Building Month

Getting down to the business of building

The Index

This index updated June 2, 1999.

May 2, 1999

Today was a day to dream a little. I am thinking of building a little nook in the SW corner of the garage, make some bench seats out of strawbales and maybe a fence along the western property line. I want to build a cob (straw, clay, sand, soil & water) gecko slinking up the corner SE corner of the garage. I envision it wrapping up around the corner of the garage. Of course this will not be until we actually do the adobe finishing a week or two later.

Another idea is to do some sunburst design on the garages east facing wall, maybe out of metal, tile or glass. At this point I do not know what color it will be, but it won't be beige.

I am starting to like this place. I was thinking off putting the house on the market in June, and now I am not so sure. I bet I could sleep in the garage!

May 3, 1999

We got David wired. His email is tlp@canada.com. The tlp is for Three Little Pigs.

May 5, 1999

Some new ideas. I want to put together a time capsule to be placed in the walls and noted with a plaque of some sort. A newspaper from the day, pictures and stuff from the year 1999. I have no idea when it will be unearthed, but it is my message to the future.

A neighbour contacted someone at the Edmonton Journal newspaper and they seem interested in doing a little piece on this in their life section. Stay tuned.

David finished the plywood forms and tied the rebar. It looks pretty cool. It is starting to come together! We will probably pour the concrete monday. This weekend I will be kayaking on the Pembina River and David will be up for a celebration in Valleyview. Next week is crunch time. Bring it on.

May 6, 1999

David picked up a great wooden door and some windows at the Architectural Clearinghouse on Calgary Trail North.

May 11, 1999

Concrete day! The day was perfect, overcast and a little cool, and after the work was done the sun came out and things were nice and warm.

We had ordered the cement from LaFarge and they helped us estimate 5.5 cubic yards of concrete. Our pad was 22'4" by 18'. The edge of the pad would have a depth of 10" for about a foot, then sloping up to a 4" thickness in the centre. My figures were:

Volume of maximum size pad - Volume of the sloped area. The Maximum Size Pad: height x length x width 10" x (22'4") x (18') = 10" x 268" x 216" = 578,880 cubic inches = 335 cubic feet = 12 cubic yards The Sloped Area 6" x 19' x 15' = 196,992 cubic inches = 114 cubic feet ~= 4 cubic yards Therefore: 12 - 4 = 8 cubic yards.

I guess the result is that I should have estimated. We eventually ordered 8,5 cubic yards, and had enough to slope a little driveway onto the pad.

I was quite impressed that they said that they would be there at 11:30 and they were there on the nose. I mean dead on. We had driver #27, Reid L. who was absolutely wonderful and comes highly recommended by us. Friendly and helpful and a gentleman. Ask for him by name. :)

Pouring and leveling and screeding (is that the word?) is a lot of work, luckily we did not have to use any wheelbarrels. We were quite impressed by out first pad. The pictures are in the photo gallery. Concrete is not cheap, 8.5 yards comes to $1254.04 (that includes GST).

May 15, 1999

We were supposed to be building today. We postponed due to the rain and wind and snow (forecast, but there was none.) It wasn't a weekend to build.

There are a few reasons that we did not building this weekend.

The Rain. The straw is best kept as dry. The straw over the course of years does lose moisture but it is best for it to be dry when building.
The Wind. Even raining out is not a problem keeping bales dry, as long as they are under a tarp. But with the wind this would have been trickey.
The Site. We are anticipating a few people and the site would havwe quickly turned into a mud bath had we built today. And the straw is safely in a barn in the country.
The Cold. Working in the sun is fun! Working in the cold isn't cool.
The Experience. I want this to be a fun experience, with time afterwards to enjoy conversation, community, music and some food.

For these reasons, we will be building the weekend of May 22 & 23. If you want to be alerted by email just let me know.

May 16, 1999

Finally the big site redesign. Hopefully this format is a little cleaner to develop on and for you to navigate! It is a lot of work. Time to look for an HTML package and not do this by hand anymore!

May 17, 1999

We started building the base wall assembly. Got a fair amount done and even got the corner pieces and door boxes in to butt the straw into. There are some photos of this prep work. That evening in the mail was the offical building permit. And there was one condition, that there had to be pressurized wood where the wood touches the concrete! Oh no! I phoned to see if we could just paint on the preservative, but that was an expected NOPE.

May 19, 1999

We worked on the base wall assembly and the roof bearing assembly. The base wall will rest on 2x4s that contact the concrete. Between the lattice-work of this assembly we have used EPS foam and have caulked any openings. This will keep the straw from coming in contact with the concrete and prevent any wicking of water into the strawbale walls. It is a little tedious work, but it is now done.

We replaced the old base wall assembly with pressure treated wood as per the permit conditions. We had painted the old wood with preservative, but that was not good enough. We placed EPS (non CFC) foam down inside the base wall assembly and caulked it in today. We will build the window box and the Roof Bearing Assembly (RBA) thursday.

Replace the base wall 2x4s with pressurized lumber and placed the foam between the wood so that the straw resting upon them does not contact the concrete floor - and no moisture wicks up. We also caulked the cracks. The weekend is shaping up to be okay.

Confirmed with the caterer that it is a go. "A little nervous, am I." (with apologies to Yoda for that!!)

May 20, 1999

Finally converted all the data from the old web site.

Straw arrives tomorrow morning at 8am. We built the Roof Bearing Assembly (RBA) today and finished of the base wall assembly. The sun was shining, there were clouds in the sky and it was a great evening to be working.

May 21, 1999

Straw arrives today.

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This page updated June 2, 1999.