Left to right: PortaPotty, PortaOffice, driveway, pickup and silt fence, Pete's Pyramids, Excavator and 1200 pink cubic feet of XPS insulation for the Thermomass walls.
Labor Day, September 5th — For most people it's a holiday, but HJ O'Keefe Builders took delivery of their 8-ton excavator on site this morning, delivered by Mad River Construction of Westerly RI. With winter on the horizon there's not a lot of time to waste getting the shell up and covered. Peter O'Keefe hit the dirt with the excavator Tuesday morning, and by the following week — now — we are ready for the foundation pours.
And the week before, a huge flatbed backed in over the lot to deposit 1200 cubic feet of 4" thick sheets of XPS, the extruded polystyrene foam that will form the middle of the Thermomass concrete sandwich walls.
Site prep is a big deal, and when you are building solar you have to look at the compass as much as the dirt. Gregg Fedus of Fedus Engineering placed the foundation lines to true Solar South (14° 6' West magnetic deviation here), and the O'Keefe brothers nailed the lines down before digging in. Result: we are ready for the concrete.
Next blog is all about the pour as Dennis Purinton of Purinton Builders oversees one of the few Thermomass homes to be built in this part of the country. Stay tuned for the fun stuff as we post.
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Good reads: The Rise of the Hybrid Home | What's a Real Smart House? | | Virtual Reality, Wabi-Sabi | Location: Daylight | Process: Design