Growing the East Wall

East Wall, days 1+2

With the drainage and guttering work completed, we were able to start the East Wall, and that's what we'll be building over winter.

The twin aims of this blog are to keep me and TJ motivated to keep building when it's cold, and to entertain some Canadians.

It actually does help knowing that a few people are reading this, because it is a bit tempting to sit inside by the wood fire until Spring.  But this is the last update for a few weeks.  We're off to explore some forest for a week, and won't be building again for a few weeks after we get back, unless I can find a way to lift the formwork single-handed

We originally planned to have all the walls built and one coat of outside render by autumn equinox, so we could do inside carpentry work over winter.  Yeah, that was a nice dream.  But I don't mind not achieving it, because the things that distracted us were a lot of fun.

The revised winter plan is just to keep going on the East Wall and finish off the ceiling / roof cavity.

Matching Hepburn Wind t-shirts.  How cool are we?

So gradually the East Wall is growing.  Whenever find a few hours, we do another section.

People drop in to see how it's going and hand out t-shirts. That's our niece M, who is a part-owner of the the shed, under the "you built it? you own it" policy.

Day 4

Those darker sections are the wet mud from last weekend's building session.  I'm trying to raise the wall as evenly as possible, rather than doing one panel at a time like I did on the South Wall, because the panels shrink as they dry and it's best if panels on the same wall shrink together.  There are bamboo rods sticking through the gap in the vertical studs to tie the wall panels together a bit, plus a core of mud-straw mix.  If they shrank at different rates, the connection between the panels would be weakened or broken.

We're nearly up to where two of the window go - which is pretty cool. I'm looking forward to framing and fitting the windows.  And if the building inspector is reading this, take a look and you'll see we added an extra pice of bracing, and re-attached the old bracing a little lower.

Nerd stats: the Day 4 section is 1.3m2 of wall x 25cm thick.  It used one bale of straw.  It was the first really cold day - maybe 14oC outside.  (Yes, Canadians, pity us.)

Next jobs?  Cut off and replace the low west-wall section that was damaged by those freaky storms last January before we got the verandah on.  Complete the tall west-wall section, by mudding up the gap at the top now it's finished drying and shrinking.  Figure out how to do the corners of the building.  Wire up for solar.  Possum-proof the ceiling cavity.  Add a ledge to the south wall for swallows to nest on, and a tube for micro-bats.