Here I am sitting in a bunk bed at the place we are staying at in Northern Michigan. Three days ago, we set out on an unprecedented journey to build the largest Earth Shelter Project ever built. We started on the Friday after Thanksgiving and we have three of the five domes up. I am very happy with the progress, given the issues that we have had to deal with. Not sure exactly what date it is or day, but that doesnt matter to me right now.
My purpose in all I do with sustainable building is to try to get more people to build sustainably. I never want to come across as someone who bashs any one product or process. I came close today. I hate to say it, but there is still alot of monkey business going on out there that one needs to be careful of. For example, a smooth talker behind a phone can sell a building package to someone and then just drop a big pile of metal out in a field and say good luck. Not that that happened, but, well, anyway, I will continue.
The process so far has been fairly smooth considering the sorting we have had to do with the steel componants of this Earth Shelter project. Once we got the back side of the domes up, we went pretty quick. The generic manual they sent is definately generic. We found no help in that book, so we decided to do what we do best and figure this out ourselves. Once we stopped wishing that the company knew what they were doing, we started to get a good pace established.
I have a tough task alot of times, in picking what team members to bring to what job. This job, I decided that I was going to be the 'sky walker', uncle Rog was going to be the goto guy on the ground and that I would add a new person to this crew. His name is Dale and he is an equipment operator by trade. We also have use of a local equipment operator here in town. I figured that we need people that could drive heavy equipment through waist high farm field mud, while I was strapped into or on that equipment. These steel beams are heavy and the right team means the difference between injuries and not getting injured. At this point, in my expert opinion, I would not recomend a novice homeowner/builder putting up these domes. Only if you have the equipment we have, which are: sky track, excavator, and crane. These have saved a ton of time and back ache.
Today, I injured my lower bicep muscle on my right arm. I was holding this metal beam up with my right arm and things gave way. I stopped the beam from falling with my right arm and then after setting the beam, fell to the planks on the scaffolding that were 20 feet up in the air. I was yelling in pain. I never felt that much pain in my life, I could not lift my right arm! I tried and tried, but it would not move. I started yelling because I was very mad. I kept yelling "I don't care if it hurts, I need it to work". I picked the team and I was the skywalker, and now I was taken out. I was very mad. So, I gained my composure and climbed down off the scaffolding with my good arm and started pacing back and forth. I told myself that I needed my arm to work. Nothing happened, so I yelled again. We took a small break, and I went to my truck to grab some Aleve and to change clothes to something lighter. My heavy coat made my arm hurt, so I threw it on the ground. I started massaging my arm and decided that I would gut it out and do everything with my other arm because I was the only one out there that would work that high. At some point, my arm started working again and we were back on our efficient pace. Hmmm. As I write this, I have that arm wrapped up and plan on working tomorrow. It was a test of will, and I won this time. Be careful. I don't need a trophy for being a stubborn guy, but some ice would be handy.
I mention this, because, I have built more out of the ordinary places than most people. I have worked high in the air with steel before, and because of how awkward this process is, there is a lot of pressure on that steel and that is what causes the problems. We figured out what we needed to do, and everyone has a smile on their face now. Yay Earth Shelter.
I will get pictures posted and stay tuned for the video on Vimeo.com.
Just like the first time we set SIPs, we have had some issues. We will work through those and figure how to do this properly, then, let others know what is going on. I love the idea of the Earth Shelter house and I am even more fired up now that we have three domes up.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Working on the future
Today is Thanksgiving. There is definitely a lot to be thankful for, including that I have somehow managed to not become ill with all the hours I am putting in. What's the secret? Lots of vitamins and this stuff called "wellness formula" which is available at most natural health stores.
I will keep this brief.
I am very happy with the direction of this business over the last few months. We have gotten over a huge hump that was the results of how things were done a year ago. Although I still work as many hours as I did a year ago, I now feel that I am not going around in circles as much. A year ago, I spent Thanksgiving in the Detroit area, just long enough to eat before I had to leave to go make sure all those people that clung to me had work. This year I have come back to my house for the day to spend it with family. Friday morning, the bus leaves for the future!
The Earth Shelter Project is beginning on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. My plan is to work around the clock, every single day, to get the domes ready for the volunteer core we have to start wrapping re-bar around the domes. This project is will be very interesting to follow, and we will be shooting HD video every step of the way. While I lead a core of volunteers, Uncle Rog and a few other 'recruits', my other employees will be back down state to finish what we have going on. I will be bouncing back and forth between the projects until we finish our downstate work. I am looking forward to finishing our other projects that are currently moving in their own directions, so that I can focus solely on this incredible project. This will be the largest Earth Shelter Project ever built on the face of the Earth (residential) and will be built to standards not usually seen in this area. We will build the south facing, passive solar wall and windows to withstand 300 mph winds and equip that side with thick steel plates to prevent anything from breaking the already, incredibly tough Andersen Window Storm Glass. These steel plates will drop into place when needed. The way I am approaching this south wall, is that I do not want anything to penetrate it, and I am sure that there are not many things on this Planet that could penetrate that wall once we get everything done. The underground complex will be buried in some areas under 22 feet of Earth. The exposed south facing walls will be ICF and the out side will be Certainteed Fiber Cement siding in a color that matches the landscape, so as to keep it from standing out where its located and to have an organic feel. You will see in the videos that we shoot, that this place will be out in a huge field surrounded by woods and big hills. When completed, it would take a trained eye to pick this place out, even from the sky.
This Earth Shelter Home, will be off the grid also. With 5 underground facilities all connected together, taking this sustainable complex off the grid will be no easy task. Can you imagine how tough it will be to passively vent an underground barn full of farm animals? Stay tuned and you can see how its done. We will be working closely with Ferris State University and their engineering students to learn together about this cutting edge project. How does this all make me feel? Well, I am stoked. I can't even sleep when I am dead tired, thinking about this project. I hope this project will connect me with others out there who wish to live in, on, or around a totally sustainable homestead.
Since it is Thanksgiving and I promised most of you that I wouldn't work today, I guess I better go and relax and get ready to got to Thanksgiving dinner.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
I will keep this brief.
I am very happy with the direction of this business over the last few months. We have gotten over a huge hump that was the results of how things were done a year ago. Although I still work as many hours as I did a year ago, I now feel that I am not going around in circles as much. A year ago, I spent Thanksgiving in the Detroit area, just long enough to eat before I had to leave to go make sure all those people that clung to me had work. This year I have come back to my house for the day to spend it with family. Friday morning, the bus leaves for the future!
The Earth Shelter Project is beginning on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. My plan is to work around the clock, every single day, to get the domes ready for the volunteer core we have to start wrapping re-bar around the domes. This project is will be very interesting to follow, and we will be shooting HD video every step of the way. While I lead a core of volunteers, Uncle Rog and a few other 'recruits', my other employees will be back down state to finish what we have going on. I will be bouncing back and forth between the projects until we finish our downstate work. I am looking forward to finishing our other projects that are currently moving in their own directions, so that I can focus solely on this incredible project. This will be the largest Earth Shelter Project ever built on the face of the Earth (residential) and will be built to standards not usually seen in this area. We will build the south facing, passive solar wall and windows to withstand 300 mph winds and equip that side with thick steel plates to prevent anything from breaking the already, incredibly tough Andersen Window Storm Glass. These steel plates will drop into place when needed. The way I am approaching this south wall, is that I do not want anything to penetrate it, and I am sure that there are not many things on this Planet that could penetrate that wall once we get everything done. The underground complex will be buried in some areas under 22 feet of Earth. The exposed south facing walls will be ICF and the out side will be Certainteed Fiber Cement siding in a color that matches the landscape, so as to keep it from standing out where its located and to have an organic feel. You will see in the videos that we shoot, that this place will be out in a huge field surrounded by woods and big hills. When completed, it would take a trained eye to pick this place out, even from the sky.
This Earth Shelter Home, will be off the grid also. With 5 underground facilities all connected together, taking this sustainable complex off the grid will be no easy task. Can you imagine how tough it will be to passively vent an underground barn full of farm animals? Stay tuned and you can see how its done. We will be working closely with Ferris State University and their engineering students to learn together about this cutting edge project. How does this all make me feel? Well, I am stoked. I can't even sleep when I am dead tired, thinking about this project. I hope this project will connect me with others out there who wish to live in, on, or around a totally sustainable homestead.
Since it is Thanksgiving and I promised most of you that I wouldn't work today, I guess I better go and relax and get ready to got to Thanksgiving dinner.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
What this all means to me and why I get up every day.
I was driving home yesterday thinking about my business and how much I work. Driving just over the speed limit, I longed to walk through my back door to see my dog Jagger, because, I had only been home 2 nights in the last 3 weeks of working. My schedule has become increasing difficult over the past few monthes. One of the reasons that I have been working so much lately, I thought that Thanksgiving was sooner than it actually was, so I was working around the clock to get our projects caught up. By the time I left Friday afternoon, I was completely wore down and in need of a short break. The ride home was 1 hour and 40 minutes, so I had plenty of time to think without the radio on. I tried over and over again to justify to myself why this journey in life was worth it. I thought over and over again about the incredible amounts of money I have or will spend to be a pioneer in this industry. It is very tough to stomach, especially when you are overly tired. I reflected on the past few years and thought about how much of an impact we have made on the industry. I repeated to myself (the way I did in Onekama), "don't quit, stick with it, don't quit". (Don't take this the wrong way, I was very tired, and those of you who know me personally will tell the others, that I need sleep and food to function at 100%, I was lacking both.) At that exact moment, I recieved an email on my BlackBerry. It was an email from someone at Green Builder Magazine letting me know that we won one of their 2009 Project of the Year Awards. Isn't that funny how things happen like that, an email that can reset your path.
Since I was only 30 minutes into my ride home, I had time to make phones calls and to think more about my journey in life. Why do I get up every day? I started to think about that. Normally, I would talk out loud to Jagger my dog, who, until recently went everywhere with me. What is in a person to get them up everyday, even when you have worked 3 weeks straight for 14 or more hours per day. Is it to load your walls up with awards? Is it to die with the most trophies? Or, is to work and perfect the art of sustainable building all I care about? Something gets me out of bed everyday beside the great Amish smoked bacon that our friends leave for us at Man Camp.
When you live on the road and have a motel bed to call your own, it makes it easy to get out of bed, because, most motel beds are not that comfortable. You only lay down long enough to sleep, then get back to work. Thankfully, we have the use of a camp now and have been sleeping well and feeling comfortable there. But, we still feel like we need to get up and get to work. Most of us figure, that as long as we are out of town working, we might as well work and not lay around camp. But, there is something greater than awards, bad beds, and continental breakfasts that get me out of bed everyday.
As I look around my office, I see many things. I see awards on my shelves and walls and I see several newspaper articles talking about my quest and the performance of the Team. Is this what gets me out of bed everyday? Do I long to have more awards than anyone else? Believe it or not, no! I do not do what I do for a piece of paper or glass that says I am the best. That is dangerous thinking if someone lives thru their awards and not their continuously improving passion and efforts. I am very pleased everytime I win an award, especially the big national awards. I think it's a great honor to be recognized as the best in North America, no matter what you do. You could be the best football player in North America, the best cook in North America, or even the best high school student in North America, and that is all incredible! But, if you look beyond the award and see the person or company that receives awards like these, you will notice a trend. You will notice, the person or company who wins these awards have a passion and intensity that is unmatched by others in their respective industry. A passion and intensity that drives them to be better, that makes them think outside the box, and that will let nothing stand in their way of doing their best. This is a very difficult thing to turn off when you get to finally go home. You can't just walk through the door and say, it's rest time. The passion and intensity follows you everywhere you go and gets you up at 4:30 am on a morning that you were hoping to sleep in. I love this, although, I would like to sleep in some day.
Here is the great thing about these awards. The greatest thing about these awards, is the press it gains us! Not for new business, although it certainly does help, but for the free publicity we get to spread the word of sustainable building. Awards are intended to raise the bar, to get people out the shadows and to bring light to progressive thinking. If I build a better, more energy efficient, Earth friendly house everytime I build a new project, and I win awards for that, then somewhere else in the world, someone will step up to challenge me. That is why I do what I do!!! I knew early on, that the only way to change an industry was to succeed and attract competition which shows up naturally as someone has success in an industry. I have seen a number of companies pop up in Michigan that are working their way to being my competitor. I can name off ten builders that have shown up as a result of the publicity we got from our Onekama Home. Does this concern me? No, because that was my plan from the beginning. Bring these people out of the wood work and create a new market! I want there to be better qualified sustainaable builders out there. The awards we win show those other companies that building this way is worth it.
I am proud to be a driving force in this state, but I can't stop there. I need to win these national awards so that builders all over the country begin to build more sustainably. I wanted to be a face for this industry change now for five years, and it is starting to happen. Am I worried that I am building competitors up that may take my work someday? No, that is the plan. We have to make sustainable building mainstream! I would rather work on the projects I work on, these projects are tough for others to stomach, because of how you have to think to get through the entire project. I turn down a lot of work, my hope is that one of those other 'green' builders will step up and do the right thing. There will always be cutting edge projects for us to build, I am not the least bit concerned that I am creating competition, that is Economics 101 and part of my overall plan.
I get out of bed everyday to be a leader, to be a learner, to be the pied piper of sustainable building, and to be a pioneer. I know that, good or bad, the news I get that day will somehow work towards my overall goal. I try to focus on the big picture, that is to: 'build sustainable houses for the research and to teach those willing to learn the information we gathered from the research, that, sustainable building is worth it and lessens the load on the planet".
A sustainable lifestyle is key to a healthy life. I feel very good that I can help people acheive a sustainable lifestyle. The awards we win are crucial for the forward movement of this entire industry change. Thank you all who support what I do and those that give me the encouragement I need to not 'quit', and to keep pushing forward.
Since I was only 30 minutes into my ride home, I had time to make phones calls and to think more about my journey in life. Why do I get up every day? I started to think about that. Normally, I would talk out loud to Jagger my dog, who, until recently went everywhere with me. What is in a person to get them up everyday, even when you have worked 3 weeks straight for 14 or more hours per day. Is it to load your walls up with awards? Is it to die with the most trophies? Or, is to work and perfect the art of sustainable building all I care about? Something gets me out of bed everyday beside the great Amish smoked bacon that our friends leave for us at Man Camp.
When you live on the road and have a motel bed to call your own, it makes it easy to get out of bed, because, most motel beds are not that comfortable. You only lay down long enough to sleep, then get back to work. Thankfully, we have the use of a camp now and have been sleeping well and feeling comfortable there. But, we still feel like we need to get up and get to work. Most of us figure, that as long as we are out of town working, we might as well work and not lay around camp. But, there is something greater than awards, bad beds, and continental breakfasts that get me out of bed everyday.
As I look around my office, I see many things. I see awards on my shelves and walls and I see several newspaper articles talking about my quest and the performance of the Team. Is this what gets me out of bed everyday? Do I long to have more awards than anyone else? Believe it or not, no! I do not do what I do for a piece of paper or glass that says I am the best. That is dangerous thinking if someone lives thru their awards and not their continuously improving passion and efforts. I am very pleased everytime I win an award, especially the big national awards. I think it's a great honor to be recognized as the best in North America, no matter what you do. You could be the best football player in North America, the best cook in North America, or even the best high school student in North America, and that is all incredible! But, if you look beyond the award and see the person or company that receives awards like these, you will notice a trend. You will notice, the person or company who wins these awards have a passion and intensity that is unmatched by others in their respective industry. A passion and intensity that drives them to be better, that makes them think outside the box, and that will let nothing stand in their way of doing their best. This is a very difficult thing to turn off when you get to finally go home. You can't just walk through the door and say, it's rest time. The passion and intensity follows you everywhere you go and gets you up at 4:30 am on a morning that you were hoping to sleep in. I love this, although, I would like to sleep in some day.
Here is the great thing about these awards. The greatest thing about these awards, is the press it gains us! Not for new business, although it certainly does help, but for the free publicity we get to spread the word of sustainable building. Awards are intended to raise the bar, to get people out the shadows and to bring light to progressive thinking. If I build a better, more energy efficient, Earth friendly house everytime I build a new project, and I win awards for that, then somewhere else in the world, someone will step up to challenge me. That is why I do what I do!!! I knew early on, that the only way to change an industry was to succeed and attract competition which shows up naturally as someone has success in an industry. I have seen a number of companies pop up in Michigan that are working their way to being my competitor. I can name off ten builders that have shown up as a result of the publicity we got from our Onekama Home. Does this concern me? No, because that was my plan from the beginning. Bring these people out of the wood work and create a new market! I want there to be better qualified sustainaable builders out there. The awards we win show those other companies that building this way is worth it.
I am proud to be a driving force in this state, but I can't stop there. I need to win these national awards so that builders all over the country begin to build more sustainably. I wanted to be a face for this industry change now for five years, and it is starting to happen. Am I worried that I am building competitors up that may take my work someday? No, that is the plan. We have to make sustainable building mainstream! I would rather work on the projects I work on, these projects are tough for others to stomach, because of how you have to think to get through the entire project. I turn down a lot of work, my hope is that one of those other 'green' builders will step up and do the right thing. There will always be cutting edge projects for us to build, I am not the least bit concerned that I am creating competition, that is Economics 101 and part of my overall plan.
I get out of bed everyday to be a leader, to be a learner, to be the pied piper of sustainable building, and to be a pioneer. I know that, good or bad, the news I get that day will somehow work towards my overall goal. I try to focus on the big picture, that is to: 'build sustainable houses for the research and to teach those willing to learn the information we gathered from the research, that, sustainable building is worth it and lessens the load on the planet".
A sustainable lifestyle is key to a healthy life. I feel very good that I can help people acheive a sustainable lifestyle. The awards we win are crucial for the forward movement of this entire industry change. Thank you all who support what I do and those that give me the encouragement I need to not 'quit', and to keep pushing forward.
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