Hybrid SIP Aluminum System

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When you’re at the computer screen ten hours a day, you sometimes forget about the real world outside. Over the last twenty years this neighborhood has changed. It was earlier this year, someone fired 8 rounds of a 9 mm Lugar outside the house, littering the street with shell casings. That was a really scary night. As the economy has collapsed, families have become extended, and the volume of cars in driveways, in front of houses, and on the street have five fold increased, if not more.

In this environment, the Rosales clan has decided to build an addition. As I’ve been exploring the design over the last 234 days, there’s been a lot of ups and downs, changes, investigation, and game changers. After learning that the City of LA will not allow flexible living quarters, the structure moved from the back of the property to come in contact with the main house. LA requires either 10 feet of continuous roof or 4 feet of common wall to call it an addition in juxtaposition to an accessory building. In an addition, you’re allowed all forms of living quarters except a kitchen. An accessory building cannot have natural gas, hot water, or a sink larger than 1 square feet, to prevent having a granny flats structure.

I had chosen early on to adopt a more robust and user friendly construction technology, in defiance of current common platform building with wood stick construction. I read an interesting article on the history of residential building, and in summary concludes building technology has evolved to incorporate lower quality and inexpensive components, instead of the highest quality old growth wood and timbers of years gone by. Wood engineering is the where the future of construction lies. The addition will not include a single structural tree member, but instead a hybrid of wood fibers or wood strands with resins and adhesives.

Something I explored this week is the combination of engineered wood panels and a lightweight aluminum superstructure. It’s a neat hybrid system using metal where necessary, but the wide open spaces with insulated panels. in fact, a company in Van Nuys, CA has a demonstration unit that I had a chance to walk through and absorb the possibilities. Where my project has stalled is in the ancillary technology to assemble heavy large cumbersome SIP’s, namely renting forklifts, cranes, and heavy material handling equipment that most likely would add $10,000 to the project.

The hybrid metal SIP technology, introduced to the USA with MHS, is still a work in progress, yet to achieve approval in a seismically active area. I thought about building without a permit, but then the City would most likely insist it’s removal, once a complaint from a neighbor came through. I’ve written anyway to the Long Beach CA manufacturer to see how much it would cost and how far they are on their way to ICC acceptance. The SIP structure would most like cost $45,000 installed. the Van Nuys licensee wanted $120,000 or more for their architectural imprimatur.

Home and Garden Tours

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It s Law Day in the USA, and Golden Week in Japan. It was also the day I made it to the Huntington Library Chinese Garden. Close to 20 million dollars to construct, and ten years in the planning, the site is stunning in it’s collection of water and stone. Unlike other styles of gardens, the plants take a secondary role to the constructed environment. It’s been a long time coming, and I was glad I could take a look.

I’m somewhat surprised that it’s been several weeks since I’ve added some notes to the project file, and I have been very busy researching floor girders. I like knowing all the minutia of a project, and with the internet I can download research reports of ICF construction, concrete admixtures and slump, seismic planning, and architectural design. sometimes I get off track, and sometimes illness prevents me from finished this project.

Last week i was ill for four days from Monday until Thursday starting with a severe migraine style headache, and ending the days with a Norwalk Virus. If you’ve ever had such an illness you would know it, more commonly referred to a a norovirus. Basically you feel deathly ill for around 30 hours, vomiting and exhuming all the fluids in your body every 2 hours throughout the day and night, but then you feel better.

Last Friday and Saturday I was at the Altbuild Expo in Santa Monica. Sunday was the Santa Monica green building house tour. Hopefully not too much longer to go to finish the architectural plans to present to the City of Los Angeles.

Project by Yourself

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Self contracting a project can be greatly beneficial since you learn all tasks and ultimately can afford certain luxuries that would normally go to a tradesman. I heard once that a construction project is a triangle with vertex points of cost, quality, and time, and normally you can only choose two of the three. Already I’ve blown my time schedule by months, but I am learning a lot about green construction.

By doing it myself, I can order tools that normally would have to be rented or contracted out. By reading other builder’s websites, a general contractor may charge between $6,000 to $15,000 to assemble a SIP structure. I looked into crane rentals, and they start $400 for two hours of service. It does not take too many crane hours to figure out that if a gantry crane costs $1,200 that’s just 6 hours of crane rental. If a tool is not too large, the answer is why not?

The material lifting I’ll need to do is no more than 600 pounds, easily carried. I’m looking into renting a conveyor belt to move debris to a recycling bin. They’re are so many time saving and labor saving technologies, that’s it worth my time investigating and ordering, well in advance of the project actually starting construction.

Faucet Detour

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I thought today would be the day I finish reading the Prescriptive Method for Structural Insulated Panels used in residential construction and some literature I downloaded from iLevel. Mom went to get her rear brakes replaced (drums and shoes), and I was going to do some lawn maintenance, and finish my drawings to present to building and safety. I tend to work best from 2 PM to 12 AM, so I finished with the electric lawn mower, electric edger, and electric blower early. At around 3 PM, from the kitchen, I hear, “The faucet sheered off.”

Thinking that the handle got loose, I took a look, and the plastic ceramic cartridge broke. The kitchen sink was already leaking from the spout, and the base was full of gook, but I disassembled the kitchen faucet and looked to the Price Pfister website for the correct parts. The parts would be more than a completely new faucet. Early this century, after looking at Delta, Grohe, Franke, Kohler, Hansgrohe,and Price Pfister faucets, and their ridiculous prices, I’ve ordered all my plumbing needs (faucet and sinks) at IKEA.

IKEA products are legendary, their design a superb European style, and their prices unbelievable. A faucet at Home Depot or Lowes that sells for $120 costs $20 at IKEA. I wanted to get a single control pot filler tall spout faucet, but the buyer wanted a traditional long spout, so the budget wend from $60 to $20 for a faucet. The replacement parts (shut-off valves, threaded connectors, supply lines) cost around $35, so almost double the price of the chrome plated brass faucet. I guess the price of copper is outrageous, as a 2 inch nipple now costs $3.00 and shut-off valves $7 each.

After an afternoon of removing the old faucet, and a an evening of installing the new faucet under cramped conditions, the faucet has flawless operation, and I hope lasts another 20 years, or when the sink gets replaced. Now I need more time to finish the foundation drawings.

The World of Concrete

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In the typical construction project, I suppose you need to start with the ground and move upward. I took the opposite approach and started form the roof, and moved through the skylights, doors and windows, walls, flooring, foundation, and earth. I’ve already selected the windows, skylights, roofing product, and building system, but have not selected the foundation yet.

I thought it would be easy. you have two choices in general in seismic design category D, continuous foundation walls, or concrete masonry units (CMU). I’ve investigated all sorts of technologies in anchoring a structure to earth. Everything from metal helical rods, posts and grade beams, and every type of gluing scheme. The foundation not only holds up a home, but acts the interface between the earth (air, water, fire) and your dry structure. It has to prevent moisture buildup underneath, hold fast during movement, and last longer than what stands on top of it.

I got the definitive word form APEX block that their lightweight composite ICF solution is not approved nor likely to be approved in the city of Los Angeles for many months. I have to select a plan B, which is either a tradition six inch formed footing and stem wall, or an alternative forming system, like an ICF. My idea is to eliminate concrete, or at least reduce it. The APEX system took this structure down from 6.63 cubic yards (cu yd) of cement to just 4.70 cu yds. All other systems reduce concrete use, but the next best system I could find was a waffle grid ICF called American Polysteel PS 3600, which will use 5.70 yards of concrete. Why this matters is concrete should be used where needed, and not extravagantly, because it has a extremely large carbon footprint in its manufacture. Concrete is also very, very heavy, and takes a lot of diesel to transport. That’s why CMU’s are out of the question.

The Polysteel forms weigh in at 7 pounds, compared to a CMU at 60 pounds. I calculate I’ll need around 75 blocks, saving over 2000 pounds from a flatbed truck. I’m hoping to design a monolithic pour of the footings and stem walls using some materials I found on the internet from Award Metals. they make a novel footing brace and monolithic strap that should accommodate the ICF forms. I chose the waffle grid, which by simple by having a irregular mold shape, it uses much less concrete than a form that has straight walls. I’m also hoping that since the walls will only be 22 inches high, my building and safety department will not require a stamp of a structural engineer.

I do have a few engineer names that specialize in ICF foundations, just in case. It’s always down to the budget. My time is basically free. This project has cost very little so far, but with professional consultants, I’m sure the fees go from zero to $1,500 really fast. I found the names through the newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California. I hope I don’t need to call them.

Towards a Better Foundation

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I thought I could whip out a foundation plan in three days, but like the SIP structure, the foundation structure needs the approval of a structural engineer. There may be a loophole of some products, using a prescriptive method for insulating concrete forms in residential construction, but I’ll have to check with LA Building and Safety. It does look like I will have to visit the department with the drawing I have and ask for some advice.

I was planning on specifying the Nudura plank style ICF, but when I checked if it was still legal to use in Los Angeles, the company failed to renew their research report approval, and their product has lapsed. Since I have to start building in two or three weeks, I can’t wait around for them to renew. In the interim, I’ve discovered several other styles of ICF: block, panel, and plank. The material used to make the form can either be EPS or some hybrid or composite material (wood fiber and cement or EPS and cement).

I’m now steering this project toward a composite ICF, as only the stem walls of the foundation need reinforcement, and the larger EPS forms, though greater insulating factor, will not come off the ground much. The composite ICF that I like, is currently not approved in Los Angeles, but there are older styles that have gone through all the testing.