solar construction methods

Construction begins!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

IMGP3062Now that our slab is done, we have a bit of genuine construction doing on up in them thar hills! OK, so it’s only a little framing so far, but after waiting five months for anything, we are quite excited! Just seeing men putting up walls was enough for me…

IMGP3061I can finally get a feel for how the house is laid out and only now I realize how large our garage will be. Mike says it’s only about one-third of the total square footage. I should have known he’d be putting in one hell of a man cave!

IMGP3071All in all, I can’t complain. I’m getting a solar home in the foothills, with views of 13,000 foot peaks from my kitchen sink!   Sure beats looking at the neighbors…

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Today the plumbing, next week the SLAB!

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Do any of you have experience in the excruciatingly slow process of building a new home in rural settings?  I’m a new viewer to HGTV, and when they complain there about 6 weeks to remodel I think, try waiting 5 months to produce a slab!

IMGP2984Because we are building a slab on grade foundation, all plumbing had to be built under our slab… and inspected twenty times!  But now, we can finally see one big slab in our future!

I never thought I would be planning a slab celebration, but we already have the champagne on hand… we’re even thinking about a slab photo for our holiday cards!

See, once the slab is completed, we can start the actual building of walls.  In other words, the house will finally begin to take shape. It’s completely crazy how much time this process takes, but our contractor/builder tells us that this is as good as it gets if you want to hire the best workers out here in rural Colorado.

IMGP2959And we do want the BEST…

How passive solar foundations are different

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

I bet you were wondering when my husband Mike was going to contribute to this effort. Here is his explanation of how changes in the floor and foundation in our new home in southern Colorado will help to maintain a warm, even temperature in the winter:

DSCF1003Our new house will be passive solar with a direct gain system. This means that in winter, the sun will shine in through our south-facing windows, directly heating our well-insulated concrete floors.

The concrete floors will be 6 inches thick and covered with ceramic tile. The tile will be a dark color to absorb the heat from the sun.

Thermal storage tubesWhile 4 inches is the optimum thickness for the concrete, additional thickness will add some extra heat storage capacity. We thickened our floor to 6 inches to accommodate a few thermal storage water tubes. You can put colored water in them and they look GREAT, but they can be quite heavy.   Please see blue examples at right… more about these later!

The concrete floor is where the light from the sun is converted to heat and is absorbed into the concrete. The floor moderates the house temperature by its mass, which gives off heat when the house air temperature is low and absorbs heat when the house air temperature is high.

The concrete floor will be insulated from the ground with foam insulation, seen in blue in this photo. It is insulated underneath and around the edges. In addition to this, the foundation walls will be insulated on the inside. This creates a longer path for the heat to escape the house, making the ground under the floor warmer, thus cutting down on heat loss into the earth.

Delays and Over-Budget Items!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

As you all must know, construction is not for the weak of heart or stomach!  I’m new to this game.  I have never been involved in a major construction project, especially in a rural area.  So far I am reminded of that famous movie quote from Betty Davis:

“Fasten your seat belts… It’s going to be a bumpy ride!” 

IMGP2834Once we had our blue prints together with  full engineer approval, we had a month and a half delay just to procure our building permit!

This was because the ONLY INSPECTOR IN THIS ENTIRE COUNTY had ten building projects ahead of ours. Yes, this county is getting more popular, probably because of the amazing natural beauty in combination with quite reasonable land prices.

Then we got some bad news about road set-backs on our property, leading to the need  to spend $10,000 extra on backfill materials.  We chalked that up to no use building a home on a less than solid foundation!

Then it seemed like we were making some great progress… for a while.  We got the footers in quickly and then the foundation. The plumbing was going in and the slab looked imminent.

That was until Mike realized the builder has forgotten about the foundation insulation.  This is essential in a passive solar home.  The heat that gets absorbed into the slab floor must be retained by insulation under the slab and at the foundation walls.

That meant another week delay to get the insulation here.  Now we’re waiting to get the excavator back up there to install it and finish the slab so the actual home construction can begin.

320 W. 2nd St. WalsenburgIn the meantime we have been living in a 1,000 square foot rental in Walsenburg built in 1911.  For the past four months we have been waiting to get this show on the road!  With half of our stuff  in storage, we are constantly saying, “Yeah we have one of those. We just don’t know where it is!”

We are so anxious to get out on our land and I can assure you, I am NOT a patient person!  Luckily Mike is a master at calming me down when I go off the deep end…