Terra-Dome Earth Shelter Build

[SamWalton]

It is handy to have more than one chisel tip so the third can be used to CAREFULLY retrieve the second which got stuck trying to get the first one out.

I learned to not sink the tool too far into rock or concrete before pulling it out and going at a different angle/direction.

Pat

We got eight tips with our BRUTE. Some are extra long and add to it's 65Lbs.

 

[mjncad]

We got eight tips with our BRUTE. Some are extra long and add to it's 65Lbs.

Extra long is an understatement on some of those bits. What I noticed when I rented one of these things is that the longer the bit, the higher the center of gravity, the harder it was to manipulate the thing, especially yanking it out of the hole.

 

[patrick_g]

We got eight tips with our BRUTE. Some are extra long and add to it's 65Lbs.

So far the most interesting task I have used a demo hammer, little electric jack hammer as REAL JACKHAMMERS are up around 100 lbs or more, on was increasing the size of a crawl space entry hole. A previous house had an addition added on so you went through the crawl space access, crawled along under the floor staying low to avoid the many too long nails that penetrated the sub floor underlayment but missed the floor joists to get to the original wall and its crawl space entry hole which was so small that I had to super-exhale to be able to scrape through.

Eventually tiring of the scrape I borrowed a friend's Makita electric demo hammer (approximately the size of yours, and while prone I braced my feet against a wall and shoved the chisel at the bottom of the access hole knocking enough off to make it easy to get by. I think it is a much better arrangement by far when gravity is aligned with the axis of the tool and pulling downward toward the chisel tip.

...and as if the weather hasn't been enough fun for your project lately it seems that winter has made a U-turn and is circling back to make another bomb run at us. I'm about 30 miles south of I-40 and we are forecast for two snow deliveries, the first is 2-3 inches of accumulation and the second about an inch. Already the fields are saturated and the ponds are overflowing so the moisture will not help. I was thinking of selling out of the Angus ranching and getting into cranberry bogs if this keeps up!

I bet you will sure be a happy camper when you get to fire up your in-slab hydronics. I like to run around inside the house barefoot and warm floors are such a luxury. I have hydronics in the walls and floor of the master shower. I run the walls and floor up to about 86F in anticipation of taking a shower and it is so luxurious as to border on decadence.

Pat

 

[SamWalton]

I failed to post some pictures of the Track Hoe in our home during the plumbing install. I have some HD video to share but this site don't support these files.

 

[sajurcaju]

Lots of action at your house Sam, good to see.

We're having leak problems at our TD house project in Maine. Water comes in around the holes in the roof. We don't have actual puddles, it is more like seepage (but enough to get the plaster wet). I should add that we had 4" of driving rain in three days (today it turned to about 12" of snow)--this is called a Noreaster where the storm sits on us. I will get my pictures out of the camera and post later.

I don't know what to say about how to fix it, since I haven't fixed ours yet (our soil is still frozen). Take a close look at your joints, maybe flash them twice.

Steve

 

[SamWalton]

We finished priming the pressure treated window openings. We are about thirty feet short of completing the lower septic drainage ditch. After we install the perforated four inch pipe and cover with stone. We will lay a filter cloth over the stone and cover with dirt. Then we will begin the second ditch. We got our third conduit installed through the west footing wall into our utility room. This last conduit is for the heat pump and the two side by side are for a future well and solar panel connections. We have more to do but we are making progress.

 

[sajurcaju]

Some pics of the water leaks in our Terra Dome house in Maine.

The blue walls are in a bathroom--you can see the leak on the ceiling, following the framing. The next shot is above this ceiling, showing the curve of the concrete dome and the ~8" hole with a black tube inside it penetrating the roof. Water is coming in around the edges of the tube.

Same kind of deal in the master bath, pic of ceiling showing moisture and the access panel, then a closeup of the access panel and the roof penetration above. All of the roof penetrations look like they are leaking. My contractor supposedly followed TD's directions for flashing, we'll find out more when we dig things up.

The last two pics are other leaks. One bedroom has water in the corner; this is the corner of the module. The module butts up against the living room module, no leak in there. Last is the leak around the greenhouse windows. Only the one window was leaking, the other two were fine. Hopefully this one should be straightforward to fix once we find the problem.

That's where we're at leak-wise.

Steve

 

[dave1949]

That's where we're at leak-wise.

Steve

Sorry to hear you are having issues Steve. That has to be one of the biggest challenges for that construction method. Hopefully this Spring you will be able to scope it out and find a solution to sealing the penetrations. Giant hose clamps around gaskets or something?

The greenhouse window should be straight forward at least. Mostly likely just needs some caulk in the right places.
Dave.

 

[SamWalton]

Steve, your leak problem is something I am dealing with as well and the waterproofing company has been little help. I am looking for solutions and will let you know what I find.

I made some measurements to finalize the drawing and routing of the rural water conduit and the Hydronic stove conduit. They will both occupy the same trench much of the way from the garage to the utility room. We also made some progress on the first septic ditch. We have been jack hammering rock what seems like forever.

I have a question? What should one do if your cameras identify trespassers? We don't know who they are yet but I think we should be careful not to make matters worse.

 

[mjncad]

Some pics of the water leaks in our Terra Dome house in Maine. Steve

That sucks about the leaks Steve. Water is amazing stuff when it comes to finding a way into a structure. It turns out the clown who built our house is notorious for building houses with water leaks. I flat out told him one time that he should advertise his houses as coming with indoor swimming pools. Let us know how you do in finding and plugging the leaks.

I have a question? What should one do if your cameras identify trespassers? We don't know who they are yet but I think we should be careful not to make matters worse.

Are your trespassers nosy Looky Lou's, or are they vandalizing and stealing stuff? If the latter, I wouldn't hesitate to take a copy of the video to the cops. If the former, I'd ask the cops and/or your insurance agent for their opinion. If either are worth a crap, they should be able to give you some advice.

 

[SamWalton]

Are your trespassers nosy Looky Lou's

Yes, so far we haven't had and damage or losses but now that we have evidence of trespassers, I think it is a good time to beef up security by moving cameras to better locations and finding a better lock for our sea container and stop in for security check more frequently.
Anyone with advice on lock systems or other methods of securing our property and materials please let us know.
Thanks
Sam

A few night shots

 

[patrick_g]

Yes, so far we haven't had and damage or losses but now that we have evidence of trespassers, I think it is a good time to beef up security by moving cameras to better locations and finding a better lock for our sea container and stop in for security check more frequently.
Anyone with advice on lock systems or other methods of securing our property and materials please let us know.
Thanks
Sam

A few night shots

I have two containers and they are locked with well protected discus locks. It would take massive force to defeat them. Unfortunately, anyone with a Makita 4 inch cordless grinder could make their own big door in the side of a container in a few minutes. A small set of O-A bottles like the HVAC guys use with a little cutting torch could get them access in a minute.

An alarm system can be set up to alert you via cell phone to activity at our site and you can view the video remotely to see if it is wild critters or thieves or looky lous if you can get a phone line to the site or if you have WIFI capability there. Video surveillance software is available that monitors a video picture from inexpensive cameras for changes that meet your detection criteria. A steady or extremely slowly changing picture does not set off the system but let someone walk through the picture and it triggers. You can be notified by cell phone. If you can get a phone connection you can be notified by email and can remotely view the video to see who or what is loose on your property.

Construction sites in general are the epitome of attractive nuisances and are at least targets for looky lous in general if not thieves in particular. People are drawn to them and your site, since it is NON-STANDARD is a powerful attention getter.

I don't feel entirely comfortable suggesting booby traps as nthings tend to get out of control BUT... I once combined the following easily obtained equipment into a deterrent system that trained folks to keep their dogs out of my front yard and the postmen to not traverse the middle of the lawn instead of the sidewalk.

One each cheap Infra-Red motion detecting security light, one rain bird sprinkler, a garden hose, and the water control solenoid valve from a junked dishwasher. You let the IR detector turn on the water valve instead of a light bulb. Set the security light unit into the TEST position so that the photo cell is disabled and the unit will activate during daylight or night hours.

In the test position these units will typically turn on until motion is no longer detected and then shut off about 10 seconds later. This will not waste much water, or whatever it is that is in the hose. If you don't have water under pressure available a bladder tank such as you use on a well or other pressure vessel and a tank for compressed air will git 'er done.

There are sites that sell booby traps to which you fit trip wires to fire the blank 12 ga shotgun shell you load them with. handy if there is anyone to respond to the noise, otherwise it is interesting to speculate as to the effect but... A few years ago these were about $2.50 each and of course are re-loadable.

I personally like pyrotechnics and my personal FAV is charges to disperse strong dye or paint onto vehicles or personnel but you may not want to start a war with some relatively innocent looky lous just attracted to a non standard and interesting construction site. They might be some of your neighbors to be.

Pat

 

[woodlandfarms]

I have a question? What should one do if your cameras identify trespassers? We don't know who they are yet but I think we should be careful not to make matters worse.

We are the last house on the road so we get our fair share of people turning around given our distance from the road. Usually once or twice a month max.

Unless you invest in a majorly expensive security system, your ability to identify license plates and faces will be pretty restricted unless they come very close to the camera. Most consumer security cameras are 480 lines of interlaced resolution. Not much to blow up when looking for a license plate.

We just keep a space on our hard drive and collect images. If a pattern would be detected I would send it ASAP to the cops. From what I have gathered there is good chance it is a repeat offender. Trespassing can be prosecuted, but good luck. Best you can usually get is a warning, which might lead to further vandalism but usually leads to being left alone.

We caught one guy with our system, and that person was an employee of a contractor who was working on our site. Cops took the images to the contractor, and he gave the name and address of the person in question. We stayed WAY out of the deal, let the cops and contractor deal with it. We wanted to get more involved but the cops made it clear our involvement would muddy the waters.

One thing, I think you have a major gate, if it has a clearly marked no trespassing sign I am quite surprised you have anyone coming up to the place at all.

Carl

 

[SamWalton]

Thanks for sharing you experience. We have been taking sometime to train and sight-in our weapons hoping any nosy neighbors who may have trespassed previously will resist temptation thinking these people have weapons and no trespassing signs. We have made a few other changes.

We gave up on going any further west in our first septic trench. The super large stone won this battle. So far we got one hundred and twelve feet. Since the first ditch my never be used we will carry the additional one hundred and fifty eight feet on the second ditch. We have been working clearing trees and moving rocks from the piles to the banks of our culvert pipe and ditch.

 

[patrick_g]

Ouch. Your stone encounter brings back memories. I was trying to excavate an "intercepting" trench parallel to and up slope from the basement excavation about 8-10 feet. It needed to be about 12 ft deep and to continue off to the west past the immediate home site so a pipe placed in it could drain to daylight at a creek bank. Rock stopped progress with a backhoe. Carbide bits in hammer drills was just too slow so I rented a tow behind gasoline driven compressor and 98 lb jack hammer. That helped but I eventually settled for a few inches less depth than I wanted. Luckily I could also get the other end of the trench to drain via a different path.

The perforated drain pipes in this trench plus the ones surrounding the basement foundation on both the inside and outside have drained clear water 24-7 even during the record drought for Oklahoma of a few years ago. I suppose I should be a little anxious about having the ground water level on the outside of my basement walls at about 5 ft above the interior floor level but so far so good, not a drop of leakage and the moisture tests made by taping plastic over the floor and exterior walls show no evidence of moisture, not even a slight darkening of the concrete where it is covered.

Pat

 

[SamWalton]

I took off Friday afternoon to go to Shawnee Oklahoma to pick up our General Plastics under slab HVAC duct system. We were saving a six hundred dollar freight charge. We were only a hundred and thirty miles one way. I was surprised about the company. They basically are a reseller for the pipe and they make the black Max line on components. After getting there we found they had screwed up our order. The three customs parts were wrong. During the order process they emailed me a form and I added the dimensioning and email it back. I am hoping they will ship the screwed up part of the order at their cost but I will make a second trip if needed.

 

[SamWalton]

Today we all got a late start and it was kind of cold. We did manage to shoot the laser and cut a slope from the garage into the great room for a 3" French drain conduit, 3" city water line conduit and a 4" hydronic wood stove conduit loop. This under slab work is serious business. So many connections, going so many places and I know I have made this very complicated but I wouldn't have it any other way. This house has many features and possibilities. I am roughing in things that are for future use or not at all. I see it this way, when the rest of the world is struggling for the very basics like water, heat and air conditioning, electricity and a safe secure place from tornados and earth quakes we will be ready.

 

[patrick_g]

Thinking ahead has become a rare activity but you may see an excellent return on your investment.

Just curious, what Shawnee outfit are you getting your stuff from? I get to Shawnee an average of at least once a week and frequently more often and it is only about 30 miles for me. If something comes up such that "eyes on site" would save you your long trip, I could check something out for you.

PM me for info if interested.

Pat

 

[newbury]

As far as security -
Lots of web cams fitted with remote control weapons, something like high power squirt guns with a dye, or a firehose. Nothing that would cause much damage. Or dogs with a remote cage release. Then let select people (like some of us TBN'rs) monitor the web cams and fire the weapons.

Now that would be a thread!

 

[SamWalton]

Thinking ahead has become a rare activity but you may see an excellent return on your investment.

Just curious, what Shawnee outfit are you getting your stuff from? I get to Shawnee an average of at least once a week and frequently more often and it is only about 30 miles for me. If something comes up such that "eyes on site" would save you your long trip, I could check something out for you.

PM me for info if interested.

Pat

General Plastics at 3500 north Harrison. I am using them because other systems simply rust and create unhealthy air quality.