Good Weather! Time to Parge

What is Parge?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Parge coat (concrete): A thin coat of a cementitious or polymeric mortar applied to concrete or masonry for refinement of the surface. The typical parge coat is 1/4"-1/2" in thickness; this may be less than the minimum thickness allowed by many mortar types.
Parging is usually applied with a trowel and pressed into the existing surface. The intent is to create a contiguous surface by filling surface air voids and bugholes (eliminating bughole-induced outgassing), to level a surface with extreme rugosity, or to prep a surface for topcoating with a high-performance protective coating.
Parging is a low-cost alternative to repointing, providing structural cohesiveness to masonry walls whose mortar has begun to fail. Parge coating can also be used to create air tightness for apartments."
So it is time to put some cement on the roof of the house - to see if we can make it water-tight.  Hopefully we will be able to have it finished and be able to rain-test next week.  Here are a few pictures of work-in-progress.

 

Garage Earth Tube Progress

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Danny and Brad came and worked on the garage 'plumbing.'  There are 5 pipes, one 4" and four 6" pipes, that are under the building or retaining wall, exiting in the front (South) of the building.  They dug them out, dug where they were going to go, and placed them.

First, was the drain pipe coming from the center of the building. 

Second, they ran the remaining four 6" pipes, the earth tubes, so that they were closer together, and crossed under the 'South Road.' 

  The bed of gravel under the end portion of the earth tubes will collect any condensation that occurs within the first 10 feet of pipe.  There are a series of holes in the bottom of those pipes.  The two on the left are the upper earth tubes (enter the building in the ceiling) and the other two are the lower ones, entering in the floor.

They are currently covered with about 3 inches minimum of dirt. and the dirt at the end of the pipe has been dug away to probably it's final grade.  (sorry, no picture yet)  A retaining wall will be put at the last 10 inches of pipe to hold back the dirt that will be on top of the earth tubes.  There will also be insulation and more dirt above the earth tubes.  Closer to the house, there will be an 'umbrella.'  However, we need to do some other work to prepare for the power company to come out and dig a trench across our field and connect power to the garage.  We will construct the umbrella after that digging, to make sure the umbrella is intact in it's final resting place.  Also, we need to install a hydrant within the area of the umbrella.  Definition of umbrella - a layer of plastic, a layer of insulation and another layer of plastic topped with top soil.  That is the umbrella in front of the garage.  There will also be one over the garage.  The umbrella is part of our PAHS - Passive Annual Heat Storage - system to store heat from in the garage, that radiates into the walls, into the surrounding soil; and then give that heat back in the colder weather.