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...