New season, new crew!

Dear friends of Mudbandits,

Summer season has arrived along with our new, energetic crowd for sharing the joys of mudding around. Five new human and one doggie friend have joined this crew for the summer, generously spreading their spirits and talents on-site and between all of us. Welcome all: Greg, Jo, Joe, Taylor, and Paddy! With Paul and Pau included, we are now 7.

Our first and busy week included sculpting a new cob oven and a cozy sitting area nestled between the small cob cottage and the main building. We also prepared a basecoat plaster mix and used it for patching some cracks and shrinkage areas around the top of the walls, lintels and sills. This is prep work for plastering soon to follow. Some tasters from this opening of the season:

Greg and Taylor smoothing out the inner sand form for the cob oven
 

Fire cob mix is made with lots of sand and some fine potter's clay. Above Joe, below Paddy and Jo mixing in the polytunnel.

Fire cob is followed by a layer of straw to insulate oven space and keep the inside nice and hot during baking.
 

Joe, Paddy and Greg preparing the base for an outdoor Rumford fireplace at the future hangout spot 
for cozy summer evenings
 

Greg and Jo giving finishing touches to a communally created cob bench
 

Springtime has brought greenery on top of our building and it begins to melt into its surroundings

To finish this heads-up about our current activities, some notes about our early spring:

While blog has been quiet during the winter, things have been rolling along in the form of careful weeding and garden prep. Garden seedlings are planted and on the way - many have been planted and flourishing on the ground already: peas, beans, potatoes for summer and winter use, lettuces, herbs, carrots, parsnips, beets, cabbage and spring onions – even quinoa!

Early spring has been busy with insulation boards and underfloor heating pipes laid on the floors. Inside the insulation run electricity and water pipes in slots carved specifically for them. To cover the insulation we spread black plastic to accomodate underfloor heating pipes and thermal mass screed to be poured on top of it all. This will make our house a hybrid, showing that it is possible to combine elements of the traditional and conventional.

Above insulation boards, below underfloor heating pipes ready for screed to be laid

Spring has also brought us a new terraced orchard on the East side of the building site with over 30 fruit trees of different heirloom varieties. There, apple, plum, pear and cherry trees are planted along with a lower row of willow and alder, later to protect the orchard from the often heavy South-Westerly breezes. Calendula is blooming, giving us sun-ray-like stripes to our freshly picked salads and of course, a healing quality to inspire hand-made cremes and salves…

Above, the terraced orchard landscape. Below, the beginnings of a blooming glory in late April

Internship 2012

We would like to welcome our 2012 interns - Looking forward to working and learning with Joe, Taylor, Greg, Paddy and Jo...watch this space

Pictures from the Internship 2011

Some Memories:

"You talking to me?"

Garden Bliss


Sunshine Builders!

Camouflaged Timber Framer

Kneebrace determination

Some gentle persuasion

Bath Time!

Pencil sharpening - right tool for the job!

Balecobbing

Concentration

Keeping between the lines

"Where did that mouse go?"

" I'm not very bright but I can lift heavy things!"

The Mixing Master

Where do you want this cob?

Just one last fitting!

Who is behind the camera?

Anyone want to play ball?

Bringing in the bales for the balecob wall

Fat camp!

Cutting the cords for cordwood walls on our jig
Who is next for a haircut?

Our victorious vegetables at the Nenagh Agricultural Show - with the head gardener!

Happiness Is....

Big jigsaw puzzle

Chisel Rhythm

It's a mans world?

Cold Season Update

Winter has arrived and most of our seasoned MudBandits have taken off to warmer climates or other adventures – only two have remained, tipping away in the glow of bright construction lights as the nights are creeping in earlier and earlier.

Left:Inner entryway framing with a template for a cob arch to-come. On the side, framing set for indoor cobbing with willow supports. Top Right: Interior hallway leading to Western side back door. On the right, fresh cob walls stay up with the help of willow supports. On the left, shuttered walls without willow supports.

So, Lady Power it has been for the past month and a half - and a bunch has been accomplished too! Lower layer of interior walls has been set almost in every corner of the building. Inner entryway has received framing ready to accommodate a set of double doors and an eventual cob arch above it. Cob around chimney flue has collapsed and a new, wider base has been re-built. Most basecoat cracks have been cleaned and patched, and fridge has received its exterior cobbing with only its ventilation channels left (to let cool air circulate into it and keep the grub fresh). Karen has also been busy making shelving on top of two closets, and Pauliina has made another lift to the cordwood wall with great help from Coenraad who came with his full team to visit from HouseAlive, a natural building company in Oregon, US.

Cordwood wall in progress. Picture taken from kitchen space, behind it is the pantry.

Paul has been with us during weekends and set up more electrical lines through the framing of indoor walls – this is to prepare for another lift in the indoor cob; electrical wiring needs to be buried inside the cob and thus needs to be well prepped before building up the wall. This includes setting up electrical outlet and switchboxes to designated spots and running the cables through them.

We have learned a bunch doing our indoor work. Because our walls are thin (about 3 inches or 7,5 cm - the thickness of a two-by-three), we have built a stud framing structure to help support our cob infill. In a thin wall like this it would be of help to have quite a fine cob mix without a lot of big stones (yet, not necessary, as our mixes now are on the rougher side of the whole summer –meaning we will pick out the worst as we go :)

Karen cobbing above door frame

Apart from horizontal battons of two-by-two boards, we have also supported the interior cob with some recycled nails hammered to the sides of the studs, and, most effectively, with some willow branches tucked and woven horizontally at regular intervals. First we had to put up strips of shuttering to keep the cob up when it was freshly built and sagging – after moving on to our willow technology, we could skip putting up strips of ply for a support as the walls gracefully stayed up by themselves. This will save us both time and materials, and will help the walls dry quicker (a process which is time taking in any case as the weather of the season is chilly and damp).

Top: Pauliina cobbing interior walls

Above and Below: Karen &Johnny working on storage shelving to the right of the main entrance. Framing in front will eventually be filled with cob.

During the past months we have had problems to hold up the cobbing around our chimney flu. Reason to this was too much sculptural work in the beginning of the cobbing work, insteadof building up a solid foundation from which to trim off after cob has settled and dried a bit.

When cob is fresh, it tends to sag and be more vulnerable for the forces of gravity. This is why it is important not to end up thickening a wall the higher it goes– especially if dealing with a lean, towering structure. Even if the end result is planned with refinement, the base should be built with a rough hand and a solid footing for whatever goes up. Forms can be shaped afterwards and beautiful, elaborate sculptural work accomplished!

Collapsed cob surrounding chimney flue, with a new starting base on the left

The little cob cottage has kept us nice and snugly warm heated by the little wood stove. Thursday night we had the first frost, and saved the celery and some cabbage to make up a batch of sauerkraut. Winter is definitely settling in.

Pauliina and Karen in front of the Cob Cottage, our winter dwelling by the construction site

Another Season comes to a close

Felix with Nye, Xavi, Sophie,Pauliina, Shawn, Sonya, Karen, Therese, Christo, Leila, Paul (Also Martin & Ben)

A sincere thank you to everyone who passed through and helped to make 2011 a great building season. Especially to our 7 interns - Felix, Pauliina, Shawn, Karen, Leila, Martin & Ben. We wish you all the best in the future and do please stay in touch.

Happy Building!!

Lots of love

Paul & Therese

The end of a season...

This entry is written by a visitor and not by an apprentice-proper. I offer you my perspective as a traveler who accepted a gracious invitation into the natural building world for two weeks, before returning to a full-time job in Brussels. If more city-bound workers could experience the joy of natural building, who knows how many paths would eventually veer away from what we imagine to be the future?

Greetings to the followers of the mud bandits. In the photo above you see some of us enjoying a picnic. Only a few minutes after we had doffed our clothes down to underwear and swimsuits and swum the frigid waters of Lough Derg, we watched the eponymous sub-aqua club arrive and don extra-thick drysuits, pulling on gloves and booties for good measure.

This was the last swim of the season, and during our two-week stay in Nenagh with Therese and Paul, Leila, Martin, Ben, Karen, Paulina, Ken, and Johnny we saw many stages of this ambitious project approach completion.

The base coat, for instance, had been applied over nearly the entirety of outdoor wall by the time of our September 30 departure. The mixing of this grey pre-plaster is quite labor intensive, and since the decision had been made to work without cow manure, one stage of mixing was the simulation of manure by adding chopped straw and cut grass, plus a liquid ferment to the clay, sand, and sawdust base. This was the first task I was given.

The artistic properties of tool-mediated physical labor become immediately apparent

when the 'tool' is replaced by its most basic ancestor, the hand.

One mix of base coat applied by three people has three different surfaces. A beautiful echo of each workers' personality. These hand movements must be deeply ingrained in our character, for even with deliberate care I

found I could not impressively mimic another style, nor could the others swipe my style. The same principle held for all of the earthen handiwork: cob walls bespeak their sculptors. Authorship at the price of hard labor: a compelling bargain both for the apprentices and the master.

Plastering occupied some of us at all times, as small delegations were sent to Cloughjordan daily to help a humble but well read and quite Irish stonemason finish weatherproofing his home before the cold of winter.

Plastering is difficult. Very frustrating if one has never before worked with hawks, floats, and trowels. There's a trick to getting the moisture of the float, the wall, and the plaster mix just right; and when you think you've got it, the professional shows up to admire what a poor job you've done and finishes the equivalent of a day's surface area, albeit sloppily, in the blink of an eye.

Some of us were decidedly better than others at plastering: Martin earned the stonemason's compliments, while I got a pat on the back and a 'I'll leave you and the plaster alone for a little while.' Through the combined efforts of ten people, however, we were able to finish a scratch coat and two float coats. One more float coat, and perhaps a skim coat, and the pretty little house will be bundled up nice and dry for winter.

Back on site the roof had threatened to blow off once or twice, and anyways the time was nigh for finishing off the roof with a couple dozen digger-loads of soil. Spreading a 2" layer over both levels of roof took almost two whole days to finish. Even in Timmy's expert hands, soil dug by a digger is full of roots and stones, and we might have had a beautiful little Zen garden on the rooftop except for Paul's interest in a living roof.

Those of us who were not raking soil above on the roof were raising walls below to the height of the timber

frame. Our bale-splitting and straw-stuffing may have been rude and quick, but with enough cob packed in between and a full covering of base coat atop we soon had a dirty roof keeping us clean and muddy walls keeping us dry.

There is vertical slit between the roofs where the level changes that is just visible in the above photo. Into this space were placed a long rectangular window on the top side

(the roof slants down toward the north) and an insulating pack of light straw-clay the remainder of the length.

Another large step in this home's completion was shaving the empty door frame, checking level and plumb, and adding (as well as cobbing over) the lintel. Quite feels like a door now!

Inside the house we approached the more sculptural elements of natural building. After finally reaching a decent level of cob wall around the hearth, we began the curvaceous design. The plan is to have an upward-curving inset that narrows as it follows the flue to the ceiling. Near the entrance to the hearth will be a rounded bench with just enough room to warm feet in front of the fireplace.

The approaching end of the apprenticeship lent a fervor to our activities and we had to force ourselves to slow down after a wall collapsing for the third time found us approaching cliché: 'Haste makes waste.' The rounded bench presented another opportunity to rush a beautiful design into reality before ensuring its structural integrity. On Paul's advice we knocked down our first attempt, cut a diagonal into the adjacent dry wall, cut teeth into that diagonal, and built what you see above. Not as fast, much more structurally sound, much better bound to the adjoining mass, and an absolutely beautiful completion to the curved wall. The joy of cobbing...

Soon, too soon, time had come to say our farewells and return to Brussels. We shared amazing conversations, saxophone duets, book recommendations, jokes, no small amount of sarcasm, and a deep connection born from the womb of that cob 'cottage', nursed by our hands, and enjoyed as the fruit of our collective labor.