Interior Finish Work

By far, the thing that is taking the longest amount of time is the interior finish work. I am doing nearly all of it with a little help from my oldest son. We really only get to work on it on Saturdays, and we generally spend about 12 hours each weekend. Once all of the other workers and contractors were finished, we were left with bare drywall and exposed concrete, and of course, a bare concrete floor. Above you can see how we cover the walls with drywall mud to smooth out the surface before we paint. This usually takes 1 rough coat, and 2 - 3 fill-in coats of mud to get it right.
In this picture, part of the wall is finished, but you can see the work in progress around and above the door. Note also the uncovered ceiling.
The picture above shows how the windows looked before the trim was applied.

Here it is after trimming and painting.
This is the view of the living room from the right hallway. Most of this room is finished, except for the flooring. The ceilings were first painted with a waterproofing coating, and then sprayed with drywall compound that left a dimpled appearance.
This is part of the view I wake up to each day. Notice the wall inside the master suite does not go all of the way up to the ceiling. We wanted to see as much of the grandeur of the ceilings as we could.
This is the other half of my morning view. It is the just finished master bath, as seen from my bed.

Here is a closer view of the Master Bath.
And another. In case you're wondering, the toilet is to the left of the window in a little alcove that provides just the right amount of privacy since there are no doors inside the master suite.
This is our other finished bathroom off of the main room in the middle of the house.

The Exterior

This is a view of the roof from the back of the house, before it was covered with dirt. The black coating is a liquid tar damp-proofing used on basement walls. It does work, but it is a mess to use. It is almost impossible to clean off of anything it contacts, including shoes, clothes, brushes and rollers. It also remains in a liquid state if it is applied too thickly. It wound up leaking through the tiny cracks between the module cold joints, and it took me several months to figure out how to stop it. I finally filled in the cracks with hydraulic cement and that worked very well. After some additional experimenting with other parts of the house, I have decided I would use the white elastomeric roof coating sold at Home Depot if I were ever to do this again. It creates a better seal, stays flexible, and is much easier to clean up while it is still wet.

I built this house to self regulate it's internal temperature through a technique called Earth Tubes. You can see the white pipes sticking up through the top of each module. I connected these to corrugated black plastic pipes that were over 100 feet each, and wrapped them around the building to stick out of the ground on the sides of the house. There are matching holes in the wall near the floor of each module that were similarly connected and routed. Unfortunately, I should have used the schedule 40 white pipe throughout because it would not have crushed when the dirt was set in place the way the corrugated stuff did. Some day if I have to dig it up for some other reason, or I inherit big bucks, I will try to fix them.
The picture shows the very back of the modules and the road built all the way around the house.
This shows the road as it comes down the left side of the house. Notice the retaining wall jutting out past the roof overhang. I painted the front walls with the same damp-proofing as the roof. I originally bought all of the blue board insulation you see in this picture for covering the roof. I was going to put about a foot of dirt on, then the insulation, then the rest of the dirt. Unfortunately, the contractor got a little ahead of me and I didn't have a chance to put the insulation down before all of the dirt was in place. Another lessen learned, and another change I will try to make in the future. Fortunately, the house is well insulated with the dirt alone and keeps a comfortable temperature with moderate heating/cooling. I spend less in electricity for the 2400 sq ft now, than I did for 1650 sq ft in our previous house, and my heat pump is smaller.
Here is a close-up of the final dirt product. The white pipe sticking up are the same kind you would see sticking through the roof of a regular house. They are for venting the plumbing connections per code.

Interior Framing

While the quality of this picture is not the greatest, it does show the structure of our most impressive wall. It is the one you see when you enter the front door. It stands 13.5 feet at the apex, and is 28 feet wide. All of the interior walls are built on the same basic principle as this one. I started with standard wall studs set on pressure treated 2x4s screwed into the concrete floor. I then topped them with more 2x4s to give me an 8 ft wall. Since the ceilings range from 7 ft 9 inches to 13 ft 6 inches, the remainder of each wall had to be custom measured, cut, and set into the ceiling. First, another 2x4 is laid on top of the existing ones to add strength. Then each piece of wood at the top of the wall is screwed into the concrete ceiling between the risers that connect back down to the standard wall. Fortunately, I had a lot of help with this part of the work since I do not do well on ladders, nor could my arm hold out for all of the drilling into the concrete ceiling.


This picture also shows the framing in the "hole in the wall" between modules. Since we use this as part of our hallway, only part of the opening is closed in.

This is a view of part of the hallway in the left hand module. You can see where the standard height wall ends, and the extended wall begins. You can also see a closeup of the ceiling work. Notice we used pressure treated wood here too. Any wood that directly contacts the concrete must be pressure treated.


Finally, here is the front room wall with all of the drywall up. In the pictures you can see (from left to right) openings for a bathroom, the kitchen, the kitchen serving window/eating bar, 2 closets, and another bathroom, the hallway to the right module, and the guest bedroom.

Let me take a moment to add a cautionary warning. Make sure you get a good drywall crew. I used cheap, and somewhat inexperienced labor and am paying for it every day now. Anytime I want to work on a room, I first have to fix the drywall mistakes, ugly seams, and mismatched edges. It is taking a lot of my time, and it is frustrating work. Don't skimp on this part of the job!

Rough-Ins and Flooring

Once the shell is in place, your plans become even more important because it is all that you have to ensure that everything comes together with the different contractors that will do the rest of the work. Make sure you have spent the time to work out as many kinks as you can while still just putting it on paper. Unfortunately, unless you are building to the same set of plans you built to before, there will be some mistakes, or at least things that you wish you had done a little differently. We did spend a lot of time on our plans. I even entered them in my computer and created a 3D layout to do a virtual walkthrough. This was very helpful and I'm sure we avoided quite a few mistakes by doing that. We have been living in the house for 4 months now and I love the layout. My only regrets are that we did not realize we could not get DSL in our location, so computer usage requires ethernet lines that I did not plan for. I did, however, make sure there were lots of conduits to each room which did allow me to make the adjustments.

The large white pipes you see above are the drain lines. The red lines are the hot water, and the blue the cold. The gray pipes are electrical conduits. The strings were layed-out to indicate where the walls would be so everything lined up correctly.
This shot shows the white pipe used as air ducts. Notice the aluminum riser used to direct the air up through the floor. Notice also that the top of that duct would be the actual floor height.
Once everything has been layed out, the strings have been removed, and gravel added to bring the height of the floor up a bit, a layer of plastic and 4 inches of concrete are poured inside the shell. I was not able to be there for the whole process, and found out later that no stress relief cracks were added. Since concrete always cracks in large areas, the floor found it's own areas to crack in, mostly around the air ducts. Fortunately, it is a floating floor, meaning the walls set on the foundation, not the floors, so the cracks do not affect functionality. They sure are ugly though.

This last picture shows the wooden window frame with the rolling shutter installed. We chose this type of covering for it's security and safety aspects, as well as the fact it can be retracted from inside the house. We also chose a manual mechanism to avoid loosing function if the power went out. We have one of these on each window, and each door.

3rd and Final Module

This is a picture of the inside of the 3rd module from inside the 2nd module. Notice the opening I mentioned previously, and the wheels indicate where the trailer is positioned that is used to lift the roof forms. Notice also all of the gravel inside, and the footers. As will be seen later, this gravel base will eventually come up to the footer level before the floor is poured.
This is a closer look at the internal forms and structures set in place before the concrete is poured.
Parts and forms everywhere.
This a a great shot of the interior of the 1st and 2nd module. There is plenty of light coming in these windows.
Wrapping it up. Once they pulled everything out of the 3rd module, they pack the roof forms on the trailer and move on to their next job. The wall forms are stored and shipped in a standard big rig trailer.

More Terra-Dome Pictures

These pictures show the concrete pumping for the 2nd module. I took the day off from work so I could watch them. It was really fascinating to watch.




This is the pumper truck that moved the concrete up to the roof. Unfortunately, it kept getting clogged and as a result, we had several concrete trucks backed up, allowing the concrete to get old. It made the final product a little rough, but the strength was unaffected.


Here is the beginning of the 3rd module. The front wall forms are not installed yet and this allows a great view of the dome structure.

Construction Begins in Earnest

One of the biggest problems with building an unusual house is getting the financing. Traditional mortgage sources won't touch anything that doesn't look like every other house in the neighborhood. It took us several years, but we finally found a small, local bank that will lend money for anything if you have the credit, but of course it costs more. We have had to pay about 3-4 percentage points above the normal mortgage rates, but as our banker is found of saying "It's a small price for your dream home".

One of the things we did was to visit the Terra-Dome folks and look at several houses they built in the area. We actually traveled up to Missouri twice to gather as much information as we could. Of course, even that was not enough to avoid mistakes, but I think it did help a lot.

Anyway, once the plans were finalized, the construction loan secured, and the contract signed, we began to build in earnest (hence the title). I was glad to be able to finally answer the constant question from friends "So when are you going to get started on that underground house of yours?" with the reply "We have the contractor out there right now".

I missed the first few days of building because I was on a trip, but when I returned, this is what I found. A few things to note about the construction of a Terra-Dome house. Because of the tremendous weight of the building and the dirt on top, the footings are extra wide, as you can see under the ladder in the picture above. Also, with each module, there must be a 9 foot opening to allow the forms that create the domed roof to be removed once the concrete has set. This takes about 3 days. These openings must be accounted for in the plans, but as you will see later, they can be filled in during the later construction phases.

This is a shot of the interior, showing the supports the hold up the dome forms.

This view shows the footing for the next module. The grooves are to allow electrical outlets in the wall to be connected under the floor before it is poured.


These views shows the forms for the 2nd module adjacent to the completed first module. Notice the opening on the right for the master bath window, and the front door in the 2nd module.

Here is more detail of the front door.
You can see the dome form on top. There is lots of rebar in these buildings, especially in the roof. They use a very specific pattern to ensure the engineering requirements have been met.