How to get 22 rafters up

One more job towards getting the roof on the scaffolding has been completed. It's the first time I actually feel that we will get this roof done before the winter really kicks in! It has taken a very long time since we started the scaffolding and the roof and we have lost our joy of working at the site because of it but now we have some joy back because it looks like we can do it after all. The rafters have been waiting on the ground ready for more than a month. And now they are all up and in place. 

This is what we needed:

- A babysitter for three days to have the kids out of the way

- One person (me) on the ground handling the rafters: making them ready to go up, lifting them up the length of myself and then going to the other end of the rope to pull. I have started to remember all kind of useful things from my sailing days.

- A good knot (that I won't name because I'm not sure of the name... Or the knot...)

- A pulley

- One person (Mick) on top helping pulling the rafter up, directing it to place and then nailing it into place, untying the knot, moving the pulley and throwing the rope down to the next rafter.

Job done!

During all of this there came snow, rain, hail and sleet from the sky. It has been between -10c° up to +1c°. Mick has these days a harness on because the planks are pure ice. He also found useful to have anti-slip's on his boots.

The snow

It came before we had the roof of the scaffolding on. But thats ok, it is gone already! So we had snow for a week. We didnt do much (work related) during that time but now that the snow is gone we will really go at it for this coming week and try to get as much as possible done before it snows again.

The King post trusses are up (the large A shape on the top). That we had done before the snow came. We prepared the trusses on the floor by making the joints and drilling the holes for the screws. So basically we put them together and then took them apart. Then we lifted the logs one by one up with a winch and Mick put the trusses back together again on the top. Then we lifted each king post truss up to the right position with ropes and winches and four persons. There goes a ridge beam on top of the trusses and there will come another one of them next week.  

Views from above

 North

On the left: logs waiting to go up for the roof of the scaffolding. 

On the right: kids having a snack. And roof tins waiting.

In the middle: the very end of our road. We don't intend it to come to our house once the house is ready

Middle behind: under rusty roof tins posts and beams for the house (to be used next after the scaffolding and temporary roof is ready)

West

The top of the scaffolding, about 6.1 meters above the ground.

On this we will now start building the roof of the scaffolding for us to be able to work longer into autumn and eventually we can build the roof of the house under the roof of the scaffolding.

A big benefit of Mick being a rock climber is that he is able to walk and work up here! He might be the only one who can...

The top of the scaffolding from below

Mick put the boards every 60cm (2 feet) for him to feel safe to walk and work up there

6th of July 2017 till 6th of October 2017

        

6.7.2017

Site cleared from trees

6.10.2017

Foundation done, joists done, scaffolding half done

Scaffolding

When the floor beams were ready with the mortise and tennon joints we put down 32 8x2 floor joists all around the house. This really changed the feeling of the area! The leca foundation and the joints of the beams are covered from the rain with some roof tin Mick collected for free from Joensuu. Every morning when we start work we need to take the covers off.

Having lunch

Now we started building a scaffolding for the house. It will have a roof on it so the whole house will be covered until it has its own roof on. This way we can work in the rain, we can work later into the autumn/winter and we dont need to uncover and cover everything when we come to work and leave work. The scaffolding/temporary rain cover is built from our peeled spruce posts and boards. It took some practice and strength to get them 12 posts into place but we got really good and fast at it and we got the last post in place just before our last helper left.

Luckily Mick is not scared of heights

All the posts are connected to each other with boards. On top of the boards there are planks to walk on. This will still get a third level on it and more support boards and planks to walk on. We ran out of the boards we had the saw mill make for us (of this size) so now we are using used boards we collected last week from near Joensuu for free. They are full of nails so we first need to de-nail them. I do the de-nailing while Mick is up high building.

Mortise and tennon joints

These are a few things we have done with the help of our helpers during the last month and a half.

We dug a ditch to direct the water away from the road/yard. 

The gravel from the digging we placed under our house so between the big rocks and towards the middle foundation. The gravel was placed there to make the ground higher and make it slope away from the house so that all the water from the rain and melting snow do not go under the house. We needed more gravel than from the ditch so we dug that from the edge of the forest. Also we placed stones in cement on top of the foundation rocks to make them all the same hight and even.

Then we began the carpentry work. We got our nine beams that were cut square by the mobile saw mill in the winter.

These floor beams were joined with a halving joints that were made with a motor saw, axe and chisel.

At each of these joints there is a mortice and tennon joint which is the junction between the wall posts and the floor beams. This also fixes the beams together. 

The beams are placed on birch bark to stop the moisture from traveling from the stone to the beam. The  surface of the beam was burned with a blow torch to dry the wood to paint it with wood tar. The tar works against insects who don't like the tar (nor the charring).  

The 4x2inch mortise joint was made by hand drilling eight one inch holes to make the chiseling easier.

Each beam is bolted onto the rock at the point of the mortise joint. This stops any possible movement of the house.

The whole family chiseling (in a local news paper article).
"Itse rakentaen kodilla on sielu - by building yourself your house has a soul"

Bark art by beetle worms

A peeling from spruce bark. The figure(s) are made by bugs. Peeled and found by David, one of our helpers. How many faces do you find?

Building the foundation

Filling the hole with stones

So after the digger came and put the foundation rocks in place we have started building the foundation for the chimney, oven, stove and an interior cob wall. The area is about 7m2. The digger dug a huge hole and it was filled with stones called anti capillary stones. They prevent the frost from moving the foundation/house because the dampness does not stay in the stones so they cant have frost in them either. The stones were compacted with a wacker, then covered with fine sand that was compacted and leveled.

Tying the reinforcing bars

On the sand we put 50mm load bearing insulation boards and built a timber shutter to hold the concrete foundation, we put in steel reinforcing bars to strengthen the concrete which we mixed on site using a petrol powered cement mixer. This is the only place we will have concrete in our house.

The wooden shutter was removed and then we started building the insulating leca (light weight expanded clay aggregate) bricks up. At the same time we have built a deep box (at right in pic. above) to bring three pipes up into the house. One pipe for water coming in, one for waste water going out and one pipe for an electricity cable. The box is also insulated.

Dry testing the leca bricks to see how they fit best

Laying leca bricks

We have a cement mixer that was shipped from Ireland amongst all the other tools that Mick had there. We also have a petrol generator to make electricity for cutting the bricks and using other power tools.
All the building materials we need to buy we can buy from Joensuu thats about 20km away. We are lucky to have a use of my dads van to transport bigger stuff.

Today we completed laying the leca bricks for the chimney, oven, wood cooking stove and cob wall base. Next week we get to start the carpentry work! We, specially Mick has really been waiting for that. And it is August already...

The Way we get our Helpers

We have for the whole summer, from May or June till October volunteers coming to help build our house. We find the helpers through three different organisations: Workaway, Poosh and HelpX. They all have the similar idea that the volunteer helper comes and stays with us, we provide accommodation and food and they work for six hours a day five days a week.

Until now we have been very happy with how it has worked for us. We mostly have had people for a few weeks but some will stay for longer. We would welcome people to stay for many months and this way they would learn and see much more than in a few weeks, but a few weeks is also good of course.

Poosh is an organisation for sustainable self-builders only so if one is building their home in an eco way they can seek for helpers through that organisation. Workway and HelpX is for any kind of work so not only for people building their home.
So we put an add up saying we need help and telling about our project and the helpers make their profile and tell who they are and what they are interested in and then the helpers look for interesting places they want to go to and contact the hosts (us) and ask if they can come. All contact happens through the organisation web page.
Then they come and stay with us and help us. They get a nice experience in a foreign country, they get to see countryside, how people live here, how we are doing our project and they lear how to do whatever we are doing just then when they are here. We get help, we get to learn from our helpers too, we get to meet interesting people and we get energy from people coming to see our project and being inspired.

A good exchange!

Digging the foundations

Last week the digger arrived in the yard so the road is ready! Kind of. It still needs the surface on so right now its very bumpy and soft. But people come to work by car!
After the road was done the digger came to work on the site. Well, first we cleared it from trees, cleaned the surface and decided the exact place for the house.

Then we had a man come to take coordinates of the place of the house for the municipality map.

 Site cleared from trees. Photo taken on the 6th of July.

Almost all rocks in place. Photo taken on the 11th of July. A big change!

Then we had the digger come in. He/It scraped the surface, took the stumps and stones away to the side of the road with a tractor and trailer and then leveled the area and made the spot of the house slope down from the side of the house 3 meters away all directions so that the rain water flows away from the house instead of going underneath it. Then Mick marked the house spot again and the spots for the 9 big rocks. He did it with string, sticks, nails, a level and some help.

For the last few days the digger guy has dug the foundation. So digging, filling it with smallish stones, then laying huge rocks on top. The house will come on top of the rocks so quite high.

All the time that this was happening we had our dear helpers peeling, clearing trees, peeling, building  walls to the shed, peeling, moving logs, peeling, sharpening the peelers, peeling, building a rain cover for the peeled logs and peeling.

Peeling peeling peeling

Now that we have stools and enough peelers and enough people to help we have three people peeling all the time. It is great to see the progress.

On the right there are the peeled posts (nine 4.5 meters long) and beams (nine 3.4 meters long).

On the left still to be peeled nine roofbeams, nine purlings and eighteen braces. In the pile there are also beams that we dont know yet what we will use them for but they will probably be peeled anyways. 

 The logs are attached to the carpenter's stool by something called a dog. It is hammered in the stool and the other side is hammered in the log. This way the log stays in place when we peel.

Concentrating.

Building a carpenter's stool

Carpenter's stools will always be needed for many different kind of jobs all through our project. And since we had for some days 6 helpers at a time we were able to make more of them. Mick showed how to build them and now we have 3 new benches to work on. They are used every day to peel on.

Matias making a stool

    Leo was helping too with his little saw

We have our building permit! Meillä on rakennuslupa!

Jee, well done all of us. It is a great feeling to have a permit to build and no changes needed to be done. So what I did yesterday afternoon with Luna on my back was I cleared the place of the house from all the trees. It looks now really nice and open and it actually looks like a big area even if im sure it will some days not feel like it. But this is a nice feeling to finally get going with the project without waiting anymore. :)

Building a tool shed

Right now we are building a round wood timber framed  shed using traditional mortise and tenon joints and the floor is of pallets. 

We got two helpers (one staying with us and one living local) and two more are coming next week so Mick is building the shed and I am peeling with the helpers. First we peeled logs for the shed and now we are peeling rafters for the house. 

OKSAT POIS 17.6.! :)

Hei kaikki!
Tervetuloa risutalkoisiin! Meidän tie on lähes raivattu mutta
vielä viimeiset, jo kaadetut puut pitäisi saada pois tieltä ennen kuin
kaivuri tulee taas juhannuksen jälkeen.

Käytännössä tämä tarkoittaa sitä että vesurilla tai kirveellä
poistamme oksia puista ja siirrämme ne sitten tien viereen kasaan.
Työtä on myös sellaisille jotka eivät halua käyttää työkaluja eli
pelkkää oksien siirtämistäkin on tarpeeksi.

Talkoot ovat la 17.6. klo 9-12, sitten lounas ja 13--> kunnes haluatte
lopettaa tai kunnes syödään päivällinen klo 18. Eli olette
tervetulleita heti aamusta tai lounaan jälkeen ja olette tervetulleita
jäämään syömään päivällistä.
Työkalut ja käsineet meiltä.

Jos kiinnostaa tulla niin ilmoittauduthan miulle viimeistään pe 16.6. mennessä.
Kyyditys Joensuusta onnistuu.

Samalla pääsette näkemään meidän talon paikan, jo valmiin tienpätkän,
kaunista Suomen metsää ja tietenkin meidät! Lapset ovat tervetulleita
mukaan, Leo ja Lunakin tulee.

Ystävällisin terveisin Marja ja perhe

Building without debt

We feel very lucky to be able to build without having to take a loan. When I was a kid I saw my parents example of how nice it was for them to have started their dream  (an organic farm) without a loan. When they had decided they want to buy a farm and start growing vegetables they went off and worked for 5 years saving money to buy the farm. These days it is more than normal that when you decide you want to buy a house you go to the bank and get a mortgage.

So already when I was a kid I decided I don't want to take a loan but instead I want to save money for my house. So that's what I have been doing for the last 15-20 years! Of course I haven't been making money all those years so during many of them I was not saving more money but my goal all along was not to have to touch my savings I already had. And I was able to do that, even when studying, thanks to my parents who supported me financially when I studied and also thanks to my first profession, nurses aid, because with that schooling it was super easy to get a job for the summer so I didn't need to touch my savings. Being stingy also has helped. (When me and Mick started spending more time together and did shopping Mick was surprised to learn I thought sun dried tomatoes were too expensive to buy except on special occasions).

Another reason we have the money is that Mick used to own a house in Ireland that he has sold now and there was some money left from that as well.

All along I had thought I'm saving to buy an old house but that dream has changed into building one. I think building one will be more expensive than the houses we looked at for buying. When building you easily might use all the money you have and also it will cost more than expected (or so I have heard).

What ever it ends up costing it wont cost more than we have so I feel safe in that way. And we both feel really lucky to be able to do this project without banks involved. Yes, our savings have come from working from eight till four so being in the working world (and rat race) is necessary sometimes but it is good also to be able to leave it if you want to. Its good to believe in yourself that you can do it too, not only others.

We hope our example inspires others to build small and cheap, from recycled materials and materials you can find from the building spot so that it can be done without loans or lots of money involved.

Out of the rat race into the beetle race (oravanpyörästä kisaan kuoriaisia vastaan)

Mick often talks about how we are trying to get out/stay out of the rat race (or have succeeded in some parts): no bank loan, no need for nine to five (or in Finland eight to four) jobs, no busy city life etc. So we try to live with out being in that rat race but now we are in a race against the beetles!

When you cut trees down the fresh cut down bark on the tree starts to attract beetles. The beetles come fast and they lay eggs in the bark and then the baby beetles start to eat the bark.
Luckily here (at least the beetles we have) don't eat further than the bark. Or they do go a bit into the timber but not so much that it would be harmed by these. So actually the race is not that bad. When we were peeling boards this week we found many beetles like in this picture and also some other type of beetles but the harm that they had done was small and the marks easily peeled away. And once you take the bark away the beetles are not interested any more. So we win!

A funny fact: Rat race in finnish is oravanpyörä which is literally translated "squirrel wheel"
Hassu fakta: oravanpyörä englanniksi on rat race eli "rotta kilpailu"

The visit of the mobile sawmill

The same week that we were busy getting the planning application ready and getting the road cleared the mobile sawmill came. Those were busy one and a half days too. There was a big pile of pine to be cut. The sawmill guy put his mill ready the day before and started cutting the next morning. He needed lots of helpers to carry away all the boards that were cut. A noisy job!

Getting ready to cut more

 On the left the pile of pine logs uncut, on the right the cut ones stacked according to size

It took the next good few days to stack all the cut boards into a big pile

Now they can dry slowly and they don't warp (hopefully)

Application in!

At the same time when we were clearing the road in a hurry we were trying to get the building permission application ready. The drawings by the engineer were ready on the 10th of May. I went to print them at the library with the kids and Mick continued clearing the road. After loads of printing, filling in forms and getting signatures from neighbors that they OK our plans we were finally ready to apply. The application was left to the office on the 11th of May at 9.30 am. That felt really good and it was a relief to have it in.

Right now lots of applications are left before the summer so it will most likely take five weeks to get the permission. During that time we might be asked to do changes but hopefully nothing big. We have showed the designs and had correspondence with the planner already before applying so there should not be any big surprises.
This is what we applied for:

Julkisivu itään, South elevation 1:100

The surface of the house wont look like this because the roof will be of aspen shingles, haapapaanu and the walls will be clay and lime so a very smooth surface

Leikkaus, Section 1:100 

The posts and beams will be visible inside the house. 

The chimney will be in the middle and a wood burning stove will heat the whole house.

The windows on the roof will bring in extra light.

Road done half way

First of all sorry to all you readers that there has been no posts for a long time! We were on our trip to Ireland and Holland and came back in the end of April. The trip was nice but it did take a good week to recover and get back to our normal rhythm. Then we spent some time at out building site clearing space there. After that we went back to clearing the road.

The person digging the road had planned to come in the end of June but he was suddenly available in the beginning of May. So he came and we spent a week trying to clear the road faster than he dug it :) Luckily the road was mostly cleared but at some points it was cleared only 4 meters wide and the digger needs 12 so thats what we were doing.

The digger stayed a week and then needed to go to another job so he will be back in the summer. But half of it is done!

Our new road. The view to the field wont soon be there cause the birch will have leaves

Our BIG helper

We had a machine come to move the logs that we have cut down for building. Now they are in two places, one pile in my dads field waiting for a mobile saw and the rest is very near to our building site separated to a few different piles of big pine, peeled spruce and non-peeled spruce. Great to have this done and now the road is more cleared as well.

Not achieving goal number two

Yes, our second goal to have the building planning application ready before we leave wont happen. We wanted to have it so that we leave the application before we go on our trip and while we are gone it would be looked at in the planning office and then when we would come back we would have the permission to build (or just small alternations needed).

But this was too much to achieve in the time we had. We got close but not ready. Mick drew all the sketches for the house and we gave them to our construction designer. He drew them almost ready on the computer but gave us some good suggestions to change the floor plan. So we started rethinking the layout and thats what we are still doing. With a small house it is crucial to have everything planned right. And planning takes time.

Well, our new goal is to decide what we want and then have that drawn up by our designer. When we come back we will do the rest that needs to be done for applying and then we will apply as soon as possible. This new timetable will delay our plans but we hope not too much. And at least we will have a better floor plan in the end!

Achieving goal number one

We have all along had two main goals for before we go on our vacation trip to Ireland and Holland. Those two goals have been to get the building permission application in and to have the road cleared. We have since made our goals smaller or more realistic: to get the building application ready for our house (but not for the outside buildings) and to get the road cleared so that there fits a machine to come to gather the trees that we have cut down. This machine will also gather the trees cut not only from the road but also bigger trees up a ridge. Those big trees will be used for the main structure of the house.

We (or maybe just I) were having some panic thoughts that we wont get to those goals until we had our second helper and friend Oopi over for more than a week and he really was the right guy in the right moment. Thanks Oopi! Oopi and Mick had almost all of trees needed cut down from up the ridge and Oopi cleared with a brush saw the part of the road that we had not cleared yet. Oopi is a lumberjack so he really did know what he is doing and Mick learned a lot from him.

Oopi clearing the road with a brush saw

Oopi raivaamassa tietä raivaussahalla

After that my dad has also been a huge help clearing the road starting from the other end of the road. He has been clearing the road almost every day now for a few weeks and thats a great help for us. He has also been up the ridge cutting trees down. Most of the trees cut down from the ridge have a disease that spreads from pine to pine and kills the tree (but the tree is still perfect to use). It makes me happy that we are using trees that would have died anyway pretty soon.

So we have achieved our goal that the road is now ready for the machine to come next week to pick up all the trees lying around. He will get all the trees down from the ridge and all the ones from the road and bring part of them to a pile near our coming house and part of them to a pile for a mobile saw to cut to boards.