Strawbale Building in Golden

Monday, September 04, 2006

Labor Day

It's Labor Day and the boys did labor. I went to the site with Barb (the woman who made me start this blog!), showed her around, talked about the window details with Jeff, the builder, took some photos (soon to be downloaded) and went to lunch. The boys (Keith, Jeff, Ilan and John) spent time securing the structural steel pan on the glulams and completing some framing in the garage. While the steel pan will be filled with concrete when the slab is poured on the second floor, we are going to leave it exposed on the basement level. We have had a variety of responses to this idea, such as, "you're kidding, right?" to "no your not," to "maybe you could cover it with this." We have to constantly tell ourselves that it doesn't matter what other people think, they just don't know what is supercool!
Keith informed me tonight that they are hoping to pour the basement slab on Saturday. That means that all the tubing for the radiant floor heat must be installed by Friday. Roberto (the amazing slab pour-er) came by today and said he could do our job on the side with four workers and charge a little less, but it would have to be this Saturday. This doesn't cause me a great deal of stress because I'm just the lunch delivery person and the photographer, but I know the boys will be stressed. Ahhh, the joys of building.
I am very happy we have decided on the radiant floor heat but it wasn't an easy decision. We are planning on a lot of passive solar gain for heat and having heating in your floor seems to negate that. We talked about doing a forced air system with solar thermal heating the air but neither one of us liked the idea of duct work and air blowing around. We have decided on an HVAC system that uses passive solar, 4 solar panels and a 560 gallon storage tank, a tankless domestic water system and an earth tube with an HRV (heat recovery ventilator) for ventilation. This discussion has been going on for about 4 months and finally, on a hike, Keith said, "this is what I think we should do," and I shook him by the shoulders and said, "for the love of Pete, please make a decision!"

2 Comments:

Blogger Beeb said...

Things are moving fast! It's gonna be done before you know it and we'll be having a party with organic wine and beer for all and a little skating expedition on the pond.

10:22 AM  
Blogger Beeb said...

P.S. I do like the exposed steel pan for the ceiling in my room. And, I especially like those stacked board beam things - beautiful...more pictures please!

you guys truly are amazing and quite an inspiration.

10:29 AM  

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