Roofing and rendering

By the end of today we had half a roof and a wall full of render.

Pretty exciting stuff! I think the speed at which we're moving is making the week move so slowly. It feels like we've been at it for weeks! Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of the workshop, so today was the day people were supposed to leave. And we did lose a few of our crew today, with more leaving us tomorrow, which is fine of course - people have their families and jobs and lives to go back to next week, and many people have a long long drive home. But this understanding doesn't mean it's not hard to say goodbye. It's been such a huge, emotional week, with so many bonds being created and strengthened, all to the soundtrack of drills and generators and cement mixers and circular saws and cries of "Oh no here comes the rain!".

Today our roofing crew were hard at work defying gravity and generally hopping around at a ridiculous height attaching rolls of Enviroseal roof wrap (for condensation reduction) and giant sheets of corrugated iron.

We ended up choosing just plain galvanised iron instead of one of the colourbond colours, which wasn't an easy decision after I'd read an article about the environmental benefits of white roofs. After reading the article we had a few days of considering white colourbond, but in the end we went back to our original plan of good ol' gal.

Our reasons? 1. Gal lasts longer - colourbond is a coating, gal is a treatment, so although they both have the same guarantee (20 years) all the dudes at Steeline Pambula told me that gal will definitely last longer. 2. Gal is cheaper - an important consideration given our teeny tiny budget. 3. Gal looks better - we like the old school shed-barn-farm-watertank kind of vibe. 4. Breaking news: Frank has just informed me that gal is also safer for collecting rainwater on account of the fact that UV breaks down the colourbond coating and releases chemicals into the drinking water.

While the roofers were roofing, us ground-dwelling folks got started on cobbing the gaps between the strawbales.

Cob is traditionally a mix of clay and straw, but we used lime and straw with a bit of cement to help it dry quickly. This was mixed up in Frank's cement mixer, the straw was added in the wheelbarrow

and mixed up by hand

(let me tell you, the ergo baby carrier has proven indespensible on the work site!) then shoved into the cracks to make a smooth surface for the render to stick to.

When all the gaps were filled, and we'd all learned a little bit about the importance of wearing protective goggles when using lime, we started on the first coat of render. Frank explained his method for using the hawk (the square platform you use to hold the mixed render) and trowel to put the render on the wall,

then my dad explained his 'alternative German' method, then us amateurs amalgamated the 2 and did our best just to get the stuff to stick to the wall.

I figure by the time we get to the 3rd and final coat, our method will be down pat.

If you've ever read Strawbale Homebuilding, you will, like us, have gotten the vibe that hand-rendering is by far the worst bit about strawbale building. We got this vibe, and had intended on making use of Frank's rendering machine. Our lack of town water supply, however, put a kybosh on this idea, as the render pump needs good water pressure to operate properly. Plan B: A 1000 litre pallet tank on the back of a ute, a cement mixer and some hands. We managed one wall this afternoon, so I'm actually feeling OK about the process ahead of us, though I am hoping we can get quite a lot done before everyone goes home and it's just me and Pearl and the kids slapping the stuff on.

After the first layer of render is applied, a 30cm strip of fibreglass mesh is applied around all the vulnerable bits (window and door frames, corners and footings) and mooshed into the render.

This is to strengthen the render (a nail in that render can hold 30kg!) and also reduce cracking. Then the whole kit and kaboodle is cross-hatched with a straw fork to make a 'key' for the 2nd layer to attach to.

I felt pretty relaxed leaving the site today, with half a roof (the other half is still covered in plastic), a wall of almost-completed render and remaining exposed areas covered in tarps, knowing that every day it's getting safer and safer, and more resilient to any pesky rain that might crop up.

We have Frank for another couple of days, and today Pearl's sister Hannah and her husband Bukhari arrived with their 2 (gorgeous) kids to help out, so I reckon we'll make OK progress, though we are, of course, feeling sad about the impending departure of our beloved friends, and we're all just a little bit tired.

" I love our little house! I don't want to live anywhere else!"

Thus spoke Pearl as our first truss was lifted into position and we caught our first glimpse of our beautiful little hand-made home. Indeed, it is a glorious sight, and pretty much wiped out the memory of the last few days' tears and fretting and nervous tummies.

This morning, after the fog lifted, we saw blue blue skies. We rejoiced, we did good weather dances, we hurriedly ate our porridge so we could get to the land and assess the damage. Frank brought his moisture-meter and we tested all the bales to see if any needed replacing due to water damage. The internationally-recognised theshold for safe moisture levels in building bales is 19%. Most of ours were pretty good, but we had one pesky one, in the top row, that was testing around 20%. Luckily for us we didn't have to totally dismantle any walls, and Frank was able to just pop out the 'infected' bale using his enormous strawbale mallet (affectionately known as "the pursuader") without even moving the top plate. We felt pretty good. I'm pretty sure all of us had at one time or another considered the prospect of having to rebuild entire walls due to damaged bales, so to get away with only replacing one was super!

Our reading of strawbale books had led us to believe that strawbales could not get wet AT ALL. Many a strawbale book and article told us: "moisture is a strawbale house's worst enemy!". That is true, but not the extent we had assumed. According to Frank (and let's face it - if you can't trust Frank on these matters, who can you trust?) strawbales can get a little bit wet on the outside of the bales, but not at all moist at the 'heart' of the bale. This is the bit we tested with the moisture-meter. The water-shedding capacity of our bales was also aided by the fact that they have been laid on edge, meaning that the cut edge of the bale is hidden within the wall, and the exposed edges act kind of like a thatched roof, shedding the water off rather than sucking it up like a straw.

We very quickly completed all our walls, and manhandled the top plate into position - including a 5-person uphill tug-of-war to move the massive thing 20mm to make it perfect - all before lunch!

Spirits were high as the sun shone on our quick progress, and immediately after lunch we lifted the first truss into position. You will notice the trusses are blue. This is because they're made of treated pine. Getting pre-fab trusses was something we were always going to have to do. With no building experience, and no money to pay someone to build a properly-framed roof, pre-fab trusses were our only option. And you know what? We're pretty fine with that, not least of all because it meant we were able to get our roof up in one day today, especially given the precarious weather conditions. Our trusses have a very wide bottom chord, which will act as the bearers for the floor of our sleeping loft. They were especially engineered for us to make the most of that roof space while still being structurally sound (obviously) but also aesthetically pleasing. Our roof pitch is 45 degrees, which is a tad unusual in Australia on account of us not having to shed snow from our roofs all that frequently. Some people also think it looks a bit funny. And while I do concede that our house looks rather like a gingerbread cottage, and also rather like the kind of house a 4 year old would draw, we love it to bits and wouldn't have it any other way.

All this rain we've been having has really made a HUGE deal of the whole roofing exercise. Now our strawbales are safe from thunderstorms and rain, which is a relieving thing indeed. It was also lovely to see our little house take shape - no amount of whiz-bang CAD pictures could possibly compare to seeing the little "gingerbread cottage" taking shape on our very own block of land. And the love!! I know I've mentioned it before, but seriously - it's astounding! Especially given the circumstances. So much rain... so much sticky mud. People are showing up every day with their hearts and their bodies geared towards helping us build our dream. It's overwhelming, really. And even people we barely know are pitching in, bringing us meals and baked treats for the hungry hoards.

Morag, Frank and Matt spent much of today atop our top plate, which is no mean feat given it's about 9 feet off the ground.

This gave me the heebie jeebies as I'm really not keen on heights - I forced myself up a ladder today to help attach one of the trusses but was really quite useless on account of not being able to let go enough to use the hammer. So to see all our dear ones fairly trotting along the top-plate carrying all manner of heavy items really reinforced the feeling of love we have for this whole project.

As the roof went up today, Morag asked me, "Do you love your little house?" and I replied, "I do, but I love you more". And it's true! To build a house with someone, to pitch in and do all the multitude of tasks both big and small that make up a house-build, is really something, and I hope against hope that one day I can return the favour, not just to the people who have helped us this week, but to anyone who needs it.

Today was supposed to be the last day of our workshop, so tomorrow we're losing some of our workforce as those who had traveled to be with us return home. But some are staying on, and many locals have offered to give us a hand with the rendering, which is our next big job.

The rain is supposed to stay away for the next couple of days, which would be lovely, though there is slightly less urgency now that the trusses are up and tomorrow we'll have a proper roof over our precious 4 walls.

Cost of the trusses was $2500.

Day 4 = fully slow bo

This is the sky we saw as night fell and we felt hopeful. This day was spent eating too much cake and drinking too much tea. Some of us ventured into town to the library or red cafe or the Candelo bookshop. We also spent a little too much time nervously watching the sky and seeking too many weather forecast updates on our iphones. We felt nervous when told of early river flooding for fear we wouldn't be able to make it to our land tomorrow. We cooked up a delicious dinner and shared it with family and friends. Frank has told us he will meet us at the land tomorrow at 8am and we hope to finish the bale walls and get the roof on. It might just be...

Kind of like the Somme, only not...

Last night it rained all night. Hard. Olive wasn't feeling well, so she and I slept on the couch in the loungeroom so as not to wake up Oski and Pearl. Needless to say, not much sleeping was going on in our flat-roofed house - the rain was so loud!! Made louder, I'm sure, by the anxiety surrounding the safety of our beloved strawbales.

This morning Frank emerged from his bedrom, late, still in his pyjamas, putting to rest any fantasies we had about going to work on the house today. The best we could manage was an hour or so making sure all the quagmire-y bog-puddles could drain freely, and adding about 50m of black plastic to our coverage attempts. Our little tiny house now looks like something Christo lost interest in halfway through. Many tears were shed this morning as I counted our losses, but then all was put into perspective when Peps pointed out that the whole situation was probably like the Somme, our little house being like a French peasant's house that had been partially blown to bits. But of course it's not like that at all because we haven't lost our house (just a few bales, and some insulation) and no-one was approaching us with guns and/or bayonets. All plusses.

Also, when we returned home from the house-wrapping, mum and Jen were ready with egg and ham rolls with Pearl's homemade tomato sauce. We are surrounded by the people we love (all congregated cozily in the loungeroom now, reading and doing crosswords and chatting quietly), so it's kind of just like a wait-for-the-rain-to-end party. Frank's gone home for now, as the rain is forecast for a few more days, but he's on call for the minute the rain clears.

Now, we wait, enjoying each others' company and reminding each other to look on the bright side.

Day 2 = wet

We returned home this evening with heavy hearts and very soggy, muddy feet. Today, day 2 of our strawbale building adventure, the rain came down. We frantically covered and uncovered the bales as each burst of rain came down, and sheltered under whatever random piece of building material we could find.

Our uber-clay soil was very soon transformed into a slippery mush, and a last-minute path of gravel was laid so we could get around the building site semi-safely (seriously, that shit is slippery!).

The kiddies, meanwhile, rejoiced in their new textural playground.

Rain during construction was by far my biggest, if not my only, reservation about load-bearing strawbale construction. Non-load bearing strawbale houses get their structural supports and roof first, so all the bales can be stacked safely out of the weather. This was very appealingly safe-sounding to me, and I was always more inclined towards this method of building. But when we decided to build our tiny 'practise' house first, we realised that the size of it (6x4 metres + loft) meant that it made heaps more sense for it to be load bearing. We decided to take the gamble, and today we paid the price for our risk.

We did get a small amount of work done today though, in between huddling under the little lunch marquee,

and managed to get 2 of the walls stacked to roof height, and part of the top-plate on, but it wasn't nearly as much as we had anticipated. But we are learning so much! And still managing to have some fun, though I must admit that today was probably one of the most stressful days of my whole life. I don't get why people feel the need to do extreme sports for an adrenaline rush - just build a load-bearing strawbale house in the rain for some excitement in your life!

We also received our roof trusses (and finally got a feel for how big our sleeping loft will be),

our roof insulation (no conflict!), roofing iron, guttering and ridge-capping and our clay and lime (we ordered the clay before we realised what our entire block was made of - oops). The clay came on the back of a truck that had no unloading device, so we had to unload all 72 x 20kg bags of clay and 55 x 20kg bags of lime by hand. But we started a little chain gang-type line and got them unloaded and re-stacked pretty quickly!

As I write this, our spirits have lifted, thanks to some stew, warm spiced cider and cake, and we are all trying to ignore the sound of the rain falling heavily on our roof. My thoughts though, are with our strawbale walls, excruciatingly close to being finished enough to put up the roof, but for now protected only by a few strategically tacked tarps.

I can only imagine the state of our driveway tomorrow - we had 2 cars stuck in the quagmire today, which were pulled out, by hand, by the burly blokes on the worksite. As Pearl says though, there is nothing we can do about the weather. If our build isn't complete (or not as complete as we would have liked) by the end of this week, we'll just have to work it out. And I know we will. And at least, at the very very worst, we'll have a whole heap of wet straw to use in our veggie garden beds.

Total cost of strawbales, fencing wire, and gripples (for compression of the bales and securing them to the bottom plate and each other) was $1400. Ironically this is the biggest part of our building, but the cheapest!

"How could one team have so much talent?!"

These were the words that came out of Frank's mouth when he measured the levels on our second course of bales. Awesome!!

This morning, as Frank and I drove up to the land, I felt like he was about to give me the result of an exam - the bottom plate exam. The result of said exam was "Fantastic", "This is excellent", "one of the neatest jobs I've seen" and "I'm going to take a photo of this". After starting the day feeing extremely nervous, I soon settled into things, even experiencing tears of joy when we saw the strawbale truck chugging up the road. Ahhhh.... But how could I not feel joyful while building our little house on a perfect autumn day, surrounded and buoyed by the love of so many friends and family members. Seriously, if you're considering building a home, this is the only way to go. We worked so hard!

We cut and re-tied bales to make half bales, which we tucked around the windows and doors.

We cut channels into the bales to make space for the battens which are used to compress the bales and attach them to the bottom plate, every 2 courses.

Morag and Steve made the door buck, attached it to the bottom plate, and then braced it to keep it plumb.

Nassim assisted with the compression by walking around on the bales.

Kiddies read stories with Jaije and played on the rendering sand (now mixed with dirt: we're ordering some more) and climbed the bales.

We stacked bales and whacked them with a giant mallet to make sure they're straight, and tied them with wire and tensioned and compressed them with gripples.

We chiselled recesses in the ends of our hardwood top plates and our not-so-hardwood battens, so that they would fit together neatly.

We put in our window bucks and then, at the end of the day we covered it all with a giant truck tarpaulin to protect the bales from dew. As the sun started sinking we all felt pretty happy and pretty tired and pretty surprised at just how much we achieved in this day's work!

We're looking forward to tomorrow, though I'm a little nervous about the insulation arriving as the insulation we chose is contrary to Frank's recommendation. It's a tricky thing this insulation business, and has been by far the biggest headache. So much advice! So many opinions! So much information and so so many data sheets to wade through. In the end I think I was beaten down by exhaustion and the necessity to actually just make a decision and bloody well order the stuff. I don't feel like I ever could have arrived at a decision that would have ticked absolutely all of our boxes... So in the end I just did my best with the information available to me. But more about that tomorrow

Today we...

Finished off the loo with the view, made from a couple of sheets tied around some star pickets.

The toilet itself is a composting toilet bought through an ad in Grass Roots mag - the only mag where you'll find an ad for a second hand composting toilet.

This is the view from the toilet:

We then set up and tried out the camper trailer in our front yard, which is to be Nassim and Steve's home for the next week. Dad is loaning it to us for as long as we need. It will also be guest accommodation for when people come to visit us. Funnily enough, it's actually bigger than the teeny tiny house we're about to build.

We also cared for a little Olive who was sick in the tummy. Poor little bubba. Though she still found the energy to play some awesome imaginary games in the camper trailer involving "Baby George" (aka. Oscar) and "Mrs Cook" (aka Pearl).

We welcomed friends and family with love and excitement.

If it wasn't for the fact I'm so bloody nervous I could almost have pretended it was just a big party!

And then we feasted and laughed and fretted and plotted.

Dinner tonight was dahl, courtesy of Pearl's dad, and a 2 potato curry from Plenty, courtesy of Pearl. Also pappadums and raita. And a ton of beer...

And now, to bed.