A MILESTONE HAS BEEN REACHED
Actually several milestones were reached this weekend. I had been without a truck for over a year until I found a really good one in March. The only problem with it was that it had no tailgate and no trailer hitch. Up until now I have had to make arrangements to borrow a truck with a hitch whenever I wanted to make papercrete. So this weekend I finally got those installed and now I am all set to hook up to the tow mixer and make papercrete to my heart’s delight. Can’t tow a mixer without a hitch!
The second and most important thing was the the new little building has the walls all the way up and all the forms removed.
New building with forms removed.
It looks so neat and clean and I love the color now that I am using cardboard in place of the newspapers. Notice the lighter colored courses at the bottom of the walls. This is where I added some latex paint to waterproof the papercrete. This should be done to about 8 inches above grade.
There are a couple of things I learned that I will pass on. Getting the forms right to begin with is number one. We spent a lot of time on the forms and it paid off. Even with the attention they got we still had a few problems, such as when we started filling a form only to discover that someone had neglected to screw it in completely. This caused a few minor blow outs but nothing serious.
Secondly, and I can’t emphasize this enough, work goes so much faster and the frustration factor is considerable lower when you have and use all the same sized screws. This may seem like a small thing but it really is not. When you are going around moving forms up you invariably have to also move some of the bracing. And sometimes you may need to add a small piece of lumber or plywood. I just go crazy when I’m moving right along and all of a sudden the screw is the wrong size and I have to stop what I’m doing to find the right bit and change it out.
The third milestone is that I started filling in around the vigas on the first little building. First I had a friend get up on the roof with a chainsaw and trim the vigas.
Back view of building with forms removed.
Trimming of vigas so they are flush with the walls.
A lot of people have asked me why I don’t leave the ends of the vigas sticking out so it will have the “Santa Fe Style”. Well I don’t particularly like that style and also I am modeling my buildings on a very cute little old building I pass every day on my way to the post office. It is just a simple rectangular box with old fashioned windows and doors. I’ll get a pic to post when I think of it.
Me filling in with papercrete around the vigas.
I mixed up a load of papercrete using the same formula As for the infill with the addition of 2 buckets of pumice. (Yes I have found another source of pumice. Hooray!) Pumice adds volume to the mix and helps diminish shrinking.
I drained it on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood to remove some of the water make it more malleable and packed it in around the vigas. There was a lot of area to fill in because of
First layer of papercrete over and around vigas.
some last minute changes we made when we put the vigas up.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover how easily it went on. I had been wondering how it would bond to the cut ends of the logs. It stuck like glue.
One mixer load almost finished the front of the building. It was so hot that we had to stop working after just the one load. I’ve also learned that when you have volunteer labor you have to be considerate and not work them to death.
I will continue this filling in during the rest of the week, building up layers of papercrete and then we can finish the roof next weekend. More on that next time.
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