House Redesign

So here is my original plan for my house. It's a straw bale house design. Straw bales have about an R-50 insulating value and can support your roof if you "float" your top plate on top of your bales. Bales cost $1 to $3 a bale depending on the deal you get. That means a my 600 square foot house would cost $200 to $600 dollars for the straw in the walls. This is not a bad cost at all. That being said, I have run across a cheaper way to build.

My parents decided to build a raised garden using used tires. You can either go with the tire vase design that requires a rim, or you can stack 4 tires on top of each other after cutting the side wall out of one side. Used tires are free. We went to our local Les Schwab dealer and asked if they had any used tires we could have. They seem real happy to point us to their semi trailer full of used tires and said go ahead. It could have something to do with the fact that the US produces about 200 million used tires a year and it costs them money to get rid of them.

A Google search on tire houses will lead you to an organization called Earthships. Earthships appears to be a band of old Hippies that seam to worship the Earth a bit much for my taste, but they are not without their usefullness. Their designs tend to be on the ugly side when they start building with bottles. They stack their tires like bricks, pack them with dirt, and insert a soda can in the void on the side in between each tire. If you have clay in your soil, that will probably work. The dirt I have is more like the Anti-Clay. My soil will not pack and stick together when it dries. When it dries out it runs almost like water.

This stack is stacked like I saw in the tire trailer. This stack has a higher tire density and lacks the void the other method has. The botom row looks like it may be slightly less stable, but that can be worked out. Earthships tend to be build on hilsides. I don't have a hillside. So, I'm going to build using most of the same techniques as I would with strawbale construction. The downside is that I've discovered that the end of tire walls have some issues. this will crop up any time I try to make a corner in my wall.

To get rid of this problem, I have decided to make my house round. This introduces several engineering problems, and I've only solved some of them, but I've made my descision. I will still use 30 hay bales for key locations, but the rest will end up being tires packed with dirt. I've mapped out the location of the sink drain, so I can still work out the drywell step I am working on right now. There are a few other things I have to figure out before I pour concrete, but the drains are all I have to work on right now.

Side note: Google Chrome does not have spell check.

Cave Troll Flu

You hear a lot about Swine Flu in the news lately. I came down with something 2 Sunday mornings ago and it lasted about 8 or 9 days. Since Swine Flu seams to last about 48 hours, I'd say it wasn't Swine Flu. Since I got grumpy and didn't want to communicate with the outside world, I'm dubbing it the Cave Troll Flu. That does not mean nothing has been happening around here. There have been several developments I will be sharing over the next few days.

Prowler Rebuild continued - The pros and cons of T-111-

While I'm alternating between 3 different projects of my own, I received more picture of the Prowler rebuild. He is putting a peaked roof on his rebuilt Prowler. In my opinion, peaked roofs are superior to flat roofs in almost every way until you get to building large buildings. This roof will not sag down and puddle water in the middle like many camp trailers do.

The OSB turn out to be a T-111 variant. There are 2 basic types of T-111 available. Their is the plywood version and the OSB version. A Google search for T-111 confirms much of what I already knew. A lot of people start having water related problems with the stuff after it is 10 years old. Careful maintenance may get you 30 years out of the stuff, but generally you want to replace it with something better when it goes bad.

I am reminded of a wooden canopy my dad built for his pickup bed. It was built of 4x4s and plywood that was screwed together and sealed up with silicone. As I recall, it took less than a year for the vibrations and flexing of the truck to cause the canopy to leak on every seam. Wood may be flexible, but it was the wrong kind of flexing for that canopy.

I suspect this will have the same problem. As the frame flexes as it goes down the road, it will put stress and strain on the building materials and building techniques that were engineered for the non moving variety of house and will significantly age the house every time it is moved. If this is held together with nails, then it will probably be even worse.

The good news is, T-111 is relatively cheap and if water does get into the framing, it should be able to get back out, unlike the metal did in it's original construction. If he doesn't move it a lot, has no need for this trailer or is prepared to replace the siding in 10 years it isn't a bad choice. It's not like a trailer is something you expect to last.

Prowler Rebuild

My brother, The Keeper of the Mountain, has made progress on his Prowler. He didn't provide much in the way of explanation, but he did send pictures.

Picture #1 suggests to me he took the oportunity to redo the wiring and look over the brakes and bearings. There is no better time to do this than when you have a bare frame.


Picture #2 appear to indicate he is laying down treated 2x4s to provide a base to work on. The sheeting is probably a moister wrap of some kind.

Picture #3 is the actual floor framing. It looks like 2x6s with 5+1/2 inch fiberglass insulation. The 2x6s should be what actually carries and spreads the weight stress of the structure. The insulation is about 3 times what you usually find in trailers. He is currently a bout 300 miles from me in a very mild climate, but if he ends up near me, he's going to benifit from this increased insulation a lot.

Picture #4 is the subflooring. The gray stuff appears to be glue. My experiences would make me not want anything to do with OSB, but it might be OK here.

Picture #5 is the wall framing. These appear to be 2x4s. I have another brother who is involved in some repair remolding of some buildings made about 10 or 20 years ago. He says OSB should be illegal. I agree. I have great reservation about seeing this stuff being used structurally like this. If he does a flawless job of keeping it dry, he may be OK though. I'm sticking by my ridiculous theory that he will end up regretting this stuff at some point.

#15 of 10: Plumbing

Someone once wrote that: "Of ten things that can go wrong with a house, 15 of them involve water." Today's problem involves plumbing. In the bottom left of this picture is where the water entered the cabin. While this was working, this would always freeze on us several times during the winter. After the cabin was moved out of, this finally broke. If you go around the corner to the right and pull out the washing machine, you come to Picture #2.

Embedded behind the stucco are the hot and cold water pipes. The water comes from the right and enters the cabin to the left. These faucets feed the washing machine. Hot is on the bottom and cold is on the top. When the pipes broke inside the cabin, the capped off the water with some plastic plumbing. This proved to be too close to the cold cabin and proceeded to freeze and break. I chipped away the stucco with a hammer and capped off the pipes with a metal plug and cap. I'll redo the stucco later. with the water on again, I checked all the faucets. They seem adequate for now, but the toilet has lots of problems. The float valve does not let water in the tank, the flapper does not keep water in the tank, and when flushed, the water doesn't go down very fast. It's going to need to be overhauled.

On the upside, the old hearth is removed and lights are hung with nails and wire coat hangers. It make for a passable computer room. another light hung in the bedroom, a couple rounds with the vacuum, and they are almost a home. I have the guts of a broken clock hung as art and I have more art behind the flat screen I'll hang later.

I'll need an internet connection before its officially a home though. Getting a WLAN to span 1000 feet will be an interesting trick.

I decided to leave the wires as is. The bare ones aren't live and the live ones haven't caught fire in the decade they have been there, so I'm not going to mess with them until I tear the place down.

The Last "Band Aid"

I got some leak stopper for my roof. This stuff is thicker than the lap cement. I used it to seal up the can lid that is plugging my chimney hole. I then troweled the lap cement onto the remainder of the roof to seal up any little leaks. I believe it will still leak at the joint of the two roofs because the lap cement was the wrong stuff to use on the crack and rips of the steep roof. It just drained off.

This is the last "band aid" I'm giving this roof though. I don't want to spend any more time and money on this cabin than I have too. I want to be tearing it down in November.