The exposed parts of the cellar retaining walls were in dire need of attention: The lime finishing experiment was informative but not holding up to the elements. The incomplete water-shed umbrella meant that water was collecting into the retaining walls and together with the clay soils exerting pressure on the retaining walls. That pressure met [...]
Summer Kitchen Renovation Part4: Electricity
A few days after completing the post the guys from the electric company came out to do their part. They were quick ... done in less than two hours. They put in the new electric box and moved the meter into it: ... and moved the main supply wires from the summer kitchen to the [...]
Earthen Floors with Sukita Reay
Sukita wrote "the book" on earth floors and it was sweet to watch her at work in this short video demonstrating the making of an earth floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSIsEF3nybA
Summer Kitchen Renovation Part3: Electric Post
Our connection to the electric company currently runs through the summer kitchen and from there to the house. It is embedded in the structure. The main above-ground cable runs from the road to a post sticking out of the summer kitchen roof. (top foreground)A main cut-off switch is installed on the outside wall (bottom front [...]
Re-roofing the Deck
We finally went on a (planned) detour from the summer kitchen renovation. We had been planning to re-roof the deck. The original roof was planned to be simple metal sheets but we decided to go instead with clay tiles. However, the angle of the roof is shallow and is not suitable for the tiles. Because [...]
Summer Kitchen Renovation Part2: Water & Electricity
When I started healing from my strained back we invited the excavator back to do the work we halted a couple of weeks earlier. I offered guidance, Iulia did the work! We started working on a water line. There was already a second pipe (the first being the one that feeds into the house) coming [...]
Summer Kitchen Renovation Part1: Destruction
For the past few months Iulia has been clearing out the summer kitchen in preparation for renovation. We haven't started because I've been reluctant to get into this project. During this period of my reluctance we did get more clear about the general plans for the renovation. We also got a set of 4 used [...]
Rainwater Harvesting Swale
This project was seeded 3 or 4 years ago. I think it was early spring, following a wet but warm winter. This means that snow melted quickly and saturated the soils. So that when spring rains came there was a lot of runoff. This effect was amplified greatly by the almost bare surfaces of the [...]
Shiny Clay Wall Finishing
I enjoyed this video very much - it made me want to get back to clay: https://youtu.be/wTY6arzNs24 It gave me confidence that my experiments in the earthbag cellar were in the right direction - and that with additional refinement, wonderful results can be achieved with earth!It confirmed how important the material mix is in achieveing [...]
[Webinar] Building with Earthbags: our experience with the cellar
Dear friends,In the last 2 years we built our cellar from earth bags. It was mostly the two of us... helped along the way a bit by volunteers and friends. We learned a lot, people started to ask questions. This is how Iulia started the Romania: EarthBags Building / Constructii din saci umpluti cu pamant [...]