Throughout the process of building this house Dustin and I have continually confirmed the old adage that building things take twice as long as you expect them to. Often, it takes more than twice as long. We have found this especially true when relying on others; it’s been extremely difficult to keep timelines because we’re often stymied by external factors such as waiting for forms to be put in place and concrete to be poured.

So one lesson is simple: you’re going to be wrong about your estimates of time (at least until you’ve done this many more times than we have). It can be pretty painful when you’ve told someone you’ll get something done by a certain time, and someone else is holding you up.

Another lesson: write time lines into agreements with contractors. It can be hard to put penalties for not reaching goals, especially because you don’t want them to hurry up a job cutting corners, but at least writing down goals can give both of you a place to reference.

With all of that, there is an upside to being slowed down, it has given us the opportunity to work on other projects. Dustin is working on creating a little art studio in the shop. He’s had fun being able to do some finish work and also built some cool stairs / storage area. The whole process has been an exercise in using space as efficiently as possible (for example, we have one door which functions for either the shower or the toilet, whichever is in use).

I’ve been working up the gumption to post about a home automation system that I’ve been building in the hopes of reducing energy usage and collecting data (such as the water level in the cistern). I haven’t posted about it yet because I wasn’t sure that it would ever come to fruition. However it’s starting to progress despite my woeful lack of electrical engineering knowledge. So with that said, I’ll hopefully be posting a little preview of it soon. Until then, here’s a picture:

it’s been nearly two weeks since my knee surgery, the swelling has reduced, though not yet dissipated. my biggest challenges are regaining range of motion (stretch, stretch, stretch) and staying off it enough in order to aid the swelling issue – hard to do when building a house.

todd and daniel started putting the old, rusty, salvaged, corrugated siding on today, it looks awesome! a huge “thank you” to those two and everyone else that’s stopped by to lend a hand.

Dustin is getting knee surgery today. He hurt it a few months ago while climbing. Hopefully this will get him back to full health! Anyway, everyone wish him luck.

Oh, and don’t forget to check us out on the Discovery Channel’s Renovation Nation at 9:00 tonight.

On Tuesday the city electrical inspector visited for the third time. The wiring in the shop is finally up to par with city standards after many alterations required by the inspector. The difficulty meeting the standards were exacerbated by the fact that the city kept sending different inspectors to the shop, with each individual finding different problems.

On Monday, Bob and Dustin continued putting up plywood for the art-studio space in the shop; they’ve had to fashion lots of custom pieces including one around the breaker panel. The plywood (and recycled pallet wood) are covering blue-jean insulation, which will hopefully aid in dulling any noise emerging from the shop.

There are going to be two separate power meters for the house and shop, one will calculate the energy consumption of the house, and another will calculate that used by the shop. This is so that we can separate the shop’s energy use from the house; the shop is not part of the living building challenge, but we’re trying our best to keep it “green.” Using two meters will allow us to make sure the house is net-zero. In this instance, “net-zero-energy” implies that a building must produce as much energy as consumed over the course of one year.

This spring and summer have brought the first bounty of our roof top garden! Friends have planted varieties ranging from the original ground-cover crop of nitrogen-fixing Austrian Winter Peas to zucchinis to strawberries to the sinus-clearing Mustard Greens. Everything is flourishing and ready to eat. In fact, the zucchinis are turning out to be quite large, which means that there will be no shortage of zucchini bread in this household. The success of this season sings to our future gardening experiences atop the roof with its two feet of increasing nutrient rich soil.

Today, Creative Gate Works is expected to arrive and begin discussing the building of railings above the shop. Dustin and Garrett have agreed to provide the materials needed for this job, while the company is sponsoring the project with their labor. Garrett and Dustin are very pleased with this opportunity.

Right now the project is waiting on Reserve Steel to get some software issues (a dongle from Hawaii) resolved in order to enter in the dimensions for the steel stud walls, which will be fabricated to length by a computer-controlled machine. Once the walls are in place, the house will seem ever more complete, with the added bonus of ample shade for Dustin and co.’s summer toils.

Update: Also it appears as if the show is on at 9:00 PM ET which would make it 6:00 PM PT

Update: It looks like we’re not going to be on the Discovery Channel, but Planet Green, a Discovery subsidiary (the channel finder below works).

As mentioned previously, we’re going to be on TV! And Soon! The show will be airing this Friday July 24th at 9:00 PM ET / 6:00 PM PT on the Discovery Channel Planet Green (find out what channel it’s on). Here’s what they say about it:

Portland, OR: Salvage Brothers

Steve helps the Moon brothers build what they hope to be one of the greenest homes in the country. Steve will help install steel walls, reclaimed wood from shipping pallets and even check out a composting toilet.

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so the blog has been quiet for a good while… it’s time for some updates:

we were visited by steve thomas from the discovery channel’s renovation nation the show should air soon – we’ll post an update when we find out the date.

we put up some of the exterior stud walls for the camera:

we’ll probably need to take them down in order to get the interior walls in. during the show we also took delivery of our composting toilet.

we also finished the steps into the shop:

and put a recycled pallet wall in the shop (picture forthcoming). Read the rest of this entry »

so i’v sprained my MCL (medial collateral ligament) pretty well, or is that badly? either way, i’ve been on crutches and mostly out of commission since last monday night.

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The house has begun!

The hole for the footing has been dug and nick and crew are beginning to construct the forms for the footing.

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we’ve waterproofed the shop and are now preparing to pour the footing for the retaining wall, which will hold the soil that will allow us to make a garden on top. once the retaining wall is done we will be able to start digging the house foundation!

so finally all the forms have been stripped from the shop walls and we’re starting to layout the electrical and plumbing that will traverse underneath the concrete slab within the shop. we still need to break off all of the snap ties:

which will require us finding a bar that is just bigger than the head of the snap tie to fit over it and bend them back and forth and then rotate them till they break off – it takes about 10-15 seconds per snap tie and there are around 1600 of them… so hopefully only around 4.5-5 hours of work.