Construction begins on main house, groundworks, energy modules, swimming lane, foundations, block wall and floor slab.
This morning, we tied our pulling ropes to the 6 support struts and mortared
the cement board down on top of the wooden T supports.
Cement-board-mortared-in-place
We are letting it set and cure before we screw the cement board down and
start filling in the whole area with the sandy soil, hardcore rubble and
everything else that is rubbish to compact it down solid and rebuild up the
level back up to the foundation point.
Today, while we waited for the delivery of our 300metres of the 20mm black
plastic pipe to come, we worked on finishing off the Earth Tube Mixing
Chamber and the Air Tunnel structures.
We dug around the whole chamber and tunnel, removing a spade width of soil,
down to the foundation slab. This is to allow for us to insert a layer of
DPM plastic sheeting all over the concrete blockwork plus a sticking out piece of
about 100mm as well. All this is to keep the whole unit dry and keep our air
supply from getting damp with wet weather.
Next, we got a large piece of cement board, 10mm thick stuff, and placed it
on top of the remaining part of the tunnel that goes under the main house
foundation, and cut it down to size, with a triangular notch cut out to make
a 300mm square “hole”.
Cement-board-mortared-in-place
This cement board needs lots of extra support inside the tunnel as it is
going to have to take the load of ready-mixed concrete being poured on top.
We wanted to make sure that the weight of the fluid concrete will NOT
suddenly snap the lid! We tested the strength of the cement board by putting
a medium sized piece 150mm apart on two bricks, and put more and more load
on the middle and find out if broke or not. It survived Stephen’s weight of
80kg at the end!! We tried separating the spacing to 250mm and worked our
way up with the extra load but it snapped with my weight of 70kg. This led
us to conclude that a spacing of 180mm would be just fine and we can have
enough to fully support the whole board.
So we made six T shaped wooden module with one horizontal strut and one leg.
Cement-board-supports-1
Cement-board-supports-2
Each piece of wood will have a length of string tied to them, ready for the
final process of removing this support mechanism.
Tomorrow, we will seat the cement board on fresh mortar on the edges of the
tunnel and press down to firmly hold the support struts into place. Once the
concrete is poured and set, we can pull on the twelve ropes to yank out the
individual pieces of the support modules!! We hope we can rescue the pieces,
all 22 of them!!
The-strings-to-remove-the-supports
This afternoon, we looked at our requirement of installing temperature
sensors around each Energy Module. But we don’t have the actual temperature
probes or wires yet, so we need narrow pipes to act as conduits for sliding
these temperature sensors in later on. So we have ordered some narrow
20mm diameter polyethylene pipes and we will cut various lengths and bury them in
the ground around each module plus also some under the modules too. Then later
on we can slide in the wires with the temperature probes soldered on the
wire at the calculated points so we can take measurements and record
progress of how well (or badly) the energy module is performing.
So this afternoon, we have been experimenting with ways to seal off the cut
ends to stop water and dirt getting in and also providing a “end stop” for
the process of sliding in the temperature sensors in. we discovered that
polyethylene, when heated with a small gas flame, will melt quite easily and
we just squashed the end in a vice to fused the end into one solid sealed lump. It worked out very nicely after all.
Sealed-end-of-conduit
We will install the temperature probes on a stiff wire and then put a cotton
ball or padded disc between each sensor to keep the air from circulating
which might interfere with their neighboring temperature chips and ruin our
data logging abilities and learning what is happening down there with the
heat.
It was our first hole to do (out of the total of 5!) and it is the 2nd
smallest one to dig out! It lives under bedroom 3, half in and half out of
its en-suite wet room.
We dug out 3metres by 2.5metres and 1.2metres down (10feet by 8feet by 4
feet down), to make room for the insulation (200mm thick under and around
the edges with 100mm on top), wrapping around the energy module, measuring
2.5metres by 2metres and almost 1metre tall, being made of 2 layers of 10
crates, to make a 20 Aquacell “hot water” tank.
We dug out most of the hole using the digger.
Module-1-Rough-dug-hole
Then Shaun cleaned the bottom with a spade until it nearly level. We got the petrol powered plate vibrator (which is very heavy) into the hole using the mini-digger to lower it down (and back up again!) and ran it around make sure the bottom was compacted
nice and solid.
We needed to make sure the bottom is as level as we can make it so we put
down two edge strips and got them positioned using the site laser height
gadget and set the two edges exactly at 2.7 metres on the sighting pole. Just
to clarify, the level generator is sitting on a reference point 1 metre above
ground, and the foundations (and the whole house) is 500 mm down below ground
level, thus making the ground we are working on 1.5 metres below the
reference point so 2.7 metres minus 1.5 metres makes 1.2 metres which is the
depth of our hole!! Nothing to it!! Smile!
Module-1-Guide-rails
We scraped along the two edges with a flat straight CLS 89 mm timber and got
the bottom of the hole fairly flat and level so when the water tank (oops I
mean the Energy Module) is set down, the water will not spill out on one
edge or another as it rises and falls. We Hope!! Grin!
Module-1-Hole-ready
Tomorrow’s job is to cut and get ready the insulation boards and make up the
required thickness on the bottom and vertical edges, while we wait for the
delivery of the 20 mm plastic pipe that we are suing as a conduit for the temperature
sensors we want under the tank.
This afternoon, we researched and designed a simple boring tool for making
holes into the soil where we need to insert temperature sensors in and
around the Energy Modules.
We used a 32mm diameter plastic pipe, a metre long, and took 4 6-inch nails
and fixed them to the end, with about an inch sticking proud out the end.
Then the plastic tube was connected to our powerful vacuum cleaner and
managed to “drill” down into the sandy soil!
Hole-borer-1
Hole-borer-3
Hole-borer-2
We did hit the gravel interface which was hard to get pass, but we did
managed to get down 1 metre.
But the pipe did clog up with the damp sand so we will have to clean it out
regularly, but fortunately, we have only 35 holes to drill!!
This morning, we got the first 20 Aquacell crates opened up, blasted with
jets of water and reassembled back together again!
We made a small dent in the pile of our Aquacell mountain ..
Stack-of-Aquacells
Only another 180 crates to go!!
We used our crate splitter tool, then used the pressure washer to spray
water into all the crevices and then loaded our trolley with the sparkling
clean plastic crates afterwards.
Washing-Area
A very wet job it is too!
During a long session, starting this morning at 10am, we assembled and
mortared all the pieces of the air tunnel together and finished about 2:30pm
with the lids going on!
We needed to mix two loads of mortar as we just ran out at the point of
having done the two rows of the walls. So all the remaining mortar, after
finished cementing down the concrete blocks on as lids, we spread it out all over the
whole Earth Tube Mixing Chamber and down the slope of the air tunnel to seal
and cover up the joints.
Earth-Tube-Tunell-Mortered-Together-2
Earth-Tube-Tunell-Mortered-Together-1
We will now let that all set for a couple of days to harden, then start
chucking in all the remaining hardcore and sandy soil around the area to
build up the levels again, ready for the foundation!
In the meantime, we start doing the Energy Modules!!
Today, it was the day of slicing many concrete blocks to create the air
tunnel from the Earth Tubes Mixing Chamber to the house! The jigsaw puzzle
was very complex with a three dimensional aspect to it, both sloping
downwards, curving around and also widening out too!!
There was at least 17 cuts made, using a 9inch diamond disc in a high
powered angle grinder machine.
Erth-tube-tunnel-blocks-cut-to-fit-1
Erth-tube-tunnel-blocks-cut-to-fit-2
Erth-tube-tunnel-blocks-cut-to-fit-3
We need to go and buy two more concrete blocks to complete the “lid” to the
tunnel. That’s tomorrow’s job along with mortaring all the pieces together
into one smooth solid unit!
As part of our commitment, with our neighbours, to keep the Loke neat and
tidy, we scooped up the remaining hardcore and ballast gravel and sharp sand
mixture and moved them off the end of the Loke and down into our building
area. We scraped and levelled the surface and compacted it all over to make
it nice and neat.
End-of-loke-cleared
We can at last get our old car out again!!
After we have finished the sewage pipes (the filling in of their trenches),
we started with the adjustment to the Earth Tube Mixing Chamber and the Air
Supply Tunnel construction.
The foundation slab is all set and very nicely done!
Earth-tube-Concrete-finished
We managed to get the end segment off the chamber with only having to
destroy one of the concrete blocks. Now we are planning the procedure of
what blocks to go where and what angles to slice certain blocks to form the
downward slope of the tunnel exiting from the mixing chamber etc. etc.
On Monday, we will resume and finish this task and then fill in all the soil
and the remaining hardcore material back in around the chamber and tunnel
and compact it all to build it up to the required level for the main house’s
foundation etc.