November 2005

The basement foundation is built:

In this first photo the footings are already in place and reinforcing rods for the poured concrete foundation wall are being placed. Formwork panels for the basement walls are also arriving on the site.

This corner pier is shaped special for the basement stair landing.

A truck bearing formwork.

Formwork for the walls being set up. Note they used form panels with a masonry like pattern embossed.

Overview of the work.

Most of the formwork in place.

Placement time: the concrete pumper.

This fellow is placing the anchor bolts in the plywood templates that follow the anchor bolt plan that we provided. These will hold the main frames of the house to the foundation..

Formwork stripped, the concrete cured.

And here, the garage end of the house. This must be backfilled for the garage slab to be placed. The black coating is the waterproofing that will protect the baasement from ground water.

That is all for now. Steel is due in mid February.

Components of the house have been in fabrication through late January and February. I don't have any photos of the steel shop but we did get back some images of the fabrication of the insulated wall panels.

Here you see the insulated steel panel exiting the forming machine. That is the tongue side of the tongue and groove edge that is facing us. The steel sheets are coming off a coil of steel, they are formed to the face profile, and foamed in place while moving through the line. These panels are one of the most expensive parts of the system, but they are at the heart of the quick build, energy effeciency, and low maintenance - you are investing your money here in the product rather than on labor on site.

This fellow here is operating the big machine that is the fabrication line.

This I am told is the "laser-guided flying saw". As you might guess it is cutting the panels to our required sizes.

Here is our panel order stacked and waiting to be shrinkwrapped. The panels are shipped with a wrapping to protect the finish during handling.

Steel arrived on site today, 28 Feb 06, and this is what it looked like:

This particular trailer is loaded with primary structural members. There is nothing like the smell of fresh steel primer in the morning!

Here comes a second floor beam. Those closely spaced tabs are for the connection of the steel floor joists.

There was a crane there today just to unload.

Here we have roof purlins (smaller roof beams that span between the main frames) and wall girts (again smaller wall frames that span between floors and main framing members). All these parts are numbered to correspond to a set of erection drawings which indicates the location of each piece.

Roof panels stacked on site. Notice the length - one piece for the entire length of the slope of the roof.

Windows and doors also arrived and are in a storage Pod on site. Tomorrow the wall panels arrive and the frame should go vertical.

Day 2 of the build, 1 Mar 06. When people ask how long does it take to install the EcoSteel House I have been telling them 2-3 weeks. We get to see if its so. Today the insulated wall panels arrived.

They are stacked closest to the crane.

First the posts of the main frames. There are four of these creating the 3 bays that make up the house.

The baseplates are lined up over the anchor bolts as the piece is lowered.

The posts closest to us are on the low side of the roof - you can see the roof slope in the taper at the top of the posts.

This is the wind bent frame being installed in the center bay. It is the job of this additional frame to add strength to the house along the cross axis. Without everything could tilt over like a house of cards.

Here you see how the bracing frame is oriented 90 degrees to the main frame member.

Looks like most of the posts were placed today - tomorrow some horizontal work.

Day 3 of the build, 2 Mar 06. Today was spent putting in place all of the floor beams.

The first two along the front facade are in place here. We have beams at the ground floor because of the basement of course. A slab on grade configuration would eliminate these.

This is the rear wall at the intersection of the master bedroom and the porch room which is a few feet higher.

Most of the beams are in place now.

The same intersection of beams pictured here, now pulled back to the center of the house. You can see the higher platform of the porch room to the right, an internal post in the foreground. This sits in the wall between the house and garage. Tomorrow the roof framing goes on. Next week panels.

Day 4 of the build, 3 Mar 06. The weather looked good today, but it became windy. The crew was installing the mainframe beams, but handling them in the wind became difficult. Luckily there was plenty else to do, so the floor beams were finished and the light guage joists were begun.

Here we are at the start of the day. Some of the wall girts are in place.

First the remaing floor beams. This is for the inside edge of the porch room.

Here is the first main frame roof beam going in. If the wind gets one of these babys swinging it can easily knock a man off a ladder, so after the effort on the first two it was prudent to stop.

And beam number two. You notice that these are tapered. This is common practice for pre-engineered metal buildings. In order to make the joint with the post strong to resist wind the beams get deeper where they are attached. This is not needed in the center so the beams are tapered to reduce material. The posts can be fashioned the same way but we have used straight posts in this case, but you can see tapered columns in the sketches of other designs.

And here are the floor joists going in. This customer opted for the light guage joists with a plywood deck. But we also can do open truss joists with steel deck which gives you a concrete floor slab on each floor.

And there it is at the end of the day. You can see the profile of the roof clearly now and the rest of the roof beams should go in on Monday.

Day 5 of the build, 4 Mar 06. I did not expect them to work on Saturday, but the crew is from out of town and it does not pay to take a day off! The main frame members were completed, and the sub-framing for window and door openings mostly completed as well as 1st floor joists.

Here are those remaing roof frame members going in.

The frames complete here, and the roof purlins (sub framing that spans between the main frames at the roof) as well. The crew is actually working on the floor joists in this photo.

You can see the volume of the house now. We will start to feel the space more when the second floor joists go in.

Day 6&7 of the build, 5&6 Mar 06. Looks like floor joists were finished up on Sunday. Monday was spend finishing the wall framing and and getting the stair started.

The second floor joists are installed.

Wall framing in progress. Here you can also see the wind brace frame very clearly. It fits between the main frame and provides lateral strength.

Stair framing going in. Still much material staged for installation.

I am going to predict that panels start tomorrow. They will probably take this week, and windows and trim will go in next week to complete the build.

Day 8 of the build, 7 Mar 06. Wrong. Well, sort of. Plywood panels went down for the floor deck today.

This picture shows the light well that is between the upstairs hall and the Porch Room. The master bedroom is at the far side.

The light guage metal joist floor system in this house uses plywood deck for the floors. Steel deck and concrete slabs are also an option.

The ground floor almost finished.

Day 9 of the build, 8 Mar 06. Plywood, plywood, and more plywood. Two days putting down plywood - this carpentry thing is for the birds!

There is the completed frame from the downhill side on top of the daylight basement foundation.

Crew doing the plywood thing. Gun the glue down and screw. A good shot of the different floor height of the porch room. That little rise pops up the ceiling height in the living room.

A good view of the interior volume here.

This gap between the upstairs hall and the porch room will let light penetrate the center of the house.

Now that the deck is behind them the window installation will being. I had the sequence wrong up above. The windows go on directly to the framing, and the panels are installed over them. So next we will see the window units go in.

Day 11 of the build, 10 Mar 06. Somehow we skipped a day. But no matter, windows are going in. This part is a leap, because in almost every other kind of construction much more of your wall is done before windows go in the openings. Even the term "openings" suggests that the only holes in the walls are the ones where the windows go. But no, with this building system the windows go on first, before the wall panels. This is because althought the wall panels are siding - insulation - and interior finish all in one, as far as the windows are concerned they are siding. So they go on after the windows!

With the vertical subframes in place you can see each window opening now.

The two large openings at the second floor are in the master bedroom.

This is the side of the house, and we are looking at windows in the kitchen.

There they are - windows hanging on the skeleton.

Family room windows below, bedroom above. The small square is in the hall bathroom, and the kitchen windows beyond.

Day 12&13 of the build, 11,12 Mar 06. The rest of the windows and sliding doors went in this weekend as well as the base angle. Now the structure is ready for roof and wall panels.

The crew wrestling one of the 8ft tall sliders into place.

The interior side of the porch room with all the sliding doors in place.

The outside corner of the house, kitchen on the ground level, porch room above. Towards the front of the house is the family room on the ground level, and a bedroom above. The small window in the middle is for the bathroom.

From the opposide corner now, the garage side on the ground level, music room beyond, and the master bedroom above, with the closet and master bathroom towards the front of the house.

This is the metal angle that receives the wall panels at the bottom.

Day 14 of the build, 13 Mar 06. Garage doors were installed, base flashing over the bottom angle, and then, yes, panels began.

The crane was used to facilitate putting them in place on the high side of the house as the walk out basement meant that the panels begin a story above the ground. A single vertical panel will run from ground floor to roof.

The panel in position at the corner of the house.

Here you can see the panel resting on the bottom angle and base flashing. The panels are fastened wtih clips that lock in at the joint and are hidden by the panel that joins.

Day 15 of the build, 14 Mar 06. Most of the work today was fitting of panels.

The scaffold was required in this case to assit in placing the panels lifted by the crane. The slope of the site made the house too tall for ladders on this side, and too high to place the panels with an AT forklift. So that necessitated the crane, which has to lift blind to the far side of the house.

Half way across the facade.

Panel joints with this profile are very subtle.

Day 17 of the build, 16 Mar 06. Panels are progressing nicely now and we should be able to see the roof go on next.

Here is the house with panels on three walls. This is the last time we will see this x-ray view of the interior.

Side wall panels going in here on the other end of the house.

The other end already completed.

Back to the other side again where the panels are now done.

Today the last wall is being done. I'm optimistinc that the roof panels will go on tomorrow. There is trim that will be applied at each of the windows and door openings. That should be the last step of the installation.

Day 18,19,20 of the build, thru 19 Mar 06. Panels continued up to the roof being half done. Things have been taking a few days longer than I hoped at each step, but for the first build the crew has done great. A seperate crew was in during this period of time to finish out the interior rough framing. They did that very quickly, so now all of the interior partitions are framed.

The stairs are being installed now - they start in the basement.

Here are the front wall panels going in. This side was much faster as access was easy, and the crew had the routine down by now.

The last wall panel goes in - hooray!

And now the wall panels complete.

They immediately followed up with begining the roof panels.

Here we are looking up through the stairwell to see the roof panels coming into place. You can also see the interior partition framing here as well.

They finished that day with the roof about 1/3 installed. It should be done the next day and then the trimming of openings and corners will begin.

Day 21&22 of the build, thru 21 Mar 06. Panels are complete, and some other interior work on finishing the stair and partitions has been going on as well. But for now we have exterior images showing the panels completed.

Here we are back on the panels.

And here with all panels in place. Trim work and the canopy must still be installed. There are some overlay siding panels that fit between the second floor windows which serve to tie the windows together and give them a strip like appearance.

And a closer shot of the finished panels. You can see the foam cores exposed on the edges of the panels. Covering this is part of the trim work that will happen next.

Day 23 of the build, 22 Mar 06. We have a shot of the interior showing the stair, and several of the trim and overlay panels going up on the outside.

Steel stairs with precast concrete treads. The short run at the very top of the photo is the steps that take you up to the porch room.

The trim going in around the window.

The trimmed windows now joined by the overlay panel.

And then from a distance as they move on to do the same to the other windows.

Through Day 26 of the build, 25 Mar 06. Trim is progressing all around the house at the windows, corners, and roof edges now. There is not much left for us to do here and the job will be wrapped up soon.

There is an overall view with the majority of the trim in place. The forward windows and the side of the roof are not trimmed yet.

Here is a close up of one of the corners. You can see the overlay siding panel here clearly. The downspout from the gutter is being installed to the right.

A close up of a corner again. You can see the one sliding door is not trimmed yet. The micro rib pattern of the siding panels is very clear in this photo. That should give you a better sense of what that feels like.

Day 30 of the build, 29 Mar 06. This is it. Our work on the house is done, but for a few items that are backordered and will be installed when they arrive. This includes the railings for the porch room doors, the front entry canopy and a few pieces of trim.

You can see the tabs for mounting the canopy above the windows. We will get a few more photos once those last items are installed. But until then the show is over! Thank you for following our build.

We will post updated photos as we receive them.

6030 House

Construction Images

These images are from the first 6030 House to be built. It is located in Maryland, south of Washington DC on the Chesapeake Bay. This first house is being placed on a basement foundation on a mildly sloped site.