The Mountain of Dirt

Yesterday's blog was too long... I need to learn to hold something back...  Sorry.

Made some progress today.  The crew showed up fairly early.  It was COLD.  I suppose the Yanks will laugh at this, but there is something about Texas cold...  It cuts into you.  The temps started out in the mid 30's and kept coming down.  Tonight it is in the upper 20's, what they call a hard freeze here...  Ha.  Windy from the North, and by noon we had a pretty good clip of SNOW coming down. 

So, they dug out the sloppy part at the bottom of the pad, and surprisingly, it had pretty good hard clay dirt underneath.  I would estimate they dug out about 18 inchs.  They also dug a little on some soft spots where my daughters bedroom will be, and later on they found a spot under the garage that required further work.  The mountain of dirt that this creates was HUGE.  I am standing on the very top of this at an altitude of about 25 feet to take these pictures.  I doubt anyone will ever stand on that spot again, as after the fill is installed they will use (some) of that dirt to fill in around the edges and taper things off and create a drainage plane away from the house.  BTW, you can see from up here the shape of things, especially the gentle curve of the driveway as it swings around to the apron.  I am happy with the location.

So far, we are in the mid 30's of truckloads of dirt.  The trucks were making a round trip of about 60 minutes, and there were 7 of them or so.  You can imagine that this is not a cheap process, and one of the few things that is beyond our control.  So it takes whatever it takes to fill the hole, make a level pad, and keep all the engineers happy...

Speaking of...as the job progressed today, the field inspector for the geotech company came by to check on the status of things, take samples of the fill dirt, and have a chat with all.  He seemed pretty happy about things but didn't like the "pumping" that was happening under the garage.  The fill is interesting stuff, it is not unlike modeling clay, except has some sand content in it that keeps it from going "plastic" and when you put a bunch down together it creates a structure over the ground.  This structure moves, though, so as things drive across the top it works the soil below up and down.  This action actually causes water in the subsurface to "pump" to the top, and in this case it literally made a little pool of water on the top of the fill.  I am surprised to witness the difference in behavior between regular old dirt on the site and what they haul it.  Regular old dirt looks good for a while while it is being worked, and then it just literally breaks apart and has no structure at all.  The geotech guys will shoot some kind of penetrating beam down into the ground to determine the percentage compaction as we go. 

So, the decision was to shut down for the day, dig this area back out, and let it breathe...  I think perhaps the fact that it was Friday afternoon at about 3:30 PM had even more to do with that decision, because nothing really prevented them from working around these spots, and they have plenty more dirt to haul... 

BTW, I promised a picture of the "Mountain of Dirt"...  Here it is.

I asked a wise old plumber once how he thought something had been plumbed, and he responded "Well, it all depends on what they had on their truck..."  Human behavior perhaps drives building decisions more than we know...  Saturday weather is supposed to be cold, but perfect, mid 50's or so...   Our weather guy has been a bit off on his calls lately....

Have a great weekend.

Rain, more burning, and lots of decisions

The "Claw" at work...

First of all, this picture is NOT of what I did today, but when the clearing crew was at work a few days ago...  We had a fairly nice weekend, but on Sunday night we got some pretty good rain, then again on Tuesday, and it really rained hard.  This has created havoc here and some decisions that aren't easy to make. 

On Tuesday, we took the opportunity to go "shopping" for some things... We have to do this while the kids are at school, and it's a minimum of an hour into the big city.  So we had to hustle.  Good luck on the door, progress on figuring out the fireplaces, and unfortunate progress on the windows.  More on all of this as we approach those subjects, but here is the skinny for now... The door(s) are cool, and they will be awesome.  The fireplaces will be 1 each wood burning and 1 each "direct vent".  We originally were planning on having two wood burning fireplaces, but the house will be so "tight" that I was having doubts about getting 1 fireplace to draft, let alone two...  Direct vents, on the other hand, suck in combustion air through the outside of a double wall vent pipe, while the hot stuff goes back out through the center.  You can run them on propane or gas (we will only have propane available).  For our house, this allows us to run 1 wood burner and the direct vent at the same time, which we would probably only do if we were having a party.  The risk is that, at this party, there is cooking going on, stinky people using bathrooms (sorry, couldn't resist), and thus vent fans in the kitchen and bath could potentially put a vacuum on the house and pull smoke back down the chimney...resulting in an unhappy set of guests and even more unhappy homeowners.  One of the things I can do to help prevent this is put a limit on how many vent fans the Centralite lighting control system will allow to power whenever the house is in "Party" mode.  Ok, I am rambling... Sorry...  Wonder if I can limit the number of stinky people at my party???

Windows, YIKES...  I have been studying windows for nearly two years, and as we come up to decision time I am still not decided.  I know that I want the "pulltruded" fiberglass variety, but frankly I cannot justify the extra price of them.  The kicker is that to even get them in the ballpark for price, I had to jury rig the types to allow for SDLs (simulated divided lites), single hung here, double hung there, wood interior here, fiberglass interior over there...  Short story long... We walked into the window place and the Mrs didn't like the interior finish of the "all fiberglass" version...  So I think we are canning the fiberglass windows and opting for wood windows that are "clad" on the outside with aluminum. 

Some more about windows...  Vinyl windows are simple, they come in "normal" sizes, and you order them up and put them in. , and vary from each mfgr Some look better than others, and they are very energy efficient as compared with aluminum frames.  Fiberglass windows are cool because they are way stronger, and the coefficient of expansion for the fiberglass is about the same as the glass, so there is less "movement" between the frames and glass, and thus less chance for a seal failure.  They can be painted, and water can't hurt them.  Vinyl windows have limitations in color.  The reason is that the material itself gets hot as the colors get darker.  You Yanks up north probably don't know about heat, but down here it gets hot, and when the temperature of the vinyl gets in the 140 F range, the vinyl begins to get "melty"...  So they keep the colors light to help keep that from happening.  Wifey here wants brown windows, and I agree with here, it's the right look for the house.  Brown gets hot in the sun... 

My advice to you... Either don't care about your windows, or start trying to figure them out now... It will take a long time to get this item right (unless you have unlimited funds).

OH, went out to the lot Tuesday night to see what the rain was doing to the mud.  It wasn't pretty.  So I am poking around in the dark and the drainage ditch on the east side of my property had water in it.  First time I had seen this happen.  Well, the developers had put some silt fence in the thing at intervals to keep it from rutting out.  Good idea, except the silt fence was overflowing and the water was coming onto my pad site...  So, like a crazed animal I start hopping up and down on the silt fence trying to break it apart... No luck, that sucker is tough.  Back to the truck for the only tool I had in there, a shovel.  Tried digging under the silt fence in the water, no luck.  So I started beating on it with the shovel, in the dark, in the rain...finally got it to tear apart. 

BTW, there is some kind of poison oak or stickers over there, my hands were itching big time by the time I got home... An emergency wash with soap, water, and then alcohol...

Two Tank Hot Water Schematic

OK... one more picture...  This one is a schematic of the hot water system.  It is not the full schematic, but the one I sketched out to keep the basic principles in my tiny little brain of what I am trying to accomplish.  In a nutshell, the water comes in cold to the Desuperheater Tank, gets as warm as it can (130 F max), then hops over into the dedicated hot water tank, where the Combination Unit Ground Source Heat pump works on it some more (only to 115 F).  Then the water is distrubuted by way of manifolds.  Now, for the complicated part...  If the sun is shining, why pay to have the GSHP come on and make hot water.  So the solar is hooked up to the lower heat exchanger and heats the water all it can.  In the wintertime, I will also suck heat out of this same tank and distribute that heat through the floor heat system.  This will be accomplished with 4000 linear feet of 1/2 inch oxygen barrier pex, snaked into the concrete (hopefully) below the level of the framers nails.  The tubing is fed via two Taco XPB pumps, which have an onboard computer to determine (based on outside air temperature) what the "target" temperature of the floor needs to be to offset the amount of heat the building is losing, and thus replacing it with the appropriate amount of BTU's.  This concept is called "outdoor reset".  So rather than waiting till your dining room gets cold, then having a thermostat telling some valve or pump it needs heat...then, 12 hours later the system actually has added enough btu's into your dining room to change the 25 cubic yards of concrete under there by a measly 1/2 degree, we make that change several hours before the room actually gets cold, by predicting what that temperature will need to be to keep the room comfortable, and adjusting it before the room ever gets cold.  In the opposite situation, it starts getting warm outside, and the system is already lowering the floor temp so you don't spend money on heat you don't need.

I am rambling again...

Ok, so if the Desuperheater tank gets hotter than the water in the dedicated tank, why not mix the two together and make both tanks hot, and store more, hotter water?  This is accomplished by using a delta T controller that triggers a "mix" pump whenever this occurs.  Another trick... If someone wants hot water, and the Desuperheater tank can provide it at proper temp, why not bypass the dedicated tank (with a strategically placed mix valve) with that hot water and leave the other tank alone??  This allows the Desuperheater tank to stay colder and the dedicated tank to stay hotter.  When the desuperheater tank is cold, my effeciency on the GSHP is higher, and if the water in the dedicated tank is left undisturbed, I won't have to pay to heat that water at all... OH, the second mix valve is for two reasons... 1.  It protects users downline from potentially scalding water from the solar hot water system, and 2.  It is set at a slightly higher mix temp so there is always a "trickle" of water coming from the dedicated tank, so it doesn't stagnate.

There is also a Grundfos pump that applies a positive pressure to the hot water system when powered.  This hot water is "forwarded" to the manifolds and the furthest spot away in the house and allowed to return through the cold water side via a "Grundfos Comfort Valve."  So, when somebody far away wants hot water, they don't have to wait, nor waste water waiting for it.  The comfort valve shuts off at something like 85 F, so hot water doesn't pass to cold after the system warms up (which would waste heat).  Also, normally the Grundfos Pump would be on a timer, but my Centralite system will actually run it...

1.  Stinky person goes into bathroom, turns on light...

2.  Centralite now knows the bathroom is occupied, so the remote vent fan is activated.

3.  Hopefully the stinky person will wash their hands, so turn on the Grundfos to precharge the hot water.

4.  Stinky person leaves, hopfully turns off the light behind them...

5.  Centralite dimms the light back down to 0 %.

6.  Fan runs for 5 more minutes and then shuts down...

7.  Stinky person not so stinky anymore...

The really cool part.... I think I have a plumber and an HVAC guy that actually understands what I am trying to do....  Even though neither of them will have too much involvement other than just getting the pipes to the tanks...  I am happy with that...

Send me your comments on the TWO TANK system   And someday, if I get in an ornery mood, I'll throw in the 3 tank model schematic just for fun... 

Tomorrow they are calling for a pretty good chance of SNOW... Yes, the white kind you Yanks are so used to... I get comments all the time about my complex heating system, but in the end the thing is designed for comfort.  Keep the heat close to the floor, close to you and your little piggys...  Plus, it gives me a great way to distribute heat that I am getting from my solar hot water system...  Total cost for the radiant heat system... Probably less than $5,000.  If I screw it up and it don't work so good, the GSHP just comes on and warms up the air to whatever the wall thermostat is set to... It doesn't even know the floor heat is there.

Dirt guys are going to try for it tomorrow.  They have to dig out some of the muck and replace it with fill dirt.  I have to remeasure things and make sure the house is sitting inside all the setbacks, plus room for a future shop and pool...  I hope it all works out...

Today I burned some more brush, and in addition cut a few trees that I decided would interfere with the house.  Tonight a raging fire burns in my fireplace.  Also put up some more orange construction fence.  My buddy is building and almost done, and the last thing the landscape guys do is drive their bobcat through his trees and leave giant ruts in the mud, but it screws up the root systems on the trees, and you can't fix that.  So I guess the fence is helpful.  Also shoveled out a 50 foot or so ditch so if it does rain, the water can't get to the pad so easily...  Surprisingly easy to shovel.  I have moved the Ibuprofin to the front of the medicine cabinet.

Sorry for the long post...