erinisshovelinggravel.com

Good news! I ordered a new camera battery charger and it was delivered today! We no longer need to rely on 5 minute Paint jobs! (There are some pictures in this post. They are Jessa's. Enjoy.)

We went to Michelle's on Wednesday and Friday. It's starting to get exciting out there- the site actually looks like we're going to be building something there.

On Wednesday, we finished stripping the trees. Locust trees are far harder to strip than pine, but luckily, there were only two locusts.
(See the tree that is the second closest? That one was the toughest to strip. All those curves and knots. Looks good now, but not an easy job.)

The last of our gravel was delivered. When Phil and I were out there Monday, there was some gravel, but we still needed a little more for a corner and to fill the bags for the stemwall. Jessa's mom was hit on by the gravel deliverer. Good stuff.

Just for kicks, here's the site before gravel:
Notice the columns. They were erected in the rain. They will hold our logs, which will hold the building. We are counting on these columns. (Jessa did a test to see if the columns were all in line and level, as we planned them to be. Only a few are a little off, and it's nothing that can't be compensated for when we cut the logs. Good.) Also, notice that, at the time that this picture was taken, the topsoil was not completely removed. Lastly, please notice the drain tile, which slopes downhill (thanks to some great digging) and comes out to daylight on the side of the hill (per code requirements.)

Post-gravel:
This picture was taken yesterday. I dub yesterday "Day of Extreme Heat." It was hot. We moved the tent-ish-thing to where we were working, but it was still, very hot. Please note in this picture, the pillars are mostly covered. By the time the floor gets put in, only a couple inches will be showing. Note me, filling bags (the same kind as what we use at John's) with gravel. This will make up the stemwall. The straw bales will rest on top of the bags. Notice the two rolls of chicken wire that were (later) rolled out so that the earthbags could be placed on top of them. They will, later, wrap around the earthbags, providing extra strength and unity in the stemwall as well as giving us something to plaster to. Note the lumber in the background that will be used throughout the structure.
The beginning of building. We are finally going vertical. (I can't really see the chicken wire in this picture, so I assume you can't either. I promise it's there though.)

Tomorrow (yes, Sunday,) we are going out to meet up with a guy named Paul who knows how to timberframe. I think Phil and Jessa both wanted someone with more experience in on this step, just to make sure things go well. We're going to put our long logs up. I will take pictures.

Now, another "picture bomb," featuring John's house. (I was only there for a few hours on Thursday, filling bags. I had something else I had to do in the afternoon. No real updates from Thursday.) (These pictures were taken a little while ago. Our walls are higher now.)

Electrical has been set. It was a little tricky bagging around the outlets, but we succeeded. They are nailed/screwed/attached to a flat piece of wood, which is nailed into the bags. We used a slightly-less-full bag on top of the outlets, molding it around the outlet as much as possible. Placing electrical stuff has been mostly John's project.
Another one of John's projects has been meeting code requirements for plumbing. Even though John has no intention of putting a commode in his bathroom, he has to put the plumbing in to support one. The pipe sticking directly up is for his non-existent toilet. The other lines lead to the kitchen and shower (I think. Again, this is John's project mostly, so I don't know a ton about it.) John has had to re-do the plumbing multiple times to make the codes inspectors happy.
He had to dig underneath the wall at one point (to get the plumbing to go to the kitchen.) Nothing collapsed. Even when John stood on top of the wall. We must be doing something right.
The dome is going to be 16 feet tall. This pole is 16 feet tall. It's weird to see how far we still have to go. The pole will be part of the compass once we start arching the dome (after the four foot mark that you can see painted on the door forms.) (We're probably beyond that point by now- I haven't been at John's much in the last several days, but after I left Thursday, more stacking was done and Jeff is back and was stacking on Friday.) I will post more about the compass as I learn more about it. (If you look very closely, you might see a tiny orange flag at the top of the pole. We needed a flag.)
Meet my least favorite job. Tamping. Since I've posted on this site that it is my least favorite job, Phil and Jessa always get a chuckle when I do it. I really don't mind it, but if there's something else that needs to be done, I will generally go to that other job. In this picture, you can see both kinds of tampers. The store-bought one that I am using (my favorite) and the homemade one sitting on the ground next to me.

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.

Different Days

Tuesday- Michelle's
The boys were gone and, for the first time, it was just Jessa and I working. And it went rather well. We went to Michelle's to finish taking the topsoil of the un-dug part of our foundation. (This is something that we asked the neighbor to do before digging the foundation, but somehow, it was not done.) Jessa had come out previously and dug for five hours, only getting halfway across, so I was afraid that this was going to take the whole day. I started digging while Jessa finished laying the drain tile. It wasn't bad- it was just a matter of removing the top 8 inches or so. Once Jessa hopped up and helped dig, it took no time at all. We were done by noon. Having nothing else to do on that site, we went home.

Wednesday- John's
Jessa and I were expecting a slow moving day, since it was just going to be the two of us and John. However, that was not the case. Many of the neighbors stayed and helped fill bags for a while, Jessa's mom came back out to help and we got nearly two rows layed. I filled bags some, layed barbed wire, placed bags and tamped. (A lot. I now have blisters on my hands. Tamping is still the least favorite.) At the end of the day, some of John's family came to visit and Thom Price came to visit (and bring us Italian chocolates. Yum.) It was a good day, and was far more productive than we imagined it would be.

Thursday- Jessa's
Jessa and I were on our way out to Michelle's to strip timber. We called Michelle to let her know that we were stopping by Lowes, so we'd be later than expected. When we called, Michelle informed us that the trees hadn't been delivered yet. Having nothing else to do at Michelle's, we turned around and headed back into Berea. Instead of going to John's (since he wouldn't be expecting us,) we went to finish up an example solar house for Jessa's previous job. The house was probably five feet tall at the highest point in the roof and had solar shingles and a floppy solar panel. The house just had a few finishing touches that it needed- it had a few screws that stuck out a tiny bit, the floppy solar panel needed to be attached and the floor needed to be waterproofed. The nails were tiny and only stuck out a little, but we were afraid that a kid walking through the house might scratch their finger, so we cut off the tips of the screws. (We started using little wooden biscuits to cover the tips, but it didn't seem extremely sturdy, so we decided to cut the tips off.) We then used some sticky tar-like substance to make the solar panel stick to the roof. Then we painted a thin layer of sealer onto the floor (discovering that it gets the sticky tarlike substance off our hands. Interesting.) I think Jessa was glad to finally have this project done, and I was glad for a change of pace.

Friday was supposed to be (and was) rainy (and the fourth of July), so we didn't go out.

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.

Productivity!

First, we had lots of help lately(Adam, Jeff, Lilly, Jessa's mom, Nathan, and random other visitors.) These people have been providing lots of entertainment, as well as energy and extra hands to do some work.

Second, we found a quicker method of filling bags. Instead of using the dirt that was excavated, which needed to be sifted because it was full of large rocks and clay chunks, we are using rock dust, which comes from the quarry up the road. We fill a bucket about halfway with rock dust and then dump it into a bag that is being held by someone who gets the (oh-so-difficult) job of sitting on a bucket, holding a bag. (I don't really like that job.) This goes a lot quicker, although the bags weigh more. The bags are about twice as thick though, so we won't need as many to build the dome. (There was a point where we thought we might need twice as many bags as originally predicted. I'm not sure what the new estimate is, although, since these bags are fairly small, we will be putting in a second order.) Right now, the rock dust pile is at the bottom of the hill, so it needs to be hauled in a truck up to John's site (but tomorrow someone with a bobcat is coming to move the pile to the top of the hill.)

While half the team is filling bags at the bottom of the hill, the other half has been at the top of the hill, placing bags, tamping and barb-wiring.

We are about a third of the way done with our fourth layer.

It rained today. Not for a long time. Just enough to cool us down (and get our clothes wet.)

(Just a note- we are tying extra bits of wire to the barbed wire that stick out a few inches towards the interior of the building. This wire will later be used to tie chicken wire to the walls. This chicken wire will help the earthen plaster stick to the bags better. Ingenious.)

None of this is particularly easy work. Some parts are more labor intensive than others. My order of preference (so far) on these jobs is as follows:

1. laying barbed wire
2. placing bags
3. filling and pouring buckets
   
4. holding the bags as they are filled
5. tamping

But I'll do whatever I'm told. (Although I suck at tamping, so far. I am good at barb-wiring.)

My back has been a little sore lately (which is why holding the bags as they are being filled is so low on my list- it just hurts.) I'm fairly certain that my posture is terrible. I bought a back brace today at Lowes, although I'm not sure if my ego will allow for me to wear it. We will see. (I also bought a pair of gloves similar to Jessa's- I have worn them and know that they fit and that I like them. I want to wear them everywhere. I also bought two cheap-o pairs of gloves for my guests who are helping out. Also bought some new headbands, since mine are getting so gross so fast.)

Jeff is going to be with us for the summer. The original plan was a two week visit (which would be over tomorrow- hard to believe) and then he'd be off to do some natural building in Spain. The Spain thing got canceled, so he's going home for a week or so and then coming back. I think he wants to learn more about plastering.

2 days.

Almost two entire rows of bags have been layed. The mountains of dirt that we are using to fill the bags are getting noticeably smaller. The door frames have been attached to the walls (by nailing the frame to a piece of wood that goes between two layers.)

Most of my time has been spent digging. I layed barbed wire today, which, although slightly difficult, was a nice change of pace. I haven't been too anxious to stop digging and do other things simply because I recognize that I will have all summer to work on this house and I know I will get my opportunity.

Adam and Jessa weren't on site today. It was noticeably quieter and slower, but the boys and I managed.

I'm getting used to coming back to the SENS house smelling terrible.

And now, a guest entry from Adam!

Hi, this is Adam.

I like to visit Erin when I am not busy at home and during this visit I volunteered my help towards her internship.

The last two days have been tough. Thursday we started laying all of the earth-bags we had filled which almost completed the first layer. I can tell this is going to be very tedious process from here on- digging the dirt to be sifted - filling the sifted dirt into bags and then laying them - and finally tamping them. Tamping is where my energy has been spent the last two days- it takes a lot out of me.

Not a lot of progress was made at John's site Friday. John, Jeff, and I didn't spend a lot of time on a particular job. I stuck to tamping for the most part until John mentioned needing trenches dug for drains to empty through. After I dug a trench for two sinks and a shower, the site looked a small mess. I await to hear Phil's thoughts on our progress/changes.

A few of John's friends showed up in the afternoon Friday. We gave them a tour of the site and surrounding projects, such as the straw bale house. In return they brought us extra lunch and provided wonderful conversation and company for an hour or so. Sometime after that we called it quitting time and I drove Jeff home. It was a good steady day for a Friday, and a good way to start the weekend.

I will not be able to be here for a majority of the project, but hope to visit again to help and maybe see the finished production of John's house.