Exterior clay plastering Weekend

Having been 'house Dad' for the last 3 weeks, due to a sore back, all credit must be given to Nicky and Greg for pushing forward with the exterior clay plastering against all odds. However with the two types of clay arriving in the nick of time; all the surrounding window insulation stuffing (that seemed to take weeks!) completed; plaster mix experiments analysed and straw wall hole stuffing eventually finished. The last, but no means small, task prior to the main plastering was to achieve a 'level playing field'. This involved making up heaps of clay-straw mix (found to be best produced in a cement mixer) and building out any low areas to the level of the main wall. Mainly around windows and the stuffed holes (where only the deeper recesses are stuffed with dry straw).


We pretty much followed the tried and tested formula of 'slip' coat then 'body' coat. The former, with a feel of thick cream, is sprayed on and then hand rubbed in. This provides the binding between the straw and the more structural body coat. This being an aggregate & fibre rich clay plaster, usually applied in 2 goes, totalling 40mm approx.



The body coat is put on by hand and is where all the fun can be had! It is a very forgiving plaster, like using straw bales as opposed to brick, and so most people find it a very satisfying experience. Thank you so much to everybody who turned up.

Closing in!

So what happens above the straw bale buck 'n' beam walls; more straw! But this time with an infill system. Due to the sloping roof angle and that a buck/beam system requires a constant level all the way round, we had a this angling section to insulate. The idea was to build a stud wall between the box beam and the top plate (under the rafters) and then insulate with wool batts. But we had so many bales left over we thought, why not use them!

The result looked very 'wealden' house design to us; Here's a link to a wonderful example:-
http://www.picturesofengland.com/England/Kent/Sevenoaks/Ightham_Mote/pictures/1095104





Here's how the idea progresses; On the outside, building wrap is secured around the stud wall and and then polyproplene 'CAVIBATS' are nailed on ready for the weatherboards .

On the inside polyester insulation (i will cover choices of insulation in a later post) is placed in the hard to reach areas. The remaining spaaces between the studs will be infilled with customised bales.


Once all the stud walls are completed, the weatherboards are nailed on. Above these, on the rafters, are nailed the soffit boards. Thus the finished effect in the photo. And sadly we bade goodbye to Craig; a year to the day. What a body of work he has left us with; just fantastic!






Windows! Greg has been busy creating them from timber i rescued from the three 19th century houses i partly took down. As with the rest of this house, this has not been a straight forward journey. Initially Greg and i spent hours searching through the container for some straighht unknotted studs (not an easy job!) for the jambs. We then needed to find even better quality timber for the sashes. This rather long winded process required various timber sizes to be cut out of some large Canadian Oregon beams i had brought up from 'Demolition World' in Invercargill. This involved pulling out all metal hardware (plus double checking with a metal detector), carting them upto the timber mill to be cut down to size, bringing them back and then Greg taking them to our dear friend Finn's fabulous workshop for the real work to begin. After many weeks the wonderful finished articles started arriving at the house.

Once the windows were installed Nicky has so patiently oiled and stained them all; twice! They look lovely.

And here's one for the family!

bale raising weekend

So the bale raising weekend arrived; a rather fabled and integral part of building a SB house in my mind (as every book/article about SB homes seems to mention one). Where do i start. It was a wonderful, empowering, surprising weekend of work, fun, friends and food. Everyone had a lovely time and we got a our strawbale walls too!

Basically our SB wall system is a buck/beam system; whereby the bucks (ladder type structures each side of the window/door frames) provide start and finish points for the bales. The top box beam (another ladder type structure)runs around the house above the bales. Within the buck/beam idea there are a number of techniques and the one we used (purely through Craig & I thinking it through as opposed to an obvious choice) was leaving the bucks 'tall' and running them through the box beam. This is supported just above the required height of the wall and the bales built up to it (i won't cover details regarding bale raising as they're in every book and best done rather than described). In our case this was 2.4m.

Once this height was reached the box beam was cranked down; acheived through running pallet strapping as a loop under the sill plate, up the wall and over the box beam. Once tightened this effectively pulls the box beam down towards the sill plate, thus compressing the bales and making the wall really secure.


The following 4 photos illustrate a important few bale techniques:-

Fitting bales between bucks around a corner. Bloody hard to do well as corners love bulging out in all directions; as this one continued to do despite everyones' best attempts. (Nicky & Greg eventually tamed it just prior to the plastering!)







Filling in gaps! Making and fitting custom sized bales; when there just isn't enough room for a 350 x 450mm bale! The one technique not sown is chainsawing bales down their length.

Lastly stuffing small holes with twisted bundles of straw.




The following 3 photos show walls raised but not compressed; hence the largish gaps and wonkyness. The third shows the debris from chainsawing!















The last 3 show the end results of everyones hard work; plus plenty of unused bales (for infilling the upper wall section; yet to be done)

Christmas fun & games with the bales

I came back after three weeks. During that 1st returned weeks the weather was fine; so i did all those really important dry weather jobs (not!); oiling the clay floor, clearing bird droppings off the P&B's, tightening all the nuts of the P&B system, clearing up the section and putting alot of the base for the clay floor down.




I then realised (a couple of days prior to christmas) that we had loads to prepare for the straw bale wall raising destined for the 8th of Jan. Thus the classic Wanaka xmas weather started (pouring rain!) and continued fairly consistently until the 9th Jan (and i mean real UK style rain!). A comic, Grand Designs style saga ensued with 2 weeks of bale soakings, people soakings, multiple handling of bales trying to keep the dry ones dry (50% perhaps) and then sort the wet ones into saveable (again 50% perhaps) and thenthe unsaveable composters.


I had heard about recompressing slack bales; (which all Kiwi bales are, construction-wise) and so we built a very basic, but highly effective, bale crusher. Thus Nicky & i spent Xmas and NY period in teh pouring rain compressing bales. The children were so patient and loved playing in the ever increasing flooded area too. Once we had compressed 150 bales (av 25/day with child interruptions) we then made small bales out of the partly wet ones for corners etc.


A friend came to help with the sill plate preparations (i thought it would take 1/2 day; it took 2 1/2), which involved filling the gap inbetween the wooden plates with polystyrene, putting the pallet strapping under the plates (more on that in the next post), preping the strapping and tightening the sill plate bolts.

To cut the rest of the story short i finished the preparations for the bale raising at 8.00 on Friday evening.

No photos of teh chaos as whenever i wanted one it was either pouring or the camera battery was flat or teh memory card full!

December

The first 3 weeks of December saw me being house Dad and Nicky on site. She loved being there and i so enjoyed being Ella & Lewis. However Nicky hasn't found time to write the blog so i will. Unfortunately as i wasn't there i can't really say much other than Craig completed the folly and Nicky did heaps of linseed oiling, moving around, staining and then restacking of the weatherboards. She also filled in all the soon-to-be inaccessible gaps in teh folly framing with insulation and put polythene on the floor (in preparation for the next stages)

November

Bucks and box beam in place ready for the bales. Basically the bucks provide a space for the window jams and the beam is cranked down on top of the bale wall to provide structural integrity. Our technique of having the beam in situ first is a little unusual (the Australian method as opposed to the Amercian apparently; Craig and i just figured it out ourselves!) as usually the required height of the bucks are estimated first and then packers used to fill a gap if required. This is really a very brief and some what poor description but any strawbale book/site details it so well that i just slacked off here! Sorry!

Pergola poles. The roughest looking landscaping ones turned out fantastic; and finished my shoulder off in the process!. Thus here's ends my involvement presently and Nicky has leapt into my shoes very enthusiastically along with..........



Enter Olly and Rich; the two responsible for the fresh burst of energy on site. I think i mixed concrete and lifted hardwood poles as enthusiastically as them once! But seriously, i've been battling with a shoulder injury for several weeks so have decided that i needed some time out. Nicky's been waiting for an opportunity to become involved; and is so far really enjoying it. She's been busy mixing (and colouring) concrete for the internal wall and (guess what!) staining weaterboards. I, on the other hand, am completly exhausted by the children!

Re-enter the 'folly' into the budget. Looks great but has already taken a heap of time and will take some more yet! Stage one; paper and battens. We are using cavibats (http://www.cavibat.co.nz/) to avoid treated timber ones. WE couldn't afford 'Proclima' paper (http://www.proclima.co.nz/)(although it appears fantastic) so used Tekton instead. There'll be plenty more aout the folly so i'll stop here. Also i'm Dad presently so haven't a clue about what's going on anyway!


A couple of interesting issues here. Basically we had planned for a masonry or earth wall here for passive solar gain. Then changed the room dimensions and thought we'd save time/money by having a framed wall instead.

However we have always loved the idea of a masonry heater (http://www.amazon.com/Book-Masonry-Stoves-Rediscovering-Warming/dp/1890132098 (inspirational book)). A friend attended a course last year at a friends strawbale house in Alexandra by one of the foremost heater builders in the States (http://mainewoodheat.com/). Unsure as to whether we would require or even afford one we just made up the foundation (bottom left in pic). A corner of framed walls is over it but has be built so that it can be altered around the heater if and when. A bit of futureproofing i guess. So we then realised that we should have more thermal mass afterall in the room. Out comes the sabresaw (first time as yet!), a bit of cutting, boxing, and mixing et viola, a mass wall within a framed wall that will be hidden behind a thin layer of plaster.

Oct - Nov - Porch & Odds & Sods

q


A few weeks of shorter projects for Craig & me; but still exciting as they all seem to produce significant steps along the path to.............? This image is being, and will continue to be, repeated alot for a while yet. Linseed oiling and staining boards of various kinds





The childrens' area has become a makeshift work for thicknessing the recycled Canadian Douglas fir beams for the mezzanine floor








The front most mezzanine beam inserted with another post; i think it looks great. The bucks to be positioned either side of window/door openings within the SB wall are already made and being stored on the sub-floor.






The 'camp kitchen' set up. Ella ,in particular, loves eating and camping on site.








The porch will be worth every cent and i think vital for an 'outdoors' family. The big window will have a bench under it for propagating seeds etc and the N window provides a lovely sunny spot in the mornings to have a quiet coffee whilst enjoying the view of the sun rising over Grandview Peak.

Bedroom areas Oct 2010

This area took almost as long as preping the bathroom slab area up; unbelievably. First stage was to insulate the inside of the footing walls with our collected poly scraps. Then the floor level was built up 350mm with compacted scalpings. Thin layer of sand then polythene over everywhere with it being tape sealed aong all joins etc. The posts were treated the same as the main house posts were; 700mm deep in concrete enclosed in a polythene 'sock' having been 'Mulsealed'. After much thought/research i decided not to insulate under this floor (obviously the subfloor will be insulated); a contraversial decision but one i will stand by. Instead i intend to exteriorally 'wing insulate' the southern and western perimeter walls. Check out:- 'http://www.thenaturalhome.com/frostwalls.htm. It seems to make sense, so we shall see

The finished clay floor level will be below the top of the footing wall; the sides of which had been insulated with poly and then DPM'ed. So this 400mm wide sloped section (from the floor to the top of the footing wall, if that makes sense!) was chicken wired and then concreted (to seal that area too), as I felt clay would not hold on the slope.


The floor bearers are from made from the rimu studs out of Paul & Michelle's house. The floor was a quick clay job, chucked down in a couple of hours over the polythene DPM; really just to seal it if the sub-floor area is ever used to store anything.





I am pretty happy with the result as only small cracks and I will seal it sometime with a linseed/beeswax combi. Not an exact recipe; just used what i could get that day and what was lying around the section. 1 trailor load of 'Cardrona' clay (pretty pebbly stuff), 1/3 trailor load of our section clay silt, a couple of sacks of different sands and scraping up scalping leftovers around the place. Leave everything open to a rainstorm over night, mix in trailor, chuck down and run compactor over it a few times.


Details of the subfloor below both sleeping areas of the house. This is the children's area which you can see is partly partitioned (probably will be an earth plaster arch or something) so they can share the room for a few years and then it can be completely separated without too much more work. We have also allowed for 2 doors in the future; one of which will now be used for the entrance to the bigger single room and the other for the time being as a door into a closet within the bedroom. Nicky, Craig and I have discussed a lot about 'future-proofing' and how to design/build now to allow for possible changes in the future. Another future-proofing feature is a slab beneath this subfloor to allow for a small masonry heater to be built (i'll cover in another post).



The west 6x2 wall for the turret between our sleeping area and the children's. This will incorporate a full height warbrobe/cupboard. The engineer precribed sheet bracing for both side walls of the folly; ie plywood or superbrace. The latter appears more inert but, after the recent Christchurch shake, we all thought (perhaps incorrectly!) that ply would be more effective as bracing. After researching heaps about ply offgassing etc, it appears 'Ecoply' offgases less formaldehyde than natural wood even though glues are still used.




Our sleeping area to the left and the children's to the right. The sub floor has no real purpose other than providing a 'sense of occasion' and differentiation between the living and sleeping areas of the house. The beams for the mezzanine floor in our area can be seen.

sept update 2

So we laid the concrete slab in another long day and then Craig got cracking on the framing for the 3 rooms. The space above the bathroom will be a storage/children's sleeping area if friends come. A changefrom the originalplan of just having it as a roof space; we're trying to squeeze every useable m3 out of the house!




Almost completed framing showing the full height pantry and a funky 'bobble' glass window we got given as a bit of a feature. I'm beginning to love the pastel colours of the 1960's lead paints!









The timetable was progressing well until Greg heard of a farm cottage available for salvaging with only a week left. WE arrived and teh tin roof had gone but we took the roof rafters down in a day and had 'em stacked away; just what we needed for the extra timber Greg required for the window frames.





Next day we stripped 3 rooms of the wall sarkign boards. It appeared the whole house was Southern Beech; a rare find indeed! We were optimistic about the floor T&G too but we we'd cut out and lifted a section the boards were riddled with borer holes so no luck there. We'll go have a final nose around after the digger has pulled the walls over so we might grab a few straight stubs and even a few weatherboards. It took Greg a day and a half to process the rafter 4x2's and both of us day to clean up the sarking. Time consuming but worth it. That'll look great on one of our ceilings!