We had brackets made up to put the purlins up. 140 brackets and they needed to be painted as well!! We have purchased the bolts to attach the brackets and purlins to the main beams.
We spent a whole day cutting and putting up the fascia boards (literally a full day, as Brad finished up in the light of the full moon! They went up fairly quickly with our trusty 'lifter' - the lifting device we built to handle the heavy timbers.
All that remains to finish the frame are the purlins (70 beams that go between the main beams). This will probably be a pretty intensive job as there is a lot of timber to put up. We hope to get stuck into that soon!
Then we will be gearing up to put the roof on which will make building life a whole lot easier!
It's very exciting to see it all coming together! The plan is awesome and helps to visualise what the internal structure you've built so far will become. I take it the sun room will have glass window? This will need to be custom made? And you make reference to the Australian heat --> summer --> fire season - how/what can you do to reduce fire risk in a straw house? Maybe a silly question but can't think of anything - it is 20 to 12 though!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the positive feedback, we have started bolting the purlins up now and have put 20 up out of 80 (half the longer outer purlins). The next post will be about that work.The sunroom will have a glass roof and wall facing north, not sure how we will pay for that bit yet. We are envisioning the glass wall to be made up doors so that it can be opened up, there may also be some leadlighting. There will also be glass doors leading from the sunroom into the living room/kitchen that can be folded back out of the way for passive solar heating in winter and to let lots of light into the house.
ReplyDeleteThe summer heat is the biggest problem we face interms of keeping the house cool, that is why we will have a white roof, we will not have air conditioning but most likely have at least one ceiling fan. The sunroom will hopefully be able to help cool the house in summer by opening up the outer door and venting lower down on the doors between the living room and sunroom, the heat created in the sunroom will rise and then escape out the front and the air to replace the escaping hot air will be drawn through the house from the open south facing door/windows (through the trees).
Fire risk is fairly minimal and strawbale construction is actually really good in a bushfire, the biggest risk to the house are open gaps into the roof cavity etc (this is the same with any house). The strawbales themselves are completely encased in about 50mm of mud render and since there is minimal air (one of the key components to fire) they will not burn unless exposed. The mud render is actually a really good fireproof material, think pottery which is basically a mix of clay, which when fired reaches temperature of 900 degrees C. The bales themselves offer great insulation to high external temperatures. Apart from the sunroom all of the windows half height (the practical reason is that you can arrange furniture in front of the windows which does not work so well with full length windows). The house has quite a low profile and with a hill to the east actually provides really good wind shelter, we end up in a sortof buffer zone with most of the wind going up and over the house/hill (this was one of the deciding factors when choosing the house site, We don't want to be blown away when exiting the house which always happens to people who build on top of a hill for the view).
Since the bushfires in Victoria a few years ago we have had a new test come in that applies to all new houses called the BAL (bushfire attack level) which is assessed by an independent person. The BAL is used to determine key building features that have to be implemented. Our BAL results came out at low because we are in essentially grasslands, although I am guessing that this will change as we re-vegetate our block with trees, we will most likely build our house to conform to a higher BAL to take this into account.
Thanks for the interest, there are no silly questions ;)
Nice! I checked prices for concrete and wow... I think I might go with a earthen floor? Not sure yet. If nothing else I may just make floor joists, but then there would be a problem of attaching the bales to the wooden floor? Mine will not be as large as yours maybe a little more than half yours from eyeing it.
ReplyDeleteHi Eric, because we did all of the work for setting up for the concreting it actually came out not too bad pricewise and it is a great surface to work on. For us another benefit is that the house is lower to the ground (with timber floor the posts would have had to have been around 0.5m longer). Strawbale house on a stumped floor is not so uncommon, we have a book by called Building Your Straw Bale Home by Brian Hodge in which he prefers a stumped house over a slab for various reasons (it is a good read if your planning to make a straw house, written by a builder so it has lots of specifics on all parts of building as well as different problems the author has encountered).
DeleteThe way we are attaching the bale walls to the concrete floor I believe is almost identical to a timber floor, we will be posting a new entry soon since we have now started on the walls. We will have pictures of the steps we have taken so far.
Regards Brad