Our House

Pump house layout

I’ve been thinking about the pump house, how I’m going to construct it, building the walls, how the cover for the well is going to work.  I’ve got some of the details ironed out.

I need the pump house for a variety of uses; water storage, canned food storage, root cellar, wintering over plants, water treatment.  It’s got to be multipurpose or there’s no point in changing what I’ve got.

Right now we have the pump house sitting on top the well which makes servicing anything about our water supply situation problematic.  The outside dimension of the pump house is 6’6″ square.  The interior height of the pump house is between 3 and 4 feet.  Anything done in the pump house is performed squatting, sitting or kneeling.  Ugh.  If we needed to service the pump, we’d have to lift the roof off the pump house to pull the pump out of the well.  Double ugh.

So, a new pump house is the plan and it’s my task for the summer while Wadly’s working.  I did the research this morning for a building permit and the building I’ve planned comes in at 196sf, under the 200sf threshold for requiring one.

There are two walls of the new pump house which will sit on the well curb.  I can put posts in the ground set in concrete for the three outside corners, but the posts for the three inside corners must be mounted to the well curb.

To mount the posts to the curb I will need to drill holes in the curb and mortar in rebar at the post locations.  I can drill the posts and set them over the rebar pins.  I’ll need smaller holes between the posts for fastening the reinforcing wire.  If I don’t have an impact drill by then, I’ll need to rent/purchase one.

The new pump house needs to have room for a pH conditioner, two 36 inch diameter storage tanks (165 gal ea), a carbon filter, a uv filter and shelves for canned goods.  I’d like to put the chest freezer in there as well.  I don’t know if the heat generated by the freezer compressor would cause a problem.  I’ll have to look into that.

I also have to look at what I’m going to do for a floor.  I want to keep the room connected to the ground to moderate the temperature year round.  That will involve insulating the ground around the pump house and well out about 6′.  I plan to strip the surface cover back and spread bentonite clay to seal the area around the well anyway, so there’s no reason not to lay an insulative layer over that.

I’ll probably pack crushed rock inside the pump house footprint to provide a level base for the floor, then  I can lay whatever material I choose as my floor surface over that.  Concrete may be best, with a central floor drain that exits out away from the well.

As you can see, I’m still planning.  The more I explain it, the more the bits I think about and the more my plan comes together.  The eps-crete walls are a given.  That stuff rocks.

West end of wall Top down section

We’ve gotten another section of the wall done.  This one’s a lovely celedon green.  Wadly’s off to shop and have coffee with a friend today so I’m not expecting anything productive to happen around the farm.

Here’s the west end of the wall as well as a top-down cross-section so you can see how the eps-crete infill wraps around the post.  In the future, when I extend the building west, the foundation will be extended.  I should have wrapped the foundation around the inside of the post as well.  Hind sight.  I also should have done my electrical run and fastened the four-gang box to the 6-6-10-10 before putting the infill in place.  Again, hind sight.  This stuff is easy to shape after the fact so I can run a channel for the conduit and box before I build the next wall.  It just would have been much easier to fasten it to the reinforcing wire BEFORE doing the infill.  This is definitely a learn-as-you-go project.

I haven’t been posting.  My apologies.  I screwed up my neck and the result was ugly.  I’m getting better.  Now that Wadly’s done with his summer job, we’ll work around the weather to get more stuff done.

Terry and I got the posts and foundation in for the south wall of the bedroom.  As this is also the north wall of the sun porch, this is progress.  Not as much progress as either of us would like, but progress. We also picked up the additional lumber we’ll need for framing in the sun porch.  I still have to buy a new bit for the router so I can route in window openings.  Most of that I will do on the table saw or in situ with the skill saw, so that purchase can wait until the framing’s complete.

I still haven’t rounded up the 8″ stove pipe I need for the rocket mass heater.  I also haven’t worked at it very hard.  I can’t do much on that project until the sun porch is in.  Wadly is really resistant to the thermal mass run going along the wall so I’m going to wrap it into the corner around the radiating tank.  It won’t do quite as good a job heating but it will still be a huge improvement on our little radiant heaters.  The catalytic heater stopped functioning properly when we weathered in the break between the airstream and the living room.

We’re currently working on a full length awning over the garden window and door at the west end of the living room to replace the 8′ awning we moved from the slider (making room for the sun porch).  This job is a must as without it, that end of the building has no protection and we have no place to stand out of the weather while getting the door opened.  The 8′ awning was great but we really need one that spans the full length of the building.  We should have that done today.  We disassembled the 8′ awning the day before yesterday and got the framework for the new awning up yesterday.  Today we’ll get it roofed . . . assuming it doesn’t rain.

I was going to have Wadly cut a 8′ piece of metal roofing in half lengthwise to cover the top 6″ of the awning but I have just had a brighter idea.  I’m going to use billboard vinyl.  It will let in the light but still protect the garden window and door from glare.  Brilliant idea!  It will also make a softer transition to the polycarbonate.

One further plan for this winter.  We need to move the power from the pump house, which is going to be torn down and rebuilt, to its permanent location on the barn (which is now mostly weathered in and functioning as Wad’s shop).  I’d like to get that done before I have to change the power in the living room to make room for the rocket mass heater.  Moving the power in the living room is easy, it’s two 4-gang boxes connected by a 6′ length of conduit.  I have to move them down the wall quite a bit and swap the power connection from one end to the other.  Not a big thing, but it’s got to happen.