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Back in October, I was asked to give some input and support to people who want to build their own house. The main question is “how to get started.” There is a lot to consider and a lot more to actually do, so often the jumping in point becomes the freeze point. In other words, right when you should jump, you freeze and question whether or not you are crazy to even consider building your own place. This may not be a bad question to ponder. Let’s start there.
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My friend Scott sent me this email to see if anyone needs any mesh for a project nearby. If you are interested, please respond to this post and I will forward the message to him.

We’ve (2) 100 ‘ rolls of 6′ width, 2″ welded wire mesh, and (2) 100′ rolls of 4′ width welded wire mesh left over from our construction project. They are still in their original unwrapped rolls. I’ll have to double check what I paid for them, but I’d probably like to receive 75% of my original cost.

I recently received a comment from a gentleman in Missouri who told me “…recently our area of Missouri approved a grant for the construction of straw bale homes offering a $15,000 construction reimbursement for the building of straw bale homes…” Wow! That is a great deal and something I would like to learn more about.
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I want to live in a country that supports Green Construction and healthy living. I want to see more people building green homes and driving efficient vehicles. I want to see the health and strength of my community grow. That is going to take action, not just desire.

Today, the price of oil went up by more than $2 per barrel at its peak. I remember when oil prices were approaching $60 and I thought that was high. Today the price landed at a new high of $88.20 per barrel before retreating a little. As I watched the financial report about this upward trend, I was saddened by the reporter’s comments about the average American consumer and our impact on the entire planet.
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I just went through a humbling process on a new home construction project. I used a soils report prepared by a geotechnical engineer and provided by the land owner for a home site I was to build a custom home on. The soils report showed that there was fill from ground level to 3 feet down and that below that (from 3′ to 7′, the depth of the test pit) was “medium stiff, red-brown clayey SILT; moist.” That spelled out native soil to me and the report further stated that the foundation requirements for such soils were standard spread footers over a compacted rock base of roughly 4″ thickness.

Here’s where the humility comes in: I actually proceeded as if this engineered report was accurate. That seems like a fair assumption, but proved very expensive. The report was a couple years old, and when I compacted my gravel base on the site, the City wanted a new geotechnical report report they would approve the compacted fill and allow me to form my footers. I called my own geotech and asked him to come out for a site visit. he had us dig a test pit and when we did so, he was not convinced the soils that were quoted at 3′-7′ were in fact native. He asked my backhoe driver to keep digging. It was not until 13′ down that we knew he was right. We starting bringing up 40 year old garbage! The “soil” the previous geotech had identified was in fact 40 year old fill over an old personal garbage pit in the old property owner’s back yard.

A simple foundation changed to something very elaborate. We had to follow the native soils below the fill line all the way around the house and pour a sand/cement slurry to fill the now very deep, three feet wide holes. All of the rock had to be removed from the site so it would not end up contaminated and then replaced on the finished grade after the slurry was poured. The ultimate cost of this work was over $7000 and a time delay of one month ensued from the date of the geotech report request to that of completion of the new requirements. Yikes! So, know your ground. Know what is under your ground. Be certain that what you are building on is solid and can hold your structure. Although this was a slow pain in the rear end to deal with, I always prefer to deal with potential problems up front rather than having to fix them after the fact. The time and money spent on this project far outweighs the potential disaster that could have occurred had we not been required to get a new report. Of course, the fact that I relied on a previous geotech report is something of a frustration. The report, although 2 years old, should have been accurate and it was not. You can be sure I will write a letter to the company owner of the old geotechnical engineers on that one!

Perhaps the most important aspect of any home construction project is a critical path. This is the time line that you must create for the completion of your home. The path is so important because it shows you exactly when things need to happen in order to keep the house on track for a desired completion date. This is the only way to ensure that the project does not go on forever! With a good critical path, you can inform sub contractors when they will be needed on site long before they actually need to be there. Of course, when you miss specific deadlines, it will affect the rest of the critical path so be sure to update it frequently. Whenever you update the path, be sure to contact all affected parties (subs and suppliers) and give them new dates for their work. your subs and suppliers will appreciate the amount of lead time and detail you are giving them and it will make the whole job easier to handle and predict.

Creating a critical path takes a lot of understanding about what is involved in the home construction process and it also takes an understanding of how long each phase should take. Creating a critical path with no building experience is not a good idea so be sure to hire some one who has the experience you need to create a realistic critical path for your job. Editing the critical path as adjustments are made is more simple and can be handled by anyone with basic computer knowledge and a grasp on the construction process at hand.

I offer critical path services for those of you interested in building your home with a guideline and map to success. The path is often offered as part of my consulting services, and I also offer them as individual packages for home builders. I can’t say enough how important these paths are so if you don’t know how to create one yourself and you don’t want to hire me, then hire a contractor in your local area who knows how to build with bales to create a path for you. It is well worth the investment!

I have received a lot of messages in recent days asking about the cost of straw bale construction. The basic question is: what does it cost per square foot to build a bale home? It is all but impossible for me to answer this question because there are so many factors involved in calculating cost. What region is the home built in? What design features does it have?
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