When you first start to think about building a house, you think in large sweeps. How you move about a space, what it should be made of and how it should breathe. A concrete floor, radiant heating system, energy efficient windows, doors and appliances, good room flow, the use of natural materials and for us a main structure made from SIPS (Structural Insulated Panel System). But then there’s a whole mess of stuff no one tells you about that finds you making decisions on the fly all the time.
The first big decision was how to dig our 400 ft. utility trench. Because we were going to pass through part of a wetland, the utility trench was restricted in width by the County. It had to hold our propane, phone, electrical and water. Since we could not lay each line out side by side, we had to separate them by having two on the top and two on the bottom. That meant hanging and pinning two of the lines on top to make the trench less wide.
Walking the trench from Jen Pennington on Vimeo.
Then there’s figuring out the cut and fill for the foundation pad. The top native soil had to be banked for future use. Sounds simple enough, but finding space accessible in the forest that was not in the wetland buffer was not so easy. Piles were placed on the East, North, and West sides of the house, above the setbacks. If you have to bring in fill, what type of fill gets used? Our local landscaping company supplied some County certified pit run for our low spots that came from just 3 miles away.
Then came the retaining wall. Before we could continue with the foundation pad, stumps in the back of the house and a dead tree I was trying to save as a wildlife snag were moved and placed elsewhere. Large boulders were brought in to start the wall because getting behind the house once the panels were up would be a problem. It became a series of dominoes before we could even start on foundation causing us more delays in the project.
Once all this was settled we were ready to move on to foundation forms. As luck would have it, our contractor Ted met Eldon at All Whidbey Topsoil. They were talking about what type of dirt and gravel would be needed to fill the inside of the stemwall cavity when Eldon noticed we hadn’t yet started the bottom footing form. He suggested we use a product called Form-A-Drain. It was the perfect solution for us since drainage was a big issue.
The Form-A-Drain is an eight-inch high channel about two inches wide that runs continuously around the perimeter of your building. It has slits in it that allows water to collect, run and exit through a drain-pipe on our south end that will eventually lead to a cistern. It’s made from 100% recycled pre- and post-consumer PVC, including common post-consumer containers such as shampoo bottles. Using it saved us the cost of wood forms and filling the stemwall cavity with very expensive gravel. Pea gravel was used up against the drain areas and landscaping cloth was placed on top of that. Then fill sand/dirt was used in the interior of that. It was an inexpensive solution, that was more functional and eco-friendly. Additionally, we did not have to disturb yet another area of soil in the back of the house to put in a curtain wall drain which was part of our original plan.
Ted called us immediately, completely excited by the idea. I’m not sure if the economy has anything to do with it or not, but Eldon gave us a great quote, and had two of his guys there to install it the next day. He even loaned us the use of his metal stakes. It took us completely by surprise and we couldn’t be happier.
At the heart of all this is what I think about a lot. How do other people do it? When people say they are building a green home, unless they are crazy enough to be part of the process everyday, my guess is most homeowners rely solely on their contractors or architects to make these decisions for them. And no matter how eco-friendly we try to be, we still struggle. To give credit, there are great builders who do know these things. But do most homeowners care or know how dirt on their site is moved in relation to building their house or do they only see the box on the hill? Are they willing to look beyond the myriad of eco-friendly interior finishes and scratch beneath the surface to uncover the most important connection a house has to its environment? The very ground it sits on.
