Filling in the corners

4 November 2015

So the main sections of the walls are all done, all that remain are the 45 degree joining angles.  These have to be stuffed with loose straw, but it has to be stuffed tight and held taught if it is going to hold plaster. 

 The last bale, ready to be broken up for loose straw.  We also have a number of black sacks of raked up straw to use when this runs out

 Me with a bucket of loose straw hauled up my ladder, stuffing one of the corners

 The house from down the slope, with all the walls finally intact

 Dave cut a section of a long, solid piece of olive wood we had been saving, to dress the door lintels on the south wall and front door.  For a bit of rustic charm!

 The south door - which will eventually lead into the 'conservatory' (passive solar heating area) - showing one side stuffed with straw and one with loose mesh, ready to be stuffed.

 Here's me making the meshed batons that enable us to structure the corners - we staple plasterer's mesh in short segments, say 40cm lengths, overlapping each other from the bottom up.  Then the baton can be screwed to the wall, trapping one side of the mesh securely.  It can then be stretched tight across the space to be stuffed and stapled taught.  Handfuls of loose straw go in to fill the section, then we move up to the next one until it is all as solid as we can make it.

 A photo showing the gaps in the wall around the vent pipes and the door frame - this is why it needs a lot of stuffing to finish off

 The last corner, mesh-and-batoned, above, and below, after stuffing and stapling - ready to be plastered.

The Last Bale

2-3 November 2015

The second-from-last row of bales, with notches for bottles, went up as soon as the weather improved again.

 The bottles look rather fabulous when the sun catches them, and we hope they will be even better when surrounded by white plaster.

 From the outside.

 Supper time - top row with pipe vents installed.  Dave hauling the tarps back into position.

 The last bale - a bit of a sorry one, which is why it got left till last.  

Unfortunately we have quite a lot of space left to fill, and this one won't fill it.  But the bales reach the roof at the outside edge, only the roof-slope area inside is still empty, between the joists, so we thought, what if we put some other insulation in those spaces, then we don't need to use up the remaining straw.  It just so happens that we have a huge heap of ex-Nisos yacht pillows to recycle.  We'll jam them in behind boards at the top of the wall, and we can finish without sourcing more straw.

One other bale - from the garden centre - impregnated with oyster mushrooms, apparently - we've stuck it under the kitchen table to see what happens.

Other interests

1 November 2015

Sunday, so we took a break. With our weekend trip to visit Meteora only a fortnight away, Dave 'fished' out his fly-tying gear and started making fluffy sparkly things on hooks.  The plan is to stop at a few rivers and lakes in the Greek hinterland en route.

While I got all excited about my new book: Edible Forest Gardens (David Jacke and Eric Toensmeier) and started surveying the land in order to make a map of existing features.

Gardening and Fishing

30 October 2015

A drizzly day, so we left the tarpaulins up, and decided to plant out our winter crop seedlings.  We had planted a tub of turnips and of kale, and they were ready to move into the ground.  Dave had cleared the old potato patch a few weeks ago, and spread a straw mulch from the floor scrapings after the west wall was baled. 

Mum and I had done some wood chip mulch-making while she was here, so we hauled the pile of wood chips down the garden, spread them on the straw, cleared a couple of rows, and planted the seedlings, in between downpours.

 Then we got a bit over-enthusiastic and threw a couple more rows of random winter crops into some more rows.  We have a large store of out-of-date seeds, our own and ones given to us, so they are unlikely to germinate.  This is one way to find out.

Recently, we were rootling through the trailer to find something or other and discovered Dave's fly fishing rod had been snapped by rough handling in storage.  It was something of a blow, as Dave hasn't had many opportunities to use his fly rod, but he liked to feel it was there if he wanted it.  So we got him a new one (only fair, after my extravagant camera purchase).  It arrived yesterday, and the rain gave Dave the opportunity to get it set up, and see how it handled ...

He seemed pretty pleased with it

Making light channels

28 & 29 October 2015

Time to build that last wall.  The first row of bales with the air vents cut into them went in, then we worked our way up the wall, splitting and fitting bales - the first wall we've done entirely on our own.  It was quite restful, with lots of tea breaks, and no worries about getting things done to any schedule.

At the same time, we had a glass light channel-making process in operation.  The bottles had been given to us by Jessica at Mamma Mia about two years ago, and they had been kept in the cellar under the decking outside the kitchen.  So they had to be retrieved, the worst of the dirt washed off outside, and then brought into the kitchen for a hot soapy wash and vinegar polish.

 Trying out the trial one - not clever, forgot it wasn't stuck together and the bottle fell out.  Oops!

 Dave constructing the channels: two scrubbed clean sparkling water bottles from Zagori and a length of 80mm tube to connect them.  We cut the tube to 29cm to give a channel length of 54cm - which should protrude about 1cm each side of the wall after plastering.

 The bottles are stuck into the tube using the clear silicon that we use to stick the window glass into the frames.  Held in place with some masking tape until dried.  Left untouched overnight to dry.

 My bottle washing station: drying in a wine rack given to us by friends and finally found good use for

 Bales in place up to the top of the door frame.  The next level will  have the bottles cut into it.

 First bale in place with bottles cut in - from the inside.  Pretty blue.  Will look rather good when surrounded by plaster (we hope)

At this point we realised the awful possibility that we might not have quite enough bales for this wall.  It seems that we will need 10 to finish the top two rows - and we have 9.  How cruel is that?  We will also need a lot of loose straw to stuff the corners and to make into chopped straw for all the plastering yet to do, so more bales are essential.  We will ask around locally, as we just need good quality straw, not build-quality dense-packed bales.

 

Bale Topiary

27 October 2015

Despite changing from cob to bale for this wall, we will still build the glass enclosure to heat air in the winter.  The area will warm up, and if it is vented, it will circulate the warm air into the house.  So we need vents.

It turns out that what Youtube and books don't tell you is that if you want to cut a small channel in a straw bale, a hedge-trimmer is the tool of choice, not a chainsaw.  A couple of weeks ago our local Lidl was offering hedge trimmers, and I felt we ought to have one, to keep the brambles back from the battery boxes.  So there it was, begging to be used - we measured up for the vents and cut channels.

 I liked this job, Dave didn't get much of a look-in.  Topiary is fun.

 First bale in position, vents neatly cut in.

 Cutting the channels - using an offcut of pipe to measure depth and width.  Bits of rebar just visible under the right hand channel, holding the string down clear of the cutting depth.

A close up of the bale-splitting knots we use.  It's known as a wagoner's hitch, and requires a loop in one end of the string, and another part way back from the other end.  The length of string after the second loop is passed through the first loop and back through it's own loop, as many times as required.  The resulting leverage makes for a very tight knot indeed, and is finished off with several half-hitches.

Star-gazing

27 October 2015

We subscribe to an email alert called EarthSky News, which keeps us updated with celestial happenings, so early on Tuesday morning we were up just before dawn to see four planets of the solar system visible by eye.

Clever new camera (Panasonic Lumix TZ70) managed to capture two of them on film, the view from our front doorstep, looking east along the south wall past the eventual conservatory roof.  Venus and Jupiter (Mars is there too, but very close to Jupiter).  Mercury is low down on the horizon, lost in the rising dawn.

Also this week there has been a fabulous full moon, known as a Hunter's moon at this time of year.  Huge and bright, right through the night. 

Limping Home

24-25 October 2015

Ladder frames under construction, and fitted up the sides.  We will create meshed, stuffed corners as before to take the bales round these 45 degree angles.

 But Dave had been getting pain in his foot, especially up ladders, and so on Sunday we drove down to the GP in Nidri.  On arrival, the car gushed water from the radiator and promptly died on the high street.  The GP said it was an infection or it was gout, (Dave, not the car), prescribed antibiotics and told Dave to rest.  But I couldn't get him home.  In the end, Laurie from Nisos helped us limp the car round to the garage, and delivered Dave and I home.  Phew!

While Dave rested, I went into Nidri by bicycle to get vital supplies for baling the wall.  More twine, more ring bolts and some large diameter (125mm) pipe for the through-wall vents.  The twine and bolts could go on the bike, but 6 metres of pipe was another matter.  Luckily I ran into Paris who suggested Rowan could deliver the pipes after work.  

 Despite supposedly resting his foot, Dave completed the ladder frames, and fixed in the lower level of vent pipes.

Twenty-sixth October - the inaugural firing up of the stove with the new chimney.  A great success, very warm and snug in the music room.

A Glass Act

Fri 23 October 2015

When the south wall was going to be cob, we were going to embed blue glass bottles in it as a feature.  The bottles need to go through the wall, end to end, as little light channels.  Despite changing to bales for the wall, we wanted to keep the glass bottle idea.  This took some planning.

Some time ago I had bought a glass cutter, so we fished it out and set it up and Dave had a go - creating a rather lovely blue glass vase for me.  But in the event, we found that the bottles didn't need to be cut, as the width of the wall was just longer than two of them.  So I found a drain pipe piece that was lying around outside and turned out to be a perfect diameter and we constructed a trial light channel.

Big change of plan

20-23 October 2015

So, do you remember that south face that we planned to build in cob so as to create a wall with thermal mass behind a conservatory-style glass lean-to.  It would heat up in the winter sun and with vents top and bottom would circulate warmed air throughout the house.

We changed that plan.  Dave suggested we bale the south wall.  If we needed thermal mass we could install black painted radiators, or a dark stone floor, and we already have the stone stem wall there.  If we change to bales we can do the wall now, while we wait for Rowan to be free to make the window frames, and we would be all walled in before the worst of the winter. 

It was too tempting to resist.  We changed the plan.  The wall will be baled.  We think there are enough bales are left over from the west wall, and it will be wonderful to get them out of the living room anyway.

 So while I finished the second coat of plaster on the cathedral wall, Dave started constructing ladder base frames for the final, south wall - leaving the sailcloth up as long as possible as the weather is very changeable this time of year.

 The following day, Dave made mixes as I leveled and seated the frames into the wall.

 Meanwhile, we have become very excited by a tree called Moringa Oleifera, which has edible leaves like spinach and grows very fast.  However, it is proving very difficult to germinate, so the appearance of this seedling was cause for major celebration.  Watch this space ...

With the base frames dried in, it was time to clear the wall of sailcloth that has been up for two years ready to start making corner and door ladders.