The SIPS have arrived!

The structural insulated panels (SIPS) arrived on 3 flatbed trucks today!
These pre-constructed foam and wood panels will be used for the second floor walls and the roof of the entire building.  It's cold and windy in St. Louis with rain and snow, so the crew won't start installing them until Wednesday.  They are sitting in the side yard right now.

Our hard working crew.

 Jeff

 Jimmy

view from our future second floor

Profiles in Building - Greg Swetz

Greg Swetz is directly overseeing the construction of the envelope of the house including the foundation, walls, windows, roof and landscaping.  He owns BRC Builders, LLC and is the main subcontractor on the project.

Greg was born in Wisconsin and moved to St. Louis over twenty years ago courtesy of his wife, Daniela, a resident of St. Charles county. Greg’s interest in construction began while he was working as an electrician after leaving the Air Force. Following the wedding, Greg pursued this interest by renovating their first home, a dated and dilapidated fixer-upper. After the couple’s third live-in renovation, Daniela refused to live with any more drywall dust, so Greg turned his construction experience to outside projects. Seeing opportunities where others only saw problems, he successfully renovated a dozen properties--everything from a former drug house to a burned out shell of a split-level. Greg enjoyed the challenges brought by each project, especially in determining how best to reuse existing materials in combination with re-purposed and new products. He quickly became a regular at Habitat for Humanity’s Re-Store.

Greg’s foray into new construction came after buying a lot and building a spec home from the ground up. Finding he enjoyed the process, Greg began taking on more construction projects, designing and building a new home for his in-laws, and even eventually acquiring ground and building The Villas at Seckman Glen subdivision in Jefferson county.

Greg has been interested in alternative energy since wind and solar power came to the forefront in the 70’s, and has followed the evolution of the industry ever since. While evaluating different green technologies, Greg determined that the most cost-effective energy solution was saving energy rather than generating it, which led him to Insulated Concrete Form construction. He began experimenting with this new means of construction by building one of the villas in his subdivision out of ICF, and has since completed four ICF projects over the last two years (including his in-laws’ home). Dan and Michelle’s home is his fifth ICF project.

Thanksgiving

They started framing out our bedrooms!

The SIPS will be here in about 2 weeks. Then it will really start to look like a house with a roof and a second floor. We are very excited.

Happy Thanksgiving

Concrete pour

Well the first floor walls had concrete poured yesterday and the bracing taken down today. Everything looks good.

 This is the front of the house.

 Crane with cement pump.

Pouring cement into the ICFs.
We've now completed the use of the styrofoam forms and Gary is taking the leftovers to be used to insulate the lower part of a "cold house/green house" at Earthdance Farms in north St. Louis county.

The walls are getting higher. Due to rainy weather, the cement will not be poured until next week. We are still awaiting the SIPS. That will take another few weeks.

The rising walls

The ICFs are on the rise for the first floor. The guys will pour cement sometime next week, either Tuesday or Wednesday. It's looking like a structure at this point!

Water and sewage

Over the last 2 weeks there has been major work trenching and laying pipes for incoming water, outgoing sewage, and rainwater.

The plumber, Gary Parham, dug massive ditches with the backhoe.  Here a worker is welding together the pipe coming out of the slab (foreground) with the pipe connected to the water main.

This is a picture of our water coming off the main.  This is about 5 feet below the sidewalk.

This is a picture of our sewer pipe connecting to the large sewer under the middle of the street.  The workers had to cut away a big chunk of street pavement, then burrow down about 15 feet!  I was amazed at how deep it was.

Once the plumbers finished and back-filled their trenches, Greg's crew could come back and work on the walls.  As of 10/30/12 they are about 3 feet high and the windows are roughed.  This is Ella standing in her future room.  She has been playing a game with gravel in her room.

Today they poured the cement for the slab foundation.

Progress on the foundation

There's been a lot of progress on the house over the last week!

First, the men working on plumbing, electricity and hvac all placed pipes and tubes that will be under the slab.  This includes electric conduits to every room, incoming water and outgoing sewage, and a pipe for the ground source heat pump.  Here is Frida posing with some electric conduits and water pipes in the kitchen.

 After all the pipes were placed and checked by the city inspector, a truck with a gravel shooter sprayed rocks in and around the house.  They deposited several inches of gravel.

 Here's Ella playing with the gravel.

 Once the gravel was all placed, then Jeff and Jimmy spent all day placing 2 layers of R20 high density foam.  It took a long time because they had to cut little holes for every pipe and tube sticking out of the floor.

This foam is one way that our house is different from most homes.  In typical home construction there is no foam under the floor, but insulation here actually makes a big difference in how a house performs from an energy standpoint.

Carlos growing up

Carlos is growing quickly. He is 8 pounds 14 ounces today. He enjoys keeping mom and dad up so he can feed all night. Big sister Ella has been great with him.

We also went to visit his 99 year old great grandmother Mema.

Profiles in Building: Anthony Garavaglia

Anthony Garavaglia is working as the general contractor on our house through Trumpet Construction where he has worked for the last 5 years.  Shortly after he started working with Trumpet he had a daughter named Brianna (4) followed by a son named Eligio (3) together with his wife, Stephanie.

Anthony was born and raised in St. Louis within the 63139 zip code (the same one we are building in).  He went to college in Indiana, but returned to St. Louis to work with a large construction firm with over a billion dollars in revenue.  He was one of the first people in St. Louis to become a LEED AP.  He earned this distinction by managing the construction of an award winning LEED Platinum office building in St. Louis.  Since moving over to Trumpet, a much smaller company, he has built over half of the 5 most environmentally friendly buildings in the region according to the St. Louis Business Journal.

Enter the Dragon

Carlos Gene Berg was born on 9/25/12 at 1:13 am and weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces, 20.5 inches in length.  He's already 8 days old and up to 7 pounds 11 ounces now.

Carlos has already been out visiting the site a few times to help out with his big sister.

There was a mild setback with the rain as water and mud caused the icf's to float up out of place.  Greg and his crew had to dis-assemble, then re-assemble the entire 3 foot wall and then successfully got cement into it before another rain.  Here they are pouring the cement into the walls.  Greg is on the right.

Yesterday, the plumbers spent all day setting up the drainage pipes and the bringing in the pipes where the fresh water will flow.  This all had to be done before the foam and cement is set for the slab.  They also placed a plastic "pex" tube 3 feet underground around the entire inner perimeter of the foundation for the HVAC.  Fresh incoming air will run through the tube to moderate its temperature before it goes through the heat exchanger.

Insulated Concrete Forms

The crew started placing insulated concrete forms today.  They are stacking the pre-fabbed styrofoam today and will pour cement into the space between the 2 layers of styrofoam tomorrow.  The blue connectors keep the space uniform and will hold re-bar.

Profiles in building: Gary Steps

As part of this blog, we'd like present the cast and crew of our project.  Over the next couple weeks we'll introduce Gary Steps, Ralph Wafer, Anthony Garavaglia and Greg Swetz.  The blog may be a little delayed, however, as we anticipate the birth of our newest family member today (or maybe tomorrow morning).

Gary Steps - energy consultant

Gary was born in Kansas and attended the honors program at University of Kansas.  He then left his PHD program to move to DC and become one of the founders of Mensa College. He moved to St Louis to begin a 30 year career for IBM that took him all over the world.  In 2004 Gary launched Steps Systems, then started Butterfly Energy Works in 2007.

Gary has been an environmentalist since his childhood, long before the term existed, and believes that his interest was sparked by his father's career as a civil engineer.  His father spent most of his career as the engineering head of the Kansas State Water Resources Board where his job was to worry about the quantity and quality of water in the state. He was involved in one of the first cloud seeding programs anywhere and was one of the first people to worry about states sharing rivers.  

Gary's mother was one of the first women to graduate from college. She passed away of breast cancer at 82 and his father died of old age at 97.  He has three siblings, an older sister in San Diego, an older brother in Mechanicsburg Pa, and a younger brother in Silicon Valley 

Gary has been responsible for multiple certified green homes, and has audited and helped improve the energy efficiency of grocery stores, churches, warehouses, office buildings, and a laundromat. Each has it's own challenges from an energy standpoint. He is also helping bring multiple leading edge products to the marketplace. Several will be evident in the Berg/Ong home. This will be one of several zero or near zero net energy buildings he is working on.

As part of his role on our house, Gary is performing energy modeling to determine the proper amount of insulation under the floor, on the walls and in the roof as well as the most advantageous placement, sizing and typing of the windows and awnings.  He is also advising the team on the type and size of heating, ventilation and air conditioning system to use.  He is involved in other aspects of the building as well.

Pouring the footings.

Groundbreaking!

We finally broke ground Sept 19! It was very exciting. We have been waiting for this day for a very long time. We were also waiting for baby dragon to enter the world. His due date was September 16, Mexico's Independence Day, but he failed to make an appearance. My friend Lisa says that he is on 'Latin time.'

Uncle Michael at ground breaking

Here are the preliminary floor plans for the new house. They still need some adjustment of course. We are trying to trim the overall square footage to control costs.

Cute pic of Ella

Here is our little girl in her favorite purple dress!