Progress between New Years Day 2011 and Feb. 2011

The following is the work that has been done between New Years Day 2011 and today (pics following the summary list):

1. Majority of Rough electrical finished- As you can see the electrical on the exterior ICF walls has to be well thought out ahead of time, since it is more difficult to make additions or corrections to electrical later compared to a traditional stick built house. Also the wiring is secured within the ICF foam since there is no empty space within the exterior walls.

2. Majority of rough plumbing finished- All of the Pex tubing running from the manifold in the mechanical room (where all shut offs are) has dedicated lines from the manifold to each and every faucet. There are no T's or junctions in the house. This allows more control over any future changes made like installing a cistern system. It also reduces the chance for leaks since every junction is a potential leak.

3. Dry-Wall and priming- This is very similar to traditional stick built homes, except the drywall on the exterior walls is attached to the ICF foam block's internal structure. Also plywood and sheet metal is used in specific locations on the exterior walls to provide an anchor location for mounting heavy objects such as cabinets and other fixtures of any significant weight.  At this time, all the drywall and priming is done except the window "buck outs"; We want to do a blower door test to look for any leaks around the windows and do extra insulating/sealing and reinforcement for cellular solar shades before dry-walling around the windows.

4. Standing Seam Metal Roofing - This is installed the same as on any home. The benefit of a this type of roof is that it is maintenance free, it doesn't shed asphalt pieces into cistern water, and the light color we chose reduces the heat absorbed from the sun and therefore also reduces heat radiated back into the environment.

5. Exterior Cultured Stone Installation - In progress. This will be installed only part way up. The remainder will be concrete fiber board. The enclosure you see in one of the pictures is a shelter so that this can be installed during the winter.  

360 Degree Panoramas of the construction progress

My nephew Jeffrey Powers (owner of Occipital) visited our Honey-Prairie project during the holidays and we were fortunate to have him demonstrate the "360 Panorama" application (App) that he invented. He sent us the following "360 Panorama" images. It is a very cool application; It is very cool to see the progress of construction as a panorama that you can manipulate. My daughter, Whitney has since purchased the App for her new I-PodTouch and has shown us how easy it is to use, so we can now use it for showing updates as a panorama. It is also easy to purchase at the "App Store" on-line and the following is a link to some info about it: http://occipital.com/360

To manipulate the following images to see the entire panorama, just drag your mouse from one edge of the picture toward the other edge (but let go of the mouse as you spin the picture, so it will keep spinning after you let go of the picture). Continuing to do so will allow you to see all 360 degrees around the space. For whatever reason, if you are clicking and dragging the picture directly on the blog, it works better using Firefox than Safari browser. Also, on each of these, using any browser, you can click "twitpic" at the bottom and then click "View Full Size" on the twitpic page to get the full-size original JPG.

The first two are the upstairs, the third one is the downstairs, and the fourth is outside (looking from the East side of the house).









The following picture is a round stereographic picture from in-between the shed and house (also provided by Jeffrey/Occipital). It is a very unique view.