Day 82: Insulation, grading and garden wall

The folks from Tri County Insulation finished spraying foam insulation today. They completed a 7 inch average thickness application in the entire ceiling. The R-value of the 7 inch layer is approximately 40.

Tri County Insulation also installed UltraTouch batt insulation in the interior stud walls. This insulation will reduce sound transmission between the bedroom, bathroom and family room.

Steve continued doing a great job grading and shaping the landscape while Justin, Trevor and I built a small garden wall by the southeast corner of the home. The wall will prevent collapse of the east hillside in front of the bedroom patio door.

Green comment for today:
Consider using UltraTouch batt insulation from Bonded Logic to insulate your wall or ceiling cavities. The advantages compared to typical fiberglass batt insulation are:

• It is made from recycled cotton denim resulting in lower manufacturing embodied energy
• It emits no harmful particulate matter into the air resulting in improved indoor air quality
• You can touch it during installation without getting irritated skin

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to leave a comment.

Day 28: Pouring the first wall lift

Las Animas Concrete and Pacific Coast Concrete Pumping were back again today. This time concrete grout was pumped to fill the network of horizontal and vertical cells in the APEX blocks. The grout is inspected for slump to be sure it is not too thin or too thick. Here is a vid of Mark, the inspector from PSI, performing the slump test.

We passed with a slump of 8 inches, the thinnest mix allowed per structural engineering. A thin mix is desirable because it penetrates hard to reach areas more easily than a thick mix. Mark verified proper rebar placement before pumping. He also verified that grout filled the cells by poking a ¼” diameter rod through the APEX block skin at the bottom course. The rod came out wet with concrete indicating proper fill. Finally, Mark took samples of the grout which will be tested for compressive strength over the next several weeks.

Here is a pic of the pumping crew in action: from left to right, Trevor, Mark, Georg, Todd, Joshua & Justin.

The tasks were:

• Hold the hose over a cell with minimum grout spillage while concrete is shooting out at about 3 feet per second.
• Move the vertical rebars up and down in the cells to help consolidate the grout.
• Clean any excess grout off the top of the blocks.
• Center the vertical rebar in the cell after consolidation.
• Repeat for 100 cells.

Stapling plugs after filling cells under the window openings.


Marty strikes a pose in front of some extra grout used as fill against the east wall. This grout will help facilitate water drainage at this underground wall.

A beam support bracket set in place.

Rafael has a little fun while monitoring the hose.

We finished in just a few hours with no blowouts. We have the rest of the afternoon off, wohoo!

Pastel Green comment for today:
The Portland cement ingredient in concrete has high embodied energy which typically classifies a product as non-green. However, the APEX block cells minimize the amount of concrete needed to make an acceptable structure compared to a typical Insulated Concrete Form (ICF). Additionally, the house is expected to last hundreds of years making the use of concrete more tolerable from a life cycle analysis standpoint.

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Day 11: Pouring footings

The footing trenches passed inspection by Santa Cruz County in the morning. Concrete for pouring the footings was requested immediately after passing inspection. A concrete pump is used to distribute concrete into the trenches more easily than moving the concrete truck around. Here is a pic of the Pacific Coast Concrete Pumping set up.

The Las Animas concrete truck showed up soon after the concrete pump. The truck parked so that it could pour concrete directly into the inlet of the concrete pump – see pic below.

The pump was turned on and a person on the end of the hose directed the concrete into the trench – see vid below.

Approximately 25% of the Portland cement in the concrete mix is replaced with fly ash, a by product of coal combustion. The use of fly ash has several benefits:

• it replaces Portland cement - a material with high embodied energy - with a material that was once considered a pollutant and waste product
• it makes the concrete stronger
• it makes the concrete easier to pump
  

The crew followed behind the hose. People poked shovels into the concrete to help it settle. Several people hand troweled a smooth top surface while one person checked with the laser to make sure we had a level footing – see pic below.

After 2 empty concrete trucks and a couple hours, the work was finished – see pic below.

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