Distractions

I think I will start off my entry with a big thank you to my husband. He got up at the crack o dawn one morning and took down a legal bull moose! What this means is that 2 families will have some full freezers this winter, What this also means is that we will spend another two days butchering, grinding, packaging and eating moose meat...Yay! This brings me to our topic of today.

First off: The Earthship
Attention space cadets!
This is your captain speaking, the morning report will now commence.
The tire pounding sector has at last completed its assigned project, all members of the tire pounding sector shall be reassigned other duties for the time being. The concrete bond beam of the South Wall was attacked by a swarm of worker bees and also stands completed, somewhat resembling the parapets of old world construction. Thank you to all bees. The hole crew has been filling holes...............hey! where did the hole crew go?

And there is our problem.
With three kids, that adds a whole other plethora of distractions. Add that to the gardening/fishing/hunting/harvest season and the fact that winter is coming and we are lucky if one of us can give the project our full attention each day...
In all actuality we have made a lot of progress this year. However, we were hoping to be moved in by August...But we're not, and thats okay. The house is coming along famously as you can see by the pics. Distractions have played a large part in the slowing of our forward momentum. But we have had a great summer of productivity and fun. It is a rare opportunity we've been given, to get to build our own rendition of what we want in a house. The process of building any home is a growing experience for individuals or couples alike. So many people have said " Building a house was the hardest thing my spouse and I ever did."
We were like oh yeah, sure... But now we see the light. Every person looks at things in their own unique way and sometimes hours or days can be spent hashing over the smallest of details. Sometimes we will argue for a long time over one detail and come to find out that we both wanted the same thing only we explained it from totally opposite ends of the spectrum.

Lets pick up from where the Earthship report left off.

After completion of the tire pounding on the house wall, we started to prep it for the concrete bond beam. Much ado was made about whether to build the form out of wood or cans...We ended up re-using our form boards from the South wall form and using cable staples to attach metal lath from the tires up onto the form board. We also pounded 5 1/2 foot pieces of rebar down into each tire on the top course and let it poke out up into the form for something to attach the continuous running rebar to. There were 3 horizontal continuous pieces of rebar. In order to pour the bond beam, we had to decide what direction we were taking with the roof. We added Allthread(long pieces of bolt that you can cut to length as needed) in the places where the roof framework will attach. The day of the concrete pour was a bluebird day. We hired a pump truck to dispense the concrete as the bond beam was 9 foot in the air.. (see pics on Ship of Fools Facebook page) With only one blowout of the metal lath we declared the project a success!
As the bond beam preps were occurring we started thinking about the wisdom of building our composting toilet system inside the house. There was already a plan to put the water tank outside of the house tire wall so as to keep our water cold and not take up valuable floor space. We ended up building a form for a 2 room storage area outside the tire wall which would allow for composting toilets and water to be accessible but not in the house. It also gives us some nice utility/storage area which will be handy for overall organization of the household.. It also allows us about 200 extra square feet of bedroom area upstairs as the storage area is covered by the 2nd floor. Love it!! As a byproduct of all this awesomeness the composting system plus 400+ gallons of water should keep the storage areas from freezing..
The other project occurring simultaneously to the bond beam prep was the building of the South facing window wall. It is post and beam construction with 8-6x6 posts and 4 pieces of 4x12 spanning about 64 feet of wall. That wall will be filled with an assortment of windows and the space around the windows will be filled with bottle wall. We want to let in/absorb as much passive solar as possible..
After the concrete bond beam was completed, it was time to install the posts and beam that would support the subfloor. The posts are made of log and the beam is 3 pieces of 4x12. Off of the beam hang the floor joists which span from the beam over the top of the tire wall out over the storage area.On top of the floor joists goes the plywood which completes the subfloor. My dad rooted around in the local Spenard Builders Supply and found 25-22 foot 14inch TJI's which built almost our entire subfloor. As they had been sitting in the lumber yard for some time they gave them to us at the screamingest deal around. (We also purchased aforementioned 6x6's and 4x12s out of the bargain bin) We purchased our 2x6's for the window framing from Home Depot which was somewhat of a disappointment , but sometimes convenience is the route taken.. We had hoped to use the locally produced rough cut lumber but it is cut at actual dimensions which makes it harder to work with and it would have taken a while for a sawmill to cut our order as the end of August is a busy time for project doers.. So anyway, we used dimensional lumber and it has turned out very well.
The most recent addition to our house was the standing of a 23 foot lodgepole. This is a big log about 14 inches around at the base. We hired a boom truck to come help us set it into place..It was very nervewracking having that huge chunk of wood way up in the air. My heart raced the whole time it was suspended...Now that the lodgepole is in place it is time to start thinking about the roof....Until next time!

Onward and Upward

The Fifth Course.....sigh. Shouldn't we be at dessert yet? 120 tires to go.

The peak of the Season Food Fest was held at Jackson Gardens this afternoon. Kenai Resilience asked people to bring a dish made with local foods. We truly are at the peak of the season here in Alaska and the chill is returning to the air. The grass is less green than it was for the more vibrant months of summer... The earthship continues. The fifth course is finished, the sixth has begun. What this means is that the 24 tire wall has three courses left counting the one we're on. The 15 tire garage wall has four courses remaining.....
The South facing window wall is two courses high and is being prepped for the concrete bond beam pour. The bond beam runs continuously the length of all tire walls. It sits on top of the pounded tires, is at least 8 inches square(ours is 12) has at least two continuous horizontal rebar running through with vertical pieces of rebar pounded down into each tire and into the ground beneath. The framed in window wall will be sitting on the top plate which will sit on the bond beam which will in turn sit on the tires (and the green grass grows all around all around and the green grass grows all around). We are building the South wall crazy strong by using plywood to form along the tire wall. This will allow the concrete to fall down into the gaps around where the tires come together making a 2 1/2 foot thick thermal mass wall. There will be insulation on the outside of this wall until we can build a greenhouse the length of it.
Another project we've begun is the packing of the gaps in the tire walls. Earthship Biotecture suggests filling these gaps with a straw/clay/sand mixture that you throw at the wall to get in all the gaps. I propose to use Salvation Army reject clothing dipped in cement to stuff into all of the gaps. This route is being taken for two reasons. Firstly, here in Alaska we are having a rainy summer to say the least. The sun came out this afternoon and that is the first time I have seen it directly since August 5th. That sunny evening was the first in a couple of weeks... and so on and so forth. Anyhow, not much sun for South Central Alaskans this summer. However, I haven't had to water my garden since June! When it is so wet all the time, I don't see how a heavy mud mixture is going to fully dry. Cement will cure even if it is humid... Secondly, because it is cheaper and less labor intensive to use clothing as straw is 13.00 a bale and sand is $130+ a load. We could go to the beach to collect the sand, but time is of the essence so we are trying to take reasonable shortcuts wherever possible. The clothing is free and so is the cement as the landfill has a literal ton of it just sitting there.
I'm going to leave off for now, as we are just plugging along trying to finish the tire pounding so we can move along to all things bigger and better (or at least new and exciting)