I met with Fred Pasheilich, our septic installer, on Sunday this past weekend. We signed the contract, and I paid him for the site planning and permit fee, so the process has officially begun. We spent the afternoon doing a preliminary layout of the system, trying to find a good place to put everything, and marking all the elevations. It’s our intention to build a passive solar/geothermal style home, primarily to offset the rising costs of utilities and to do our part to minimize our “carbon footprint”. The goal is to minimize the percentage of the house that is exposed to the cold northwestern winds we get in Morrow County, taking maximum advantage of the thermal protection the ground offers and the warm sunlight the southern exposure of the property provides. I plan to design the house so that the ground floor and about half of the second floor will be below grade on the north and west sides. Half of the east side will be thermally protected by the garage, which will be fully insulated. The rest of the east side and the entire south side will be exposed, with lots of low-e glass to collect energy from the sun on those cold winter days. The ground floor will be our primary living floor. The concrete slab underneath will be heated with a combination of passive solar heat and warm water which will probably originate from a wood burning boiler. With over 2/3 of the ground floor protected from the elements by earth and the garage, and another floor of non-essential space above it that we can heat or not heat as we see fit, the primary living area will be extremely cozy and efficient. The rooms in the back of the house that are totally below grade will be utility and storage rooms, and will also serve to provide thermal isolation for the living area. The lack of windows in those rooms won’t matter much, and anywhere we really want some natural light, we can use light wells to provide some natural light. The rest of the ground floor will receive lots of sun energy from the south, and I plan to use an open architectural style to allow lots of natural light into the central parts of the house.
I still have a lot of design details to work out, but for now, our biggest concern is getting the septic system set low enough to allow for a gravity feed from under the slab to the tank so we don’t have to pump the waste uphill to the tank. If we allow about nine feet for the footer, the slab, and the ground floor walls, another foot for the second floor floor-joists, and four feet for the below-grade portion of the second floor, that means we’ll need a starting point for the septic system that is at least 14 feet below grade.
We measured our elevations, and found the lowest possible starting point for the system is only about 12-13 feet below the highest point on the hill, so we’ll have to back fill a couple feet of soil on the west and north sides to acheive our goal. Since we’d probably want to do that anyway to divert any rain water away from the foundation, we should be in good shape. Just looking at it over the last few weeks, I was pretty sure we had sufficent fall to do what we wanted to do, but it was nice to see it all confirmed. I really don’t want us to incur the cost of buying and maintaining a sewage pump, nor do I want us to have to pay for the electricity to operate it …
Fred is still baffled by what I’m trying to do, but that’s typical for contractors …. they see so many houses built, and they’re pretty much always built the same basic way … the cheapest and easiest way possible. What we’re trying to do isn’t rocket science, nor is it going to be super expensive, but it’s going to fall into the ”that’s not the way we usually do that” category ….. and he can’t seem to understand why we wouldn’t just want to build it the easy way and burn more fuel to heat it. It’s going to be fun trying to get everyone to do things my way, but that’s the story of my life! After Fred made several attempts to re-design the whole house, I finally had to just tell him “look, just set this thing as far below grade as you can and let me deal with the rest …”
Luckily, I got him to give us the price for his end of the deal BEFORE he really realized what we are doing and tacked on a thousand bucks just because he thinks we have money to “waste”. I suspect that’s going to be my challenge through the whole project …. contracting each part of the project while telling each contractor as little as possible, so they don’t smell blood and wind up gouging us. It’s sad that it has to be that way, but people are predictable … the minute they get the impression that you have money to waste, they want their cut. We’re not trying to do this project on a shoestring, but we aren’t made of money, and we certainly don’t have any money to waste. I’ve found that it doesn’t take much to make a rural contractor think you’re “rich” though, so I’ll be wearing my dirtiest jeans and driving my beat up pickup truck for all the preliminary contractor meetings …
Today, Fred called me and told me that he filed the site plan, paid the fee, and the system was APPROVED. The permit has been issued, and we have a year to get it finished. My job now is to continue with the driveway work (which has to be re-routed a bit now that we know exactly where the septic system is going) and finish the design work on the house. When it warms up and dries out up there, the septic installation will begin. Another step forward …
Filed under: Construction
