playing with the sketck a bit more we also thought on bringing down th second floor for a room and just make two rooms on the ground level...which would maybe iplicate more digging, but if we already already were thinking of a space behind the house the digging is similar
Glenn, I was thinking of a green roof just off my head, not really investigating further, nice that you mention that 1:12 roof slope for green roof (i assume is losing a meter height for every 12 meters long) i changed my sketch and noticed 1:12 is almost flat and would not be able to join to the ground of the slope.
really appreciated the comment on a good footing for the retaining wall of the hill
"A gently sloped retaining wall of the round river rocks supporting the end of the roof would make sense. This would make a nice cool shaded patio area for summer afternoons. I would advise having the foot of that retaining wall lower than floor level so that water would positively be diverted away from the rubble trench footing. "
Cole, I'm really enjoying the size and design of our current house that was depending on the size of the original ruin, next one there is no original foundations so there is space to change a bit, but we would keep the separation from main room/kitchen floor and a sleeping room smaller and upstairs. after starting drawing it with the long back roof i also though of using it as a small workshop, for tools and bicycle, but what did you mean about the taller wall behind the house? not sure if i got it.
Rico, yeah, i see now that a green roof is probably not the best option if we follow that design like glenn said, i would not try to go ahead with a different angle and then fail...better to jut use other kind of roofing or changing the design, i've seen Mike Oehler underground house before, i like the idea but i guess not the best for my climate, a lot of humidty i would be afraid of molds and dampness, one of the reasons to build a bit up and have the room upstairs, but i will definitely investigate this option further
Hi all, we are back, almost 10 years since the start of our first Roundwood tiny house and we have a new similar project in our heads.
Our first house was built on a EXTREMELY low budget (was meant has a temporary laboratory house, made on top of a SQUATTED ruin) with free local, ecological, repurposed or second hand materials and a few cheap material. This next project will be on a small piece of land we bought very cheap just near the terrain of some friends and a "forest" (tree plantations).
The plot is a sloped strip of land that ends on a small stream that flows all year around. (slopeTerrain.png - not in scale according to the terrain i must clear a bit the bushes and take some better measurements on the angle of the slope)
Material available:
- clay/clayish ground
- sand (from the stream)
- pebbles (from the stream)
- stones (rounded stones from the stream and some other from the land)
- Roundwood (Eucalyptus Globulus and Acacia Dealbata - two invasive species)
The plan for now is to build a small two floor tiny house similar to the one we did before (video below) but without the basement, there is already another building for the brewery
For now we imagine digging the slope by hand (hopefully with the help of a couple of friends) to have a flat surface to build and collect materials.
we started a small sketch to start visualizing it a bit (check attachments).
After digging the slope i imagine starting the foundation (House building focusing on Good boots and a good hat philosophy).
Thinking about making Rubble Trench Foundations, there is no freezing in this area but a lot of rainfall (>1200mm/year), so i think digging half a meter deep would be sufficient, then setting a French Drain (pipe with holes) and filling it with stones, pebbles and sand from the river, then building a bit with stone and the rest with (roundwood) timberframing.
We would like to be discreet on the landscape so we were still wondering about making a living green roof or not.
Still also open to brainstorm ideas for the floor of the ground floor, should it be in wood with a air box underneath? direct on clay? maybe rocket mass heated floor in the future?
let's see how it goes, will try to keep this updated but is still just a plan in the air, we need to be more time on the terrain clearing and making measuments to continue.
took some pictures with my cellphone, but the house is too small to have nice pictures from the inside, maybe i need to find someone to lend me a fish-eye lens
so been 5 years we moved into the house, and it feels great :D
Today i was showing this post to some friends and thought to make an update on how we use the house nowadays
The stone floor (the old mill, there is no more water channel to bring water) is now a small brewery, we brew around 80l a month and the temperature is very stable inside (most of the year, probably 9 or 10 months, stays over 15ºC and all year under 25ºC) great to brew ales and some lagers when to cold
The first floor is our small living room with a small kitchen (that is still unfinished - we live in a community and meals are on the main common house) a lot of storing places on some built in closets and sofa.
The top floor is the sleeping room, we are able to stand straight perfectly on the firs 0,5m from the window and on the lowest part there are nice built in closets for clothes and storage.
Today there would be things we would have made different and still plan to change:
- we used scavenged windows and most of them are single glass, in winter we use thick curtains but definitely something to improve
- we still miss the last plaster layer on the outside wall (we only made two) but been strong and not many cracks appeared (mostly around wood of the windows (wood-clay connection no easy) we plan to still plaster and lime the exterior, still didn't and the walls look fine
- the small hanging platform from the entrance of the 1st floor needs roofing because too much water makes it slipery and starts to rot the tops of the beams with the humidity
We spent less than 500 euros (including the few tools we used) to build this little home on top of an old ruin. Took less than 3 years from planning it, getting materials building and start using it as a livable space, we are still planing to finish it, but we had a very different rhythm since we moved in :D
i just upcycled two old pression beer kegs of 50l each
till now i've been doing 25l batches, would like to go up to 200l, so would be ideal to boil/heat two pots at same times...
i thought of J shaped rocket stove like the one in your diagram, and then making somehow a top skirt that envolves both pans, probably the one directly under the heat conduct will boil faster and the second one already heating up pretty good before the heat excapes from the pipe...
is there any other good post for making boiling water rocket stoves for beer taht you found?
for a long time we don't update our posts on the forum, we noticed our posts featuring on the best posts column in the roundwood framing forum, ,
thank you all for the encouragement, help and all the info (read hundreds of posts on this forum already i think)
the whole house building process took less than 2 years, not working full on it, we were completely unexperienced and the timber framing took more than a year i guess,
on the many visits my father made, he took some pics and made a nice video of the evolution of the house
we are living on it since end of October and it's been so nice
we already had quite strong winds and everything is sound and stable, almost no cracks on the plastering, there is still many details to finish, and one day we may show how the furniture is going (we are building it still, although the sleeping room is already done
Last months have been busy, working out for a bit of cash, traveling for some weeks on a Anti-Fracking biketour we also managed to put windows and door on place, and plaster most of the building
until now, for the stone wall and the light clay walls, we've been digging earthy-clay from the forest nearby, by hand,
for the plastering we bought 1000kg of clay, pure pinkish clay, we bought the raw material from a factory that produces expanded clay pellets, it costed less than 15 euros,
the clay was already processed (grinded and humidfied?) on the factory, we soaked it in barrels and used that paste on a cement mixer with sand
for the first outside plastering we used a 1 clay 3 sand 1 straw (cut to less than 5 cm pieces), it was pretty easy to spread it and the pieces of straw helped covering very easy most of the wood from the LSC structure,
the second outside plaster mixture was 1 clay 3 thinner sand
on the inside we didn't add straw to the mix so that the plaster layer isn't so thick we also experiment 2 walls with the forest clay to check color diferences
around windows and visible beams we stapled some neting to avoid cracking.... also passed a wet sponge on the plaster where cracks appeared - seems to have worked
We have the Light Straw Clay walls filled up and getting windows and doors framed for then plastering it, still wondering which plaster to use, would like to avoid lime to be able to use it freely by hand, the idea is to use a 1 to 3 clay/sand mixture, maybe using lime on the last layer, any advices?
last pics of the LSC walls, we returned home this week and have to start plastering and fixating door and windows, any advices for that?...still not really sure wich mixture to use on the plastering, will make another post about it, we would like to not use lime on the plastering (only on the last layer) so e can continue using our bare hands and not get burned skin :/
and another one that looks like similar to the first two, i think they are some kind of chicory as they have a very bitter taste and i think are developing pink flowers (i have to walk around agian to see if they already bloom)
third set of photos, these ones i though were latuca but not sure which, they have soft spikes,or hairs on the leaves, they taste less bitter than the others, someone told me they were edible, we boil them sometimes, are these really edible?
We have many difernet plants growing on the garden probably from a birdseed bags of chicory and lettuce seeds, the problem is identifying the variants and which are edible
first set of photos, i believe these are from the same kind of plant
we wanted to play a bit with bottles inside the walls to let some funny light in and because we had been saving them for years and it's a good excuse to get rid of them
we cut them with and angle-grinder fixed on a bench, i cut more than 100 bottles and only one (of the first ones i did) broke on my hand
we cut them on the right size for each wall (from 23-26cm) and glue them with tape, we tried to clean them the best possible and then position them between the boards when filling the straw-clay mix
now we are filling up some of the walls to try out the technique and fast realize we had done too much framing for the LSC and took it out again
some pics of the the first experiment 3 weeks ago, then we had to find more straw (we had a couple of strawbales to try it out and get an idea of how much we need) and took out the excessive framing while going upward with the wall
sorry for the delay on updates, we started postponing and always lazy to organize a couple of pictures to upload....
many changes on the meanwhile, thanks for your suggestions,
so 2 month ago we took some time to do the diagonals suggested on the top floor, and then we also did then on the first one
will post on this thread a couple of pictures of that
then we started 2 or 3 weeks ago, the straw light clay (SLC) to fill the walls
we never saw this tecnic before live, so we were not so confident on it, but now i understand we did a lot of work that actually wasn't needed (we will try to start another post about it with some links for videos and websites about SLC), i'm even doubting these last diagonals we did were really necessary, as we then read/saw some videos about it and SLC has a good lateral forces resistance, just not vertical, and the house is very solid now (since the diagonals, but the SLC i think would make the same effect, i may be wrong though) we also had many horizontal woods on the SLC framing that we made before and were really not practical so we took them off, as we can simply put horizontal pieces of wood louse inside the wall when we fill the walls with the SLC mix.
thanks for your input, it's our (me and my partner) first build... probably/hopefully not the last, as i think we learn a lot and could improve a lot if starting over ...
can't understand why the pic on the first post is on it's side now...
was playing with sketchup again (running it on wine on an old linux computer) to confirm if this is what you were referring to, adding braces to connect the top floor posts to the girts,
we were thinking on other diagonal reinforcement, , but this now makes more sense
You didn't mention where you were when you introduced the rhythmic movements.
up on the top floor and the movement is more noticeable on one direction than the other (to where the roof hangs)
The first floor looks to have enough bracing but I notice there isn't any knee bracing where the first floor meets the second floor, this could be a movement issue.
can you clarify what you mean by knew bracing where the 1st floor meets the topfloor?
I also see you have large rectangles formed by your styles and girts, you might try changing that geometry into triangles to see if that stiffens up the framework enough so you wouldn't need to add knee bracing at the first floor/ second floor junction.
Any frame, regardless of construction type, is going to have some movement until it is all buttoned up. This is partly a function of the added weight, weight is stabilizing since it travels down.
If you put the full roof on, that weight will travel down through the posts or at least it is supposed to.
Triangles are stiff in all directions, their shape takes loading from one post to the next and so stiffens the superstructure.
Rectangles are able to wobble on the long sides since there really isn't any loading of that portion of the superstructure, that is one reason geodesic domes are so stiff, every section is diagonally braced
we will make the rest of the framing of the walls (for the ligth straw) with more diagonals, and with all the weigh will hope it' enough,
we also though on adding a diagonal bracing on both sides of the house that would go from 1st floor posts, to the roof beams, screwed to the post and girt
if you would reinforce it with some screwed in bracing, where would you put them?
some updates and some questions, 3 months have passed, much of the time we were travelling and not working on the house, we left after installing the plastic over the roof on november (updates till then on this post: https://permies.com/forums/posts/list/40/43534 ) and rested a bit to let the winter pass
we've spent the last month or so building the framing for the light-clay-straw walls and the windows/door of the 1st floor, also apply most of the top floor flooring, and are now starting the framing of the top floor,
now that we installed the flooring on the top floor and the 1st floor is framed, the structure looks sound and don't move with strong winds (also there is no walls so wind passes very easy) but if we apply our body to give rithmetic movement, the frame trembles/moves, is it normal?
i've been at other low-cost clay constructions where the struture moved also and after the walls covered it stops, we built it with much more care (those were post in the ground type of cnstruction), but instead of clay-straw we are going to fill it with light clay,
i would like to hear opinions about that movement, will lthe light-clay filling hold that small movement or the walls will crack if there is to much love on the top floor and we should reinforce with big bracings from the outside (would end up inside the wall)?
it's our first construction and after almost a year on this i feel it completly dferent and would make many small changes, although this was always meant as a learning experince
so, some months have passed, much of the time we were traveling and not working on the house, we left after installing the plastic over the roof and rested a bit to let the winter pass
we've spent the last month or so building the framing for the light-clay-straw and the windows/door, also apply most of the top floor flooring, and are now starting the framing of the top floor,
now that we installed the flooring on the top floor and the 1st floor is framed, the structure looks sound and don't move with strong winds (also there is no walls so wind passes very easy) but if we apply our body to give rithmetic movement, the frame trembles/moves, is it normal?
i've been at other low-cost clay constructions where the struture moved also and after the walls covered it stops, we built it with much more care, but are going to fill it with light clay,
i would like to hear opinions about that, will lthe light-clay filling hold that small movement or the walls will crack if there is to much love on the top floor ?
it's our first construction and after almost a year on this i feel it completly dferent and would make many small changes, although this was always meant as a learning experince
