Getting Closer -- 11/11/10

Hi All,

Here in Vermont, winter approaches whether we're ready or not!  We're getting much closer to a completed home, so I wanted to send out a quick update.

 

A flurry of activity in late summer and early fall got the exterior plasters finished before the real cold weather arrives.  Note the windows are all trimmed out, and the white corner boards, which are not-so-common in straw bale houses.

 Here's the house after the finish plaster on the outside.

White lime paint and two color samples at left.  The exterior plasters and the first 2 lime washes are complete -- we'll add a pigmented lime paint in the spring.

 

 Next, we hired Julie and Ralph to come back and put on a lime paint to protect the finished surface.

OOPS -- sideways...  Anyway, here's the surface texture after the first lime wash is scrubbed into the surface with a sponge, leaving swirled appearance -- cool!

Here's Ralph, painting away to try to finish before it gets too dark to see.  Linda and I helped paint the trim, and we just made it -- as you can see, it was already getting pretty dark.

After the white lime paint, the house has a white-on-white look.  We'll probably revert to the coffee and white coloration. like the first photo in this post.

Now the exterior is ready for winter with the exception of the cedar shingles to be applied to the entry porch roof, and if time allows, the dormers.  All the rest of the  work now goes inside to complete wiring, plumbing, re-installing the wood stove, hanging the kitchen cabinets, and all the trim and painting.

We're aiming to move in around December first, but we've decided we will celebrate Christmas 2010 in this new house no matter what!

I'll post an update on the interior work soon...  Be well!

Pouring The Radiant Floor

Hi Folks,


I'll try to post updates a little more quickly, now that I have a digital camera on loan from a friend and co-worker.


Roughly a month ago, in late July, we "poured" the concrete floor.  Had we originally planned on a concrete floor some 2 years ago, "pouring" would have been a more apt description.  Since we originally planned on a pounded earth floor, made from clay sand, straw and lime, we went ahead and built the frame, roof structure, and walls, with the idea that the site-built earthen floor would be built after most of the construction was completed.


Well, life -- and financial reality -- sometimes intervenes, and it turns out that an earthen floor would have taken longer and cost more than concrete, since we would have to hire out the work if we wanted to get into the house before this winter.  We opted for a tinted concrete floor with radiant tubes for the eventual solar heating system.  With all the walls in place, there was a lot of pouring going on, but it was pouring out wheelbarrow loads that then had to be shoveled, raked, and worked by hand quite a bit -- hot, heavy, and very humid work!

Here are a few photos of the process, which may not be in exact chronological order...

Radiant Tube Layout -- SE Corner

First comes careful planning and preparation.  The gravel and sand under the floor is smoothed and leveled.  The vapor barrier goes down (polyethylene sheeting), and the insulation is carefully fitted and sealed on all sides.  We used 3" of foam board in two layers of 1.5" cross-stacked.  The radiant tube layout reflects the thermal losses expected in a given room, the potential for solar gain from south-facing windows, and the way the room will be used.  The tubes are laid out in several loops of between 200 and 250' length.  In our case, we put out 4 x 225' loops, and one shorter loop of about 180', which will get throttled back with a balancing valve.

Buildings lose heat to the outside walls, so the first part of each loop goes right to the outer wall, and the tubing is closer together there.  More heat is applied where more heat will be lost.  The spacing of the tubes is usually lower toward the center of the building, where the heat loss to the environment is much smaller.  In the above photo, huge south-facing windows are just off-screen to the right, so the tubing is closer together on the south side of the building to re-distribute any heat gained when sunlight strikes the floor.  Toward the left, and in the foreground, the spacing is further apart.

Cement Truck and Front Door

Here's the outside view -- the cement truck pours the concrete mix through the front door...

Filling The Wheelbarrow

...to the waiting wheelbarrow.  These are maneuvered into place, where they are carefully dumped, taking great care not to damage the radiant PEX tubing.

Pouring the Concrete

A small piece of plywood is placed where the frame of the wheelbarrow would damage the tubes, and the load is carefully deposited where the spreaders need it.

Brad Dumps a Load

Even the lowly homeowner can help with this part -- no brains, just brawn needed for the wheelbarrow part!

Raking the Concrete

Since the wheelbarrow creates sloppy plops of concrete, a lot of hard hand work is needed to rake and spread and shovel the heavy mixture into place for an even, level floor.

Greg Spreads Concrete

This is Greg, the boss of the concrete crew.  He directed the layout of nails and strings to guide the pour and get the floor leveled and built up to the right height.

Ben Shovels Concrete

Ben Graham, as the general contractor on the job for the bale walls and floor system, helps shovel the concrete onto the bubble wrap insulation to create a thermal break between the floor slab and the ICF concrete grade beam that supports the walls.

More Hand Work

The concrete has to be leveled and smoothed out fairly soon after it is placed, partly for access to the area without damaging work already completed, and also to work the substance before it begins to set and stiffen up.

Toward SW Corner and Kitchen

Plumbing and drains are boxed in and protected

Smoothing and Leveling With a Scree Board

The surface is created with a LOT of heavy hand work, pushing, pulling, and spreading the stuff around to create a flat and level floor.

Work Your Way Toward The Door

Concrete work starts at the furthest corners, and work progresses toward the door, where the cement truck is filling wheelbarrows.

Hot, Heavy Work

As work progresses toward the door, it gets hotter and hotter.  The temperature outside is rising up through the 80's, but the concrete is now starting to warm up as it cures and hardens, so the inside temperature really takes off after a few hours.

Greg Power Troweling

Once the floor sets up enough to bear a little weight, the power troweler smooths the surface, and tends to bring up water from the mixture.  Experience is needed to get the floor flat and smooth, without pulling up too much water, which can change the color, texture, and durability of the final floor.

Finished Floor Toward SE Corner

 

 

The concrete is tinted to a dark charcoal gray, mostly for passive solar gain.  It will lighten as it dries, then when the painting and finish work is complete, the surface will be polished and sealed, which will bring it back to a darker color.  By 6 PM it was about 120 degrees and very nearly 100% humidity in the house, even with windows and doors open!

Finished Floor in SW Corner

Walls still need lime-milk paint, and the exposed beams will get sanded and oiled, but we're getting there by great leaps and bounds. 
 


Next up -- finish plaster on exterior, and kitchen cabinets -- can't wait!


Till next time,


Brad

Recent Progress -- July, 2010

Hi Folks,

It's been a long time since I was able to send an update since I lost my digital camera.

Here are a few photos and captions of recent work (from June & July) 

SE Corner Before Radiant Tubing

I've been using photos of this corner to show progress in stages on the project.  Here's a photo with foam insulation, but before the radiant tubing went in.

Bedroom Windows & Radiant Floor

After the vapor barrier and 3" of foam board insulation were installed, the PEX tubing for radiant floor heating was installed.  Closely spaced near the edges, where the heat loss is highest, but a low density overall, since we want the bedroom a little cooler than the rest of the house.  PEX tubing is stapled directly to the foam;  concrete slab will be poured atop this.

Linda Meets With Sam Clark

Linda meets with Sam Clark, who runs Sam Clark Design, a cabinet shop in Barre, VT.  Sam is the author of a few great books on designing and building small houses, and specializes in compact kitchen designs.  Sam Clark Design

The kitchen will be very simple, but carefully designed to get maximum utility out of a small space.  The cabinets will be fabricated in Sam's shop in Barre (about 30 miles away), and delivered in a few weeks for installation.  In the meanwhile, we need to get the plumbing roughed in, and figure out all the wiring, and pour the concrete floor...

Lots to do;  and now, more and more, the decisions need to be final (gulp!).

Cheerio,

Brad

Recent Progress -- No Photos (!)

Hi Folks,

Long time -- no post.  We're back in action with a lot happening, which is a bad time to have lost -- maybe forever -- the digital camera!  Seems I went to a site visit 2 weeks ago, and I have not seen it since.  I may have driven off with the thing on top of the car...

SO, a progress report w/out photos today, with more photos coming soon.

Here's what's been happening:

• Roof Insulation:  Dense pack cellulose at roughly R-62 in ceiling (16.5" at high density), plus other materials = ~ R-66 total.
• Insulated stem wall and wiring chases.
• Insulated north wall of utility room with 5.5" of damp-spray cellulose in 2x6 stud wall inside the bale wall (probably a total of about R-53).  This was a blast to install, and made a huge mess.  Really something to see or experience!  After the over-spray is trimmed off, it looks so neat and tidy!
• Don't Step On The Blocking!  Brad steps on fire blocking while attempting to screw plywood to ceiling and falls through one the the 2x4 interior walls, proving that 16-penny nails are no match for the finely-tuned shins, chest and back of the modern-day homo sapiens, that gravity still does work, and that tetanus shots still hurt!
• Plastering upstairs (Steen Coat and Scratch coats)
• Wood trim around window boxes.
• Finish plaster work commences downstairs.  Smooth surface with gently rounded contours.  Ready for clay paint.  Lookin' good.
• Cardboard removed where finish coat has been applied, revealing a real hint of the finished look with exposed beams -- looks FAN-TASTIC!  Wish I had the #$@*+ camera -- DOH!
• Under-floor plumbing and drain pipes.
• Venting for plumbing drains installed in ceiling.
• Greywater and blackwater drains installed in preparation for pouring the concrete floor.
• Under-floor wiring runs completed for the concrete pour.
• Worked on kitchen and bath designs, and looked at entry doors.

Coming soon:

• Completion of insulation
• Blower door test #1
• Completion of finish plasters
• Exterior plasters completed
• Wiring completed
• Concrete floor poured
• Electrical service hook-up

Stay tuned for more...

Brad Vietje,
Newbury, VT

Earthen Plasters - 2

Hi Folks,

Here's a little more about the natural earthen plasters used on our straw bale home project.  Quite a bit of the plaster work has been done by David Ludt and Nick Jackson, and for the past few weeks we've been slowly drying out the walls with the constant application of heat from the Elm wood stove.

We started with an adhesion or base coat that's rough and textured with quite a bit of chopped straw.  This plaster is based on the pioneering work of Athena & Bill Steen, so it is sometimes called the "Steen" coat:

 

Rough-Textured Adhesion Coat

The adhesion coat is allowed to dry until it begins to shrink, crack, and separate from other surfaces at the edges.  These cracks will be filled with subsequent plaster applications for a solid wall structure, and for good air sealing.

The timber frame is protected with cardboard throughout the plastering process.  The beveled window openings are still rather "hard-edged", and strips of drywall have been attached to the window framing to bind to future coats of plaster.  Additional drywall strips are then used to box in the top of the window structure, for good adhesion, as well as good air sealing with clear caulking.

When the adhesion coat has dried sufficiently, the second, or "Scratch" coat is then applied.  This varies in thickness to smooth out the contours of the walls, and the window openings are sculpted somewhat, and rounded over.

 

Air sealing is enhanced by sealing around the windows with expanding closed cell foam caulking, the application of beveled wooden strips around all the openings, as well as wallboard (sheet rock) strips, which are sealed with clear caulking.  The drywall is then covered with the scratch coat and finish coats.

 

Window recesses and scratch coat -- another view.

Note the caulking between layers of dissimilar materials.

The scratch coat then dries over a few weeks time - depends on the temperature and humidity.  We've kept the temperature between 32 degrees and about 55 degrees, and the relative humidity has been quite high (75% - 80%), due to all the moisture evaporating from the plaster.  This high humidity causes condensation on the cold surfaces of windows and the un-insulated roof upstairs, which will be remedied when the roof is ready for cellulose insulation.

As the scratch coat dries, it cracks and separates from other materials.  These cracks will be filled with the finish coat, and then sealed with the layers of clay paint on the inside.  On the outside of the house, the finish coat will be a lime plaster, and numerous pigmented lime washes will seal any cracks that develop.

Here you can see large areas drying, and darker areas still moist.  Areas with stuffing between the bales hold more moisture, and take longer to dry.

 

Cracks form as the plaster dries.  Cracks tend to form around inflexible structures, such as the saplings used to bind wall sections together or the rough 2 x 4 framing supporting the window boxes, as seen here.  Stem wall and wall outlet rough-in wiring can be seen at the bottom.  The stem wall will eventually be covered with drywall and plastered -- the space behind the drywall will be filled with dense packed cellulose insulation.

As the moisture is driven out of the plaster, it takes less heat to maintain the temperature, but we're still burning quite a bit of wood.

OK -- Time's up!  I've got to build up the fire and do some more wiring!

Earthen Plasters -1

Hi Folks.

I want to share a bit about earthen plasters.  I'm still learning, so I'll do my best to get the details right.

When most Americans think about "Plaster" they  envision powdery white, chalky stuff, like Plaster of Paris, or the insides of Drywall sheets.  Plasters come in many varieties, and many are not white or chalky.

A broader definition of plaster would include any mineral based coating that can be applied wet, and that cures or dries to a harder, more durable surface.  Thus cement stucco could be described as one kind of plaster, and drywall compound or Spackle two other sorts.

The term "Earthen Plaster" usually describes a plaster made from earth-based materials, like clay, sand, and lime, usually mixed with some sort of fibrous matter for added strength.  These materials can be purchased in relatively pure mixes, or made up from local materials found on-site.  In locations with good deposits of clay, its common for the clay to be dug up and slaked in water and then mixed into the plaster.

We're using clay plasters for both inside and out, with overcoats of Lime Plaster on the outside for durability, and clay plasters and clay paint on the inside for a better vapor barrier.  We don't have good clay deposits on the property, so we're bringing in bagged clay, and mixing it with local sand, chopped straw, and fresh manure.

Here's a tub of the "scratch", or second coating in a big tub:

 

Earthen Plaster in Tubs

This is a mix of clay, sand, chopped straw, and fresh horse manure.  These two tubs, about 900 pounds each when full, then age until we're ready to use them.  This will be the scratch coat -- on top of the adhesion coat, and eventually under the finish or top coat.  The adhesion coat was mixed with fresh cow manure, and bringing in steaming, fresh bins of sloppy cow manure did make the place smell like a dairy barn for a few weeks.

 

Finish Coat Aging Behind the Wood Stove

This tub is going to be the finish coat, and differs from the scratch coat in being less fibrous (less straw), and its made with fresh cow manure.  It's soft and gushy -- about like thick peanut butter.  Once mixed in with the clay, sand and straw, the manure smell goes away.

Adhesion Coat is Applied

Here the first, or "Adhesion" coat is applied to the walls in lower half of photo.  It is squished in pretty hard, and smooshed into all the crooks, crannies and voids in the bale wall.  You can also see one of the saplings used to stiffen the wall structure, the stuffing of clay and straw packed in-between the bales, and the cardboard that is stapled to the timber frame to prevent too much mess and staining of the wood.

 

Adhesion Coat -- West Wall

Here's the West (kitchen) wall with the first coat of plaster in process.  Wooden framing supporting the window box is still evident, and the beveled window openings can be seen here, too.

I'll send in more updates about the plastering and how it dries in later posts, but wanted to show how the process looks in each stage.  Come back in a few days for another update.

Clear skies,

Brad

Wood Heat -- Napoleon To The Rescue!

Hi Folks,

It's been a long time since I posted -- just too busy at work lately!

In order to apply the interior plasters, we need to keep the building above freezing at all times, preferably above 50 degrees (F).  I ordered a really nice little stove from Napoleon -- the 1100-PL, with cast iron legs. After much design and re-design we figured out what we'd need for Metalbestos chimney pipe, or smoke pipe, and installed it over 2 pretty darn cold days in December.

Then we hoked up the little Napoleon stove,and started heating the building...  Ahhh, wood HEAT!

Here's the cute little Napoleon stove, after installation:

Napoleon 1100PL Wood Stove

This stove has a pretty small firebox, but should be plenty to serve as back-up heat when the house is finished out.  For now, it should be large enough to keep the plaster from freezing.  This installation will be neatened up when the drywall and plaster are complete, but it should do for now.

BUT... Important Science Lesson:

The Napoleon stove spent the first 10 days or so just thawing out the walls and the building materials.  With huge tubs (~ 1800 pounds) of natural plaster frozen solid (we had low temp's around -12 F earlier), it took quite a few days to bring the place up to around 50 degrees.

Then the plaster was applied to the walls...

Turns out, when you spread the plaster, and increase its surface area by about 20-fold, it begins to cure, and lose moisture to the air through evaporation.  The evaporation process requires an energy input -- the heat of evaporation.  In this case, the energy source is heat from the stove.  As the clay dries, it begins to cool, and to keep the building around 50 degrees suddenly takes a LOT more heat!

Thus, we needed to bring in a larger wood stove for a month or so, in order to dry the plaster on the walls.  The Napoleon stove was sized for the eventual heat load, but the construction process simply takes more heat, until we get the plaster dried out!

Here's the Elm Wood Stove we borrowed for the duration of the plaster work, sitting right in front of the Napoleon:

The Elm Wood Stove c. 1989

The Elm stoves were made in Waterbury, VT, about an hour drive away, and are no longer made.  They are quite pretty things, with a barrel shape, and artistic castings and a "pie plate" front.  This one needs a good cleaning and some stove blacking, but it does work just fine.  We have it sitting on some old cast iron legs I found in the woods from the Fox Farm days.

Now we're heating TWO buildings with wood stoves, so we spend a lot of time building fires!  Tonight is very windy & snowy, and well below zero, so I have to go tend the fire in the Elm stove up in the bale house...

More later,

Brad

Zero Energy Buildings

Getting to ZERO

So, What is a Zero Energy Building ???

The goal of the project is a zero energy building, or "ZEB".  That is a building that produces all the energy it needs -- both thermal as well as electrical.  In this climate, thermal loads for a small super-insulated building are all on the heating side, as no active cooling should be needed.

A zero energy building starts with what we term "Near-ZEB Construction".  Essentially, that means a conscious effort at every phase of design and construction (or renovation) to lower the thermal and electrical loads of the structure, and all of the loads used inside that structure.  Once those loads are as low as possible, making the heat or electricity required becomes a more manageable task.

The basic question to consider when building a new structure or home, is "How much energy (fuel) do you want to buy?"  Since fuels to heat (and cool) homes are expensive, and certain to get a LOT worse in the near future, one option is to buy none, or ZERO.  Thus, the term Zero Energy Building...So, how is this possible?  Well, for the most part, our buildings and our building codes set a very low standard for thermal energy performance.  If we take the time and care to look at all the details, and carefully engineer a building to require dramatically less energy to meet its design heat load, we're a long way toward that goal of zero energy.

Near-ZEB construction is the starting point, so I'll attempt to explain what that means:

• First, consider a new building built to current building codes.  That hypothetical building we'll call code-built construction.  The heat load for such a structure is, by definition, 100% of the thermal load for a building of the same design and floor plan.
• Next, consider a building that is uses 20% less energy, or 80% of the energy consumed by the code-built home.  In this climate, that 20% threshold is required for Energy Star designation.  Thus, we'll define Energy Star Construction as a building that uses 80% of the fuel required by a Code-Built building.
• Near-ZEB Construction is a building that uses 70% less than the code-built home, so it requires only 30% of the energy of the typical code-built home.
•  ZERO Energy Buildings, or ZEB's, make all of the energy required for the building load.  Without Near-ZEB engineering, planing, and design, getting to ZERO will be very difficult, or very expensive.

Q:  But isn't Near-ZEB performance expensive?

A:  NO!  Not for new construction.

 Here's a very important fact to consider:  For new construction, spending about 10-12% more on the project (and putting that into the thermal envelope of the building) can save you 70% on heating and cooling costs -- FOREVER!  

Really -- as in, no kidding.  In other words, a code-built $200,000 house in this climate will need about 1,000 gallons of oil for heating.  Spending an extra $20,000 now will bring that down to 300 gallons -- a 70% savings.  As the price of oil (or whatever fuel) rises, the "payback" on this investment gets smaller and smaller.  Over time, it can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and can make all the difference in surviving oil shocks and rough economic times to come. Thus, the thermal performance driven by our current building code is very VERY low indeed, and Energy Star is only a small step in the right direction!

Achieving Near-ZEB performance in retrofit situations is far more difficult, and will be more expensive.  For down-to-the frame gut/rehab jobs, its very cost effective to thicken the walls and get as much insulation and air sealing in there as possible.

What does Near-ZEB construction look like?  Usually, near-ZEB performance means thicker walls and higher performing windows and doors with lower U-values (higher R-value).  It also means careful attention to all the little details of air movement, and air barrier integrity to achieve low infiltration values.  How thick the walls need to be depends on the type of insulation being used, and the design heat load of the building.

The design heat load is the # of Btu's required, per hour, to maintain a constant desired interior temperature, under the coldest conditions usually faced in the building's location.  That's not the record cold temperature, but the lowest temp's seen 98% of the time.  The assumption is that designing for the record low would be overkill for most of the time.

Thermal Performance for near-ZEB Buildings in Northern New England:  John Unger Murphy, of Murphy's CELL-TECH uses the following numbers to describe ideal near-ZEB specifications:

"5-10-20-40-80"  (note that each number is twice the preceding number).

 Meaning:

• 5 = 0.05 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals (VERY tight)
  
• 10 = R-10 Windows & Doors.  (That's a U-value of 0.10, so pretty high performance!)
• 20 = R-20 on all below grade surfaces, including basement floors
• 40 = R-40 above grade (pretty high -- 2 x 6 and R-19 fiberglass actually performs at roughly R-11)
• 80 = R-80 in the attic & roof.

Meaning:  If you do this, or get as close as possible, you can create a NEAR-ZEB building!

Wall Thickness -- (Remember the wall thickness question?...)  The wall thickness to achieve roughly R-40 is about 11" for dense-packed cellulose (R 3.8/inch), and about 6" for high-R spray foam (~R-6.8/inch, initially).   While most people haven't designed a home with 11" thick walls (or thought about how that would look and feel), getting to R-40 will cost about 3 TIMES as much with spray foam as compared to cellulose, which does level the playing field a bit.

So -- how will this bale house perform?  Well, time will reveal all.  We won't make the above goals, but we will be testing the air infiltration and seeing how close we can get to ideal Near-ZEB performance.  That will be the topic of a future post.

For now, Happy New Year, and Stay Warm!

December 16 Update

Hi Folks,


Its been a while since I sent out an update, so I thought I should.  Since the last post, we've ordered and received a nice Napoleon wood stove for heating the insides during construction, and we're set to install it TOMORROW!



That's very exciting, since we can start working on the insides once we have a source of heat.  Eventually, we'll be installing a very cool (warm) solar heating system with dynamic high-mass thermal storage (see www.thermalstoragesolutions.com), which will allow us to get a high percentage of our heat and hot water without combustion, which is pretty darned incredible -- stay tuned for more about that.  For now, we need to burn some cordwood to heat the place so we can plaster the insides, run wires and pipes all over and get the interior finished.


Here are a few photos of recent progress:

View From South

Here's the current view from the south (minus the snow).  We have windows in and temporary doors installed for the construction period, so we don't bang up the permanent ones.

The south facing roof has been kept open for mounting the solar thermal collectors, but we're re-thinking that placement, and will probably mount the evacuated tube collectors on a ground mount to the Northwest side of the house, just south of the barn (behind the house in the view above). 

Lime Wash

Cracks in the clay plaster were sealed up for winter, and a partial lime wash was added to add weather resistance against driving rain and snow.  This will be covered in more than an inch of additional plaster in the spring, but helps keep the weather out for now.

West Entry Porch

Nick Jackson (with lots of help from Siera the wonderdog) has been framing up a little entry porch from left-over timbers. 

'Nuther View

Nick did a great job creating this from 150-year-old stock.  This is now sheathed with White Cedar roof decking, (and 8" of white snow),  and pegged together with White Ash turned pegs.  It will eventually have a waterproof roof surface.

Ben Bevels Bales

Here Ben Graham is using a Lancelot chain saw wheel on an angle grinder to bevel the window openings at 45 degrees.  This helps them let in more light, and to spread that light out over a wider aperture when seen from inside.  OSHA regulations require me to inform you that I had to plead with Ben to remove the full-coverage face mask for the photo-op.

Insulated Tater Boxes

Remember all that excess loose straw?  Ben took some home to mulch his garden, and we've been covering up the raised beds to put them to bed for winter.  We leave our potatoes, carrots and parsnips in the ground, and cover with about 12" of straw.  When we need some, we go dig 'em up.  When the house is complete, we'll have a root cellar, but until then, this is a pretty darned handy way to store root crops -- hey, I'm getting hungry!

 Taters!

While I was covering up the potato beds, I couldn't resist the temptation to dig up one mound with my hands to show what's down in the earth -- beautiful potatoes!  These are pretty typical of the results we had this year, and we were really lucky -- many people lost most of their potatoes to the Late Blight, or "Irish Potato Famine Blight" -- which is what happens when we start shipping infected plants all over the country and planet through greedy agribusinesses.  Local food doesn't need to be shipped up from far, far away.  These are Kenebec Potatoes, part of a group order of seed potatoes from the local Groton Growers Market, and supplied by a local organic source.  Some of these are 6" long, and most are still healthy -- whew!

I'll try to update things a little more often over the next few months.  A lot will be happening as soon as we get some heat hooked up -- its now down around zero degrees (F) at night, so not much work gets done in that sort of cold.

Coming soon:

1. Woodstove!
2. Electrical Work!
3. Internal Plaster!
4. Plumbing!
5. Floors!
6. Roof insulation!
7. Let's get going!

Clear skies,

Brad

Walls and Windows -- Looks Like a House!

Hi All,

The house has been draped in tarps for the past 2 weeks, and looking a bit like a big funeral was going on, but the tarps were protecting the base coat of exterior plaster...

Now that the clay plaster has cured somewhat, the tarps are (mostly) off, and GOSH -- it looks like  HOUSE under there!

Here's a few photos of recent progress on the walls and windows.

Here's the south face with the west side still draped in tarps.  With the windows in, it even looks a lot like a real house!

Covers OFF.  Here's how it looked this morning (11-4-09)

Plaster curing & Nick working on blocking.

Note that some of the bales and framing show through the first layer of plaster.  The chinking between the bales is done with a mix of clay plaster and straw, so there's more moisture there, and it will take a little longer to dry out.  We had rain and a little snow last night, which didn't really change a thing.

Lumpy Walls.

The walls are lumpier than they look in most of the photos.  Most of this will be smoothed out next spring, when the other layers of plaster are applied, but there will still be an organic, not-quite-perfect look that we like.  Any small cracks in the base coat, or separations from the wood framing will be sealed up with subsequent layers of plaster.

Inside:  East Window

Everyone should have a wheelbarrow in their living room!  Here's the look with no plaster except a little bit of chinking and the window installed in the east wall.  The bales are beveled at 45 degrees to open up the window and help reflect light into the room.  Drywall "fins" can be seen around the frame -- this helps with air sealing, and will be invisible when the plaster is applied.

Southwest Corner From Inside

Here is the interior with one of the big windows at left (south) and the old house is seen through the window.  Note the saplings sewn into the walls for support when there's a large expanse with no framing.  The plaster will completely cover these.  I'm told they won't sprout branches and leaves -- we'll see.