Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Floored
So far, the biggest hurdle in the finishing process has been the earthen floor. To make a long story short: we poured a shiny, smooth, level, gorgeous floor 3 weeks ago. The following morning, it was depressingly full of cracks. Various efforts have been taken since then to return the floor to its original glory, but the cracks kept coming back.
We fixed the floor on at least three different occasions, and it wasn't an easy process. A floor-fixer must "float" himself out across the floor on a pathway of boards and insulation foam - this is to spread out his weight so that he doesn't leave deep impressions in the new and malleable earth. He must start at the side of the room opposite the door, and then work his way back, digging out, filling, and troweling cracks as he goes. Most of the work is done in a squatting position. He travels with a bucket of floor mix, a bucket of water, a trowel, his patience, and deep chest strength ("core" strength, if you will). Despite his best attempts at spreading his weight, it's near to impossible not to leave impressions from the boards he is standing on - so in addition to cracks that he's fixing, he must trowel over all of the board marks he leaves.
Mike claimed to like the process, but he is into yoga. I found it tedious and awkward.
Below are the infamous cracks. It is interesting to note that the floor was consistent in its cracking. It was always the same pattern, never any cracks in new locations.
I started thinking that maybe the problem was that our repair process was just covering cracks that still existed beneath the surface. In theory, as the floor continued to dry (and the clay to shrink) the buried cracks would continue to widen, pulling apart the material directly above them and causing new visible cracks in the same spot.
We finally decided to just add an entire new layer of floor. A very thin layer, about 1/4" thick. Again, it came out looking spectacular. A day after this, Mike left for New York and I left for a week to visit my family in Durham. Upon my return to the cottage, I was confronted with the same cracks in the new layer.
I decide that maybe downward force was the best solution, because it would potentially compress material into filling each entire crack while simultaneously allowing me to release my aggression upon this unruly beast of a problem. I took the hammer to a crack, troweling over the hammer marks to smooth it back out. This ended up working surpisingly poorly, as the crack came back within half a day.
This past monday, I decided that I needed some sort of blank slate for this floor process, and so I ripped up entirely the newest 1/4" layer. My intention was to get down to the first layer, fill whatever cracks were there with sand (because by this point the original layer was dry, and so the cracks were done expanding), and reconsitute and re-install the top 1/4" layer.
I dug it down to this:
And I liked the look so much - mottled and rough (and relatively crack-free) - that I decided that it should be celebrated as the final floor! The appearance was refined a bit with a session of hard-troweling:
The hard troweling is just what it sounds like. Taking a trowel (and in this case a little bit of water, because the floor was so dry by this point) and giving the floor all hell. It really helps to use two hands, and allow your body to fall into the sweeping motions, aggressively putting all of your weight behind it. What happens is that material is being moved, and molecules aligned, resulting in a surface quality that is smoother and sealed.
Before:
After:
In the second photo, you can see that the general surface is smoother. Some sand and fiber particles have been pushed out, and are now laying on top - this is fine, because they will just be swept away before the floor is finished and sealed with a treatment of linseed oil and beeswax.
What a relief to have a beautiful, dry floor.
We fixed the floor on at least three different occasions, and it wasn't an easy process. A floor-fixer must "float" himself out across the floor on a pathway of boards and insulation foam - this is to spread out his weight so that he doesn't leave deep impressions in the new and malleable earth. He must start at the side of the room opposite the door, and then work his way back, digging out, filling, and troweling cracks as he goes. Most of the work is done in a squatting position. He travels with a bucket of floor mix, a bucket of water, a trowel, his patience, and deep chest strength ("core" strength, if you will). Despite his best attempts at spreading his weight, it's near to impossible not to leave impressions from the boards he is standing on - so in addition to cracks that he's fixing, he must trowel over all of the board marks he leaves.Mike claimed to like the process, but he is into yoga. I found it tedious and awkward.
Below are the infamous cracks. It is interesting to note that the floor was consistent in its cracking. It was always the same pattern, never any cracks in new locations.
I started thinking that maybe the problem was that our repair process was just covering cracks that still existed beneath the surface. In theory, as the floor continued to dry (and the clay to shrink) the buried cracks would continue to widen, pulling apart the material directly above them and causing new visible cracks in the same spot.We finally decided to just add an entire new layer of floor. A very thin layer, about 1/4" thick. Again, it came out looking spectacular. A day after this, Mike left for New York and I left for a week to visit my family in Durham. Upon my return to the cottage, I was confronted with the same cracks in the new layer.
I decide that maybe downward force was the best solution, because it would potentially compress material into filling each entire crack while simultaneously allowing me to release my aggression upon this unruly beast of a problem. I took the hammer to a crack, troweling over the hammer marks to smooth it back out. This ended up working surpisingly poorly, as the crack came back within half a day.
This past monday, I decided that I needed some sort of blank slate for this floor process, and so I ripped up entirely the newest 1/4" layer. My intention was to get down to the first layer, fill whatever cracks were there with sand (because by this point the original layer was dry, and so the cracks were done expanding), and reconsitute and re-install the top 1/4" layer.
I dug it down to this:
And I liked the look so much - mottled and rough (and relatively crack-free) - that I decided that it should be celebrated as the final floor! The appearance was refined a bit with a session of hard-troweling:
The hard troweling is just what it sounds like. Taking a trowel (and in this case a little bit of water, because the floor was so dry by this point) and giving the floor all hell. It really helps to use two hands, and allow your body to fall into the sweeping motions, aggressively putting all of your weight behind it. What happens is that material is being moved, and molecules aligned, resulting in a surface quality that is smoother and sealed.Before:
After:
In the second photo, you can see that the general surface is smoother. Some sand and fiber particles have been pushed out, and are now laying on top - this is fine, because they will just be swept away before the floor is finished and sealed with a treatment of linseed oil and beeswax.What a relief to have a beautiful, dry floor.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Enter,
We still don't have a name for the cottage, but I thought it might be nice to put a symbol of some sort above the door. Because Margaret planted two fig trees out front as part of the passive solar design, I went with a fig leaf (although most people see it as other things, like "a baby," or "a nature shape.")
Often in strawbale homes, a builder will pick a place to put a "truth window," a piece of glass right up against the strawbale wall. This allows the homeowner to prove that their house is built out of straw, in the case of disbelievers. The fig leaf acts as a cob truth window (sans glass), the only place on the entire cottage where the original cob is showing through.
With the door, which will be painted (Margaret's vote is deep blue):
I decided to do a bit more lime, for an especially grand entrance, like walking into a flower. This is right after I scratched and hydrated the areas to be plastered, to provide a good surface for adhesion:
You can see how the scratch marks will give the lime plaster some "tooth" to grab onto:
Sunset is when the clay really gets to show off its color:
Often in strawbale homes, a builder will pick a place to put a "truth window," a piece of glass right up against the strawbale wall. This allows the homeowner to prove that their house is built out of straw, in the case of disbelievers. The fig leaf acts as a cob truth window (sans glass), the only place on the entire cottage where the original cob is showing through.
With the door, which will be painted (Margaret's vote is deep blue):
I decided to do a bit more lime, for an especially grand entrance, like walking into a flower. This is right after I scratched and hydrated the areas to be plastered, to provide a good surface for adhesion:
You can see how the scratch marks will give the lime plaster some "tooth" to grab onto:
Sunset is when the clay really gets to show off its color:
Insider
Because the earthen floor has been layed and is now drying (and can't be walked on), it is tough to get photos of the interior. Luckily, Mike and I decided to incorporate a brick floor extending from the entrance to the woodstove hearth. This has provided a countless number of benefits:
1. One can still step inside while the floor is drying - I can take photos, visitors can take a peek, we can store tools safely inside at night, and I can sleep warmly on the brick on the cool nights that are becoming more and more common as we move into October.
2. With brick taking up 1/4 of the entire floor, we were left with less earthen floor to do: fewer materials to haul, mix, and pour.
3. We had to custom cut all of the bricks that run along the wall - we also decided to make the transition between the bricks and the earth a really voluptuous "s" shape, so we had to cut those too, which provided us with our first opportunity to get some beers and work late into the night with some extension cords from the solar panel and a light. It was great to see the cottage lit up at night.
4. As a personal benefit, I really enjoyed using the brick, and love the look. It went straight to the top of things I want to use on my next project.
I'll get a better photo of the brick once I can walk across the floor, but here's the best peep:
The Northwest corner:
The Southwest corner. I love the orange light on that window reveal at dusk.
1. One can still step inside while the floor is drying - I can take photos, visitors can take a peek, we can store tools safely inside at night, and I can sleep warmly on the brick on the cool nights that are becoming more and more common as we move into October.
2. With brick taking up 1/4 of the entire floor, we were left with less earthen floor to do: fewer materials to haul, mix, and pour.
3. We had to custom cut all of the bricks that run along the wall - we also decided to make the transition between the bricks and the earth a really voluptuous "s" shape, so we had to cut those too, which provided us with our first opportunity to get some beers and work late into the night with some extension cords from the solar panel and a light. It was great to see the cottage lit up at night.
4. As a personal benefit, I really enjoyed using the brick, and love the look. It went straight to the top of things I want to use on my next project.
I'll get a better photo of the brick once I can walk across the floor, but here's the best peep:
The Northwest corner:
The Southwest corner. I love the orange light on that window reveal at dusk.
The Evil Chicken and his friend, the Footed Toothfish
It's been quite a while since I've had an operable camera on the cottage site, but those days are over(!). The building has gone through a number of visual changes in the past couple of weeks. My latest undertaking was purely for aesthetic value - both to cover up cracks in the red earthen plaster, and to add general character to the otherwise plain north and west walls.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
You may be thinking: "but, but, but it looked pure, and simple, and beautiful before the mural. Now it's a bit too much; visually overwhelming, even. It takes attention away from the gorgeous foundation stones, and adulterates the curve of the roof."
I've thought the same things. However, it was an experiment, and a fun one at that. I don't think I'd ever do it on my own house.
But as far as positives go: it makes the house very unique - I specifically avoided certain subjects in my mural that I find corny and overused: hands, the sun, moon, stars, happy faces, flowers. It looks especially good from far away, like in the garden, which is where most people first see the cottage. I hope that it draws crowds down through the garden fence to get a closer look. Most importantly, the lime plaster covers up all the unsightly cracks that opened up in the earthen plaster beneath it. In fact, the shapes in the mural (including the Footed Toothfish and Evil Chicken) are based on where the biggest cracks were that I wanted to hide. The art created itself as I went along.
The earthen plaster had to be scratched and partially saturated with water to provide a good bonding surface for the lime plaster.
Here is the gardener's view (the origin of the mural is where the stove pipe exits through the wall - it's supposed to be like flames and monsters are shooting out from the pipe and around the wall, kind of) :
The drying process for the lime plaster was really neat. The plaster is actually mostly sand (1 part lime putty, 3 parts sand, 1/2 part horse manure). As you can see below, the freshly applied plaster is more the color of the sand, but the white lime completely takes over the color as it dries.
I don't know much in detail about the process that lime goes to - Mike is always able to explain it more fully (he was a chemistry major). Basically, limestone is mined, crushed up, and then heated in an extremely hot kiln. During this heating process, CO2 is released. (Then a lot more happens....) When you buy lime in the United States, it is sold in dry, powder form. The powdered lime is "slaked," which means that it is mixed with water to form a putty. The putty is stored under a layer of water to prevent it from being exposed to air (which will cause it to harden). The longer the putty is stored, the better it gets (can't remember why) - the putty I used has been sitting in a 55-gallon drum for 4 years! The putty is mixed with sand to make a plaster. When the plaster is applied, the lime pulls CO2 back out of the air, and goes through a chemical change, turning it back into "stone." So a coat of lime plaster on a wall is essentially a coat of really thin (and breathable) stone. It is more durable than an earthen plaster, which is why we used it on the exterior window sills (no photos, sorry) where rain water might sit for longer than on a vertical wall.
Up close, the lime and earthen plaster look very similar in terms of texture. This is because they are both mostly sand. One has clay, one has lime. Both have a little bit of horse poop, which provides tensile strength (if you ever pulled apart horse manure, note how it's mostly all grass, broken down into short bits). When I first started to touch and break up horse poo, I was a bit disgusted. Once I started thinking of it more as "grass that has been processed through a most beautiful machine using natural enzymes," it wasn't bad at all. In a plaster, the grass acts to hold things together and prevent cracking once the clay starts to shrink. It's like the rebar in concrete, but on a tinier scale.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
You may be thinking: "but, but, but it looked pure, and simple, and beautiful before the mural. Now it's a bit too much; visually overwhelming, even. It takes attention away from the gorgeous foundation stones, and adulterates the curve of the roof."
I've thought the same things. However, it was an experiment, and a fun one at that. I don't think I'd ever do it on my own house.
But as far as positives go: it makes the house very unique - I specifically avoided certain subjects in my mural that I find corny and overused: hands, the sun, moon, stars, happy faces, flowers. It looks especially good from far away, like in the garden, which is where most people first see the cottage. I hope that it draws crowds down through the garden fence to get a closer look. Most importantly, the lime plaster covers up all the unsightly cracks that opened up in the earthen plaster beneath it. In fact, the shapes in the mural (including the Footed Toothfish and Evil Chicken) are based on where the biggest cracks were that I wanted to hide. The art created itself as I went along.
The earthen plaster had to be scratched and partially saturated with water to provide a good bonding surface for the lime plaster.
Here is the gardener's view (the origin of the mural is where the stove pipe exits through the wall - it's supposed to be like flames and monsters are shooting out from the pipe and around the wall, kind of) :
The drying process for the lime plaster was really neat. The plaster is actually mostly sand (1 part lime putty, 3 parts sand, 1/2 part horse manure). As you can see below, the freshly applied plaster is more the color of the sand, but the white lime completely takes over the color as it dries.I don't know much in detail about the process that lime goes to - Mike is always able to explain it more fully (he was a chemistry major). Basically, limestone is mined, crushed up, and then heated in an extremely hot kiln. During this heating process, CO2 is released. (Then a lot more happens....) When you buy lime in the United States, it is sold in dry, powder form. The powdered lime is "slaked," which means that it is mixed with water to form a putty. The putty is stored under a layer of water to prevent it from being exposed to air (which will cause it to harden). The longer the putty is stored, the better it gets (can't remember why) - the putty I used has been sitting in a 55-gallon drum for 4 years! The putty is mixed with sand to make a plaster. When the plaster is applied, the lime pulls CO2 back out of the air, and goes through a chemical change, turning it back into "stone." So a coat of lime plaster on a wall is essentially a coat of really thin (and breathable) stone. It is more durable than an earthen plaster, which is why we used it on the exterior window sills (no photos, sorry) where rain water might sit for longer than on a vertical wall.
Up close, the lime and earthen plaster look very similar in terms of texture. This is because they are both mostly sand. One has clay, one has lime. Both have a little bit of horse poop, which provides tensile strength (if you ever pulled apart horse manure, note how it's mostly all grass, broken down into short bits). When I first started to touch and break up horse poo, I was a bit disgusted. Once I started thinking of it more as "grass that has been processed through a most beautiful machine using natural enzymes," it wasn't bad at all. In a plaster, the grass acts to hold things together and prevent cracking once the clay starts to shrink. It's like the rebar in concrete, but on a tinier scale.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The list
I suppose that as I get excited about new ideas through people and photographs and happenings, I subconsciously build my mental list of "things I want to learn over the next 4 years." I feel confident in checking cob off the list. I aspire to learn the art of building thatched roofs (photo at bottom of post). As of tonight, I am feeling rather tingly inside about the prospect of learning how to build masonry ovens, and integrating one into my 2010 project. What could be a more natural progression of interest than from mud to fire?
Sit your eyes at the head of the table, and feast:
This one is so big because it not only provides heat, but some bells and whistles to boot. It looks like it has a bread/pizza oven above the firebox, wood storage (to really dry your wood out well for an efficient burn), a heated seat, a warming area for pots of food, and probably more (maybe hot water heating). The idea is that you burn a really hot and fast fire at the beginning of a day - the brick masonry stores all of the heat and then slowly radiates it, keeping the house warm for at least 24 hours. Because it burns so fast and hot, it's 90% efficient, whereas a cast-iron wood stove is typically 60% efficient, and a typical English brick fireplace is only 10% efficient (in terms of a fuel/heat ratio).
The ones below are more my style (those soft shapes!), and can definitely be mimicked using cob:
Below are some interesting masonry ovens for bread-baking:
Denmark thatch:
Sit your eyes at the head of the table, and feast:
This one is so big because it not only provides heat, but some bells and whistles to boot. It looks like it has a bread/pizza oven above the firebox, wood storage (to really dry your wood out well for an efficient burn), a heated seat, a warming area for pots of food, and probably more (maybe hot water heating). The idea is that you burn a really hot and fast fire at the beginning of a day - the brick masonry stores all of the heat and then slowly radiates it, keeping the house warm for at least 24 hours. Because it burns so fast and hot, it's 90% efficient, whereas a cast-iron wood stove is typically 60% efficient, and a typical English brick fireplace is only 10% efficient (in terms of a fuel/heat ratio).The ones below are more my style (those soft shapes!), and can definitely be mimicked using cob:
Below are some interesting masonry ovens for bread-baking:
Denmark thatch:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)