Solar and wind are the future

[Pointedstick]

PS,

Are solar panels and installation cheaper than 2-3 years ago?

Thanks.

Dramatically so. And the cost keeps falling! The all-inclusive price is between $3 and $4 per watt in most parts of the USA. In parts of Texas, I believe it's in the $2-3 range. This is why it's economically competitive with fossil fuels. It's not the government subsidies; it's simple supply and demand.

[Pointedstick]

We can save money in even more clever ways. For example, instead of wood frame walls, we'll build them out of Durisol. That's expensive, but we can offset that cost by not having any drywall or paint! Instead, when the stucco crew comes to stucco the exterior, we have them do the interior as well, in a nice white lime-gypsum plaster--adding some pigment if desired to give it a more adobe-ish look. Now we only have two subs to manage (general laborers, the stucco/plaster crew) instead of six (framers, insulators, stucco crew, drywall crew, trim carpenters, painters), and that saves us money and time. And the result is a thousand times better: no rot, no mold, no termites, bulletproof, never fades or needs repainting, high-R-value, high thermal lag, incredible acoustical privacy, very little construction waste (= less cleanup cost).

Interesting!!! Are you talking about this for interior walls as well as exterior?

Yes; both. Around here everything is stucco, and the difference between stucco and plaster is just what the mix is made out of (stucco = cement and coarse sand, plaster = cement or lime and gypsum, and fine sand). Essentially you plaster both sides of the wall.

I've got no immediate plans to do so, but at some point I might want to mess with my apartment's layout. Simplifying labor costs is an even bigger deal here in NYC. The wall thickness and weight is a consideration though. Think this would work in an old wood/brick frame apartment building?

The exterior walls of your building are probably solid triple-wythe brick. The walls' interior surface is either lime plaster over brick or lime plaster over wood lathe over an interior-side wooden stud wall. The interior walls are going to be wood frame with lime plaster and lathe over them. Plaster and lathe is very expensive and time-consuming which is why drywall replaced it. If you remodel, expect drywall to be half the price or less and lathe, or less--which is why people choose it these days.

The reason why my proposed approach is cheaper for new construction than drywall-and-paint is:
- The surface is solid, so no lathe is required
- You've already got stucco guys onsite for the exterior (everything is stucco around here), so you just have them basically do the same thing inside the house, but with lime-gypsum plaster instead of cement stucco
- Bare plaster is beautiful, so you don't need to paint. This is a HUGE savings because paint is surprisingly expensive!
- The interior wall surface is done in one day, or as fast as the plasterers can work. Drywall takes a minimum of three days. Day 1: hang drywall, tape and mud the drywall, wait a day for the mud to dry. Day 2: sand the surface (huge mess, hazardous to health), wash the surface to promote good adhesion, spray on a texture with more mud. Day 3: wait a day for it to dry, prime, and then paint with two coats. Each step can take more than a day of course, especially for a large-ish house or in a humid climate where the mud doesn't dry quickly.

[Kriegsspiel]

I like this line of thinking PS. I did a complete gut flip, and the way you wrote it up makes it seem like building a completely new house out of durisol would be easier than messing with all the insulation/drywall/paint/siding that I did! Very neat.

[Kriegsspiel]

BTW, did you have contractors stucco your house or was it already good to go when you moved in? I wonder what a quote would be for say, a 1200 sq ft ranch.

[Pointedstick]

BTW, did you have contractors stucco your house or was it already good to go when you moved in? I wonder what a quote would be for say, a 1200 sq ft ranch.

It was not good, and I had to have another layer added. I took the opportunity to beef up the insulation and had them install 2" of EPS foam (about R-8) under the new stucco. For my 1800sf ranch (including the garage), the total cost was a bit over $9,000, which in retrospect was way too high and I was a dummy for accepting that bid.

But the work was done well and the increased insulation has been effective, if not cost-effective. I would do many things differently if I could turn back the hands of time, but making these kinds of mistakes and learning stuff was part of the reason why I bought a fixer-upper in the first place.

When I start my homebuilding company, I definitely plan to build everything out of Durisol or some near equivalent (Faswall, Apex block, Liteblock), eventually transitioning into developing a new product that does the job even better and doesn't require any supplemental concrete. But I've realized that should be the stretch goal and I need to actually build houses first, so they can be the testbed and showcase for the product.

[Pointedstick]

I like this line of thinking PS. I did a complete gut flip, and the way you wrote it up makes it seem like building a completely new house out of durisol would be easier than messing with all the insulation/drywall/paint/siding that I did! Very neat.

I'd love to hear more about this (maybe start a new thread? This one is rapidly veering off topic). My house is across the street from a foreclosure that I am very strongly considering buying and flipping, capturing extra value by remodeling it from a 2-bedroom house into a 3-bedroom. At a certain price it's worth it to demolish and rebuild from scratch but I'm not guessing that I could get a price that low from the bank or that the much higher value of the result would profitably sell in my neighborhood, where most of the houses go for $125-175k.

[Kriegsspiel]

I like this line of thinking PS. I did a complete gut flip, and the way you wrote it up makes it seem like building a completely new house out of durisol would be easier than messing with all the insulation/drywall/paint/siding that I did! Very neat.

I'd love to hear more about this (maybe start a new thread? This one is rapidly veering off topic). My house is across the street from a foreclosure that I am very strongly considering buying and flipping, capturing extra value by remodeling it from a 2-bedroom house into a 3-bedroom. At a certain price it's worth it to demolish and rebuild from scratch but I'm not guessing that I could get a price that low from the bank or that the much higher value of the result would profitably sell in my neighborhood, where most of the houses go for $125-175k.

Haha, that sounds exactly right, mine was a a 2 bed 2 bath bank-owned foreclosure, that had been vacant/squatted for 2 or 3 years, that I turned into a 3/2. I was originally going to rent it out, but the numbers in the end favored flipping. I'd never done it before, but my dad has done work on every house we've lived in, so he taught me how to do all the things. It was a great learning opportunity though. I like when I can make money from an educational experience. Let's see if these pics come through...










This is a weird hallway that I made into the third bedroom.



Master bath... other one was in similar condition.

[Kriegsspiel]

This is the old master, the new third bedroom is on the other side of the wall.

[Pointedstick]

Beautiful work. Doesn't it just give you a sense of how cheaply and flimsily houses are built? On one hand it's nice that you can demolish and replace parts of them so easily, but wouldn't it be nice if they were built right in the first place so nobody had to?

What parts did you hire out? I see the electrical drop was relocated.

[MachineGhost]

When I start my homebuilding company, I definitely plan to build everything out of Durisol or some near equivalent (Faswall, Apex block, Liteblock), eventually transitioning into developing a new product that does the job even better and doesn't require any supplemental concrete. But I've realized that should be the stretch goal and I need to actually build houses first, so they can be the testbed and showcase for the product.

Why do you think no one has thought of disrupting what sounds like a laborious, expensive process before?

Heck of an upgrade, Krieg! How much did the house value increase up on reappraisal?

[Kriegsspiel]

When I start my homebuilding company, I definitely plan to build everything out of Durisol or some near equivalent (Faswall, Apex block, Liteblock), eventually transitioning into developing a new product that does the job even better and doesn't require any supplemental concrete. But I've realized that should be the stretch goal and I need to actually build houses first, so they can be the testbed and showcase for the product.

Why do you think no one has thought of disrupting what sounds like a laborious, expensive process before?

Heck of an upgrade, Krieg! How much did the house value increase up on reappraisal?

Beautiful work. Doesn't it just give you a sense of how cheaply and flimsily houses are built? On one hand it's nice that you can demolish and replace parts of them so easily, but wouldn't it be nice if they were built right in the first place so nobody had to?

What parts did you hire out? I see the electrical drop was relocated.

Thanks. MG, I bought it for ~$27,000 and it appraised for over $116,500. I sold it for a bit less because I'm a big softy good person.

PS, for sure. Demo was when I found out how shoddy this place was. Which was unfortunate; I wanted to do a mostly cosmetic makeover and rent it out One of the interior wall's framing wasn't even anchored to anything, it was just swinging free! After I pulled the ceiling down in one room, I saw the ceiling joists had been sawed in half and weren't even supporting anything! The bright side was that, like I mentioned, re-doing the entire place let me see how it's all put together. I'd feel pretty confident doing future plumbing, electric, trim, painting, landscaping, HVAC, hanging doors/cabinets, etc. I've hung drywall before, but I'm with everyone else... it's worth it to hire that out. Or if I build a house, the "insulated masonry with channels cut into it" concept is pretty clutch.

I did have a contractor do quite a few things. That was a horrible experience in almost every way.

• Roof- I had them put on the shed dormer in the back, because the master bath didn't have a full 10ft ceiling (the master bath/bed are an addition). They didn't extend the drip edge all the way over the bathroom. The roof also leaked. The gutters too.
• Siding. They ordered the wrong kind, and the wrong color.
• Exterior doors. Hung incorrectly, the deadbolt didn't line up flush. They also somehow got 4 different locks/keys for the 3 doors, it took them 2 tries to get it right.
• Windows. They did a good job.
• The driveway and walkway concrete work. Got concrete on the door frame and didn't clean it off. Otherwise a good job here.
• Drywall. No complaints.
• Had a plumber come to check our plumbing work and hook it all up to the drain. He fucked that up and the toilets flushed onto the ground underneath the house until we noticed and fixed it ourselves.
• It took them almost a full month longer than the estimate.

Two things they did a good job with, the drywall and concrete, were subbed out. There were no problems with the windows either, but I'll bet I could install windows myself.

Oh, I guess I "hired out" changing the electric box, since it was in a stupid place, right in a usable room when there was a utility room a few feet away! I was originally going to hire out all the electric work, but ended up just having him install the new mast. Again, I could have done that too (I'm not sure if I was allowed to, but I was able to). We did all the rest of the electric. The lines are much cleaner now, since it comes off the line to the house at a nice 90 degree angle, and it's back between the hot water heater and furnace. The furnace was originally in the closet in the weird hallway. There were a couple hiccups with it, like putting the wrong breaker in for the AC line.

[WiseOne]

PS, this is absolutely brilliant. Thank you for sharing this. Reducing wall work from 3 days to 1 will more than offset any added cost of Durisol - hell, the contractors' parking tickets alone would probably make up the difference.

And you're right, painting is breathtakingly expensive. I paid to have my apartment painted because doing the entire place would have been too much work even if I threw the traditional painting & pizza party, and it ended up costing somewhere close to a thousand dollars per 100 sf.

[Pointedstick]

PS, this is absolutely brilliant. Thank you for sharing this. Reducing wall work from 3 days to 1 will more than offset any added cost of Durisol - hell, the contractors' parking tickets alone would probably make up the difference.

And you're right, painting is breathtakingly expensive. I paid to have my apartment painted because doing the entire place would have been too much work even if I threw the traditional painting & pizza party, and it ended up costing somewhere close to a thousand dollars per 100 sf.

Why do you think no one has thought of disrupting what sounds like a laborious, expensive process before?

Conservatism and traditionalism: "That's how it's always been done." I see people doing nonsensical things like building walls out of masonry and then finishing them with interior stud frame walls covered with drywall instead of just plastering! When confronted, they usually sputter something equally nonsensical about wanting to make life easier for the plumbers and electricians (just run 'em through block cores, duh?) or wanting more insulation (but they never insulate the interior stud frame wall anyway) and insulating on the outside is easier, cheaper, and more effective).

Also, each individual part of the process feels cheap and fast, and it's so common that nobody notices how it adds up in the end when you put everything together. There's also a wider pool of laborers who know how to hang drywall than those who know how to plaster--although that's not a problem in a place like New Mexico were stucco is ubiquitous, since plastering is basically stuccoing with slightly different materials.

Krieg, I bet you could have done the windows. It's really easy in a wall with exterior siding if you're going to be replacing the siding anyway. I did my own windows two years ago in a much more difficult wall with stucco, fiberboard sheathing, and 50 year-old tar paper and it wasn't too tough:









All you really need to do is think like a raindrop and lap everything properly.

[Mr Vacuum]

A Durisol product is also used for road noise barriers.

Purdue University Evaluation of Alternatives to Sound Barrier Walls
http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/50000/50600/5063 ... nt.cgi.pdf

Durisol precast noise wall panels are made out of organic softwood shavings processed to an acoustically engineered size and bonded together under pressure with Portland cement concrete (PCC) (36). They are also claimed to be highly sound absorptive, noncombustible, thermally insulating, self-draining and freeze-thaw resistant.

Sound aborption seems like a good property as well for use in a house full of fans (radon mitigation, furnace, desktop computer), compressors (dehumidifier, refrigerator, freezer, A/C), and kids.

[Mr Vacuum]

Another thing about the economics: it's often a no-brainer to go solar.

For example: I have a roughly $30/mo electric bill. That requires $9,000 in investments to offset forever ($30*12 months * 25 years for 4% withdrawal rate). If I can zero out my electric bill for less than $9,000 with solar, it's a better economic deal! If your electric bill is much higher than that, it's probably even more of a no-brainer, even if yo live somewhere cloudy.

So I use http://pvwatts.nrel.gov to estimate the size of the system I'll need. I'm estimating extremely conservatively, by multiplying my peak month by 12 gives me a maximum yearly consumption of 3360 kWh per year. PVWatts says I need a 1.9 kWh array facing south with a 35˚ tilt. The cost of this array is 1900 watts * $3.50/watt avg * 0.6 (federal and state rebates) = $3,990. That's less than half the cost to null out my electric bill compared to simply accumulating investments! Of course the investments are more liquid, but still, that's a fantastic deal. It's likely even better in real life if I estimate my consumption using realistic rather than conservative figures.

It gets even better if I switch all my gas appliances to electric and null out my gas bill too, which currently costs me $13/mo minimum, even when I'm not using any gas. That means there's a $3,900 investment savings to just getting rid of that base charge.

My yearly utility bill costs before I started this were an average of $1,468 a year, which costs $36,700 to offset with investments. So I started working on deleting those bills entirely. I spent $14,000 on energy efficiency work to reduce the consumption (too much in retrospect, but lesson learned). Then I spent $3,200 to convert my water heater and range from gas to to electric. That leaves $19,500 for the HVAC and solar panels; if they cost less than that, I'm ahead financially, and I've accrued a zillion side benefits too (zero net carbon emissions from my house, no risk of carbon monoxide poisoning or the house blowing up, eliminated utility cost pricing risk, etc).

You can do it too! You might be surprised by how financially advantageous it can be to go this route, especially if your house already uses mostly or entirely electric appliances.

The financial advantage assumes you don't move, right? What kind of equity do you expect on the up front investments?

[Mr Vacuum]

Property placement is a big deal. I have full sun on the south roof, but with a pyramid hip the geometry limits the system to about 9 panels or 2.4 kW (using numbers from https://solarpowerrocks.com/square-feet-solar-roof/). My usage is more in the Desert range, so, yeah, lots of work to do on the efficiency and consumption side.

Interestingly, Indiana provides no up-front subsidy, but there is an ongoing property tax deduction equal to the value of the system. If I had room for a 4 kW system, the property tax deduction on that 2.4 kW system would put a $28/mo dent in the rest of the bill.

[Pointedstick]

The financial advantage assumes you don't move, right? What kind of equity do you expect on the up front investments?

Yes, but a PV array is going to increase the value of the house, too, obviously by a variable amount. But you may be able to turn it into a real selling point if the array makes your house net zero and you can advertise "no gas or electricity bills!"

[Kriegsspiel]

Thanks. MG, I bought it for ~$27,000 and it appraised for over $116,500. I sold it for a bit less because I'm a big softy good person.

Kriegsspiel, that's an amazing rework! When I look at the "before" pictures, the only image I can muster is a bulldozer. The transition is very impressive. Do you mind sharing whether you made money on the project?

Thanks. Despite all my mistakes and impatience I did end up making about $12,000 on it.

Coming back full circle to the ideas of renewable energy and building houses, I've been thinking about how cool it would be to go in and revamp a cheap, neglected neighborhood/small town into something like an eco-village as a long term project. So fixing up small houses in a well-located neighborhood with good insulation, solar, composting, edible landscaping, solar water heating, maybe some kind of community garden/event area, that kind of stuff.

[doodle]

Why do you think no one has thought of disrupting what sounds like a laborious, expensive process before?

Conservatism and traditionalism: "That's how it's always been done." I see people doing nonsensical things like building walls out of masonry and then finishing them with interior stud frame walls covered with drywall instead of just plastering! When confronted, they usually sputter something equally nonsensical about wanting to make life easier for the plumbers and electricians (just run 'em through block cores, duh?) or wanting more insulation (but they never insulate the interior stud frame wall anyway) and insulating on the outside is easier, cheaper, and more effective).

Also, each individual part of the process feels cheap and fast, and it's so common that nobody notices how it adds up in the end when you put everything together. There's also a wider pool of laborers who know how to hang drywall than those who know how to plaster--although that's not a problem in a place like New Mexico were stucco is ubiquitous, since plastering is basically stuccoing with slightly different materials.

Pointedstick and I have pretty much identical construction philosophies. When drawing up my houseplans I attempted to introduce a variety of “common sense” measures into the construction process thinking they would save material and labor and thus leave more money in my pocket. However, I soon realized that there is a specific process and materials that the majority of contractors and laborers are familiar with. Deviating from this process often doesn’t lead to the savings that one initially expects and often can also create headaches with permits and code compliance.

For example, I attempted to eliminate drywall and go with the interior stucco plan that Pointedstick talked about but this created a lot of complications with running electric using a traditional concrete block construction. It also introduced wall insulation issues. The contractor (who had a fantastic reputation and did great work) was also reluctant to introduce new wall building alternatives and stray from a formula that had worked great for him for 30 years. New materials that he was unfamiliar with meant headaches and potential unforeseen costs and problems and so the more I tried to deviate from tradition, the less interested he became in the project.

I eventually decided to just sell the land. The neighborhood had appreciated quite a bit over the two years I owned the land to the point where it no longer made sense to build a non traditional 1bed 1 bath house. I sold the land at a healthy profit and have focused my efforts now at looking for somewhere other than a swanky downtown area where it would make sense for me to create my non conventional lifestyle. In the end my greatest concern with designing a common sense house is that I would have to eventually resell my asset into a society that doesn’t necessarily favor common sense construction.

[doodle]

BTW, if you want to see a mockery of democracy as it relates to solar look no further than Amendment 1 in Florida. One of the most shocking examples Ive seen of how big business has corrupted the legislative process.

http://www.upressonline.com/2016/11/col ... er-growth/

[Pointedstick]

Great to see you again, Doodle.

The headaches you ran into are why you need to be the GC yourself. Finding a forward-thinking GC is nearly impossible. When you're your own GC, you just select methods that minimize the need for hired subs in the first place, and when you do have tradesmen on site, you just have them complete their individual part of the process without caring how the pieces fit together. Stucco guys don't care if they're doing the inside or the outside; they just care that you pay 'em.

Also, traditional block walls present many problems, as you discovered. Insulating them on the outside can be a challenge. The best approach in your climate would be 3" of rigid mineral wool fastened with tapcons screwed into the block, but good luck finding a GC who has ever even heard of rigid mineral wool boards! Durisol-type ICFs solve many of these problems even if you hire a GC because ICF construction is increasingly familiar as it gains ground everywhere. It's just a slightly different type of ICF that's made of a different material than polystyrene. The construction method is fundamentally the same no matter which company's ICF product you choose.

It's also definitely true that a 1 bed/1/bath freestanding house doesn't make a lot of sense, market-wise. People for whom that size is perfect generally don't need a freestanding house, preferring an apartment or condo. About the smallest you can go would be 1200sf/3 bed/1 bath which you could maybe sell for $120k in the right market. The profit margin starts to get tight unless you've got some really clever plans and techniques, which you won't have as a prospective homeowner trying to hire a GC to manage the project.

[doodle]

In the neighborhood where my lot was located 3/1 houses built in the 20's and 30's were selling in some cases for upwards of 300 grand. New construction 3/2 was going for 600+. I just couldn't financially justify plopping down a "monstrosity" on a piece of land with that value. On top of it all it was a traditional neighborhood and my design aesthetic is so functionally driven that it was a bad fit irrespective of the bedroom / bathroom square footage configuration.

Acting as my own GC was my original desire until I realized the complications of trying to do so while holding down a full time job. In retrospect I could have probably handled it, but it would have been a somewhat stressful undertaking and if something major were to go wrong I would have had little to no recourse....a risk I was hesitant to take considering the sum of money involved.

The Durisol product is very interesting. That's the first Ive seen of it and it seems well suited to the all stucco / plaster model (which I greatly prefer). I will have to do some more reading on it. I considered aerated concrete block initially as a way to solve insulation issue but again it was hard to find labor that had experience working with it while blocklayers are a dime a dozen and skilled at using the material.

One problem that I continually ran into as I designed the house is the prevalence of chemicals. From plumbing, to insulation, to flooring to even the furnishings every new engineered product seemed to contain some weird chemical treatment, additive, glue etc. This gave me cause for concern especially after watching documentary regarding chemical burden tests in mothers breastmilk.

I'm not really sure at this moment what my next step is. Im presently looking for an area of the country that is a little better insulated against future unknowns. Florida as a whole (although we have beautiful weather now) seems to be getting hotter and hotter every summer. When I first moved down here 15 years ago it was rare to have summer days that exceeded about 86 or 87 degrees. Now we are regularly up in the low to mid 90's. On top of that I have seen water levels increase with my own eyes and Miami is already dealing with flooding on sunny days. I see this as a serious threat to Florida's future and don't want any part of the potential chaos that unsubsidized flood insurance or continued coastal flooding and erosion will have on the state going forward.

[doodle]

With regards to electric in durisol, I guess you are running the electric through the attic and feeding it down through blocks vertically? Horizontal runs seem complicated. In that case roof trusses are a must unless you want to do sips with a drop ceiling I assume. My concern with the trusses is how to insulate without resorting to spray foams and such chemical products. What is your take on roof insulation for the chemically concerned homeowner? Cellulose?

[Pointedstick]

There are chemicals and then there are CHEMICALS, if you know what I mean. But to a certain extent you need to pick your poison. The only way to really have a totally "chemical-free"* build is to use mostly stone, lime, and unprocessed timbers.

You can get pretty close to this with a more "normal" build by simply avoiding plastic products as much as possible, especially when taking into account how much they will be coming into contact with human skin or interior air. That primarily means no carpet and no PEX water supply pipes. No vinyl windows; wood or fiberglass. Nothing with formaldehyde glues, so no engineered wood products inside the house (no engineered hardwood flooring, no OSB, no plywood, no engineered wood cabinetry, no engineered wood furniture). No anything that requires a lot of sanding or cutting inside the house (so no drywall). No polystyrene/polyurethene/polyisocyanurate foam insulation on the inside.

What does that leave you with? A lot, actually. You make the walls out of some kind of masonry block and cover them with old-fashioned lime plaster on the inside. Your windows are made out of wood like they have been for 500 years, or maybe even fiberglass or aluminum-clad wood. Your floor should be solid hardwood sealed with a mineral or oil-based substance, or else something masonry (tile, stone, finished concrete) Subfloors can be made out of solid timbers or pre-cast concrete T-beams. Insulation can be cellulose-based or mineral-based, like mineral wool, AAC boards, or AirKrete. For roofs, you can use real wood framing or metal SIPs. They even make mineral-wool-filled metal SIPs these days!

You run your plumbing pipes and electrical wires up through the blocks from the basement, because you have a basement. No slabs--you want at least a crawlspace, to facilitate future changes to the utilities. A basement is even better if your water table's not too high to support it because if you make the walls out of something sane like Durisol, it's easy to finish it and have essentially free square footage.


* note to chemists: I am using this term non-scientifically

[Kriegsspiel]

What is your take on roof insulation for the chemically concerned homeowner? Cellulose?

This is appropriate when you want whoever pulls down the ceiling in the future to curse you with a voodoo doll.