Remaining doors and windows in (mostly)

South side with photovoltaic panels and some NON-low-e glass (finally)

Joe and Ben got the windows, storm door, and sliding glass door installed before everyone arrived for Common Ground Fair.

Homestretch

So today is the last day, I think. I kept waking up all night, like you do when you have a job interview or a trip the next day.

As has so often happened since we began this adventure, serendipitous help arrived just when we seriously needed it.

17 and counting

It appears that it is only possible for the two of us to mix and lay six batches of mortar in a day if we have done all of the preparatory putty mixing and log cleaning on a prior day, and if everything goes absolutely perfectly. This means no unexpected livestock management,, no turning off the alarm clock in your sleep, no visitors,and no dogs taking off after some phantom in the woods---

Countdown . . . 25 (ish) batches to go!

Alright, so,life gets in the way. Especially farm life. This morning we had some buckling escapism to deal with, and a bit of fence reinforcement to ensure that our girls don't kid in January. Then we spent about an hour scraping and cleaning log ends before we could start mixing mortar.

There are no shortcuts in cordwood

Well, there are; but they come with a price. Most of the shortcuts we have taken have been caused by the fact that we were in a hurry. Most of them started with a phrase like, "We don't care what the book says" or "we don't need to . . ." and continued with the phrase, "we'll just . . . ." We are here to tell you that the people who wrote the books know what they are doing. Care what they say. And don't "just . . . ."

Cordwood Commentary

It's worth remembering some of the comments people have made about our cordwood house, while helping us build, seeing finished walls, or watching us work:

"This is . . . different . . . "
"This is awesome!"
"Looks awfully tedious." (our neighbor)
"Won't it shift?"
"Won't it heave?"
"How do you keep the bugs out?"
"How long will something like this last?"
"So . . . you're not going to sheetrock inside?"
"You guys are out of your minds!"
"Pretty zen."
"This is really laborious."
"This is crazy!"
"Looks awfully tedious." (our neighbor again)
"This is so cool!"
"I'm happy for you guys, but I'm not really diggin this cordwood thing."
"It's like a fortess!"
"Me, I like to throw up some plywood, some vinyl, and call it good."
"You'll be able to heat it with a candle."
"Looks awfully tedious.' (neighbor---still)
"When I look at that wall, I think of 101 Dalmatians."

And the best one: "I'd say it looks pretty Zombie-proof."

Tarp House starts to become Sunnywood

Because it's important for the lime-putty mortar not to cure too quickly, we had tarped each panel as it was completed, to protect it from sun wind. So as far as the neighbors could tell, despite all of our building efforts, we still had just a tarp house.

Today we removed the tarps from the panels that we had completed 30 or more days ago (time enough for initial curing): a total of 5 panels. Even though these earlier panels, as the "learning walls," incorporate all of everyone's mistakes, they are still awesome. I can't wait to live in this house.

10th panel is done!!!

As of 5:30 yesterday (Sunday, 9/20) eve. This panel took 16 batches and 3 days for Joe and me, with Heidi working with us for about half of that time. We had our first real frost Saturday night, so we'll have to wait and see if and how that affected the fresh mortar. All of the panels are now tarped and curing. Stay tuned for details and photos about mixing lime putty and mortar, setting window frames, using bottles and other decorative features, techniques for top work, comments people have made, and more.

Going for 10!

Okay, due to popular demand (i.e., both Joe and I think it's a good idea), we have completed panel 9 and begun #10! We have been very lucky to have Heidi back to help us. It took 19 batches and 4 and a half days for panel 9, but the big window frame took a lot more preparation and handling than the smaller frames (that will be another post: how 2 people lift and set these massive frames). Our plan is to be done with the 10th panel, if we push it, by the end of the day on Sunday. Or Monday.

We had a light frost in some spots last night, but covered the new work with tarp.

Trapped in cordwood

Our long silence does not mean that we've finally mortared ourselves into our walls! We're just in a building frenzy, trying to complete as much wall area as possible before the calendar puts an end to it. After that we'll update this blog with detail and process notes and photos.

We finished the 8th panel on Saturday the 12th. We could move in for the winter with 8 panels, as that would give us three "bays" closed in, if we install a temporary wall at the west end of the completed panels. But we made so much progress on the 9th panel yesterday (we're getting better at this, and faster*), that we are now considering the possibility of a 10th, which would give us 4 bays---all of our living area except the utility and project rooms.

See the rough floor plan below. The gray exterior border represents the 18" cordwood wall. The small black rectangles are posts; there are a total of 14 cordwood panels between the posts. We have completed the panels bracketed with red: three on the north, three on the south, and the two large east panels. As of yesterday, we had about a third of the cordwood done on the 9th panel (the next south-facing panel). If we complete another north panel, making 10, we can move our temporary wall west by an entire set of posts.

We've extended our "stop" date to the 19th, which is surely pushing it in terms of approaching frosts. What do you think: is it worth taking a chance that frost might affect the set of the lime mortar?



*Joe and I, working alone, mixed and laid up six batches of mortar, in addition to cleaning some logs and sifting some sand.

Working on panel 6!

Heidi, beginning the sixth panel:

Our post and beam, shed-roofed, 43' x 25' design has 14 infilled cordwood panels between the posts. The minimum number of filled panels we need to be able to live there during this winter is eight: this would give us the kitchen, bath, one bedroom, and a bit of living area. But we can only lay cordwood until about mid-September, because lime-putty mortar doesn't set up well in really hard frosts. So our goal has been 8 panels by mid-September. Looks pretty doable at this point (maybe we can fill 10 panels, which would give us more living area and the other bedroom!).
The following pictures show the fifth panel, which is actually the center panel of the three well-glazed south-facing living-room panels. This went fast because the window frame took up so much room.
Here are Isaac and Heather, completing the top of the center panel. Note Joe's homemade scaffolding:


Check out Isaac's under-the-window cordwood pattern!


Laying a bottle end:



Joe is sitting in the window well. 18-inch-thick walls make window frames with a lot of options! (You can see one particularly bright turquoise bottle end as well.)

Working around (or out of) the rain---and cordwood heros

You can see a bit of how Joe has rigged the tarps that cover the wall openings as awnings to work under in this season's never-ending rain (of course, the sun came out for these photos). Isaac and Heather are our cordwood heros! Before long, they'll be teaching us what to do.
This picture of how neatly the cordwood wall meets the ceiling/roof belies how difficult and time-consuming that piece of the work really is.

Life can sure change all in a moment

So . . . we've lived in our current house for almost exactly a decade: longer than either of us has lived anywhere else in our adult lives. It's where our youngest daughter spent her high school years, and where our youngest son has lived since he was nine. We had planned to try to sell it, when our cordwood house was nearly ready to move into. But life has a funny habit of not working out as planned. Our house has been---unexpectedly---sold, to the satisfaction of both seller and buyer. Now all we need is a place to live!

We had planned to start laying cordwood last spring. We worked on painting and repairs in our current house, so that when we were ready to sell it, it would be ready to sell. We enjoyed the activities of our youngest child's senior year in high school, and concentrated on college preparations for him.

We were ready to start laying cordwood. Then the rains hit. As I write, it has been raining pretty steadily, with few breaks, for about two months. No one around here has ever seen anything like it.

We have 14 panels to fill in with cordwood---although we could probably move in with just eight panels and a temporary wall. But we have to stop laying cordwood no later than mid-September, because the lime-putty mortar won't set up properly in a hard frost.

We have already been blessed by "help from the sky." Isaac and Heather have been awesome!!! Karen and Clive!!! Ian!!! However we are here to say that if any of our readers have the slightest interest in learning how to build with cordwood, NOW IS YOUR TIME!!! We stand ready and waiting to teach you everything you would ever want to know (as well as stuff you wouldn't). Come on out and experience the zen of cordwood . . .

Friends---and first complete panel

Friends Karen and Clive joined us for a day of cordwood, and were initiated into all of the mysteries. We have decided that they are the best new pointers of cordwood mortar EVER---even Jaki Roy of Earthwood would approve, I think! Their section of wall will stand out when the house is done, to be sure.

We also filled in the top of one of the two nearly complete panels, making our first complete panel! Fitting and filling in at the top is very time-consuming, and uses a LOT of mortar.

30 batches of mortar later

We had our two days of summer, and it's raining again. We have managed to make a bit of progress, though.

Laying cordwood at last

Rain be damned---we are laying cordwood! And very glad that we decided to build a timber frame with cordwood infilling, rather than building load-bearing cordwood, because we have a roof to work under. The folks in the Daycreek forum---particularly Bruce and Nancy---have been most helpful and we have achieved very good LPM (lime-putty mortar) mixes, with the help of some bagged dry sand. When the mix is good, you can feel it and hear it while you're mixing.

We are using 18" log ends, and following Rob Roy's suggestion, going with approximate MIM (mortar-insulation-mortar) widths of 5"---7.5"---5" (to leave a half inch for log-end relief when pointing).








The corners around the posts are kind of funky: we use 6" log ends on alternate courses. From the outside there is no difference: we just need to remember to leave room for insulation on the inside.

Splooty mortar, and the cordwood learning curve

You can read all you want about something---and trust me, we have---and you can try to learn from the example of others---we took Rob Roy's cordwood course---but nothing can prepare you for actually doing something, other than . . . DOING it.

We have opted to use lime-putty mortar rather than a Portland cement mix. It is time-tested (the Romans used it) and doesn't have the embodied energy of Portland (cement manufacture produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide). So last week we cracked open some of the 100 bags of Type S builders lime we'd purchased, and hydrated it to make a lime putty, using a recipe from New York cordwood builders extraordinaire Bruce and Nancy: 13.5 gallons of water, 3 50-lb bags of lime, and 1/2 cup of dish soap. This mixture is WORK to mix, even with a paddle mixer attached to a power drill. We covered the putty with a film of water and plastic, and let it sit for a bit more than the required 3 days.

Yesterday we tried our first mortar mix: 2 1/2 parts sand to one part lime putty. However, here in Maine we have had a freakishly wet spring---we had five inches of rain just between June 19 and 21, and it's been raining all month---and our sand, despite our best efforts, is pretty moist.

The resulting mortar was overly moist. Cordwood guru Rob Roy says that a ball of mortar, when tossed three feet in the air, should NOT go "sploot" when it lands. All I can say is that ours was pretty splooty.

We tried laying up our first bit of cordwood with our too-wet mortar, rolling up one of our tarp "walls," but the rain and wind began again as soon as the tarp was up. We were forced to give up after half a batch of mortar, which is probably just as well. We were in a hurry to lay our first cordwood after all of the preparation, and forgot everything we'd read about technique and "mortar, insulation, wood" cadence. Looks like we'll need to wait out the weather, settle down, and try again.

"Pretty splooty"

Everything but cordwood

While we haven't started on the cordwood walls yet, we have been busy getting everything in place so that we can. This has involved going to Houlton to research and buy our Bison hand water pump, taking delivery of and storing fifty 50-pound bags of hydrated lime for our lime putty mortar (once again our son Isaac has provided invaluable help), having a truckload of sand brought in, and trying to locate a supply of dry sawdust, which will be the insulation between the exterior and interior mortar joints in our cordwood wall (see photo of cordwood wall in progress from our Earthwood Building School workshop). How could we know that dry sawdust is dear as gold in this part of the state, prized by dairy farms as bedding?

We have also taken the time to plant some fruit and nut trees, as well as pine trees for wind breaks/privacy, spread hay and wood chips on the bare dirt of our much-loved berm, and lay down loam, cow manure, compost, and wood chips as the foundation for next year's vegetable garden. The truckload of cow manure was a mothers day gift from Molly and Ian: one of the best ever! (The gift that keeps on giving, as I said.) Actually Joe has been doing most of the hard labor, while I sit in my cell---whoops!, office---every day and think up annoying questions to ask and things to remind him of.

I take the liberty of sharing this recent Facebook post of Joe's:

"You work sixteen tons, and whaddaya get? Another day older, and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me, my life's too hard. I owe my soul to the credit card... Yup, Kyle and I hand shoveled 10 tons of loam, a ton of manure and five tons of mulch. Sixteen tons, and whaddaya get? A garden that's 750 square feet, compared to a house that's going to be only 660 square feet!!"

He's not kidding: we kept expanding our vegetable garden plot, worrying that it wasn't big enough, until we realized that it had exceeded the square footage of the non-shop portion of our house! It's all about priorities . . .

Moving cordwood: don't underestimate the tortoise principle

Joe has been hauling the cordwood from the cutting site to the building site. Via rather small tote sleds, without the help of a snowmobile, horse, or even our Newfie. Why? Here is how our decision process went:

We want to begin the cordwood infilling as soon as possible in the spring. Cool, we thought; we'll order sand and lime and be ready to roll as soon as hard frosts have passed. We'll have to allow time to bring the wood over from the cutting site . . . which will mean driving the truck to the cutting areas where the wood is stacked . . . the access roads to which are not likely to be dry enough to drive over till June . . . aarrrgghhh, another flaw in the plan. Better to get the wood out now, while the ground is frozen and snow-covered.

Our first idea was to get the wood out with a borrowed snowmobile and tote sled. Sounded good, but not a viable option for the landowners, since our snowmobile tracks would very likely have had the effect of quickly incorporating their land into the ITS system and attracting every sled for miles around. We finally decided that we'd try the long slow route of hauling wood out with hand-pulled sleds, one small load at a time. When we made the decision, we figured that we might only get a third of the wood out before spring, but that would still give us a jump on building and Joe had some time this winter.

What we didn't expect was the progress that can be made with slow, steady effort. With a good pair of snowshoes, as well as some much-appreciated help from Isaac, Joe has already moved two-thirds of the cordwood from the cutting site to the building site five miles away---including setting up wood racks inside the Sunnywood frame---with a plastic sled, a homemade wooden sled, and an small pickup. This has been a lesson in the value of incremental but consistent expenditure of energy (and way cheaper than a membership at the gym). We have also learned that low-tech solutions can sometimes be very effective: having done this, Joe doesn't believe that using a snowmobile would have been any faster, or that much easier. It does help that the wood has already been drying for a year, so it is considerably lighter than the first time we handled it.
Loading sleds:


Working against gravity:


Working with gravity!:


To Sunnywood:


Inside to stay good and dry:

Cutting the cordwood for the walls

(Joe here.) Obviously, this post is out of sequence for how things really happened. In January of 2007 we began discussing how to get the wood we'd need. We were contemplating buying our wood in tree lengths and then debarking and cutting to size. However, some friends of ours who live near our building site offered to let us cut wood from their land. It was a win-win situation all around, we got the wood for free, they got a lot of cleared space. All they asked was that we haul the brush to central spots so they could chip it.

In June of 2007 we started cutting the wood for our cordwood home. There's really not a lot I can discuss about cutting wood, whole books have been written about it to better effect than I can describe here. I did work out a sequence that worked for me since I was working by myself most days I was cutting wood.

The first thing I'd do is drop the tree, then limb it, and haul the brush. After the site was cleared away and I could see what I was working with, I'd buck it to size, (we are using 18" log ends), making sure to work around forks, bad spots on the trunk, crooks and other less than straight pieces. I'd also save parts of pretty big branches. Depending on how energetic (or tired!!) I was, I'd keep pieces all the way down to a couple of inches in diameter.

After bucking the tree to size, I'd move all the odds and ends of unusable pieces into piles, (some of which we've used in our woodstove), then I'd haul the cordwood to wherever I was going to stack it. Where possible, I tried to set up a stack between two trees in order to have support for the ends of the piles.


I was using a yard cart to move the wood from where I cut it to where I was stacking it. Obviously, the amount I could move depended on what diameter log end I was working with. I had some loads that were only two pieces, some had twenty!! Once I had the wood moved to the pile location, then I'd peel it. There is some discussion about the best way/time to peel the log ends. I tried peeling the entire tree, I tried cutting the trees into 54" sticks (which worked out to three 18" log ends per stick) and peeling those, but ultimately I ended up waiting until I had cut the tree into the 18" log ends. This way I didn't end up peeling forks, crooks and other pieces I wasn't going to use. I also peeled pretty much immediately after I cut the tree as it peeled a whole lot better that way. We used mostly white pine, and some spruce, both of which peeled pretty easily. The spruce was a bit harder because the branches come out in pretty random patterns, the white pine has branches in fairly regular spacing. I was able to peel for up to three days after I cut a tree without having to rely on a drawknife. My typical peeling tool was a putty knife. I could start a slit down the length of the log end and peel the bark away in strips. Sometimes I could get the bark to peel off in one piece, almost like pulling a single sheet off of a roll of paper towels!! One other advantage I found was that, except for the largest pieces, I could sit on a stool with a log end in my lap and peel it. It was nice to be able to work in the shade on hot days!! I was able to peel with no problems from June through about mid-September in our area. After that point I had to start using the drawknife on each piece. As it stands now, I still have about five face cords to peel. Our friends let us stack the wood on their property which saved me having to move all that water in the green wood. By the time we're ready to start the cordwood part of the project, the wood'll be nice and dry, and LIGHT!!

A couple of hints I'll pass on that I hope you'll find useful. I bought a lot of sacrifice clothes at the Good Will thrift shop for this part of the project. You get a lot of sap all over your clothes when you're working with green pine. Also, my friends suggested a pretty neat product called Citri-solv which is a non-toxic non-acidic citrus solution that really takes the sap off of pretty much everything. I used it to clean myself and my tools.

Here is a picture of one of the earlier stacks. Over all, I cut about 8 cords of log ends, which works out to about 21 face cords, which, if I calculated correctly should be enough to do the house we've designed.