Finally – some wood – and more concrete

April 18, 2010

We’ve made significant progress in the last two weeks.  Basement Contractors poured the basement floor, the theater room floor, the garage floor and more of the exterior walls.  So now we’ve poured more than 250 cubic yards of concrete and we still have a lot more concrete to go.  The weather was cooperating nicely until [...]

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Starting to take shape

March 29, 2010

Now that the basement wall forms have been removed, we can see plans beginning to take shape.  This week we will be working to pour the basement floor and the garage floor.  Before the floors can be poured, we have to get geothermal lines in place, run some of the rain harvest pipes, and do [...]

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The Big Pour

March 21, 2010

On Friday, March 19, 2010, Dolese Brothers delivered 168 cubic yards of concrete for the lower level walls of the home.  It was a beautiful day, in the mid 60’s to the low 70’s.   As you can see by the photos below, we finished the pour before the weather changed.  We’re not very knowledgeable about [...]

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Going Vertical

March 18, 2010

The basement walls are going up.  The walls will be 12” thick – 5” of concrete, 3” of DOW Styrofoam, and another 4” of concrete.  We choose the the Thermomass Building Insulation System by Composite Technologies Corporation because of the high energy efficiency and price.  Weather permitting, we should pour the concrete for the basement [...]

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Footers are Poured

February 22, 2010

We completed the footers last week.  The site was fairly dry and everything went well.  However, it rained again this weekend and we have a big mud hole – again, as you can see in the final photo. In order to save money and make sure we have minimal waste, we are attempting to handle [...]

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Construction Resumes

February 16, 2010

Since early January, construction has been stymied by weather.  It was the wettest January ever in Oklahoma.   We have had water in the basement hole continuously since Christmas.  The water was pumped out last Thursday, February 11.  On President’s Day, work began on building the footer framing.  The first truck, of more than 70 loads, [...]

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Thank you neighbors

January 23, 2010

Thank you to our new neighbors to the south.  We went to the work site and saw the temporary cable TV link strung along the driveway.  We can only assume our construction crew cut your cable.  We also want to thank the Coits for letting us store dirt on their lot 363. It’s been too [...]

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The Big (Chilly) Hole

January 7, 2010

It’s the coldest week in the last twenty years in Oklahoma.  No work will be completed at the job site this week due to the low temperatures.   However, we have been working with the plumber and doing the engineering on all the trusses and support beams.  Suzy and I will be attending the 2010 International [...]

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We lost our first LEED point today.

December 17, 2009

We were going to try and earn a LEED point for Sustainable Sites Item 1.2.  SS 1.2 has to do with no disturbance zones and leaving 40% of the buildable lot area, not including area under roof, undisturbed.  On the first full day of construction,  about 100% of the area not under roof was disturbed.  [...]

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Ground Breaking

December 16, 2009

Sally and Lydia help lower the cost of construction for the new home.  Suzy brought gold shovels for the ground breaking ceremony, but the Lytle girls decided that was boring and a lot of effort. So each took a turn with the big shovel – Sally was a natural.  She made it look like a [...]

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