Winter arrives

Winter arrived with about a foot of snow and brought work on the site to a halt. The ground has not frozen yet and is a quagmire under the snow. We have decided to put the project on hold until spring. There is plenty of design detailing to do over the winter along with sourcing materials and selecting subcontractors. There is also some great snow in the backcountry calling to us so we are off to check it out.

Filling in the geothermal source field

We had a three ring circus going between Danette, Kevin, and me.


Jenny tries out the compactor.

We arrived at the site early Monday morning and started filling and compacting the remaining soil in the geothermal source field but as the sun warmed the site, the ground thawed and things became very slippery. We came close to burying the 2000 gallon water truck trying to get it closer to the hole. Even the excavator was sliding around on the slope which, I would imagine, is very unnerving if you're sitting at the controls. Danette took it in stride. Kevin seemed to enjoy hot roding the skid steer around in the mud. It rained last night and the forecast is for more through the weekend. This puts things on hold until the site dries a bit.

I have had several people ask how the geothermal system works. Here are a couple links to sites that have more information on how it works.

http://www.bluesky-energy.com/ This is a Denver area company that installs systems (not the one we are using)

http://www.waterfurnace.com/ This is one of the geothermal equipment suppliers

Geothermal Source Field

Laying out pipe in the Geothermal source field


Vibrating screen used to create fill to bed the pipe


Pipes bedded and soil compacted as weather hits


Lake formed by the rain being pumped out


Ken Jenkins wife, Danette Jenkins mother of three and excavator operator for the family business created this hole and Gordon Heinrich and Dave Hines of Braxis Engineering along with my labor, laid out the tubing for the Geothermal source field. Assembly took about four hours but filling in the hole became a bit of a problem as we had a difficult time finding a vibrating screen to sift the soil for bedding the tubing. Stones could damage the pipe and hard soil clumps create air pockets around the pipe which reduces thermal connection with the soil. Once the equipment was located it took about one and a half days to sift enough soil to bed the tubing. We scrambled to get the first eighteen inches of fill in place and compacted as the snow and rain began. The following day I returned with a rented pump to empty the lake formed by the 1.5 inches of rain that fell.

Construction becomes official 11/08/07

Raider by the temporary address sign


Jenkins putting in a culvert for the driveway


Taking a break while clearing oak

The project became official with the installing of our temporary address sign. Raider, our new companion from the Humane Society poses for the camera. Putting the culvert in allowed us to get on the site to start clearing and chipping the dense oak on the build site.

The Begining

After agonizing over the Strawbale house project my wife and I had been planning for almost two years, we decided to kill the project for a number of troubling reasons. We sold the land and bought another property in an area known as Horse Gulch. The lot has a great southern exposure that begged for a good passive solar design. We hired local architect Greg Madeen who is well versed in all forms of natural building including; strawbale, adobe, and rammed earth, to design a passive solar adobe home that would nestle into the pinion, juniper, and oak covered south facing slope towards the front of the property. The wall profile will consist of two 10 inch adobe blocks with a four inch gap between them filled with perlite. Greg's first pass design was very close to what we had invisioned and, with a few small adjustments, was ready to be detailed out. We began excavation work in early November with hopes of getting the drive, septic, power, and cistern in before the snows made progress too dificult. We decided to use a geothermal mechanical system in the house so the first project became digging a hole 105' x 36' x 7' for the source field.

The house project progress entries begin at this point