All cleared up

For the end of May and beginning of June me and a helper have been clearing up the site. Because when me and Mick cleared the collapsed mess in the winter off the house base we just piled all the timber next to the house in big piles of roundwood, 2x4`s, 2x5`s, 1x5`s and so on. Most of them broken and all of them with nails or screws in them. Or both. Now we took out all the nails and screws, scraped the fungus off the most important boards and then stacked them in individual piles and covered the stack.

Here is the area where there was big piles of broken nail`y timber but now it looks so clean and empty to me. 

This is the biggest pile we made of all the boards neatly in stacks. And a cover on them. Most of the boards we are able to use again, it was the round wood that broke more and short peaces of them might not come in use. But I am very happy this job is done now and there is not a mess any more.

Re-bailing straw bales 21.5.

Last year was a really bad straw year and we were worried about not getting any but asking around did the job again. We found straw bales from a person in Joensuu who had thought to built a straw bale garage but then did not (for our luck). He had harvested them a few summers ago when it was a good straw year and they were kept well. We collected about 280 of them last autumn and 111 more this spring with a van and trailer and stored them in our shed. But they are way too loose for building a house so they needed to be re-baled. 

This May we loaded them all (in two goes) on the tractor trailer of my dads and drove to our neighbors who has a baler that does small square bales (not the big round ones that are much more common these days).

The re-baling was really fast and went very well. There was four of us doing it.

We brought 391 loose bales and re-baled them into 156 tight bales. So 2.5 loose bales into one tight bale. We need in total 360 tight bales for the house so we still need to pick up 500 loose ones and re-bale them. In good weather of course.

Tight bales with kids and their daddy. The tractor looks tiny... The bales are going back into our shed to wait.

Rain cover number 2

 

Our tarpaulin rain cover took a couple of days to put up. 

Much quicker than the last one!

The kids circus tent in the fore ground, lightweight frame of cover behind. We bought two 10m x 7m tarpaulins for 220 euro, they were quite easy to put up. Lets hope they last the job!

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.

THANK YOU

to everyone who was helping us this year. 

It has been great to have all that help, we would not have managed without it. 

During the year 2017 we had 34 different helpers (including friends coming for a day or two). The helpers came from Finland (9), Belgium (1), England (6), Scotland (1), Germany (7), Italy (1), France (3), Singapore (1), South Korea (1), New Zealand (2) and USA (2).

All together we have had over 1400 hours of help. Thank you all!

Also thank you friends, family, neighbors and strangers who have supported us this year. Great! 

Our family of snowmen wish

Happy New Year to all!