Dwight Hartman
30th April 2010, 14:22
I'm Dwight Hartman. My wife Colleen and I are building our 2nd house. This is on the Key Peninsula in Pierce County, Washington USA - to the west from Tacoma across the Narrows bridge. We previously built a house over the span of several years near Issaquah, Washington. That house can be viewed at treehousepoint.com and is owned by a couple that build very well constructed tree houses and use the house that we built as a bed & breakfast lodge and location for small conferences and weddings.
Our new house is constructed primarilly of Perform Wall, an ICF product similar to Rastra. This will be our retirement home as we are both in our 60's. The work done thus far on the house was performed by Green Bridge, Inc. and paid for from the proceeds of the sale of our first house. To continue with Doyle Lewellen, who owns Green Bridge, Inc doing all of the work, would require that we obtain a construction loan - no small feat in todays economy, and especially to build anything other than a standard recognizable stick frame house on a standard subdivision lot where it will look like every other house lined up for sale. Therefore we will continue the work ourselves with Doyle, who is an excellent contractor whom we highly recommend, serving as a consultant.
My entire working experience for 33 years was in municipal and county land use management. I was usually in a management position however I wrote many codes and ordinances and advised city and county councils and planning commissions, design review boards etc and worked with the public when they wanted to do something on their property. As a result, I know what is and what is not possible to get approved and can comfortably talk with the people (regularors and inspectors) that anyone who wants to do something on their property has to deal with.
Since we can't hire everything done now, we will be doing it all except those items such as septic system and fire sprinkler system instalations that must be done by a licensed contractor.
We are presently getting ready to put the exterior finish on the perform wall and install windows. I know that Perform Wall and Rastra structures have usually had a stucco finish applied on their exteriors. Because we want to do the exterior finish ourselves, we plan to use Hardi Plank siding with cedar trim on the perimeter of our vinyl windows. Thus far, I have not been able to find realy good information on how to do this.
I know that vertical strips of some wood type material has to be adhered to the perform wall/rastra walls to serve as nailing surfaces for the siding. I expect that should also be fastened to the surface around the perimeter of all windows and doors. I know there are special products that need to be used to seal all air and water gaps around the windows and doors. Should the walls be sealed with a spray on or roll on sealer, or should Tyvek be used on the walls over the nail on strips?
Any information that can be provided would be valuable. We are comfortable in stating that Perform Wall is an excellent product to work with. We have extensive digital photo records of our entire building process and would be happy to provide anyone who is interested with those photos.
thanks, Dwight
Our new house is constructed primarilly of Perform Wall, an ICF product similar to Rastra. This will be our retirement home as we are both in our 60's. The work done thus far on the house was performed by Green Bridge, Inc. and paid for from the proceeds of the sale of our first house. To continue with Doyle Lewellen, who owns Green Bridge, Inc doing all of the work, would require that we obtain a construction loan - no small feat in todays economy, and especially to build anything other than a standard recognizable stick frame house on a standard subdivision lot where it will look like every other house lined up for sale. Therefore we will continue the work ourselves with Doyle, who is an excellent contractor whom we highly recommend, serving as a consultant.
My entire working experience for 33 years was in municipal and county land use management. I was usually in a management position however I wrote many codes and ordinances and advised city and county councils and planning commissions, design review boards etc and worked with the public when they wanted to do something on their property. As a result, I know what is and what is not possible to get approved and can comfortably talk with the people (regularors and inspectors) that anyone who wants to do something on their property has to deal with.
Since we can't hire everything done now, we will be doing it all except those items such as septic system and fire sprinkler system instalations that must be done by a licensed contractor.
We are presently getting ready to put the exterior finish on the perform wall and install windows. I know that Perform Wall and Rastra structures have usually had a stucco finish applied on their exteriors. Because we want to do the exterior finish ourselves, we plan to use Hardi Plank siding with cedar trim on the perimeter of our vinyl windows. Thus far, I have not been able to find realy good information on how to do this.
I know that vertical strips of some wood type material has to be adhered to the perform wall/rastra walls to serve as nailing surfaces for the siding. I expect that should also be fastened to the surface around the perimeter of all windows and doors. I know there are special products that need to be used to seal all air and water gaps around the windows and doors. Should the walls be sealed with a spray on or roll on sealer, or should Tyvek be used on the walls over the nail on strips?
Any information that can be provided would be valuable. We are comfortable in stating that Perform Wall is an excellent product to work with. We have extensive digital photo records of our entire building process and would be happy to provide anyone who is interested with those photos.
thanks, Dwight