There are several stories in the works. I am waiting on the septic field to be completed so I can tell that story. I am also waiting on the inspectors opinion of my waterproofing tests. The latest drama is my inspectors concern about the back-filling. Since this concern came in after the footings were formed, it could be quite costly to remedy… I’ll find out tomorrow where that will go (it ended up fine, video of the back-filling showed enough tamping). In the mean time, I am guessing I won’t get any more permits approved until we sort these things out.
So, lets talk about something completely different, my new Over the Tire Tracks (OTT) for my Skid Steer.
My skid-steer was pretty useless in sand. As soon as you start to turn, it starts to sink and and you are quickly stuck. I researched over the tire tracks (OTT) and quickly discovered that even if you buy tracks, they won’t work very well unless you also buy new tires. The back tires were already new, I just needed to replace the front tires… I figured that I should replace the tires and see if I still needed the tracks. $400 later, I discovered that my skid-steer was still pretty useless in the sand.
I don’t spend money lightly, and OTT are expensive, so I spent weeks looking for a decent “used” pair. Occasionally, the steel bar kind would show up on Craig’s list. Of course they were all rusty and most seemed to be for the wrong tire size or spacing… but the kicker was that they were still selling for more than half their new price. From my research, I knew that these bar tracks would give good traction on some types of ground, but I needed “flotation” on the sand. I needed wide rubber pad tracks. I didn’t see those second hand anywhere.
Also, OTT tracks also require at least 3 inches of space between the tires and the side of the Skid Steer… I measured and had only 2.25 inches. I called around and found that the 3 inches was definitely a minimum. The solution was to buy and install “wheel spacers”, another $300. This made me wait even longer to order…
Eventually, I gave in and ordered a set of Prowler Stealth OTT with the extra spacers. I almost backed out, so the sales guy offered me an even better deal, plus free shipping. They arrived a week later on a 1400 lb pallet that I was able to easily offload from the truck with my skid steer…
I took the wheels off and put on the wheel spacers. They were just over 2″ thick, which added 4″ of lateral stability to my SkidSteer… They went on pretty easily thanks to the old, but powerful socket driver my father left with me during his last visit. Basically, you bolt them on where the tire was and then use their new wheel studs to bolt your old tires back on.
After all 4 wheels were back on, it was time to get the tracks on… These suckers were heavy. I managed to lay out one side and drive the skid steer on to it, then I used a rope tied around the wheel to pull the track up onto the wheel as I drove forward. For the other end of the track, the only option was muscling it into place. I found it difficult to lift it and guide it properly over the tire treads, so I appreciated my wife helping out with that part.
Prowler provides some tools to help you wrangle the tracks together so you can slide in the carriage bolts. I am guessing that these tools probably work well with the other types of track that they sell (as shown in the instructions), but the Stealth rubber tracks have less space between them and it is tough to get the turnbuckle in place. Once it is in place, it tends to turn the rubber pads out of alignment rather than bring them together. Eventually, I managed to get the first track bolted on, but that was just the start. Once the track was in place, I was able to measure the slack and find that I needed to remove about 5 inches of total length. That is too little to remove a whole link, so you need to do it by unhooking and re-hooking individual links using the half inch shorter hole. This meant I was going to get lots of practice.
The instructions show using the turnbuckle tool positioned between the tires, and I did the first couple that way, but I soon found it was easiest to take advantage of the natural slack in-front of the tire. I could pretty easily move that link into position, the hard part was reaching inside to put the carriage bolt in place. As I got more and more links tightened, it got harder and harder to pull the track into position and I was back to using the turnbuckle for the last couple holes.
One problem with the turnbuckle is that it was pulling the tracks together in a way that rotated them so that I couldn’t get the bolts in the right place… I eventually solved this problem by adding stakes that kept everything flat. I eventually got the first track all tightened up. I had shifted 9 links.
I then shifted 9 links on the other track while it was laying on the ground. That was a lot easier. Getting the second track up on the skidsteer was also easier, thanks to some practice. But it still took me quite a while to get the last two bolts in place to secure the track…
How did it work out? Pretty well. I can now actually use the skid steer on my sandy site. I have since used it to save about $1000 worth of footings work. I also used it to unload a couple tons of rebar from the top of a truck. It moved a few hundred feet of 8″ pipe to the edge of a trench in one trip, etc… I am sure it will come in very handy for the rest of the construction phase… And then? Maybe I sell the skid steer with the tracks?
After digging the trench and laying the septic pipe, drain tile and earth tubes, it was time to backfill the trench. We started at the top by the house, but I didn’t record the first couple hours for some reason, but I caught enough of the rest to put this video together.
The Video
The Story
We placed the earth tubes by staking them into the side of the slope. This saved us from killing ourselves manually back-filling the trench on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year. However, it did slow down the back filling process. Instead of just pushing the dirt back into the hole, we had to carefully (and manually) backfill around the earth tubes so they would keep the right position and slope… I guess this added another couple hours of backhoe time to the true cost of the earth tubes.
I was actually surprised how the excavator attacked the problem. I guess I naively thought he would bring the dirt in from the side where the dirt had been placed… Instead, he started from the other side and dug his way down. He dug undisturbed dirt and put it in the hole under and around my earth tubes. Once the tubes were covered enough to protect them from the excavator and there was a slope for him to climb down into the trench (in the video, you can see him slip a little), the excavator was able to reach up and pull the sand from the far side, down into the trench. From there he was able to quickly move up and down the length of the trench pulling in the dirt.
Eventually, when the trench was almost full, he was able to climb out the far side and reach some of the other dirt.
At some point, Dick parked the excavator and got into the bulldozer to level off and “reshape” the hill.
At this point, the Septic field is not yet complete, so there will still be some more earth moving before the septic system is complete.
My Pink Skirt
Marty and Dick knew I wanted a flat area 4 feet up the wall to put an insulation skirt in, so they flattened and tamped the ground in that area for me.
Meanwhile, I had been doing my own work for my employer in the trailer, but when they guys took their regular lunch break at noon, I started my 1 hour shift.
The idea is trap a bubble of heat around the house with an insulation skirt or umbrella. This idea was popularized by John Hait who calls it “PAHS” or Passive Annual Heat Storage, but the idea had been fully researched by the University of Wisconsin several years earlier. You can read more about it here.
The umbrella is really supposed to be several layers of insulation with layers of plastic between. I only put in one layer of 2 inch Rigid insulation (Foamular 250) and ran it out about 16 ft (2 sheets) from the house. Since this is really more of an insulating skirt beyond the basement rather than an umbrella over my home, I didn’t feel the need to go the full 6 inches thick that I plan to over the rest of the house. Similarly, I didn’t feel the need to put several layers of 6 mil plastic in this location. Instead I just went with one layer of pretty think painters plastic. The point of the plastic is just to reduce the amount of water that can go thru this area and steal away the stored heat with its high specific heat capacity. I sloped it all way from the house and covered it over.
I will eventually overlap this skirt with the larger insulating umbrella. Our backyard patio will eventually go over this area.
While the trench was open, it was our chance to lay the drain tile and earth tubes. We didn’t set the timelapse and we were too busy working to take many photos, but it is an important step for any earth sheltered home, so I want to capture a few details. Sorry, no timelapse.
We had already laid the drain tile and earth tube close to the house as we back-filled that portion. Click here for that story. But we still needed to run long tubes from the house to daylight.
The bottom of the trench was already sloped to 1% and the septic line, made of 4″ schedule 40 PVC, was already in place (done by the excavator and already approved by the plumbing inspector). We needed to bury it, but with a constant slope. Sherri and I used shovels and rakes to pull down dirt and bury the original line by about 6 inches. We (and the boys) stomped on this layer to pack it down, especially next to the buried septic pipe. The end result was a nicely sloped flat bottom trench.
We connected 100 ft long segments of 6″ corrugated drain pipe to the ends of the pipe we had already buried up by the house. We used a proper fitting connector piece and also taped it heavily and covered the connection in landscapers fabric. We laid these two parallel drain tiles along the trench and periodically placed dirt on them to even everything out and keep them separated by a couple feet. I would have liked to have separated them by more, and I did where the trench was wide enough. In all, we added about 150 ft of pipe to each end of the drain tile loop.
Normally, a drain tile loop is connected to a single long pipe that runs to daylight. However, by connecting each end to its own pipe, I am able to use it as an earth tube circuit with an inlet and outlet or two inlets. The other end of the pipes goes into the house, but I can simply connect those ends together if I want the air to circulate under the mass of the house without entering it (by-passive annual solar heating). The extra cost is the additional 150 ft of pipe, which cost me about ~$100.
The second layer of earth tubes was the 8 inch double wall (smooth inside) HDPE pipes. These come in straight 20ft segments that have a bit of flex to them. You can connect the pipes directly (bell and spigot ends with soil tight connectors) or you can connect them with 30 or 45 degree joints. It was a hot day and we did not have the energy to properly bury the 6″ corrugated drain tile before laying the larger earth tubes, so we decided to mount the larger earth tubes to the side of the slope (with stakes) a couple feet above the previous layer. This still left more than 10 ft of earth above these pipes for most of the distance and gave us more than 6 ft between the two parallel pipes.
At the end of the day, we had 4 earth tubes, each over 150 ft long, going from the house to “daylight” along the trench.
The next step would be backfilling.
Later, while back-filling the trench, we made sure that the 8 inch pipes stayed in place while the excavator back-filled below/between them and the 6″ pipes… This took some care and probably added at least an hour to the back filling process. The excavators charged by the hour, so that should probably be counted in the cost of the earth tubes, but seemed like a bargain compared to backfilling that trench manually on that hot day. I did pull out some of the stakes when they were no longer needed to hold the pipe still, but many were buried in place at an additional cost.
I don’t spend money lightly, and OTT are expensive, so I spent weeks looking for a decent “used” pair. Occasionally, the steel bar kind would show up on Craig’s list. Of course they were all rusty and most seemed to be for the wrong tire size or spacing… but the kicker was that they were still selling for more than half their new price. From my research, I knew that these bar tracks would give good traction on some types of ground, but I needed “flotation” on the sand. I needed wide rubber pad tracks. I didn’t see those second hand anywhere.
