Roofing

After the projects of the saw mill and brick layer coming and the sauna we finally finally got to start with the actual house project. This meant starting to complete the roof. We did one third of the roofing in December and it took a long time because of the weather, the short and dark days, the figuring out how to do things and also the tiredness from the long building year. But now it is much faster! We thankfully have a carpenter helper who does roofing as a job and another motivated helper who is thinking of being a carpenter so Mick has good help!

A view from a tree that Mick climbed: The house, roof and lots of trees. The trees in front are mostly birch, in the middle mostly spruce and in the distance pine.

The roof of the house is divided into six sections, three big ones and three smaller sections under the windows. Figuring out all of this roofing a round house has taken a lot of time from Mick and once in a while given him a head ache or sleepless nights but now it is looking good!

The second part of the roof took only seven days and then it had the tins on already. The weather for the roofing has been amazingly good. Almost no rain, warm and hot weather with many windy days to keep the mosquitoes away.

 

Putting on the last lats.

The third part of the roof took only about five days.
The house still has the plastic cover on the sides because it gives a protection from the weather to the inside of the house. We will leave this plastic on all through the summer because the next project is starting on the walls and it is important to keep the wood and straw bales dry all through the building process. 

The roofing of the smaller sections under the windows began in the middle of this week.

Buying and taking down a Sauna

After the project of the brick laying we went to get a sauna. We would like to have an old building in our new yard and it would also be a nice atmosphere in an old log sauna. We have been looking on the internet for one for a few years now and have gone to see a few but never a suitable one. Now we went to see one about 40 km from our house and it seemed good. The sauna is 100 years old and the log part of the building is 3.5m by 3,5m with a post and beam structure in the rest. The lowest logs were rotten but we thought we could just replace them. Otherwise the building seemed really suitable for us. It has a sauna with a combined washing room and then a separate dressing room/summer room. So we bought it.

Our two German helpers Pirmin and Jackob, and Mick started by taking all the inside paneling boards off that were covering the logs. We tried to take all apart so neatly that we could use them again. After taking off all the boards we were able to see the logs were not at all in as good condition as we were hoping for. From outside they look good but from inside many were rotten, much more than just the lowest ones...

In the deal with the people selling the sauna we did not need to take anything we did not want so we left all the insulation, broken boards, the chimney, the rotten beams and other stuff.

The summer room was not built with logs so we were able to take it down easily. This is what was left after taking the summer room walls away.
After taking the roof off we were able to loosen the logs by hand using a nail bar and then lift the beams onto the ground. They are so old and dry they weigh very little. Now we also really saw the condition and were really disappointed by it. Almost half of them were rotten and so not usable or not worth putting in a building again. This meant to build a new sauna out of these we would need to replace half of them.
So we moaned and groaned and felt stupid and felt we have wasted all this time and energy and money for something that turned out to be something we did not want. In the end we took most of the logs to maybe use in something later (maybe not a sauna) and thankfully we got some of our money back.
This project took us a week all together and fortunately everything fitted in a van and trailer by taking full loads back with us every day we went to work on taking the sauna down.

The oven and stove

After the chimney the oven and cooking stove were built. The chimney came right in the middle of our house and the oven beside it. The oven is built in a very particular way so that the smoke circulates around, up and down before it goes out of the chimney. This way all the bricks are heated well and they stay warm for a long time to heat the house. The flue closers for the oven and stove were put near the top of the chimney. When the fire is gone in the oven we close the flue right away so the heat stays in.

When the oven was built our job as a helper for the brick layer was much easier because we did not need to carry the bricks and mortar up to the roof. Mick actually had time to have lunch!

This is the chimney, oven and stove ready from the back side. We will still plaster this all with clay plaster. You can get really beautiful natural colours to add to the clay plaster so it will look really nice when it is ready.
The smoke of the stove goes through the back of the oven to the chimney. This is unusual but possible. We were very lucky to have our friend recommend a good brick layer who has 50 years of experience and  he was very good and quick at his job. Making the oven and stove took a week.

And from the front. The chimney on the right, then the oven center and then the stove on the left. The big hole is where the wood is burnt. When we have burnt all the wood we want that time we push the coals to the back of the oven where there is a space where they fall down on a grate that is in the first hole under the oven. The red coals turn into ashes (while still giving heat) and then those ashes are later pushed down to the second hole where they are emptied (in the winter about once in two months or so). The two smaller holes on the bottom of the oven and on top of the oven door hole are for the chimney sweeping. Because we will still plaster this all the doors are now missing, it will be easier to plaster it without the doors. The big hole where the wood is burnt is where we do baking then when the coals are pushed out of the way. We can make anything there that we want depending on the heat of the oven. By burning more or less wood we can control the temperature. Usually in the winter we heat the oven to 250-300celcius, then we first put in some dinner to bake like pizza or oven vegetables. Then we put in bread or buns and last we might still put a cake or cookies to bake when the oven heat has gone down to around 175celcius.

This is the stove. On top we do all our cooking and heat warm water for washing the dishes, to have a cup of tea etc. On the right the top door is where the wood is burnt and below that is where the ashes fall and are taken away from (maybe once a month or more). The lower door has a vent for giving the fire oxygen and to create a draft for the fire. The bigger door is a small stove for baking food in in the summer when it is too hot to heat the oven. So this way we can make oven dishes even if we don't heat the big oven. The little oven in the stove here heats up automatically without slowing down the heating of the top of the stove. In this too the brick laying was very particular so that the fire goes all around before going out to the chimney. This oven will not become really hot but suitable for some foods like lasagna. I am really looking forwards to being able to bake foods in the summer too.

Some of the doors, chimney sweeping vents and the stove top are bought used. They are all cast iron so they last long! They just needed some cleaning and after that they were wiped with rape seed oil.

The brick layer visits

So this is what we have been doing for the last few weeks: We have been helping the brick layer built us a chimney, oven and stove.
First the brick layer came to visit the place and plan the job. He also gave us a long shopping list for all the stuff we needed to get for the job. We had thought first of using used bricks but in the end we decided to use new ones because of the better quality. In this cold of a climate it is crucial to have an oven that heats the house well (if like in our case it is the only heat source in the house) and also for us a good stove is crucial because it is the only way we can cook. This is why we decided to use new materials and to use a professional to do the work.

So a truck came and brought us 2530 red bricks and 3000kg of mortar. And some fire bricks and other materials. Not cheap!

The chimney is built straight by hanging a plumb bob which is a string line with a weight on it from top and then nailing a board where the line hangs. The brick layer built the chimney along this board (seen in the picture on the right against the chimney)

It was an unusual space for the brick layer to built where the chimney goes out of the roof. There needed to stay minimum 10cm of space all around the chimney for fire safety reasons. This will be later stuffed with rock wool.

When the brick layer got higher doing the chimney the work for us was very heavy. There was no time to spare from making more mortar, bringing it and bricks up onto the roof and also building the scaffolding for the brick layer.

Working on the last 2 meters of the 8.4 meter chimney. The bricks with no holes in them were all built in the house and outside above the frost line the bricks with holes in them are used because they last longer (don't split from frost as easily). The bricks are made in Finland, there still is two brick factories here.

There it is. Building the chimney took about one week.

The sawmill visits again

We have run out of some certain size and quality timber boards, planks and beams so we needed to cut some trees down again from the top of the hill close by to our new house. This happened in the late winter. Then we had a log moving machine to move all the logs to my dads field where we had the portable saw mill visiting for a week.

 This is the pile of wood before cutting them. 400 logs from 3.1m to 6.1m lengths. 

It took almost five days in total to cut these.

 Here is the pile of cut boards stacked for drying. It took about six days to stack them.

They will still be covered and left to dry for a year or two. On the right there is beams for a sauna to be built by the lake.

We had the saw mill cut 17 different size of timbers. In Finland it is cheaper to get boards and beams this way than go to the shop to buy them, that is if you have your own forest.

Walls with starw bale insulation

So this March I have been back working on the house alone, this suits me as there is lots of little things to think about and ideas to try out.
We actually only have one exterior wall that goes all around the house, it is 26.4m long and 3m high. The straw bales need some kind of stabilizing, this can be done two ways, they can be pinned down the middle of the bale with really long dowels which stop the bales from sliding against each other. Or they can be stabilized using external pinning, which I had thought to use 3"x1 1/4" (75x32mm) timbers every 35cm, these are nailed to the base and the top of the wall, one on either side, and tied together through the bales with twine.

Base of wall

First to carry the straw bales 4"x2"s spaced the same width as the bales are nailed to the floor joists.

Top of wall with structural beam on left

The top is a lot slower as a birds mouth cut needs to be taken out of the roundwood rafters. And then a timber is fixed from the inside top piece to the roundwood beam of the structural frame.

Top from the outside

Then the external pinning 3"x1 1/4" (75x32mm) is nailed top and bottom. These make building the straw bales a lot easier as there is a surface to place the bales against.

10 bales standing in place, feels good to be looking at them!

 We made a trial of placing the bales, each one is tied by the strings to the outside as they are laid. Only 9 fit in leaving a 230mm space for the last 300mm bale, then the bales are compressed using heavy duty ratchet straps until I was scared about the ratchet failing from the pressure! The last bale just fits in with a bit of shoving and pushing and the straps are released.

We now have a precompressed bale stack, looks like it works. Yay!

 I want to add some extra stability to the walls as I noticed there was some movement when we finished the structural frame. This stopped when we put temporary 5"x1" X braces between the posts. Our engineer Esa suggested doing a yurt wall type lattice. We will probably be doing this, I just have to decide if it will go on before or after the bales. Easier to do the bales first but then harder to do the lattice, or easier to do the lattice first and harder to do the bales? I'm going to do some trial sections to try it out.
I realized the last bale can only be fitted from the inside because of the sloping roof, so that's decided then we will build the lattice after the bales.

Views from above

We had a reporter and photographer come to make an article about our project. The photographer had a copter/drone that he took these winter pictures with.

A picture of our place from right above. The blue circle is our house (covered with a tarpaulin), next to it building wood under cover, to the left of it some trees, the outside toilet on the edge of the few trees, all the way to the left the piles of fire wood. Closest to the top of the picture a pile of building wood and close to that the play house. To the bottom of the photo there is the driveway up to our yard. To the right (south) of the house there will be our garden with berries. Picture/Kuva: Aleksi Jalava/Iltasanomat

 

Picture taken from the south so here you could see our well and garden if it wasn't covered with snow. To the right here is building wood under cover.  On the east side of the house you can see the completed tin roof. The rest of the roof is covered with a tarpaulin and the sides are covered with recycled plastic to keep the snow out of the house for the winter. To the east we have young spruce forest on a uphill, to the west we have really young mixed forest with mostly birch on a downhill. Picture/Kuva: Aleksi Jalava/Iltasanomat

 

 Picture taken from the north. In the background you can see my dads vegetable farm. When we are in our yard we are not able to see the fields through the skinny forest. Picture/Kuva: Aleksi Jalava/Iltasanomat 

This picture is taken last summer from the roof of our house. It shows the few trees we have between the house and the fire wood piles.

 This is taken towards north. Playhouse and in distance building wood.

And this is taken towards south. There is our water well surrounded by earth that our helpers moved to make the ground higher because the ground around the well was in a depression. So now the rain water does not run down hill straight to the well and will hopefully flow away because of the uphill it meets before the well. You can also see the area that will be our back garden.

How far we got on the roof in 2018

So we continued on working right up until Christmas again last year in an attempt to get the roof finished before the winter, but as you will see it did not quite get there. All of the major structural stuff is done but only one third of the roof is covered with used corrugated galvanized sheets. We chose to use the metal sheets as they have a lot less work involved than the aspen shingles we were planning on. 

 Scale model of roof

I changed the shape of the dormer windows to better suit the metal roofing sheets, thus avoiding lots of joints between different roof surfaces meeting. I made a scale model of the roof to try out some ideas and decided on this shape which divides the roof into three somewhat flat surfaces. All the cuts on the sheets are at about 45 degrees which reduces waste. So we end up with pointy topped dormers instead of the more curvy eyebrow shape .

Our minimalist scaffold with dormer roof windows to the sides

First we fixed the soffit boards to the overhanging part of the roof. These are 1 inch sawn boards with natural edges, we first scorched them with a propane blow torch to give some more resistance to insects and rot protection, and they look nice too. Then cut and nailed them all around the roof. They will only be seen from underneath.

Soffit boards with wind protection layer above

Next the dormer windows, fixed on to the wall beam a 5"X6" frame carries the central rafter which is the same design as all the other rafters. Then 4"X2" jack rafters run at right angles from the central rafter to meet the main roof surface. Then we built a small stud wall each side to make the space for the insulation and to give intermediate support to the jack rafters. The jack rafters we needed to fix temporarily because they had to be lifted for the wind protection membrane to run underneath, this was a bit awkward and slow, I would have liked to avoid this but could not come up with a better solution.

Dormer window from inside

Jack rafters

Then we get to start covering up! Wind protection membrane, 2"X2"s fixed horizontally at 800mm centers, 2"X2"s vertically along the run of the rafters, these make up the recommended 100mm ventilation space. Then water protection membrane, 2"X1"s vertically, 4"X1"s horizontally spaced to suit existing holes in second hand roof sheets, and finally cut and screw on the corrugated galvanized roof sheets. Yay!

 

 Membrane layers and ventilation space

Nearly ready for metal roof sheets

So we got one of the three main sections finished and the tarpaulins covered the rest of the roof. We put up a plastic wall to keep the snow out and then took a long rest!

House from the east

THANK YOU!

Dear Helpers of year 2018  (and sorry this comes very late!)

Thank you soooo much for all your help you gave. It was great to have you all here and we got a lot done.Year 2018 we started and completed the timber structure for the house. We completed the structural part of the roof. That was great. We also made many years worth of firewood, started with the garden and made the water well usable by moving a lot of earth. Not to forget picking 100 liters of blueberries, 100 liters of lingon berries and all the other big and small jobs that came along. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF THAT! We would not be able to do this project without you all!
This year 2018 we had 16 helpers from Norway, Belgium, England, Germany, France, Japan, China and Reunion. You did all together 324 days of work (of which 120 was by our long term helper Karel, triple thank you for you!). What a great successful year!

The amount of snow on the fire wood piles. This picture was taken on the 29th of March 2019