Categories
Construction Earthbags

Summer Kitchen Renovation Part6: Cob Wall Moved

It hasn’t stopped raining since we took down the roof so we focused solely on completing the “wall moving”. Now that the roof was out of the way and we were moving up the wall we could tamp the earthbags from above, standing on the remaining walls and beams.

I had just removed the rain gutters and found Kiwi confused. She has a growing repertoire of Parkour moves and one of them was jumping from the tree to rain gutter and on to the roof. Here is she is deliberating what to do with the rain gutters gone:

she didn’t make the jump!

In this picture the “moving wall” is becoming increasingly clear. The wall in the foreground is shrinking while the one in the background is growing:

… and working under the tarps while it is raining (soon it is my turn to go out into the rain to tamp down those earthbags.

As we reached the top of the window frame it was about time to complete the window header. I went with a design of a reinforcing grid sandwiched between two layers of solid boards. The grid was already built but needed charring:

… and then packing the gaps with insulation:

… and installing it in place … gave the window more presence and wholeness … and started to feel more like a picture frame to the outside:

During one of the sunny spells Kiwi climbed up and parked herself in a folded tarp close to where we were working:

Watching her there reminded me of George Carlin’s line “why are we here? PLASTIC!”

When we finally arrived at the old door frame the feeling of “we moved the wall” became real:

We reached the top of the window. We installed the boards that completed the window header. We used cob-bricks we set aside from the “destruction” phase to rapidly fill the space above the window. We used cob to fill in the remaining spaces (when there was no more space to work with earthbags) … and the new wall was suddenly done:

In designing the window I was working with the “Window Place” family of patterns from Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language” … and even amidst the mess of construction, the window does indeed feel like a welcoming place:

.. and the old neighboring mullberry tree feels like a friendly neighbor:

We then had some “easy” earthbag work (compared to the constrictions we’d encountered in the window wall) rebuilding the base of the opening we took down during the “destruction” (where there was a traditional oven):

The window frame that goes into this opening is almost ready and we can fill this wall out.

.. and today we took delivery of almost 7 cubic meters of wood for beams, a 2nd story floor, stairs and roof framing. Just moving and organizing this was an equivalent of a work-day for us:

Categories
Cob Construction Earthbags

Summer Kitchen Renovation Part5: Moving a Cob Wall

After last year’s preparations (a bit of deconstruction, preparing for water and electricity, installing an electric post and reconnecting electricity), this spring we started renovating. I’ve been less regular about pictures so this is an overview of what we’ve been doing.

We stripped the small “porch” of its flimsy wooden covering and window. Given our slow and sometimes unpredictable work progress, we decided to keep the roof on as long as possible (so as not to leave the structure exposed to the elements). We decided to build the new external wall around the existing wood frame. Here is Iulia creating a base of cob on top of which the new earthen wall will be built.

With the frame out of the way we could decide upon the new window location (not what we thought it would be). This required putting in two new posts and removing an existing one:

Meanwhile I was experimenting with the new workshop tools (thickness-planer and table saw – maybe deserves a separate post) to see if I could build a reliably straight and correctly sized window frame (for used windows we got last year) … and I was to get a decent result. After three layers of earthbags … the frame found its place and we continued to build up around it.

We are reprocessing cob by crushing it and remoistening it. We started using the soil from last year’s deconstruction using the cob-pools we also prepared last year. When we finished that soil we started taking down the internal wall … again resuing the materials … so “moving a cob wall”:

and discovered some rotten beams … this one in particular … it had the an electric pole sticking out above it that, I’m guessing, acted as a reliable water collecter that drained above the post.

It is a clear testimony to how tolerant cob is to water (absrobs it, gets stronger with some of it while releasing the rest into the atmosphere) and how intolerant wood is (especially the basic pine we have available to us here).

We reached a point where work on the sacks was becoming uncomfortable … we were crouching and banging our heads on the beams and ceiling. So we decided to take off the roof despite god laughing at us with a 10-day forecast with plenty of rain in it. Iulia’s sister and her partner came out to visit and helped us get the tiles off:

We responded to god’s challenge with plastic tarps which are doing a reasonable job (while also efficiently pooling water). We continued to take the framing apart .. from small to large members:

Then we took off the gutters and peripheral wood sufaces. We still have a ceiling to take down over the internal room (a layer of wood boards covered with a few centimeters of cob) … and then the large beams that go across the entire structure … but that will wait for the weather to clear a bit. Meanwhile we are back to “moving the wall” and loading the cob-pools in preparation for resuming construction:

Categories
Construction Earthbags Webinar

[Webinar] Building with Earthbags: our experience with the cellar

Dear friends,

In 2017-2018 we built our cellar from earth bags. It was mostly the two of us (Iulia and Ronen)… 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 group on Facebook. The group grew, now more than 1000 people.

Many of you continued to ask questions, talked to Iulia in private about details.

From all your inquiries we want to make one more step now to share our experience with those who are really interested in earth bags building. Now, as traveling is a bit more complicated, we invite you to sit at your place and join us in an open conversation – a webinar on earth bag building – questions and answers from our experience.

So, grab a cup of tea or water join us! 🙂

When? Tuesday, 19th of May, 19:00 Romanian time (check your local time here). We estimate to spend around 1,5 hours together, depending on your interest and group dynamics.

What? We will build our conversation based on how participant’s interests are related to our experience. Ronen already wrote a summary of our journey with the cellar (again, please read all the posts he wrote along the two years we built the cellar) an we are interested to converse with those who have specific questions. We learnt and lot and still learning. 🙂 We do not pretend to hold the absolute truth, yet we realize – from your questions, from all the conversations and debates Iulia is following on the natural building and off grid groups on Facebook – that you want to know more and we have things to share.

We will not lecture you on earth bags building, you can read a lot on the internet.

Where to we meet? Online, we will give the connection details for those who want to join. We will use Zoom.
The webinar will be held in English – Ronen, the facilitator of the webinar, does not speak good Romanian. Translation can be offered by one of the participants (volunteering). Iulia will be moderating the conversation.

How to join? Please fill the form below to let us know that you want to be in the conversation.

Exchange. We suggest a starting donation of 50 lei for Romanians (Revolut, BT Pay or BT payment) / 15 Euros for people outside Romania (paypal) / participant, for this meeting, paid upfront. In the spirit of gift economy, we also encourage you to adjust (increase or decrease) your contribution, based on the experienced value, at the end of the webinar. The details for offering donations will be provided for those who want to join.

Looking forward to meet and talk to you all! 🙂

Iulia & Ronen

PS: the pictures below are a selection of pictures along the way of building our earthbag cellar 🙂

PS2: the post picture is with Iulia sitting on our first completed earth bag arch.

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Reinforcing Cellar Retaining Walls

The exposed parts of the cellar retaining walls were in dire need of attention:

  1. The lime finishing experiment was informative but not holding up to the elements.
  2. 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 the weak curvature of the walls (where one wall also was out of plumb) and caused the earthbag walls to push outward.

We decided to build a secondary concrete wall alongside the exposed parts of the earthbag retaining walls. This will hopefully reinforce the earthbag walls and weather proof them and prevent further degradation. We also decided to use concrete blocks (that would be filled with rebar and concrete) instead of attempting to build formwork to support heavy concrete walls.

The first step was to dig the trenches into which the concrete walls would be set. We did this when the excavator was here to work around the summer kitchen.

The next step was to find construction materials: concrete blocks, cement and rebar. We have construction material shops in the village that do delivery. But they do not have a truck with a crane for offloading. On a good day, I do not look forward to manually offloading 120 concrete blocks and 20 sacks of cement. My spine was healing from a back strain so manual off-loading was unimaginable. We did some internet hunting and found a supplier (further away) with better prices for the items which compensated for the additional expense of long-distance delivery with an offloading crane:

The first step was to complete and level the trench.

Next was lining it with geotextile and covering it with a drainage layer of sand and gravel:

… and then seeing how the blocks would fit and how far they would go:

and then running into the extension of the ventilation intake pipe and figuring out how that should meet the wall:

This gave me a first opportunity to shape concrete blocks … roughly possible but not a good idea.

I soon realized that it was not possible to continue dry stacking because it would not be possible to elaborately fill concrete around the pipe. So it was already time to finalize the placement of the pipe … some cob “joined” it to the existing pipe (which had been deformed by the weight of the earthbag walls):

… and backfilling (this felt like a point of no return):

A bit of improvised form work to complement the poorly-shaped concrete blocks:

… and the first vertical rebar … added initially just around the pipe where I intended to poor concrete:

… and then a first concrete pour … at the time it felt more dramatic then it may look:

… then more vertical rebar and a continuing cycle of concrete, block laying, back-filling … and a wall grew:

… and the cat discovered the pipes and playfully enjoyed hiding from the dogs … not really hiding because she is being indoctrinated as a member of our dog pack:

… until the (first phase) of the first wall was completed:

Iulia joined me for some of the work on second wall:

… until it too was “firstphase completed” (forgot to take a picture!). This was already a relief since now the earthbag walls were protected from further collapsing. We now had massive retaining walls made up of a core earthbag wall, some backfilling (where there were gaps) and a concrete wall.

We deliberated quite a bit about options for the top of the wall. We ended up deciding to “cap” the wall with a concrete top that would lean slightly away from the cellar entrance area. And so began another adventure. Finding a way to keep in place formwork, backfilling (with earth and bricks) to reduce the amount of concrete that would be needed … and putting in some lengthwise rebar that would lock it all together (I think it may have been good to put in some short rebars set into the width of the top … but I cut that corner):

I tried to mix a thicker concrete (with less slump) so that it would build up and hold its form better:

I worked my way up in segments:

… and then moved to the second wall (though between the two walls we seeded another recovery project, also related to the cellar … more on that in a future post) to apply the same strategy to its slightly different shape:

This is where we are now:

The concrete work needs to be continued, but to do that we first have to interface between the ends of the concrete wall and the cob walls:

We will do this with cob … and that will lead us to the final form of the wall and allow us to complete the vertical parts of the concrete and the “cob bridge” that sits on top of the entrance.

Nights and mornings are getting cold and the days are getting shorter … curious to see how much further we’ll be able to go this season. I am content with where we have arrived and feel it will hold up well in winter. I do look forward to reaching a state of completion where we can let the place settle and help it transform back into an undisturbed green space with a passage into the earth.

I’ve come to (somewhat) better appreciate the qualities and potential of concrete.

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Earthbag Cellar: Shelves and … Food!

The shelves felt like  a small scale “industrial” project … mass production and assembly of parts.

I had already charred a few boards in preparing for the shelves. Now it was time to cut them up and make them into frames.

Then piled them up for charring the remaining parts at the “charring station” just outside the cellar.

After charring I moved the frames into the cellar and over a few days applied two layers of linseed oil to them … both for additional protection and so that we wouldn’t get dirty from touching the charred wood.

After that I prepared the 104 shelf supports and then install them onto the frames (the layout is designed to let us setup different shelf sizes to accommodate the different sizes of jars we typically use).

Meanwhile the temperature in summer kitchen was rapidly dropping uncomfortably close to zero … so While I was busy with the construction Iulia was already busy moving our food from the summer kitchen into the smaller cellar room.

And then came assembly … one frame and then another …

Until we had a skeleton standing and ready for contents:

And just to get a feel for it … I placed a few of the old shelves (I designed the new shelf-frame to use the same size shelves as the old one)  in place and stacked on some tomatoe sauce bottles … and it felt good 🙂

Then lots more packing stuff from the summer kitchen, moving it to the cellar, cleaning the old shelves and moving them also to the cellar, cutting new boards into more shelves (the new frame takes many more shelves), making the rear board for each shelf with a small backing strip to act as a rear stop … LOTS more wood processing.

We got a large roll of plastic-ish table cloth and started covering all the shelves.

… and the shelves started to come together and fill up

… and we brought some root vegetables and cabbages for storage … and they joined some apples and last local pepppers in the small room.

… and then more shelves and more jars and more shelves …

… and the cellar has become a place … the place we imagined it would be.

We started the shelves when the ground was frozen solid (very convenient). Then it got warmer and we had to carry lots of stuff through the mud (very inconvenient). The temperatures are now comfortably parked around zero. We have snow up to our knees … a sight we haven’t seen for 4 or 5 years:

There is still the grainery and another storage cabinet to make … but I don’t know when I will get around to them. The critical things are done and we are settled in for winter. They may wait until spring.

It was 7 years ago that the old shelves were built and loaded (just before winter) with our first winter supplies:

I was and continued to be moved by the site of the old shelves, now standing naked and almost empty.

I feel like I have witnessed a major cycle … and the empty field of the summer kitchen is now available to become something new.

The days are short and cold … and another year is ending … and also … in a way … this feels like an end of this journey. If you’ve been following this Earthbag Cellar chapter of our journey, thank you for your interest. If you’ve visited with us during these two years to lend a hand, thank you also for your material support.

We hope to be back in spring with new projects. Wishing you a warm and peaceful winter 🙂

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Earthbag Cellar: Cellar Doors

If like me you enjoyed Donnie Darko then you know that Cellar Door is arguably the most beautiful expression in the English language. This is a story of not one, but two cellar doors!

It started with a vision of a nice arched door that fills the arched doorway. I built the frame, stuggled to shape a rough template for the arch:

I Made an actual arched header (required laminating two pieces of wood) … I don’t have a picture because the result was depressing. The door couldn’t open … it is basic (duh!) geometry when you see it up close and personal. The arch of the door and the arch of the doorway collide.

I remember having to decide where, in the depth of the door opening, to install the framing for the door … I decided to go with the middle. That was a mistake. The framing should be on the side towards which the door opens.

So I had to scratch that option and went for a fixed arch and a rectangular (and slightly low) door (I’ve since banged my head a few times, hopefully I’ll learn).

Then preparing all the boards that would enclose the door … here they are laid out right before charring.

I assembled one side of the door … then filled it with an insulating layer of leftover styrofoam:

… and then closed it up (the frame was charred, brushed and oiled with linseed oil, the filler panels were charred and brushed strongly in preparation for a colored finishing).

… and we hung it … and voila … cellar door #1:

We’d already done a lot to protect from rodents, Iulia asked for more … and so the arched header was covered with a hidden metal plate

on top of which were installed the arch panels:

Because this is the outside door, I took advantage of the spaces in the arch to stuff in more insulation:

… closed it up and then it was time for experiments with color:

The final touches were rodent protection on the bottom of the door and … handles:

… and rinse, repeat (though not exactly the same) … and the cellar door #2 (separating the two rooms) came into being:

All of this was possible because the floor, though not yet completely set, has hardened enough for us to walk on it … which meant, that with doors in place we could also start moving in.

After finalizing measurements of the planned shelves we built a couple of frames to mockup the size … and were happy with the result (4 meters long, 2.26 meters tall, 60cm deep)

The day before yesterday we moved some things from our summer kitchen into the smaller inner-room of the cellar as transition storage:

… and that was in preparation for today when we moved the freezer into its new home. It was somewhat of a balancing act for the two of us relatively small-folk … but with the help of the wheelbarrow we got it done. Here it is out in the sun where Iulia defrosted and cleaned it.

It was a freezing day … so the frozen contents stayed frozen:

… and here it is in place, plugged in and fully loaded.

And the cellar is becoming an actual place!

Next are the shelves … and the last project on my list (thankfully since the days are getting short and freezing cold) for this year is the grain-storage.

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Earthbag Cellar – Ventilation Chimney

This seemingly small part of the project turned out to be a place where I immersed myself more than I expected.

The initial objective was to protect the ventilation exhaust pipes from sun (they are made of plastic), rain and rodents. But as it came into being I felt it was a surprisingly prominent aesthetic element  that invited me to give it more attention.

I was not able to give this all the attention and quality I wanted because of numerous constraints, especially, in this case, the position of the pipes makes it difficult/precarious to reach.

The first step was to build forms in place (no pictures) and to pour a concrete base.

The next step was to build a brick chimney. I felt comfortable with bricklaying from my experience with rocket stoves. I did experiment with a new (to me) mortar mix (1 lime : 1 concrete : 6 sand).  I quickly gave up on trying to lay the bricks  perfectly  level because of the limited access to the work. I tried to incorporate some anchoring mechanisms into the chimney.

Then it was off to figure out how to design, build and install the head of the chimney. Originally I wanted to create a triangle-shaped roof. But as the chimney came up and took on character in relationship to the cellar, that felt wrong. A more soft and round form appeared in my mind and I set out to draw it … make cutting templates … and finally into the workshop to make it.

First came the base:

… and on top of it … the arch form I envisioned.

After a dry-assembly failed I made a change that would make assembly of the two parts easier … then it was off to char and oil all the wood surfaces:

Next was partially fixing the wire mesh onto the base:

… and initially assembly of the base (to get a sense of progress and make space in the workshop):

Then came the metal-roof preparation. First measuring real sizes and cutting the sheet to size and bending it. I’ve got a slightly tedious but fairly reliable strategy for bending:

In reality it was a sequence of bending and cutting actions that led to a sheet that could be bent and folded onto the curved arch.

… and then mounting it and nailing down the mesh and:

I am not confident that my anchoring strategy has worked ou well … so we will see if this thing holds in high winds or if it will need some reworking next spring!

Tomorrow we hope to get some wood boards that I need for working on the front door … and the earth-floor has set enough that we can carefully walk on it … so it may be possible to also approach the inner door and shelves (without putting them in place yet) … so that when the floor does set we’ll be ready to go!

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Earthbag Cellar – Structure Done(-ish)

When I thought I’d finished with the internal walls I decided to play around with some of the cracks by filling them with clay-slip. What started out with a small local (small spot) experiment became another layer of finishing on all the walls. In the small room (sorry no pictures!) that experiment was expanded to include colors using metal oxides (readily available in our village shop). Though the colors are visible, I expect they will change drastically as the underlying clay substrate dries and becomes much lighter.

We are running a fan that is circulating air (and pulling humidity out of the small room).

With that done (ish – I expect another round of work with the cracks when the walls set … again because I am curious to see what kind of results we can expect with the clay soil under our feet!) I started alternating between a finishing layer on the earthen floor and experimenting for the first time with a lime-based finished for the external and retaining walls. It was interesting working with the lime but only time will tell about the results. Though the work is done, the walls still need to be uncovered (they are covered with tarps) and watered once or twice a day for around two weeks (the time it supposedly takes the lime finish to set).

This is what it looks like now (under the unfairly glorious light of a sunset). The walls turned out grey (and will probably be painted a tan color with a lime-wash in the coming days).

I decided to use the typical lime available in hardware stores. The quality of this material is questionable. Ideally I would have liked to use  aged lime-putty which I know who to ask to try go get – but that is not as easily available. So in the spirit of experimentation (that permeates this entire project) I went simple and local first (and that is just one of many variables that can effect the quality of the lime-based work). If that fails ( = does not survive the elements) it may need to be redone!

Though the work is “done” … it isn’t really. In the coming days I hope to be able to burnish the floor (make it a smoother finish), water the walls … and get started with working on the outer door.

I am curious to see if the floor sets hard enough soon enough (the walls can take their time) to be able to move our food in for this winter!

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Earthbag Cellar: Earthen Finishing

A couple of months ago Iulia posted on a local (our village) Facebook page that we are looking for help with the cellar construction – women only! One woman expressed her interest and finally, in the last stretch of earthwork the circumstances matured for her to join us. Speranta was with us for a few days and was a great help (much more on the implications of that that in a separate post). She helped Iulia mixing the batches of cob and applying the base (rough) layer of finishing.

When we finished the large room and moved into the smaller one, we realized that the earthbag walls were disappearing and decided to put in a “vanity window” that is typically put in to prove to people that the structure really is made of earthbags (or straw bale or whatever you build with) … but mostly it will enable us to reconnect with the vast work hidden under the surface .

The vanity-window also became a kind of “finish line” as Iulia and Speranta converged around it.

… and converge they did 🙂

We also made some repairs to the retaining walls, where we did not apply enough material (say it with me: cob is a structural material):

While they were applying the rough layer I focused on the next layer, adjusting mixes, techniques … experimenting to see what I can achieve with the natural clay subsoil under our feet. This image shows different stages of work and different results:

There is a lot I can say about earthen finishing … but I don’t know if I will ever be able to put it in words. It is a physical learning … and I feel like a beginner. Seeing and feeling and working with the material is immediate and intuitive; it is subjective yet clear. Describing it is hard to do. It can be an immersive and meditative work (and physically demanding). I am realizing that in future projects I want to give it plenty of space. Right now we are in a bit of a race (though still working pleasantly and spaciously) as the temperatures are rapidly falling (we’ve already had nights with almost freezing temperatures).

We’ve already made more progress than these pictures tell:

  • The internal finishing is technically complete … though I am still playing around and experimenting with a finer finish.
  • The electricity work is done … we have lights and power and a fuse-box installed (another first for me).
  • I’ve begun filling the cracks in the earthen floor.
  • Today I did a first experiment with the outside, lime-based finishing. I’ve been preparing for this for some-time, it is the last major known-unknown for me. The experiment felt good … we will see in the coming days and weeks how it settles.

It is unclear yet when we will be able to use the cellar. The biggest question is when the floor will settle hard enough to support a load. Soon we will clear everything out, we will install a fan, I will lay the finishing layer on the floor … and then we wait (while I attempt to create the outer door).

Categories
Construction Earthbags

Earthbag Cellar: Cob Bench, More Earth Finishing & Final Burial

We finally got around to converting the three stumps of wood in the retaining wall into a bench.  Long pieces of wood were laid length-wise (and some anchored down with bent nails).

… and then covered with cob:

… on top of which another layer of cuttings was laid out (to extend the width of the bench):

… and on top of that another layer of cob (no picture yet … imagine the same picture as above just thicker).

There isn’t much to show in terms of cobbing … lots of sieving soil, mixing cob, loading it into buckets and applying it to the walls (first layer to fill in the spaces between the levels, second to flatten the wall). This is what it looked like inside when we stopped work to focus on the final burial … more than half way through the rear wall in the large room:

We invited the excavator for one last time (we thought) to finish the burial: this time to cover the umbrella and restore the part of the hill that was excavated behind it during the previous (pre-umbrella) burial. This is what the ready-for-burial umbrella looked like before we started:

We were too busy to take any pictures when the cellar itself was being covered, but this is what it looked like when that was done (the top is now a flat area):

This was done with subsoil from behind the cella (from a depth we’d already excavated from/to). We decided we did not want to use existing top-soil since ours if full of weed-seeds. We will try to build new top-soil on top of and around the cellar (maybe more on that in a separate post).

Then we started filling the back. We used this opportunity to clear out of the field two small hills (that we created years ago). Here Iulia is guiding the driver to the piles:

… and he cleared a path and started moving earth (lots of it):

… and that wasn’t nearly enough (I’ve given up trying to estimate soil quantities … I keep under/over estimating quantities when it comes to soil) … and so we started excavating from a hill not far from the cellar site:

… and then the driver informed us we were done for the day (he too underestimated the work) … he returned a couple of days later and finishes the job:

… and the tractor went back and forth …. until the back of the structure was filled:

… since then we’ve been doing LOTS more earth-finishing … today we completed the large room and moved into the smaller one … and applied a first test of final fine finishing.