OK, more progress this week, it's finally starting to look like something. Nothing happened all last week; the dirt contractor took the week off to take his daughter to the national archery championships in Louisville, Kentucky. His daughter won Texas for her age group (high school), and placed 68th out of a thousand contestants in Louisville. Her first time at this competition too.
Once we had enough dirt on top and in the back to make a ramp for the track steer, it went pretty fast up on top. You just have to be careful to always be pushing dirt in front of you, so you don't run on the plastic sheeting and waterproofing underneath. The 1st layer is almost complete, just need a little more on the edges by the parapet wall, and to smooth everything so we can lay down a layer of 1" expanded polystyrene insulation and another layer of plastic sheeting:
The other thing you have to be careful of, is never to touch (with the track steer) any of the vent stacks or concrete pillars up there. Fortunately, there is enough room between most of them to maneuver, but you still have to watch, especially when backing up. Fortunately, the dirt contractor is an expert and an artist with his track steer. He rented a smaller 75 hp one just to work up on top.
It's starting to look like something, now that the domes are all covered and valleys between them filled in and smoothed out. One more day of track steer work should make us ready to lay the EPS and sheeting. Hopefully the wind won't be bad when the time comes - the EPS sheets are 16' long by 4' wide, but they're really light and would blow away easily.
Meanwhile, back up the road at my shooting range, the soil processor is still at work. Another big (95hp) track steer is feeding it. You put raw material (excavated from the hill to build the house) in at one end, and it goes through a big turning drum. The drum exterior is a 1" open grid, so everything less than 1" in diameter goes out a conveyor on the side, and everything 1" or larger goes out another conveyor on the end. Powered by it's own diesel engine. This thing is expensive to rent, but really worth it, to have sifted soil to put on the top of the house and not have to worry about grinding rocks into/through the waterproofing.