Day 64 - part 2 - ground floor frame complete

It took us 4.5 house to put up all of the external and load bearing internal frames for the ground floor! That includes a break for lunch! 34 frames in total went together, some of them very large and heavy and a few of them quite small and light. There were a few small errors of measurement and placement, but only things that Bruce would fuss over.

Overall view of the completed framing with temporary external bracing still in place. The panels are 2.88m high (almost 10 feet), and with the thickness of the ground floor slab and the space underneath, the framing is quite high.

View of the octagon with Pat and Wendy's front door to the left.

The front of Bruce and Morag's house with kitchen window to the left, front door in the middle, and large window to the dining room to the right.

View across the front of Bruce and Morag's house towards the side wall of the kitchen. the framing is only the outside of structure of the wall. An another wall will be constructed inside the space, to create a cavity 40cm thick which will be filled with hemp/lime insulation. this will reduce the size of the rooms by 25cm at the external walls, but will also provide deep window openings.

The double thick party wall with two lines of studs and substantial cross bracing between them.

View across the front rooms of Pat and Wendy's house, looking towards the octagonal shaped sitting area (session space!) from the kitchen, with the front door to the right.

The long back wall of the two houses.

Overall view from the North-West showing Bruce and Morag's house in the foreground.

Day 64 - part 1 - Barn Raising!

The day of the frame raising finally arrived. And again we have been blessed with the weather. We have arranged for a team of about 8-10 people to help us put all of the ground floor wall panels in place. Bruce, with the help of Eoin, will be responsible for laying out the positions of the panels and for tacking them into position, while Pat will head of the larger team to move the frames into position.

We started the day by raising the plastic in the corner in order to move the plywood that was covering the hole into the cellar (the sheet would have been in the way of some of the walls). We have planned that the walls would simply be placed on top of the plastic, leaving it undisturbed.

But we found to our dismay that the the two sheets had leaked in a few places! So the plastic was pulled up, and although we will have to come up with another way to protect the floor after the frames were in place, it does make the whole day easier as we will not have to worry about damaging the plastic.

Only one section of the floor was wet, and it didn't seem to have soaked into the hemp/lime insulation below. The OSB board that we used is quite resistant to water, and the coat of varnish would have helped.

In the background of the photo above is one of the two stacks of wall frames. We built a second brace at the end of the pile so that the frames could be flipped to one side or another so that we could easily pull out the frame we needed to put in place next.

The first frame being moved from the pile. It took a while to figure out how best to move these large frames.

Everyone had the required high vis vests and safety helmets, though Pat was left with a non-standard riding helmet. Safety first!

The first frame being raised into position on the floor slab.

Bruce was about to hammer in the first nail (with a posed smile)!

The second frame goes in to form the first corner (which happens to be Bruce and Morag's kitchen) while Eoin measures out the line of the third frame. The frames were assembled in such a way that they supported each other as much as possible while the rest of them were assembled.

Bruce rushes into position, drawing his trusty hammer!

Everyone concentrates on the third frame.

The end of the house begins to take shape, as the fantastic weather dries out the floor at the other end of the house.

The heavy frames are moved with ease across the site when there are enough people. (John Burke's house in the background).

The first of the three sections of the party wall between the houses gets lifted into position. This was the largest and heaviest panel, as it was made of two frames nailed together.

A little persuasion to put the frame in place. "Sledge to the millimeter" was the motto of the day!

The main front wall of the house finished in time for lunch/tea break (as well as the camera battery wearing out from all of the photos that Morag took!)

The rest of the frames went in very smoothly with everyone knowing what to do. There were a few pieces of cross bracing that needed to be sawed off, but everything else went in very quickly, perhaps too quickly as Bruce and Eoin had to race to keep ahead of Pat and his crew, with the result that there were a few errors of measurement, but nothing that would cause problems, or would be noticed in the future.

Day 63 - preparing for the frame raising

This morning we built a few small frames to finish all of the exterior and interior load bearing walls for the ground floor. We then spent the rest of the day preparing for the frame raising tomorrow.

We even had enough time to produce a cut list of joists, blocking and headers for the first floor structure and to cut most of them in the workshop, so that they would be ready in case we had enough time and people to get them into position after the frames go up.


Most of the joists are standard lengths (with many of them being full 4.8m lengths), but there are a number of unusual lengths, which were marked to help with identification.