Eco building, Permaculture design, Travel

Let the concrete pour

March 1, 2014 1 Comment

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From the floor up

It takes someone pretty talented to be able to take beautiful photos of a concrete pour whilst standing on a ladder trying to get window trimming done. That person is not me, so if you like pretty more than practical forgive me my shortcomings and tune in tomorrow for some shiny. Earthship biotecture do their slabs in an interesting way with timber framing dividing it up into lots of little pours and the timber formwork itself becoming expansion joints. It means that you only have to do a few pours at a time, then when they are cured move on to the ones adjacent. Its fiddly, but no more so than having to do an awkward large pour and reach all the edges I guess. Its pretty with its red oiled wood a counterpoint to the greenish tint of their iron stain. If you want to be more sustainable you could do the same with a mud floor.

The formwork is leveled, and “porcupined” with screws so that the sides grip the concrete. Reinforcing mesh is cut to size and when the concrete is poured it is lifted up somewhere near the centre to give tensile strength. The concrete is hard troweled, timber sanded and stained, then the concrete is stained after it is cured for a few days.

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Meanwhile outside the wind had picked up, the day before had been all sunshine and we were stripping of jackets in the heat. Today was freezing. Jerry and Dan were constructing bottle wall retaining walls, as simple as it gets without even cutting the bottles and making them into bricks. Through the pipe we could hear jack hammering all day, Dylan and Co were searching for a air duct that may or my not be there but was definitely at least 5 feet down in soil so frozen they at first they thought it was concrete. Enrique and I agreed we definitely had a pretty sweet deal with the indoor trimming.

See you tomorrow for some pretty.

Eco building, Permaculture design, Travel

Intricate finish work

February 28, 2014 No Comments

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Timber sunbursts

We met Phil and Rory, who were days away from a trip to build windships in the Phillipines to laugh in the face of the raging typhoons. Ron clearly wanted to impress Michael Reynolds Number 1 and 2, there seemed to be a pecking order, but I guess if you break any relationship down there always is, just hopefully no one looses any feathers in the process. They were chill and pumped the Reggae whilst plastering the inner chamber. There was some swearing from intern Jennifer, a tiny sweet girl with a self confessed dirty mouth, as all her plaster fell in a great chunk to the floor. It was all rather amusing.

Enrique and I were promoted to timber finish work, crafting the finish face of the timber sunburst inner door and window framing. We measured and mitred, starting slow and rough, but getting better with every cut. Our brains could never relax with saws spinning and mysterious angles left by past interns that were never quite the same degree or length. From the amount of figurative encouraging slaps on the back we got from our fellow interns in the trades we figured it was pretty complicated and perhaps tedious aesthetic work, but when it worked it was thrilling. I love puzzles and jigsaws so when the drill screwed all the pieces into place it was immensely satisfying. It did give me a new found respect for carpenters and tradesmen like and I’m sure I’ll think twice before designing anything too fancy for the sake of fancy in the future.

In the background head gal Heather with a full head of dreads and a no nonsense love of her “tunes” (don’t touch the ladies stereo) supervised some bottle wall grooming, Rose made some doors and hanging above doorways on ladders we were in everyone’s way, just the way we liked it.

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Eco building, Permaculture design, Travel

A healthy fear of power tools

February 27, 2014 2 Comments

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Earthship carpentry squad

Day 1 on the earthsip building site, I was excited to get building for once instead of just sitting in an office cerebrating. Dylan and our “Earthship Tower” housemates went off to replace the plastic glazing on Bris’ Simple Survival with double glazing. By the end of the day it was airtight, but someone (*cough* Sam) accidentally cut off the water and power, she was good natured about it, but we owed her showers for the next week.

I volunteered to be on carpentry squad with Enrique under the stern watchful gaze of Mick. At first we thought Mick was a little disgusted with our lack of power tool experience, but after a day realised it was just his quiet, get ‘er dun kind of way. He was the kind of guy whose compliments mean a lot because you know he doesn’t waste words with false praise.

We began making door stops, the drop saw had a piece of timber shoved in where a button used to be, the table saw’s lock didn’t really work…it kept us alert. I enjoyed using the drop saw, but the table saw freaked me out a bit, but as Dylan says it’s good to be afraid of power tools, it’s the guys who have worked with them for twenty years who end up losing a thumb by being complacent. By the end of the day we had both door stops in with weatherstrip and phew on inspection the doors actually closed. It was slow going, but we’d get into our groove eventually, and fun, I can’t wait to build more when I get home, perhaps Chook Mansion 2.

After knock off we bundled in cars to go to the Taos Mesa Brewery (there is no getting around without one). Our waiter went around the table charming and insulting patrons in turn. On discovering we were Australian he waxed lyrical about how he has a friend n Australian who wants his to manage his nightclub so badly he’d pay for his air fare over, he’d go but he has kids and two ex-wives in the States and there is no way he is flying them over. He plied the table with beer and me with ice tea as he buzzed by, the only waiter in the packed place, he noted that we were in an earthship with tires under the dance floor, repurposed CD racks fro ceiling panels and off cuts for acoustic decoration. We had sweet potato fries an burgers while a jazz duo sang and strummed throaty warbling melodies, a nice night to remind us that the internship was as much about meeting like-minded people as learning to build.

Eco building, Permaculture design, Travel

A simple survival

February 26, 2014 6 Comments

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comfort in the desert

There aren’t that many people who would travel across the world to visit the most inhospitable place in the New Mexico desert, but even fewer who would build there. That’s what Michael Reynolds did, he invented the earthship, a house that makes survival in the extremes possible. Rain water is collected from the roof and used for drinking water, is filtered through planters in a greenhouse, then used for showers and flushing toilets, then the black water too is filtered for landscaping. Banana plants are growing where the temperature is -10C outside in winter, they’re off the grid with solar panels on the roof and tires and glass bottles are used as building materials.

Melissa drove from Minnesota and picked up Madalyn in Alburquerque, then us in Santa Fe. We were crammed in buried to our necks in luggage and groceries, but completely merry about it all. I demanded conversation to keep my claustrophobia at bay and Madalyn told us how she had been staying at a place in Albuquerque where they kept a pet pig (the product of a failed realtionship) and the guy who owned it slept with in his bed. She sailed tall ships for a living and was really interested in what people wanted to name their children, I believe she liked Jasper.

We arrived, got the lowdown from Ron and then got separated into groups and thrust into the arms of our “Den Mother” Griffin. He gave us a tour, in a fantastic world weary way that only a Virginian, pot smoking, earthshipper can. We were housed in “the Towers”, some others in the “Simple Survivals”. The other group got shipped 30 minutes away in “the Castle”.

That night we met for green beans and beer. In a cloud of smoke Griffin happily chattered about Michael Reynold’s book about Wizards and Mike’s penchant for strapping himself in a coffin on top of a pyramid to have the moon burn holes through the back of his head. Perhaps this earthship caper was a little more esoteric than we thought, but Ron had seemed very grounded in the practicalities of septic systems so maybe not. KTAO 101.9 FM was humming Native American tribal chants on loop in the background all night and Griffin had grand plans for being the greatest Den Mother ever by covering a table in tin foil and laying out a hundred different types of salad, a sort of Viking feast for vegetarians. It was all rather delightfully surreal, I’m really not sure what might happen next, but I think it will be fun.

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