Going Up.

Alright guys. I've been avoiding posting. So much has happened at Michelle's... (This entry was written while listening to NPR's "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" and talking to my mother on the phone. Therefore, it might have a few mistakes/redundancies in it. I might go back and edit later. It just took way too long to write and I am glad that it is done.)

For kicks, here's what Michelle's looked like when you guys last heard from me:
Actually, it wasn't this built up. The stemwall was not complete at the time of my last post. Sunday, (the day that we were supposed to meet with a guy named Jeff to get some timberframing help but he didn't show,) we finished the stemwall.

Here's a now picture:
It has grown. Here's how:
These are the U-brackets that we attached to the concrete piers. We attached the whole in the bottom to the screw on the J-bolt that was sunk into the pier. The two holes on each side of the bracket would later be attached to a log.

The original plan was to lift the logs using a nifty tripod device.
The plan was to lift the log about halfway up using strength and a miniature tripod and then continue lifting the log into place on the pier with the big tripod.
This plan was unsuccessful. We did not have the manpower. So, we got machine-power.
Harol, the neighbor with the bobcat and cute dogs, came to help. Jessa's husband, Nathan, also came.
We used a safety chain on all our logs, which did not keep the raising process from being exceptionally nerve-wracking. Especially since Nathan had to crawl on top of the bobcat to move the chain around.
After we got the logs vertical, we used 2x4s for extra support.
Some of the logs had been notched out the previous week. The notches had to be lined up with the U-bracket so that the log would fit. There are also holes on the bottom of the logs that had to be lined up with the J-bolt.
Sometimes getting the logs to line up took a little "convincing."
Once the logs were in place, we screwed the two bottom screws in, then stood back and (judging primarily by sight) made sure the logs were straight. Then put our braces in and then a few more screws.
3 logs up. ^_^ The fourth log was difficult to get up. We didn't want to run over the stemwall and we couldn't really get to the pier from the outside because of fence nearby.
(I just like this picture.) We started at the pole from the outside, and once it was fairly vertical, it tipped. The chain held the log as it went from vertical to horizontal, knocking and breaking one of the braces on the first log. There were some screams and gasps, but everything was fine and the first log stayed standing.
We ended up putting up the fourth log from the inside.

The building, up. Hoorah!
The next day, we had to put up our sideboards. We hadn't picked up our scaffolding yet, so we winged it. Scarily. A shaky 10x2 is not a comfortable thing to stand on. Phil did, though, for the majority of the day. The 10x2 sideboards needed a place to rest, so Phil carved notches. He started just using a chisel, but soon picked up his chainsaw. I helped some, although found that I am slightly afraid of heights when on such rickity scaffolding.
It took us a full day to get these five 10x2s up, but the next day went by much faster. I believe in learning curves. (This is a favorite picture, if only because Phil and Jessa's butts are up in the air. Lovely.)
The supports have made for some awkward hammering so far, but we're leaving them up as long as we can.

The next step was putting up the floor joists for the loft. Although the loft covers two thirds of the building, we were only prepared to put up one section of joists. The second section will come when we put the curved cob wall in- the joists will be built into the cob.

The joists weren't a huge issue, as long as we measured our notches correctly. I did get to use a chainsaw for the first time in my life. Wonderful stuff.

Today, we were going to build stairs. Phil was looking at the plans and realized that, according the the plans, the stairs were only a few feet below the sideboards, meaning that people were going to have to duck quite a bit. This was not good. We decided to move the stairs a couple feet towards the curved wall, so there's less of a landing. When we move the stairs as far as we can and allow 6 feet under the sideboard to walk under, we still needed some steep stairs. 9 1/2 inch rise and 9 inch run.
Phil marked the stairs out, using a textbook from a construction short-term class. (I get a personal kick out of doing stuff that nobody on our team has done before, like stair building. That way, we're all on the same level. Learning together. Kinda.)

When Phil started cutting, the lumber REALLY started cracking. He decided that we need more lumber to act as a backing. We are going to pick that up tomorrow.

So, with no stairs to build, we were searching for something to do. The next step in our progress is going to be getting a roof up. Phil thought that maybe we could go ahead and trim the tops of the posts, since they were all a little long. Thus:
He put out a 10x2 to stand on, but it was a little too uncomfortable. We decided to wait until we got a temporary floor down on our joists (tomorrow, most likely) so we can use ladders and scaffolding and such. It would be safer and easier. And we got to leave the site early today because there was nothing else we could really do.

And, just because this picture did not fit into my narrative anywhere:
Adam and Nibbles, Harol's dog. Harol has another dog named Red who is super affectionate and rides around with Harol in his mule.

I'm a barb-y girl.

(This entry is long and disorganized and possibly confusing. This is your prewarning.)

Today was a good day out at John's. Not that we ever have bad days. I just feel like there was a lot to say about today. I think I did a tiny bit of everything today at the site. Even tamping. Barely.

Richard, the SENS director at Berea and one of my professors, came out to visit the site. He asked how everything was going- it was still a little too early in the morning to be entirely enthusiastic, so I think he got short answers. He asked if I was learning a lot, which I kept thinking about throughout the day. Yes, I have learned a lot. It's very specific though; I have learned a lot about building an earthbag dome. I have learned how to strip trees and pour concrete and hammer without smashing my thumb. I am gaining comfort with the processes of natural building. I think when I began my internship, natural building was something that I had just read about, seen pictures of, and seen in the movies Richard showed. While it made sense, it wasn't extremely tangible. Now that I've been working on the process for several weeks now, I recognize the amount of work, thought, time and materials that goes into natural building. I think this means I'm learning things.

While I've done this before, I feel that I should mention to my Loyal Blog Readers a process that I get too much joy out of doing- that is, pinning bags. There are a few places in the walls where a bag's open end will be facing an open area (as opposed to our normal stacking method where the open ends stack against other bags, keeping everything tight.) Simply folding the bags' ends doesn't work very well- they tend to come open and spill dirt. Instead, we fold over the ends and take two nails and pin the side using the nails. Sometimes it's tough to get the nails to go all the way through- those bags are tough. Phil suggested using tie-wire instead of nails- to make the wire go in and out and twist it shut. I tried that and it worked decently, but the wire bent a bit as I tried to stick it though the bags. I could go either way as far as what I pin the bags with, but I like the look of (and get more personal enjoyment out of) using nails.

Phil also showed me another way to lay the barbed wire. Once the walls get to be four feet high (which will be very soon,) we will start the curve to the dome. We will take each layer in a bit more. Since our bags are so much smaller than typical bags used for earthbag building (I think ours are a foot wide,) we decided to make the walls two bags wide. This will make it easier to tamp and give a little more structural integrity.

I do not feel capable of explaining this correctly. Thus, drawings! Behold, my mad Paint skillz.

(Above) This is the way we are currently stacking our walls. (This would be the view from above.) Each course would look like this, but the directions of the bags alternate. (The next course would, if drawn, have the vertical bags on top and the horizontal on bottom.) The red shows where we put our barbed wire. On the vertical bags, we keep it low enough to be able to snatch onto the horizontal bags that will be stacked on top of it. (I hope this makes sense.)
This is the way that we are switching to after four feet. Because the bags are not alternating directions, they are, essentially, forming two walls side by side. We need to connect the two walls. So we use barbed wire.
This is the method that I started doing. It was very similar to my straight barbed wiring in that it was forced into place and pinned where I wanted it.
This is what Phil suggested. He called this method "serpentine." Instead of straightening the barbed wire when pulling it off the roll, we keep the natural curl and just lay that down. Sounds good in theory, but I really did not like it. It did not want to stay flat on the bags and kept jumping up and smacking my arms. I didn't feel like I had much control over it. I used it for a while, but then decided to switch back to my method.

(I am now done with my explaining of barbed wire.)

John had me do more math today to figure out how many bags we were going to need for something. (Now that I think of it, I can't remember what exactly was being calculated. I was too focused on numbers.) I really am rusty on my math. Easy math too. Subtraction. But I came up with the right answer eventually.

It rained today- we saw the clouds coming and were pretty ready to run to the neighbor's porch by the time it started raining on us. It was a hard rain, for about 15 minutes. We took some bags that needed to be turned inside out onto the porch.

There are two dogs at Egret's Cove and I love them very much. They both came up to the site today to walk around and visit. One of the dogs, who is quite short, followed Jessa up onto the wall, which is fairly tall. It was immensely cute.

***

Yesterday, Phil and I went out to Michelle's and stripped trees for her timberframe. I used a machete and a draw knife. Both of these had very short handles (in comparison to Phil's tool that I cannot remember the name of that had a very long handle with a flat metal piece on the end for wedging underneath the bark.) This means, I got to crawl all over these logs. Most of the logs were pine, and the amount of rosin they contained was ridiculous. When I got home, my shins and arms had rosin and dirt crusted on them. My back also hurt from leaning over all day. We left with one and two half trees left to de-bark. We stripped 10. We are going back tomorrow to finish stripping and start filling bags for Michelle's earthbag stemwall.

Picking Trees

Yesterday was the day for picking out trees. Michelle's strawbale/cob studio has a timber frame, so we had to go pick out the trees to be used. Phil already had access to three locust logs that would work as posts on the exterior of the building, so we needed nine more posts for the interior of the building. The posts are going to keep their natural round shape (as opposed to being milled.) We also needed several pieces of 8 foot long curved wood for some interior support/aesthetics in the loft.

We went to visit Tim, our tree-cutter who has a very nice wooded piece of property (and cherry trees and a horse and two very big dogs.) He said that he could probably harvest enough pine for the interior posts. We walked into the woods to get a better look at his trees. The path was incredibly slick from the night before's rain and was fairly steep.

Phil and Jessa (and a big dog)

Michelle and her two boys.

The hike back down. Slippery!

Measuring a curved log for the loft.

After leaving Tim's, we stopped by a place nearby where Michelle was getting some windows from. The truck wasn't big enough to carry the windows, so we decided to come back with the trailer.

Phil, Jessa and I went to look at another patch of bamboo that we might be cutting from for John's house. We will be cutting today.

Planning the Summer

I had a meeting with Phil and Jessa yesterday. I was waking up from a nap that I took to get rid of a headache, so I was fairly low energy. The meeting went well though and I now feel more comfortable with what I'm going to be doing this summer.

There are three buildings that I am going to be working on.

1. John's earthbag dome. This is the structure that I'm most familiar with- I've been following the progress as John, Phil and Jessa have been designing and dealing with codes people. This structure is unique because it's actually a house. From what it sounded like, nobody has lived full-time in any of the structures that Phil or Jessa have made.
2. Carol's cob pottery studio. This will be a round structure with a shed roof.
3. Michelle and Rob's strawbale and cob art studio. Three walls will be strawbale and the fourth will be cob. Cob needs to be round, so the fourth wall, the southfacing wall, will be rounded, allowing for more thermal mass.

We set up a schedule for workshops for the summer. Jessa wanted to check with the project owners to make sure that the weeks we designated to work on their buildings was alright with them, so I'm going to wait until I hear confirmation from that before posting the complete schedule, but I will say (that this sentence is getting very long and) that there are nine straight weeks of workshops that I will be helping out with. The plan is to hold workshops Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 with long lunch breaks. We're hoping that each workshop has 5 to 15 people. The workshops will start June 16th, two weeks after my internship officially starts. Phil and I will be doing prep-work in those two weeks. I'm waiting to hear more about that.

June 10th I have a doctor's appointment. July 30th I go to the Warped Tour for free tabling for the Rainforest Action Network. I honestly know nothing about this- a friend of mine (Lilly) asked me if I wanted to join her. I will be recieving information in the mail to pass out, etc. I just found out that it was July, not June, so I will have to tell Jessa next time I see her.

I'm taking care of the animals now. They are sweet and wonderful. Even the shy cat (Sara) let me pet on her for a while. Good stuff.

Just a little update...

I am officially done with this semester of school. Finally. I think I'm mostly done packing up my room as well. I'll be moving into the SENS house on Sunday. Monday through Saturday, I will be staying at a woman named Judy's house taking care of her (adorable) pets. She lives about 11 miles off campus, so it will be a nice little mini-vacation. I am coming back to campus on Tuesday at 1 to meet up with Phil and Jessa to "hammer down a bunch of details for this summer." I'm looking forward to my first week of summer.