Recent content by bow-tie

Some good points shared already regarding building with concrete / ICF (Alex's 7 points had some great insights). We started our house build in fall of 2014. We did a lot of research before any dirt was moved, and I wasn't doing anything until I was confident our end product was going to be...

Washed dishes in high school...briefly. Walked cornfields during the summer through college. Managed to survive two different megacorps 11 years before moving on to a family owned business. I didn't fit there either. Go figure. I "retired" so to speak in 2013 to become a SAHD. I ended up...

Laurence, congrats on the part-time gig. And a well paying one, too! I quite FT work in 2013. I had my fill of the bull where I was working. We had one youngin' full time in school and one soon to be preschooler. I ended up in a gig working A LOT during tax season, but only work a handful...

I turned 40 earlier this spring and my wife turned 40 a few weeks ago. I told her "you can say you were a millionaire at 40". She said "who would ask me that?". That's not the point... I clearly found it more exciting then she did. So you are not alone Laurence. Regardless of the lack of...

We love squash and zucchini, but the vine borers rarely let us have any fruit before they kill the stinkin' plant!

early 2004 - read about the E-Rforum in Newsweek and became a member soon thereafter winter 2006 - DS born summer 2007 - made final house payment and became completely debt free fall 2011 - DD born summer 2013 - telling the job to shove it; trying the SAHD thing and some P/T employment...

40 is completely achievable, but you have to put the screws to the expenses. Not doing that could force you to use a withdrawl rate that has a high risk of not lasting your lifetime. Even in a worst case, you and/or your wife work a little bit throughout the year to cover the difference...

I may have missed it somewhere in the prior posts, but I think I read you are only putting $30-ish per month against the principal of that car. When are you ever going to pay off $8,800?? Wouldn't it be better to find a $3k car for cash, keep $1k back for the first big repair, and tell the...

So everyone who blogs has aspirations of being a figurehead??? Uh... never would have figured that one. I've been a member here since 2004, and owe this place a colossal debt of gratitude for helping me understand why I couldn't wait to find a way out of corporate hell. That being said, after...

ERD50, The air exchanger you are talking about, is it similar to an energy recovery ventilator? I read about the ERV from the link provided by Zathras about the house build by the NDSU students. I have never heard of ERVs and wonder how long they have been around and if they are a proven...

In my estimation, over 90%+ of houses built in Iowa include basements, so I would like to think what I want to do isn't a great departure from the standard building protocol performed in this area. In my eyes, the greatest departure from the norm would be an absence of an 'upstairs'. The...

devans0, I'm a fellow Iowan, too. I don't understand how a house built into a hill wouldn't have any advantages of a berm home. I don't have much for experience, but it doesn't seem intuitive to me. Wouldn't the earth provide some type of insulation? What about interior and exterior...

I thought if it was designed correctly, we might be able to get away with no geothermal, and not have any unique maintenance or repair expenses. My idea is to essentially build a basement and put a roof on it. People have been digging basements for generations, so we hopefully wouldn't run...

I don't know if Iowa's climate would qualify as extreme. It gets plenty cold in the winter and plenty hot and humid in the summer if you ask me. My minds eye of our house wouldn't include anything 'earthy' on the roof. Picture a walkout basement (dirt on three sides) with a steel roof...

Hi all, It's been quite a while since I've been on the site, but I thought of the combined brain trust here when I started noodling the building of a new house. So here is my story. We're pursuing some property that would require a new crib. I want any house we build to be as efficient as...