Phase 1 of Building

The biggest project we have going on at the moment is building more rooms onto the existing one. These will be, going west to east from the existing building, the living room (13' x 10'), the dining room (13' x 10'), the kitchen (13' x 10'), and the entrance way (8'x6').

The north side is dug into the hill (adding thermal mass to the coldest side of the house), and the south will be double-glazed polycarbonate windows. The eaves on the south side will be such that no sun gets into the room in summer, when the sun is at its highest and hottest, while allowing the sun to enter all the way to the back of the room in winter. This will help us heat the house and grow year-round food in the flower beds that will be built at the base of the windows.

Here is a summary of what we have done so far:
1)Dug into the hill (north side of house) and leveled a 40' x 16' area.
2)Built a cement block retaining wall to the south of the building site.
3)Put a 4” PVC pipe at the base of what we dug out. This runs all the way along the earth, leading out to the garden. We have a trench dug into the clay up the hill from the building site, but should any water get through to the house, this should carry it away from the foundation.
4)Filled the whole site with 8” sand.
5)Compacted the sand.
6)Dug post holes for the south corners of the rooms. We covered castillos with lathing, put them into the holes, leveled them, and poured concrete into them.
7)Put 30 feet of 4” metal square tubing on top of the posts and welded it in place.
8)Poured a 6” x 6” metal reinforced foundation. We dug into the sand a little and then made forms so that the rest was above the level of the sand. The trench was lined with plastic, as an added security against water. We had pieces of rebar sticking up out of the foundation at two feet intervals or either side of doors.
9)Attached wall panels, made of remesh and rebar, to the foundation rebar.
10)Cut out doors and windows, when necessary.
11)Wired two layers of lathing, going in opposite directions, to the wall panels, using hog nose pliers and clips.
12)Cut out any holes needed – for water pipes, stove pipes, thermal cooling pipes, etc.
13)Wired the house with AC and DC plugs and switches.
14)Put in the breakfast bar and other shelves – all of which were made out of rebar, remesh and lathing.
15)Put in curtain rails, picture hooks, and anchors for a future shelf.
16)Put in and plumbed the doors and the window frames.
17)Made two 8' x 4' movable forms that we used for backing while we put the first layer of concrete (scratch coat) on.
18)Using a 3:1 finely screened sand to cement mix, we stuccoed a scratch coat and brown coat to each side of the walls. The final coat, which will consist of cement, lime and fibers, will go on after the roof is finished.

So that's where we are now: Stage 1 is complete and we are about to start Stage 2... the roof.

For more photos, click here.