Steel Kit Home 1

To build the new house, the earthship mass wall had to move. The build site was right above a large valley so I decided to shove it down into the valley to create a dam.

After grading the site, I had a contractor come out and put up forms for the concrete slab. We then had gravel delivered and spread and tamped it to create the form for the 20" thick turn down slab.

You can see the turn down slab in it's final shape. The pile of tamped gravel in the middle is about 6" from the top of the form while the sides of the slab go all the way to grade to create the footer. The entire slab/footer assembly is monolithic and I made it nearly 2x as thick as was recommended to have the extra mass for heat storage for the radiant floor.

I had a contractor install the plumbing and then me and my Dad did the in slab electric, data, cool tubes, ecofoil vapor barrier/radiant insulation (LINK), and 6 zones of radiant in slab 1/2"pex tubing.

The building was brought right up to the site and I unloaded the trailer with my late 60's JD backhoe with pallet forks on the bucket. The hardest part was the roof panels which were 35' long and very flexible. I had to have a guy on each end while picking it to keep it from kinking while I moved it.

This video explains the progress up until this point.

More to come!