On Narrow Pond in Ant Village

Rainy morning, sunshine in the afternoon

...education in the morning and then...

needed a third leg for my saw horses....pealed two logs

put the third legs on

went to work on the south side plate
-found center
-identfied which upright logs went where on the south plate
-used those logs' diameters to notch center holes at both ends and middle
-notched side  holes for east west plates to lie in
-moved south plate off sawhorses and to its final resting place

...the south wall frame is emerging from the bark...

got the North wall bottom plate prepped....

...now to leveling for the south and north bottom plates
(yep I know, most people get a perfectly level  pad first; just happens with these specific different heights, I won't need to level the whole pad cause I am starting at the heighest end. I'll just level a 2' wide area for each plate.)

...let's see now....oh that's right, ate lunch

.....and then discovered my solar south was off.  I felt one of the stakes sorta slide on an underground rock back when I set it....today I checked it cause I had time while I worked on the debarking and the north plate.   -that little slip made a huge difference.

So I lost two hours setting the south plate to true solar south.

I suggest using four pieces of rebar and if stakes 2 and three hit a rock, dig that rock out and go straight down with your stake.

Any ways, I certainly am glad I took the time to correct the error.  The badlands of New Mexico and Arizona are full of failed passive solar because someone didn't think a little error would hurt that bad.  

In my case, a 10 degree angle error would cost me 10% efficiency every minute of every hour for 6 hours per day for as many years as the building lasts.

How much is that?  Well according to NREL, Montana gets about 410W per solar irradiance hour. 41W x 6hr =246Wh per day, so in one week, I've lost over 1.7kW.  

In a year, 52weeks x1722Wh/week
89,544 Wh, or 89.5kWh in a year.  Basically, in passive solar, a 10% error will @&$* you up....and you'll be cold and miserable.

If your passive solar isnt working, it is on you -sun is still there whether you catch it or not.  End rant.

...guess I am a little testy having to fix my error in the heat of the day :]

anyways. North plate will hopefully see level tomorrow noon.

...setting the north plate gave me fits....it did its best to be off by an 1/8 or a 16th.  Harried me so much I also wanted to verify my east west line today....

...so while verifying (one stake 2 hours before solar noon and 2 hrs after solar noon), my east west line, I started to fit the south wall members to the south plate.

Hi Orin, so it looks like your plan has bottom sill plates and the posts rest on those, will there be any central posts inside the interior space which also have sill plates? I recall Jeremy also mentioned starting with sill plates, and was wondering if there were some design inspirations that led you to this sill design vs posts in holes. Did you do some water table test holes and found posts in holes would be an issue, or was it some other preferred method?