Category: House building

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Finishing the first floor (for now)

Time is getting a bit tight and we’re still working on the first floor walls. Fortunately, three of the south-facing walls are almost all window (to take advantage of free solar heating during the winter), so the “panels” we have to fill in are very narrow indeed. Each one only takes about three batches of mortar as opposed to around eight for the average wall panel. The leftmost window required tiny, tiny logs to fit:

Thin little panels? Or giraffe necks?

Working our way around the house, Clare decided to incorporate a bottle feature in the panel near the front door. The inside bottles will be blue and green – a river in the wall:

Still bottles run deep

Finally on to the fifteenth and final panel on the first floor – the front door panel:

The gateway... To Logs

So, mid-August and we’ve just finished about half the outer wall. Think we’ll finish the second floor before freezing weather hits? Nah, me neither. Looks like we may be doing a lot of cross-country skiing again this coming winter (oh, darn!).

Besides being the “Summer of Mud,” 2009 also seems to be the “Summer of Bees.” They’re everywhere right now – if you stand still you can hear the whole field buzzing with nectar-lapping fuzzballs.

Give us all your pollen...

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The ‘Monsters of Cordwood’ 2009 tour

This summer we had several distinguished guests visit Nerdwood. Richard and Becky Flatau built a lovely cordwood house in northern Wisconsin in 1979 and have lived there since. They’ve done a great deal to promote this style of building, including publishing how-to books, conducting workshops and hosting the 2005 Continental Cordwood Conference (CoCoCo). Clare and I met them at a cordwood workshop held immediately after the CoCoCo – one week after we closed the sale on the property where Nerdwood now sits. They hosted a party for workshop attendees at their (very cool) house, which was most inspiring for us would-be cordwood masons, and they proved to be gracious and entertaining hosts.

Richard had emailed me saying that he and Becky were conducting a workshop this August. The folks building this particular house were using lime putty mortar (LPM), same as us, and the Flataus, who have mostly used traditional portland cement-based mortar mixes, were trying to get as much hands-on experience with LPM as they could. They asked if they could stop by for a weekend and build walls with us. Naturally, we were delighted – not only would we be enjoying their company, we’d be getting help building the house and expert advice from true cordwood veterans.

The Flataus would be staying at the house of another cordwood legend, Wayne Higgins. Wayne finished his cordwood house, Stonewood, in 1991 (although he’ll tell you he isn’t quite finished yet!) and it’s one of the first cordwood houses we ever saw. Wayne (who is also a talented sculptor, painter and illustrator) is very involved in the cordwood ‘scene’ here in the Copper Country; when we signed up for the CoCoCo in late 2004, he called us out of the blue to invite us over to see his house since we were interested in the subject. Wotta guy!

The Flataus showed up Friday evening and we went to visit both them and the Higginses. Much merriment ensued, as did much learning. For example, I learned that one should never offer Wayne a trip to Graceland, even all-expenses-paid, or offer to put on some Elvis. I’d imagine Gary Numan is right out, too. Saturday morning, we met the Flataus at the jobsite. After Clare and I explained our methods of creating LPM, Becky caught a pic of us mixing the first batch. That’s Richard on the right:

The latest in Men's Cordwood Hat fashions

Lime putty mortar requires advance preparation, since you mix up lime putty (lime and water), let it sit for awhile (current conventional wisdom is at least three days, but I’ve found a minimum of five days to be much more workable) then mix the putty with sand to produce the mortar. The putty I had prepared for the Flatau’s visit was experimental for me – I had seen that some people were mixing a bit of dish soap into the putty to help it retain moisture better, thus reducing cracking when the wall cures. I tried it with this batch of putty, but misread the ratios and added about ten times the recommended amount of soap. Whoops!

The first batch we mixed with the overly soapy stuff had a really weird texture, much too soft and pillowy. It laid up OK, but wasn’t as easy to work with as the non-soap mix. Fortunately, I also had some of the non-soap putty as well, so we were able to blend the two to get a decent-feeling mixture. Soon, the Flataus were cordwooding like a runaway train. A train that lays up walls. And shows you helpful tips. And jokes and puns with you. Y’know, that kind of runaway train.

Nerdwood slowly gets woodier

Above, Target: Utility Wall. Below, Target Engaged.

Whoo! Look at 'em go!

And, from the inside,

But Richard, you're already on the other side!

Saturday afternoon, we got a visit from Wayne Higgins, his first visit here. We were pretty excited to have him over, since it’s quite a jaunt from Stonewood to Nerdwood. He invited us along on a visit to George and Paulette Beveridge’s cordwood house, which we had visited a few years ago (when George cut the birch logs that now hold up our second floor). They’ve made quite a bit of progress; their house is amazing and unique – truly a work of art. Richard took some great pictures and posted them here.

Richard and Becky stayed till Sunday then rode the happy trails back to Cheese-land. We certainly enjoyed their company and their help, as well as them giving us an excuse to visit some friends we hadn’t seen in awhile. Of course, I’m forgetting to mention the third Flatau. They said they would be bringing Summer with them, which I wasn’t too happy about since I was really enjoying the cool weather so far this year. In fact, here’s Summer, all tuckered out after a weekend laying logs:

These are the log days of Summer

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The Summer of Mud

No, not that kind of mud! Although we have been getting a normal amount of rain this year, unlike the previous two years of drought.

By mud, I mean mortar. The plan this year is to lay up the outer cordwood wall and if we’re really on the ball, install the windows and the in-floor heat, and have spray foam insulation, er, sprayed, on the inside of the walls. This way, we can continue working on the interior this winter.

Since we’ve only done one wall of the shed and three wall panels (out of 30 outside panels) of the house, we’re still not sure how quickly we can work. It seems as though different people have a very wide range of cordwooding speeds. Of course, things would go faster if we didn’t both work full time!

So, we’re cranking up the mixer, making lime putty and hauling buckets o’ sand around. The first new panel is in the back of the house – it features the French door that leads to the the porch:

Oui, c'est tres jolie!

Ha! That didn’t take very long! Of course, that panel is mostly air…

Next in line is the panel next to the proch and the panel that the upper deck stairs are next to. It would have been much easier to cordwood these two walls before the stairs went up – there’s only about a half-inch gap between the stair treads and the wall, making it a challenge to lay up logs and mortar, as well as to point the mortar (smooth the surface) after the logs are in place. No gap at all between the deck of the porch and the wall either. Couldn’t be helped, though; we really wanted the deck finished this spring. Here’s the stairs panel:

No Potter under these stairs

Those two took quite awhile – hard to lay up, plus no windows in either of them. It’s looking pretty cool from the inside though:

It's a home all right - to LOGS!

Here’s the most recent one to date. It has a small window in it for the downstairs bathroom:

Home wasn't built in a day, after all

So, as of July 7, 2009, that’s seven panels of thirty done, three finished last year and four so far this year. Ulp…

Some nice bottles ought to cheer us up:

So many wines, so little time

And, how about some poppies?

And now, my beauties, something with poison in it, I think. Something with poison in it, but attractive to the eye, and soothing to the smell. Poppies... Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Sleep. Now they'll sleep!

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DecksAnDrumsAndRockAndRoll

One of the (few) benefits of taking so long to build this house is that we’re able to save up a bit of cash along the way. We can use this to hire out some of the things that would take us forever to do ourselves, like the roof. It became clear that another one of these things would be the wraparound deck and porch. The deck is very important in that it will keep the rain off the first-floor cordwood walls. The large roof overhangs protect the walls higher up, but it’s a long way from the roof to the first floor.

We contacted our builder pal John Hamilton (he of roof-putting-up fame) and asked him to quote out the job. The quote looked good to us, so we asked when he could start. He had some time at the end of April; this was also a good time because he could beat the biting bugs (who deserve a good beating).

So, while we continued prepping logs and getting the house site cleaned up after winter, John and his merry men got to work. Their first task was to extend the interior floor joists to the outside using treated lumber, and nail a board (rim joist) across the ends:

Can I get a rim shot!?

Next, they laid down deck boards, fixed posts at the edge of the deck, and installed rails:

Yarrrh, matey, best not be goin' overboard

Here’s the nearly completed deck. Note that there are no posts holding it up, it’s all cantilevered out from the inside floor joists. Because of this, using synthetic decking was out of the question; it’s much heavier than the treated lumber we used, and the engineering gods said no way to that kind of extra weight:

I'm always railing against something...

The final (extensive) task was to build a screened-in porch under one of the rear roof overhangs. Clare had the idea to raise it a few feet off the ground and have one set of stairs going from the back of the house to the porch, then from the porch to the deck. John and his crew did a great job helping us figure out the details, then making it happen:

Try and get us now, ya wee flyin' vampires!

Now we have a really sharp-looking place to eat lunch and get out of the sun and bugs, and it won’t always be blowing over like last year’s tent.

We anticipate spending a lot of time here

Woohoo! Here come some early (for us in the frozen wastes) spring flowers. Marsh marigold in the vernal streams:

Your rich uncle died - and left you all his marsh marigolds

And wild strawberries everywhere else:

Strawberry surprise? Or The Apples in Stereo?

The strawberries they produce are tasty, but no bigger than a blueberry.

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Wintermute

The snow hit hard in December and continued through January. Temps stayed cold and the snow piled up an the roof. Up and up and up! Had to have had three or four FEET of snow on that shallow roof. Fortunately, the frame didn’t budge. In February, it warmed up enough that all that snow came off the roof at once, creating a GIANT mound of snow behind the house. Here I am, standing on the mound. I can easily see into the second floor:

Somewhere under this mound there be timbers

Another couple of late snowstorms left an additional mound in the back, closer to the house – apparently it didn’t come down with as much velocity as the original avalanche. By late April, all the snow had melted except for our roof remnants:

Temporary Tumuli

Time to start cutting more logs – whooooo!

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Look out! It’s a tarp!

Once again, we’re way behind updating this site, so I’m typing this in June 2009 but dating it November 2008. With winter breathing down our necks (should’ve worn scarves), one of the tasks was to tarp over the empty bays between the posts to keep as much snow as possible out of the house. If there’s one thing we’ve accumulated on this house project, it’s tarps, tarps, tarps:

Under the sea, under the sea...

Here’s the outside after the first floor was done, and after a bit o’ white stuff fell:

May all your Thanksgivings be white

Another vital task was to brace the house a little bit better, since we were counting on the rigidity of the cordwood infill to help resist racking – particularly with a heavy load of snow on the roof. Since there is precious little cordwood infill, we put up a couple of large diagonal braces on the first and second floors (you can see the second floor braces above, in the first and fourth bays). These will come down next year when we finish cordwooding the outside wall.

In addition, the row of posts & beams holding up the roof in the back of the house needed permanent bracing, since they are outside the house and won’t be cordwooded:

Gravity vs. Engineering - Who Will Win!?

In addition, we cut up a few more logs. Since we hope to be able to work on the house next winter, this may be our last guilt-free goof-off season until we move in. Here comes winter!

They call him Old Man Winter. Pretty tough old man. Like, Clint Eastwood tough.

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One wall to bring them all

Well, two more walls, actually. And it didn’t bring them all, but it did bring our friends Matt and Lynette.

A fine day for muddin'

Cordwooding is a great social activity; it demands less attention than, say, television, so conversation flows freely, but it also gives you something to concentrate on during a conversational lull. Plus, it gets you out into the fresh air and sunlight. Of course, it’s even better when your fellow cordwooders have a natural feel for laying up logs.

I've got my ear to the wall. Ear!

Clare and I have found the most effective method for wall building is to have an “inside man” (or woman!) and the “outsider.” I trust Clare’s eye better than my own, so she usually handles outside duties, since the outside is the only side which will be visible (remember, we’ll be building another wall inside this one). Basically, we each have a tray full of mortar, Clare slaps a log down and we both lock it into place with the mortar. After a few logs, we do a very rough pointing (smoothing the mortar between the logs) and continue the process. Since the lime putty is so slow to set, we do the finish pointing the next day.

Cordwooding is fun! Years and years of fun!

Matt and Lynette traded off, but consulted with each other a lot on log placement. Of course, they won’t have to look at the wall every day, but maybe they’ll be visiting regularly.

You can see the inside of a wall below. The silver tubes sticking out of the mortar are the “bottle-ends” we’re putting in the wall. The bottom of the bottle is on the outside, just like a log, and the neck end of the bottle is wrapped around with an aluminum printing plate. Thus, when we lay up the inside wall, we’ll stick another bottle into the tube so the bottom of that bottle is flush with the inside wall. We also laid in some fiberglass rebar shaped like a capital “I” (serif, that is). This will tie the two walls, inside wall and outside, together, providing more stability to the inside wall. We used fiberglass rebar so as not to create a thermal bridge between the two walls.

Tubeway Army?

Here are the three walls, from a distance:

This year's wall crop was pretty small...

And a bit closer up:

...but pretty tasty!

That middle one without the window took quite awhile! Marcy, a local cordwood house builder, said to put in plenty of windows and doors, or you may never finish.

Since the lime putty takes up to thirty non-freezing days to cure, and we finished the last of the three walls September 20th, it looks like three walls is it this year. That’s actually cutting it a lot closer than we ought to have, since it can get cold quickly by October up here. Not quite as many walls as we had hoped, but hey, more fun for next year! Plus, we have more time to line up some “cordwood socials” for 2009.

So, more tasks to round out the year, more on that in the next post. But first, a great time to enjoy this year’s outstanding Fall colors:

That's a lot of Longbottom Leaf

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Laying logs at long last

Finally, we get to the meat (and by meat, I mean wood) of the matter – laying up the logs. We’re building a double-wall cordwood house – what this means is we build an eight-inch thick cordwood wall, have the inside of the wall sprayed with five inches of spray-foam insulation, then build another eight-inch thick cordwood wall on the inside, up against the foam. This gives us a twenty-one-inch thick wall with a very high R-value (R-40+) and a tight building envelope. We’ve been told we’ll be able to heat it with “a hair dryer” and/or “a candle.” It also gives us a whole lot of cordwooding to do.

Because we have so much to do, we have to make it as efficient as possible. One suggestion lots of cordwood builders make is to get a mortar mixer – faster and more thorough than a cement mixer, and much faster (and easier on the back) than mixing by hand. We went with an electric mortar mixer since it’s quieter and doesn’t stink up the whole process. They delivered it to the loading dock where I work, and the receiving manager told me I’d better pick it up quickly, since everyone was eyeballing it. Clare and I managed to roll it off the back of the pickup truck and park it next to the house. It’s the most orange thing we’ve ever owned:

I crown thee King of Mixers

You can bet it won’t look this clean much longer! So we dump in two and a half five-gallon buckets of sand and one bucket of lime putty (half a bag of hydrated lime that’s been soaking in water at least three days) and fire it up. Five minutes later, it’s ready for the “Sploosh test.”

Indeed, Lord Splooshington

This bit o’ cordwood wisdom says you should toss a softball-sized ball of mortar three feet in the air. When you catch it, it should hold together without cracking (too dry!) or splooshing out like a cow pie (too wet!). Having never handled a cow pie personally, I had to wing it a bit. After you lay up a few batches, you get a pretty good idea of how wet the mortar should be. Finally, on August 21, 2008, the momentous occasion:

Return of the Log Lady

Careful with that log, you Clare

Is it wall yet?

Woohoo! One log down, a million billion to go! Because the lime putty mortar sets up so slowly, we build up a couple of feet of one panel, then move on to the next panel. After a few days, here’s how it looks:

Still mostly see-through

Some of the wall panels have windows, so we build window boxes out of rough-sawn cedar and fasten them in place before laying the cordwood:

Windows is OK, but I prefer Mac

We couldn’t resist the temptation to buildall the way to the top as quickly as possible:

Nine logs high and rising...

Finally, done with the first panel:

A panel of amateur cordwood enthusiasts

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Don’t forget the details

Note – We’re way behind updating the Nerdwood site, so even though these next few posts are being written in October, the dates on them reflect when we actually did the work.

So, the “few details” we had to wrap up before cordwooding – the ones that would only take a week or so? Pretty much exactly a month. Building a cordwood house (or probably any house if you do it yourself, are not a builder, and are trying for a decent level of workmanship) is much like flying into the event horizon of a black hole – everything sloooooooooows down.

One of the first tasks was to treat the timber frame with a preservative. Since the timbers are untreated pine, spruce and hemlock, and since they are exposed to the elements to varying degrees, we sprayed them with a log home preservative containing boric acid, which protects against both wood-loving insects such as pine-bark beetles, carpenter ants and termites (although we’re too far north for termites), and against fungus and mold. Although you can use a solution mixed up from 20-mule team borax, we spent a few more bucks to use a glycol-based solution, which penetrates much further into the wood and stays there. The only portions we’ll have to re-treat are those that get rained on directly. The cordwood walls use cedar logs, which are naturally pest- and decay-resistant, and are protected under wide overhangs, so we won’t need to treat those at all.

Next up was a drip cap. The cordwood walls are being built atop an eighteen inch high concrete wall (probably faced in stone) to keep them dry, so we needed something to interface between the cordwood portion of the wall and the kneewall. We cut pieces of synthetic decking, attached it to the kneewall with concrete screws, and wrapped it in copper flashing, whichwill develop a nice patina after a few years, and should last pretty much forever.The rear third will be mortared directly into the wall with the rest sticking out.Here’s how it looks so far:

That's quite a few pennies

Finally, we needed to cut and prep some logs:

Those are some logs, all right

“But Greg,” says Clare, “We’re going to need a lot of logs.”Okay,

It's gonna take a lotta logs...

“No, I mean a lot of logs!”Hmmmm…

A picture is worth a thousand logs

Now we’re getting somewhere!

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I’m gonna raise the roof, I’m gonna carry on

give me an old trombone, give me an old baton…

Nerdwood welcomes you

We’re building most of this house ourselves; just the two of us with lots of advice and the occasional helping hand. We are contracting out a few steps, though, one of which is the roof. Not only is it a bit too high for us, it would take forever for two inexperienced people to do what needed to be done. John Hamilton and his crew of merry men finished the roof on July 17, 2008. It took them just under a week and a half; here’s how it all came down. First, they put up the rafters:

They'd make a heck of a raft

Those are sixteen-inch high I-joists, which are made from scrap wood (just like OSB sheathing) and can be made to order to surprisingly long lengths. Ours were forty-four feet long; the crew cut them down to just under forty feet for the main part of the roof and used the rest for the overhang in front. Next up was to put up the decking and fascia boards:

Bloody fascias!

They actually laid down a layer of decking, then ran two-by-fours above the joists and laid a second layer of decking on top of that. This allows us to fill the entire sixteen-inch cavity above the ceiling with insulation, and the space between the two layers of decking will provide ventilation to keep the roof cool in summer and prevent ice forming in the winter.

After the decking, they put up felt paper and the metal roofing panels. We went with a white roof, which will help keep the house cooler in the summer. As you can see from the first photo, the top of the roof itself is not really visible due to the shape. This is true from almost every vantage point. Here’s a vantage point I’m unlikely to “enjoy” on a regular basis:

This is the highest I've been yet!

This is standing on the peak of the roof looking down across the front overhang.

The final bits were the soffit (the underside of the roof) and the fascia covering (sides of the roof). The soffit was a bit tricky for the crew since they had to wrap it around the many angles of the post-and-beam structure.

No critters getting in here!

The crew said it was the largest soffit they had ever built; this was due to the large areas of overhang in the back since it’s a square roof over a semicircular building. Finally, they brought it all together by finishing the fascia and related trim:

Go ahead. Rain all you want.

Whew! Now the frame will stay dry and we can work under cover from the sun and rain. We have a few more details to build before we start cordwooding, but these should only take a week or so. Here’s a gratuitous vantage point looking northeast from the house:

That's what I love to see

And a visitor to the house:

Please eat some bugs, fella!