I would take that spreadsheet to the home depot's pro desk and ask them to run it through their bid room. Could save you up to 20% on materials. Usually the larger the order the bigger the discount ✌️ just a thought
100% agree with you on your decision. Also with more conventional builds there's not the unknown factor of failed batches and that added cost. My first construction job was pouring foundations when I was 18...never fell in love with it. lol.
Yes, I am sure we would have had some batches that settled, and we may have needed quite a few extra batches. We are pouring the slab ourselves a little at a time. It is a lot of work, but going well. We need to do something with the extra Portland cement. 😄
No one needs more stress in their life. I’m so glad that you guys figured it all out and it’s actually going to cost 5% less! Red and Brian would get along great because Brian is all about crunching numbers and spreadsheets and research. It’s really cool to see the 3-D walk through. It’s going to be awesome! 😃❤️👍 Also. I love spiders. My son does too. He picks them up. Lol
Yes, many things about using aircrete were definitely going to be stressful, & trying to keep the walls wet enough to cure with all of the wind we get in the spring. It's a challenge, we needed our walls to stay wet, and yours need to stay dry. 😂 We think 🕷️ are pretty cool too, and I like seeing all the different types of tarantulas we have out here. The black widows that like to hang out under our trailer are not so cool. Thanks for watching.😊💜
The brown tarantula is a female while the black one is the male. Females tend to make burrow homes and the males travel. Same species. Nice pictures of them.
i am glad to see your moving forward and getting things done keep the great work and have a great weekend happy holiday season to you guys and your family
I think you saved a lot of people time and stress making this decision. That being said, comparing the two methods building a small (100 to 150 sq ft. structure ...think basic cabin--not house) in a tropical area,with only aircrete as structure and insulation,do you think the costs per would yield similar results ?
If you already have the equipment to make aircrete, and build a dome shape, aircrete would be less expensive. A traditional structure could be built faster, would last longer, and likely wouldn't cost too much more. I have heard of multiple aircrete domes with water leaks that can't be repaired, because the aircrete near the cracks turns to powder. If you have some time, and want to build a structure that is inexpensive and strong, I would recommend hyperadobe. We just finished helping our son complete his hyperadobe tiny house. Best wishes! 🌞🏜️
Yes, the coating is great as long as the aircrete doesn't turn to powder or small crumbs inside the walls. If we could have made consistent and good batches like at the beginning, we would have used aircrete. It's too cold here for now, and we would have had to wait until spring to do further testing.
I understand I live on the Mississippi gulf coast and it doesn't get cold here until late December to late February I built a 12 x 12 shed out of aircrete 2 years ago I wonder if the climate has anything to do with it I've had no problem with it so far
Awesome, glad to hear about people actually building structures out of aircrete. We haven't found many people online that are sharing the long term durability of aircrete. It would vary a lot too depend on the recipe and methods used. Yes, I think the cold Drexel and water were making for a wetter foam. It was still under 100 grams per quart, but heavier than our earlier more successful batches. We get a lot of wind in the spring, which would have made curing the aircrete walls a huge challenge, so we are glad we aren't going to have to deal with that.
It's been awhile since we ran the numbers, but we did learn it wasn't going to save us any money, and it was going to be a lot more work. We also didn't include the cost of the forms.
We are planning to use the bricks to make an outdoor rocket stove, and maybe a pizza oven. Right now we are using them to hold down plastic and stuff as we work on our concrete floor. I also like to put bricks around my plants to keep them protected from the wind and cold. We'll find uses for them. 😊
He got a 2 month subscription to Chief Architect. There is a lot to learn about getting it to do what you want it to, but he figured out how to do most of what he needed to do with it. It was awesome in helping to figure out the proper roof overhang and orientation based on the seasonal angle of the sun. Thanks! 😊
Re- Can you share your XLS - Thanks you so much for sharing your journey is has been both educational and inspiring we are planning a build here in Australia (lots of spiders) , i have watched all your videos but this is my first time commenting. Any chance you could share a link to your XLS
Thanks, glad it was useful! Sorry we don't have the information available to share. Maybe you can get a screenshot from the video. Best wishes on your build! 😎
Yes, rammed earth was our original plan, but we couldn't find a backhoe to buy, and the process looks a bit tricky and very labor intensive... and insulation is nice, I don't like being cold in the winter. Thanks! Glad we bought our materials during the price dip, before the prices shot back up.
Hello. I need some metal pearlings and I live in the Phoenix area. Can you let us know what company you use to buy your pearlings? If so, I’d appreciate it. Thank you.
A sensible decision, and especially because of labor and constructability unknown unknowns, which will surely be a lot higher with aircrete. Often alternative method advocates are not so objective. But your materials-only cost comparison may not be representative for comparing just the ext walls. In any case we all expect you to be continuing with the aircrete testing experiments for the edification of your viewers - thank you!
Thanks! Yes, aircrete just wasn't working out. The cost comparison is for interior, and exterior, walls, roof and floor, complete with insulation and sheetrock. He is ordering the roofing materials today before the prices go up. We will be plastering the rest of the aircrete garden wall, and eventually plan to use some of the sample blocks to make an outdoor rocket stove, and maybe a pizza oven. We may eventually make some more aircrete for a rocket mass heater for in the house. For now, we need to get this house built, and it's too cold to make aircrete.
You mentioned one video that you had earth with clay content from a pond on your property. Have you thought of using Adobe in part of the structure for high thermal mass?
We probably have excellent soil for making adobe, it would be cool, but a whole lot of labor. Thermal mass is great in the summer since we cool down so much at night. We wouldn't technically freeze, but it would be really cold in the winter and hard to heat. That is the main reason we moved away from any type of earth type building.
What I meant was a a wall(internal structure) or any other structure inside of your insulated house not outside structure. That would be like a thermal mass buffer added to the timber..
Yes, we are planning to do earth floors on the south side of the house, so we should get some thermal mass benefit. The sun will hit the floor in the winter, but the overhang is such, that it won't in the summer. Thinking about it now, I wish we had made room to make the floor thicker to make more use of that thermal mass. I had thought about adding a wall or something inside, to capture some of the heat, but we aren't sure yet.
Interesting analysis, thanks for sharing! One other bullet you may have dodged is issues now, or down the road related to availability of financing. I can't imagine Fannie or Freddie buying a loan thats secured by a property made from aircrete/styrocrete. 🤣
Urrr, come to think of it, don't think a loan on an off-grid property would go conventional either unfortunately. Man, f dumb ol Fannie and Feddie!!! 🙃
Thanks! Yes either way, we will likely have to owner finance if we ever decide to sell the place. We plan to live here for a very long time, but you never know. 😊🏠
Since the low foam yielded best results, could the reason for the failures and cracking have been the amount of water? Depending on the foam used could have contained a significant amount of water that wasn't accounted for, maybe?? I'm completely new to aircrete, so assume what I'm throwing out here are just wild guesses with this stuff, but I'm not a stranger to concrete. I've been fascinated with it ever since I was a kid. The UHPC used in pre-cast pre-stressed beams last time I dug into a white paper used a significant amount of cement to aggregate ratio, roughly 1:1 and the aggregate is super fine, but the cement to water ratio is significantly reduced. Would almost be a dry pour if not for the add mixtures used. It really seems like yall were on the right track with the high cement ratio. Maybe one day this stuff will take off.. Just hoping someone doesn't figure out the secret and all of a sudden the price skyrockets up next to lumber... lol Seems to be the way things usually end up Anyways, cool vid bud. Still going through the playlist. Thanks for putting all this out there
We are using a somewhat low water mix to make the aircrete stronger. The typical recipe that most seem to be using has 6 or sometimes even 7 gallons of water, and we were using 5 in all of our test samples. It makes it stronger, but I'm sure also less insulative. It also seems to make the slurry heavier which make it harder to get the heavy stuff at the bottom mixed in with the foam. If we had decided to move ahead with aircrete we probably would have bought a mortar mixer. Adding styrofoam to aircrete is all the rage now, I think it will have issues too, and will be a lot of work, but we'll see how it works out for people as they start trying to make stuff out of it. There has been a shortage of Portland cement in our area lately, probably due to shipping issues, so it seems like the price will go up on it. Aircrete is interesting stuff, and tricky to make. It's been an interesting experiment, but we are glad to be moving on. Now that lumber prices have gone down some, a more traditional house with more insulation than the aircrete house will be less expensive anyway. We have a video comparing the cost. 🙂🏠
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid I’m new to aircrete. I saw your other video where you was using literal styrofoam polystrene. And then I’ve seen other videos where people are making foam from soap and using that to make bubbles. Are these 2 methods for 2 separate things or?
@@johnle231 We were using Drexel foaming agent to make the foam bubbles and haven't tried adding polystyrene to any of our aircrete batches. We are using polystyrene sheets to insulate under our concrete slab. Yes, regular aircrete is different than styrocrete.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid Hey I found the video if you might be interested It is titled ‘aircrete on steroids’ by Stephen Williams. The guy built a house/building using styrocrete
What state/climate zone is the house being buildt in again? R19 walls with R38 ceiling is pretty much lowest allowed by code in North Carolina. For a passive house You'd want at least an R60 roof! Add 3" of foam board to the roof to at least get R55. is my suggestion. Adding insulation latter after the build is always very costly and impractical. I'ts the most important part of a passive hosue build !
We are in a desert area, climate zone 2/3. We don't expect the house to be fully passive, but the house should do really well in the winter with the large south facing windows. Swamp coolers work really well here for most of the summer, and our temperatures cool off enough at night, that we don't need overnight cooling.
Yes, and it will go up faster, and be better insulated. Probably going to miss the thermal mass some though, but we are excited to get this house built. 😊🏠
Classic example of everybody being excited by alternative building methods but then reality slaps you in the face... The reason it's not used more is that it's HARD. There's the resistance of banks to loan on alternative if it ever goes up for resale and that insurance companies don't want to because they have NO idea of their liability so can't set rates. I'm still proceeding ahead with the stand up panels between the steel columns. My test pour where I poured 1" of regular concrete, let it sit for an hour then poured 4.5" of styrocrete on top (2x6 frame, 4 foot x 8 foot) and let it wet cure for almost a month (I got impatient and couldn't wait the full 30 days, haha) turned out great. Note - I stood it up on edge and shot it's hard face with a .38 and all it did was small craters, no visible cracks so I think it's tough enough. For as massive as it looks it's amazing how light it is. (It's heavy but MUCH lighter that as if it was solid concrete). Obviously a crane rental will be necessary to stand up all the premade panel sections in 'Assembly Day'.
Glad it is working out, and it sounds like a good solid plan. It would be much easier to let the walls wet cure if they are poured flat. It would have been very difficult to cure our upright walls, we get a lot of wind here in the spring. Sounds awesome, and best wishes on your build!
@@johnle231 I'm using EPS round beads like go in a beanbag chair and mixing it with a cement : sand ratio of 1:3. I tried shredded styrofoam but because of the slightly different sizes of the pieces there was too much variability and one batch would need more mortar than another batch. With the beads they seem to mix and distribute evenly with consistent density of the test panels
@@johnle231 the key thing is my labor is free so that's a huge cost savings. The EPS beads are relatively cheap BUT the freight charge was high, not due to weight but because of volume. I suspect that the cost of construction would be close to the same as conventional materials but I'm doing it this way because it's rot, insect and fire proof and very resistant to high winds. I want low maintenance and longevity and that's not something you get with conventional material built homes.
Yes sir, but it's a permit that allows us to opt out of most permits and inspections. We are 1/2 mile from our nearest neighbors and power lines, but not too far from town.
one of my friends has recently bought a house with a single panel roof (no attic) and its been the worst thing ever for r value, even a small attic makes a huge difrence
@@timgoodliffe That's what our daughter's house has, but it might be R-6, they converted an old structure on the property into their house. It has some thermal mass, so it's working out kind of okay. 😄
ONe doesnt' need an attic, a 2 to 3" vented space is all that is needed to allow the hot air to move out. Also white painted roofs will reflect heat. If one is in a colder climate than a black painted roof might be what's needed. I forget where this house is being buildt?
Yes, we seriously considered many alternative building possibilities, but finally settled on wood and metal. The house should go up pretty fast, and now that the cost of lumber has come down, it is a pretty good option. Thanks!
I watched a whole lot of aircrete videos. Most of the aircrete guys have so many videos, it's really hard to find answers to any particular problem, and we just didn't have time to watch all of them. Some of our aircrete turned out awesome, but as the temperatures got colder, our guess is that we needed to use warm water in the soap solution. I'm excited to follow Honey Do Carpenter's aircrete house build, but I am glad we have moved away from aircrete. With our particular house design, aircrete was going to be slightly more expensive, and way more work.
must look up your previous vids but that looks like very crumble aircrete. you would of been safer just using a professional aircrete blocks, would of been way stronger.
They are hard to find here. We learned that this type of aircrete is too temperature sensitive, and hard to get consistent results, so we went with a more traditional build.
Yes, the shipping container structure is a little ways away from the house site. While we were experimenting with aircrete the cost of lumber went down, so it wasn't all bad. Once we finish the concrete portion of the floors, we can start on framing. Excited to be able to build this winter, the nights here are cold, but the days are pretty nice. 😊🏠
I would take that spreadsheet to the home depot's pro desk and ask them to run it through their bid room. Could save you up to 20% on materials. Usually the larger the order the bigger the discount ✌️ just a thought
We have the pro discount, which at least pays for taxes and gives a discount on delivery. Some items get a bulk order discount, so that helps some.
100% agree with you on your decision. Also with more conventional builds there's not the unknown factor of failed batches and that added cost. My first construction job was pouring foundations when I was 18...never fell in love with it. lol.
Yes, I am sure we would have had some batches that settled, and we may have needed quite a few extra batches. We are pouring the slab ourselves a little at a time. It is a lot of work, but going well. We need to do something with the extra Portland cement. 😄
No one needs more stress in their life. I’m so glad that you guys figured it all out and it’s actually going to cost 5% less! Red and Brian would get along great because Brian is all about crunching numbers and spreadsheets and research. It’s really cool to see the 3-D walk through. It’s going to be awesome! 😃❤️👍 Also. I love spiders. My son does too. He picks them up. Lol
Yes, many things about using aircrete were definitely going to be stressful, & trying to keep the walls wet enough to cure with all of the wind we get in the spring.
It's a challenge, we needed our walls to stay wet, and yours need to stay dry. 😂
We think 🕷️ are pretty cool too, and I like seeing all the different types of tarantulas we have out here. The black widows that like to hang out under our trailer are not so cool.
Thanks for watching.😊💜
The brown tarantula is a female while the black one is the male. Females tend to make burrow homes and the males travel. Same species. Nice pictures of them.
i am glad to see your moving forward and getting things done keep the great work and have a great weekend happy holiday season to you guys and your family
Thanks so much! Wishing you a Merry Christmas as well! ☺️🎄
Onward and upwards. Get after it. Thanks for sharing
😊🏡
I think you saved a lot of people time and stress making this decision.
That being said, comparing the two methods building a small (100 to 150 sq ft. structure ...think basic cabin--not house) in a tropical area,with only aircrete as structure and insulation,do you think the costs per would yield similar results ?
If you already have the equipment to make aircrete, and build a dome shape, aircrete would be less expensive. A traditional structure could be built faster, would last longer, and likely wouldn't cost too much more. I have heard of multiple aircrete domes with water leaks that can't be repaired, because the aircrete near the cracks turns to powder.
If you have some time, and want to build a structure that is inexpensive and strong, I would recommend hyperadobe. We just finished helping our son complete his hyperadobe tiny house.
Best wishes! 🌞🏜️
Thank you ! About what I thought your answer would be.@@RedandAprilOff-Grid
The secret to air Crete is the fiberglass mesh wrap it adds the strength you need
Yes, the coating is great as long as the aircrete doesn't turn to powder or small crumbs inside the walls. If we could have made consistent and good batches like at the beginning, we would have used aircrete. It's too cold here for now, and we would have had to wait until spring to do further testing.
I understand I live on the Mississippi gulf coast and it doesn't get cold here until late December to late February I built a 12 x 12 shed out of aircrete 2 years ago I wonder if the climate has anything to do with it I've had no problem with it so far
Awesome, glad to hear about people actually building structures out of aircrete. We haven't found many people online that are sharing the long term durability of aircrete. It would vary a lot too depend on the recipe and methods used. Yes, I think the cold Drexel and water were making for a wetter foam. It was still under 100 grams per quart, but heavier than our earlier more successful batches. We get a lot of wind in the spring, which would have made curing the aircrete walls a huge challenge, so we are glad we aren't going to have to deal with that.
Thank you for the excellent break down of the actual costs! Apparently aircrete with the coatings required costs at least $4.50 per cubic foot.
It's been awhile since we ran the numbers, but we did learn it wasn't going to save us any money, and it was going to be a lot more work. We also didn't include the cost of the forms.
Well done mate. Thanks for bringing us along 🎄
Thanks for watching! 😊🎄
You could probably use those aircrete test blocks as pavers for a path around the house sometime... but I'm sure you've got enough on your plate now!
We are planning to use the bricks to make an outdoor rocket stove, and maybe a pizza oven. Right now we are using them to hold down plastic and stuff as we work on our concrete floor. I also like to put bricks around my plants to keep them protected from the wind and cold. We'll find uses for them. 😊
Excellent video, What kinds of software are you using, Designing home?
He got a 2 month subscription to Chief Architect. There is a lot to learn about getting it to do what you want it to, but he figured out how to do most of what he needed to do with it. It was awesome in helping to figure out the proper roof overhang and orientation based on the seasonal angle of the sun. Thanks! 😊
Thank you
🤠
Re- Can you share your XLS - Thanks you so much for sharing your journey is has been both educational and inspiring we are planning a build here in Australia (lots of spiders) , i have watched all your videos but this is my first time commenting. Any chance you could share a link to your XLS
Thanks, glad it was useful! Sorry we don't have the information available to share. Maybe you can get a screenshot from the video. Best wishes on your build! 😎
I , Found This Segment Very Interesting. Did , You Consider Rammed Earth For Your Home Build ?.
Yes, rammed earth was our original plan, but we couldn't find a backhoe to buy, and the process looks a bit tricky and very labor intensive... and insulation is nice, I don't like being cold in the winter. Thanks! Glad we bought our materials during the price dip, before the prices shot back up.
Hello. I need some metal pearlings and I live in the Phoenix area. Can you let us know what company you use to buy your pearlings? If so, I’d appreciate it. Thank you.
Freeway Metals, they are in Phoenix. They had the best prices we could find at the time. Best wishes with your projects! 🌞
A sensible decision, and especially because of labor and constructability unknown unknowns, which will surely be a lot higher with aircrete. Often alternative method advocates are not so objective. But your materials-only cost comparison may not be representative for comparing just the ext walls. In any case we all expect you to be continuing with the aircrete testing experiments for the edification of your viewers - thank you!
Thanks! Yes, aircrete just wasn't working out. The cost comparison is for interior, and exterior, walls, roof and floor, complete with insulation and sheetrock. He is ordering the roofing materials today before the prices go up.
We will be plastering the rest of the aircrete garden wall, and eventually plan to use some of the sample blocks to make an outdoor rocket stove, and maybe a pizza oven. We may eventually make some more aircrete for a rocket mass heater for in the house. For now, we need to get this house built, and it's too cold to make aircrete.
You mentioned one video that you had earth with clay content from a pond on your property. Have you thought of using Adobe in part of the structure for high thermal mass?
We probably have excellent soil for making adobe, it would be cool, but a whole lot of labor. Thermal mass is great in the summer since we cool down so much at night. We wouldn't technically freeze, but it would be really cold in the winter and hard to heat. That is the main reason we moved away from any type of earth type building.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid I see
What I meant was a a wall(internal structure) or any other structure inside of your insulated house not outside structure. That would be like a thermal mass buffer added to the timber..
Yes, we are planning to do earth floors on the south side of the house, so we should get some thermal mass benefit. The sun will hit the floor in the winter, but the overhang is such, that it won't in the summer. Thinking about it now, I wish we had made room to make the floor thicker to make more use of that thermal mass. I had thought about adding a wall or something inside, to capture some of the heat, but we aren't sure yet.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid Good luck!
Interesting analysis, thanks for sharing! One other bullet you may have dodged is issues now, or down the road related to availability of financing. I can't imagine Fannie or Freddie buying a loan thats secured by a property made from aircrete/styrocrete. 🤣
Urrr, come to think of it, don't think a loan on an off-grid property would go conventional either unfortunately. Man, f dumb ol Fannie and Feddie!!! 🙃
Thanks! Yes either way, we will likely have to owner finance if we ever decide to sell the place. We plan to live here for a very long time, but you never know. 😊🏠
Since the low foam yielded best results, could the reason for the failures and cracking have been the amount of water? Depending on the foam used could have contained a significant amount of water that wasn't accounted for, maybe?? I'm completely new to aircrete, so assume what I'm throwing out here are just wild guesses with this stuff, but I'm not a stranger to concrete. I've been fascinated with it ever since I was a kid. The UHPC used in pre-cast pre-stressed beams last time I dug into a white paper used a significant amount of cement to aggregate ratio, roughly 1:1 and the aggregate is super fine, but the cement to water ratio is significantly reduced. Would almost be a dry pour if not for the add mixtures used. It really seems like yall were on the right track with the high cement ratio. Maybe one day this stuff will take off.. Just hoping someone doesn't figure out the secret and all of a sudden the price skyrockets up next to lumber... lol Seems to be the way things usually end up Anyways, cool vid bud. Still going through the playlist. Thanks for putting all this out there
We are using a somewhat low water mix to make the aircrete stronger. The typical recipe that most seem to be using has 6 or sometimes even 7 gallons of water, and we were using 5 in all of our test samples. It makes it stronger, but I'm sure also less insulative. It also seems to make the slurry heavier which make it harder to get the heavy stuff at the bottom mixed in with the foam. If we had decided to move ahead with aircrete we probably would have bought a mortar mixer.
Adding styrofoam to aircrete is all the rage now, I think it will have issues too, and will be a lot of work, but we'll see how it works out for people as they start trying to make stuff out of it. There has been a shortage of Portland cement in our area lately, probably due to shipping issues, so it seems like the price will go up on it.
Aircrete is interesting stuff, and tricky to make. It's been an interesting experiment, but we are glad to be moving on. Now that lumber prices have gone down some, a more traditional house with more insulation than the aircrete house will be less expensive anyway. We have a video comparing the cost. 🙂🏠
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid
I’m new to aircrete.
I saw your other video where you was using literal styrofoam polystrene.
And then I’ve seen other videos where people are making foam from soap and using that to make bubbles.
Are these 2 methods for 2 separate things or?
@@johnle231 We were using Drexel foaming agent to make the foam bubbles and haven't tried adding polystyrene to any of our aircrete batches. We are using polystyrene sheets to insulate under our concrete slab. Yes, regular aircrete is different than styrocrete.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid
Oh that must’ve been a different guy that was making “styrocrete”
Thanks for clarification
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid
Hey I found the video if you might be interested
It is titled ‘aircrete on steroids’ by Stephen Williams.
The guy built a house/building using styrocrete
What state/climate zone is the house being buildt in again? R19 walls with R38 ceiling is pretty much lowest allowed by code in North Carolina. For a passive house You'd want at least an R60 roof! Add 3" of foam board to the roof to at least get R55. is my suggestion. Adding insulation latter after the build is always very costly and impractical. I'ts the most important part of a passive hosue build !
We are in a desert area, climate zone 2/3. We don't expect the house to be fully passive, but the house should do really well in the winter with the large south facing windows. Swamp coolers work really well here for most of the summer, and our temperatures cool off enough at night, that we don't need overnight cooling.
I like your nice, big, hairy spiders. I’m sorry the aircrete did not work out. I just watched all your videos. I’m glad I found you again.
Yes, love the different types of tarantulas! Thanks, and thanks for joining us! 💛🏜️
Saving some money is a plus.
Yes, and it will go up faster, and be better insulated. Probably going to miss the thermal mass some though, but we are excited to get this house built. 😊🏠
Classic example of everybody being excited by alternative building methods but then reality slaps you in the face...
The reason it's not used more is that it's HARD. There's the resistance of banks to loan on alternative if it ever goes up for resale and that insurance companies don't want to because they have NO idea of their liability so can't set rates.
I'm still proceeding ahead with the stand up panels between the steel columns. My test pour where I poured 1" of regular concrete, let it sit for an hour then poured 4.5" of styrocrete on top (2x6 frame, 4 foot x 8 foot) and let it wet cure for almost a month (I got impatient and couldn't wait the full 30 days, haha) turned out great.
Note - I stood it up on edge and shot it's hard face with a .38 and all it did was small craters, no visible cracks so I think it's tough enough. For as massive as it looks it's amazing how light it is. (It's heavy but MUCH lighter that as if it was solid concrete).
Obviously a crane rental will be necessary to stand up all the premade panel sections in 'Assembly Day'.
Glad it is working out, and it sounds like a good solid plan. It would be much easier to let the walls wet cure if they are poured flat. It would have been very difficult to cure our upright walls, we get a lot of wind here in the spring. Sounds awesome, and best wishes on your build!
@bob joatmon what mix are you using?
Are you using self made foam similar to shaving cream or literal polystrene eps broken down foam?
@@johnle231 I'm using EPS round beads like go in a beanbag chair and mixing it with a cement : sand ratio of 1:3. I tried shredded styrofoam but because of the slightly different sizes of the pieces there was too much variability and one batch would need more mortar than another batch. With the beads they seem to mix and distribute evenly with consistent density of the test panels
@@bobjoatmon1993
Did you do any cost analysis?
Save money or no?
@@johnle231 the key thing is my labor is free so that's a huge cost savings. The EPS beads are relatively cheap BUT the freight charge was high, not due to weight but because of volume. I suspect that the cost of construction would be close to the same as conventional materials but I'm doing it this way because it's rot, insect and fire proof and very resistant to high winds. I want low maintenance and longevity and that's not something you get with conventional material built homes.
I’m in Phx. Did you bother getting any permits etc building out there seemingly in the middle of nowhere?
Yes sir, but it's a permit that allows us to opt out of most permits and inspections. We are 1/2 mile from our nearest neighbors and power lines, but not too far from town.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid
May I ask what that permit is called? I’d like to look into the details of it
@@johnle231 It's the Cochise County, owner builder opt-out permit.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid
Ah I’m in maricopa
one of my friends has recently bought a house with a single panel roof (no attic) and its been the worst thing ever for r value, even a small attic makes a huge difrence
The roof will be 12 inches thick and have an R value of 38, so we think it will do pretty well.
@@RedandAprilOff-Grid definetly beter than the r4 insulation we're looking at haha
@@timgoodliffe That's what our daughter's house has, but it might be R-6, they converted an old structure on the property into their house. It has some thermal mass, so it's working out kind of okay. 😄
ONe doesnt' need an attic, a 2 to 3" vented space is all that is needed to allow the hot air to move out. Also white painted roofs will reflect heat. If one is in a colder climate than a black painted roof might be what's needed. I forget where this house is being buildt?
👍
😊🎄
Aw... ya gave up building alternatively. Oh well. Good luck out there
Yes, we seriously considered many alternative building possibilities, but finally settled on wood and metal. The house should go up pretty fast, and now that the cost of lumber has come down, it is a pretty good option. Thanks!
to bad you did not look closely at "Honey Do" Aircrete structure
I watched a whole lot of aircrete videos. Most of the aircrete guys have so many videos, it's really hard to find answers to any particular problem, and we just didn't have time to watch all of them.
Some of our aircrete turned out awesome, but as the temperatures got colder, our guess is that we needed to use warm water in the soap solution.
I'm excited to follow Honey Do Carpenter's aircrete house build, but I am glad we have moved away from aircrete. With our particular house design, aircrete was going to be slightly more expensive, and way more work.
must look up your previous vids but that looks like very crumble aircrete. you would of been safer just using a professional aircrete blocks, would of been way stronger.
They are hard to find here. We learned that this type of aircrete is too temperature sensitive, and hard to get consistent results, so we went with a more traditional build.
The containers look so much smaller in the background..
Sorry you had so much problems with your build at this stage.
Yes, the shipping container structure is a little ways away from the house site.
While we were experimenting with aircrete the cost of lumber went down, so it wasn't all bad. Once we finish the concrete portion of the floors, we can start on framing. Excited to be able to build this winter, the nights here are cold, but the days are pretty nice. 😊🏠
Y'all can - please - not put pictures of them their spiders on your videos! Them things cause nightmares! :)
I put a warning this time, we have some pretty cool and different tarantulas out here. 😏😊🏜️