Rafters, baby!

After getting all our side-beams up, it was time to focus on rafters. Before putting up a ridge beam, we needed to know what style our rafters were going to be.
They could either be set into the beam (sketch on left) or above the beams (sketch on right.) We decided to go for the inset ridge beam for extra security. Since none of our beams are directly lined up, the cutout was not actually going to be in the center- instead, most beams were going to need their sides notched out.

The first order of business in putting up the ridge beam was to even out the tops of our posts.

Phil has become quite the expert on elevated construction.

As the top of the post fell, it hit and snapped one of our supports. Everything was alright- just exciting. (The rest of the post tops gave us no problems.)

Setting the ridge beam was not too terrible. We had gotten plenty of practice putting up beams with the side beams- this was just a little higher up in the air. We pre-drilled holes into the beams for the lag screws to reduce the amount of time we had to spend up on ladders. The two outer beams got placed first to ensure that they landed halfway on our middle posts. The middle beam was then measured and cut for an exact fit.

Adam and Phil, placing the last beam.

Completed ridge beam.

The next step in the roofing process was to put up the actual rafters. Adam and I trimmed all the rafters at a 25 degree angle. (Actually, we somehow didn't get the angle right the first time, so I had to trim most of them again the next day. Oh well. Learning.) I then made the angled edge about a quarter of an inch thinner so that our true 2x6's (I think) could fit into the hurricane brackets made for dimensional 2-by's. (I don't feel comfortable typing 2-by's. It sounds right saying it, but not typing...)

Phil finds the appropriate angle/cut for the bird's mouth. We were later able to make these cuts on the ground.

After a steep learning curve, the rafters started going up pretty quickly. (By "pretty quickly," I mean 3 days. Not necessarily full days, but 3, nonetheless.)

We finished rafters today (no picture available) and went home early as a reward. Good stuff.

In the meantime, other fun and exciting things have been happening. Like getting straw!

Pallets are being used to keep the straw off the ground. We put a plastic sheet over the bales to protect from moisture and put the top and sides of the tent on.

Jason Coomes has also been out to visit us twice. Jason is going to be a new professor at Berea (teaching my Ecological Architecture class, among others.) He worked in Alabama with Rural Studio before this, and I think everyone is pretty excited to have him in Berea. He seems nice and knowledgeable (which is good, since I will be working with him next year,) although natural building is fairly new to him. Once was basically just a visit to see the project and talk about possible class trips to work on the site, but yesterday he stayed for a while and helped up put up some rafters. We then headed out to John's.

I've been to John's a few times without mentioning it in my blog. It's only been a few random days (or, in yesterday's case, half-days.) Jeff has been camping at John's, so the two of them have been continuing work without us. Without going into too much detail, here are some pictures for you. Some are mine; some are Jessa's. They are taken over the course of a couple weeks, so the heights of the walls and such vary- don't be confused.

Starting corbelling (curving the walls in to create the dome.)

The compass has letters on the vertical pole that correspond to the letters on the horizontal pole. I'm not sure who did the math, but they figured out where the wall should be at what height, so using those guidelines, the compass helps to figure out if the wall is curving in enough.)

Goofing around... It's an "UnBirthday Cake" (with teddy grahams, because that's how my mom used to do it) and a mouse drunk off tea. (Think Alice in Wonderland.)

A waterproof barrier was layed on the backside of the building since the area will later be infilled with dirt. Trying to keep out moisture.

Jeff's make-shift steps. Very helpful.

The crew, resting and visiting.

Starting the arches.
Almost done with the arch. Arch, complete. (And Jeff.)
The building, almost as it is now. Now there are two complete arches and maybe another layer or so of bags. It's an impressive place.

Oh, and for kicks, here's a picture that Jessa posted of Adam and my completed seam coverers:
I thought it was cute.

Picture bomb!

Jessa updated the HomeGrown HideAways website, adding to the blog and photo album, as well as switching a couple dates of workshops and lowering the workshop costs. Since my camera battery charger is still MIA, I stole some of her pictures. I'm going to do a quick recap of the time since my battery died...

We marked out the floor plan with marking paint directly on the foundation. We've had so many changes in the design- seeing it layed out on the ground helped a lot!

Phil and John (on the left) were the primary designers. You'll see in the photo above that we (Jeff and I, on the right) were filling bags before the design and forms were finished. I wrote about doing a lot of digging and screening in the last couple of weeks.

This is the screener (and Phil.) In the beginning, I scooped from the piles of dirt along the site directly onto the screen. The large rocks that were filtered out fell to the bottom of the screen and into a wheelbarrow (not pictured.) After a while, it was easier to shovel the dirt/clay into a bucket and pour that onto the screen. Someone would be on the other side filling bags with the finer clay/dirt mixture.

The first bags being layed were probably the most exciting, so far. There were six bags that we tamped and signed- Jessa, Phil, John, Adam, Jeff and I all got our own bags. (That's me in the picture, with Jeff and Adam's lower half.)

Our forms get a lot of questions from people who come to visit the site. Mostly, "Isn't that a small doorway?" The thing to understand about forms is that the earthbags will be stacked around them completely. Once the forms are surrounded and the arch is covered, the wood will be removed. The doorway that is in the middle of the (very large) wood arch is simply so that we can get from room to room when the walls get tall.


Each row gets two rings of bags. Each layer alternates (meaning that, in the above picture, the interior bags are vertical-ish while the exterior are horizontal-ish; for the next row, the interior will be horizontal and the top vertical.) The altering helps with structure- think bricks. In between each row of bags, we lay barbed wire. This is my favorite job on site, so far. In order to make the barbed wire stick, we have to individually poke each barb into the bags, alternating which side of the barb goes in.

We have had a lot of people helping to make the job go faster. (The picture above was taken at our end-of-day gathering.)


We haven't been at Michelle's much over the last couple of weeks, but there was one day that Phil, Jessa, Nathan and I snuck out there to get the foundation trench ready for gravel to be poured in it. This involved making cement bases for our timberframe logs.

We had to cut cardboard tubes down to size, using lines and levels and such to make sure that they were all at the same level (since the ground has a 5 inch slope from one side of the building to the other, this was very important.)

Nathan and I mixed cement. Those are 80 pound bags, so Nathan did the lifting. I held the mixer to make sure that it didn't tip. Tough job.

(I have terrible posture, I realize.) Nathan would tip the wheelbarrow up, Jessa or Phil would hold up a funnel to help guide the cement that I hoed out. Then someone would use the trowel to smooth out the top. We later stuck some J-bolts in the cement (and then got rained and hailed on and got covered in mud and dirt.)

(Today we were at John's. It was his birthday, so we had 3:00 rootbeer floats with the neighbors. Our fifth layer is done and our sixth layer is started, although, at the end of the day, we just filled bags. The electrical conduit was being placed between the fifth and sixth layer and it needs to be inspected tomorrow before we can continue placing bags. Jessa and I will be at Michelle's tomorrow and back at John's on Wednesday. Adam and Jeff are going to Florida, for different reasons, and Phil is in North Carolina on vacation with his family, so it will just be Jessa and I. Filling bags is somewhat time consuming, so Jessa suggested spending the later part of the afternoon filling bags- so we will have a stock ready for us Wednesday.)

Oh, and to clarify (because I was asked), "tamping" is compressing the contents of the bag (either using a large, flat bottomed chunk of cement ore a store-bought metal square with a broomstick-like handle) until the contents are very hard and bricklike. It requires a lot of repetitive lifting and thrusting downwards, but it works. Keeps the building solid.

I am becoming an expert digger.

Thursday, I dug all day. I was shoveling excavated dirt onto a screen to sift out large rocks. Then, someone (mostly Jeff) would scoop up the dirt and put it in a bag. Then, someone else (Jessa) would move the bag to its position in the wall, where someone else (Phil and Adam) would tamp the bags. (This is a fairly simplified version of the day, but, really, I just dug all day. Other things happened, like a bag holder being designed and forms being finished and placed.)

Yesterday was a lot of fun (to me.) The team split up, so Adam and Jeff went to John's and Phil, Jessa, Jessa's husband (Nathan) and I went to Rob and Michelle's. Jessa had purchased 40 80-pound bags of concrete, so we needed to take two trucks to carry the load. Jessa and I were in her truck- we met up with Michelle and her boys at a farm to look at bales of straw- test the wetness and size and whatnot. Everything seemed fine and the straw will be delivered in a few weeks (so Michelle doesn't have to worry about keeping them dry on her property until it's time to start strawbale construction.)

When we met up with Nathan and Phil at Michelle's (after a spurt of rain and lots of "please stop raining so this concrete doesn't get ruined..."), we started cleaning up the foundation trenches that were dug last time we were up there. We had to widen a few spots and take all the loose clay/dirt out of the bottom, squaring the edges as much as possible. Then we had to mark where the pillars for the timberframing were going to go. There are 12 pillars (which is probably overkill for this tiny structure, but we're going with it- designed by someone else) and each pillar needs a concrete base. So, using many tape measurers, line levels, yards of string, plum-bobs and lots of brain power, we marked our 12 posts and dug out where the base would go underground. Nathan and I mixed concrete in the mixer that Phil normally uses for plastering while Jessa and Phil prepared the 10 inch tubes that we would be filling- hammering rebar in the free-standing tubes for extra support. We worked out a system for filling most of the tubes- Nathan would move the wheelbarrow full of concrete to the tube and tilt it up, either Phil or Jessa would hold the "funnel" (extra tube cut open and used as a slide) and I would push the concrete with a hoe. As we were filling the first 6 (mostly buried) tubes, we saw that there were some big storm clouds coming. We started moving faster to fill the freestanding tubes,concrete although they took longer since we coudn't get the wheelbarrow close enough to pour; we had to shovel into the tubes, which were twice as tall as the tubes that were buried. We got a few filled, keeping an eye on the fast-approaching clouds that were starting to lightning. We worked through the first couple of sprinkles, but as soon as hail started falling on us, we ran inside. (Actually, Phil and I ran inside. Jessa and Nathan ran to the truck.) We waited for the rain to stop pouring for nearly an hour. Once it got down to light sprinkles, we went back outside and continued filling the last couple of tubes and leveling the tops of the tubes that had been rained on. Our shoes collected mud/clay like crazy- they became so big and heavy so quickly that it very soon became difficult to walk. We finished up though, stuck empty concrete bags over the top of the pillars (to try to protect the smooth surface from the still-falling rain), decided against laying drain tile (which was part of the original plan so that Michelle could have the gravel poured at any time) because we didn't want to risk knocking over one of the wet free-standing concrete pillars. Jessa said that she and Nathan would come back tomorrow (today) to check on the pillar bases and lay the drain tile.

By the time that we moved the rest of the concrete bags (which had been kept fairly dry throughout this whole process) into Michelle's barn and said our goodbyes, it's was 7:00, we were soaked, bad smelling and in desperate need of showers. It was fun though (although I am now going to move my rainboots into Jessa's truck.)

The First Six

Today, the first six earthbags were layed. Six earthbags, signed by the six people working on the building: John, Jessa, Phil, Adam, Jeff and myself.

Adam and I started our day finishing an arch for a doorway. This took a very long time- things didn't square up very well and we had to disassemble. I discovered that screws are infinitely better for problem items than nails. At least screws are easy to take out. (During this time, Phil, Jessa and Jeff were working at the top of the hill- not sure on what...)

After lunch, Adam and I helped Jessa with filling earthbags. We didn't want to lay any yet- I think we wanted to wait until we had all the forms built. John and Phil worked on making a giant arch for a large entry-way. We shoveled dirt off the piles made during the excavation onto a homemade screen, which was at an angle so big rocks would fall into a bucket while small rocks and clay/dirt would fall down onto a pile, which was later scooped into bags and set off to the side for tomorrow.

We got a visit from the codes officials- they had to come inspect the foundation. Duane (the codes official who gave us our permit) did not come, but sent two other guys who didn't seem to have much background on earthbag. I think they had been told the general idea, but they asked lots of questions and were interested in the earthbag bible book that we've been using. They said things were good to go "for now"- I think these codes people are just curious enough to let us do this.

My back was a little sore today. I'm trying to be careful to lift with my legs and not my back, but I have such terrible posture anyways... Even sitting can make my back hurt. I know I will have issues with this in the future- trying to be conscious of it now. Tomorrow, I will be sure to take my tylonel/pain reliever with me.

Jeff is nice- not quite what I was expecting. I think I am not used to males under the age of 30 working in the sustainability realm. He's very nice though and seems to know what he's talking about. After work, I took him and Adam out for pizza at Papaleno's and, later, he showed me pictures of an 11-dome house that he just helped construct in California. Seems like a smart, easygoing guy.

I think tomorrow will be lots of shoveling and bagging dirt. Tomorrow and the next couple of weeks.

I really need to find my camera battery charger.

Building Forms

We're starting work late today, so I have time to update.

The last two days have been exhausting. Good, but exhausting. This is why there have not been updates.

This is the first workshop week scheduled for the summer. Unfortunately, nobody signed up for the first workshop, very possibly because of the late start on advertising. So, it's been Jessa, Phil, John, Adam and I.

Monday was a form-building day. (My camera battery is dead, so I don't have pictures, but hopefully Phil will send me some of his and I can post a few.) We built arches for the doorway- these are half-cylinders- they are a foot and a half thick so that they go the entire width of the wall. We constructed tall, thin blocks to hold the arches up for the doorways. We also built door frames. (The arches are for doorless doorways. The door frames are for actual doors.) These pieces will be set at the beginning of construction and bags will be placed around them. Once they are covered, the arches and blocks holding them up will be taken out and the earthbag will stay arched. (The door frames will stay in the walls and doors will be screwed onto them.) Most of this stuff was built from (or at least supported by) salvaged pallets. We worked in the sun and were very thankful for our breaks.

Yesterday, John and Adam weren't with us (at least, not for the majority of the time.) Jessa and I continued to work on forms while Phil worked on leveling the gravel foundation (which had finished being placed Monday night.) After lunch, I helped Phil level and tamp the foundation. Lots of shoveling gravel. The floorplan changed a little because of fun whims, but nothing too extreme. It wasn't near as hot outside. The lack of people made progress seem much slower than Monday's. I hammered my thumb pretty hard- it is still colorful underneath the nail and a little painful to put too much pressure on.

Today, Adam and John will be with us on site, as well as Jeff, who drove up from Florida last night. We will be placing (and signing and taking pictures of) the first earthbag. Exciting stuff.