Selecting the site

When the last of our kids left home, we started looking to downsize our living arrangements.  We have always been avid nature lovers, and having lived in the city since the 70’s, we were looking for a little more elbow room.   We spent about a year of Sunday drives looking for a likely place to call home.  

The site we ended up with backs up to a wilderness area of a county park our family has enjoyed for years.  Last year a rehabilitated juvenile eagle was re-introduced to the wild at this park, joining a nesting pair in the area. It is about 400’ from the Flat River where it changes from a nice trout stream to the backwater of a power company reservoir.  It is near the end of a cul-de-sac limiting traffic to a trickle.

We purchased just under five acres.  The property was last actively farmed in the 1930’s as a pig farm, and is bounded on the north and east with 60’ red pines.  The remaining ground has filled in over the intervening years with elm, maple, oak, black cherry, red pine, white pine, scotch pine, cedar, jack pine, and sassafras.  We have a couple of nice stands of staghorn sumac, and a surfeit of autumn olive which seems to have found ideal growing conditions. 

The previous owners had cleared a large area in the center of the lot which is in native meadow grasses and flowers.  We have a few invasive species that we will weed out over time including Canadian goldenrod, knapweed, and the autumn olive.  We do have wild strawberries, thimbleberries, big bluestem, poison ivy, and purple love grass which leaves a purple/blue haze over the meadow when in seed. 

Among the fauna we have seen: a dozen deer swarming the site, the eagle pair, an osprey, many songbirds, fox, woodchuck, the mother of all raccoons, a small skunk, rabbit, and several frogs, turtles and snakes. 

This only brings us to the why.  This site location defies every other instinct for sustainable building.  We will no longer enjoy the assault of city noises, or light pollution.  We will be located about four miles out of a small town with all of the requisite life support services.  We will not experience any greater commuting time than what we had as city residents. 

We will also be installing a large garden and perhaps failing miserably as farmers, but we both have a hankering to get our fingers dirty.  I figure the critters get a share, we get a share, and anything else we produce in excess of our needs we will send to the food bank.

Which brings us to the topic of chickens and goats.  I half jokingly mentioned to my wife that I would like chickens and goats.  The goats to keep the grass mowed, and the chickens for pest control, eggs, and soil amendments.  I inserted images of them on some early building elevations, and they refuse to go away much to my wife’s horror.  The land is zoned Rural Agricultural, and as such we are entitled to retain 4 cows, 4 horses, 9 pigs, 9 sheep, 9 goats, and 97 chickens.  She is sure we will just be baiting in the local carnivores.  I will keep you posted.   

PICs - Forming the ICF foundation walls

Footings and Foundations

Progress this week has been steady.  Contrary to our expectations we found the soils to be coarse sand with no moisture at the bottom of the excavation.  We formed and poured the footings, and have set the Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) for the foundation walls in preparation for a pour tomorrow.  The plumber, well contractor, and HVAC contractor have installed sleeves in the wall for sanitary and water supply lines.  A basement egress window is framed in the foam. 

The foam walls have an R value (the ability to Resist the transfer of heat) of 24.  We will be adding another three inches of foam to provide a total R value of 38 for the wall assembly.  The ICF form is an 8’ long by 18” deep collapsible form which gets good production, low shipping costs.  The form is reversible, and scrap pieces as small as 2” can be used to minimize waste which is recyclable.   

For reinforcing steel there are two #5 bars in the footing and a 2’ x 4’ grid of reinforcing steel in the walls.  These are locked into the ICF forms in clips provided in the form design.   

We were fortunate to discover a company by the name of The Insulation Depot (insulationdepot.com) which recovers insulation from roofing tear-offs and manufacturer end runs.  They have about 50 warehouses around the county where they capture, store, resell, and ship the material at about half retail cost.  The material is slightly damaged, but any imperfections can be filled with spray foam.   

Insulation Depot never knows what their inventory will be from one day to the next.  Our project would have been best served with 2” high density extruded polystyrene (XPS), but they had a manufacturer’s end run of 1” tongue and grove which will require a little extra handling.   

We are planning to install cement stucco on the perimeter of the home.  As this is an expensive and labor intensive operation, we are planning to contribute a little sweat equity.  We will be taking the opportunity over the next couple of weeks before we backfill the foundation to develop our stucco skills on the foundation walls.  I will write more about the stucco materials and process in a later issue. 

With the very permeable soils, we are not concerned with water infiltration and have modified the foundation waterproofing specifications.  Originally we intended to install a peel and stick membrane.  With the low probability of any problem, we will experiment with installing used EPDM rubber roofing membrane.  In addition to being used and in need of attention, there are two drawbacks to EPDM roofing material.  First is that EPDM is vapor permeable, but if it directs water to the footing drains instead of through the basement wall we can live with that.  The second issue with EPDM is UV degradation from sunlight which will not be a problem in this application.     

A couple of our local commercial roofing contractors retain roof membrane from re-roofing projects and give it away to anyone who is interested.  People use it to roof their hunting cabins, or as liners in landscaping ponds.  We had already planned on using this material for the stormwater collection system, and this fits in very nicely with the materials re-use ethic.