Windows and ceiling

Test-fit for windows in the East Wall

We're back, after a month away from Clydesdale.  It's good to be back, and I was  happy to see that the shed is still standing.  More than standing - it had sprouted a set of windows of its own accord!

TJ framed up the windows in a few days before I arrived, putting them in exactly the spot we chose using the "TLAR method".  So this is the first thing I saw when I arrived yesterday afternoon, and I was pretty chipper about it.

There was misty rain all day today.  It would have been miserable trying to build with mud, so instead we used the day to fix the droopy ceiling.

The ceiling is made of Solomit Strawboard, and it's one of the very few purchased new items in the shed.  Solomit is made in Western Victoria, out of wheat stalks left over after the harvest.  It smelled sensational when it arrived - like freshly mown grass, only even sweeter.  It has all sorts of thermal and acoustic insulation properties, it's non-toxic and I think it's very pretty.

But we didn't attach it using the best method, so it looked pretty ordinary.

Before - saggy ceiling

Today we sanded and oiled some 2nd hand mountain ash boards, cut them to size and screwed them to the ceiling batons from below.  They're very strong, and in some spots they've lifted the ceiling by 3cm.

After - 6 x 3m four-be-ones

It was a big deal to buy these boards, because we dragged all the other hardwood in the building out of rubbish skips on renovation sites in Melbourne.  But these boards are very visible, so I wanted them to be good quality, and not so dark they detract from the very pretty Solomit.

Next weekend if the weather lets us, we'll be mudding again.  There are five big buckets of mud mixed and waiting.  Now the window is framed up, the East Wall suddenly looks achievable!

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.

Tiny little stones un-rubbished

waste-stone ramp

One of the neato things about building with earth is that there are no waste products.  Everything is a building product, whether you know what to do with it or not.

When we wash the wheelbarrow or the mixer, we keep the washing-water because it contains perfectly good clay for the next mix.  Even when we wash our gloves and tools, we are harvesting clay for next time.

When the strip footings were dug for the walls, the digger dumped two big piles - one of sub-soil and one of odd-sized rubble rocks.  

Clay sticks to things, so harvesting it means basically washing it off things.  We harvest clay out of the sub-soil pile by throwing spade-fulls into the mixer, adding water and pressing the start button.  The clay is washed off the hundreds of tiny little stones, and we pour it out.  Inside the mixer, all the little stones are leftover.  

We've been dumping and compacting the little stones about the building site to make ramps for the wheelbarrow.  We hadn't really thought much about it until we started noticing the pretty colours the tiny little stones were starting to go, after a few months of sun and rain.

So, we've decided to abandon plans to buy fill and pavers to make a floor for the verandah.  TJ took the pile of leftover rock-rubble, dumped it under the verandah and tamped it down - pause here and look at the photo and contemplate the size of the task.  He did it in one day.  That's 6m x 1.5m x up to 10cm deep.  The pile was exactly the right size, which is spooky.

Rubble base for tiny little stone topping

Now gradually as we build, we will spread the tiny little stones from the bottom of the mixer over the rubble base and tamp them down a bit.  It won't ever be absolutely stable like proper paving, but it will make a perfectly safe and really quite pretty flat surface that crunches satisfactorily when you walk on it. It will blend aesthetically with the walls because the walls and the stones spent millions of years together before we came along.

Now, since this is a bit of a random post about 'ain't nature neat', here's a picture of a golden orb weaver web.

Golden Orb-weaver web is golden

I managed to get well into middle age before somebody pointed out the bleeding obvious -  that these webs are actually golden - it's not a trick of the light.  I'm clearly at my least observant when I've nearly walked into a spider the size of a tea-cup.  This year, which is either a really good or bad year for spiders generally (depending on your point of view), the Golden Orb-weavers are about the size of tea-pots.

The TLAR method of window placement

You know you're never going to get an actual tip about a building method on this blog, don't you?

TLAR is inspired by how my Grandfather made dresses for his daughters.  Legend has it (and everything about him is legend - eg he met his bride singing Tristan to her Isolde) that he would hold a piece of fabric up in front of a passing daughter, pin, pleat and mutter, then send her off to have a bath and get ready.  When she emerged, she slipped into a new frock and he went back to inventing air compressor patents, writing literary reviews or similar.

We need some windows in the east wall, we like passive solar and 3D design is hard.  But mud shed can't be any harder than clothing a teenager, right?

So we held windows up against the east wall at about equinox, which is when we want the sun to come in the windows each year.  When somebody said That Looks About Right (TLAR) we put a pencil mark on the frame.

Horizontal? Nyeh.

2nd vertical window? Yeah TLAR.

And one on this side, yes.

Those windows will need shading in Summer.  So around solstice we'll see how much shade they get from the roof and decide if we need to add some. We'll leave some decent supporting framework embedded in the mud in case we decide to make some awnings, but maybe it will be canvas blinds.  TJ fancies permanent shutters that open to the side, because they would offer top bushfire protection as well as conforming to some aesthetic standard I hadn't realised he held.

Sharp eyed readers will notice all the windows are behind the diagonal strapping that holds the frame rigid.  Once we had the window locations marked, we cut and re-attached the strapping.

Sadly, I didn't get an "after" photo before we started burying the new strapping in mud.  You know, this is the one thing the building inspector would worry about and I forgot to goddamn photograph it.  I kind of like the building inspector, though.  He came out to inspect the frame, and tested it by grabbing bits of it and giving them a good shake. Very TLAR.

Also, what about those windows, ey?  Five bucks at the Daylesford Tip, the pair of them. See-through and everything.  Bargain.

The TLAR method of window placement took us about half an hour.  Yes, we have done more since then.  I'm just slack with the blog, and the computer is in a cold room.  I'm going to catch up by doing a few more posts in the next couple of days, then after that we won't be about to build for at least three weeks.

Nom nom nom

Nom nom nom

So, yeah, mice are eating the mud shed.  Not all of it, just picking the seeds out of the chaff in the render, leaving little divots.

It's quite cute actually. They prise the seeds out individually, climb up to the window ledge, husk them and eat them.  Dear sweet little soon-to-be-ex mice.

I really should rethink that plan to make the top coat of render out of gingerbread.

Sour-dough render cracking

Meanwhile, the render has dried well.  It has cracked about as much as I was expecting.  I think I could have reduced the cracking if I'd been here when it was drying, to do another few passes with the the float when it was about the texture of plasticine and starting to crack.  But really the cracks aren't a problem.  The render is adhering well, and the next coat will fill the cracks and look prettier.

Today's rock work

We only had half a day to build, because we went shopping for a few supplies at the Wesley Hill Market near Castlemaine.  It's the most beautiful local market, with organic food stores and genuine crafts and a laid-back arty greenie vibe. Every ten metres you see someone you know, and stop and chat - typically friendly country people.

I have a few friends who sneak in at dawn to avoid seeing anyone, because once the sun is up and the coffee tent is pumping it takes three hours to buy a beetroot.

But we did get the big East Wall rock footing mortared into place. I find cement mixtures challenging, and rocks are heavy, so I don't enjoy this job.  But I enjoy having finished it, and the rocks are quite beautiful. They have all come from around the house, but not from natural areas.  I think the bloke who built the house dug them out of the ground when the house site was levelled.

Freshly mortared rock jigsaw

It's the easter break, so we have two more days to play in the mud, and glorious Autumn weather.  Crisp mornings and warm days.

No mud this week

Parsley the house-wallaby inspects the newly minted footings, back in the day.

Sadly, mudding has been put on hold for a week while non-muddy business is attended to in Melbs.

Luckily we have our friend and his family holidaying at our place in Clydie.  Before he left, I begged E to send me a photo of cracks as they form in the drying mud render, so I wouldn't miss out entirely on the experience of watching mud dry.

Oh, come on.  You're worse.  You're READING about missing out on watching mud dry.

Just like chocolate icing, only mud

South wall, first bit o render

It all worked out, those three tubs of fermenting mud.  It worked!  When I arrived the tubs of mud had risen like bread dough, and were bubbling with air.

The mud turned into render that spread onto the wall like trowelling chocolate icing onto a cake.

It wasn't even smelly.  Just a slight sweet-sour smell, that the butterflies really liked.

Butterflies like sour-dough render - also, that's an expansion joint on the left.  Fancy. (Edited to add - relax, they're not stuck, just resting and maybe having a sip of fluid. Dozens of butterflies came and went all day.)

I'm not sure the week of fermenting added any actual magic.  I think clay generally benefits from a good soak. But it went on the wall easily, stuck well, and it was a generally pleasant task that I was able to do on my own in one morning when I was at the property by bicycle.

I've made a big deal about the render in these blog posts, but it's a big deal in my head.  I've planned this and worried about it, read about it, and taken the responsibility to do it. The building will fail if it doesn't work.  So it was a relief to see that it was working. 


Where I really got excited was at this point, where the mud wall meets the rock footing, because working with irregular rock shapes was a big decision I made that I worried would backfire.  But it was good. It was easy.

Beautiful rocks

And this point:

This stuff defies gravity

This is the first I knew that I'd be able to render the top of the circle window, without the render glopping off onto the ground under its own weight.  It was really quite a moment.

South wall, nearly completed

I ran out of render mix just before the whole wall was completed.  But it looks good, yes?

I've got so used to looking at the fuzzy shaggy light earth walls with the drying wheat grass growing out of it, I'd almost forgotten that the building will have these smooth walls.

I'm not sold on the brown colour - it will dry to a lighter dusty brown.  Next year the whole building will get a thin coat of fine render, which we can colour with oxides, and maybe a coat of mud paint ('alise').