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!

sept update 1

Having spent 3 weeks making the boxing for the big perimeter footing pour, it takes almost that time to prep and hand pour the bathroom, toilet, pantry and porch area slab. Only slab in the house but went for concrete due to these being 'wet and functional' areas. The inside of the perimeter wall is insulated with landfill saved insulated panel foam segments; very painstaking to place in a jigsaw fashion!

The porch footings are also insulated as are the house footings inside the porch. Plumbing done (Aquatherm pipes, Greenpeace approved apparently). Then these areas are filled with 'scalpings', compacted, more reclaimed poly sheets on floor, polythene, then heating tubing and reinforcing ready for the pour


Close up of the bathroom, toilet, pantry plus the mini slabs for wood stove and washing machine with the future earth floor hallway inbetween. Yes we went for underfloor heating tubes! I ummed and ahhed for weeks over this but relatively cheap to buy and install so if we don't want to have them plumbed in right away at least there for the future. Our restored wood stove will produce heaps of hot water so if this area does end up cold then that can be put to good use heating the floor.



The funky looking footing for the masonry wall made with corrigated iron boxing (unfortunately buried of course) and same idea as above for insulating the footings beneath the sleeping areas timber sub floor






An earlier photo showing the work involved with preping for the piles to be concreted in and how much we had to build up the level of the of the ground. I lost count of the number of our trailor loads; approaching 10 i think. The weather reduced (as it still has) the entrance to our land into a mudbath so big trucks and mini tractor loading the base would have caused mayhem. Our trusty 4X4, trailor and shovel completed the job with least damage to the land. Plus the children loved seeing their old man driving an enormous loader at the local quarry to scoop the gravel up in!