Eco building, Permaculture design, Travel

Castle & Pyramid

March 3, 2014 4 Comments

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where the wild things are

The weekend rolled around and we felt like we’d earned it. Relying on the kindness of our truck driving Towers neighbour Sam, we headed into town. The goal was grocery shopping with an underlying agenda of nachos and margaritas at the Taos Inn. While the boys checked out the local fly fishing shop I was greeted by an automated and frighteningly cheery “Good Morning” from the thrift shop door. It was a Johnson street worthy secondhand shop with the added bonus of a ski section. I bought the luxury of a second pair of pants, my only other pair had started giving out clouds of cement dust when I walked, not ideal.

Then we were counting speed bumps on the way to a BBQ at the Castle. It really was more of a large scale tin can, but the inside was awesome, like a kind of large scale cubby house. From the roof we could see the Mesa stretched out until it hit mountains on all sides, below geese were causing a ruckus in the same pen as a world weary rooster, who just looked with a “tell me about it” shrug of his feathers.

Mojitos, a sunken fireplace and beams of light on an 80s interior. It had the same signs we had come to associate with earthship, brilliant ideas then a sudden loss of interest, things never quite finished because another idea, another building takes over. This building and those surrounding were the genesis of an ADD way of building. It was fun, unconventional and innovative, but the people staying in the Pods didn’t have running water for two days and the girls in the castle were freezing at night.

While the castle interns organised dinner, we wandered outside, the sun was gone but the light still brushed the plains pale with the pyramid looming alien ahead. It wasn’t “the pyramid” of Mike Reynold’s moonlight excursions in the coffin, but there was something otherworldly about it. this might have been in part due to the interns ensconced in its mezzanine tip beatboxing, the echoes reverberating down the rickety ladder and out into the cool night air.

After dinner a circle of five braved the night chill and played hot coals around the fire. Three catching and passing and under strict instructions from Dylan the two of us dodging to protect out pump jackets. Then later after a good natured scrabble at the door, with Vera and Melissa not wanting anyone to leave we were back in the car counting speed bumps and singing at the top of our lungs to the hits of the 90s.

Eco building, Permaculture design, Travel

The Towers

March 2, 2014 6 Comments

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This is where we live

Another day of slabbing, carpentry and bottle wall cleaning. Enrique and I finally got into a sweet rhythm doing what had talen us two days in half a day on the second door. By clean-up time I could still have gone on for hours, and that’s how I knew it was time to try something new. Timber and tools were familiar friends, so it was time to learn a knew skill.

After dinner the interns in walking distance filtered into our humble abode. When we first realised we were staying here Sam and I, perfect stranger, hi-fived one another, it was nice. An experiment in a double storey city dwelling it had radiant slab heating, a double height courtyard and most importantly running water which we were told people in “the Pods” lacked. Ground floor and first both had a bedroom/kitchen and after some tossing of furniture between the levels a little table each. The four of us had leisurely lunches together being only a minute from site and we could here Jason strumming his guitar upstairs most night.

Most importantly there is a double height cistern system that was running low after a dry spell. Important because when a water delivery truck showed up they weren’t familiar with the system. Water began spilling across our kitchen floor and it was then with mop in hand that I got my first and perhaps only encounter with the great man of mystery Michel Reynolds. His first words to me were something like “we F@#$ed up”, then they did some tinkering and the tide receded.

Now packed with interns and instruments, the place hummed with random chords. Bris tried to teach us the Saw, but I could never quite get that sweet spot on the S curve. People were shy, but some nice melodies kept floating to the surface, fell to pieces in disharmony then rose up anew. I was beginning to like this place and these people a lot, and was almost missing them already knowing we’d only have a few weeks together.

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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