The house is 2×4 construction with a tongue in groove 1″ board exterior and a stucco finish. The basement is 4′ poured concrete slab. It is not quite a daylight basement, the windows in it are just 12″ high and are barely 6″ off the ground.

The interior of the slab basement has 2″ beadboard foam insulation. We are adding 4″ of solid foam board insulation to the exterior from just above ground level to 2′ below the surface, with a 12″ lip. That means, effectively, digging a ditch around the entire house that’s about 2′ deep and 2′ wide.



The hard Alaskan glacial rock had to be broken up with a pick and strong shovel for most of the house, but the east side was the greatest challenge. The east side has a huge grade which slopes toward the house and ends at a 4′ rock wall that’s barely 2′ away from the side of the house.

Because the trench is usually populated with dandelions and other weeds it is hard to walk through 99% of the time. All that changed in the summer of 2009 when Tom took a backhoe to the entire hill, rock wall and all.

We still had to hand dig the ditch though, because that side yard is very narrow and the backhoe is very wide.

Our neighbor, Gary, came by and picked up several loads of big rocks (plus we delivered several loads) and pretty soon he had a nice rock wall around his front yard – something he’d been meaning to do. What a great deal all the way around!



Here’s a view in the opposite direction, showing the ditch and some of the foam. The plan for summer 2010 is to re-frame the entire house exterior (above ground) with 2×4 framing and insulate that with solid foam insulation and vapor barrier.