Things are going UP!

We're getting some elevation on our home site.  Guides for the crew laying up adobes, called both "speed leads" or "story poles" are being put up in preparation for the construction of our adobe walls.  The first coarse of adobes are "fully stabilized" or waterproof required by the adobe construction codes.  All the rest of our adobe are simply mud blocks.  The story poles are placed at the corners of two exterior walls or the intersection of an interior wall and an exterior wall.  They make it easier for the adoblero to make straight level walls.  Of course simultaneously the brick floors are being completed and the electrician is laying in the wiring and installing outlet boxes between adobe courses.  It's like a well oiled machine. . . most of the time.  The walls will start to go up next week.

Brick Floors Started

Our brick floors are now emerging. There was some delay caused by the radiant tubing expanding in the heat and pushing up in the sand above the level that the bricks for the floor are to lay. I should have planned for more sand than the 1.5" specified. With more fill sand, say 3", the leveling of the dirt under the sand and the flatness of the wire grid (which holds the radiant heating tubing in place) would have been less critical. Never-the-less, as you can see, now the bricks are going down.  And they look beautiful! Our brick lady, Lorraine Duran is doing a beautiful job. You can tell she "loves her art," as she puts it.  Mind you, she has been doing this for almost 30 years so she has had some practice. Indeed, after these photos were taken she completed the entire living room the same day.

Road and Drive

With the rainy season coming up we decided to go ahead and put in the drive and improve the road to our land.  We filled in the trench for the power/water/phone lines, and graded the road and drive.  Then 4" of road fill was added to give us all weather access. This will come in handy soon.  In a couple of weeks, we are going to have some extra traffic.  With the adobe walls going up it is time to put in our fireplace.  The Southwest Solar Adobe School is scheduling a "How to build your Rumford Fireplace"  class with our home as the class room.  Jim Buckley, Mr. Rumford Fireplace himself, is flying in from Seattle to conduct the class.  Jim is going to build our fireplace while he instructs the class and Joe Tibbets, Director of Southwest Solar Adobe, and I will be Jim's helpers.  This will be a lot of fun and we will get a great Rumford fireplace built by the Master.

Radiant Heating

Matt's team (MR Concrete) is working on the sub-floor, leveling, adding dirt here, removing dirt there, preparing to install the sub-floor insulation.  The insulation, 1" of underground rated (R-5) foam board, goes under about 8 inches of thermal mass that includes 4 1/2 inches of dirt,  1 1/2 inches of sand, the 2" brick floor.  The thermal mass in the floor will work nicely with the adobe walls, storing heat in the winter and cool in the summer to smooth out the seasonal day/night thermal cycle.  The radiant tubing runs through the sand, and the sand is topped off with the brick floor.  All-in-all we will have a nice quiet and cozy back-up heating system for our passive solar design in the winter and can circulate cool water during the summer.  Here the radiant tubing, installed by Plumbing Express, is ready for the sand covering.