Very nice to see this thread come alive again, I just noticed.
We have a persistent leak. Our house is standard Terradome construction, per my earlier comments in this thread.
The shop has 8' sidewalls, the barn has 11' to allow a hayloft. The leak is located along this common wall. From the roof side you have the shop dome and then a vertical wall for the extra 3' on the barn. The shop module was poured first, including the dome. The barn was poured next. Since they share a wall, this leaves a cold pour between the shop sidewall/dome and the 3' extension for the barn on the common wall. At approx. the height of the cold pour is where the anchor bolts holding the 2x12 loft floor attach to the wall. We have consistent water coming in (slow drip, wet wall spots and dribbles). I have just realized that it is coming in the holes drilled for the anchors that attach the loft floor to the wall. No, they did not use SS anchors...
The loft is not in danger of falling down due to there being a lot of lally columns supporting it around the edge. I would, however, like to clean this up. I've had two contractors dig it up, things got better each time (we used to have a spreading puddle after a rain). This summer I dug it up (well, my 21 year old daughter and her friend did). There appeared to be a definite low spot in the poly/bentonite sheets used in the valley (pooling water along edge), so I peeled that back and poured in granulated bentonite. I had some leftover poly/bentonite sheeting, so I covered the granulated with that, lots of overlap on seams. Above that was the drain pipe, rock, landscape cloth. We left the hole (about 3' x 7') open to see what would happen. We made no discernible change in the leak.
It seems to us that the water could enter the cold pour and travel horizontally to where it prefers to leak, maybe that is happening here.
In the first pic you can see the shared wall from the barn side. The smoke alarm is mounted on a double 2x12. The 2x12 against the wall is wet. The big rust dribble is coming from the anchor fastener directly above it. You can see about half the hole at the top of the pic, partially covered by the joist hanger. You can also see my attempts at guttering; there is a sink directly below. The other picture shows a close up of the end of the fastener.
None of the other barn walls have any dribbles. Only a couple of spots on the shared wall have a dribble, and this one is by far the worst. Most of the fasteners on this wall don't leak.
That's what I've got on the leak.
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We were really surprised at how well our small wood stove (an old Vermont Castings Resolute) heats the house. The living quarters are three modules, stove in the center and a fan in each hallway (to the outer two modules) keeps the bedrooms at reasonable temps in winter. Summer we run about 10 degrees below outside temp during the heat of the day (such as it is in Maine--mid 90's). We also have solar to supplement the boiler driven floor heat when something more than the wood stove is desired. The solar panel is a 24x8' hot water panel I built and we have radiant in the floor.
We really like our house.
Steve
Maine
Sam thanks again for posting more pics its such an impressive build.
