Day 103: Interior plastering and ceiling texture

On Friday Joshua, Trevor and I completed interior gypsum wall plastering. It is great to have all of the APEX blocks finally covered. Here is a pic of the sliding glass patio door on the bedroom south wall.

Marty applied and knocked down ceiling texture while Trevor, Raphael and I shuffled scaffolding around. Between the rain this week and the water evaporating from the plaster, the house is humid like Florida. Below is a pick of Marty up top with Trevor and Raphael below. Thanks for reading. I appreciate your comments.

Green comment for today:
When selecting finishes, especially those inside the home, consider the simplest materials with the least amount of additives. This will result in the best indoor air quality. For example, my interior wall finish is 99% gypsum plaster (plaster of Paris).

I chose to avoid premix or ready mix materials because they contain vinyl compounds which act as binders. Once applied, the Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) portion of the binder will evaporate into your home atmosphere potentially affecting respiration in folks with chemical sensitivities. It is true that the VOC concentration will reduce dramatically over time, but it is best to not allow the material in the home if it is not needed.

To determine what is in a product, look at the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). This can be confusing when a manufacturer decides to include a series of products on one MSDS. You sometimes see the words "may contain one or more of the following" in the Composition/Ingredients section of the MSDS. In this case, you need to call technical support to see if the particular product you are interested contains any offending ingredients.

Day 100: Interior plastering

On Monday we applied gypsum plaster to the interior north wall. It is nice to see the cold looking APEX blocks covered with a uniform finish. Here is a pic of the great room portion of the wall taken from the loft.

The guys from Independent Energy Systems were back again today to install another rack for the photovoltaic array. Thanks for reading. I appreciate your comments.

Day 83: Swales, plaster preparation and another retaining wall

Steve completed creating 2 swales; one to the east (uphill) of the home and one to the west (downhill). I will plant fruit and nut trees in the downhill sides of the swales. Winter stormwater surface runoff is slowed down, spread out and sunk into the soil by a swale. Soil under a swale will still have water in the drought season after surrounding soil has dried out. This will reduce the amount of irrigation water needed for the fruit and nut trees. The east swale will reduce the amount of surface storm water reaching the home. The west swale will reduce the amount of surface water running off the property from the south yard. Here is a pic of the east swale.

Some of the other tasks started or completed today:

• In preparation for plastering, Joshua cut and installed pieces of diamond mesh metal lath to the exterior of several windows.
• Justin applied weatherproofing to several second story windows
• I applied foam insulation around the interior of several windows
• Alan Dodd of Live Oak Design delivered beautiful doors for the bedroom, bathroom, closet and entry. Alan is also building the kitchen cabinets. All of the wood used is FSC certified.
  
• Erik installed some Cat5 cables and began working on a conduit to run audio wiring from the north to the south side of the family room
  
• Trevor waterproofed the southwest retaining wall we built yesterday
• Trevor built a small retaining wall on the northwest corner of the utility room. The retaining walls were built from leftover pieces of APEX block.
  

Stella status:
She is still getting bigger and about 5 months old,

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Day 62: More porch beams, more wall framing, windows and electrical

It was a busy day. Justin installed the last 4 curved glulam beams over the porch.

Marty began framing two interior walls around the bathroom. Trevor and I prepared the openings to accept windows and doors. The window and door delivery happened in the afternoon. We unloaded the truck and had time to install 3 windows before the end of the day. Here is a pic of the loft casement window opening to the south.

Erik the electrician showed up and began installing electrical wiring boxes in the wall. Rectangular pockets are carved in the APEX wall material to accept the boxes. Since the wall is 85% foam, this is an easy process. In the pic below you can see some boxes for wall sockets in the bedroom. The white spray painted lines represent where channels will be routed to accept Romex cable.

Green comment for today:
The Greenspec online product directory provides a great starting point in your green product search. It may not list all green products available in a category, but you can be sure that listed products have passed a thorough screen for greenness. This is where I first heard of Loewen windows.

Stella status:
Stella got stung or bit in the cheek by something today - probably a wasp. Her face was so swollen I couldn't bear to take a pic. Her tail was still wagging the whole time, even though she was probably hurting.

Thanks for reading. I enjoy reading your comments.

Day 32: Beams, bucks and blocks, oh my!

I sanded beams after the work day ended again today, so this will be another short post.

• Completed the 9th course of APEX block.
• Assembled the last window buck.
  
• Installed all 2nd story window bucks.
• Sanded 2 more 4X10 ledgers.
• Installed all ledgers in the kitchen.
  

Here is a pic at the end of day 32. It is really exciting to see all of the window openings in place.

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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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