We needed to hook up the septic side lines to run from the bedrooms and garage to the main central line coming from under the basement. The original plan had these running under the house, but the plumber suggested that it would be much easier to run the line outside the house completely… At some later point, we also decided to run the bedroom electrical along this outside line. Of course, this all required some digging. Gota love that nice soft sand.
The Video
Some details
The Stack:
The bedroom septic line had a further run and needed to be below frost depth, so it connected at a lower point on the stack. Then I connected the garage line at a higher point. However, I thought it would be a good idea to slope it more and get deeper than I had to… Some plumbers say that you shouldn’t slope too much because the solids and liquids will separate and you will have clogging problems. I have done my research and determined that was not true (just a plumbers wives’ tale) so I didn’t mind sloping it more. However, after making the stack connection with the Y-pipe shown in the video, I decided that I didn’t like the angle of the connection. Basically, these pipes are designed to connect at closer to perpendicular or maybe 5 degrees off. My original connection was maybe 20 degrees off. It was probably sealed, but it didn’t look great and I didn’t want to take any chances. I ended up cutting off that Y-connection and extending the stack so i could connect at a higher point with less slope.
The Shortcut:
The plumbing and the electrical in the bedroom wing both connect in the laundry room, very close to eachother so they can exit from the same hole and follow the same trench… However, I didn’t measure conservatively enough and although the electrical cables could reach the panel, I was worried about being a few inches short of making final connections, so we ended up digging a short cut trench for the electrical cables. At least we could still re-use about 2/3rds of the trench.
The Electrical cables:
Earlier, I had experimented with other kinds of cable, running thru conduit. This time I was using cable that was certified to be directly buried. It was still in conduit where it came out of the garage (because it is not certified to be encased in concrete and because I didn’t want a potential leak above the floor anyway), but then came out of the conduit below the footings level. I basically wired it according to above ground code with the required depth below the footing and bushings, etc. After burial, it will only further exceed code.
Gallery
Just some pics…
The Trench was a combination of had dug and Skid Steer dragged
The Skid Steer can’t dig like an excavator, but it can pull the dirt out of the way with the wide bucket…
The skid steer can’t dig like an excavator, but it sure can move dirt.
Another angle on the SkidSteer, because of reasons.
This is the stubbed in end of the garage septic line that had been buried before the garage floor or footings were poured.
This is the stubbed in end of the garage septic line that had been buried before the garage floor or footings were poured.
The main line is 10 ft below ground. These two side branches bring in the bedroom and garage lines.
The plumbing stack from above.
Pipe laid
This is the high end on the bedrooms side. The vertical part was for an additional cleanout. I left it off the video because the plumber didn’t like the angle of the fitting and cut this out before connecting up the way he wanted it.
My father dug most of the shortcut trench himself
Cables laid in the trench…
The boys were mainly for moral support, but still wanted to be in the picture. This picture was just in-case I needed to prove the depth to the inspector.
Another pic for the inspector, with Sherri being goofy in the background while working on the rebar.
This is quite a bit deeper than code requires.
This is the toilet rough in. We simply cut off the pipe and pushed in that fitting so we could attach the toilet.
We needed to run 200 amps of electricity from the meter on the back corner of the garage to the mechanical room in the middle of the house. This part of the process was necessary and lessons were learned, but it was a smallish stand alone project, so here is the shortest video segment yet…
Cable run:
Code requires that 200 amp service needs at least 2/0 copper cable or 4/0 aluminum. I went with the copper, even though it is a little more expensive, because it is much thinner and easier to work with. The rooms are not that far apart, but since I had to start in the back corner of the garage and travel a long path up and along walls, I ended up ordering enough for a 125ft service run.
The run requires three of the heavy 2/0 cables (220 volt service) and one smaller 4 gauge ground wire, so the total weight on the spool was about 200 lbs. We attached conduit to the steel Quonset hut with 3/8ths inch bolts that could support the weight (and the tugging). Actually, these were bolts left over from assembling the Quonset hut. On the back wall, we attached to the Fox blocks with wood screws every 8 inches.
The cables have a slightly slippery coating that makes pulling easier, but I still didn’t think my wire puller could handle the load. Instead, we used the wire puller to pull a rope thru the conduit, and then we used the rope to pull the heavy two-ought cables.
Code limits the maximum number of bends because it just gets too hard to pull the wire if there are too many. My run was below the maximum, but I still didn’t want to try pulling the whole thing at once. Instead, we put up the first section with just a single 90 degree bend and pulled the wires just thru that. Then we added sections, threading them over the cables and working back toward the breakers.
The quick time-lapse makes it look easy, but it really didn’t feel like it at the time and I was very glad to have hunters help. Don’t try this sort of thing on your own. At one point you can see us both trying to support the weight of the cable while we add screws for the brackets in that back corner. Lots of sweat.
I just liked this pic that the timelapse camera took of the arches while we were organizing the wires
My parents came out that weekend to help with setting up steel (that’s another video), but also jumped in to help me wrangle the wires into conduit and fit those in place between the garage and the mechanical room. The trickiest part here was that both ends of the assembly were fixed and we had to get the conduit measured just right and then, with the wire already in side, fit between the two ends. Fortunately, it was just flexible enough.
This last section of conduit is “outside” now, but eventually the kitchen floor will be poured over it.
Introduction:
Welcome Hunter M. to the video.
Hunter is an 18 year old college student (just finished his 2nd year of film school) with a side interest in building. His personal interest is in a tiny house project, and, hopefully, he will build his own some day.
Hunter is a great worker, with a very optimistic attitude and a great sense of humor. He is also great at paying attention, he learns fast and he anticipates what I will need next. He has been a great help so far this summer and I am sure he will do well in life. I would be happy to recommend him to anyone, just not on Saturdays when I need his help.
Tips:
1) Be careful about the direction of your conduit. I put the first section in backward and my first attempt to pull the first cable failed because the cable was hitting on the inside end of the pipe in the connection. Fortunately, I was at least consistent and could go around and pull the cable from the other direction.
Pull the cable in this direction, and never mix directions with the conduit.
This sort of rebar bender can help you move service entrance wire
2) Similar to the service entrance, I found that using my rebar bender helped me feed the wire thru that hole between the inside and outside. It is tough to describe without catching it on video, but you can make the thick/stiff cables move like an inch worm around the corner and through the hole.
3) Code requires all the cables for a run to go thru the same conduit. This is to keep all the cables the same length so that the sin curves for the AC current stay in sync between the black and red cables… If anyone wants to know more, I could come back and put in an illustration to explain that here. I did know that and put all the cables through the one conduit. The second conduit is so that I can later come back and run other things (Ethernet?) from the garage to the mechanical room. When building a concrete, underground house, a second wire chase is a good idea.
For some strange reason, I have always wanted to build a block wall. So of course, I had to work at least a bit of that into the plans. I chose to build the bathroom out of block because it was all internal walls and I liked the idea that it may slightly brace the quonset hut before we added concrete over it. We also had this idea that the garage would be finished first and it would be great to have a bathroom in there so we could use it during the rest of the build…
Also, I have often joked (only half kidding) that I would like the bathroom to be waterproof so we could clean it with a power washer. And that would require no drywall…
First, the Video…
Glass Bottle Wall
I have also wanted to make a glass bottle wall for a long time, but with a low R value, they are not practical as an exterior wall in Michigan. Instead, I plan to finish the gap between this bathroom wall and the Quonset ceiling with glass bottles… This way, it will be an internal wall and will let light in from the garage skylights while still finishing off the bathroom wall to the ceiling to provide privacy. Video to come later… much later. Maybe after we move in.
Pro-tips
1) Buy half blocks, etc. When you go to price the blocks, you will find that the full 8″x8″x16″ blocks are pretty cheap. In my case, they were 86 cents each. But then if you look at half blocks, you will find that they cost almost twice as much for half as much block. At first, I said, “No way, those are for suckers, I’ll just split the full blocks.” And while it is true that some of the full blocks come designed to be split, it was not easy and I wrecked half the blocks that I tried. Eventually, I realized that those half blocks were expensive because they were worth it! I also bought 4x8x8 blocks and cut those in half for some quarter blocks.
2) Pay for delivery. Blocks are heavy and it took hundreds to make even my small bathroom. You could make a bunch of trips with a pick up truck (be careful not to overload it), but for the money you would pay in gas, you could just have them delivered all at once and without risking wear and tear on your vehicle. Delivery also saves you time, and time is money.
3) Cut the blocks for electrical as you go. I guess we were just so excited to be building that we forgot to do that. When I came back later, it looked pretty easy in the video, but… If cutting the block had cracked it, how would I have replaced it? It was also pretty challenging to get the ENT boxes to fit in the holes with the conduit attached to the tops, and then I had to run the conduit and wires all the way up to the top of the wall and back down again, which wasted a few extra dollars. Plus, you just look silly for forgetting.
4) Make sure your concrete dye is a nice liquid or powder so you can mix it accurately. Mine was a lumpy semi-solid mass that had been sitting on the shelf at Home Depot well past its expiry date and this made it very difficult to get a uniform color. I found that I could blend the color by wet sponging the wall later, but it still doesn’t look quite right.
Gallery
Here are some pics from along the way…
This was the plan for the bathroom. The shower plumbing was supposed to come up in the wall, inside the blocks, but it was placed about 6 inches off… We discussed how to adjust the bathroom to fit and ended up moving the ind wall back another 8 inches, so things ended up a little bigger than this.
Get your blocks delivered. They are heavy and delivery is cheaper than all the trips it would take to carry these safely in my pickup truck.
Sherri waiting patiently for me to setup the camera
Blocks at the end of the second evening, before the bond beam went up.
Before the bond beam
View of the door buck and scaffold inside.
Laughing about something… Sherri has water in her bottle with a pin hole in the top that she was using to help smooth out the walls.
Michael helping out on the inside while Sherri and I finish up the outside.
Half done the inside, and I am leaning back to adjust the camera.
Sherri finishing up surface bonding the last wall
A view from the inside…
I had accidentally touched up some of the outside with lighter cement from the inside (see above the door), oops. I decided to try and smooth it out.
The surface after sponging to smooth out the color and texture.
I installed the toilet flange with a hammer drill and some tapcon screws. Easy.
Brand new toilet… Oh the horrors it will see.
After the walls and door were in, we could add a toilet…
