Day 68 - starting the first floor

In order to help us build the first floor structure, we first used some of the timber to construct a temporary platform a bit more than half way up the ground floor walls.

These type of things take time, but when we finally started to put in the joists, this elevated platform made it much easier and safer to work.

The main part of the floor structure consist of full length joists that run from the long perimeter walls and cantilever over the interior structural walls and beams that run over the cellar walls. The joists from the front and the joists from the back will be spliced together to distribute the loading and tie the building together. Full height blocking was used over these central walls, and additional blocking will be put in later when we are not so rushed.

Even though we started late on this miserable day, we were able to get a substantial portion of the back joists in place, and took advantage of Eoin (from Wales) helping out for the day to get all of the full length joists up onto the structure.

Day 67 - finishing the ground floor structure

We had a fair amount of rain overnight, and we have found that our strategy for keeping water off of the wood floor slab is not working. We lifted the plastic in a few places and found some water sitting on the surface of the OSB board. At the moment it does not seem to be doing any damage, but it will eventually leak down into the hemp/lime insulation. We can't wait until the rest of the frames are up and the roof on before doing something, so we have decided to finish putting in the first floor joists and structure and then to cover the entire frame with a big sheet of polytunnel plastic.
We spent the day finishing putting the top plate into position and preparing for the joists.

Day 64 - part 3 - covering up

While a few of us continued to work on securing the framing that had been temporarily nailed together, Pat and the rest of the crew that continued to help out set to work laying heavy builders' plastic on the floor in anticipation of rain. Having pulled up the one large sheet of plastic earlier in the day, we needed to make sure that the wooden floor slab did not get too wet. The solution we came up with was to create shallow pans or tanks in each of the spaces of the houses, from which the excess water would drain away through the door openings. Though not an ideal or perfect solution it is the best option we have, as it will allow us to continue to work, while protecting the floor.

Once again we have been blessed with he weather! About an hour after the main sections of the floor were covered with plastic it rained!

Day 58 - more ground floor frames

For the last few days we have been covering the stack of wall panels with plastic, to keep them dry. The timber can deal with a certain amount of water, but we thought we would keep them as dry as possible. We also needed to tie the stack together so that none of the panels moved or fell as they are heavy and would cause considerable damage if any of them fell.



This of course requires one of us to climb up onto the stack ...

We completed the panels for the south end of Pat and Wendy's house this morning. In the photo above we are lifting the section with the big double doors that lead into the kid's room.

Day 49-52 - site cleanup and prep

The plastic went on in good time and seems to be working well to protect the wood floor slab.
While Bruce was in Dublin for a long weekend, Pat kept busy on site and off site. The edge of the plastic that hung down from the floor slab was trimmed back to allow air movement under the slab and to prevent the plastic gettign in the way of future building.



Some of the corners of the plastic were ripping on the sharp edge of the OSB board and these needed to be strengthened with tape.

Pat also spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the area around the house, including removing the stones that we had raked out from under the slab and others that would otherwise get in the way.

He also transported a lot of wood from his various storage places around the country, and cut up a load of off-cut wood into laths which will be used in the exterior plaster of the houses.

Flooding

A huge amount of rain fell yesterday, and most of the excavations for the posts were flooded this morning.
As was the cellar. One of the houses had more water than the other - indicating that there was a leak somewhere. Hopefully the plastic lining will deal with that.



We used a few hoses to siphon the water from the perimeter excavations into main pit (which is almost 1m deeper. It was a slow process but we managed to get all 15 pits cleared of water before the concrete truck arrived in the afternoon.

Day 13 - blocks and rain

We both started on site late today - family stuff - and were stopped short by the rain which started mid afternoon, and became too wet and persistent to continue. Our first weather related delay/stoppage. But we did manage to get in most of the third course of blocks. (no photos though).