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 60 - the long back wall

Today we worked finished the panels that compose the long back wall of the two houses. As this wall faces North-East, and away from the views, it is composed of much smaller windows, most of which will slot in between the studs - which are spaced at 600mm centers (2 foot centers) - as seen above

Because the studs run uninterrupted beside the window, there is no need for a standard lintel. Instead we added two horizontal pieces to the back face of the frame to strengthen the top and bottom of the window and provide support for the sill and frame. We plan to make our own opening windows which will be fixed directly to the stud frame.

Day 57 - octagon walls completed

We finished the 5 panels that will make up the exterior ground floor walls of Pat and Wendy's "octagon". Except for a few adjustments in width, these wall panels are essentially identical - containing one big fixed window (large enough for Pat to stand in) with a large opening vent to the side.


There isn't a lot of wall space in these panels for cross bracing, but we wanted to make sure that the base of this three floor octagon tower was strong enough and that the frame around the large window was rigid enough. In the end we opted for one long piece on each side of the window, and we but in two smaller pieces of bracing to each side of the window.

The stack of wall panels is starting to build up into an impressive pile, and we are only just over half finished the exterior walls and we still have to finish the interior load bearing walls.

Day 54 - window decisions

Having finished the first frame yesterday, we were forced to answer the question that has been on the table for a while now: how much work do we do in the workshop, and how much on site?

The logical answer to this, given that we can expect weather, shorter daylengths and the efficiencies that we could achieve in a workshop setting, seemed to be that we should do as much as possible within the workshop. This would/could include the window surrounds, sill, flashing, framing etc, as well as putting on the mesh and laths that would form the base for the exterior hemp/lime render.

On this basis, we spent much of the day sorting out how all this could be done, refining some details, and starting to prep some of the materials.


After a considerable amount of fine tuning of the planer (which had not been used in a few years and was out of alignment) we decided to abandon the idea of doing as much as we could in the workshop. We realised that there were too many elements to deal with and in some cases we had not done enough research or prep work. So we decided that we woudl concentrate on making the rough frames only, and leave the rest to be done onsite.

We did end up with a few good examples of how the wood panels for the window openings would look.

Day 19 - the cellar is finished

Today we finished the final course of the cellar walls, eleven working days after starting the blockwork (some of the days were very long and some were short). We even had time to clear out all of the extra blocks to be used for the perimeter piers, and cleaned the base of the cellar.



Each of the 5 chambers of the cellar has at least two ventilation windows, one at the top of each side wall. We also left a hole for the services to come into the each of the cellars below grade.

The bunker!