Aight Gentle Readers....I've been home and am now back at sea....and more progress has been made...
The Glory that was Spring in Texas has matured into the all-consuming heat of Summer...the stock tanks filled by the generous rains of the past few months are starting to retreat from their high-water marks, with mine losing over a foot in just the short time I was home, the fields filled with wild flowers like Bluebonnets, Indian Paintbrushes and Indian Blankets have dwindled to occasional clumps of daisy's and "black-eyed Susans" here and there and the lush green grass, when cut for hay, reveals itself already browned-out near the ground....the heavy air is filled with the smell of fresh hay, the cicadas are howling their Summer Song, and the dogs have dug their summer bunker under the garden shed so they have a redoubt from the sun....Summer is on....and it's gonna be a HOT one...just the way I LIKE IT...
Precious Bride and I took my first weekend home OFF...chillin with my Best Girl is, after all these years, still a delight....we plotted and planned, and all too soon, split up...she back to her work at the Multinational Corporate Giant, and me to the Ranch...
There was a bit of rain still falling at the Ranch when I got up there this trip...5 inches had fallen the week prior, and our little stock tank was brim-full and overflowing onto the "Back 40"...but with the roof on, I was able to carry on with the work....and first on the list was completing the stained concrete floor.
I had left the surface covered with the iron salts resulting from the staining process as a protective layer while the roof-raising was going on...now it was time to clean and seal the floor...
A rental floor buffer and my small power washer made easy work of cleaning off the residue, and I was pleased with the result...the scratches and dings from all the heavy carpentry going on were almost invisible...
Sealing the floor was way too easy....the acrylic sealer recommended by the stain dealer was applied with a pump-up tank sprayer...a coarse spray just wetting the surface was all that was required...it self-leveled nicely and although the process took longer than I had anticipated as several thin applications were required to build up the desired thickness and drying time was extended due to the higher than normal humidity, the result was perfect...Two coats took four days...
Then I applied the wax....once again the dealers recommendation was spot-on....so easy....the "Zep" wax can be actually be applied with just a regular string mop...I used a lambs-wool applicator so I could more closely control the build up of the coating ....and 4 coats of wax later, the floor was a glistening beauty...now protected from any staining by paint etc....when the construction is done and it is time to move in, the dealer-dude says all it will take is a good buffing with a "burnishing" pad and a light mopping with some fresh wax to take care of any construction damage....he recommends this sort of floor treatment for the high-traffic applications like grocery stores and the like...and it seems to be working great....
Precious Bride and I are delighted with our choice to go with stained concrete...the thick concrete slab is providing the "thermal flywheel" effect I had hoped for...it is at least 20 degrees cooler inside the building than outside, without any air conditioning....the floor resembles polished travertine...the cost of the materials and tools (approx $1200) is a fraction of what the usual combinations of floor-coverings like tile, wood etc would have cost... PLUS....I get to keep my promise to Precious Bride regarding providing her a house she can clean with a yard-blower and a hose...
Sweeeeeet!!!
With the floor done, I got my Woodbutchers back to work...framing walls in a pole barn is a little bit different than your traditional stick-framed house...the roof, after all goes up first...but soon, the boys caught on and all the outer walls were framed, windows were in place and even some of the trim for the metal skin was going up...
During this process, Precious Bride and her Mom came up with some really good ideas for a couple of engineering changes....the wide expanses of windows in the Kitchen and Great Room will now have "deadlights" (fixed glass) above them to take full advantage of the high ceilings and fill the house with light, and the roof of the Mud Room has been extended to give a some rain-cover to the back door and provide for the eventual extension of the roof into a car-port....I had been wondering how to give a vehicle some weather-cover without spoiling the lines of the front of the house...and MIL came up with the perfect solution....I just need to add a couple of poles and 16 feet of roof to the existing frame...and all it will take is removing two pieces of metal trim to get access to the existing framework...
One of the advantages of being an "Owner-Builder" is being able to do your engineering on-the-fly, without a bunch of change orders...
So - Here are pics of where the house stands as of now...
Wall framing is a snap in the pole frame....fewer but larger pieces of lumber...and the non-load-bearing walls allow you to have as much glass as you like...
This is the Great Room looking from the Kitchen...deadlights will go above the bank of 3 windows and a transom will adorn the front door...
...and here is the reverse view of the Kitchen, looking from the Great Room...where deadlights will top the 4 kitchen windows...
If you look closely, you can see the interior walls layout marked in tape on the floor....the interior portions of the exterior walls will use horizontal framing members like the outside, but the interior partition walls will employ more conventional framing techniques.
The careful observer will note the exhaust fan in the Kitchen gable wall...Precious Bride and I plan to utilize natural and forced air ventilation whenever we can....all of the rooms, even the closets, will have high ceilings, and all the rooms will have vents to allow the warm air that collects at the ceiling to be exhausted by the vent fan...
I believe that the current plague of "Sick Houses" is due to the misuse of sealants and non-permeable membranes in the quest for "tight houses" and energy efficiency...without providing sufficient ventilation....tho drafty and less energy efficient, you rarely see black mold growing in the pre-1980's houses around here....
I am not, however an engineering / environmental Luddite...I am simply using older technologies alongside the new ones in our attempt at the "perfect" house for our hot climate...
> High ceilings in all rooms (Minimum 10 feet) to allow hot air to rise above the head level of the occupants
> Ceiling fans in each major space
> A vent system and whole-house fan to remove hot air from the ceiling. The whole-house fan has a thermostat and will run automatically
> Thick masonry floors directly coupled to the earth to provide a "thermal flywheel"effect, moderating the temperature swings inside the air-conditioned envelope. The year-round average soil temperature at our site is 73 degrees F at 5cm. Those dogs and their bunker....they know something....
> Extra thick exterior walls and a ceiling filled with good old fiberglass insulation and passively vented from the ground continuously to the peak via the corrugations in the steel sheeting and vents in the seal system. None of the new insulation materials can beat good old fiberglass for price-per R unit and ease of installation. Plastic film is only used as a moisture shield behind window and AC penetrations to prevent water damage to the insulation by water potentially wind-driven past the flashing and sealants
> A reflective, polar white roof
> "Low E" glass in standard aluminum window frames with the option of installing interior "storm" windows in the future already engineered into my window trim design. Using "builder-grade" windows with a low E glass lowered the cost per window by at least 400% over the mega-engineered super-duper high-efficiency window units
> Thru-the wall AC units and vent-free gas heaters in all spaces rather than whole-house HVAC. Heat or cool a zone as it is required rather than the whole structure
> Generous use of butyl tape, butyl and silicone calking, 10mill plastic, spray foam as needed to weather and vermin-seal the structure
So there you have it...check back when the house is done and we have a few years of electric / propane bills under our craw and I'll let you know how things are working out...
I was hoping to get some of the steel skin up this trip...but one of my Woodbutchers decided to move on to more lucrative work...voted himself off the Island so to speak....so towards the end of the trip I had to content myself with what I could accomplish with just one extra set of hands...
I also spend a little time putting in some irrigation for PB's trees and lilly's...PB had come up for a long weekend and planted several nice crape myrtle trees and dozens of native lilly's she found in a ditch near MIL and FIL's house....the price of computer controlled water hose-end timers has dropped to the point where they are in my price range...I set up two of them to give the new arrivals a good drenching once a week...I'll let you know how they work out...our part of Texas is still in drought conditions, so I am not going to count on much rain for the next few months....
So...there you have it...another successful months work on the ultimate DIY project...and now I have a month to recover and plot the next moves...
I shoulda done this a long time ago...
BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!!
Terry
