“It’s way too hot to climb there now!” I heard this morning.
Weather, temperature, and the presence or absence of rain become frequent preoccupations among traveling (or even stay-at-home) climbers.
Here’s a great site for weather in the United States:
They don’t yet post weather outside the United State.
The weather site helps to avoid spring snow showers.
That’s my tent, buried under the snow!
South-facing windows covered in snow
When it snows at my house – an Earthship that I built in 1995 as little as one inch of snow will, given windy conditions, cover my front windows with snow.
Earthships were designed by Michael Reynolds, who initially wrote three books about how to build these passive-solar heated adobe homes: Earthship: How to Build Your Own, Vol. 1 ,
Earthship: Systems and Components vol. 2,
and
Earthship: Evolution Beyond Economics, Vol. 3
While I’ve seen many books and websites about how to build a passive solar Earthship, or similar, type home, I’ve seen few books or articles that discuss living in one. Since many people, once they hear that I own an Earthship, ask me about living in one, I’ll share my experiences.
Living in the Earthship has both advantages and disadvantages. I’m at between 9,400 and 9,500 feet in the Colorado mountains, with the expected cold and snowy winters. When it snows, it often blows, and the windows (my heat source) become coated with anywhere from a few inches to a foot or two of snow.
Thus, first thing in the morning, I need to sweep or shovel the windows to clear the snow. After a big storm, we’ve had several feet of heavy wind-packed snow (think 50 – 60 mph winds with 80 mph gusts) that my son has struggled to excavate and remove. I asked Solar Survival Architecture (Michael Reynolds company in 1994, when I bought my plans) for vertical glazing, but at the time they refused to sell a design with vertical windows. Had I known how difficult it would be to shovel my windows after every snowfall, even a small one, I would have waited until vertical-glazing designs became available. I believe that they now offer vertical glazing.
In future posts, I’ll discuss heating with a wood stove ( and chopping the wood). In past posts, I’ve talked about repair of the stucco walls, both interior adobe and exterior stucco.
After a storm
West bedroom has a new coat of stucco!
We’ve come a long way, from gaping holes in the wall that let in rain, snow and wind, to a newly-refinished stucco exterior.
Along the way, we extensively patched the roof, repaired the gutters, and re-poured the sidewalk. Now all that remains are minor chores like repainting the trim, caulking the gaps between stucco and windows, and cleaning up.
South wall with new stucco finish
We’re still missing the railing along the sidewalk and I’m looking for a carpenter that can help put it back up. Anyone know any carpenters in Summit County, Colorado?
Front wall, west bedroom and new sidewalk
West parapet wall
Entry, west bedroom
Front wall living room and bath
Working too hard on day 1 to take photos!
Day 3, application of color coat, is today. The stucco contractors said it would be a long day!
Clint adds the finishing touches
My new concrete mixer behind on the right; the Gore Range behind Clint on the left.
This past week we finished pouring our new sidewalk; the gutter subs came and fixed the gutter, and yesterday we finished reinforcing our leaky roof with more EPDM (rubber).
Today, the stucco contractors came and started work on the stucco repair. They added lath over the cracks and tomorrow (YES! They do work Saturday and Sunday - it was their idea even - not mine!) they plan to start the first stucco coat over the lath.
while I’m thrilled that the repair work on roof and walls looks as though it’ll be completed before winter (which hits very early at 9,500 feet), I really, really wanted to go to Leadville today to watch Lance and other friends race in the LT 100. However, I had to stick around the job site. My stucco contractors originally planned to start work on Friday, but it poured all day,which delayed the start until Saturday.
An earthship remains a fairly unusual type of house, so they had a fair number of questions about what to do where, and some of it was what I preferred. I’m also interested in getting this construction job done as soon as possible, so my assistance can speed up the process. When they ran out of screws and lath, rather than sto wrok to get more supplies, I ran to the local lumberyard and picked up a few sheets of metal lath and more long screws.
I sure would have loved to watch the bike race, though. I used to race road bikes in the 80s, and Tristan and I religiously watched the Tour de France this year.
I guess that’s one of the prices of home ownership - you have to repair them when they break.
“Snakey” sunning itself on bath windowsill
Many animals live near the earthship – foxes, coyotes, deer, and elk appear fairly commonly in winter. A skunk has come to eat our compost, and a marmot lives in the rock pile bordering the garage.
I often see peregrine falcons flying above the house, and am thinking of buying a DSLR with a good telephoto lens so that I can shoot photos of them.
But a few animals come into the house, perhaps seeking warmth or shelter.
Last winter, an ermine mink visited our earthship, ran around the room and climbed on the planter. I hoped to see this graceful creature again, but that was his only visit.
Today, another animals we’ve seen periodically over the years paid another visit – a snake. We first saw “Snakey” entwined in the jade tree plant. Today Snakey was sunning himself on the stucco in front of the bath window – the hottest room of the house.
I ran to get my camera, and after taking several photos, which did not scare Snakey off, I leaned forward to touch the little snake. It stayed right where it was, sunning itself, and I got a little bolder and petted the snake. Since it didn’t seem to mind that, I picked him up for Tristan to take a picture.
“Put him down! He’s terrified! You’re scaring the poor snake,” Tristan adamantly insisted. After the photo, I put the snake back down on the bath stucco, where he stayed right where I’d put him and continued enjoying the morning sun.
‘Snakey’ up close
Freshly-poured sidewalk
It’s finally coming together. Yesterday we poured section two of the sidewalk - section one is pictured above.
The next section covers the far part, where the post is still in place.
The gutter folks put up a gutter on the garage and a new end cap on the gutter above the entry.
Today we finally finished patching the EPDM roofing! After so many weeks this year, and many days on the roof last fall, it looks like our roof is complete.
Tomorrow we need to finish installing flashing beneath the windows because when the original builders built our structure, they didn’t flash under the windows. It may be possible to get away without flashing in the desert, but at 9,500 feet in snowy Colorado, the melt and thaw cycle plus a high snow load eventually separated the stucco from the underlying lath, resulting in a very crumbly structure.
And Friday, if all goes well, the stucco contractors will begin patching and replacing the separated stucco. I’m so happy that someone else will be doing that part of the work, and we may finally have a day off. We’ve worked on it 7 days a week for about three weeks now, and both look forward to a day off.
Tristan removes the railing while Nanda Devi supervises
Our sidewalk developed a severe slope toward the hosue, which caused cracking of the stucco wlls, so we decided to remove the railing and then re-pour a new sidewalk with an outward slope.
The longest section of railing
We suceeded in removing the large piece of railing above in one long section.
We next removed the post bases.
The middle photo shows where the stucco began developing cracks after water draining toward the house, and underneath the sidewalk, weakened the stucco.
The interior bedroom wall with loose plaster
I’ve previously written about the earthship that we have in Summit County. Michael Reynolds designs these energy-efficient structures and many were built near Taos, New Mexico.
We bought plans in 1994 from Solar Survival Architecture and built our home in 1995.
Lately, the EPDM membrane roof leaked in several places. Though we spent many days repairing the roof last fall, we didn’t succeed in removing every leak. We patched every hole and crack that we could see, but didn’t realize that went the roofers first roofed it, they had not glued the EPDM that stretches across the berms behind the wing walls. This summer, we finally found the unsealed seams and crawled under the EPDM to fix the drainage.
Unfortunately, by the time we fixed these leaks (which I hope are the last), the walls had already absorbed too much water and the finish began crumbling off.
Now I’m trying to fix the walls!
Wall after removing loose plaster and earth
Looking northwest toward the Gore Range, about 1996
Kitchen with Lake Dillon through window, about 1998
West bedroom with view of Mt. Buffalo about 1998
West bedroom with view toward Lake Dillon
Sunrise, winter