Good Solutions

At the beginning of our first building season (March 2009), Scott and I outlined a plan of action for our three-year building adventure. As mentioned in an earlier posting, we actually completed everything on our To Do List that first season. What a great way to end the first leg of our journey!

That outline listed complete and raise the timber frame, construct the roof and raise the bale walls for season two. Those are still our goals. However, now that we know a little more (often a precarious position), it is apparent that we need to refine that list by adding the baby steps we'll take along the way. We also have other things to add to the list. Two of those projects have moved to the top.

The first comes about because we'd like to begin work again in April. April in Torrey can be windy and cold. Our yurt has no insulation at all, and often it seems colder inside than out. We've located a used wood burning stove which we plan to install. This will ward off the chill and give our yurt yet another homey touch.

Second, we have four cats: Pete, Stentor, Missy and Rusty. Last year they spent a long, lonely summer stuck in our house in Logan. Our very kind neighbors, Don and Patty, fed the foursome and kept an eye out for their general well-being. But I really missed the cats, and it is really kind to ask your neighbors do continue with such a big favor for another summer? No! So we need to build a cattery which will be attached to our garage.Through a pet door, the cats will have access to the cattery during the day and the garage at night. I'm reluctant to let them scamper about unwatched. I've heard unhappy stories about cats who get lost in a new setting. And what about the owls and coyotes in the neighborhood? Yes, a cattery is a good solution.

Doubts

One of the advantages of working during building “seasons” is that we have time to think ahead and to plan in advance. A disadvantage is that we also have plenty of time to dwell upon our shortcomings, and this makes us doubt that we will ever be able to get the project done.

For example, a few weeks ago Scott said, “I think building a STRAW house might be one of the stupidest things we’ve ever decided to do.”

Why was he saying this? We’d gathered some preliminary figures for the amount of straw we would need - four hundred fifty bales. Since one of our primary goals is to get our building materials locally, Scott began calling folks in the area. They grow oats in Wayne County, and we hoped they would be able to provide straw. He learned that straw in Wayne County is used for fodder, so the grain is not separated from the chaff. It is left on the stalk and baled into the bales.

This is good for feeding animals, but it is bad for building walls. As the bales are stored and as they stand in the walls waiting for plaster, that grain becomes a magnet for mice. Mice in your walls? Not a good plan. And, if the grain gets wet (although the ultimate goal is for the walls to NEVER get wet), it will sprout. I can just imagine what a disaster squad would think when I called for help. “What in the world were you thinking?” We’d get another earful of big bad wolf jokes but not much assistance with sprouting walls.

In Cache Valley where we live now, it would be very easy to gather 450 bales right out of the fields and truck it to Torrey, but that defeats the concept of local products. And the supplier in Filmore, Utah isn’t growing grain next year. After many phone calls, many dead ends and many hours of frustration, Scott did find a source in Delta, Colorado. That’s a little over 200 miles away from Torrey. At least we have a source, but is that local? I think only time will tell.

From Our Front Porch

These images were all taken from the front door of our yurt.

Many Thanks To...

by http://www.wordle.net/

Basics

This blog is called “Our House of Straw.” So far, however, we’ve said nothing much about straw. That’s because this first season has been one of preparation. We needed a few basics before we could begin the straw features of our house: road, water, electricity, temporary housing, an enclosed work space.

Our goal is to do as much work as possible using our own puny skills, but, in some instances, it has been necessary to rely upon the expertise of our many skilled neighbors. All of the cement work and the framing of the garage are prime examples. As Wayne, our architect, explained, building a garage of straw is a rather pointless use of time and materials. The footprint alone for a straw bale garage presented a good argument for traditional construction.  It wouldn’t be a heated structure, and we would only ever use it as work and storage space. That’s why Double T Construction was employed.

Still, we want the exterior of the garage to closely match the earthen plaster exterior of our house. Wayne built three structures on his property in Driggs, Idaho: his straw bale home, plus a garage and a workshop that are built with traditional stick framing. To finish the exterior of the garage and workshop, Wayne used a technique that was very common prior to the introduction of drywall - lath and plaster.

This process begins with lath, narrow strips of wood nailed horizontally across wall studs.  The lath is about two inches wide by four feet long by 1/4 inch thick. Each horizontal course of lath is spaced about 1/4 inch away from its neighboring courses. Once the walls are covered with lath, plaster is applied. The plaster is pushed through the 1/4 inch gaps between each lath which “keys” the plaster to the lath.

We thought it would be a simple undertaking to locate lath, but it turned into a quest. After calling many possible sources, we finally found enough lath for the project at the Home Depot in Richfield, seventy miles from Torrey. As the clerks loaded the bundles of lath onto our flatbed trailer, they asked what we planned to do with it all. After they heard the explanation, one fellow laughed and said, “They invented drywall to get away from this.” I don’t think he shared our vision.

One of the last projects of this first season was covering the exterior of our garage with lath. Now it sits, under a temporary wrap of Tyvek, waiting its future handsome coat of plaster.

How Firm a Foundation

When people find out we’re building a house of straw, their first reactions include incredulity and a few jokes about the big bad wolf. Once they realize we are serious, that disbelief turns to interest, and soon they’re asking questions. "What do you cover the straw with?" "How do you keep the straw dry?" If they know a little about construction and then a just bit about straw, they say, "That's going to be a huge foundation!" Yes, indeed, it will be, and we tackled that foundation this summer.

Since the bales we plan to use will be eighteen inches wide, that means we’ll need a foundation that is also eighteen inches wide.  The frost line in Torrey is 30 inches below the earth’s surface. That means we need a foundation measuring 18” wide and 36” - 40” high all around the approximately 150-foot perimeter of the house that will be constructed with bales of straw. That’s A LOT of concrete. To reduce that amount, we opted to build a rubble trench foundation.

To begin preparing the house site, Scott mowed the meadow grass. (We aren’t big fans of mowing or lawn. This might be one of the only times I’ll ever see Scott use a lawn mower.) Then Tyler Torgersen brought in his crew to remove the top soil. Next the crew dug a narrow trench at the house’s perimeter. They positioned perforated pipe throughout the trench. The pipe’s purpose is to drain any moisture away from the foundation. Typically the pipe runs to daylight. Our property doesn’t have much slope, so, rather than going to daylight, our perforated pipe goes to a dry well that is eight feet by eight feet down to about five feet below the surface where the ground water runs. They filled the trench and dry well with gravel. Finally the crew poured about two feet of foundation concrete.
  

This is where we left our house for the season. It felt grand sitting in the “living room,” looking at the Cock’s Comb to the south and toasting our good fortune.

On Our Own

We’ve been back in Torrey a little over two weeks now. We wanted to complete some of the timber frame work - as much as was possible for two novices working on their own. We discovered that’s what we truly are. In all of this time we’ve only completed three trusses. That means we’ve used a grand total of 18 pieces of timber. That’s including the six we used when Adam and Jake were here.

Just when we thought we were doing great, we’d make a mistake...cut a line we should have erased, made a one and one half inch tenon that should have been a two-incher. Yikes! Luckily we will be able to salvage the timbers with those mistakes. There truly is an art to all of this, and we are rank beginners.

Scott has said from the start, “A big project is like eating a whale. It’s done one bite at a time.” Today he said, “I didn’t know this was going to be a blue whale!” I guess he was hoping for a minke.

Now I’ve got to go back to work, but in October Scott plans to be here two more times on his own. He hopes to work on posts, girts and braces. I’ll return one more time before Halloween...the end of this year’s building season. The week I’m here, we’ll put the lath on the exterior of the garage. (When we plaster the garage, that will be practice for our house.) That week we’ll also ready the yurt for winter (basically put the scaffolding back in place to help support a snow load).

When we get back to Logan, we’ll begin making lists for the next building season. A BIG plus for us...Shanna and Doug (Scott’s sister and her husband) are going to be here next summer to lend much-need helping hands. Hooray!