My Domestead's Renovation

Renovation Update

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March 26

This week I ripped the very funky bathroom out of the garage, which only took a few hours, with my kids help. It was a mess. The composting toilet only drained to a bucket, and the water cistern was a cattle trough, mounted up in the ceiling. I've decided to put a wood stove in that corner as I remodel the garage into a shop & office. I'm definetly going to put the new bathroom in the end of the existing walled off garage bay, since that is closest to the septic tank. I've got the 2 and 3D CAD work mostly done, I'll add a link once it's presentable.

April 7

Today I finished putting a stainless steel liner down the chimney, and hooking up a used wood stove I bought to replace the stupidly installed one that was there already. The main problem was I needed a stove that vented from the back, rather than the top, so I could have less bends (bends restrict air flow), than the old system, which barly worked. The old one had a stove pipe that went up to a whole in the chimney about 10 feet up, which was a cresote breeder, cause of the weird drafts. (temperature changes and drafts are the two most important concepts in installing a stove pipe) Instead, I ran my pipe up through the flue, by cutting the old firebox out with a torch. The test fire worked great! The draw was so good, all the flames burned aiming towards the rear vent.

For materials, I went crazy and put in a 25 year warrenty, single wall, stainless steel pipe. As there is almost 36 inches of masonary around the old broken liner, a double wall pipe wasn't nessesary. 28 inches of masonary equals one inch of insulation, which is standard. The main reason for the insulation is to retian heat, to keep cresote from forming.

It took 23 feet of pipe to reach the stove. I also put a T and a cap on the bottom to make cleaning, and long term maintainance easier. On top I put a rotating, wind vane style spark arrestor, and weather cap. As the old liner fell apart from the wind/freeze/snow/melt cycle, I sealed this one up tight. It'll also keep the domestead from wasting heat.

I'm slowly learning to hate owner built housing... I ripped the steps up in the bathroom on the pedestal the composting toilet is on, and after months of wondering, grokked the reality of the plumbing. Not only are all the drain pipe the wrong size, the slope is way off! Both major bummers. So I'll have to replace the main drain pipe so I can hook up a low-water flush toilet. The ground is thawed enough to dig in, so can excavate outside finally.

June 18

I'm amazed at how many rocks I have to move! Digging out a stone floor may not have been the best decision. I'd guess 30-40 tons later, I have the rocks in the ex-greenhouse dome dug down 2 feet everwhere, and deeper in the places were there is plumbing.

This picture is the floor before I dug it up. You can see one small test hole I dug, which was very discouraging. The little rocks didn't dig very well, and the big ones required a digging bar to move!

I also managed to get the old Carousel composting toilet tank out. That was an interesting project. I first had to remove the floor above it, as the Carousel tank is typically mounted in a basement or in my case, part way in the crawl space.

In this picture you can see the foam pad that was under the large round tank, and the short curved wall by the toilet area.

Once the floor was off, I removed the top, which exposed the 4 chambers, which I then dug out with a posthole digger. 99% of it had composed into peat, and had no odor at all. There was a tiny bit that hadn't decomposesed in 5 years, which to me, is more evidence that they just don't work good at this altitude.

In this picture, you can see where the old platform was, because there are no wall coverings.

July 18

Rocks everywhere... I'm so sick of moving rocks. I did break down and get some excavating help from SugarLoaf Services (303-258-3725). Having a tractor in your house in as interesting event, one I'm not sure I'd want to repeat. Scott (the driver) was awesome though. He did an incredible job in a very tight space, and saved me months of digging by hand.

I've mostly been ripping things apart all month. Everytime I get into something, it turns out to be a huge project. Nothing was done to code, so it looks like I'll have top redo all the plumbing and electrical wiring. Among other things, there is zero power upstairs in the loft, which I'll need to fix.

August 18

Finished the sub-floor! At times we were stuck digging trenches in the rocks to put in the floor joists. What a project. I went with 14 inch I beams, because of the 14 foot span I had to cross. We then ran one 32 foot pressure treated beam all the way across the dome. This enabled us to box off a section, and then fill in the ends with more I beams. Once this was done, we covered it with a single large piece of plastic, (for radon mitigation) and then a layer of 3/4 inch plywood.

It feels so good to be able to walk on a flat surface. I was getting tired of walking through the uneven, craters left by excavating. Every time we put in another floor joist, we had to move rocks out of the way. There were two big piles left that the tractor couldn't get to. Cutting all the plywood was interesting, because there wasn't barely any straight lines.

I finally wound up ripping out all the plumbing and rewiring what was there. While at it, I left an extra drain pipe, so I can add a half bathroom to the main dome if I ever want to. It was better to put it in before I sealed up the floor. What prompted all of this was the discovery that the kitchen drain pipes actually went slightly uphill, which wasn't very effective. Now all the plumbing is done to code, with PVC drain pipe. When I got the new Toto "Drake" toilet working, I could only marvel at finally having indoor plumbing again.

I like the Toto toilet though. It's very quiet, yet has a powerful enough flush to do the job. Here you can see the vent pipe behind the toilet, and the drain pipe in the not yet finished bathroom floor.

Sept 18

I'm exhausted, but almost there. All that is remaining is some tongue and groove (3 1/2 x 3/8 inch pine) to be put on the walls, and a 3 1/2 hardwood #1 Oak floor. As I've gotten the walls put up, I ran wires for both a 24VDC lines (for lighting), and 120VAC off the inverter for outlets. To make things visually easier, I ran the 120VAC through the bottom of the studs, and the 24VDC through the tops.

Because I built curved walls, to match what was there, I used 2x4s for the studs, and then covered them with a 3/8 inch plywood skin. This skin was to not only make things stronger (I wanted extra support for the loft), but to make it easier to nail the 3/8 x 3-1/2 inch tongue and groove pine strips. The pine matches some of the existing walls, and being light, helps keeps things less dark looking.

It's been nice to have all the plumbing all working, as well as the new outlets and lights. Other than the comfort of knowing everything is working and up to code, it has taken alot of the stress out of living in a construction zone.

Oct 18

Oh well, I didn't get all done as I had hoped. I did get some things accomplished, they just took more time than I had planned. I did get a hardwood floor in the bathroom, and finished the walls, so it's now all enclosed in the pine tongue and groove. It looks pretty good. I also started on putting the hardwood floor down in the "hot tub room", which I'm changing to a kids toy and dressing room. I also installed a Cozy Propane heater in the little dome, cause I didn't want the bathroom to freeze.

The big project of this month was getting the wireless phone system working. This project actually started months ago, as I used some UHF handhelds to spot out the best areas. I then went back with my GPS, and marked the Qwest phone boxes as they come out of the ground. Then I'd do a signal strength test from each location. Once I had a short list of preferred locations, I then contacted the owners of the best location. I couldn't get Qwest permission to install anything on a Qwest pole, so I had to install things on private property.

The owners of the property were very supportive, and then I ordered another phone line at their address, that gets billed to me. Once the phone line was hooked up, Qwest had to spend 7 days fixing the trunk lines, as my location was literally at the end of the phone cable. Then I had to scout out a place on the hillside near the phone box for the underground cable.

I finally settled on a small meadow about 85 feet uphill from the box. I then setup my other portable system, as I ordered the parts, but I have to wait for them to arrive. My portable system is a 235AH system I used for a portable UHF backcountry repeater. I hooked that up with the antenna on a mast, and it worked! Then I discovered "the problem". I later replaced my original one with one better suited to the cold, and replaced the T-125s with a 280AH Gell Cell. There are more details on my wireless phone system here

The problem was that after a phone call, the line would short out, and no phone calls could be made until it was cleared by Qwest. They kept telling me it was a problem in my system, and all my tests kept showing the problem was on their end. After 2 weeks of this, with me running many tests, I finally convinced them it was their problem, and suddenly they found a bad circuit board, miles from my house! Once that was replaced, it's been working reliably.

Nov 18

It's amazing how easy it is to underestimate the magnitude of some projects. Putting down a hardwood floor seemed like such a good idea, but it sure took a while because of all the curved walls, and wacky geometry of a geodesic dome. Pretty much right away, my friend David that was helping with this project, and I decided to not use molding to cover mistakes, which forced us to make most cuts a jigsaw cut, with 3-6 little trims, all "cut to fit". It turned out we could only do about 5 square feet or so a day. We worked out the probable walking patterns through the hallway and the rooms, and then laid the main floor in 4 sections, with black walnut trim between each section.

It took three sections to do the hallway, since it was between three curving walls. it also had a trap door where the plumbing stack was, which I wanted to have access to. The big room where the woodstove will go is another section. For these four sections, I was forced to buy about 250 square feet of #1 Red Oak strips, 3 1/2 inches wide.

The old hot tub room, and soon to be toy storage and changing room was floored with old #1 Oak, 3 1/2 x 1/2. These boards were about 20 years old, but I found about 300 square feet of them on a wood shed on the property. These were just enought to cover the new toilet floor, and the whole changing room floor.

We used an air gun to nail the floor boards, which worked better in the confined spaces than a regulat floor nailer. Since neither my generator, nor my invertor would run the air compressor, we used 1 100lb propane tank, converted to compressed air at 70psi. This would run the nail gun all day, and my friend David would charge it up at his on grid (and soon to a grid intertie) house every working day. This was nice, as the compressor was noisy, and the air gun was quiet.

Dec 18

A smelly few weeks. Sanding turned out to be as messy as I thought it would. I used a 120VAC orbital floor sander. For one whole day, it was sunny and windy, so I ran it for about 4 hours on excess juice! Eventually I had to fire up the generator, cause the sander sucks power, about 800Amps an hour, which was pulling the batteries down. Sanding took about 3 days with the orbital. It was hard, because of all the little tight places caused by the curved walls, forced us to hand sand them.Removing the old dark stain from the old bathroom floor took the most time. It turned out to be very uneven from the original sanding job.

Then after sanding, I put down a coat of water based Verathane "fruitwood" stain. This wasn't quite as good as I wanted it, so we put down another coat of stain to really bring the grain out, without making it just a little browner. It worked pretty good, but I also learned to never stain in the dark by artificial light. It makes it hard to see what you are doing. Using a water based stain turned out to be a good idea, as it dried within 2 hours, and also it didn't have any toxic fumes. Within hours of staining the floor, the bathroom was usable for everyone again.

After the stain dried all weekend, we then put 4 coats of water-based Verathane Floor varnish. I wanted to seal the floor good against water damage, because in the snowy climate, everyone is always tracking snow inside. This took a few days to put all the coats on. Like the stain, the water-based varnish didn't emite toxic fumes, and it was dry to walk on within 2 hours.

Jan 2001

After months of working on the house, I have to go back to work, cause I prefer to pay my bills, than go furthur into debt... This project went on a little longer than I planned on. I did mange to get the carpeting down, so the kids could finally move into their new rooms.

So here's Deja's room on the left, and Abel's room on the right.

Summer 2001

I had already ripped out the old railings that had been on the curved stairs going to the loft in the little dome. Now I decided it was time to replace them. I had a pile of old Aspen tree logs, that had literally been buried in a snow drift for a few years, so they had developed a nice color that Aspen doesn't usually have. I peeled them all down and sanded them by hand for what seemed to take forever... Once I had the posts done, I bent the railings from some tall, thin aspens into place.

Jan 2002

I found a used Vermont Casting "Vigalant" wood stove to install in the small dome. I made a fire shield out of the flagstones I had orginally removed from the stone floor 18 months ago. It seemed appropriate. :-) Rather than route the stove pipe through the old hole, which was in a stupid place down too low, I decided to run the pipe up the inside, and go out the top. This would be the best for maintainance, although tough to route the pipe.

I used double wall stove pipe, because of all the wood paneling in the dome. Two supports were needed to hold the stove pipe near the ceiling/wall, and a big bracket was used where it goes out the top. It was also easy to support the stove pipe, by using the roof of the cupola.

Feb 2002

Sigh, it looks like the generator has gone out, and fried the inverter in the process. Now the inverter itself has become a big load on the whole system, draining the batteries. So now we have to turn it on and off. After much consideration, I break down and order a Trace 4024, with a Trace DC250 Power Center. Ouch. I fixed the generator when I realized the problem was it was kicking out 170VAC. So I adjusted it down to something reasonable again. When the Trace 4024 showed up, I replaced the old Heart Inverter with it, but didn't rewire the old power panel yet. I had to order a few more parts. Then I plan to finish up by replacing the old power panel with the DC 250, adding disconnects for everything. Previously, there was one big disconnect switch for everything.

April 2002

Ah, the rewiring project's time has come... I picked what seemed to be good weather, after a bunch of warmer days, but the weather gods must be pissed off at me or something... Once I got the old breakers and junction boxes ripped off the wall to make room for all the new stuff, it got windy, snowy, and cold! Brrr.... rewiring in the cold and dark by flashlight isn't much fun. It turned out to be a 3 day project, but now the power is reliable again for the first time in months.

During the rewiring, I took the opportunity to redesign things completetly, bringing it not only up to Code, but making it easier to maintain as well. For a more detailed view of this project, check my rewiring project page.