to check for eggs. What lovely inquiring minds those kids have! They discovered our frog family in our water service pipe and were quite entertained by them.

The Robinsons are the first family we've had visit our project with young children and we are amazed at how similar some of our own values are and how closely aligned our thinking is on how we want our family life to be. We, for example, don't think it strange at all that Kim and Curtis Robinson sold their home and bought an RV and have been travelling and home schooling their kids. That is seriously cool. What a great expererience for the entire family (sort of like closing your family business to build a house out of tires and pop cans!)

By 9:30 the mosquitoes were getting agressive and Monica and Nikki had to make their way back to Lone Butte.

Tomorrow we fill more tires. We are so grateful for the help; the house is moving along at a speedy pace thanks to the simple abundance of extra hands.

I continue to get more offers of assistance and requests to come and see what we are doing for later this month and next. I haven't had time to respond to all of them, but hope to do so this week. So far, we haven't turned anybody down as we know that getting into the thick of things is the best way to learn before a person builds their own earthship.

We've been taking photos and with Monica's cache of photos I will try to get some more posted in the next few days.

And yes, I am posting this in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Some days are so packed with activity that I have trouble falling asleep!

Updated expenses

I've taken a few minutes to update our expenses. I should note that I'm including GST in all figures, until I apply for the refund.

PERMITS
HPO	$425.00
Building Permit	$1,504.00
Septic Approval	$157.50
		$2,086.50
PREP COSTS
Excavation	$1,950.00
		$1,950.00
MATERIALS
Tire Walls (inc. poly, Metal Lath + portland cement)	$513.04
Perimeter drain (inc. PVC pipe and fittings, filter cloth)	$528.46
Thermal Wrap (inc. poly, rigid insulation, tuck tape)	$3,769.11
Nails/other fasteners	$16.12
Tires	$0.00
Dirt	$0.00
Tire press	$0.00
Cardboard	$0.00
		$4,826.73
Total		$8,863.23

My rough estimates for our building project (minus permits) was about $5,000 to complete the drainage and the thermal wrap. So far, without our excavation time for the drainage trench, we are at $4,313.69 for these items for these two items. Based on my experience quoting out log buildings, I tend to build in a good cushion and it's a good thing I did! I grossly underestimated the cost of the rigid insulation, thinking this would cost us about $1500. We may still have to purchase a bit more, too.

Overall, we are on budget for getting the earthship to lock up so we can work on it over winter. I'm pleased by that and hope that the roof doesn't throw me any curveballs in terms of cost!

More supply shopping

Tuesday found us on the way into Kamloops with a list of supplies we needed to complete the perimeter drain for the building, the thermal wrap and the rest of the materials to do the tire walls. We are now on our third row of tires. Sean and Anna left last Saturday on errands in the lower mainland. We sure miss their help! Things go slower without them!

As our tire walls increase in height, we need to start backfilling so that we have a same-level surface to work on. That meant putting in the perimeter drain and starting the thermal wrap. On Monday evening we sat down and made an extensive list of supplies that we needed for Wednesday, which is when we asked Alvin to return and do some trench digging. On our way into Kamloops Tuesday morning Chris hit the cell phone and started to get some prices.

Our biggest learning curve was on what kind of rigid insulation to buy for the thermal wrap. The thermal wrap is the layer of rigid insulation that is buried around the house (to the height of the roof) that contains the heat around the house and prevents any thermal heat we acquire in the house from seeping slowly out into the ground. For a better explanation of this go to Earthship Biotecture at: http://www.earthship.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27:thermal-wrap-turbo-charge-your-earthship&catid=49:comfort&Itemid=30

Rigid insulation differs in kind and price. The blue kind is the one more generally accepted for burial. However, we found a white brand that was half the price. Most sales people told us that it was not acceptable for burial. However, we saw a little bit of text on the promotional material that indicated otherwise. Sharon Donchi (who used to arrange log home shows and now works at Home Depot) called the technical rep for this company and it turns out that it can indeed be buried. We however, wanted to achieve an R12 value, which is generally accepted by Code for a traditional basement wall. This less expensive brand was only R8. By the time we ran the numbers the blue brand was still more expensive but probably by only 10-20 per cent. Using the white brand may have been less expensive, but it did have a lower compression value AND it is not generally viewed by traditional building authorities as a product that can be buried. When all was said and done we decided on the blue brand.

Generally perimeter drains are constructed using a product called Big O. This is a black, perforated, flexible pipe that is laid in a slightly sloped drainage ditch around the building. The pipe is accompanied by filter cloth and drainage rock and then buried. The idea is that if water accumulates around and in the ground surrounding the house, it will drain into the pipe and be passed around and beyond the house. However, our family and friends had had issues with Big O collapsing over time so we decided to use perforated 4" PVC. We also decided to install three vertical cleanouts should we ever get a plug up. For us, digging through 10 feet of bermed earth is a bigger issue than with a traditional home! More pictures of the finished drain in a few days!

The PVC pipe was a lesson in going to the specialists. We priced this product at all the big box hardware stores and there was up to a $5 difference in a 10' piece (ranging from $20 locally to $15 at Rona Hardware). As we were driving past Andrew Sheret, I pulled in and Chris came back with a quote of $11.10 per piece. With savings in hand, we started loading up.

Today another volunteer earthship builder arrived. James is from Newfoundland but is moving to Victoria and decided that before he got a job there, he wanted to do a few things, inlcuding help us for a few days. We are glad to have his help and look forward to Friday when Sean and Anna return with their "mate" Josh.

The photos are fairly straight forward but I'm having trouble manipulating them and being able to put captions on them. The trailer shot is of 30 of our 140 pieces of rigid insulation. There are several shots of the drainage ditch and because I'm always behind the camera, Katie took some pictures of me, doing what I do best, apparently: sitting and supervising!

Eggs have come

On Monday we got are first egg from our hens. Instead of it being in the laying boxes it was in the corner of the chicken house. It was tiny compared to the Schillings eggs. Yesterday we put fake eggs and somebody told us to put golf balls in so we did. This morning I went to go check for eggs and there I saw a small egg a little bit bigger then on Monday. It took me a long time to get the hen out of the laying box.