Good enough for rural work.

This afternoon I took my youngest daughter Abigail up to the block to layout and start to dig the trench for the first part of our dry-stone garden wall.

She was a star and very funny, taking two sticks and drumming on everything! "dad, DAD! listen to this" on the grass, different rocks, the cro-bar the shovel, I stopped her short of drumming on the car.
She had a ball playing in the red dirt that I dug up.

Now 'dug up' is a funny term, you see the ground is so very hard that I needed to use the cro-bar on every inch! there was no "digging", with a full force drop of my heavy bar, it made it only 5 or so centimetres! Basically i removed the sod from about 5 metres of trench 900mm wide with the bar... I think I need a mattock?
At least this time I beat the cro-bar, no blisters! I used the bar continuously for an hour and my hands feel as though they have worked, that's for sure but no blisters so I guess I win.
Once I made it through the 5m it was time to break for dinner but i noticed that the bottom of the trench was no where near level, So next time I'm up there ill remove some high spots and level it out.

Now I got to figuring, how could I do this best by my self?
I have a water level, but it normally uses two people or bucket and pressure that I haven't got my head around yet, so this evening I went out to the shed and selected a few lengths of suitable stuff and quickly dressed it up. Ended up with a piece of black wood, a piece of QLD Silver Ash, and a piece of northern Silky Oak. and knocked up an "A frame"

You can see in the pictures below that an A frame is simply two long length of timber with a cross bar. Add to this a plumb bob and a couple of pencil marks and you've got a hand tool for finding levels that are the same.
These are normally used to follow contours in land for surveying etc but I think it will work equally level in helping me find the level in the bottom of my not so deep trench.

Preparing stock with the jack plane. Notice my great working holding devise, a wedge fashioned for old flooring with an axe and used to wedge the board in place between to bench dogs.

The completed A frame. Bolts through the leg and a old hinge at the top hold it in place. Notice the Plumb, hanging on the string line

Notice the pencil marks.

To "calibrate" the a frame you mark the location of the string once. turn the Frame around, being careful to observe the location of the feet and placing them accurately in the same location, although reversed. Marking the new location of the string line.

A new line half way between these two line should show that the two feet or on the same plane.

Total cost... nought. recycled everything. If you didn't all ready have a plumb bob, you course use anything heavy like a small stone for instance.

Just because i have one of these it's no excuse you erase the dumpy level from my wish list.

This guy is a bit full-on (read American) but he discribes the use of the A-frame pretty well.



Worrying and planning

"Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. "
W. Churchill

So last week we got a little busy with planning and came up with this!

Hopefully you can make out the pegs and the red and white tape that mark out the approximate boundary of the house. Minus the veranda.

This is one of the best planning activities we've done. Although I believe that I'm quite capable of visualizing drawings, it really helped us see it in the flesh.

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.

But what about a garden wall?
A start on the garden wall at last!

Over the last few weeks I've read four books on building with stone.
I highly recommend all of them, if you're interested in such a project, or even a larger project!
In the company of stone - Dan Snow
The art of the stonemason - Ian Cramb
Stone Primer - Charles McRaven
Stone by design - Lew French

Whilst they all recommend using "suitable" stone for walling and if its not available, buying it in from a quarry, I have a different idea. (Yes I'm acutely aware how stupid that sounds. But I'm a teacher and therefore, I know best! tut tut..?)

I feel as though our outcrop can supply enough stone, all be it rounder then the recommended flat field or quarried stone. I would dearly like to be able to use material from our property and keep the loop closed as often as i can.
I will have to break up many, many stones and be careful in their placement but it'll be great to complete the work, whilst cleaning up our site a little. Our stone will suffice for the garden wall but none is useful for larger pieces like stair treads, mantels or lintels like I was hoping for.

The photo below represents my first efforts in moving some of our stone to a stockpile near the start of the wall.
The largest at the front I figure to be about 80kg or so.
How do you estimate the weight of a stone you can't lift?

In the coming week I hope to get a few 'feathers and wedges' perhaps for my birthday next week? A Rotary Hammer drill and see if i can open up a few of these. Many will be able to be used as is and I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Stockpile growing

I've held onto the pallet truck for the last three years since closing the timber shop. Glad i did! being only 100mm off the floor means i don't have to lift anything! just bar it on.

Speaking of barring! The first time in two years i picked up the cro-bar and within 5 minutes i had 8 sizable blisters!
soft much?
Owing to the lack of rain lately the pallet truck was great, i thought the wheels would sink in but the ground it so hard it rolls smoothing and i was able to tow this stone with one arm (all be it hard work)

"The more a man looks, the fussier he gets"

Whilst passing my 100th hour of looking at floor plans, elevations and 3D renderings, I got to thinking about one of my favourite outdoors men, (no not Bear) Dick Proenneke.

The title of this post is a quote from his film 'Alone in the wilderness'. An absolute must for anyone who enjoys nature, on any level, and if your into hand tools and old trades and the skill of an individual than you simply must watch this film.

Get your hands on the whole thing if you can or ask to borrow mine.

Liza and I have began getting bogged down in interiors at the moment and it hit me.
"The more a man looks the fussier he gets." (dick whilst searching for a building site for his log cabin)

So here are the floor plans as they stand tonight:

Ground Floor

First Floor

Please take a look over these two plans and if you have any constructive feedback it would be appreciated.
Make your suggestion in the comments below and I'll take a look at it. I've been alerted to one already and its the Laundry and the WC, the door and the washer will not work (wrong size) Thanks Dad ;)

Field gate finished

Well it's done bar the hanging...
Oh wait first I need to build the wall! Well it's going to have to wait till that's done first.

The gate is made from stuff that I had on hand in the shed that didn't need too much processing.
Cypress, western red cedar and fir.
All mortise and tennon pinned with hardwood dowels.
Anyway, a picture

Timbercrete videos

Here are some Videos to bring you up to speed with Timbercrete

 

 TV advert

 From Gardening Australia

A short Introduction


Does anyone have and information on septics and grey water they can point me at?

Whilst in the shed today I thought that I'd get a jump on a garden gate.
Sorry of the side ways picture, i thought i rotated it prior.. Guess not.
The gate still needs it's diagonal bracing and yes she has pants on.

Dunmore House

No I haven't done more
Dunmore House is the key architectural influence to our design for our home.

Some things are timeless and others, well lets just say there ephemeral.

In Australia we call this style colonial, that is a vague time from before 1901 (what we term Federation) and back to white settlement. Heavily Georgian in appearance, but toned down to use locally available materials and labour.

Modern day Dunmore House

Modern day Dunmore house

Original Dunmore House

present day Dunmore House

Here are several view of Dunmore House.
Essentially a Georgian Cube with an Australian wrap around veranda for the heat!
Here is a story from the Maitland newspaper with a good photograph

Typical Georgian House

There are a few key features that we are looking to include in our house.
The front door, typical of Georgian houses, side lights and transom. I want it tardis blue! (read white - yes Liiiii zaaaa)
Double hung windows, and glazing bar, steep hip roof, Concave verandah.

Here is my REVIT drawing as it stands tonight. It's missing a few details at the moment but you get the idea.

Stone Cloven House Isometric View

My business is with Isengard tonight, with rock and stone.

Stone Cloven House

About the name.
I'm calling our house "Stone Cloven House"

Back in 2000 when I first read Lord of the rings. I was enthralled by the description of Isengard and the tower of Orthanc.

I dreamt of building a stone house. In my mind I could see the smooth blue stone and Gothic arches.
Thirteen years has come and gone, and I still want a house of stone but I've toned down my desire for a castle but still the stone sticks.


I remember back riding the train from Tumbridge Wells to London (often with out a valid ticket), and the day I thought of the the name "Stone Cloven".
I wrote it down in my now long lost work diary, but didn't need to, as it has stuck with me all these years. Finally I'm building a house and it just happens to be on a block of land strewn with granite.


With a slant towards self sufficiency over the last few years, and great success in the garden, I'm looking towards the ideals of permaculture for inspiration for how our home will sit in it's environment.

Whilst looking for information on sustainable, efficient building materials I happened across the timbercrete web page (via the post and beam site) and it seemed strange and weird; up there with the other tree hugging hippy building methods like rammed earth, mud bricks, and hempcrete. I was looking more along the lines of aerated concrete (hebel) and the like.
Taken aback by the sandstone colouring and the texture of the hand-made blocks I looked into timbercete, reading everything that I could.
With my background in Timber it didn't seem like a bad option.

Back to the name:
The Cloven part is I guess a spin on 'to cleave'. To split asunder.
I've been moving a lot of rock this past week in readiness for a dry stone garden wall and will no doubt split many stones in the making of such a wall.



So I finally get to use my name that I've had saved up for all these years on a (mock) Stone House.
I should add here that it's important that you don't think of timbercete as a stone. But for what it is, a super efficient building material, making use of waste material, and meeting a need.

Fathers day Gift from the girls. Snake guard (meercat)

Old photo of Joscy from our Terrigal garden

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

They say, (more truthfully Lao Tzu said) that a journey of one thousand miles must begin with a single step. Well today I have taken our first big decision on the external finish of our house and have resolved to use "Timbercrete" for our walls.

Timbercrete at night

You can read more on Timbercrete here. But to give you a quick low down, it is a manufactured "masonry block" that consists of Cellulose (radiata pine - saw dust) sand, cement and 11 secret herbs and spices, that make the product fire resistant, water resistant, very tough (think dents like wood, not cracks like brick) it's able to achieve a thermal "R" rating value many times higher than a clay brick. Also we think it looks the ducks guts! (that's a good thing)

Being my first post I guess that I'm getting a little ahead of myself, for those of you reading whom do not know me personally, let me catch you up a little.
We (my wife Liza and I) have decided to build our own home. It is our first "home" and as such we thought we may as well shoot for the stars.

We have many goals for this building and the most important is the "feel like home" factor. I'm not too sure what that means either?  But it's easy to explain what we don't want.
We do not want a McMansion! these fine examples of our great Australian dream are at the other end of the scale, although our home will undoubtedly share many common features, like walls, floors and roofs, that is about a far as we want to go.

One of the goals of this Blog is to share our experience with others, so they may keep abreast of what we doing in our lives (regarding the building), and to help others thinking of going down the same path, be it with material choices, finishes, design matters, red tape or otherwise. If you have any comments please level them after each post or email me and I'll include a response where i can or perhaps post an answer if it is warranted.

"On Our Selection"
1 acre.
Hill top in North Cowra NSW.
Granite Outcrop - strewn with small and large boulders.
Sloping red sandy clay
Westerly Views (filtered) through 200 degrees and many established trees, native and otherwise.

just a few of the small ones

View to the north from where the shed will be

the flat back yard

Tens years strong. Planted in drought and survived 8 years of drought conditions
- Hardy much?

Our preferred building location

Ariel view showing neighbours. our block is bound but the arc of pines
on the left and the row of tiny conifers on the right.

Westerly view over river flats toward Conimbla National Park

On our selection - a classic Australian film - for your entertainment! (10mins long - there are 7 other parts :)