Raising the Roof

With the walls in the living area at full height, it was time to raise the roof beams. All the timbers were eucalyptus trees sourced from a sustainably managed plantation on the ridge up behind the house, The trees were simply trimmed of branches and pealed of their bark before being put in place. The most challenging part of the process was raising the large tree that would become the ridge-beam over the living area.

After the ridge-beam was in place the rafters and battens went up fairly quickly.  Any timbers that pas over or run along the top of the walls are tied down with metal rods that were imbedded into the walls as they were rammed. The tie-downs act to stop the roof from lifting during strong winds and tie the walls together using the timbers as a kind of bond-beam.

Tin on and looking like a house! The plan is to line the tin roofing with mats woven from papyrus to insulate from radiant heat from the sun and noise from the rain.

Construction – Lintel Detail for Bathroom Windows

Unlike most of the window openings, that extend up to the top of the walls, the bathroom windows puncture one of the big end-walls, with the triangle of wall extending up above them. We had considered a self supporting arch, but the soil was not forming cleanly and the amount of solid timber required to make the arch-form would have been significantly more than the timber we used for the lintels. In the end we used 40mm thick hardwood 3 times longer than the width of window opening, to spread the load of the wall above out away from the window. The masons set the lintels into the course below, ensuring they were level with a firm footing on both sides, and then we continued ramming the next course.

Construction – The Walls Reach Full Height

Here you can see the walls are getting rammed and trimmed into their final height.exact height was debated heavily by the masons, as the general consensus was that for a building as wide and long as ours the roof had to be much higher and much steeper in pitch.  There was a bit of confusion on my part as to what was driving this because it was already taller and steeper than the surrounding houses. But then i realized that the because of the openness and width, the house looks more like a church or a school that a village house, so it wasn’t a functional issue, but more of a ‘just doesn’t look right’. In an effort to stop the house looking too imposing, the roof stayed as designed.

Filling the forms got more challenging as the walls got higher!

 

The ladies keep up a steady stream of well mixed soil and heckle!

Here one of the masons trims the top of the wall with a machete, following the string-lines laid out by the Master-Mason. The metal rods protruding from the top of the wall are for fastening down the logs the will be used to bond the walls together and form the basis of the roof frame. Each of the metal rods extends at least 2 formwork-layers into the wall (about 1.2m) and is anchored by crossed of hardwood buried in the wall.

Construction – All walls started

Construction – Wall Repair

Two otherwise excellent sections were marred by a broken joint: it was time to experiment with some repair techniques. This successful repair was done by pounding earth into the hole with the end of the wooden block, and finished with the side of the block to level it with the surrounding surfaces.

Construction – More walls

 

	The walls are so good that even the goats like them.
	The second frame for the day and it is only 0830

Construction – The walls are underway

     

Construction – Roughing in the Drains & Capping Foundation

After an unseasonable period of rain and a broken foot, works are back underway. The foundation walls are finished and the spaces in between have been filled loosely with soil to provide a surface to walk on while the walls go up. The lose fill will be allowed to settle before being tamped down to provide a base for the floor.

First order of business was to rough in the floor drains and sewer pipes into the foundation wall. The small oversight of not putting these in while the foundation walls were going up was quickly rectified. Next a cement cap was added to the foundation walls to provide a level base for the walls and act as a bit of a moisture barrier. Gaps are visible where the eucalyptus poles are going to be fixed to the foundation.

Construction – Foundation nearly finished

5 days, 40 workers, 250 tons of stone, 30 bags of cement, 60 tons of sand and 20 tons of gravel, and we are nearly there…

	Emmy and Cheryl walking out on the nearly finished foundation walls; they are standing where the living area meets the valley porch
	The valley side porch is going to get some nice sunset views.

Construction – Foundation Continues

Some more images of the foundation underway – please excuse the dodgy mobile phone snaps.

	We are trying, as much as possible to source our materials locally, luckily there is a quarry just down the valley because we’re at 200 tones of stone and counting.
	At the end of the second full day of stone laying, the outer foundation walls are up to full height.
	The front wall looks higher than we expected ( in the rush to get started a more detailed survey was never done ) but as you can see, there will be some nice views from up there.

Construction – Preparing the Site

After negotiating with two master masons that were recommended by our friend, it was decided that we should start immediately, in order to give ourselves the best possible chance of finishing before the rains.

In less than a day the site was cleared and smoothed.

Inspecting the weathering on the big sample, which has been through a few really heavy rainstorms in the past week. In the closeup of the big sample you can see that the only damage from from a week in the rain is from people digging at it with their keys.

A successful first day at the site

Construction – Foundation begins

The foundations are done in the local style; stone and cement walls set into trenches under all load bearing walls, then packed earth and small stones in between to form the a base for the cement floors.  The walls are marked out with timber frames and string, then the trenches dug down into the firm subsoil – no frost lines to worry about here.  The downhill side of the foundation is dug a full meter into the subsoil to hold the house firmly in place.