Money, Money, Money! Unfortunately everything always comes down to money.
Financing is one of the hot topics when it comes to building an unconventional home. If you look around online there are many people interested in dome houses but one of the common threads is financing. Where do I get it? Can I get it? Is it different than getting financing to build a conventional home? The short answer is.... it depends. Not a very helpful and kinda disheartening answer. There are many different ways to approach it and each person may only have one way that will work for them. I wrote a detailed post about it right after we managed to finally find a bank to work with us. Read about it HERE. We had given up and something I read online made me research again. That's when I found our solution. It has been almost a year since I wrote the other post about financing. We didn't get as much as we would have liked because it is a home equity loan against the land we own not based on how much the house will cost to build. It should be enough combined with the money we have saved to get to the point of a C.O. if we are careful and do much of it ourselves.
It has been a long bumpy process to get to this point but we done with this hurdle. Whew! Now we tackle the next phase with even more challenges.
The newest unexpected delay is related to the plans. We were chugging right along building the forms for the footer and found a supplier for our rebar. We sent them the foundation plans and paid for everything we needed in the estimate they sent us and we were ready to schedule delivery based on how long it would take them to cut and bend everything for us. Then they had a question for the engineer. That was the beginning of the drama. Our engineering plans specify that "concrete exposed to earth or weather" needs to be epoxy coated rebar. Think about that for a second and let it sink in.
This clearly threw the rebar supplier for a loop. They wanted to know if all or just parts of the rebar order was to be epoxy coated. Mr. Dometastic and I had read that in the plans and mistakenly dismissed it thinking it was "rebar exposed to earth or weather should be epoxy coated". We wouldn't have rebar exposed and its silly to think that they would require it for the whole foundation....RIGHT?!
I sent the question to the engineer and went to google to try to figure out why we would need it. SO google informed us (later confirmed by the engineer)
epoxy-coated bar are typically specified where "corrosion resistance of reinforcement is of particular concern such as in parking structures, bridge structures, and other highly corrosive environments" Ummmmmmmm.........
Mr. Dometastic and I have privately joked since we hired the local engineer that we thought they were treating our house like we are building a parking garage. I guess the funniest jokes do have some truth to them! We argued our case with the engineer and they removed the epoxy coated rebar requirement but then added that they needed a few other things. Proof from the concrete company that they could provide a specific mix of concrete (resistant to water) with the mill certificates along with the shop drawings where they would have to possibly modify them depending on the mill results. The rebar supplier sent us "shop drawings" as part of the estimate process where they determine how much rebar is needed to comply with the engineering. I thought that was all it was and no big deal. Then everything came to a screeching halt. We thought we were done with plans. Apparently this is not just for estimating how much rebar to order but it specifically shows where each rebar is placed and everything about it. It has been 2 weeks and counting after first realizing that "shop drawings" are kinda a big deal part of the plans and waiting for the engineer to make his changes. This is another case of not knowing the normal process and falling into a pit because we weren't ready for it.
It has been a long bumpy process to get to this point but we done with this hurdle. Whew! Now we tackle the next phase with even more challenges.
We have only barely started building the house portion of our project and we have come to the realization that it is going to be a rough road. The big take away with building this house knowing nothing about the process is always expect the unexpected!
This clearly threw the rebar supplier for a loop. They wanted to know if all or just parts of the rebar order was to be epoxy coated. Mr. Dometastic and I had read that in the plans and mistakenly dismissed it thinking it was "rebar exposed to earth or weather should be epoxy coated". We wouldn't have rebar exposed and its silly to think that they would require it for the whole foundation....RIGHT?!
I sent the question to the engineer and went to google to try to figure out why we would need it. SO google informed us (later confirmed by the engineer)
epoxy-coated bar are typically specified where "corrosion resistance of reinforcement is of particular concern such as in parking structures, bridge structures, and other highly corrosive environments" Ummmmmmmm.........
Mr. Dometastic and I have privately joked since we hired the local engineer that we thought they were treating our house like we are building a parking garage. I guess the funniest jokes do have some truth to them! We argued our case with the engineer and they removed the epoxy coated rebar requirement but then added that they needed a few other things. Proof from the concrete company that they could provide a specific mix of concrete (resistant to water) with the mill certificates along with the shop drawings where they would have to possibly modify them depending on the mill results. The rebar supplier sent us "shop drawings" as part of the estimate process where they determine how much rebar is needed to comply with the engineering. I thought that was all it was and no big deal. Then everything came to a screeching halt. We thought we were done with plans. Apparently this is not just for estimating how much rebar to order but it specifically shows where each rebar is placed and everything about it. It has been 2 weeks and counting after first realizing that "shop drawings" are kinda a big deal part of the plans and waiting for the engineer to make his changes. This is another case of not knowing the normal process and falling into a pit because we weren't ready for it.
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