Light Straw Clay

Light Straw Clay

Last week before vacation and we're still hard at work. We cut finished and installed interior sills, finishing lentils to be installed later. And after much time and detail from all of us, the bay window posts were completed. A trial run on a previously built template in the evening, and carefully installed by all the next morning. A perfect fit. Much to be proud of and the house is feeling more like a home.

A bit of digging from Timmy for an upcoming dry stack urbanite wall and the beginnings of our light straw clay wall on the north side of the building. A lot of setup but we were able to raise the panels a level a day.

A quick look at the wall from the interior. Notice the beautiful timber framing from last years interns.





We've built scaffolding to help as we move up the wall and a plank to help us transport the light straw clay from the bank. Pretty tight fit at top of the wall
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Picking out posts for a shed and a couple of lifts shy of a complete wall finished off the week.








South side of house drying, so we can install lentils.

Fresh From Holidays! Drainage, Woodwork & Fermented Brews...

Fresh from holidays - chores at site have left little time for blogging, yet here we are with some pictures and stories of progression!

We’re lucky to have gained new members to our group – Laurene from France will join us for some time, as well as Graham who interned here last year and is now back to bring his experience on timber framing along with stories of his building project in Kenya.

Light straw clay wall with freshly finished base coating on the left

Past weeks have included finishing up our light straw clay walls with patching the hollower parts with more straw. We’ve applied a basecoat onto the surface – basically, a sticky mixture of green grass clippings, chopped straw, clay, sand and water – all mixed together and fermented for a couple of days to bring up a unique fragrance before application :)

Double doors on South-Eastern wall

Double doors were set on the South-Eastern wall by Ben and Graham. Door on the Western side has also been set, along with lintels and sills to our bay window and Northern side light straw clay wall. We have tied “odds and ends” with cob, filled in spaces under window sills, sealed in doors and leveled out cob surfaces above windows in preparation for creating cob lintels.

Karen, Leila & the freshly set up bay window lintel!

On the Western side of our site a timber framing project is taking shape, aimed towards creating a workshop space. We have already cleared the land and set up a grid for posts. Some of us have had a chance to chisel out joints to fit together posts and beams. Others have been working on more knee-braces for the timber frame in the main building.

Michael chiseling out post & beam joint

With the help of Timmy and his digger, we put down drainage pipes on the North side of the house above the rubble trench. There are pipes to lead out rain- and grey water, as well as insulated pipes to bring in solar hot water heated in panels (yet to be installed) further up the hill.

Drainage set in - notice fresh base coat on light straw clay wall at the right behind Timmy's digger!

Work on electrics has begun from the Eastern side of the building, with electric chords being buried in the indoor cob walls. Some of us have been preparing the grounds for more roofing, patching the EPDM rubber and clearing the space in general for further roofing membranes. This week, our stone expert Ken has come for a visit to guide us into the secrets of stone work, in the form of a retaining wall.

Paul fitting electrics into cob wall

All in all, our building is taking new shape fast, and its walls are retaining an ever cozier indoor space more and more sheltered from the cooling weathers of the coming fall.

Our cozy indoors (picture from July right before holidays)

Could it possibly be summer!?.. Mo' cobbin'!!

Still reeling from the loss of our buddies Xabi and Christo who have gone on cobbing and baking for those who need it most, we found some cheer this week in the shape of some sunshine and a fantastic new chap; Micheal. Great to have someone new to work with and hopefully if he doesn't like smooth jazz we can join forces against Martin's jazz crusade, gotta keep it rocking on the site!. Martin, jazzin up the veg with his sexiphone..

The walls are getting really high now so we started throwing cob in order to supply the builder, lots of opportunities for fun and games, my favourite is trying to get a three pointer into Shawn's builder's gap.
As we all got busy throwing cob and trimming and building

correcting walls is a pain in the rear!

higher and higher this giant mechanical monster suddenly appeared all growling and grinding, it was lovely Timmy and his digger, arriving to try his supremely skilled hand at cob mixing for the first time! .


Timmy in fighting form

The mean digger soon transformed into a soft toy as it started mixing cob, it was amazing to watch!. Hey, if you can't beat them, make them build nice things!.


In the meantime, lovely Sonia, Shaun's wife, left us after a week hanging with us and making lovely cake. Thanks Sonia, we'll miss you, hope you come back!

Shawn and Sonia, very proud parents of 2 lovely cakes, mmm!



Timmy 's digger was quite a help, lifting the giant mixes straight onto the highest scaffold positions for us to cob onto the now lintel height walls. The cob itself, although a bit rough was surprisingly good, definitely the way to go for fast building.
As we are now at lintel height, we had to make sure the dead men were made up and set in in order to fix the lintels, a task which Shawn and Micheal speedily completed. After all this, a quick tidy of the site and onto fitting more windows and starting slipstraw walls...

lovely wood!

Working the window pillars



Yeah mummy, very funny.. now I've got dirty feet!


Micheal reaching new heights


Big hairy arse, measured for window seats!

Good Bye Christo & Xavi

Thank you both for all the memories and teaching and laughs. Its not the same around here without you. Hope to see you both soon again!

Windows and doors have arrived!!

We recieved our windows and doors and started cobbing them into the walls. We were fortunate to have a few days where the weather allowed us to continue our cob mixing and the walls are looking really beautiful. After the windows going up the house really started to take its form.

The Rumford fire place has had its first fire after connecting the chimney flue. It provides a very warm and cozy space. Paul gave a lecture last week about interior design and has challenged us to come up with designs for this space.
The bay window will be going in soon! It is a massive window.
We did a lot of wood work this past week which consisted of building window frames as well as frames for the clay slip infill system we will be applying here.
More windows!

Sour Dough – “Christo” style

Starter

Use Rye Organic Wholemeal flour
50ml water and 50g flour in a jar with muslin to allow it to breath and keep flies etc out
Keep in a warm and dry place
Stir 3 times a day approx and when active/bubbling add a teaspoon of flour and a drop of water

After 1 week you should have a good quantity. Keep feeding to avoid it getting too sour.

Maintaining Starter

Wetter & Warmer = More active
So to slow down; keep it cool and dry (add more flour than water)
Or to activate; bring to 30°C and ad water
Feed it its own weight in flour and water (double it) every 6 hours
Avoid letting started go black (putrefied)

Making Bread

To activate starter the day before baking add water and store in a warm place

Quantities

***For 2 loaves***
180g white + 340g wholemeal + 350ml water + 1 tablespoon salt +1.5decilitres of starter

***3 Bucket Approach – 12 loafs***
Starter in bucket1
Fill 1/8^th of Bucket2 and Bucket3 with starter
Save some starter in Bucket1 for next week. Add flour and water, replace lid and store in cold place
In each bucket add:
3 tablespoons of dissolved sea salt
1lt water (Not lukewarm but not too cold)
1500g of flour (50% wholemeal and 50% white for beginners – 60% wholemeal and 40% white ) or 6 cups of both
One bucket will make 6 loaves...add water if needed

Mixing in the bucket
Kneed for 5 to 10 minutes
Keep one hand clean to rotate the bucket
If adding nuts or fruit, or sun-dried tomatoes, pre-soak and add now
For spices or cheese add later, or add olive oil for pizza dough later

Close lid tight and leave for 3 to 4hrs (The longer it is left the more sour the bread will become)

Final Kneed
After 3 to 4 hrs (1 hr before bake – just after firing the oven)
Spread flour on table
Add a little flour on top of dough and down sides of bucket to pop dough out of bucket
Cut into 6 pieces and coat with flour
Kneed for 5 mins adding small amounts of flour if needed to prevent sticking. Keep maintaining the shape of circular loaf. Also stretch and bang off table to stretch the gluten
If you wish add seeds, herbs, fruit, nuts or spices by spreading dough flat and evenly dispersing seeds etc and kneed in circular motion to mix throughout bread
Place on flour and cover with a linen towel (cotton will stick to bread)

Allow 30mintues to rise and perform final shaping
Slice top of each loaf
Bake 40mins at approx 180°C (7 seconds tolerance for “some forearms” in earthen oven)
Check after 20minutes
Place in damp towel after removing from oven to avoid hardening of crust

Following a week of heavy rain and intense woodworking we got back to cobbing during our fourth week here in Nenagh. We had started to put back on the few pounds we had shed over the previous weeks so it was nice to get back to getting our feet and hands dirty again. To speed up the building process and the drying time we set about creating a very high “spine and ribs” at the end of every lift of wall. This meant that we could build higher but it would also dry faster, allowing us to add another layer sooner.

mmmm, pedicure anyone?

We were joined this week by cob legend Christo and his lovely colleague Xavi, all the way from Holland, who are to spend two weeks with us giving us invaluable tips on many of the finer aspects of cob building, including the light straw clay process, plastering and some input into design approaches. But first they introduced us to a new cob dance (which we will dub the “tarp shuffle” - a very elegant way to mix cob with a partner). It took a while to get used to this innovation but we were soon shuffling along quite nicely. Not sure if we’d win any prizes but it was fun..

The latest dance craze -watch out Maximus!

As we continued building up the walls it became apparent that certain areas needed some more design consideration especially where the external walls connect to the internal ones. This was particularly the case for the living room area, where the internal cob wall around the fireplace integrates with the exterior wall. Paul asked each of us to look at the room and think of some design solutions for this particular space and took us through some elements and principles of designing interior spaces. It is definitely an advantage to have a general idea of where you will place shelves, built-in seating, niches, etc. at this stage to save time later on. Designing early on can give unity to a house as a whole, bringing balance and harmony to a project. Lots to think about!

Great excitement on site on Wednesday as the external windows and doors arrived – double glazed with hardwood timber frames. We set about getting the window openings ready for installation. A team screened earth using a wire mesh to make a refined cob mix without large stones. We then made a template for the width of the windows allowing a tolerance of a few centimetres to get the window into the opening. The already roughly built walls then had to be cut back to these dimensions. The windows were then lifted into place on the stone sills, levelled and then braced back to the timber frame. After being secured in the right place we used the refined mix in around the frames to set them into the wall. So we now have full height windows and half height walls!

We also started on the framing for the light straw clay wall –not so easy when nothing in the building is square! Christo thankfully kept us on track with his ingenious ideas. Another task tackled was making the recesses for the round wood window mullions for the large bay window in the living room. There was a lot of chiselling and checking going on with a great result after the long hours put into it. It’s really starting to look like a house now with some of the windows installed.

Therése celebrated her birthday with us this week. Happy Birthday again! To mark the occasion our resident Basque and Gallegan maestros cooked us up delicious paella dishes full of yummy treats like seafood, chicken and chorizo – Que rico! We also had the raw food chefs whisk together another great raw cake.. What a feast! On the theme of food it should be mentioned loudly that we have been treated to lots of yummy bread since Christo arrived -this man has many many talents! Thanks to all the great efforts to make us fat!

Bread-tastic!

This weekend we had the good fortune to attend a cob oven workshop being given by Christo and Xavi and being hosted by the wonderful sculptor Philip Quinn and his lovely family, Liz, Kate, Eve, Ruairi and Will at their home in Holycross. Some more cobbing on our days off but great to see what you can do with cob over two days. Thanks to Philip and family for the great food and hospitality. More about the earth oven building will be written in detail -watch this space!

So almost a month has passed and things are slowly settling into a routine.. Ralphie is keeping us on our toes stealing the cobber's thumbs, Johnny is complaining about the weather and brings us little gifts that he has skillfully hunted down and the rest of us animals are alive and kicking -happily Ben's hand is still in one piece!

Ralphie hard at work!

One of Johnny's offerings

So that’s all for now folks ‘til the next thrilling installation..