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.