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Winter Project 2012 3.2 -- Big Garage Cabinet Finds a Home

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 4/20/2013

With the Winter of 2012 seemingly never wanting to end (I love the snow but come on--where's my Spring?!?) I found myself with another day of decent, sunny weather but nearly impossible to actually work outside--the recent 9" of global warming we got a couple of days ago is now melting, rendering everything outside a  muddy, snowy, slushy mess. So I looked over the Winter 2012 Projects list and decided it was time to work on hanging up stuff again.

The target of my attention this time was a very large cabinet that needed putting up in the garage--specifically the apartment garage area. This cabinet once was the top of a computer hutch that sadly didn't survive the move to Tanglewood. Ordinarily putting up a cabinet wouldn't be much of a problem, but in this case it was large (4'x4'), heavy (~150 pounds), with the whole endeavor complicated by a desire to mount it up fairly high from the floor (a good 4'). This height made it impossible for Colleen to reach when we tried to lift it up together, and the weight was too much for me to get it that high on my own. The awkward size combined with the higher placement and the problems I discovered recently when I put up my TV in the master bedroom meant that getting this cabinet into place was a bit of a puzzle.

I eventually solved the problem with a combination of heavy duty brackets mounted down into the concrete and a large ramp fashioned out of a long leftover porch railing section to slide the cabinet up. Execution after that was relatively simple. I fastened the railing section to the brackets so it couldn't slip, "walked" the cabinet over to the far end of the railing, and then began using a series of automotive jacks and jack stands to slowly lift it all up to the height of the brackets. This was far and away the longest part of the entire exercise, as I had to go slowly and carefully so the railing wouldn't tilt too far and the cabinet fall off. I ended up repositioning and raising jack stands and such several times throughout the effort as it got higher, but eventually I got the railing fairly level with the mounting brackets. At that point the job got fairly easy--I slid the cabinet along the rail to the mounts, made sure it was centered properly on the brackets, fastened the cabinet to the wall (so it wouldn't tilt) and then to the mounts (so it wouldn't move). When all was said and done, I took down all of the ramps and jack stands and such--and the cabinet was installed!

Assuming it doesn't fall down overnight, we'll put other things back in the garage tomorrow and I'll move on to the next chore. If it does fall down, of course, I have a bonfire planned where it will be the guest of honor--getting it up there was ultimately way harder than it should have been! ;)

So there we go--another chore knocked off of the list and a little bit less disorganization in the garage. All in all, a fine day.


Steven in Colorado

Big TVs, Heavy Cabinets, and Concrete Walls

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 4/7/2013

Well now... this has been a bit of a learning experience.

Since my last entry it's mostly been dismal and wet and cold outside and I've been pretty busy at work, so the upshot is that I haven't been able to get much worked off of my Winter 2012 Chores List. The weather is getting better now though and that should change shortly, thank goodness. 

In the meantime though I've accidentally run into another learning experience that I thought I might share with other ICF (and probably SIP) O-Bs. This is precisely the kind of thing you probably won't think about ahead of time--I certainly didn't--and there are some implications for how you build that might come in handy during the construction process.

For Christmas I gave myself a large LED TV (60"). It's not all that heavy, but it's large enough to be awkward for a single person to handle. It's intended destination was the master bedroom between the two large windows opposite the bed; this allows me to watch it from bed if so desired or from my desk if I'm surfing around on the computer or watching TV just before bedtime. The TV didn't come with any hardware to mount it, so I had to buy that separately.

The kit is a good one--no complaints there--but I quickly realized that I was going to have a problem with it. These kits are of necessity made for the vast majority of folks who might buy them, and the vast majority of folks have stud frame houses. The 3" bolts that came with the kit would no doubt do a fine job of anchoring it to the studs of a wall for mounting, but wouldn't even reach through the drywall-and-styrofoam of the BuildBlock ICFs.

"Well that's no problem", I thought to myself. "I'll just mount into the plastic webbing studs that BuildBlock helpfully integrates into their blocks at 6-inch intervals for just this reason!" (Okay, I cleaned that up a bit.) That's when I ran into my second problem...

The plastic stud mounts that are part of the BuildBlock system are something you can detect with a simple stud finder, so I hauled out my trusty Black & Decker and began scanning the wall. BEEP... found one. BEEP... found another, but not really 6" over from the first... more like 9". That's odd. BEEP... wait, this one seems to be only 2" over from that one... that's odd. Let's try higher up... what, NO BEEP? Oh wait, there's one... over by the window?!? What?

Chatting with Colleen revealed what had happened. To handle the irregular areas extending between the two windows in the master bedroom (which are arched) the builders used a lot of "scrap ICF"... bits and pieces that they had left over from the longer, fuller runs. And those, as it happens sometimes are small enough that they don't have webbing in them at all--or they only have a single brace, and in piecing them together you sometimes get two webbing studs within a couple of inches of each other. Colleen remembered this area being particular problematic for the builders (in fact all of the arched windows were) and she wasn't a bit surprised that the plastic studs were irregular at best through this region.

Well smeg. That's a problem, since I couldn't tie into the wall securely. Those 3" bolts just weren't going to cut it if all they could tie into were Styrofoam. For me to make the mount work, I'd have to anchor into the concrete--which of course required a longer bolt.

After much searching, I ended up going with the same things the crew used for anchoring the stairs to the concrete walls--Red Head Wedge Anchors. I got mine at Lowe's, but I'm sure Ace and Home Depot have them too. These are 5" long and have a flared end that expands into the concrete when you cinch down the locking nut on the outside end. I was able to drill my mounting holes as I "normally" would (into the drywall), then switched to a concrete bit to punch those holes deeper into the concrete for the bolts to anchor properly. Once I got them in and cinched down, I had a mount that held anything I put on it--I even grabbed it for a quick chin-up! 

The TV went up the next day.

I'll be using these again later today (as it happens) to mount a heavy cabinet in the garage. Again, it's on the outer wall and weight wise it's actually heavier than the TV; I briefly tried putting mounting brackets into the webbing there (not quite as irregular as it as in the master bedroom) but I don't really trust them to be secure enough, so it's back to the concrete wedges. I suspect I'll be happier with that anyway.

I would have preferred to go 6" deep, but they didn't seem to offer anything like that in the 3/8" bolts. The larger ones that are 6" longer are 5/8" bolts, and that was too large for the TV mounts. These seem pretty strong though, so I'm not too concerned.

So out of all of this are a couple of Lessons Learned for folks:

• Don't trust the advertised ICF spacing. Just because they sell it with 6" or 9" spacing doesn't mean you know that's actually what's in your walls where you want to put something. If you didn't do it yourself and know that the spacing is as delivered, then it's almost a cinch that it won't be. I would guess that since SIPs are somewhat more engineered there might be less trouble with those, but any trimming to make something fit could still end up biting you.
  
  
• Take pictures or video of your walls before the drywall goes up. This is particularly true if you build with ICFs and SIPs, but I could see value to it with regular stud construction as well. We didn't do this and at the time I would have said that was a silly waste of time, but in retrospect I wish I had a record so I could compare what my stud finder is telling me to an actual picture. Of course this could take a lot of time and at a guess there will be portions where you want more detail than you have, but at least it would be something you could refer to.
  

The Doorbell Works! But There's More To Be Done.

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 2/9/2013

This wasn't really on my list of Winter 2012 chores, but the mystery of the front doorbell had really started to bug me. I was most gratified to discover the root cause of the problem last week; today I took a step towards fixing it.

I had no idea where the transformer had been purchased, but since the builders got so much stuff from Lowe's, I took a chance and swung by there. It was a good guess; I got exactly the same model as the broken one. That made me happy since then I didn't have to deal with any potential voltage incompatibilities.

The good news is that I got the transformer replaced! It was amazing to hear my doorbell actually CHIME for once... it's loud, exactly what I needed for a house the size of Tanglewood.

The bad news is that I don't really think I can put it all back into the mount where it was originally. I see why it was crushed originally; the hole that the electricians put behind the chime (a standard-sized light switch box) really isn't big enough to hold the transformer and the wiring very well. That's why the first transformer got crushed; they could only push it in so far with the wires behind it, and once they tested it, the act of putting on the chime itself broke everything.

So I think what I'll need to do next is a bit of surgery. If I widen the opening to roughly the size of a double light switch, there should be more than enough room for both the wiring and the transformer to fit, and it'll all still be nicely tucked behind the chime housing itself. It will make a bunch of dust (everything dealing with drywall does, it seems) but that's just the price of getting it right.

This will be a good afternoon project here in a couple of weeks, I'm thinking...


Steven in Colorado

A Mystery May Be Solved

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 1/31/2013

One of the things that has annoyed me since I moved in up here has been the doorbell on the front door.

In part that's because they never actually PUT a doorbell on the door; apparently the ones that they had didn't work, and after we closed on the house it just sorta wasn't the builder's problem any more. I didn't view that as a big deal as I would have surely replaced the standard doorbell with something a bit fancier anyway, and besides there's nobody coming to visit on a regular basis here at the back of the canyon. So that wasn't a problem.

The real issue came from the fact that when I started to think about the doorbell and what I might put there, I looked at the chimes around the house (there are three for the front door so you can hear it everywhere), then went to the door and rang the bell. (In this case I just touched the wires together; they are 16V wires and all a doorbell does is close the connection when you press the button.) Imagine my surprise when nothing happened!

I checked breakers everywhere... nothing is really marked as "doorbell" anywhere, but given that the chimes are scattered across the house they are probably each on a different circuit. Nothing was tripped anywhere. Colleen assured me that during construction she was there when they were testing the lines and distinctly remembers one confirming there was power at the chime, and she thinks (wasn't 100% sure) that she remembers the bell being rung as a test. So why it wasn't working didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Researching the manuals for the doorbells (Never let the crews toss your manuals! We had to intervene to save ours!) I discovered that the chimes actually work on a 16V AC power supply from  a transformer that is itself wired into 120V. I knew there was nothing like that in the circuit breaker boxes (that's probably not even code anyway), so I searched around in the attic thinking it might be hooked up somewhere there. No luck.

Yesterday I took the downstairs chime off the wall to see how it's wired, and it's only got the two 16V bell wire lines running into it. Interestingly enough, there are 120V lines behind it in the niche, capped off because they're live (found that out almost the hard way--it wasn't a very big fire, honest). This indicated to me that the transformer might be behind one of the chimes, but I ran out of time for further investigation.

So today just on a lark I decided to check the 16V circuit to see if it was live--and it wasn't. Hmmmm. With this in mind (and knowing the 120V in the wall was live), I went upstairs to check the chime in the library.

The good news is I found the transformer! The bad news is I also think I know why the doorbell isn't working... it's partially crushed!

Good grief. What the smeg is wrong with some people?!?!?


Steven in Colorado

Photos

The transformer! Note the crushed top; at a guess I'd say that the internal connections are busted. I assume I'll need to replace this puppy.

January Snowstorm

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 1/29/2013

Spent about a half hour this afternoon sweeping 5" of global warming off my solar panels from the storm last night.

At least tomorrow is supposed to be bright and sunny! ;)

Steven in Colorado

Photos

From up the hill.....

...and from below the panels.

Winter 2012 Project 1.4 -- Window In, More Concrete Poured

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 1/26/2013

When I put together my initial Winter 2012 Project List, I noted that Project 1.0 (the shed) would be heavily dependent on the weather. At this time of the year there are three critical elements that must coincide in order for me to get any substantive work done outside on the shed:

1. It's got to be decently warm... not 30s or 40s, but at least the mid-50s. Otherwise I spend more time fighting with things that are cold and wishing I were warmer than actually doing the work, and that's counterproductive. It's also no fun dealing with concrete and water in colder conditions as everything ends up wet and cold despite my best intentions.
   
   
2. It helps a ton if combined with the warm-enough weather it's actually bright and sunny too. At this stage of the shed (where everything is stacked and most of it is held down by lots and lots and lots of concrete) I'm not worried about anything blowing away, but some bright sunshine while I'm working makes it all more pleasant.
   
   
3. Finally, these conditions must happen when I have a day available to actually take advantage of them. This usually means a weekend day (unless I happen to be taking a day off). There been several warm days that came smack in the middle of the week, and we happen to have full or decent sunlight nearly every day in Colorado--but both conditions seemed to go missing around these parts when the weekend rolled around.  Very annoying.
   

So far this year all three conditions haven't coincided very often... but today they did! And so  of course I took advantage of it. Temps had hit 50^o F by the time 10:30 AM rolled around, so I headed up to the shed to get some work done.

Knowing that my window of opportunity is more limited here during the winter I had stockpiled only a small number of bags of concrete, five in total. I'd even moved these up to the site last week in anticipation of the forecast for this weekend and as it turned out it was spot on.

First up was to put in the glass block window I'd ordered a while back from Home Depot. I'd spent part of last weekend getting the framing for the glass block window installed, so the first thing I did was place it carefully into its new home. Now, it's normally not a good idea to put windows in before you pour--after all, the typical window opening needs bracing in all directions against the pour, and the weight of the concrete can twist or shatter any window that might be in too tight. In my case however I needed to make sure that I'd sized the hole and framing that I did last week properly--after all, if I had to resize the hole it would be a LOT easier to cut wood and foam than to tear out concrete after the fact. I also knew that I wouldn't be putting the normal stresses on the framing that happens with most pours, simply because I'm not doing several cubic yards at a time blasting out a concrete hose as with typical construction--my method is about 1/3 of a 5-gallon bucket at a time, slow and sure. Much easier to find and fix problems as they occur, at least.

As it happened, however, it would appear I'd sized it perfectly---the window sits in the frame with a bit of room around the edges. It still needs to be caulked in yet, but it shouldn't fall out even with a strategically placed gust of wind... it's pretty snug in there and I think will be fine until I get a warm afternoon and a tube of clear caulk up to seal it in. I was happy.

Once I had that in place, I was able to look over the wall sealing one more time, then get to work pouring. Since I only had the five bags, it didn't really take me very long, and I was able to do most of it from the exterior where the hillside gave me quite a boost up. My focus today was on the area between the window and the door--I wanted to get the concrete here ready for the eventual sill plate work. That meant getting the concrete in the walls to about 3" from the top--once I've attained this level all the way around the shed, I'll be ready to build and install the sill plates. My estimate was that the five bags I had would just about finish off this corner area perfectly.

I was pretty close, all things considered. The concrete flowed towards the top of the door frame (and the ICF running across the top there) more than I thought it would, mostly because I made it relatively wet and runny (so it would get under the window and not leave any voids). In retrospect, six bags would have probably done the job perfectly, but all in all I did pretty well.

Clouds had moved in by the time I was done, but I was able to take a few minutes to clean up some of the construction mess that had accumulated, sweep out the existing shed and tidy up the tools that had gotten moved all over the place. All in all it was a good day, very productive. I learned that I can reasonably pour a little bit more concrete during the good daylight hours which should help the overall winter phase of this project move a bit faster, and it's clear that I need to spend a bit more time getting the final trimming for the upper wall ICF done so I'll be level all around the structure.

But it was a good day, one step closer to completion. The forecast is looking like I'll have another confluence of the three conditions noted above in a couple of weeks, but of course that's a long time out for a forecast... we'll see.

Steven in Colorado

Photos

Closeup of the glass block window from the outside. Note the tarp bungie-corded down over the top of the shed to help keep snow out during the winter.	Long shot of the glass block window, from the other side of the shed. Pretty pleased with how this worked out.	Shot of the window from the inside. The inside of the frame (a 2x10) will make for a decent, high shelf that I'm sure I'll lose things on in time.

Winter 2012 Project 3.1 - Big Mirror Finds a Home

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 1/1/2013

With the coming of the New Year and a continual blanket of snowfall descending from the clouds all day long, I decided that today was a goodly day to get started on another of my Winter, 2012 projects -- putting stuff up on the walls.

We had a ton of stuff hanging on the walls at Wyrdhaven, and I was amazed at how long it took to take them down, wrap them up, and move them up here to Tanglewood. Most of the stuff has been spending the months since the move hanging out in the great room, including a rather remarkable hexagonal mirror that the eagle-eyed Colleen spotted early in our construction phase.

This mirror had been considered for various spots in Tanglewood and we had moved it around a couple of times trying to find the right spot, but I'd finally settled on putting on the wall at the end of the dining area towards the master bedroom. That wall puts a nice reflection back the long way towards the kitchen and adds considerable depth to the whole area. The only problem I had was help getting the thing up on the wall, since it's remarkably heavy and pretty awkward for one person to handle (a good 4' wide and 5' tall). With Colleen's assistance we got it up today.

Not bad at all, if I dare say so myself.

Lots more to put on those walls, but it's a start!


Steven in Colorado

Photos

A slightly fuzzy shot, but good enough to see the mirror. In the reflection you can see a gun cabinet and (way back in the back) the cage with my ferrets.

Christmas Snow!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/25/2012

We got about 3" of the white stuff last night, though it was colder than expected. This time around the snow was very fluffy and lightweight. I'm pretty sure that if there had been any wind at all there would have been huge snow-free sections of the road.

The lightness of the snow helped quite a bit when I trekked up to clean off my panels. For only the second time since we've had the panels installed I was able to remove the snow by simply "bumping" the panel supports.  This caused a cascade of snow down the panels leaving them entirely snow-free in a thrice! (And if I had the panels at a slightly steeper angle as I've been contemplating recently I doubt there would have been any snow of significance on them at all.)

So it's bright and sunny and snowy and cold out there--a beautiful Christmas day!

Merry Christmas to all from the High, Snowy Mountains of Colorado!


Steven in Colorado

Photos

The panels before...	...and the panels after. Excellent.	Snowy driveway.
Gorgeous view looking out from the panels across the valley.	A closeup of a clump of snow on a twig near the panels. As you can see, it's VERY loose and the crystal structure is easy to see.

...And Now It Gets Brighter!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/21/2012

Don't get me wrong, I love the winter! The snow, the holidays, the focus on doing things inside vs. outside... it's all good.

But obviously when you have solar panels this is in many respects the "worst" part of the year, as there are so few hours of sunlight compared to the summer. That means more generator runs, more gasoline or propane swaps, less off-grid independence. And that's annoying.

Today was the darkest day of the year for 2012... and so from here on out it just gets a little bit brighter, and a little bit sunnier, and a little bit more solar-friendly every day.

Yay!


Steven in Colorado

Panels in the Snow

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/19/2012 3:31:32 PM

We finally got ourselves some decent snowfall today... it's still coming down as I write this, though it lightened up a bit. I took the opportunity to go sweep off the panels.

They weren't producing anything at all when I got up there, no doubt due to the 2" of snow layered atop them. It was just wet enough that I wasn't able to just "knock" the support and have it all slide off, so I got out my trusty sweep broom and had at it.

Didn't take long at all, and I only slipped a couple of times. While sweeping off the white stuff I was evaluating how feasible my thoughts were about modifying the mounts to allow for a more vertical (and seasonally-adjusted) deployment... I think it's doable!

But that's for the future. For now, I've got the panels swept off and Christmas stuff to finish, so it's putter-putter-putter around the house while the squirrels shiver outside....  ;)


Steven in Colorado

Photos

My panels--pretty in the snow, but not really doing much otherwise.	Sweeping them off isn't producing a LOT of power, but heck it's something....	I put a tarp over my new shed so that snow and (eventually) melted water wouldn't get down into the forms.

Winter 2012 Project 6.2 -- Sealing Up the Attic Hatches

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/15/2012

Following up from my first round a couple of weeks back, I took advantage of today's cloudy, snowy, messy weather to finish up the second stage of this particular task.

It really didn't take all that long, as I'd honestly done most of it the first time around. Today's efforts focused on sealing up the apartment attic hatch and the kitchen garage door. The attic hatch was tricky because the ceiling is pretty high in there, whereas the kitchen door was easy conceptually but it took some time to find the right location so the insulation wouldn't interfere with the door closing.

But hey... done and done. One more task off the Winter, 2012 list!

Looking down the road, there's a small period of sunny and warmish weather coming up during which I might be able to get some more work done on the new shed. With the days getting so much shorter now as we race towards the Darkest Day of the Year I've decided to restrict myself to only five bags of work this time. My aim will be to frame up the window and then pour the mix around that, both to raise this last remaining area up to the general level of the rest of the wall and to seal in the framing properly. As a bonus since it's on the uphill side, I won't need to use the ladder much, which is a big plus. It should be straightforward enough, I think.

But in the meantime... progress is progress. Huzzah!


Steven in Colorado

First Real Snow and Some More Solar Thinking

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/9/2012

I awoke this morning to find that a solid 4" of snow had fallen overnight! This is on balance fantastically good news, as the very light snowfall we'd gotten a few weeks back really wasn't enough to do more than get things a bit wet.

However snowfall means snow on the panels, and solar panels don't do a very good job of making power when they're buried under a few inches of the white stuff. So I pulled on some boots and put on a heavy coat to head up to the panels to brush 'em all off.

I've gotten quite good at doing this so there weren't any problems, but while working some thoughts I'd been having concerning my panels came to the fore. I've decided that my panels really aren't tilted enough for this latitude.

There's been lots of work done in this field over the years, but the general rule of thumb is that your panels should be tilted based on your latitude plus 15 degrees. This theoretically optimizes their output for the winter months so that they're better facing a sun that runs low across the sky. In summertime you're not producing as well as you should, but sunlight is so much stronger and the days so much longer that you still come out ahead.

Of course that's for a fixed angle setup (such as my ground mounts). Even better are mechanisms that would allow you to adjust the tilt based on season or, for absolute best performance, a full up tracker.

I had ruled out trackers mostly because I didn't want to deal with yet another mechanical thing that inevitably would require maintenance at some point. Looking at my current mounts, however, I think that I might be able to upgrade them from being completely fixed angle to something that lets me adjust the tilt. Even if the new mounts only permitted three positions that would take care of all four seasons (as spring and fall would essentially be the same), with the panels gradually becoming more "vertical" over the year until the winter position is much more steeply angled to face the lower winter sun. An added advantage of this is that snow is considerably less likely to stick to the panels, thus reducing or eliminating the need to sweep them after a night of snowfall.

So this is something I've decided to bounce off Solar LeRoy at some point, and I might stick it on the "to do" list for next summer or the year after. There's no real rush at present and I certainly have plenty on my table so I'm not lacking for things to do, and besides I can't work on this during the winter anyway. But I am indeed pondering it... the panels are attached with larger L-shaped aluminum mounts that presumably would need to be replaced with larger C-shaped mounts that allowed movement, rather like a desk drawer slide. Some wiring might be too short to move freely and would have to be replaced, but I probably won't know that before I get at least a prototype mounting option in place to see how it might work.

Amazing what kinds of thoughts a little bit of snowfall can trigger, huh?


Steven in Colorado

Photos

My driveway this morning. There wasn't really all THAT much snow (about 4"), but it sure was a welcome sight.

Well, MOSTLY welcome that is. Not crazy about it socking in my panels!

Winter 2012 Project 1.3 -- Pouring the Upper Walls (Part 4)

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/4/2012

Another excellent weather day, the start of a bit of vacation for me--so I poured more concrete!

Winter 2012 Project 1.3 -- Pouring the Upper Walls (Part 3)

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/1/2012

Another astonishingly warm "winter" day... so what the heck, I poured more concrete!

This time I hadn't had the chance (realities of work) to do more than get 10 bags pre-positioned, so I wasn't able to do the full 15 bags I've done in the recent pours. Still it all went quite well and every bit as smoothly as it has the last couple of times; I fell into the rhythm that I established the last time around very quickly.

There were a couple of minor issues, nothing too serious though. With the other two rounds of pouring being focused first mostly on the uphill side around the (eventual) window and the second mostly along the rear and downhill walls, I found there were some irregularities over where the concrete had firmed up (only to be expected). So today I decided to focus on pouring into the "low spots" that hadn't been gotten to before--overall a good idea, but one that necessarily involved a lot of ladder moving as a result. In retrospect, it was probably good to have fewer bags to deal with as there was definitely more climbing/moving today than there had been before, and even though I started at about the same time in the morning I didn't really finish up much more quickly than I had before.

(Interlude -- While asking Colleen a couple of questions about how the builders did various things around Tanglewood she related to me how ICFs are typically built in more "rural" areas of countries like Mexico or Haiti. According to Builder Dale, having a mechanical mixer there such as the one I have is considered to be a great luxury--concrete mixing is almost always done by hand. The way it typically works is that a big ring of sand is poured in the middle of a flat, hard surface--preferably the middle of a road or parking lot, but a cleared out spot near the site will work just as well. The oldest member of the crew (generally the supervisor) handles a water hose and fills this ring of sand with water, and then bag after bag of concrete are dumped in and mixed by hand (usually by two or three stout young men) until the supervisor says the concrete is of good mixture, at which point several other boys dip five-gallon buckets into the mix and take them to the forms. Usually this means running up a series of 2x6 ramps that have been built along the outside until they can dump the bucket, and then back down they go for another load. This goes on all day, with swaps between the stirring-crew and the bucket-crews at some point (usually at lunch).

Hearing that, this makes my site look downright laid back don't it?)

It was a good day though, and each day like this puts me closer to the finish. As it stands now I'm somewhere between ~53% complete and ~66% complete, depending on which bag estimate (75 or 60) is closer to reality. Eyeballing it, I'd say I'm leaning towards the 75-bag estimate but it's hard to tell in some places.

Next up I've got to get the window framing in before I can pour another round. The mud there is about 6" below where the framing will be, and I want to make sure I've got that area all properly sealed up before there's any chance of the concrete reaching it. I'll do that and then stock up some concrete over the next week while I try to figure out when/if I can get another day of pouring in...

As I've said before, one step at a time!


Steven in Colorado

Winter 2012 Project 1.3 -- Pouring the Upper Walls (Part 2)

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/25/2012

So here I was facing another gorgeous day of weather just filled with the promise of being able to goof off in any way I wished...

...so of course I spent it pouring more concrete!

Seriously, I'm glad I was able to. As I've noted before I've got to take advantage of these rare warm late fall days while I can, and if it puts me another step closer towards knocking something off my Winter 2012 Project List, so much the better.

Overall things went more smoothly than they did a couple of days ago. Today I focused on the "downhill" side of the shed since I'd worked pretty exclusively on the "uphill" side by the window last time, and so this meant all ladder climbing since the walls are 8' high. Fortunately I've got the rhythm down now and developed a bit of a routine to tackling the problem. Being a computer guy by nature I could even break it down into code:

1. Each 80-pound bag of concrete takes four of these little quart-sized pails of water to make it good and wet (I prefer that for this kind of pour; the mud doesn't hang up on anything and flows freely);
2. Two pails of water go into the mixer, then a bag of concrete, then two more pails and turn on the mixer;
3. After 2-3 minutes the concrete is well mixed, so I scoop four shovel-fulls (a short shovel is perfect for this kind of work) into a 5-gallon bucket;
4. Said bucket is then hauled up to the top of the ladder (5 rungs) and dumped into the wall, where I can hear it running around the forms since it's so liquid;
5. Back down the ladder to get another four scoops and back up to dump it again;
6. Dump the last four- or five shovelfuls into the bucket by tilting the mixer to empty it;
7. Two more two pails of water and a bag of concrete into the mixer;
8. Two more pails and turn the mixer on;
9. While the mixer is mixing, haul that last bucketload up the ladder and down the wall it goes.
10. Repeat Steps 3 thru 9 until out of water or out of concrete!

I did have a couple of minor hiccups, though not with the pour itself. I knew I'd be doing all ladder climbs today and so thought I might only be able to mix 10 bags, so that's all I took up on my first stint. When I realized I had plenty more daylight I took my Gator back down to Tanglewood to fetch the other five bags only to run out of gas partway there (note to self--keep gas can in Gator full!), so I had to do some hiking back and forth to take care of that little annoyance. 

But the day was successful in all. I got another 15 bags into the wall, putting me at either 40% or 50% completion depending on which final estimate (60 bags or 75 bags) is closer to correct. 

The weather over the next couple of days is supposed to be cooler and wetter, so I may not have any more pouring opportunities until this coming Saturday (at least the weather forecast is promising). In the meantime I'll check on the status of the shed tomorrow and get some more concrete stockpiled in anticipation.

One step at a time!

Steven in Colorado

Posted by Tim in North Pole, AK on 12/2/2012 Tim's Forum Posts: 17 Journal Entries: 31 Interview Answers: 64 Average Forum Rating: 4.20 Tim's Selected Image 12/2/2012	I imagine you could probably take a break from the gym after all that work.
Posted by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 12/2/2012 Steven's Forum Posts: 87 Journal Entries: 738 Interview Answers: 255 Average Forum Rating: 3.87 My Construction Website Steven's Selected Image 12/2/2012	Heh... true, I don't really feel any guilt at all when I have a hearty meal that evening!  Steven in Colorado

Winter 2012 Project 1.3 -- Pouring the Upper Walls (Part 1)

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/23/2012

I knew going in that pouring the upper walls for the shed wasn't going to be as simple (relatively speaking) as pouring the lower walls was. After all, way back in October (was it only a month ago?) I had more sunlight and warmer temps. More importantly, I was only dealing with walls that were 4' high... I didn't have to lift those buckets of liquid rock nearly as high.

So I tried to approach this next round of pours a with some planning:

• Obviously with the shorter days I would be very unlikely to get all three courses poured in one go. I had estimated I could do perhaps 10 bags a day (the first three courses took around 54 bags), so I was looking at a good four or five days of work here. That's okay because ICFs make it easy to pour in stages (or "lifts"), so that didn't worry me overmuch.
  
  
• Lifting buckets up that high was going to be dangerous. I have a nice 8' ladder up there for basic work, but here I'd be hauling concrete around. It was going to get tiring quickly and I'd have to run smaller bucket loads on each run, so that would make it all take longer than before too.
  
  
• With weather coming in potentially any time, I couldn't pre-position all of my concrete at the site a few days ahead of time. Instead I would need to move up my estimated 10 bags/day up there the night before, covering it up with a heavy plastic tarp to hopefully protect it from any rain or snow.
  
  
• Since there's already concrete in the lower half of the walls I'd need to mix these batch a bit more runny than I had before, if only to ensure I'd get the new concrete around the dried concrete stuck on rebar from the previous pour.
  
  
• I would also need to keep the interior of the shed a bit more clear of debris and construction material than the last time around. Since I'd need to climb the ladder more and the only frack'in flat spot on this hillside is the one I dug, of necessity that meant that's where the ladder would have to go... and that meant tidying up the work area a bit. (Note that this is good practice anyway, though it's easy to let it slide.)
  

It wasn't as difficult as I'd be worried it might be, as it turned out. I was able to pour most of the  mix through the gap I left for the glass block window... as it turns out it's about 4' off the uphill ground (remember the shed is set into the hillside) and with a very wet mix like I was using, I could pour there and it would flow around most of the shed walls. That was a nice discovery. I did end up using the ladder for the last couple of bags just to more evenly spread the concrete around and that did indeed take more time, and I had some trouble getting the last of the concrete out of the bottom of the bucket... a handy repurposed gardening trowel fixed that problem.

Things went well enough that I actually finished out my 10 bags with plenty of afternoon sun to spare--so I came down to Tanglewood, loaded up another 5 bags, and proceeded to pour them into the shed as well!

So all said I'm either 20% or 25% of the way done as of this evening, depending on how many bags I'm going to need (my lower estimate is 60, my upper is 75). Either way it's a good step; give me a few more sunny days like this one and I'll have those walls done!  :)

Of course, then I have the roof... and the floor slab... and the hydronic system for the internal heating... and the generator slab...

One step at a time!

Steven in Colorado

Wow... Big Solar Generation

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/18/2012

While not quite on par with the previous record I noted last year, it's right up there!

Today started out fairly cloudy and I wondered how well we'd do on generation. Around 10:00 AM though, the clouds cleared up and the solar system started to make up for lost time...

As I've noted before, it's a little weird how solar works... rather than "filling" the batteries as quickly as possible, there are all kinds of mechanisms for trying to regulate the charging so as to be more effective and "deeper". That's fine and I (sort of) understand it, but the system is built with the assumption that there's lots of sunlight over a good amount of time and a reasonably-sized "load" (in this case, the batts and whatever the house was using).

So when the batts get a bit lower than they normally would (because the sunlight was weak) and then we suddenly get brilliant sunshine--well, the system goes into overdrive! :)

Gotta love it. The batts got well and truly charged over the course of the remaining sunlit part of the day, too.

Just thought this was neat.


Steven in  Colorado

Photos

Not quite as high as my prior record, but right up there.

Winter 2012 Project 1.2 -- Second Round of Verts Installed

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/17/2012

So today I took advantage of the goodly weather to tie in the upper shed "verts" (vertical rebar) into place and patching various weak areas in anticipation of the next round of pouring. The trickiest part was that this time around it needed to be cut slightly below the top of the upper course, since there will be anchor bolts and stuff up there for the roof and you don't want the rebar sticking up into that. On the lower section, I cut the lengths a bit long so as to help "tie" the lower and upper sections together a bit. This ended up with a bunch of smaller (roughly 1-foot length) sticks of rebar left over, but I've got A Cunning Plan for them!

The cutting and tying all went fairly well, though I nearly came to a standstill when I realized with a start that my handy-dandy Rotozip's metal cutting blade was nearly used up. I discovered this when I had two more cuts to make, went to make them and couldn't--the blade had worn away enough that the finger guard was actually blocking it from reaching the metal of the rebar! Dang.

So I did what any red-blooded American would do--I removed the finger guard so I could finish my cuts.

(Yes, it would have been extremely embarrassing if I'd cut off a finger at that point... fortunately I didn't.)

Once I got all the rebar cut and tied into place, I then went around and patched up various areas ahead of the next pour. I should really say the next round of pours---given the shortened days and colder weather, I probably won't be able to pour all three courses of ICF in one go. Now this is okay if a bit unorthodox--after all, houses are built in stages (called "lifts") since it's just too tricky to try to pour, say, 20 feet of ICF in one go. In my case it'll be difficult enough since I'll have to haul buckets of concrete up to the top of the wall and that's gonna slow me down in addition to the shorter days.

On the plus side the nights aren't that cold, and with ICFs you can pour down to around zero degrees. We're nowhere near that yet so with a few good days I'll be able to get the walls taken care of before (hopefully) the heavier, colder weather comes rolling in.

The small pile of leftover rebar I have will go into the new pad for the generator, planned for the uphill side of the shed. I had intended for that to happen nearly last in the sequence, but I might move it up to give the generator a better location for winter; up against the shed I can provide it with greater protection from the elements in the event of a really heavy snowfall. We'll see.

No pictures because, honestly, it just didn't occur... not that much exciting with rebar anyway!


Steven in Colorado

Bobcat on the Porch?

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/11/2012

When I got up this morning I saw that we'd had a light dusting of snow overnight. With the sun out it was melting pretty quickly, and so I thought I'd step out to check the readings on the propane tanks before things got muddy.

Opening the front door I was surprised to set a set of prints in the shaded snow, running down the steps from the porch to the driveway.  There weren't any prints coming UP the steps, just down. You can see a couple of shots below.

Colleen is inclined to think these are bobcat prints. In particular since there aren't any prints going up the steps, just down, it does lend credence to this thought--the cat would have had to jump up onto the porch from the front, then sniffed around before padding down the steps away from the house. I know they weren't Shadow's prints (my dog) since I hadn't let her outside yet.

So... did a bobcat actually come this close to the house?


Steven in Colorado

Photos

A shot of the print in the snow. The claws are very well defined; the pad less so.

Another shot with my footprint for size comparison.

Winter 2012 Project 6.1 -- Sealing Up the Attic Hatches

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/11/2012

I knew this particular project would go fairly quickly when I first put it forth on my Winter, 2012 "to do" list. I got a big chunk of it done today.

This weekend has been an annoying one for getting work done around Tanglewood. Literally all week long we had gorgeous weather, sunny skies, warm temps--and I was too darned busy at my "day job" to even think about taking a day to go pour concrete. As soon as we get to the weekend and I can get some work done outside--the temperatures plummet to the low double-digits, we get rain/snow/high winds, and if moisture wasn't falling from the sky then everything was so soaked that working on a slope with heavy objects really wasn't the bestest idea around.

Sigh.

So I decided it was time to get started on some of the other winter projects, and sealing up the attic hatches has arguably been sitting around the longest. I tracked down my 8' ladder (it had been moved to the upper deck during summer gardening projects), found the insulation I'd picked up last fall, and got to it.

The first two main hatches are now sealed nice and clean. It wasn't hard at all, just took a bit of measuring. The framing guys left plenty of room around the hatches for this kind of thing, for which I was profoundly grateful.

There's still one more attic hatch to be done but it'll be pretty fast once I get a crack at it. I've even decided to extend this particular project slightly by adding insulating tape to the house and apartment doors leading in from the garage--over the past few months we've discovered that if the wind outside blows just right you can get a bit of a wind/blowing sound around those doors. It's nothing major but I'd like to fix it before it becomes annoying to somebody.

So all in all... good progress!


Steven in Colorado

Winter 2012 Project 1.1 -- Second Stack Completed!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 11/4/2012

This took a bit of coordination this time around as I close out my Summer 2012 Projects list to the list of Winter 2012 Projects, but I had a warm and sunny weekend and was able to take advantage of it!

The focus today (since it was indeed good weather) was a continuation of my primary Summer 2012 Project, that being the building of the new solar shed.

I finished the day today putting the finishing touches on the second phase of my stacking for the new solar shed. It's interesting to note some of the things that went differently this time around.

When I did the first stack, I completed it in basically a single day. I had to go back over the next couple of days to put in the door framing and to scab various areas in anticipation of the first pour, but for the most part the most difficult task I had was in simply figuring out where to start and deciding whether it made more sense to cut a single block into two parts to better accommodate spacing or if I could find two smaller blocks to trim into place.

There was also some cleanup work to do before I got started this time around. When I laid out the first course I had to run a shop vac over the footer to remove any loose gravel and debris that had fallen onto it (amazing how “messy” a forest is) but that went pretty quickly. This time around though I had some bits of concrete in the block “teeth” where a bucket had slipped while pouring, so I had to pry out those little drabs (all hardened of course) before I could start stacking. This was all relatively easy, fortunately—the concrete wasn't really “sticking” as much as it was “pooled” into some of the teeth, so a little work with a flat head screwdriver and some judicious blowing cleared them out nicely.

This time around the stacking was definitely different, though. That fourth course, the one that goes atop the first three that I'd already poured, was somewhat difficult to get into place—and it's definitely going to need a touch more adhesive and scab work before I can pour again. The teeth in the blocks on the new fourth course didn't want to “line up” with the teeth in the blocks on the existing third course—I had to do a fair amount of shifting, and pushing, and even some hammering with a 3-pound sledge to get them into place. In a couple of places I couldn't make a full size block fit correctly (one end or the other just wouldn't sit right), so I ended up cutting it into portions and fitting them individually. (This wasn't particularly difficult, though of course 1,947,638 more little Styrofoam bits were liberated into the world as an unfortunate consequence—my apologies.) And with all that there are still some slightly larger gaps between blocks than there had been with anything I had with the earlier stack. As an engineer, this puzzled me somewhat until I figured it out...

...and in retrospect it was pretty obvious actually. The concrete I poured before had slightly warped/deformed the existing blocks that made up the first half of the shed, and this in turn was causing some problems with putting on the next course. Nothing serious and nothing you could see just looking at the wall, but quite enough to make a difference when stacking very engineered Styrofoam blocks atop each other. While building Tanglewood the ICF guys would take a couple of days before the pour to brace all up and down the walls. They also had some yellow guide wires in place that they would use to pull the walls taut if necessary, tying them off onto rebar driven into the ground, a heavy piece of equipment, and a couple of times even to a nearby tree.

For the shed of course, I didn't do that. The walls are pretty short and in the case of the uphill wall the dug-out portion of the hillside served as a handy brace.

One might reasonable wonder if I'm now wishing I had reinforced more, but honestly I don't think so. While getting the fourth course into place was more difficult than I'd expected, the overall result wasn't really much different than stuff I'd seen on Tanglewood proper, and a bit of scabbing work prior to the next pour should take care of things nicely. The rest of the stack went very smoothly once the fourth course was in place and that was all to the good. So while this was an annoying bit of a building conundrum, it didn't slow me down too awful much.

The work overall went fairly smoothly and I got all of the primary stack and rebar in by the end of the day. The final course was a bit of a challenge since it is so high up (6 courses == 8 feet at the top), so to properly access it to fit the block snugly into place, I had to toss some blocks onto the top of the existing solar shed, then climbed up there to fit them into place. I took the opportunity to glue down these blocks while putting them into place as well, figuring that I couldn't really get to this location very well in the first place so I had to make the most of it while I could. I really don't want any leaks or blowouts there when I go to pour!

There are still a couple of things I have to do before I can think about scabbing and pouring. I haven't done the block for over the door frame yet, as this will  mean a lot of measuring, cutting, and (probably) swearing. There's also the glass block window I'm planing to install on the uphill side of the shed to bring in some light (an ICF room is a very very VERY dark space!). I didn't want to compromise the insulation value of the shed of course (since part of the whole point of this ICF rebuild is to help keep the batteries warmer) and so I eventually picked out this puppy from Home Depot. Since I was running out of light by the time I got the last course stacked, I left the blocking out of the window for another day.

There's also (sigh) a bit of a problem with one corner of the stack, ironically the same downhill corner I had trouble with when I was pouring the footers. The ICF leading into one corner simply would not line up cleanly, and I had to cut a larger block into several smaller sections to get them to fit properly. Upon reflection I think this area must have bowed more as a result of the first pour than the other walls did, which accounts for the gappage between blocks here. I did the best I could with patching it up and straightening out the blocks with the internal rebar, but ultimately all I can do now is to patch and reinforce this area heavily before I pour. Once drywall and the exterior are up. you'll never see the difference anyway (there's an area on the back of Tanglewood that looked horrific before they covered it up with stone!)

But overall this went very well and I got a lot done in the smaller amount of daylight I had at my disposal. Over the course of this week and the coming weekend I hope to get the patches up and the the finishing work done, and then I can start to think about when I might be able to pour the rest of the wall.

Exhausting but very satisfying work.

Steven in Colorado

Photos

Fourth course looking from outside the back wall.	Shot of the fourth course from inside. This corner would cause me fits later.	Fourth course up, looking at the inside back wall. Very clean.
Fourth course looking from uphill aside the generator.	Fifth course looking from behind and slightly uphill. Note how it's almost taller than the existing shed here.	Fifth course from directly uphill. If you look carefully across to the far wall you can see where I had some problems fitting in the block.
Sixth course stacked with a block out for the window. Fortunately (didn't plan this, but it worked out well) the window will fit almost in the center of this opening.	Sixth course looking at the outside of the problematic corner. Looks okay here...	...but here you can see how the ICF portions really waver a bit. I can partially fix this with some heavy reinforcement, but the rest of it will just have to be heavily patched prior to the pour.
Looking across the sixth course to the door. You can see I still have some work to do here; I'll have to cut a block horizontally to make it all fit properly.

Tanglewood: Winter Plans 2012

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 10/31/2012

For many, Halloween (Samhain in an older tongue) marked the end of the Old year and the beginning of the New. In the spirit of this tradition (and since the first snow has officially marked the end of Summer, 2012) it seems only reasonable to put together a list of Winter, 2012 projects:

1. Gradually finish work on the new solar shed – A holdover from the Summer, 2012 list but something I can work on from time to time as weather permits. Colorado winters are blessed with many sunny and semi-warm (mid-40s) days, so a few of those once I've got the walls up and the roof on will go a long way towards letting me get the shed complete. I really want to get this thing done so as to give my batts a warmer environment (warm batteries are happy batteries!) and to make way for other projects next summer.
   

2. Install trim and thresholds around the house – We left out the thresholds during construction simply because we ran out of time, and trim on things like the steps were apparently a casualty of the fallout between the trim guys and Builder Dale. All the parts for both are here however and the recent installation of thresholds in the apartment while my mother was on vacation shows this isn't a terribly difficult endeavor. Installing these will go a long way towards making Tanglewood feel “more done” and will help me reclaim the space in my library where all of this stuff is currently stashed. Win-win!

3. Hang up stuff – When we moved out of Wyrdhaven, I was a bit astonished at just how many pictures, photos, mirrors, and tapestries we had on the walls. During the transfer of stuff from Wyrdhaven to Tanglewood I actually had to move where I was stashing these pictures and such twice, as the ever-growing pile completely took over first the kitchen bar area and then the floor/wall in front of said counter. Right now about half of them are living in the great room while the remainder are upstairs in the library, all leaning against walls awaiting deployment. Figuring out where everything goes will be a great project for a couple of cloudy, snowed-in winter days and as with the trim will make a long stride towards making Tanglewood feel more like a house and less like an unfinished project!

4. Reorganize the garage – Probably all guys say this from time to time, but my garage is a mostly disorganized mess. Removing the general construction trash at the end of last summer so I could get some of my cars in there helped a ton, mind you, but I never quite finished the job due to other, more pressing demands on my time. My noble 1973 Suburban (Suka is her name, by the way, though Colleen calls her the Yellow Behemoth--and yes she's a she) is still sitting down below the woodpile because the garage bay I was going to park her in isn't quite long enough with the existing shelving to actually put her there. Add to that the fact that I've learned a bit better how things could be organized so that t his is over t here and those shelves are over here, and a few days of rearrangement and reorganizing is clearly in order. Another perfect project for a cloudy, snowed-in weekend or two, I think.

5. Finish wiring up the house Ethernet – Mid summer shortly after we moved in was spent wiring up outlets around the house to support everybody's access, and honestly that all worked out pretty well. I never really finished the job however, only getting about half the hard lines done before other demands on my time made me set it all aside. I think some of the warmer winter days (it's cold up in that attic!) will be the perfect time to finish all this wiring, partly to get it done and partly to support some of the new TV installations that are coming (all the new TVs we'll be getting support some form of internet access).

6. Properly seal up the attic access hatches – This should be relatively simple. I learned at Wyrdhaven that if you properly sealed up your attic hatches with some form of insulating tape, it would go a long way towards keeping the heat in and the cold out in the winter, with the reverse being true in the summer. Tanglewood features three attic access hatches and they all should be properly sealed at some point. I've got the tape; just haven't had the time with all the work I've been devoting to the shed.

7. Finish tiling the apartment utility room – I got the easiest and most “accessible” part of this done just prior to our move to Tanglewood back in mid 2011, but there's more to do. The area under and around the pressure tank and inside the apartment closet await some very careful cutting, measuring, and installation work. This one will take a lot of time since I can't leave the area blocked up and messy each day when I'm done, but winter really is the perfect time to do it.

Summer 2012 Project Evaluation -- Too Optimistic!

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 10/28/2012

Since I've now had a quality morning sweeping an inch of snow off the solar panels, I guess it's finally official... Summer, 2012 is behind us. With that it's time to take stock of my Summer Projects (far too ambitious, as it turns out) and start to put together a list of Winter, 2012 projects:

• More solar panels - Got this one done fairly quickly, and I can definitely see a difference. On the bright and sunny days they don't really make much difference at all, but when it's cloudy, the added surface area is a decided plus. I anticipate this to continue through the winter, giving me a bit more time from the batts than I had last winter. Grade: A+.
  
  
• Rebuild the solar shed -- Boy, this has been the Monster Project, taking up FAR more time than I'd anticipated. Mostly this was frankly due to the excavation work; I couldn't get a machine in there to help me, and doing it by hand took considerably longer than I thought it would. There's a lot of rock in that hillside and I just didn't realize how much work that was going to end up being. Grade: C.
  
  The good news (such as it is) is that the shed is half enclosed now, and with our sunny warmish-days (even in mid winter) finishing the shed can be a prime candidate for my Winter 2012 list!
  
  
• Get the antler chandelier into the living room -- I haven't quite given up on this one yet for 2012. The word from the Milgard folks (who designed the patio door) is discouraging--they say the fixed portion can't be removed. That and the other research I did at least tell me what won't work. Still I have hopes with enough manpower I might be able to still get it through the other part, if I have folks who can hold it while we maneuver it around to see if we can get it in. I'll add this one to the Winter 2012 list. Grade: D.
  
  
• Widening the driveway -- Never got to it at all. The closest was to pile up all the dirt and gravel excavated from the shed to be ready when I do. This goes onto the Summer 2013 list.  Grade: D
  
  
• Move the 500-gallon propane tank up to the generator. -- This is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. It turns out that the location I had sussed out for the tank relocation is too close to the road (building code restrictions), so I'll have to figure out a  new location. I'm kicking this one into consideration for the Summer 2013 list; until then I'll give myself a grade of C here.
  

Summer 2012 Project 2.9 -- First Pour Completed

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 10/21/2012

Well it's taken FAR TOO FRACKING LONG since I got the first three layers stacked of the new shed stacked, but I was finally able to pour concrete today!

It's certainly been an interesting experience. The BuildBlock site gives a lot of information regarding proper stacking technique and estimating the amount of rebar your project will need. What it doesn't really do though is give much by way of useful guidance regarding anything besides using a concrete pumper truck to provide your mud. If you're stuck with having to do it one bag at a time as I am, you've got to kind of wing the whole thing.

(Let me jump right in here and tell any readers to NOT BUILD THIS WAY IF YOU CAN AVOID IT! My circumstances are rather funky in that it's a smallish shed, far up in the mountains, and I simply couldn't get a truck up here for any rational price. If you have a choice, by all means let concrete professionals bring up the mud... doing it all one bag at a time is a lousy way to get a lot of exercise.)

The biggest problem has been estimating how many bags of concrete I'd need for this first pour. Over the last couple of weeks I've tried to estimate how many bags of concrete (80-pound kind) it would take a half dozen times and managed to come up with three different--very different--answers. I couldn't figure out why they varied so much, nor could I find any reference online that helped.

So ultimately I decided that the best way to find out was simply to have a lot of concrete on hand and to just do it. To that end I spent the last few days stockpiling 46 bags at the site, got the mixer moved into the shed footprint so that it was level for ease of mixing/pouring--and then today I poured.

For the record, each course of the 4" block for my project took approximately 18 80-pound bags of concrete.

(It's interesting the differences between building Tanglewood and building a small shed. The BuildBlock site goes on at some length about the merits and necessities of heavily reinforcing walls prior to the pour, then spends a great deal of space to discuss how to handle blowouts (i.e., concrete breaking apart a seam or dislodging a block) should they happen. This is all very useful information and the builders did a LOT of this while they were building Tanglewood itself, but when you've working on a relatively small project like the solar shed, most of that information isn't needed. Bracing is only tangentially important where a given block is compromised in some fashion or where you have doors. Since blowouts are often caused by concrete that's too wet, the BuildBlock site cautions against this--but when you're pouring it a bucket at a time, a wetter mix makes it easier to work the concrete around rebar and utilities penetrations.)

But that's all getting off the main topic. I spent today mixing and pouring concrete one bucket at a time. Once I got into a good "working rhythm", things actually moved fairly quickly, and I only stopped when I simultaneously ran out of water for the mixer and most of my good daylight. I got the first two courses solidly poured and parts of the upper course poured before I ran out of daylight. I didn't have any problems working around the door frame at all, and none of the rebar nor any of the blocks tried to "float" (another potential problem when using a wetter mix). Everything looked in good shape with minimal water seeping out from the bottom of the walls, and I'm pleased to note that none of my scabs (patches made to holes) leaked at all.

I'll spend the next couple of days bringing up some more concrete and letting today's pour cure. I'll also proceed with moving up the rest of the block (currently down by Tanglewood) up to the site and getting it ready for stacking. While I could probably proceed without pouring the third course, I kinda want to get it done first, mostly because from here on out the pours are going to get more difficult since the walls will be higher--might as well do this course the easy way while I can. 

I say again that this particular summer project has taken FAR too long and it's frankly a race against winter at this point, but at least I took another big step forward today!

And call me crazy... but frankly this is a lot of fun... ;)


Steven in Colorado

Photos

Not a terribly good shot, but I was trying to show the concrete levels in the forms. I didn't fill them all the way to the top because I wanted to leave room to set the next vertical rebar into these forms.	I kinda made a mess doing all this work, but I had a pretty good rhythm going towards the end.	This was perhaps the largest "scab" work I did... the forms here had a good inch gap. No idea why, but this bracing did a great job of keeping the concrete from blowing out.
No leaks along the back wall, the longest unsupported and unbraced bit. You can see some of the caulking work I did here, though.

Summer 2012 Project 2.8.5 -- Ready to Pour

Posted to Tanglewood by Steven in Colorado Springs, CO on 10/13/2012

Well, everything is stacked for the first three courses, the concrete has been pre-positioned near the shed, and the mixer had been moved down inside the shed footprint itself (it's flat there). I've made the penetrations for the electrical and internet connections and patched up everything that looked like it might possibly spring a leak at some point. The door  has been framed and is (I hope) reinforced enough for the pour.

I think I'm finally ready to pour assuming I get a decent weather weekend! This coming weekend is looking promising... fingers crossed!


Steven in Colorado

Photos

The mixer is ready to go. It's going to be a great deal of trouble when to time comes to move it BACK out of here, but that's for later.	The concrete is all stacked up and ready to go... 56 bags in all. I *think* that will be enough for the first three courses.	Closeup of the door framing and the doubled-rebar flanking it. This is recommended practice for all doors and windows with ICF construction.
Long shot from behind the shed giving a better view of the door frame.