Continuing Inward

When last I wrote, we had just finished putting up stakes and strings for the inside walls for the bedroom, bath and pantry.  I've spent the last three weeks trenching and building forms.

First trenching done.  

Forms in place. They only go so far because trenching for the plumbing needs to be done before the rest of the forms can be put in place.

This pictures shows the footing where the three foot high adobe wall separating the sun space from the bedroom will go.  There will be a wooden post at the end of the adobe wall that will go up to the ceiling.  The post will be some more wood from the old bridge. There will be an opening into the bedroom but no door.

Here you can see the trenching I've done for the plumbing.  The shallower trench on the left is for the cold water from the pressure tank that will be in the garage.  Hot water will also go in this trench from the on-demand hot water heater in the bathroom back to the washer in the garage and forward toward the kitchen. I know this trench looks shallow but there will be maybe 6 more inches of dirt for the floor once the trench is filled in.

The deep trench toward the back of the picture is for the gray water.

The closer deep trench is for the black water.

Trenching done I can now finish the forms.

Forms are completed and rebar is in place.

The biggest challenge here has been dirt management.  The soil is very dry and loose and I had to be careful where I put it. More than once I realized that I had piled dirt over a spot where I was going to have to trench. Often I would add to the pile only to have it roll down the mound back into the trench! Thought about running a hose into the house to wet down the dirt but with all that exposed straw, I felt that would be tempting fate. We will just have to live with the loose soil until we can refill all the trenching - after the plumbing is installed - and the concrete footings are poured.

We are currently waiting for an estimate on the plumbing.  We have to have a certified plumber install the propane line but we have always thought we'd do the rest of the plumbing ourselves.  We decided to see just how much it would cost to have the guy doing the gas line do the plumbing, too. We'll see. We may end up doing the plumbing anyway. We cannot pour the footings until the plumbing is roughed in and we cannot build the walls until the footings are poured so we are in a bit of a holding pattern.

While we're waiting for the plumbing to be resolved we have moved back into the garage to finish the east end.  We will be installing two non-opening windows plus a small access door. Quite a while back, we picked up some double pane windows at the Habitat Re-Store and this past week Rick built frames for them.

They have been stained red and look really nice.

This is where one of the windows will go.

This picture shows the two windows with the access door in the middle. Straw bales will be stacked on this wall once the windows are installed. The outside will then be covered with underlayment like we did on the roof and corrugated siding. Should look pretty cool.