Dear Readers, I'm terribly sorry that this update comes more than a month after the last update. I was making interim updates to my IG, but was neglecting my duties to the website. For this, you have my sincerest apologies. Also, this has been the sadder part of the build to watch, but we'll get to that in a second. Anyway, updates below! Peter Since our last episode, the slab area of our foundation has been further excavated, insulation has been added everywhere, plumbing has been placed, internal drain tile installed, and a radon wrap is over the top ahead of the final concrete slab pour, which will happen sometime this week when it stops raining (but also, yay rain! Minneapolis is in a pretty bad drought this summer). That probably sounded like a lot, but really what it means is: we have had the lion's share of our fossil based products installed and it has been PAINFUL to watch. We have added more foam insulation that was cut extensively with chainsaws and there is honestly a lot of extra material leftover that will be heading to a landfill, as well. The worst is the pool of foam pellets forming in the rain out my window as we speak, which we will have to clean up and remediate as we clean up the site before we eventually add vegetation in the future. Glass half full side of things, even if it is foam based, it has been great to see the care taken to make sure everything fits and is tight. The three guys that have been working on this extensively over the last few weeks have done a great job and our architects and builder have done a good job checking quality control and making repairs if something isn't quite right. Our house will be very well insulated, which is much easier to do from the onset than as a retrofit. Also, though Katie has built houses before both with Habitat For Humanity as an AmeriCorps vista and with her dad in Indiana, I have no residential building experience of note. So for me, it has been interesting to learn, for example, that most homes don't have insulation in their foundations at all! Or similarly, I develop large solar facilities for a living and have worked with agricultural drain tile before, but I have never seen the garbage can-and-hose style drain tile that was installed here. Always learning! I will work to post my next update sooner. As mentioned above, this should end the foam part of our project as the foundation slab gets poured as soon as the rain stops. That should also make our site start to look a lot cleaner and more interesting. Final piece we are waiting on is our final final *final* building permit, which we should have today or tomorrow if the City hits its timelines. More to come!
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AuthorKatie Jones and Peter Schmitt chronicle their building adventure. Archives
January 2024
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