10. Well and Septic System

There is no public water service to my lot, so we had to dig a well. The neighbors on both sides of our lot were always bragging about how their wells were only 150-180 feet deep, and produced over 100 gallons-per-minute. Naturally, I figured that if my well were halfway between theirs, surely I'd be in the same aquifer. I picked my spot and contacted a well-drilling company. When the contractor arrived with his rig, he said that my chosen location was a bit too far up the hill, and suggested a lower spot which would make it easier to get his truck into position. So they set up and started drilling. All morning. 200 feet, 300 feet. 400, 500, 600, 700 feet. Mid-afternoon, the contractor said he was sorry, but it looked like that site just wasn't going to produce anything.  He felt bad that he didn't use the site that I had originally chosen. We agreed that if we didn't hit water by 800 feet, we'd try a different location. (Of course, I'd still be charged for the dry hole.) But we didn't have to, as about 50 feet later we had a gusher.  It pegged the flow meter at 100 gallons per minute, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

For those who aren't familiar with wells (as I wasn't), a well is known as artesian if water constantly flows out of it without being pumped. That's what we thought we had at first. It's not really an ideal situation, because the constantly seeping water makes a permanent swamp around the well-head. But after a few hours our water level settled down to about 14 inches below the surface, which was perfect, according to the contractor. We capped it off for the time-being.

About a year later I had a pump put in, a monster 5-horsepower variable-speed job. A year after that, I hooked electricity up to it for the first time, and started pumping water. At first the water had an overpowering sulfur smell, which diminished to merely unpleasant after flowing for a few hours. I've been told by water-quality experts that I can get pure, odor-free water from the well, but I'll need a powerful filtration system. Great, more unforeseen expense.

The sand filter, before burial.

Then there was the septic system. Once again, I hired a well-known local contractor, who proceeded to install a rather complex system.  This consisted of two 1000-gallon concrete tanks, a pump, a sand-filter area, and a leach field.  There were various delays, so this took a few months to complete. Eventually, everything was installed and buried. Except for the inlet opening into the first tank and a couple of plastic manhole covers, you'd never know it was even there. All that was needed was a quick inspection before I could make the connection to the house.

Well, nothing is ever that easy. The inspector found that the inlet into the first tank was about 2" higher than the sewer outlet from the house. We all know what doesn't flow uphill, so there were two options. First, we could do some major excavation, removing both giant tanks, dig the holes a little deeper, and re-bury the tanks. The contractor was barely getting by as it was, and that kind of effort and expense would have probably driven him out of business. I just couldn't do it to him.

The only other option was to chip out the foundation wall to expose the sewer line, rework the pipe to exit the house about 6" higher, and pour new concrete around it. So that's what I did. It took a couple of weeks to jack-hammer a hole big enough to work in, cut and re-route the sewer lines (There turned out to be two of them), and repair all the damage to the concrete wall. I managed to do it without cutting any of the horizontal foundation rebar, but working through those little holes felt like building a ship in a bottle. 

The new angle of the line from the house to the septic tank inlet is more than adequate to allow normal flow. It was a lot of effort, but everything is working fine now.

11. Removing the Braces

After the slabs over the basement had cured for about 60 days, it was time to remove all the bracing that had been holding them up. The entire basement was a dense maze, which you could barely crawl through.

Luckily, my daughter was home from college and available to help dismantle the bracing. With walls every two feet, this was really a tremendous amount of lumber, and took over a month to remove. Everything was fastened together with screws. We stacked the best of the boards for later use, and hauled the rest to BioMass, a local electrical plant that burns scrap lumber in a state-of-the-art furnace to make clean electricity.

The three pictures at left were all taken from the same position before, during and after lumber removal. The carpenters had built a false floor in the theater, so that the temporary bracing walls would all be the same size. The structure of this floor consisted of 12" engineered wooden I-beams which would be used permanently later for the upper floors of the house.  It was great to finally see the true dimensions of the theater. There are three heights of stadium-seating, with 24" separation of height for each section. The entrance is at the left rear, with steps running down the left side of the room. Some day this room will be outfitted in full 1930s Art Deco movie-palace style, with red velvet drapes and crystal chandelier.

Here's the view from the opposite direction once all the debris was hosed out, looking towards the back of the theater. It's designed for 17 seats, plus (maybe) a balcony on the right side with two smaller seats.

The main part of the basement is the game room. This will contain a pool table, air-hockey board, foosball table, dart board, card table, area for board games, ice-cream bar, and more. The game room will be outfitted in Jules-Verne style, like the interior of the Nautilus from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". There's even an underwater window. This Victorian-mechanical motif is becoming popular, and even has its own name - "Steam Punk".

This is the underwater window that will someday look into the deep end of the pool (If my wife lets me build a pool!)

12. Prefab Walls

Construction on the house was dormant for nearly a year due to lack of money, but in 2009 we sold our other house and had a little equity to begin work again. The basement was in, as well as the main floor slab, so the next order of business was to start framing the walls. After pricing stick-built construction, I decided to go with pre-fab walls. A local company called Pacific Wall Systems had established a very good reputation for providing high quality walls for less than I would have paid for the lumber alone.



A framing crew would still be necessary, but only to place the walls and fasten them together at the edges. Pacific Wall Systems would put me in touch with a crew, and also coordinate the building of roof trusses. I gave them a set of plans and lent them the balsa-wood model of the house. Within a few days, they had the plans entered into their computer and were ready to start making walls. Their operation is extremely precise, with laser-line guides projected onto the work tables, and everything is cut by computer.

With the walls being built off-site, it was time to install the large steel frames which were needed to stiffen the window areas of the dining room and library.

These are called moment frames and are engineered to allow the house to withstand hurricane-force wind loads and earthquakes. (Neither of which have ever been much of a problem around here.)  The frames had already been built by a local fabricator, so we just had to crane them into place and try to get the floor bolts to line up. It took a little work with a cutting torch, but we got them installed. With a wall-thickness of 3/4-inch, these things are HEAVY! The frames were temporarily braced with 2x4s until they could be welded together a few weeks later.

Within a couple of weeks, Pacific Wall Systems had the first-floor walls done and trucked them out to the lot on a large flatbed. Then a crane truck lifted each section into place while the framing crew drilled holes for the foundation bolts to slip through, and nailed the walls edge-to-edge.

Usually, the truckload will contain all the walls needed for that level of the house, which can be finished in one day. But, because of the size and complexity of this place (there is only one rectangular room in the house), the crane operator quickly got ahead of the framing crew. A lot of the foundation bolts happened to come up right in the middle of a stud, so there was some custom-cutting. Since we wouldn't have the crane for a second day, we ended up just stacking most of the walls as near as possible to their final destinations.

The smaller walls could be tilted up and fastened in place by hand. Luckily, the framing contractor had a telescoping forklift, which we were able to use as a makeshift crane to lift the larger wall sections. The framing crew would put in 6 or 7 wall sections per day, then I'd put in another couple after they went home. In about a week, the first-floor walls were up.

13. Top Floor

With the walls for the main floor in place, the framing crew started on the top level. The floor itself was simple - floor joists were laid across the top of the walls, and sheets of plywood nailed down on top. I don't like springy, squeaky floors, so I spent a little extra money and used 1-1/8-inch SturdyFloor plywood instead of the flimsy 3/4-inch sheets that are commonly used these days. Adhesive was also applied between the joists and plywood to further eliminate squeaking.

The upper set of pre-fab walls were craned in and stacked on the deck. Most of these were plain stud walls with no sheathing, so they were quite a bit lighter than their lower-floor counterparts. This meant that they could usually be tilted up into place by two or three men, so installation only took a few days. There were also several walls that had to be hand-built on the site.

As the walls went up, the pre-fab roof trusses for each section were placed on top of them in groups. These would then be moved by hand to their proper spacing and nailed or bolted in place. Almost immediately, another part of the framing crew would start nailing the roof sheathing onto that section. This locked the trusses in place and stiffened up the whole structure.

My framing contractor had talked me into using TechShield 5/8-inch roof sheathing. TechShield is a good product, which has a layer of aluminum on the underside, designed to reflect radiant energy back into the house. This is ideal if you are going to have an attic with an insulated floor, but I plan to have all the insulation in the roof itself, with a room-temperature attic.  This is known as an unvented or "hot" roof, and is done by spraying expanding foam insulation between the rafters, right up against the roof sheathing. I found out later that TechShield does not recommend their product for this application, because the foam has a hard time adhering to the shiny aluminum while it's hardening. Note: A few years later I had the spray-foam applied, and it seemed to adhere just fine.

By this time, the vaulted ceilings in the dining room, library and bedrooms were starting to look rather impressive. The framing crew was fearless, scampering across the great spans to nail on the roof sheathing.  Even with safety harnesses, it was scary to watch them. Once all the exterior sheathing was installed, the house looked great -  clean, fresh wood!

14 - Windows

With the framing done and the sheathing on, it was time for windows. Of course, they had all been ordered months ago. I already had the basement windows, which had been built two years prior to this, so I installed them while waiting for the rest of the windows to be completed. The basement windows are Jeld-Wen, which is a company located just 60 miles away. I like to support local companies whenever possible, but the price was very high for those 9 basement windows, and the Jeld-Wen estimate for the remaining 86 windows was astronomical. So I decided to go with Sierra Pacific windows, which saved me about a third on the price. The only compromise was that I couldn't get oak for the interior wood, and had to settle for fir.

One thing that added to the cost of the windows was the custom nature of the design. I wanted a round top for all the windows which would be set in stone walls, and octagonal tops for all those which would be set in stucco walls. Anytime you deviate from standard straight-top windows, the price goes up. Installing the basement windows was easy, since they were small and easy to reach.

But when the first batch of the main windows arrived, it quickly became apparent that installing some of the bigger ones was going to be a major undertaking. I got a couple of inexpensive winches, bolted them to the roof, built some temporary scaffoldings, set up a couple of ladders and slowly cranked the windows up into place. Working alone (as usual), this was an agonizingly slow process. I would climb up to one of the winches, give it a little crank to raise up that side of the window a couple of inches - tink, tink, tink. Then climb all the way to ground, cross to the other ladder, climb up to the other winch, and do the same thing - tink, tink, tink. For hours. Each of the larger windows took at least a whole day.

 

These windows were very heavy because of the thick double-pane glass. The tension on the pulley straps was very high, and I was always a bit afraid that one of them might let go, swinging the window like a pendulum and hurling me off the ladder. But everything held together.

After installing a few windows this way, I decided that a boom-lift was the only way to go. Prices for renting one were in the $200-per-day range, plus the cost of trucking the thing in and out. Realizing that with the windows, roofing, stucco, etc., I was probably going to need a lift for about a year, I started looking into buying a used one. I found one on Craigslist in Bend, Oregon, about 200 miles away, and my wife and I drove there to look at it. A contractor was going out of business and had a (very) used 66-foot Condor for $9500. He was even willing to deliver it to my jobsite, so I couldn't pass it up. I figured I could use it for a year, and probably sell it for about the same price I paid, saving thousands of dollars in rental fees.
 

If you've never been on one of these lifts, it's quite an experience. For one thing, it doesn't look like it could possibly extend all the way out without tipping over. The cage is supposed to hold 500 lbs, fully extended. Of course the first thing I tried was loading it up, extending it out all the way horizontally, and bouncing up and down. The base stayed firmly planted on the ground. However, the cage sways a lot, and I wouldn't recommend it for those prone to seasickness. The lift worked great, and suddenly I was putting in four or five windows a day, instead of just one.  By attaching the windows to the outside of the cage, I could insert them into their openings with surgical precision.



The boom-lift engine in mid-repair.

After about a week the engine in the lift suddenly started making a horrible clanking noise. I thought it had thrown a rod bearing, so I took off the oilpan and checked all the bearings. Nothing wrong. I put the bottom-end back together and took off the cylinder head. There was a small bolt embedded in the top of one of the pistons. It had come out of the engine governor, and got sucked into the intake. I got the engine back together, but the governor didn't work at all, so the engine revved uncontrollably. Unable to find the exact part I needed, I found something close on eBay (evidentally a governor from a WW2 tank), and was able to adapt it. Everything worked perfectly, and the engine has been purring ever since.

About this time, I also installed a roof hatch on top of the house, which allows access from the cupola to a "Widow's Walk" over my office, a 100-sq.-ft. sun deck with an iron railing. It's the highest point on a tall house, so the view is terrific. I ordered this water-tight hatch online, and it was pretty easy to install.

The access ladder was slightly more difficult. I ended up with an accordian-type unit, which folds up against a trap-door. The whole thing is counter-balanced with springs, so it hardly takes any force to raise or lower it. I got this system through Home Depot. It's only available by mail-order, but it only took a few days to arrive. Guests really enjoy climbing the ladder and popping out the "submarine hatch".

For several weeks I was greeted by a large barn owl in the house when I arrived each morning. I had to spend about 20 minutes trying to show it where an open window would allow it to get out. It was very cute, but messy - not a good pet. A different one has been back lately.

After several weeks of installation, all the windows were in and looking good. With the elimination of the wind whistling through the place, I finally felt there was a difference between "inside" and "outside" the house.
 

The windows were finally in!

Click on 'Older Posts' at the bottom of this page for more.

 

15 - Stone Work

The exterior walls of the basement and towers will be faced with stone. The rest of the house will be smooth stucco. Most of the stone masons around here like to use 4"-thick stone, because it's easy to stack and goes up pretty quickly. But at 25 cents a pound, stone that thick was not an option for me. By using 1-inch-thick stone instead, the cost per square foot of wall facing would only be 1/4 as much.

But I still wanted to give the impression that the rock was thick, so I studied the look of a thick-stone wall. I found that I could mimic the look fairly well by laying the stone mostly horizonally, and when not possible, at least have the grain running horizontal. I was able to find thin rock at the local stoneyards, and it even had a "grain", but it took a lot of hand-picking to get suitable ones.
The only problem was the corners, where the exposed edges were a dead give-away of the true thickness. So, how to hide the corners? In European architecture, it has been common for centuries to have columns of thick, smooth stones at each corner of the structure, then fill in between them with smaller, rougher rocks. These cornerstones are usually staggered for strength. Perfect - that look would fit in nicely with my design. But what to make the cornerstones out of?

There are some Engineered Stone products (Robertson Stone, for example) which offer pre-cut corners of real stone, but the cost would be prohibitive for me, and they only make 90-degree angles, not the 45-degrees which all my corners would require. So I decided to cast them myself from concrete. This turned out to be fairly easy. I built 5 forms out of plywood, added some rebar and a metal strap (to help secure the finished corner to the wall), and poured quick-set concrete into them. It was a fairly hot day, so within two hours there were 5 finished corner pieces.

The molds were held together with screws, so it was easy to take them apart, release the finished cornerstones, then screw the forms back together.  I sprayed a light coat of Pam cooking spray on the forms each time, to act as a mold-release.

My daughter and her boyfriend helped with making the corner pieces, and in a couple of weeks we had a stockpile of about 150 of them. This will probably be about half of what I'll need, but it's easy to start up the production line again when I've used up what we've made.

Attaching the cornerstones to the walls is time-consuming, but not very hard. First, I coated the ICF block with a waterproof membrane (I use Blue Max, but there are many available), and put on lath (chickenwire). Then I just screwed the stones to the wall, using the tabs I had cast into the stones. I used Tapcon screws which were long enough to go through the 2" of styrofoam and into the concrete core of the wall.

The next step has been a bit controversial. I injected a spray-foam adhesive behind the stones, filling in all the gaps. This is a black outdoor version of the popular yellow foam, and is typically used to hold rocks together in landscape elements, like waterfalls. When I hired a stone mason to do some later walls, he insisted on using the traditional thin-set morter construction. It will be interesting to see which method holds up best in 50 years (when I'm 112).

Now, how to deal with the round-top basement windows in the stone walls? At first I was going to cut the stones around those arches, but then I thought that a concrete trim would look nicer, and match the corners. I asked a stone mason about this, and he thought commercial trim for those windows would be about $100 each.

Wait a minute...if I could cast the cornerstones myself, wouldn't it be just as easy to make window trim? Yes, it turned to be quite easy. I used masonite to make curved forms, which were tacked down to plywood. Straight sections for the window sills were even easier. I added two pieces of rebar in each section, and the result was total success -- great-looking trim for about $4 per window!

This is as much of the stonework as I have done working alone. I tend to over-think each piece, which makes the work extremely slow-going. I hired a stonemason to do several more walls, but he was only about twice as fast as I was, and the labor costs were a little too high. I'll tackle this again in the spring, perhaps laying out the stones for each wall on the ground first.