Winter storm video

Here is a short video clip of the storm conditions at our construction site this morning at about high tide. As you can see, several waves were going over the top of the stone revetment and into the excavated pit where we had already begun building the forms for the terrace foundation.

Storm photos

What a storm! I was at the construction site during high-tide last night as well as today in the morning and the devastation of the sand fence that began a few storms ago is now complete with all sections gone and several of the posts damaged as well.

The waves ran up all the way in the tallest section of our revetment and also easily overtopped the seawall in the lower sections where we had started building the forms for the footings of the terrace.

The erosion of the beach berm continued at a much faster pace than in previous storms and there are literally only four rows of beach grass left.

 

Just take a look at the size of these waves coming in. Those are the biggest I’ve seen this year, but in comparison with the storm in 2007 these are still relatively small. Nonetheless they did all the damage to the beach berm. Our so-called “sacrifical dune” has been sacrificed.

This is the construction site right behind the beach berm. It is now essentially unprotected. Not a good situation for our construction project:

Last, but not least, here is a photo taken from the neighboring Beach Bluff Park and you can see the size of the waves in relationship to the house.

Photosynth of the construction site

I found some time to experiment with Photosynth today and created this augmented-reality view of the house that you can now browse interactively or view as a slideshow.

If you cannot see the above image, you may need Internet Explorer and/or may need to download a plug-in to view this Photosynth - and it probably also only works on a Windows computer…

HVAC Installation

The installation of our HVAC system is continuing and the radiant heat piping in the basement is now all laid out and we are ready to pour the concrete slabs next week:

 

The radiant heat piping is suspended on a steel grid to bring the pipes close to the surface of the concrete in order to optimize heat transport upwards. The pink “stuff” underneath is insulation material.

Abandoning geo-thermal approach

After more than a week of drilling we unfortunately have to abandon the geo-thermal approach as of today. Our drilling operation was struck by a series of unfortunate events. Our first attempt ended after hitting what we believed to be an abandoned sewer pipe at a depth of 60 ft. After moving the rig and restarting the operation on the second day, we again encountered an obstacle at the same depth, but this time it became clear that we had really hit an old abandoned dry well. We had to stop drilling again, needed to remove the rig, bring in an excavator to dig down to the old dry well and fill it it up. Then we could put the rig in a new position and started our 3rd attempt at drilling a well late last week.

While drilling on the 3rd attempt was possible until a depth of about 160 ft, the well started to produce too much water as we hit water pockets in 200 and 250 ft of depth. We attempted to overcome that situation by inserting 8” casing to a depth of 160’ and then inserting 6.5” casing to a depth of 280’, which should have allowed us do continue drilling past those water pockets.

However, at a depth of 320 ft we again hit more water and this time it was water at such a high pressure that we could not continue drilling any further. The drilling rig just could not put enough pressure on the drill bit to overcome the water pressure upwards, and thus we had to abandon this well completely.

After evaluating all possibilities and considering the cost of a drilling a 2nd well at another location on the site and the risk that we might likely encounter a similar geological situation, we started studying alternatives and analyzing the LEED implications.

To our great surprise it turned out that eliminating the geo-thermal component from our HVAC design actually improved the energy-efficiency of the system and possibly will yield more LEED points. This is largely due to the fact that we already had already planned a gas furnace as a backup heating system, and that the electricity consumed by chillers for the cooling system is actually quite comparable to the electricity consumed by the pumps and heat-exchanger of a geo-thermal system.

Even though we really like the geo-thermal approach, our site just isn’t the right place for it, so we made the decision today to abandon the geo-thermal approach and proceed with just the solar panels, a gas-furnace, and some chillers.

Geo-thermal well drilling

Drilling of the well for our geo-thermal heating system has begun today. The well is targeted to be drilled to a depth of about 1,500 ft. However, after 60 ft of drilling we encountered an abandoned sewer pipe that was not recorded in any plans, so we had to move the entire drilling rig 4 ft and restart the drilling process all over again.

It is expected that drilling will continue for 5-6 days before we reach the target depth of 1,500 ft.

More windows

More windows are being installed this week on the basement level and first floor of the SW facing side of the main house. Here you can see some of the windows that are already installed in the basement corner and the copper flashing being installed one floor above to the left:

And here is a photo of the remaining double-hung window being installed in the basement:

Stair foundation

The foundation for the stairs behind the house has been poured and we are now setting up for forming the retaining walls on top of that foundation:

Concrete

Concrete is being poured for the footing of the stairs behind the house today. We got the forms ready last week, but it was simply too cold to pour on Friday.

We also plan to start the drilling for the geo-thermal well sometime this week, so stay tuned for some more photos and updates soon.