It's December

I'm back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday. The following week we had a decent amount of snow which kept me from digging.


Once the snow melted and the ground dried a bit, I dug some more on the foundation trench, completing the north, west, and south sides. Before digging the north foundation trench, I decided to make blocks out of all the dry soil produced by the north, west, and south trenches. So for the past few days I've been making block. In the following photo you can see the truckload of pallets I scavenged for stockpiling the blocks and the tractor with the block machine.
Under the blue tarp to the right of the block machine is the stockpile of blocks. I think I have around 600 now.

Finally the Footings

Thanksgiving is almost here and I am finally digging the trench for the foundation. Yesterday I dug the north end of the shop and got the hang of the backhoe controls. Here is a picture of the almost finished product.

Using a backhoe is a lot like playing a very slow and boring video game. I have many more feet to go, so I'm sure I'll make the high score.

There will most likely be no post next week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Blocks Passed

As stated in the previous post, I took the blocks to a testing lab to have them crushed. It was a marathon session, lasting from 3:00pm to almost 7:00pm at Smith Engineering in Roswell, New Mexico (no, I did not see any weather balloons). We ended up testing only the samples made from the native soil and the native soil fortified with portland cement.






This is a picture of the testing press with a sample in the pressing area. The press looked like it was built by IBM in the hay day of punch cards, but it is still capable of applying 200000 pounds of force.








The first test we performed was the Modulus of Rupture. This involves "breaking" a sample over two fulcrums (pipes) spaced a specific distance apart and applying the force over a third pipe equidistant between the first two. This is easier to see than say, so the look to the right for a picture of the jig I built for the test.






The press applies a force to the top pipe at a rate of 500 psi/minute until the block "breaks." I put the last in quotes because I was expecting the block to break in two, but the press gauge is so sensitive that it is capable of stopping the press as soon as the block weakens and all you get is a small crack in the base of the block as shown in the following photo. Although the lack of breaking meant a lot less cleanup, it was a bit anticlimactic




After finishing all of the Modulus of Rupture tests, we proceeded on to the compression tests. I did not take any photos of this test, but it is done in the same press and without the pipes. Again the press loads at 500 psi/ minute until the block fails. In this case failure come in the form of small cracks appearing all around the block.

For the Modulus of Rupture, the code requires the blocks to hold at least 50 psi. The Native soil blocks held a little more than double this. The code requires the blocks to hold a minimum of 300 psi in compression. Our blocks held a little over three times this amount. It looks like the shop should be strong.

November

I don't know if the hook in the last post worked, but I am not able to make good on my promise of digging the foundation trench. Perhaps this failure to produce is fitting considering the coming elections.

Anyway, I have been busy on the project, but the dirt work did not get finished. One reason for this, is that I had to make blocks for testing. According to the New Mexico Earthen Building Materials Code, two tests must be performed on the blocks being used for building: the compressive strength test and the modulus of rupture. Each of these tests is to be performed on five randomly chosen blocks.

The soil on our building site is just on the edge of acceptability for compressed earth block, so am testing blocks made of the native soil and blocks made from a 50/50 mixture of the native soil and crusher fines (what is left over when quarries crush rock and then grade it out to piles of different size gravel). Each of these groups is again broken down into unstabalized blocks, which containing no portland cement, and stabilized blocks which contain 6-8% by volume portland cement (the latter can be used in contact with moisture; on this project they may end up being driveway pavers or sidewalks). So, if my math is correct, I have four different groups of block for each of the two tests. That ends up being 40 blocks.

Most of these I made at the end of the day on October 20th. The follow are pictures of the block press in action and some blocks on a pallet. I will take pictures of the tests, which are scheduled to take place tomorrow, and hopefully will have them available for posting next week (this time no promises).

More Earthwork

Ruidoso Down receive another 0.5" of rain yesterday, followed by our first hard frost. Today it is sunny and I am currently waiting for the sun to melt the ice from my tractor. I put an anti-gel agent in the latest batch of biodiesel. Let's hope it works! (For more on Biodiesel gel point see http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_winter.html)

Though the soil in the work site is still too wet to use in the earth block machine, it is soft enough to speed up the earthwork and I moved many tons of soil on Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday.


I took a few pictures of the building site and stitched them into a panorama. As you can see over by the crappy red building, the soil level is down over a foot from last week. To the far right of the photo, is an area that will have to be built up to the final sub grade level. Before the rain yesterday, I managed to grade and pack one "lift" of soil. The area that needs to be filled will be made of seven or so such "lifts" of about 2"-4" soil.

I am hopeful that by next week's post, I will have brought the grade to the desired level and will be laying out and hopefully digging the foundation trench. (This is my hook to keep you coming back.)

Well, I have not finished the earthwork. The first step is to remove all of the topsoil, and this is proving to be a long process. Our land used to be cultivated for, believe or not, cabbages. This was probably more than 60 years ago, but I think the cultivation resulted in deep topsoil. Anyway, the deep top soil, coupled with the rain we had on last Sunday and Monday (2.3" yikes!) has brought me up to today with still a little more top soil to remove. But I took some pictures anyway.



The first picture is of the pile of topsoil I have built up. The Newfoundland, Brie, is included for scale (she weighs 90 pound). It may not seem like much, but keep in mind that it is about 40' long. The tarp covered object in the background is a bundle of roof trusses. For some reason, even though I asked for delivery in January of 2007, the trusses came last week. I think that is part of the joy of being your own contractor.

The second photo is just a shot of the area where the shop will be situated, sans topsoil.

Hopefully I'll finish up the topsoil tomorrow so I can begin to cut down subsoil to the level where the shop will rest. The subsoil I cut out will become the shop walls.

A reader of the blog wanted me to post a plot plan of our property so as to have some sense of the scale of the aerial photo in the last post. It is a good suggestion, so here it is (Click the picture to see a larger image, and then, if using Internet Explorer, roll over the image a click the enlarge button that appears in the lower corner of the screen ).


The plot plan doesn't show the house and guest house footprints, but they will be east of the shop; the house will sit partially over the area where the existing crappy red outbuilding is currently sitting.

The shop begins!

This is Google Earth photo of the lot that Amanda and I purchased in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. We're in the house with the dark roof in the middle of the picture. The Rio Ruidoso runs along the south edge of our lot (look for the dense trees) and the road is along the north edge.

I actually started the shop project back in July. Originally I thought I would make all the buildings out of load bearing straw bale. New Mexico is a little fussy about load bearing straw bale, though, and I would be importing the straw from Texas or Colorado. Enter compressed earth block (CEB).

CEB is essentially adobe construction, but the blocks are pressed into shape using a manual or hydraulic press. The earth mix has minimal moisture going into the press, so the block need not dry in the sun like traditional adobes.

After much research, I decided to buy a machine from Powell and Sons in San Ysidro, New Mexico (http://www.adobemachine.com/). William Powell and his sons (see photo of Powell and one son with my machine) agreed to build me a machine with no engine and no hydraulic pump, instead setting the hydraulics up to run off of my compact tractor. The money saved on engine and pump allowed me to upgrade to an automatic machine that presses 2 blocks per minute for as long as the hopper contains dirt. I'm sure we'll see a lot more of the press in the months to come.

After settling on a general building technology, I designed the shop and sketched out a house and guest house using Sketchup (sketchup.google.com). This is a free and very helpful 3d drafting program. It does pretty much everything, including modeling the shadows at a given time of year and at a given latitude, longitude, and elevation. Below is a picture of the basic sketch.


Obviously, it needs some work. But the sketch allowed me to do three things:
1. Orient the three buildings for optimum solar gain (the house will be passive solar and the shop and guest house will gain some heat from the sun)

2. Obtain the best possible view from the house, keeping with maximum solar gain.

3. Fit everything in on the lot while still allowing us to live in the current (and hopefully short-lived) house and shop. All of the existing buildings will either be razed or removed when all is said and done.

At this point in the design process, I took a hiatus to address two issues that impacted the eventual building projects. The first of these involved moving an access easement on the property which was in the way of the shop footprint. Easements are tedious, so the only other thing I am going to say on the subject is that our neighbor, who happens to be a surveyor, was infinitely helpful with moving the easement. Thanks, Paul! The second issue is more interesting. Our building project is not going to be certified green built, but I did want to minimize the impact on the planet while building (hence building the walls out of earth). To this end, I built a biodiesel reactor to supply the compact tractor (and hence the block press) and my pickup with biodiesel. For those of you who know nothing about biodiesel, see: www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html. As you can see from the pictures, the reactor would make Rube Goldberg proud. It does work, however, and, with a little help from the grease traps of Denny's and the Log Cabin Restaurant, I am now running both tractor and truck on my own biodiesel.
Back to the shop.

After the biodiesel hiatus, I submitted my plans to the State of New Mexico for contemplation and blessing. They hemmed and hawed (not being used to building methods that do not involve traditional framing) and finally approved the shop plans. Which brings me to today, October 4, 2006, when my official building permit arrived in the mail. So tomorrow I am off to start earth work to prepare for the foundation, to prepare for the walls, to prepare for the roof... This last picture shows the area where the shop will be located and the funny red building that will be torn down as soon as, and not one day later, the shop is finish. (Okay, I may have actually started the earth work before I received my building permit in the mail.)








More will follow.