It’s been busy lately so I’ve not had time to put together the latest expenses for our Earthship. I’m still missing a few items from the last few days. These receipts have not made the journey from my wallet to my “in box”. The following includes the materials for the roof (as well as fuel for our trip to Surrey and lunch on the way back for me, Chris and my father, Gary Burkholder). Next big item will be windows which we anticipate being around $6-7000. We have much of the material we need for pop can walls, including flashing material leftover from the roof purchase. We also have enough EPDM left to line most of the planters when the time comes.
| PERMITS | ||
| HPO Homeowner Exemption Permit | $425.00 | |
| Building Permit | $1,504.00 | |
| Septic Approval | $157.50 | |
| $2,086.50 | ||
| PREP COSTS | ||
| Excavation | $4,480.00 | |
| $4,480.00 | ||
| MATERIALS | ||
| Tire Walls (inc. poly, Metal Lath + portland cement) | $573.04 | |
| Perimeter drain (inc. PVC pipe and fittings, filter cloth) | $528.46 | |
| Thermal Wrap (inc. poly, rigid insulation, tuck tape) | $3,781.10 | |
| Nails/other fasteners | $28.09 | |
| Tires | $0.00 | |
| Dirt | $0.00 | |
| Tire press | $0.00 | |
| Cardboard | $0.00 | |
| Portland cement for bond beam & pop can form | $341.71 | |
| Plumbing general | $78.10 | |
| Rebar bond beam | $180.35 | |
| Sill gasket – bond beam | $68.99 | |
| Misc plumbing for rough septic/greywater overflow | $91.91 | |
| Framing materials | $44.46 | |
| Wood stain | $865.93 | |
| Electrical | $1,125.65 | |
| Misc | $142.74 | |
| Roof | $13,757.09 | |
| End walls | $159.21 | |
| Equipment | $83.99 | |
| $21,850.82 | ||
| Total | $28,417.32 |
Looks like you are doing a fabulous job keeping expenses in line and accounted for. Well done. A couple questions: Are you logging your hours? and I don’t see any wood listed? You guys have used some beautiful wood.
We believe that the primary measure of sustainable building is affordability.
Because all of the wood was reject wood (no value to anybody else) I have not assigned a value to it. We spent a LOT of time recovering it, so that would be reflected in the hours we have logged (which we’ve done in a general way, not hour by hour).
When we are finished I plan to post the ACTUAL hard costs of materials and then a REAL cost (with labour and the value of the wood reconciled). I recognize because of our resources, equipment, etc. we have advantages the average builder would not have and I really want to give a real cost if somebody were to start from scratch without those advantages.
My expense logging has been VERY exact, down to each paintbrush I’ve purchased and even the sharp pair of scissors I needed to cut the EPDM…I am about $3,000 above my estimated budget, so not too bad, since we have a contingency fund to account for cost overruns…
And yes! Micheal Reynolds has been known to say, “if it’s not affordable, it’s not sustainable,” and we are believers of that, too.