The big news

When I mentioned that there would be big news in my last post, I didn't really know what that would be. I was ready for change and many ideas had been floating around in my head. The most likely were moving the house, running a tiny timberframe house building workshop, or building another one for sale. It was only a matter of time before my impulsivity would take over and one of those things would happen. Well it did. Last friday afternoon I decided it was time to move. In order to get my house out of the woods, I had to wait for the swamp I parked it in to freeze enough to support the truck, but there could be no snow on the ground. The weather provided. We had a good cold week and the outlook appeared to be beautiful and warm. This meant I had to get the house out the next morning before the fifty degree weather thawed the ground. Once this task was complete, I would enjoy the warm weather to work in on the solid ground.

The first step involved spinning the trailer around so that the tongue faced uphill where the truck could get  footing. How do you move a six thousand pound object without power equipment? The notice was too short to get a team of draught horses out here (This almost happened though!) so we used come-alongs. Slowly the house moved backwards and around as Dermott and I winched it off of the trees.

Once it faced the right way we hooked up the truck and started to pull. The house, truck and ourselves moved slowly out of the hole inch by inch. Traction was scarce, so we relied on the come-alongs again. I put the truck in 4WD low, stepped out and worked with Lauren and Dermott to set up a system of pulls off of and available tree or rock. The truck drove itself forward slowly as we clicked away on the come-alongs. Finally we made it to the steep part of the hill which was dry, but too steep for my truck alone to do the work. Unfortunately we ran out of stout trees also. When encountering a problem like this, the best thing to do is have tea and lunch.

As we were finishing up lunch, more overall clad reinforcements arrived. With the addition of Toper's truck, Jack's energy and Mario's supervision, we were able to pull the house up the hill like a freight train  with two engines.

It is out!

Next we went straight for the roof. With the roof on the house, it is nearly eighteen feet tall- way over the legal road limit, and more importantly way over the height of many power lines. Which means up to remove what was done so recently...

Jack and Topher taking a break with stale donuts.

Some of the crew.

Down to the rafters and out of daylight.

DAY TWO


This was a short day. In the evening Lauren and I drove the roof panels back over to the shop, then came back for the house.

The move went well, just needed a quick stop in the CVS parking lot to adjust some loose items.

The new home for my house is outside of my shop. I share this space with many craftspeople including  blacksmiths, a stonemason, sculpters and artists. We also have people making biodiesel and converting cars to run on vegetable oil. And a green house. It is quickly becoming a place where people show up to work on sustainable projects. Having the house here will be a big change. I have traded in the sounds of coyotes at night for a very active freight line about ten feet behind my house. The swamp has been replaces with a level concrete slab. Instead of the walk through the dark woods, I walk through the greenhouse to the common gallery space at the shop. All in all, I am very excited to be in a place with this much creativity and to be back in the city again where I can easily walk to a coffee shop. I now have no excuse not to finish my house since I am so close to the shop.

 See, the house isn't that small...

As the stretch of nice weather started to wane, Topher, Corwin and I cleared off the slab where my house would sit and pondered how the house was going to arrive on that spot. My body was starting to respond to the efforts of the previous days and I was starting to dread the idea of another day with ramps and winches. This is when I remembered the scrap yard next door. After a quick chat with the owner, we agreed on a sum of $50 for his guy with the loader to hep me out. I finished the prep and the next day and George showed up in an ancient piece of equipment that reminds me of a dinosaur to pick the house.

It looks easy, but unfortunately he only had six foot forks on the lift. I had to span the extra distance with two 8"x8" beams. Still, it only took an hour. I was very happy to see it on solid ground after watching it teetering on those forks for so long.

Thank you so much George. I love the benefits of being in an old industrial area.

At this point, I was left alone with a floor jack and a set of movers dollies to position the house properly on the slab. Easy work with the help of two friends in the shop. You will have to use your imagination on the space. It needs some work, but I know it is going to be very comfortable. The house has been rotated ninety degrees so that the door and long edge faces the gallery, greenhouse and shop. It is starting to feel a little more private from the rest of the mess behind me and more a part of the shop complex. A nice old short iron fence (let me know if you see one) will help contain the space, and I have a twenty by twenty foot patio to landscape with as much stone work and garden space as I can manage. It will be a very comfortable space this spring.

For now, it is in position and the rafters are back in place. I had to quickly re-tarp it with an old Coors Light billboard to keep out the storm, but as soon as it clears I am going to perfect the roof installation system and get the roof back on. I was given some used corrugated fiberglass roofing to use until I get the copper, and some salvaged structural insulated panels that I will use to finish the gables. I hope to do this and build my windows soon, so that it will be properly weathertight.

Check back soon for a short video of the move that Lauren and I are editing.

A great documentary

Since I haven't been showing you all anything interesting in a while, check out what these guys have done!



This house was built by a group of students at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont. The project was part of a semester long program where students learn to design and build a high performance sustainable building. I met these students and heard all about the house while I was taking the concrete countertop workshop.

Stay tuned for big things...

Stone Soup Concrete

This weekend I will be attending a workshop at the Yestermorrow School in Vermont. I will be learning the basics of working with concrete as a material for constructing countertops, sinks, etc with the owners of Stone Soup Concrete.

www.stonesoupconcrete.com

I am excited to learn how to do this and will probably be incorporating some of this work into the design of my house!

Why I haven't been blogging.

It's the same old story. Many good things have been keeping me from working on the house. These are some photos of one of those things.

I have been lucky to get to work on this incredible project recently. I am helping to create a copper cladded gable on the peak of a house I have been working on all summer. While it definitely isn't a tiny house, it is an incredible place and my skilled craftsmen have worked on it over the years.

This is a Sketchup model of what we are doing. It is composed of nine copper panels that will be crimped and soldered together on the wall, creating a weather tight system for the next couple hundred years. The top diamond is a window but the other three will have designs applied to them. This whole piece will transition into the cedar shingles below.

It takes lots of careful planning, pattern making and imagination to figure out how to cut and fold a flat sheet of metal into one of these three dimensional components.

From pattern, to copper,

past the brake, to a piece ready for final tuning and soldering.

This is a shot of my shop where we built a full size model of the wall to to our layout and assemble on. When the pieces are finished we will assemble what we can in the shop, then take it to the house and put it up!

More pieces after sheering and bending, ready to be mitered and soldered.

Terry of George A. Bardnard Co, one of the oldest roofing companies in Worcester, teaches us the proper way to tin a soldering copper using sal amoniac.

More trimming and fitting.

Soldering.

Pieces coming together.

Finally, this is what Dermot and I affectionatly call "the zoo". The small twists of copper that come off the sheers as we trim the pieces seem to take on a persona of their own. They come from the land, sea and air but seem to agree with each other in the confines of the pen.

Once we finish this, the copper roof for my house will be no problem!

October snow.

Things I did this week

I finally got around to trimming the end of the floor boards and installing a piece of oak at the step up. This is my new favorite tool- it is a circular saw made by Festool with a track to ride in. It makes cuts like a good table saw, but has the convenience of a circular saw. It made quick work of cleaning up the slightly uneven floor boards. I borrowed this form a friend.

Here is the finished edge. Now the floor is ready to be sanded and oiled!

Next on the list was replacing the broken hinge pin on the stove door. It was snapped at the joint and both pieces were stuck in the stove and door. They were removed with some careful drilling and a drift punch.

When I bought the stove, some of the firebricks that line the sides of the stove were broken and missing. This meant that I could not build a really hot fire in there for fear of warping the plates. They were also supposed to be the support for an iron plate in the top that directs the gasses and smoke for an efficient burn. Replacement bricks seem to be readily available on ebay but are expensive and must be shipped from the UK. I saved quite a bit of money by buying a $20 bucket of refractory cement and casting a new set.

Here they are right after pouring. I let them set for about 24 hours before installing them and building a small fire to make sure they were fully cured. All went well and I am now ready to burn some coal if I need too. The temperature has been in the forties at night but the cabin has been about 70 with the stove going. I definitely need to build the last two sections of wall and make some windows before it gets really cold though.

And finally, I hooked up the cook stove! I cant wait to design and build the rest of the kitchen.

Wood and Insulation

Over the past two mornings I have been cutting, splitting and stacking wood. I don't really know how much I will need for the winter. It is definitely a small house and does not take much to heat it, but I do have lots of windows (well I don't even have those at the moment...). So far I have about a half a cord. Half of it is well seasoned Black Locust, and the other half is ash which is still green. Hopefully by the time I burn though the Locust the Ash will be a little more burnable. Ash is one of the best woods to burn green if you have to use green wood though. I will continue cutting up dead dry trees from the woods. It was really nice to be able to light a fire last night to take the edge off the cool night.

The stove takes little eleven-inch chunks of wood which are very hard to make a stable stack from. This one will probably need some support.

When I bought insulation for my roof, I bought a few extra sheets thinking I would find a place for it. Last night I went to the shop and pre cut all of the panels for the two walls that require the most insulation. Once again, I tried to make them too perfect and ended up ripping off about a half inch from every piece of foam to compensate for the varying dimensions of the rough cut framing. It was a shame to mess up the clean edges from the table saw, but it is all hidden anyway. I will fill any voids with spray foam to keep everything tight. I do not want any condensation/mold issues this winter. With an R-Value of 36, I should be toasty this winter.

I wonder if I will be able to get any cell phone reception with all that foil?

Heat!

I have been searching for a suitable chimney for over a year now. If you have never looked into the price of good double wall insulated chimney, you are in for a shock. It runs about $125 a foot! I had 8 feet of it but was missing one T- section. Of course the company has updated their line, which as far as I can tell means they changed the coupling between sections just enough that the new and old systems are not compatible. I couldn't buy a new T, and could not find a used one anywhere. Last week I finally found a good deal on a used setup that had almost everything I needed. I was hoping that I could make a couple of pieces of my old one work with the new system but unfortunately no matter how many times I tried, it just wouldn't work. In the end I had to buy a one foot section of new pipe to make it through the wall.

After much time spent figuring out the best place for the chimney to exit while maintaining the proper clearances, I set up my router with a jig to cut a clean circular hole through the siding. Once the siding was cut I finished off the sheathing with a jig saw since it will not show.

Next the thimble was installed and the first section of pipe went through the wall, followed by the T. I fabricated a brace to stabilize the next length of chimney and then installed that with the cap.

Hooking things up inside involved nothing more than plugging the sections of pipe together. After worrying about this for so long, it was nice that it all went so smoothly.

It was a warm day today but I had to light a little fire to see how it all worked anyway. I don't have any heat shields installed yet so I just built a little fire to test it out. It had a great draft and I was able to make the fire respond instantly by adjusting the air inlet. Seems good! I still have a lot of details to finish before I can call in done, but it is a major step in the right direction! It is nice to feel somewhat prepared for the cold weather this year. Now I need windows, two sections of wall and some insulation.