Design - Thermal Performance

 We have been gathering data on the passive solar performance of our house for a year and a half.  Although we plan to continue reporting on over time, there are enough data to suggest some trends.  The data come from several thermometers within and below the house and one outside the house as follows:

Thermometer on first floor wall 
(the black speck to the right of the picture)

 1.  Living space thermometers at eye level in three rooms and one, read with binoculars, just under the highest point of the second floor vaulted ceiling.  These are labeled "Living Quarters" on the first graph.

2.  Thermal mass thermometers, one heavily insulated from room air at the junction of the vertical basement floor and the north concrete wall and at three depths below the concrete floor of the living room.   These are labeled "Thermal Mass" on the graph.

3.  Outdoor thermometer outside the back door labeled "Outdoor Temperatures" on the graph.

Temperatures have been recorded twice monthly -- on or near the first day and on or near the 15th of each month.  Analysis of the data for this writing revealed that using only one set of data per month was sufficient for painting an accurate picture so, with one exception, the first-of-the-month data were used.

Several piezometers were employed to monitor the behavior of the water table below the proposed house site, leading eventually to a system of French drains that lower the table.  Now we use one of the piezometers still protruding from the living room floor to take the temperature of the soil at three levels under the house down to 15' and to monitor the water table.

Overview

The data for the following graphs span 18 months, from January 2023 through June 2024.

The obvious take-away from the first graph is that, most of the time, the temperatures in the living spaces and in the thermal mass fluctuate in tandem with the thermal mass temperatures running slightly cooler than those in the living spaces.  What is apparent from the raw data in the charts below, more so than from the graph, is that the seasonal temperature changes of the thermal mass lag a month or two behind room temperatures, which is to be expected since air gains or loses heat faster than dry soil.

The second graph shows the benefits of a tight house (see the previous post regarding our blower door test results).  The temperature at eye level on the first floor, compared to 20 feet up at the intersection of the wall and the 

Thermometer at the peak of the
second floor vaulted ceiling

vaulted ceiling, diverged only slightly, marginally more in cold weather than in warm.  By contrast, convectional air movement in a typical -- leaky -- house results in temperatures that are distinctly higher at the ceiling than nearer the floor. 

The rationale for the insulation/watershed umbrella was to expand the size of the dry and insulated thermal mass beyond that directly under the house in order to protect more of the latter from outdoor temperatures.  Over time the mass would cool the house by absorbing heat during warm months and warm the house by re-radiating it into the house during cool months.  And, in so doing, the thermal mass would gradually warm from its lower Midwest legacy temperature of about 60 degrees with the effect being greater at shallow depths and less so deeper down.  But that is not quite what came to be.

The third graph shows temperatures in the soil beneath the living room floor at depths of 5', 10' and 15', taken with a thermometer on a string (pictured below) lowered into the piezometer from which some preliminary assumptions can be made.  First, the "legacy temperature" had already risen to 64 degrees, presumably due to the soil having been exposed to ambient temperatures during construction.  Second, a year-to-year comparison

The thermometer for measuring subfloor temperatures;
weight for measuring ground water levels

of the average temperature for the first 6 months of '23 versus the first six months of '24 differed by only one degree for each of the three depths.  It will be interesting to see if the close tracking holds for the rest of '24 and beyond.  If so, it will be good news because it suggests that the thermal mass may not be warming as fast as anticipated, if at all, in the face of global warming.

The last graph shows temperatures above the floor and at two shallow depths below the floor. The room temperatures were read on the wall thermometer shown in the first photo above.  The second temperature was recorded from water that had been standing for hours in one of the water lines running about a foot below floor level.  The third temperature was for 5 feet below floor level taken through the piezometer.  As might be expected, the room temperatures fluctuate more than those in the thermal mass and, as might also be expected, the water temperature fluctuates more than the soil does 5 feet down.  But as discussed below, all of the differences recorded for 2023 vs. 2024 between the three thermometers are largely insignificant, averaging only a few degrees.

We went to great lengths to control the water table with French drains at the time we excavated the house site.  The purpose of the drains was to syphon off ground water before it could saturate the soil and carry away the valuable heat stored 

Piezometer protruding through living room floor

in the thermal mass.  We monitored the water table by dropping through the piezometer to the 15' depth a spike nail attached to a cord (pictured above).  If water existed, the nail and the cord would be moistened in a way that could be measured. In 2023, water first appeared in mid-March, peaked at 32" in May and was gone by the first of July.  In 2024, it appeared in early May, peaked at 30" in early June and stood at 18" by mid-June, when this was written.  It would appear that the drains are holding the water to a level slightly deeper than 12' below the floor of the house and the highest levels exist for only 4 - 6 weeks.  These phenomena do not pose a serious risk to the thermal performance of that part of the thermal mass that influences indoor temperatures.

Discussion

While the graphs provide an overview, the data in table flesh out the story.  However, it needs to be said that taking accurate temperatures with a thermometer small enough to fit inside of the piezometer was frustrating due to its small graduations. So the subfloor figures in the table are accurate to within +/- 2 degrees at best.  The bold figures on the table are the high and low temperatures over the 18 month period.

It is easy to see a couple of things with regard to high temperatures.  First, based on the one full year (2023) for which data is available, the highest temperatures in the living space, in the thermal mass and in the shallower depths in the thermal mass, were recorded in late summer and early fall instead of in the middle of the summer.  Second, the high readings for the 15 foot depth were so erratic that I was uncomfortable settling on one high figure.  Suffice it to say, though, that the numbers overall for the first couple of years do show a slight warming of the deeper thermal mass.

The low temperatures in the living space and thermal mass occurred during the late winter and early spring for both years, rather than in the dead of winter, but the ones for 2024 are higher than in 2023 by, in some cases, 4-6 degrees.  However, at the 15 foot level, readings year-over-year haven't changed much, maybe a degree or two.  

The outdoor temperatures are useful only in general terms because they vary so much and  cannot be captured with one or two readings a month.  A good example is the low of 35 in February 2023 and a balmy 56 in February of 2024.   However, they do show how the temperatures in our passive solar structure remain comfortably temperate without conventional HVAC, irrespective of the fluctuations of outside temperatures. 

SUMMARY

Seasonal temperatures in the living space and in the thermal mass move up and down slightly but do not deviate much from each other.  The thermal mass stays a little cooler than the room temperatures and changes slower.  There is only a weak correlation between temperatures inside and outside the house, which could be expected given the thickness of the wall and ceiling insulation and lack of air infiltration.  Temperatures within the house do not vary much between floor level and ceiling level, also due to lack of air infiltration.  Contrary to expectations, the temperatures in the thermal mass during the first half of 2024 appear to be almost identical to those in the first half of 2023.  The water table rises to within 12' of floor level but only for 4 - 6 weeks in the late spring or early summer and as such it does not threaten the efficacy of the passive solar design.

These are very preliminary observations based on 18 months data.  We will continue to monitor and report as more data become available.  

Our lower Midwest hot and humid climate is different than the high-plains / mountain west climate of the two pioneers whose designs informed ours.  So it is understandable that, with a warming globe, the summer temperatures in our house could reach the tipping point for future owners who will choose to add conventional air conditioning.  Our current photovoltaic array might even then continue to generate more electricity than consumed (meter running backwards) since its solar gain peaks during the air conditioning season.  If not, it could be minimally enlarged to handle the small amount of air conditioning that would be necessary for comfort.  A nice trade-off, though, is that, with global warming, inside winter temperatures might morph in the right direction.

*               *               *               *               *

UPDATE:  December 31, 2024

The numbers are in for the latter half of 2024 with interesting implications for the entire data set.

The following table is different from the chart above (for the twelve months of 2023 and the first six months of 2024) in that the last six months of 2024 are included and it is reconfigured into cold vs. warm months.

(The bold figures in the chart are the high and low temperatures for each season.)

2023 versus 2024

The best way to look at the figures is to compare the cold months of 2023 to the cold months of 2024 and the same for the warm months.  As was pointed out in the original posting, the coldest temperatures did not occur during the middle of the winter.  They were recorded during March and April after the heat stored in the thermal mass was diminished to the extent that it warmed the house less efficiently.  Similarly, the warmest temperatures did not occur during the early months of summer but transpired during the late months of August and September when the uptake of heat by the thermal mass leveled off.

The figures for last six months of 2024 round out the picture so that additional observations are possible.  For example, I had predicted during the construction phase that it would take several years for the temperatures in the thermal mass under and behind the house and under the insulation/watershed umbrella to reach equilibrium, i.e., remain constant year-to-year.  As soon as we moved into the house in the late spring of 2022, I began taking the temperature of the house but in a ways that were not as encompassing as those that are reported here for 2023 and 2024.  But the less sophisticated figures did show temperatures that were colder in winter and hotter in summer than in the later years.  

So by 2023 I began to think that it might indeed take several years for temperatures to equalize and was surprised when the 2023-2024 temperatures seemed to indicate otherwise.  As a test, I averaged the figures for all nine columns for indoor temperatures and then combined them to give one temperature reading for cold months and the same for the warm months of 2023 as well as for the cold months and warm months of 2024.  The figures for the cold months differed by only one degree -- 69 or 2023 and 70 for 2024.  The figures for the warm months were identical at 74 degrees.  In a nutshell, it seems that the thermal mass temperatures have stabilized quicker than expected.

Interesting Correlation

The last graph in the original 18-month post labeled "Room and Shallow Thermal Mass" shows an interesting correlation between the room and the subfloor temperatures.  The room temperatures were taken from a thermometer on the wall in mid-house and the subfloor temperatures were recorded via water drawn from a water supply line running in the thermal mass about a foot below floor level.  The first take-away from the graph is that the temperatures at the subfloor level ("water temperature") and at five feet below floor level ran in parallel and separated from each other by only a few degrees, validating the use of the subfloor temperatures as representative of the thermal mass.  The second take-away is that the room and the subfloor (thermal mass) temperatures ran in parallel and close together except for a spike in room temperatures during the warm months.

This phenomena can be better appreciated in table form.

The striking thing is that air and thermal mass temperatures are clearly bunched by seasons --  "balanced" for cold months and "absorbing" for warm months.  This means that, during cold months, the temperature of the thermal mass and the living quarters were within at least three degrees of each other but not at the same level throughout the cold month season.  The heat in the thermal mass was indeed gradually depleted but not so fast that the room temperatures fell faster.  And the room temperatures never reached a level that could not be handled with a few mobile space heaters -- a situation that would be impossible in houses without HVAC that were not as tight, as well insulated and as earth-sheltered.

Unlike the matched cold month temperatures, there was a noticeable deviation, except for early (May) and late (October) months, between warm month temperatures in the living space and those in the thermal mass, especially as the warm season progressed to August. This means that the thermal mass is unable to absorb heat as fast as the house accumulates it.

Typically, the conversation around passive solar is about staying warm in the winter, which is undoubtedly warranted in latitudes north of our St Louis area   However, the problem with passive solar this far south will continue to be staying cool in summer.  While global warming may improve our winter comfort, it will worsen our summer comfort to the extent that "passive solar" may include beefed up photovoltaic (solar) panels that support a minimum of air conditioning. 

Human Comfort and Mean Radiant Temperature

Another way of looking at the relationship between the air temperatures and the subfloor (thermal mass) temperatures is through the lens of mean radiant temperature.  The following passage is taken from an incredibly important blogpost for understanding how our house works:

Mean radiant temperature (MRT) is simply the average temperature of solid matter in the surrounding environment and it is more important for comfort than the air temperature in the same environment.  In fact, a 1 degree change in MRT has a 40% greater effect on body heat gain or loss than a 1 degree change in air temperature.  Therefore, when designing living space, it is far more efficient to control MRT than it is to control ambient air temperature.  And the higher the MRT, the lower the air temperature can be.  For example, if we can maintain the MRT at say, 76 degrees, the ambient air temperature could be as low as 62 degrees but our comfort level would be the same as if the air temperature were 70 degrees. Although MRT applies to matter such as wall studs, drywall, wood floors and furniture, it takes something much more massive to provide comfortable environments.

In a nutshell, the temperature of the thermal mass of a structure is more important for human comfort than the interior air temperature.  For us this phenomenon held true in summer more than in winter.  Take for example  August 2024:  if the thermal mass had not stayed 12 degrees cooler than the room air, the comfort level would have been dictated by the 86 degree room temperature.  Instead, with the thermal mass at 74 degrees, the comfort level would have been around 78 degrees.  The fact that thermal mass and air temperatures were balanced during cold months meant that the heat stored in the thermal mass during the warm months was sufficient in quantity and availability to moderate air temperatures during cold months -- not enough to keep them from falling as low as the mid-60s eventually but enough, with the help of portable space heaters, to be comfortable.

Humidity

Another interesting phenomenon has been the amount of humidity in the house.  For the first year, humidity was unpleasantly high due to moisture trapped in the soil under the floor and under the insulation/waterproof umbrella, particularly the soil behind the concrete back wall, the only escape for which was through the floor and back wall into the living quarters.  By early 2023, the humidity stabilized to the 50 - 60% range for most of the year so that humidifiers are no longer necessary and portable dehumidifiers are utilized sparingly to get rid of humidity that originates within the house.  But the Energy Recovery Ventilator and exterior doors do admit moist air that has to be monitored and occasionally handled with dehumidifiers.         

Odds "N Ends - Estimated vs. Actual Costs - A Preliminary Analysis

It is safe to say at this stage that the cost overrun for our project will be formidable, even as much as twice my original estimate but still less than half the cost of contractor-built comparables.  (Reminder: click on any picture to enlarge it for better viewing.)

                                                 UNDER-ESTIMATING COST

A page from the original estimate

For a DIYer to think s/he could come even close to estimating the cost of such an atypical custom-built home is the definition of naivety if not insanity.  When the project is done, I will, as best I can, spend the time to research invoices, credit card statements, cash payments, etc. and compare the findings with my original estimate in order to quantify my naivety.  
In the meantime, it's interesting to look at our project in view of online cost estimates for home construction in the Midwest.  What follows is a theoretical analysis (read: wild guess) based upon industry averages for traditional stick-built homes having some degree of customization.  

While we avoid the cost of conventional HVAC, we add costs for French drains, the various components of the AGS system*, greater volume of concrete, insanely higher R-values for the building envelope, a free-standing energy recovery ventilating system, top-of-the-line windows and doors, ventilated (double-layered) roof and compulsive air sealing for the building envelope to name some of the unique attributes of the home.  Except for the AGS system, all of the features enumerated would improve the energy performance (and raise the cost) of a conventionally built house as well.  So it seems fair to say that not having to buy and support a HVAC system (initial cost, long-term maintenance and energy consumption) more than pays for the AGS system, leaving the cost of the rest of the building fair game for comparing with conventional construction but, at the same time, realizing that "conventional construction" is merely a poor stand-in for the lack of comparables for our advanced and enhanced project.

(Spoiler alert.  If your interest level is waning already, you might want to forego the details in the next three paragraphs by skipping to the last, summarizing, paragraph in this section.)

A quick online search suggests that the per-foot cost in the Midwest for conventional construction ran $121 in 2017, a year that fell about midway through our construction period.  A figure of $121 / sq ft would bring our not quite 3,000 sq ft build in at $363K, half of which, according to the online source, would be the cost of labor with another 10% going towards contractor profit, leaving 40% for materials.  For our project, not all labor was DIY or volunteered.  Some of it was done by professionals, including a journeyman carpenter and a plumber friend.  However, all non-volunteers, whether professional or amateur, received at least $15/hr and, more often, $20, which is what I consider to be a fair range for minimum wage.  And, since we paid separately for the materials involved with all phases of construction, including the dirt and concrete work that preceded the actual build, the excavation and concrete contractors' fees were for labor only, mirroring the wages of the others that helped with later construction.  I would guess then that the ratio of hired and contracted labor as opposed to my (sweat) labor and that of volunteers would be about 

1.5 : 8.5 or 15% for paid labor and 85% for volunteer and my labor.  How that plays out in terms of dollars is the rest of the story.

First, the generic labor cost has to be reconciled to fit our situation in order to be able to consider the other costs of construction -- materials and contractor profit.  If 50% is the generic cost for labor, the labor costs for a $363K house would be $182K.  In terms of dollars, the 85%:15% ratio for labor amounts to $155K for sweat/volunteer labor and $27K for hired labor.  Subtracting $27K from the $363K leaves $336K for everything else -- contractor profit, sweat/volunteer labor and materials.  Since there is no contractor profit to be paid, all of the $336K can be allocated to materials and to the value of sweat/volunteer labor.  Since the time has not come for a tally of the cost of materials, let's assume that their cost is what is left after valuing the sweat/volunteer labor.

So where are we now?  The generic cost of labor is 50% of the cost of construction or $182K from which we have subtracted $27K for contracted labor leaving $155K for sweat/volunteer labor.  Not having to pay the 10% contractor's profit saves another $36K which, when added to $155 savings on labor means that $191K represents that part of the cost of construction for which no cash is needed.  Or, to say it another way, $191K subtracted from the total cost of $336K leaves $145K for materials and miscellaneous costs requiring cash.

So, remembering that the generic square-foot cost of construction in the Midwest is $121, how do our figures compare?   When $145K is divided by 3,000 sq ft, our per-foot cost is $48 or about 60% less than the generic cost.  My original estimate was $34 sq ft for a smaller house (2,100 instead of near-3,000 sq ft), so, on a square-foot basis, I underestimated the cost by at least $30%.  What that translates into in terms of real world expenditures will have to wait until I do the post-build analysis but I suspect that it will prove to be somewhat on the low side.  Even so, it's nice to think that my major bucket list item -- to DIY a house -- has not only kept me enthused and in better health during my golden years but will have provided a nice return-on-investment for our heirs.

UNDER-ESTIMATING TIME

                                                    

My ability to estimate cost proved to be better than estimating the time it would take to build the house and to reconfigure the surrounding grounds, largely because I grossly over-estimated how fast I could get things done working mostly alone.  Having even one other pair of helping hands throughout construction would have sped things up, not just twice as fast but three or four times faster than working alone.

Does DIYing pay dividends?  Maybe, Maybe Not.

I really did think early on that it would take only a couple of years, maybe three, to build the house.  If it could have been done that quickly, the sweat equity figure that I used above would mean that my wages would have been $57K to $85K per year.  All well and good except that construction by the time it is completed will have taken at least eight years.  Divide the $170K sweat equity by eight and $21K per year might be okay for us retirees but nothing to write home about otherwise.  So I guess the lesson here, based upon these wild-guess figures is that a person should think twice about quitting his/her day job to build a house this unique, complicated and time-consuming.  Either s/he should keep the job and hire a contractor or stick to a more conventional design such as using structural insulated panels (SIPs) that could in fact be DIYed in 2 - 3 years.  The problem with having our house professionally built is that it would be hard to find a contractor who would be willing to undertake the risk involved with a ground-breaking, non-standard project unless the owner was willing to contract on a time-and-materials basis which would probably open a bag of worms for the owner.

Dirt Work

Having never sat in a track loader, I was ill-equipped to appreciate the amount of time it would take to move dirt around for our passive solar design.  Digging into the hillside to site the house was time-consuming because of the volume of dirt that had to be moved with a 6' wide bucket and the fact that each bucketful had to be carted to the storage area behind the excavation at least 100 yards away rather than swung to the side as is typically done for basement excavations.  Lots of dirt had to be rearranged in connection with earth sheltering and for the insulation-watershed umbrella of the AGS system.  Contouring the surrounding grounds to funnel run-off to numerous rain gardens also was time-consuming. 

Salvaging lumber from one of several tear-downs

According to the hour-meter on the track loader, I spent 415 hours operating it or about 52 eight-hour days.  Within the context of my original estimate of two years and using 2,000 hours per year as working time, 415 hours would have consumed +/-10% of the total construction time.  As it turns out, 3% over six years is still not inconsequential.

Pre-Assembled Wall Trusses 
I began tearing down old houses and

Jig with truss in process.

out-buildigs  and de-nailing the salvaged lumber a couple of years in advance of starting construction.  Later, when the weather interfered with the dirt work, I worked under shelter using some of the lumber to pre-assemble 30+ wall trusses for the 15" thick exterior walls.  These pre-construction tasks took hundreds of hours, mostly for processing the salvaged lumber once it was on our property.

 Altogether there were seven French drains as long as those
on the left; all were covered with filter cloth as is being done 
to the one in the middle; notice off to the left the edge the 
huge dirt storage area behind the building site.  (Click on 
 the picture for an enlarged view.)

French Drains

Knowing that the thermal mass under the house would have to remain dry for proper performance of the AGS system we enlisted the help of a soil engineer.  On his recommendation, a contractor drilled and sank four peizometers quite a few feet below the anticipated location of the AGS conduits.  Two years later during an especially wet spring and early summer, ground water rose sufficiently high in the peizometers to threaten the future AGS conduits.  The seven French drains that

Friend, Pat, laying a conduit that starts at the white
PVC pipe angling up from the trench behind the footprint
of the building and ending at the location of the future
 front foundation of the house and later to be connected
to the yet-to-be-built solar collector. 

were necessary to mitigate the problem were installed before final excavation for the house.  They took only one day with a large crew of family and friends assisting the excavation contractor but assembly of the drains from plastic culverts ahead of time took me considerable time.

AGS Conduits

Collector shell ready for backfilling the gap between it
and where the front foundation for the house would be
 situated.  By the time the picture was taken, solid PVC
pipes had been laid and buried, joining the black  AGS
 conduits with the solar collector.  Notice the terminal
ends of the conduits in the distance.

Trenching and burying the nine AGS conduits also was easily done in a single day by the contractor with several of us helping.  The time consuming part was connecting them to the solar collector on the south and managing, late in construction, the terminal ends on the north which stuck out of the ground several feet initially.  

Solar Collector Shell   

Construction of the solar collector shell out of dry-stacked concrete blocks that were fiber-bonded-cement-parged and connecting it to the AGS conduits took several weeks mainly because of heavy spring and early summer rains, and was way more physically taxing in the summer heat than I anticipated.  Once it was completed, the conduits run to it and the open pit between it and the footprint of the house backfilled, construction on the house could finally begin.

UNANTICIPATED COST OVERRUNS

The amount spent on contracted dirt and concrete work prior to the carpenter phase of construction was indeed a major surprise.  The cost of concrete itself was somewhat anticipated but the amount paid to contractors for the final excavation and pouring was beyond pale or so it seemed to me at the time being unaware of the size of their capital investment in equipment and the seasonal nature of their work in our climate.

Once that expensive phase was behind us and we started the carpenter phase, most of the overrun was for unanticipated labor and for inflation.  Otherwise, we were doing familiar things that hued reasonably close to the original budget.  Labor costs started rising when I found that I needed a second pair of experienced hands for such things as setting trusses, sheathing walls and roofs and installing metal roofing, siding and soffits as well as for some of the drywalling and blowing insulation.  The 8 years after groundbreaking in late summer 2016 was a long enough span to see inflation of the cost of materials.  For example,  the price of 1/2" drywall rose by 33% between the time I did the estimate in 2014 and actually purchased it in 2019.  The rice hulls for insulation went from $1,400 per truckload to $5,000 due partially to inflation but also other factors (as explained in one of the posts on insulating). 

And there was an exuberance factor.  I found it too easy to have the mindset that, "Oh well, we are already overbudget, so why not spend a little more for upgrades on X,Y,Z.".  This tendency manifested primarily while wrapping up the interior for such things as flooring, bathroom fixtures, kitchen and laundry appliances and lighting.

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*For those who have not followed the blog enough to know about the Annualized GeoSolar system that will provide year-round comfort in the absence of conventional HVAC, click on the title under "Featured Post" near the top of the left column.

Odds 'N Ends - Experience with Bare-Rooted Tree Seedlings

The economical way to have shrubs and trees in quantity is to start with bare-rooted seedlings that we here in the Midwest can order from our state conservation departments for less than a dollar each.  However, seedlings require a lot of TLC until they become established during the first growing season.  For what it's worth, I would like to share our experience with them on two occasions.

Reminder:  click on any photo to enlarge it for better viewing.

Current Project
Last fall, we placed an order with the state conservation

department for 80 bare-rooted seedlings to be delivered in the first week of April.  I thought that we would be finished with the dirt work behind the house by early spring and could start a woods behind the house using species of hardwood trees that are recommended by Doug Tallamy in his quintessential book on native landscaping as being the  most beneficial to wildlife.  "Wildlife" not only means the kind with four legs or two wings but also, and perhaps more importantly, a host of insects like pollinators that depend on trees for part of their life cycles.

By the time I finished the final grading behind the house, the exposed soil in many areas was hardpan (glacial till) through which tree roots do not penetrate and the thin layer of topsoil that I deposited would support at best only shallow-rooted nuisance grasses like crabgrass. The bare-rooted seedings would have to be planted somewhere else.  Fortunately, the acre lot on which we live next door to the construction site combined with that part of the building site that could support trees would provide ample spacing for the seedlings.

Temporary "Planting"
The delay between arrival and planting of the seedlings required that they be temporarily "planted" to keep the roots happy.   Dorothy and a friend dug shallow trenches in Dottie's fenced garden, laid the plants on the ground with their roots in the trenches and covered the roots with a shallow layer of soil, a maneuver called "heeling in".  After watering the protective soil, they covered it with cardboard and old carpet to hold in the moisture.  Then as needed, Dottie kept the plants watered until ready for planting.  However, holding them in this fashion for two months does not bode well for success; more of the seedlings did not survive than would have been the case if they had gone into the ground either when received or shortly after.  Mostly it was nearly ten of the black oaks that suffered due to spindly root structure compared to the other varieties -- white oak, burr oak, shumac oak, pin oak, hackberry and black cherry.

 Planting the Seedlings
Nothing needs to be said about digging a hole big enough for root cluster and refilling it while holding plant in the correct position to have the root-trunk junction at the right level.  I would mention, though, that for easy digging, I used a clam-type posthole digger then, for the tree seedlings having tap roots, such as the oaks and black cherry, I used a soil auger in a cordless drill to deepen the center part of the hole.  I made no attempt to amend the soil beyond using only topsoil for backfilling.

Ideally, the trees should be planted randomly so as to mimic a natural forest.  But, in order to make mowing with a lawn tractor easier, I held my nose and planted them in a grid pattern, allowing about 20' between trees.

Protecting the Seedlings from Critters
The topography here in the Mississippi River bluffs is sufficiently rough to provide numerous timbered gullies that are rugged enough to stay undeveloped.  As a result, our town supports a lot of closeup and personal wildlife.  A friend gave us some oak seedlings last summer that we planted without protecting immediately.  Within a day or two they had been eaten, probably by deer but maybe rabbits.  This time we didn't let the the seedlings go unprotected even for one night.

A quick Google search reveals myriad choices for cylinders in which to grow trees until they become established, usually called "grow tubes".  They range from solid plastic tubes with various hues to tubes that are like stiff netting.  Most are supported by small diameter bamboo sticks that are pushed into the soil.  We chose the netting type seedling protection tubes that are used with reforesting after clear-cuts in northwest USA because they are much cheaper than the "mini-greenhouses" that the solid variety comprise.  Mating the netting with the bamboo stick was a simple matter of of weaving the bamboo through the netting in a few places.

Initially, we used mulch around the seedlings to hold moisture and to keep grass at bay.  In order to do the latter effectively, though, the mulch area would have to be substantial.  Instead, we opted for a small amount of mulch initially to cover the soil that was denuded during planting with the intention of letting the grass grow up to the seedling eventually -- kinda.

Protecting the Seedlings from Mowing
If grass encroaches on the seedling, how do you mow it? 

4" PVC pipe +/-8" long cut
 partway through on one
side and completely through
 on the other

 Before placing the grow tube over a seedling, we slipped a 8" section of 4" PVC pipe that had been modified for easy removal (next paragraph) when the tree trunk got too big for the pipe.  Then we slipped the grow tube part-way over the pipe then forced the bamboo into the ground.  The bamboo supports both the pipe and the grow tube.

In order to facilitate removal of the pipes, they were run through the table saw twice.  For the cut on one side, the blade was adjusted so as to cut only about two thirds of the way through the wall thickness.  The second cut on the other side went completely through the wall of the pipe.  At the time of removal, it will be a simple matter of using a flat tool to pry the cut side of the pipe apart until the partially-cut side breaks apart.

In the meantime, I will be able to string-trim the grass

A drip hole of 1/16" drains the
2.5 gal container in +/-2 hours

up to the pipe without damaging the grow tube or the seeding.  Eventually, after removal of the tubes and pipes, mulching out a ways from the trees in a more typical manner will be necessary until the trees grow into a proper woodland whereby the shade, leaf litter and forest-specific undergrowth will eliminate mowing. 

Drip Irrigation During the First Season
The closest thing we have had to a genuine drought was in 2012, the year we raised about 60 bare-rooted seedlings in anticipation of having them reach a transplantable age by the time we needed them for landscaping around the new house.  Lo, six years later when we are finally at the landscaping stage, the seedlings were way past transplanting.  However, despite the drought that year, all but a handful of seedlings survived thanks to the drip irrigation system that was suggested by the farmer in our family who also provided the containers for it.  And, in retrospect, our success was also due to growing them only a few feet apart in an enclosure
that kept the deer at bay for a couple of years until large enough for the deer to reach them over the fence.  By that time though, a little pruning did not matter.

Any decent-sized container -- round, square, rectangular -- can be modified for drip irrigation.  The 2 1/2 gallon containers we obtained from brother-in-law, Ron, originally held a surfectant that is used to enhance the effectiveness of sprayed weed killers.  Thorough rinsing with tap water is all that is needed to make them safe for watering plants.  By trial and error, I found that a 1/16" diameter drip hole as close to the bottom as possible will mean that the container will drain in about two hours.  Rather than hassling with the lids for the containers at each fill-up, we left them off.  Some debris does find its way through the opening, mostly grass clippings from mowing nearby, but it is largely flushed out by overfilling the container with water each time.

As ballast against the wind, I add enough pea

Pea gravel after washing; a quart in each container is
ballast enough against most winds and keeps mosquitoes
 from breeding in any water standing after draining 

gravel to each container to cover the bottom -- about a quart for our containers.  In addition to keeping the containers anchored, the gravel covers any water still standing after the drip stops, making it inaccessible to mosquitoes.  And, being a bit anal, I try to position the containers on the north side of the seedling so as not to block the sun.

While filling a container with water, it is a good idea visually to check the drip hole to be sure it is flowing freely.  I carry a 4d finish nail for reaming any sluggish holes.  Also, during dry spells, I jump-start the watering by filling the PVC pipes with water either before or after filling the containers.  It slowly leaks out through the sawcut but the soil around the plant is nevertheless thoroughly saturated.

At the end of the growing season, it is advisable to be sure the containers are dry and stored where they cannot collect water that could freeze and burst a container.  When reusing the containers, it is best from the standpoint of preventing clogged

drip holes to empty the gravel into a wash tub or some other large vessel filled with water.  Then, stir the gravel until vegetative debris floats to the surface and goes away when the water is poured off.  Rinse the containers clean, add back the gravel, prophylacticly ream the drip holes and

start watering.

Seedlings planted between new house and our residence

The nearby photo shows the configuration of the protective PVC pipe, the protective grow tube with a bamboo support stick and the drip irrigation container.  Notice that the container is tilted away from the plant, which is not always avoidable, meaning that the container will not drain entirely. The layer of pea gravel in the bottom covers any standing water sufficiently that mosquitoes cannot breed in it.  The black cherry seedling is already growing through the tube netting but, our experience is that deer browse will not harm the tree at this early stage as long as there is plenty of growth within the tube.  

A garden hose works best for filling the containers either directly from a silcock or indirectly from a mobile tank.  Since most of our seedlings cannot be reached with a hose from the house, we temporarily re-purposed our rain barrel for this job. It has a hose bib at the bottom for a garden hose and a hole on top for filling.  When lashed to my truck bed, there is enough gravity flow to fill a container in just a few minutes.

Seedlings on our residence property; beginning in August, apple-loving
deer are regular visitors at dusk and through the night eating directly
off of the trees in the background and picking up fallen apples

*  *  *  *  *       
Update
Several of the grow tubes and PVC pipes have been "vandalized with the bamboo poles broken off at the ground and the netting and PVC pipes strewn across the lawn as well as few leaves left on the seedlings.  About a dozen seedlings were bothered.  Our vintage apple trees are magnets for deer; deer congregate starting even before dusk and can be seen all night.  Undoubtedly the damage to the seedlings was deer-centric, probably by bucks trying out their new antlers and finding tasty snacks in the process.  Based on the severity of the damage, I am not sure that sturdier tubes and support poles would withstand the abuse any better than the netting and bamboo.

Odds 'N Ends - Building a House As An Octogenarian

This post is an outgrowth of endless comments and questions (and probably quite a few snickers) about house-building at my, let's say, "mature" age.  I am now 84, having broken ground when I was 82 and expect to be at least 89 before the project is fully completed.*

Anything I have to say about staying active in the golden years does nothing to advance my main interest, sustainability, but, as a former health professional, it's hard to pass up an opportunity to promote healthy living even though I may not be the most perfect example.  So, after debating with myself for several years, I've decided to do it.  But let me admit that I have spent way more time on this post than any other for fear it would be interpreted in the wrong way -- not as a pitch for healthy living, but as some sort of me-ism.

When my access to the health professional literature for 40+ years and my personal experience is coupled with what science is telling us now, I can see dividing this discussion into three topics: work history (wear and tear on one's body); physiological (the medical stuff); and mental (the psychological stuff).

WORK HISTORY

The good news is that it is quite unlikely that I would be building a house at my age had I been doing this kind of work all of my life. I know many in the trades who eagerly anticipate retirement because of the wear and tear on their bodies.  So probably the biggest reason for my able-ness now is that I began strenuous work after "retirement age" but before I suffered enough age-related muscle loss to have made the project too difficult.  

The bad news is that leaning over dental patients and a lab bench for so many years left me with forward-head posture and acquired scoliosis that have resulted in a leg length disparity, nagging neuro-muscular problems -- shoulder pain, lower back soreness and sciatica -- that slow me down.  They would be seriously disabling were it not for regular visits to a SOT (Sacral-Occipital-Technique) chiropractor, one prolonged episode with physical therapy and four-times-daily stretching of the muscles that overwork (splinting) to compensate for structural imbalances, mainly, the lower back region in response to forward head posture.  (UPDATE, Spring 2025:  Seven years after this post was written, hip replacement surgery that balanced a leg length discrepancy eliminated virtually all of the presurgical symptoms). 

PHYSIOLOGICAL

 "I have good genes and I take care of them"
Some of us more than others manage to pick parents with good genes.  I chose well -- no history of cardiovascular disease, no diabetes, no mental illness, no debilitating arthritis, no liver or kidney disease, no autoimmune diseases, no serious allergies and normal body weight. My mother died early during corrective surgery for a one-off congenital heart valve problem.  But a black cloud -- prostate cancer --  hung over my Dad's side of the family.  So, knowing that Dad and most of his brothers died of prostate cancer and my younger brother had already had surgery for it, I was hyper-vigilant and caught it in time many years ago.  I picked healthy grandparents as well.  Most were hard-working farmers who lived well into their 90's.  

Nutrition
Much is known today about the role of nutrition in the prevention of chronic disease but most people seem to lack interest in nutrition which, I suspect, is because its science is fairly technical and constantly evolving, making it easier to be indifferent. The media are no help when they sensationalize nutrition "news", often before peer-reviewed science actually signs off on it, as a way of winning subscribers and viewers.  And, until recently, the medical profession can be accused of neglecting preventive nutrition for healthy patients (as opposed to dietary counseling for sick patients).

I was an outlier.  In parallel with my pioneering effort in preventive dentistry 60 years ago, nutrition science was emerging and I enjoyed following it, mostly with a dental bias in the beginning.  Then I attended a lecture in 1964 by perhaps the most widely recognized expert in the field at the time, Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin, who had established one of the first departments of nutrition in the US at the University of Alabama School of Medicine.  He was widely published in the scientific literature and had written several lay books on nutrition.  As Dr Cheraskin was summing up at the end of the day-long lecture, he said something like this......
"The surest advice that I can leave you is that your single best chance of staying healthy is to avoid refined carbohydrates for the rest of your life."

Research now shows how right he was.  Refined carbohydrates are increasingly implicated in heart disease, Type II diabetes and other chronic diseases for both the obese and the non-obese.  After the lecture, I gradually, as best as I could, steered my family and patients away from foods high in refined carbohydrates such as sugar, honey, high fructose corn syrup and grains that are not whole. And I personally have steadfastly avoided refined carbohydrates for over 50 years and earnestly believe that it is the best thing I could have done to take care of the fortunate genes I inherited.  How rare it must be at my age to have a normal pulse rate, normal cholesterol/triglycerides, normal glucose and only one prescribed medicine -- a mild pill for age-related hypertension? 

But refined carbohydrates are not the whole picture.  After losing our spouses, Dorothy and I met and married late in life.  It has been largely through her that we have followed the so-called Mediterranean diet almost entirely for the twenty years we have known each other.  Except for mild age-related minor problems, she is ever bit as healthy and active as I.  And, I should give credit to my late dental-hygienist wife, JoAnn, for cooking healthy foods for the family, if not quite to the Mediterranean level, to the level understood as optimal in those days.

As for nutritional supplements, I think, if taken intelligently based on the available research, they might provide a leg up -- for example, Vitamin D for my age group, particularly, those of us who cover against sunlight and drink milk sparingly, and Vitamin B-12 for those of us who limit red meat.  And a good source of reliable information for making choices about nutrition, including supplementation and healthy living in general, is the Nutrition Action Health Newsletter published monthly online and in hard copy by the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest.  

Aerobic Exercise
Except for a few sporadic years of jogging during mid-life and brisk walking for a few years in my '60s and '70s, I have not allocated time for routine aerobic exercise but I have never hesitated to undertake strenuous weekend projects and activities.  As a consequence, my physical stamina seemed always to have been nearly on a par with most of those who did.  During South Dakota pheasant hunts, guess who jogged back to get our vehicle after we hunted away from it, sometimes as much as a mile away?  Guess who keeps on shoveling after the others have stopped to rest?  Guess who keeps going after fellow mushroom hunters head for camp?  But now age-related muscle loss is taking a toll on my legs, which is frustrating, especially for heavy lifting.  But my upper body and arm strength still seem to be okay.  Curiously, my hands are as steady as they were during practice days but my dexterity has diminished due probably to dry skin and fading fingerprints, both of which provide friction for the fingers.

Habits
I have never smoked or used recreational drugs.  I have been a drinker since graduating from college -- sometimes more so than I should at social occasions but typically within the "recommended daily allowances" otherwise.

A habit to which I confess is reading.  As a result, I have missed a good share of the content on television since its beginning (except for PBS).  As a matter of fact, there have been periods of a few years when we had no TV at all and, when we have had it, it was without cable or satellite service.  And, with the advent of social media, I have limited my participation to its bare essentials.  I have lived a busy life so reading time seldom exceeds a couple of hours a day largely restricted to non-fiction -- dental literature early on and books about history and the human condition later in life.

Unknown Factors
I have been talking about numerous health practices that may have paid off in later life.  But the story might be more intriguing -- there could be other, more obscure, contributing factors.  Like a lot of country kids, I was constantly in contact with the soil and the manure from chickens to horses with pigs and cattle in between.  And, in the same vein, we had a dog while growing up and again later in life with whom we traded microorganisms that probably contributed to a healthier microbiome.  For the twenty-some years before I began wearing masks, I worked within a few inches of the upper end of the alimentary canal and respiratory tree of thousands of patients that teemed with many billions of micro-flora.  With that history, was I exposed to enough potential pathogens to give me immunity without actually making me sick?  Given all of the above, is my gut microcosm healthier than if I had been raised in a sterile urban environment or had something like rheumatic fever that required so many prophylactic antibiotics as to disrupt and permanently degrade my gut biome?  Who knows?  Recent therapy with fecal capsules for patients with antibiotic-resistant microorganisms seems to validate the importance of a healthy microbiome.  

MENTAL 

Happiness
A lot has been written about happiness and its impact on health and, while I do not profess to be an authority, I am convinced it has a lot to do with my longevity and and late life fitness -- both mental and physical.

With the exception of one misspent decade in the business world, I consider myself lucky. Happiness was with me in large measure when I was growing up in a family business in small town USA.  I had a blissful marriage and leveraged it by working side-by-side everyday with my wife for nearly four decades before cancer got her.  Happiness was with me when I chose a profession that I enjoyed beyond words.  Happiness is with me now as Dottie and I forge a life together. And happiness is definitely with me as I check off the most cherished item on my bucket-list -- DIYing a passive solar house!

In a nutshell, my life experiences have made me an optimist and I think optimism and happiness go hand-in-hand.

Risk Taking
For what its worth, I think most movers and shakers in our society are risk-takers.  My entrepreneurial Dad, whom I admired greatly, used to say, "There ain't no such thing as cain't".  His risk-taking rubbed off on me early on and influenced my approach to dentistry, to the short sojourn into the business world and now with the green building project.  It was manifested when we were one of the first white families to live in integrated public housing in St Louis (while in dental school), buying a home in the first St Louis suburb to pass a fair housing ordinance and adopting Annualized GeoSolar conditioning to the complete exclusion of conventional HVAC as part of our passive solar build.  As a result of life-long risk-taking, a philosophy has evolved that goes something like this: 

If everyone else is doing it, suspect that it may be wrong.  Be confident in your own ability to reason things through and to act on your conclusions.  Yes, there may be more stress this way but, self-induced stress, as long as it is monitored, can be healthy. 

As a risk-taker,  I have embraced change and, with the exception of a decade or so when JoAnn was dying and I gave up dentistry for the business world, I have successfully regulated the rate at which change passes through my life so as to be proactive in coping with it and not get overwhelmed and over-stressed by it.  Successful risk-taking builds self-worth/esteem that contributes hugely to happiness, at least in my experience.

Stress
Science has shown that self-imposed stress is less damaging and, in moderation, may actually be healthy while externally-imposed stress is more apt to be harmful.  I strongly believe that having been self-employed throughout life has allowed me to regulate the amount of stress I allow myself whereas, if I had been an employee, my health would have been compromised by stress from circumstances beyond my control.

Think Time

I should think DIY construction would be impossible without setting aside dedicated time to think.  By "dedicated time" I mean no distractions -- no talk radio, no background music, no TV, no visitors, no distractions, just alone with ones thoughts. In a project like ours, there are so many critical details to keep track of -- in the present, in the immediate future and in the distant future -- that need a lot of unencumbered mind-space.  Drive time can be think time but the best time for me is while literally staring off into space. 

My schedule has always included think time going back to my early days of practice.  What seemed to others like reckless risk-taking on my part had been well-vetted during think time.  Some of the best ideas conceived and mistakes avoided came about during think time.  It is a shame, in my opinion, that our world is so noisy now that most folks fail to allow themselves the luxury of productive think time. 

DIY Construction as a Journey
A common question I hear regarding our present undertaking goes something like this:  "How do you stay interested for all of the years the project requires?"  To me, undertaking a big project is like going to college.  Completion is the goal but the focus has to be on day-to-day minutia -- classes, labs, study time and exams.  One becomes so immersed in the process as to render the endeavor a journey, not a destination.  Such is our home building endeavor.

__________________

* UPDATE, Spring of '25, age 91 

The interior casework, milled on site from sawmill lumber, has been completed.  The one project yet to be completed is the custom cabinetry for the balcony office and stalled the trestle type dining room table, both from the stash of sawmill walnut mentioned in a  previous post.