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Framing Progress

evan Filed Under:

Apologies for the delay in posting; it's been a busy week. As you can see in the photo, the second floor and the roof are already up with the blue SIS (Structural Insulated Sheathing) panels. Look through the gallery for more progress photos; while we didn't get any posts up, we still manged to get out and take pictures a few times this week.


This week has really illustrated that a huge part of designing "green" is really just designing accurately and economically. More on this later. Everyone enjoy your weekend!

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Thanks for reading. We'd love to hear comments, questions or suggestions either in the comments section or you can email us at blog@rmichaelcross.com

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Wall Action!

evan Filed Under:


Today was pretty exciting; we got to see Jeremy's progress and had a teevee camera out, just cold filmin' & framin'. Jeremy has made short work the first floor exterior walls; you can see a couple of the "advanced framing techniques" we've tried to incorporate to save materials and energy. 


Also- as you may know- today was Friday, which here at rmcDG means Ronnie's feeds us. Fridays are good days.


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Thanks for reading. We'd love to hear comments, questions or suggestions either in the comments section or you can email us at blog@rmichaelcross.com


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First Floor Framing

evan Filed Under:

CLICK IMAGE FOR GALLERY


Just a quick post to update and get some more photos up. Jeremy has framed out the first floor plate. Jeremy is a one man show, and I'm looking forward to getting some action photos up here soon: things are going to move fast over the next couple of weeks. We used open web wood joists for the spans (see gallery), which provide a lot of strength with a minimal amount of depth and material.
Everyone on this end is pretty keyed in on the prize, but for anyone else reading I thought it might be helpful to post an image of where we're heading:




This view is from Westmoreland heading towards Monument. Check the Google street view below for reference.


View Larger Map


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Thanks for reading. We'd love to hear comments, questions or suggestions either in the comments section or you can email us at blog@rmichaelcross.com

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THE FOUNDATION

evan Filed Under: Tags: , , , , ,
CLICK IMAGE FOR FOUNDATION GALLERY

Friday the foundation was poured.  The whole schedule was surprisingly precise; I mean you see these guys in these big trucks, looking pretty sloppy, like a Hardee's commercial somehow, but what you don't know is that they're usually right where they're supposed to be. It's all part of this giant lumbering beast that is the construction process where the guy in the boom truck needs to get there exactly a few minutes before the concrete mixer, who is usually at some other job until precisely 3:00, and has to get this job done by 4:00 to go to another job.... So this boom truck, with its extend-o-trunk concrete hose shows up and - no joke - has 'schwing' painted all over it.  Who along the management chain gave this the green light?









Anyway... Glenn Turner & Johnny from Thermacrete poured the concrete into the ICF forms to make the foundation walls. If you haven't heard of it before, ICF is pretty much the love child of a beer cooler and a concrete masonry unit (see gallery), so naturally we like it. The foam formwork stacks up like legos, then stays in place to provide a pretty high insulation value. The concrete we used is a 30% fly ash mixture which is apparently crazy kinds of sustainable for reasons I will let the fly ash industry explain, but alas is NOT made out of the ashes of flies.


A minor blowout in one of the ICF forms provided the drama for the day, but everyone* stayed cool and collected. For my part, I reacted by attempting to fall into (perhaps through?) the foundation and surrounding deathmoat, but only managed to drop a couple of Michael's lenses into the footing (oops!). Michael's grandfather Dick on the other hand made several impressive leaps across the footing/foundation.


After the pour Dick, Richard (Hollyport Ventures), and Michael (rmichaelcross | Design Group) - heretofore known as 'Los Tres Cruces' - scurried around with tape measures and old 2x4s and helped the Thermacrete gentlemen shim some of the forms into place. Finally we put Glenn Turner's pocket change into the wet concrete, because Italians in Long Island do this. Take THAT Freemasons!


As of today, the first floor engineered lumber has been ordered and the mason is onsite laying the face brick around the foundation. We're hoping to get a couple of renderings up to show what this thing is supposed to turn into, so stay tuned.


*not everyone
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Thanks for reading. We'd love to hear comments, questions or suggestions either in the comments section or you can email us at blog@rmichaelcross.com






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Groundbroken! (but not housebroken)

evan Filed Under: Tags: , , , ,
CLICK!
CLICK THE IMAGE FOR A GALLERY OF FOOTING EXCAVATION PHOTOS

After about a year of planning, designing, drawing, rigorous & varied ritual sacrifices, puppy acquisition, and precious final minutes seconds of triple checking, ground officially broke on The Augusta Project the morning of Wednesday, July 8th. Six days later, so has The Augusta Project: The Blog!

This is where we'll be posting updates, images, anecdotes - heck, maybe even some video!- docementing the renovation/construction process as well as the certification processes for LEED-H, EarthCraft, and God knows however many other merit badges our intrepid owner/builder over at Hollyport Ventures has his eyes on. We hope you're half as excited as we are... which is pretty excited.
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