Timber carriers have become one of our best tool friends during the construction of our roundwood timber frame kitchen. With a few friends and a couple of carriers, you can easily move hundreds of pounds worth of wood without straining your back.
This post is a call for help. I am seeking information, images, anything related to pier foundation design for straw bale timber frame homes.
I am specifically hoping for detailed accounts of how to construct a pier foundation of stone for a straw bale timber frame. Or even a wood pier foundation, if it’s actually possible.
We are planning to construct our new home on a pier foundation, and I cannot wrap my head completely around how to design the pier foundation, which we may use urbanite (broken concrete) to construct. I do not want the house to have ground contact, for fear of moisture wicking up into the structure. The house will likely have a pier foundation with insulated floor platform.
I am specifically interested in how far to dig down for the piers, if the stone foundation would better be continuous, or other recommendations. Any info./links are appreciated!
This is one incredibly sweet tool: the boring machine. A boring (or mortising) machine is a hand-operated drill press, usually equipped with a two inch auger bit, that allows the builder to bore holes through timber in order to make a mortise pocket.
This particular model (I forget the manufacturer) is one that Tom Cundiff brought along with him to our timber framing workshop weekend. We banged out a few mortises a lot more easily with this tool than any other could possibly do. (Of course, not including electric drills.) We value hand tools very highly and use them nearly exclusively on our construction. Needless to say, we’re going to have to seriously look into obtaining one of these…. and to think we passed one up at the local flea market last year! Ack!
Thomas recently had this awesome little peg-making setup made by a friend, and we had the opportunity to try it out last weekend during our timber frame workshop.
It’s super simple and results in very uniform pegs, as long as you have straight grain wood to use. In this case, we were hitting white oak splits through the bench.
It’s essentially a bench with a sharpened rod projecting through the top that cuts through the wood as it is driven through from above with a mallet. Once the wood is hit all the way through, you have a 1″ peg at your disposal!
Check it out!
Dave works the chisel and mallet
This past weekend, my sub-community at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage hosted a timber framing workshop weekend. The savvy Tom Cundiff of Edgeworks came out and instructed us how to design, lay out, and join roundwood timbers. It was a lot of fun, exhausting, inspiring, and definitely educational.
It’s spring, and the building season has officially begun. I’ve been a bit consumed with thinking about building lately — between doing some work around the house, planning for the next building season for the cooperative kitchen, thinking about a new home design, and serving on Dancing Rabbit’s new Common House design committee (we are a group of five tasked with designing a new common house intended to serve a population of 150 people), I have plenty to think about in the building arena. Sometimes it’s exhausting.
But as soon as I am able to actually do work, and not just think about it, it feels a lot better.
Here’s a little slideshow of the sequence of construction activity on the Wabi-sabi kitchen. It’s from fall 2009 through the present. Notice that we’re up to the timber frame (and that’s why we need help from inspired carpenters, timber framers, and builders alike!) Here ya go:
The Wabi-sabi kitchen foundation
UPDATE (3/22/2011): This position has been filled – thank you to all applicants!
The Wabi-sabi sub-community (Ziggy, April, Thomas, and Ali) at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage are seeking individuals to help with building our cooperative kitchen and maintaining our organic vegetable gardens for the summer of 2011.
Roundwood Timber Frame and Natural Building Work Exchange Opportunity for 2011
Admiring the first post
At long last, the kitchen timber framing has begun. The foundation was completed several weeks ago, and since then, more of the framing design has been hashed out and actually started. So far, we’ve got our first two posts up and plumbed, and the first beam awaits shaping and raising.
About The Year of Mud
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
