Raised timber floor

The second layer is finished on the floor. We have to build up the thickness of the floor to be able to put in enough insulation to meet the building regulations.

So far we have used; 9 No. 200x200 beams.

36 No. 200x50 Joists with herringbone bridging on outer ring and two sets of solid bridging to halfway point and center.

6 rows of 100x50 secondary joists at 1.2m spacings.

Double ring of 100x50 timbers with solid bridging to carry the straw bale wall.

At least one more layer to come before fixing the Oriented strand board (OSB) walking surface.

Floor structure with the sheets of OSB waiting in the center

At this stage we have used in the floor about 320 pieces of timber and 1000 nails. All of the 100x50 timbers we got from a building site rubbish pile in Joensuu, thanks Ari!

Second layer of 100x50's done and some of the OSB fitted

 Progress update.

Another layer of  100x50 timbers fitted at 540mm spacings.
Some of the OSB floor base fitted.
The frame you see is for supporting a tarpaulin rain cover so we can work on the timber frame in all weather. When working in a more hand built slower way it is more important to be able to keep the progress continuous and not need to be waiting for a good weather window.

Floor fitted and the rain came down!

A friend who is an experienced builder came to help for a couple of days and we did some work on the floor and put up the frame for the rain cover. He also pointed out some possible problems in how I intended to fit the OSB all the way to the outside of the walls, there would have been a cold bridge, and no allowance for expansion contraction which could lead to warping of the boards. So now the OSB sheets are finished to the inside of the wall with a 15mm expansion gap. Thanks for all the help Ossi.

Building the floor and damage control

Crumpled roof sheets of scaffold pancake

So after removing the snow and taking away the scaffolding pancake we are now building the floor.
 The logs we had sawn to planks on the mobile saw mill last year have mold spores growing on them, we did not cover the stack in time and there was too much moisture. I have been told to scrape of the spores and leave the timbers in the sun and stack them in a dry place to stop the fungus doing any more damage.
 

Our moldy wood

For the beams already in the floor we removed the spores but I noticed on the parts not getting any sun it looks like it has started to grow again. So to hopefully stop this I have scorched all the timber using a propane blow torch.

Scorched timbers with herring bone bridging to stabilize floor joists.

Collapse of scaffold

On the 27th December we got a phone call from our neighbor saying he was passing our building site on a snowmobile and noticed something missing.

 

 The scaffolding which we had spent 3 months building and putting a roof on had collapsed. We were in shock, it was like hearing someone has suddenly died, denial, realization and some sadness later and it sinks in, then seeing it flattened as a final confirmation of the reality. 

From this time on it was referred to as the pancake.

 

This is how it all looked a couple of weeks earlier, before the roof sheets were finished and a clear plastic wall was fitted to keep the snow out.