Preparing site for new house on slab

[rharkins]

Based on everyone's input, we hired a local company with a big John Deere excavator to come in and knock down the trees. He arrived around noon, and was gone shortly after dark. I have around 70 big oak trees on the ground! He spent time knocking as much soil as possible from the stumps, and arranging the downed trees so that I had access to cut and haul wood.

I know what I'll be doing all winter!

 

[dave1949]

Based on everyone's input, we hired a local company with a big John Deere excavator to come in and knock down the trees. He arrived around noon, and was gone shortly after dark. I have around 70 big oak trees on the ground! He spent time knocking as much soil as possible from the stumps, and arranging the downed trees so that I had access to cut and haul wood.

I know what I'll be doing all winter!

And the next one too I see some good weenie roasts in your future

If you burn firewood, leave the oak you don't need for the next two winters in logs, try to stack them across two or three logs, off the ground, so they get air under. Oak will last a long time that way.

Good to hear you are making progress.
Dave.

 

[WBWI]

Glad to hear you took the suggestions. Congrats on the house! We went through the same process 3 years ago. Here is our drive (road) and wood pile. I'm still cutting it up. Last weekend I was working on logs 22-24" dia and 12-14' long.

 

[dmccarty]

We're doing passive solar, and the slab is the primary heat storage medium. I am planning on putting down a perimeter footing to well below the frost line. The slab will be insulated along with the footing walls.

Rick

Go to Builder's Guides and check out the books for your geographical area. Joe Lstiburek from Building Science Corporation wrote the books. I used his book for the framing and foundation details when i designed our house.

Our house is passive solar with a colored, finished concrete floor. We thought about a mono slab but how to insulate it? I think we used EPS rigid foam underneath and around the slab. The concrete is sitting in a tub of EPS. The edges of the tub are 1 inch EPS foam board which creates a thermal break between the slab and the footers. The bottom of the tub is either 3 or 6 inches of foam. I would have to check the drawing to find out.

Our house works very well. If the temps stay in the 60s as a high and does not drop below below the 50s the house stays at 75ish during the winter. It would do better but I put in windows based on the room and the view there of. Each major room in the house has at least a 8x6, 12x6, or 8x5 window aka hole in the wall. I did NOT follow passive solar guidelines on the non south facing walls since we wanted the view, natural light and air flow. If the humidity is low we will keep the house open while the outside temperatures get to the mid 80s.

We would have had a longer two story house with the long axis running east/west but the cost of going up a story and having open space was too much so we went with a single story house. The two story house would have been more energy efficient I think.

We also thought long and hard about putting in radiant heat in the slab. But for our area it just did not make money sense to have it installed. We heat the house with a single wood stove that is supposed to heat an 1800ish sf house. Our house is 2400ish. The only time we need more heat is when the temps fall into the teens and 20s but that does not happen often to justify a second stove which we almost installed when the house was built.

I highly recommend the books in the links.

Later,
Dan

 

[rharkins]

If you burn firewood, leave the oak you don't need for the next two winters in logs, try to stack them across two or three logs, off the ground, so they get air under. Oak will last a long time that way.

I'm cutting the trunks into 9' pieces, and stacking them off the ground until I get around to processing them. A 9' chunk of white oak trunk around 24" in diameter is just about the limit of what I can comfortably pick up with my NH 3040 with forks. I've run into a couple of stumps I can't pick up. I can roll them around, though!

Thanks for the encouragement! It's going to be a long journey, but very fulfilling.

 

[dave1949]

I'm cutting the trunks into 9' pieces, and stacking them off the ground until I get around to processing them. A 9' chunk of white oak trunk around 24" in diameter is just about the limit of what I can comfortably pick up with my NH 3040 with forks. I've run into a couple of stumps I can't pick up. I can roll them around, though!

Thanks for the encouragement! It's going to be a long journey, but very fulfilling.

Those sound like nice pieces of white oak. Any chance you could have a few of them sawn and used in your house? Cabinets, paneling, garage workbench, trim molding, etc.

Around here, a favorite method of making stumps disappear is to bury them somewhere where you will never build on. Maybe you will have an excavator in to do some other work like septic or whatever, and could have them buried then. Buried, I don't believe they will rot in your lifetime (I hope).

Remember to take time to smell the roses.
Dave.