Ant hills!

OK, not really.  Brent screened (quarter inch) 20 five gallon buckets worth of sand and hauled them up a hill to the platform.  Each bucket he dumped looked like an ant hill.

Sand screening set up (quarter inch).

The Hill.

The "ant hills".

We also collected a lot more rocks on the property and finished filling in our moat, I mean, trench.  We then laid out the heavy duty landscaping fabric (really heavy duty - our friends were generous in sharing  it!).  Where the rubble foundation rises above the level of surrounding ground, we back filled over the top of the fabric with the clay soil and packed it (more still needs to be done).  Where the ground was either even with our foundation level or above it, we will back fill on top of the fabric with larger gravel.  The gravel will be a splash back for the yurt fabric to help protect it and will be of a size that we can easily walk on it if needed.  This is not done yet.

I also worked on screening our soil for the adobe floor. Remember that we separated our B and C horizons, with our C being very clay-ey.  I screened 4 shovels of C to one shovel of B as I went, helping mix it all in.  I used a half inch square screening.  I did 10 shovel fulls to each stint at screening and there were four screen fulls to each wheel barrow and I did 7 loads in the wheel barrow.  That's a lot of dirt.

Coarse adobe layer screening set up.

Screening with half inch, right into wheel barrow.

Resultant "coarse" adobe mix ready to use.

So, we lay down about half an inch of sand on our yurt site.  We are laying the sand over a fairly fine kind of gravel anyway, so we aren't worried about perforating the plastic layer (6 mil) that comes next.  The plan is for another half inch of sand over the plastic (which will serve as a moisture barrier and a radon barrier) and then our first adobe layer - about 1" of "coarse" adobe mixed with some chopped straw and a little water - it will be tamped rather than poured, so not a lot of water.  We then plan for an inch of finer adobe/straw mix (using quarter inch mesh).  Our final layer of adobe will be poured rather than tamped and it will go through aluminum window screening.

Today, Saturday, was a work at home day.  Tomorrow is going to be a big day on the yurt site.  We plan to lay the plastic, put down another half inch of sand and then put down our first layer of adobe and hopefully get it packed.  We have a lot of water stashed on site and bought 3g "piss pump" (garden sprayer) that we will use to spritz water on as needed to help with tamping.

Bond Beam!

Holy crap, yesterday was tough!  We put in a very long day.  We had some prep work that needed to be done before we could pour our bond beam.  Brent bought some flexible landscaping edging (4" tall) and we used some heavy duty metal stakes we happened to have to pin it into place around the inside of our bender board.  We used our concrete trowels to help us set the width needed.  (It ended up varying as you will see.) 

We drove to a spot we had heard of where we could fairly quickly gather up quite a bit of rock.  We were gathering 6" and smaller (mostly smaller).  We used this to line the bottom of where our bond beam would go.  We filled in air gaps to keep from losing/using too much concrete.  We used some of the rocks to help level the landscape edging.  We again had a lot of tweaking to do to make sure the edging was level all the way around and we double checked our bender board as well.

Brent made two soil screens.  One is half inch square and the other quarter inch.  I placed the larger on top of the smaller and screened the soil we'd dug out when we first began prepping the site.  The stuff screened out by the half inch screen was cast aside.  The stuff caught by the quarter inch, but not passed through, I put in its own pile.  The soil that went through both screens was caught by a tarp and we used that as our aggregate in the concrete mix.  Our mix was 5 parts soil, .5 part portland cement and .5 part hydrated lime.   Brent mixed this dry in our huge wheel barrow and then put a part of it into a plastic concrete mixing tray he'd bought.  That's where he added the water and mixed it.  He had the most strenuous of the jobs. I did the soil screening and then the troweling and leveling of the bond beam.  My first experience with such and I was kind of worried about getting it level.  The levelness around the length/circumference wasn't an issue as we'd pretty much set that up.  However, the leveling between the bender board and the landscape edging was something I had to keep checking. 

Bond Beam

This is how the bond beam looked this afternoon when we went to check on it.  The gray lump in the middle is a tarp over the leftover cement and wheel barrow.

Utility ports under bond beam.

This photo shows a close up of the bond beam going over the top of the utility ports.  The rock on the inside of the bond beam was to help hold the landscape edging from bulging out too much.

Scalloped edge developed.

You can see that we had a sort of scalloped pattern developing.  It was from the concrete sort of bulging and pushing out the landscape edging.  We could have used more stakes.  We put heavy rocks in the worst places.  In the end, it kind of looks like we did the scalloping on purpose, a decorative bond beam if you will.

Rock supporting edging.

This shows a close up of how we used a rock to help hold the edging in place against the push of the cement.  We were getting worried about how much cement we were using.







In the end, we had hauled up 26g of water.  We used about 5g per batch mixed (5 batches mixed) - so we used darned near all we brought.  We were getting a bit worried about having enough.  In the end, we had a little bit of concrete leftover which we used in a few spots in the trench.  We were very sore and tired.  A late dinner and some extra strength tylenol and we were off to bed. 

This afternoon we went up to the site to clean up and haul up some more water.  We have been discussing on whether to do a tamped earthen floor, a poured adobe floor or a combination of the two.  Tamping uses way less water and should dry faster, but we have noticed that dampness on the soil (being clay) causes it to begin sticking to the tamper.  But, gads, all the water that would be needed for a poured adobe floor and then having to mix it and then trowel it all, well it sounds very painful.  We're leaning towards a tamped floor right now.  Either way, the next few steps are the same.  One half to one inch of sand, then a vapor barrier, then another one half to one inch of sand.  Lots of sand.....

Rubble Trench Foundation for Yurt

Let's see. Today is Tuesday. We took last Thursday off and Friday morning off. We biked and we hiked – so nice! Friday afternoon, Brent dug the drainage trench so any water the gets into our trench will have a place to drain out and not become a moat (or skeeter breeding facility). We took Saturday off as we needed to be at the rental for the delivery of our new futon mattress! (To go with the frame Brent made – we'll have a bed/couch futon for the yurt.)

Sunday we hit it hard! We laid the 4" diameter flexible drainage tube (non-perforated) in the drainage trench Brent dug.  I then buried it with dirt and created a little rocked area at the outlet for it to drain on.  Then we gathered lots and lots annnnddd lots of rocks. Our friend, Bob, got in on the action delivering multiple loads of rocks he'd picked up for us. Brent used our huge 4 wheeled wheel barrow to move the rocks from the parking area to the yurt site. (The dang thing holds 10 cuft, so you really have to be careful to not overload it.) We made some incredible progress on Sunday. It was a long day and we were tired.

4" Flexible Drain Pipe

Beginnings of the rubble in the Rubble Trench Foundation

 

North side

South side

South and west side

The big rocks that you see outside of the trench will be our beefy "foundation" rocks on which the bender board and bond beam will rest (and therefore the yurt as well).  Some of those were placed before we left for the day.

Brent went up ahead of me on Monday to begin work while I took care of the domestic chores (laundry at the laundromat and some grocery shopping).  By the time I got up on site he had put together the bender board and had it resting on top of all our beefy rocks.  We worked at gathering more rocks and getting the bender board circle sitting atop them.  Scrambling back and forth to try and get the rocks level (and therefore the bender board hopefully as well) and also trying to keep a circle with a 20ft circumference on the inside of the bender board.  Monday was mostly about the big rocks and trying to keep them level among themselves. We bought some 2ft tall chicken wire that we then used to make a gabion wall - basically to help hold in place our rock foundation.  We then lay some super heavy duty landscape cloth over the top of it and packed our heavy clay soil against it - again to help beef up our foundation.  Brent used the 10# tamper to pack what I spread on the cloth and against the rubble wall.  See, to make the platform level, our north side wall rises up above the surrounding ground so we want to really stabilize it.  The landscape cloth is to keep the soil from filling in all the air gaps among the bigger rocks as that could lead to freeze/thaw issues when moisture gets in there.  The landscape cloth is thanks to our friends Bob and Ronnee-Sue.  

Gabion pre-landscape fabric.

This picture shows the chicken wire creating our gabion fence before we put the landscape fabric and then clay soil over it.

Exposed gabion on east side.

This shows some more of the uncovered gabion in the making.

 

Partially covered gabion.

The picture to the right shows the utility "ports".  We will have electric (solar), propane and water coming in.  It was easier to put them together and we chose the point closest to where the two more troublesome things are coming from (propane - not sure how long their fill hose is, we may be using tanks we can move ourselves; this site is closest to where the well is being drilled).

Here are the ports with the soil packed down around them.  We need to get some duct tape to seal them for now to keep rain and dirt out.







Brent worked up a way to help get the circle into a true circle.  He figured out how to create 8 equal pie shapes.  We knew that each full length across should be 20 feet on the inside of the bender board.  He took a straight piece of string between each adjacent point - creating an ocatagon.  He figured out what that measurement should be and we went and tweaked and tweaked until everything measured what it should.  It was a LOT of going back and forth and it was frustrating.  Getting one tweaked often caused something else to shift. 

You can kind of make out the strings in the picture to the right.  We had a tiny nail at each point and wrapped the strings on them, pulling tight.  We had some nails pop out.  The string had a bit more stretch in it than was ideal, so we had to pull pretty tight, which didn't help the little nails.  Fortunately, it held together long enough to get it into the circle we needed.  And, we found, it was not too far off level, so we didn't have to do nearly as much work in leveling it as we did it making it an actual circle.

Ideally, these would have all crossed at the exact same point, but we did get them there with tweaking (a lot of tweaking).

Next what followed was a lot of leveling and tamping.  (That fantastic leveling rake Brent is using has been loaned to us by Bob and Ronnee-Sue - super handy tool for this!)  Do you see how there is no longer a huge mound of soil in the middle of our yurt platform?  Remember I was wondering what the heck we'd do with it all?  Well, um, we are actually a bit short of dirt!  We'll have to borrow some from the piles outside of the circle in order to finish leveling the north side.  We'll also have to use some of that soil to finish filling in over our gabion walls.  The rest will be for our earthen floor.

So, as it stands now, we need to collect more rock to fill in on the south side of the trench outside of the circle.  We also need to put a small amount in a ring inside of the circle - where our bond beam will sit.  Brent is already working on the calculations for the materials we'll need for the bond beam.  We'll have to haul water in to make the cement for it as we don't have a well up there yet - soon, though!

Yurt Platform Progress

So, we left off with the C horizon, clay.  We made a big pile of clay outside of the yurt circle.  That took a few days effort as we just worked mornings until lunch time and then called it quits for the day.  It’s hot, Brent has paid work to do and we’re not twenty years old anymore, so there!

The day finally came when we could level our yurt circle/platform.  We bought a 10# tamper and Brent beat it into submission while I was off gathering small rocks we’d need later.

10# tamper

Leveled and pounded into submission.

It was looking good!  Then, it felt to me like we ruined it all! 

We are creating a rubble trench “foundation” for a “bond beam” to sit on.  The bond beam is where the lattice for the yurt will rest and be attached and the bender board will hug the outside of the bond beam (will in fact be the outer form for the bond beam).  So, you have to dig down beneath the level that frost can affect your foundation.  We read that that is about 18” here.  You can do that or dig down to bedrock, whichever comes first.  Well, our location isn’t perfectly level, so we had to dig a lot deeper on the uphill side than on the downhill side. 

North part of trench.

South part of trench.

Supervisor Suki.

Moat/Trench and pile.

So, we’ve been digging and digging and shoveling and Brent’s had to bring in the pick axe, too.  Lots of clay, lots of rotten rock and lots of decomposed granite.  We’ve been at this for what seems like forever, though it obviously hasn’t been (3 days really).  So, why do I feel like we ruined our level yurt circle?  Cuz all the crap we dug out of the moat, I mean trench, got tossed onto our nice level circle.  Now there’s a big mound of clay/rotten rock/decomposed granite.  Much of it will get used in place, but there will still be plenty that needs moving.  Ugh.  There just wasn’t a way to do this without having to move some of the same dirt more than once – so inefficient!  

 We have enjoyed having a little shade addition to our worksite thanks to Brent's folks:

And we've enjoyed some pretty wildflowers:

Desert 4 O'Clock

Sweet 4 O'Clock

 

 













Our next step is to go for a fun mountain bike ride tomorrow morning and maybe a hike with Suki on Friday.  Then, we need to gather rocks to put in our rubble trench.  Rocks is something this place has a LOT of.  Oh, we also need to create a drain out somewhere and fill that with rock, so some more digging to come.

The Yurt & Drop Test

We've officially ordered our yurt!  It should arrive September 13th.

Today, Brent conducted the drop test of his experimental "bricks".  Now, as we aren't building walls with them, the test isn't quite so critical.  Brent held each brick at chest height and dropped them onto a corner on the dirt in the yard.  All of his bricks passed this drop test - no breaking or crumbling of the corners that hit the ground.  This is great news!

We'll be constructing what will essentially be a bond beam out of soil cement.  The outer edge of this beam will be the circumference of the yurt.  The beam will be between 3-4" in width.  A bender board will be used as the outer form for the bond beam.  The bender board will be a little taller than the bond beam.  The lattice of the yurt will rest on the bond beam, pressed out against the bender board (that is what will keep it from being of greater circumference than we need).  The lattice will be attached to the bond beam with "L" shaped metal brackets.  The interior floor of the yurt will be straight adobe.

This is the soil cement "brick".  This is the mix we'll use for the "bond beam".

This is 90% soil, 5% portland cement and 5% hydrated lime.

This is 95% soil, 2.5% portland cement and 2.5% hydrated lime.

This is straight adobe and will be our yurt floor.














We will be using linseed oil (boiled most likely) to seal the floor and bond beam.  We may use some melted beeswax in the last coat to create a harder wearing surface.

Floor Plans: Thoughts for Our Home!

We have met with our contractor, Brian Myers of SunBear, three times so far. The first was to interview him, the second to see some of his work in person and the third was at our property to sign a design contract with him. He asked for some input from us and we gave him that and more. Here's what we conveyed to him:

Our Guiding “Principles” in building this home:

• Passive solar, designed to minimize energy and water usage
  
• Small, minimize use of materials (especially mined materials such as concrete and drywall; “water wall” or at least minimize where plumbing is located)
  
• Try to minimize embodied energy
  
• Open floor plan – encourage use of outdoor living spaces
  
• Off grid sensibilities
  
• Rain water harvesting (design roof for this)
  
• Wildland fire smart
  
• Affordability also must be considered
  

We also gave him a list of the rooms we want and furniture we already have and wish to use and where.

Desired Rooms:

• Master Bedroom (w/ large closet, possibly walk-in or “room” that could manage our dressers also and then bedroom could be a bit smaller)
  
• Guest Room (functions also as a craft room, exercise room and home office) with a closet (not as big as Master’s closet)
  
• Utility/mechanics/pantry room (washing machine, chest freezer, room for shelving, tankless on demand water heater, pressure tank, etc – not sure if batteries and inverter will go here); easily accessible from Kitchen
  
• Bathroom (with walk in shower, deep enough to hold 2-3” of water near drain for dog bathing with my system; water saver shower head, but will also need wand low enough/long enough “cord” to rinse dog) – need to figure out an entrance that wouldn’t have guests going through the Master Bedroom to get to bathroom
  
• Great Room with entry area, maybe book nook, open to kitchen
  
• Kitchen (two hoosiers, antique stove, island for stove?, odd sized chest fridge) open to and part of Great Room
  

We also gave a list of our Likes:

• Organic feel
  
• Soft lines, no hard corners
  
• Window seats
  
• Exposed beams/vigas and latillas
  
• Outdoor living areas (probably different ones depending on season/time of day)
  
• Hacienda courtyard feel
  
• Hacienda and/or pueblo styles
  

Brian liked our site and didn't have any concerns with building there.  He seems excited about the project and creating a passive solar strawbale home that fits into the site (rather than forcing the site to fit the house design) and creating a home that celebrates the beauty of its location.

We have received three preliminary floor plans from him.  The third stemmed from some comments and suggestions we made on the first two.  We both really like the third plan (the other two were also good, but needed tweaking).  The house will be passive solar in design and will face south.  That will be where the great room is.  We asked for a two bedroom/one bath design that splits the bedrooms.  He was able to meet pretty much all we were hoping for and give a view through the house from north to south, which will really make the house feel a part of the outdoors.

Brian visited the site once on his own already, to look at the land and the slight slope and look at the larger trees to see how a house might fit in there.  We very much appreciate his thoughtfulness in fitting the house to the building site and maintaining the site's beauty.