A bit of road base

did I mention I moved about 3 tons of road base gravel before lunch? Got this pile off the truck, after going to get it after breakfast. Maybe it doesn't look like much, but it's enough. This material is from Langley Quarry, which pulls this stuff right out of the ground about 20 miles from here. Local materials!

More water proofing of the bermed side

Well, because 18 inches of mortared stone wall seemed a little light, and more than 3 feet of overhang might not cover everything, and the continous 4 inch drainpipe underneath the entire edge of the foundation might not carry all the moisture, Melissa thought we should do some more water proofing on the outside of the stone wall that will be bermed in.

When we attached the underlayment to the roof, it had a peel-away plastic, so it would stick down. Well, that means we have 2000 sq feet of this thin black plastic that we're supposed to just throw away. I'm not a big fan of filling up the landfill, so I started thinking it could be used for a waterproofing layer.

I took some old (free) paint and slopped some on the flattened cardboard boxes that the underlayment had come in, and 'glued' the black plastic film to it, in successive layers, like shingles.

Then, with about a dozen of these plastic covered cardboards, I layed them against the outside of the wall, again in a shingle-like pattern, one covering the next edge.

Thinking the stuff might want some more protection, I found some more old wrapping garbage under the yurt (the material was sort of a paper with fibers in it, like packing tape, but 4 ft wide and 12 ft long) and covered over the outside before tossing in some old styrafoam pieces that I needed to get rid of, and then maybe 20 buckets of gravel, for more drainage.

to be continued....

The Center Level Subfloor - Done!

I realize it's just the subfloor, and more layers are going on top of this, but we're really happy about having the center section - at least a third of the house -- completed. There's 3 inches of clay and heavy gravel on there, drying up in a very nice and flat floor that will allow us to work on the rest of the house on a flat surface.

We're on to the lower section already!

One Roof 'challenge' - gutter drainage

When they put the gutters on, they couldn't do what I wanted, which was have the downspouts on the east side, so they'd be on the uphill side to facilitate draining to slightly higher ground.

I was hoping to have rainwater tanks that might allow gravity flow to the bathroom and kitchen, but it looks like I've got a water pump plan in my future.

Here you can see the spout now on the west side. If we'd have thought about it, we could have built a bit of a slope into the roof to allow for eastern flow. Ah well. Now I'll have some sort of 'rain chain' that will probably go to a bowl below the surface of the future patio, which then drains to a holding tank.

Small Details in the Clearstory wall

Now that the roofers are out of the way, I needed to get back to the clearstory wall and get that further along. I've been hesitating to build the wall sections between the windows, because it looks like I'll have to cover up the knee braces (the "Y" arms) on the inside of the house, due to the way the windows are situated. You will still see them from the outside.

So, I added the little bits of plywood to the interior of the "Y"s, and then added the blockers that will support the plywood on the inside.

Here's a close up. This will get filled with rigid foam insulation, and possibly some of that spray foam stuff. Then, the outside will probably get an earthen plaster that will match the rest of the house, so those gaps will be taken care of by that process.

More Gravel floor work:

Having changed our minds again about how we're going to put in the subfloor, Melissa has gone around and put the necessary 1 inch insulation around the perimeter of the house, and then we've filled up the interior with another inch of gravel. We were going to do 4 inches of subfloor on the kitchen and bathroom sections, but now we realize that we can get awary with 3.

After I dumped and spread the extra gravel, Melissa again went around and leveled and tamped it down:

In these pictures you can also see how she's done a great job of piecing together the insulation and having it fit nicely around the curves of the walls.

The above is the bathroom section, with the foundation for the wall between the shower and toilet showing in the foreground.

Roof is Done!

The roofers left yesterday. Most of their last two days were taken up with the finicky details, going around the chimney, and the posts on the clearstory.


They also put up the gutters, which seem to match perfectly.




Glad it's finally done.

Buttress Footings

(how often do you read about those?) Due to the fact that our western wall will be the highest part, and has some tendency towards straightness, we decided that we should have a couple of buttresses connected to them to help stablize them in the event of an earthquake.

That means we need to have stem walls for them as well. That keeps the ground moisture and possible rain splash back from messing up the cob mixture. These will mostly still be under the roof line, but Melissa is on the job mortaring them together.





Above she's working on the southern one, and below is the northern one (both on the west, obviously). The little tunnels in each one are made from a small section of 4 inch plastic drainpipe that I had laying around that will allow the gray water drain system to easily pass through that area. You can see the bathroom sink drainpipe coming around the corner in the photo below.

Made some new tools:

I've been reading some woodworking books, and they all say the framing saw, or bow saw, is the way to go. So I ordered some fancy (replacement) $9 blades, and built the frames myself.



The front crosscut saw has madrone handles and tightener and red oak sides and middle. The back rip saw has madrone handles and tightener, young madrone (that is, it's the whole young tree trunk) and oak sides. There's short cut nails as the pins holding the blades in the handles.

Black Morrels

Found a batch of shrooms the other day and dried them out. Then, at dinner time, we steamed some back up, and here I am about to slice them up for a pasta dish.

Interesting floor results

So, we've already altered our building process about three times on this subfloor; I think we now have a system down we like.

What's interesting is watching how the finished stuf dries. There are small cracks where our scree boards were - sort of like it's cracking on the seams - which is no big deal, as we'll be putting more clay flooring over the top of this. Also, the parts to the west seem to be drying faster. First thought would be that it gets more sun or something, but it's all under the roof. My thought is that the gravel is deeper under that part, and so there is more places for the moisture to go.

In this picture, you can sort of see that the closest stuff is dry...actually this whole room is dry enough to walk on.