Dusty Don wrote:
[snip]
>It is also possible that the interior finishes chosen for many SB
>homes (lime plaster walls, "earth" floors, etc.) may have higher
>dust generation than the conventional alternatives (wallboard,
>hardwood floors, etc.). These wall and floor options can be made
>to be low dust emitters,

I think that this point could probably use some expanding upon.

Many people opt for SB houses because they hope to create healthier
living environments than "conventional" housing can offer.

However, as Don points out, these "alternative" finishes (ie plaster vs
painted drywall, earthen or concrete floors vs hardwood & ceramic )
often tend to generate more dust more easily than their conventional
counterparts.

I suspect that most people here are aware of the health issues relating
to exposure to silica dust (as would be found coming off of
improperly mixed/cured concrete or plaster or just  the preceding left
unsealed ?) , dust mite poop etc.
I understand that as recently as last month, the EPA declared that
wood dust is now officially classified as a carcinogen. [To which I'm
tempted to say "Carcinogen, schmarcinogen."]

I wonder if there is any such thing as "benign dust" ?

ie Is the dust generated from a SB building whose floors and walls are
made of clay mixes (ie very small particle size) likely to be more or
less hazardous than a SB building whose floors and walls are made
using Portland cement and lime plasters which generally use a coarse
sand particle size ?

[ I'll bet  that 'Arry will come up with evidence showing that breathing
lime dust (exclusive of the sand particles) is beneficial to the human
respiratory tract , probably something along the lines that it dukes it
out with micro-organisms who hang around in warm, dark, places just
waiting for an opportunity to cause trouble. Twenny bucks. Any
takers ?]

         ~~~ * ~~~
          Rob Tom
   Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<ArchiLogic@...>
(winnow the "chaff" from my edress in your reply)

Please visit http://www.theHungerSite.com daily

RT wrote:
  >>
If there's anyone who's near enough to the Derelict (aka Derek Roff) +
Rocky (aka Nehemiah Stone) + Septic-Fed JoE (McCabe)+ EuroRay (Rene
Dalmeijer) to grab them by the ears and "coerce" them into subscribing
to this List
<<

On the road, with limited and rare access to email.  Hard to fulfill all
my duties... Pain in ears decreasing. Coercion successful.

John Salmen wrote:
  >>
One of the most interesting windows sills we've done is a nice pristine
cedar window mated to a big thick wooden sill (fir because that was what
was available) that was rough cut and torched. A large portion of the
top surface was carbonized with repeated burning and smothering - then
cleaned and burnished. I had read a description of a similar Japanese
preservative treatment for Japanese siding, and then some material on
torchefied or torrefied wood
<<

My reading says that charring wood is most effective against borers and
other multi-cellular critters, less good against fungi and bacteria, and
   of no use against water infiltration and its related effects.  I
haven't seen anything about protection from sun, but I would think a
carbonized layer would help.

A rot resistant wood is still subject to deterioration from sun,
moisture cycling, and freeze/thaw cycling (when wet).  A simple, and
very effective solution is to paint exterior wood.

On drying wood, I agree with what Marcus said, and he hit the important
points.  The stresses inherent in the average hunk of tree trunk at the
moment of harvest are insignificant compared to those which occur in
drying.  Uneven drying is inevitable, and can easily rip the wood fibers
apart inside a board (called honeycombing) or create dangerous
imbalances (case hardening).  So the number one goal when drying wood is
to minimize the magnitude and differential of the forces caused by
unbalanced drying.  As Marcus said, cutting the wood as small as
possible, as soon as possible, is a major advantage in minimizing
degrade of the lumber.  Coating the ends of the logs is another fairly
easy and valuable step.  Coating should be done as quickly as possible.
     End checks (small splits in the wood) can begin in less than a
minute, although they don't go very deep at first, and this varies with
species and harvesting conditions.  Still, coating the ends of any log
within five minutes of crosscuting it will improve your yield and
diminsh warping.  You can coat the ends of the logs with latex paint,
wax or commercial end-coating products.

Lots of wood technology info can be found on the web site for Forest
Products Laboratory,  www.fpl.fs.fed.us

Feliz an~o nuevo,

Derelict

The amount of dust in your house is a function of indoor dust
generation (Bill's reference to hair and skin flakes, etc, but also
fabric particles, cooking debris, and other sources) and the amount of
outdoor particulate that gets in. There are a couple of reasons why SB
houses in particular could be dusty. If a house envelope is not
airtight, lots of outdoor dust will enter. There are relatively few
airtightness tests of SB houses so far, but the results we do have
show many of them to be quite air leaky. One reason may be that many
are built by the occupants and are not exactly "completed", unlike
tract housing for instance. The lack of finishing leads to envelope
leakiness and higher rates of air infiltration. It is also possible
that the interior finishes chosen for many SB homes (lime plaster
walls, "earth" floors, etc.) may have higher  dust generation than the
conventional alternatives (wallboard, hardwood floors, etc.). These
wall and floor options can be made to be low dust emitters, but my
guess is that some have high initial dust generation characteristics.
Some will just be dusty because they were experiments, and not all
experiments are successful.

Don Fugler

>
>I have a really trivial question but one that is important to me.  Does
>dust seep in like it does in a more conventional house?  I have such
>a time with everything being dusty all the time no matter how hard
>I try to keep it clean.
>Thanks


Actually, my understanding is that a fair bit of "house dust" is in
reality dead skin cells and hair from the inhabitants (including
pets).  So you'll still have that.

On the other hand, a well-detailed plastered SB house should have
less cracks and such where actual dirt can blow in, compared to
conventional construction.

Also consider controlling the amount of dust that gets tracked in.
Environmental Building News (http://www.buildinggreen.com) ran an
issue a few months ago with a lead article on methods to use to
substantially reduce tracked-in dirt, dust, and pollen and thereby
improve indoor air quality.  The article was geared largely to
commercial applications, but the same principles apply in a home.

EBN is an excellent publication, btw, and I highly recommend it to
anyone who's interested in green building news.
--
Bill Christensen
http://greenbuilder.com/contact/

Green Building Professionals Directory: http://directory.greenbuilder.com
Sustainable Building Calendar: http://www.greenbuilder.com/calendar/
Green Real Estate: http://www.greenbuilder.com/realestate/
Straw Bale Registry: http://sbregistry.greenbuilder.com/
Books/videos/software: http://bookstore.greenbuilder.com/

Chuck, are you sucker-baiting me?

Alas... Besides all my best reference stuff being inaccessible, I
won't have any time for a few days to properly address this - so I'm
afraid I'm going to have to leave you to check things out for
yourself. Maybe somebody else will speak up and tell me that I'm full
of hooey so you can go about doing what you're gonna do without any
tiny, pestering worries.

Here's a couple links that you might want to have a look at:
http://homeenergy.org/archive/hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/99/991110.html
http://www.repp.org/discussion/strawbale/200210/msg00172.html
Those should give you something to work forward from.



Chuck wrote:
  >... I have not heard of failures or problems, it makes me wonder
  >the things we all assume to make sense and then grab onto it as
  >gospel, me included sometimes, confront these other realities of
  >real examples. The question is what really is going on in those
  >existing examples? I mean coating seems to make sense but...


I'm not assuming anything. My opinion is based on building science,
and given weight by the experiences of strawbale people in the field.
(Oak Ridge by itself isn't enough to convince a skeptic like me.)

Consider: If a bale wall system without direct-applied plaster
performs the same or better than a typical stud wall in doing normal
pragmatic wall stuff, who's going to complain? It performs the same,
or somewhat better, than a "regular" wall - with the added bonus of
the placebo effect. If the aesthetic of a thick wall is the primary
reason for choosing SB, then that's fine; but if insulation value is
important, it would seem to make sense to optimize the use of the
material. To me, anyway.

Every situation has its point of diminishing returns, which - as you
know - incorporates a host of considerations. But ceiling insulation
isn't a place to cut corners, or take chances.



I wrote:
  >>Question is: If there's catastrophic roof failure (a leak), does
  >>one want the water running into the house, carrying all the mud
  >>plaster with it? Maybe.

To which Chuck replied:
  >Sure would be a good tell tale of trouble above.


Sure would.



I prattled:
  >>...if a person's going to hide the ceiling that way, they might
  >>as well just use well-detailed sheetrock and be done with it.

Chuck said:
  >I am not a sheetrocker...


I meant that to be sort of ironical-like when I said it.



Chuck pointed out:
  >a great benefit of this system is building your ceiling from above.


I like the way Sam Droege did it, myself.
http://www.potkettleblack.com/natbild/sam4.html
I'd do some things different, and the foam isn't the greenest material
choice - but on balance, I'm fond of the approach.



I dramatically intoned:
  >>Unsealed, the R could be diminished by half or more by virtue of air
  >>movement. They'd pass vapor a lot better, though.

Chuck responded:
  >I initially was thinking of just putting a generous slip on top...


You mean, creating an impediment for all that vapor coming up through
the bales - a place for it to gather, condense, party?

Oh, wait, I see: You probably meant in conjunction with a sheet
barrier below. I'd still seal up them bales if I were me. Which I'm not.




--




My personal playsite:
http://www.potkettleblack.com

thing about sills and windows that you have to keep in mind is that a sill
is either part of the building or part of the window. Windows need to
'float' in a building. Buildings move and if a window is locked into a
building structure, either frame or a stiff structural stucco then they
exert all kinds of stress on the window itself. So the whole idea of putting
a window into a surface is to both allow it flexibility but also to keep it
weathertight. Sills are there to direct water away from the base of the
window and to direct it away from the surface of the building. I've liked
concrete sills and have done a fair number but I've had problems in both
either combining it with a window (very dissimilar materials) or making it
part of a structure (in the cases I've used it in combination either with an
exterior stucco or concrete/stone facings. Basically it has become a third
element - tied to the structure in a way that provides some flexibility but
maintains a watertite seal (usually flashings and sealants) and tied to the
window in a similar way. I think it is a difficult detail but very
beautiful. They are hard to make and need to incorporate a drip edge
(usually a line cast or cut in the underside so water does not carry back to
the building face). A concrete sill has some major permanence but it moves
and expands and contracts in dissimilar ways to both a stucco face and the
wood window so requires some constant maintenance. Stone offcuts, etc are
all good ways of doing this but still the connection to the stucco is pretty
critical and having some undercut that prevent water from migrating back in
is even more crucial.

Wood sills do in a way have more integrity if they are made as part of the
window. They work with the window and move with the window, and decay with
the window - but you end up with only one connection to worry about and it
is easier to flash and seal a single wood entity than a combination of
materials. Wood is a sacrificial material and sills are the best example of
the battle.

One of the most interesting windows sills we've done is a nice pristine
cedar window mated to a big thick wooden sill (fir because that was what was
available) that was rough cut and torched. A large portion of the top
surface was carbonized with repeated burning and smothering - then cleaned
and burnished. I had read a description of a similar Japanese preservative
treatment for Japanese siding, and then some material on torchefied or
torrefied wood and found a client willing to try it out. Seems to be doing
well about 5 years later.

My material of choice for concerns about movement would be cedar. I restrict
myself to second growth material and have found cedar to be the most stable
for movement in a material with wide fast growth.

some thoughts and a happy new year everyone.

John





-----Original Message-----
From: david morrison [mailto:davjen@...]
Sent: December 30, 2002 7:23 AM
To: SB-r-us@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [SB-r-us] re: windows


Mr Tom,
you sound most knowledgable concerning woods.  while i enjoy making things
from it,  im not the best informed about various wood types etc...

as for the oak i have,  it IS white oak,  and has been standing dead without
bark on it for a  year now.  i do know that doesnt mean its truely dry,
but...  i can kiln dry it if need be in my larger pottery kiln.  i can hold
the temp in there at 500 degrees for a week which would dry those suckers
out all the way.   im assuming that it would be better to dry them whole log
rather than cut up to minimize any warpage or twisting eh?

i do like the visual picture i have of oak windows,  but you have
discouraged me from using it for the sills at the very least.....   what tho
would you suggest i use instead.  while im not personally fond of cedar,  it
may be the best local choice.   im not sure how ash holds up,  but we do
have a lot of that around.     both white and black.    im trying to keep
things local if i can,  we have an abundance of mills  here,  and if i can
keep out of that black hole known as home depot im all the better for it.
place just gives me the creeps.   sides,  you couldnt get help in there if
you were dressed in 100 dollar bills.

a thought just crossed my brain,  i suppose i COULD pour cement sills in my
shop and install them after theyre cured.   anyone see any problems there?
id be interested in what youall did for sills.

as for the glass,  i have planned on using single pane glass.  ive seen far
too many of those 350 dollar double pane windows loose the seal and fill
with water vapor after ten years.   i even saw a salesman say on national
t.v. that they really arent designed to last more than ten to twenty years.

ill sacrifice some R to keep from having to replace windows in my lifetime.
im also after a more old fashioned/less manufactured look,  which is why i
decided to build them myself,  milling the oak was just a wild hair.  i
figured since i have the equipment why not  try,  but im more than willing
to buy stock from the yard too.

later on....
d


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Marcus Hardwick <marcus1@s...> wrote:
[snipped]
> experienced sawyers can shade the odds of getting true lumber
>in their favor by paying attention to signs in the tree's growth
> patterns.

"Thanks! Marcus" for that posting on wood technology. You did indeed save me a
lot of work . Encore merci.

One other item that I should have mentioned was that if dAVId (or anyone else)is
planning on sawing-up trees for lumber intended for use as window sash, the
lumber should be "quartersawn" in order to minimise the chances of the sash
distorting (ie twisting, warping, cupping and otherwise becoming hockey sticks)
or as I gather they say in Californiaese, "shading the odds" ?

Distorted sash, at a minimum, results in a poor fit in the frame (resulting in
air leakage = drafts + unnecessary energy loss) and at worst, cracked glass.

Okay, "two items".

In the material that Marcus quoted re: cutting slate (or stone) I should
probably have mentioned the option of using the power saw to just make shallow
scoring cuts on either face of the material to be cut and then snapping it like
a sheet of glass and then using something like a geologist's hammer to knock off
the sharpish corners  left by the sawcut to yield a more "rustic" edge on the
stone as opposed to a pristene, machine-cut edge.

In addition to the aesthetic point, there's also the pragmatic aspect of not
wearing down masonry cutoff blades as quickly.

Okay, I lied. Three items.

If there's anyone who's near enough to the Derelict (aka Derek Roff) + Rocky
(aka Nehemiah Stone) + Septic-Fed JoE (McCabe)+ EuroRay (Rene Dalmeijer) to grab
them by the ears and "coerce" them into subscribing to this List, I think that
this group and this thread in particular would benefit by their presence.

The aforementioned represent a fair chunk of expertise in the area of wood
technology and the science of windows, amongst other things.


         ~~~ * ~~~
          Rob Tom
   Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<ArchiLogic@...>
(winnow the "chaff" from my edress in your reply)

Please visit http://www.theHungerSite.com daily

Chuck wrote to me offlist earlier today, or maybe yesterday, and I'm
only replying to him now. Having checked the website to see if his
questions were already answered onlist (I get the digest, which is why
I always seem to be a day behind), I found the thread continuing
there... and so answer this publicly. It contains notions in need of
massaging or shredding.


  > I don't know if you are following the Planks R me thread...
  > a lot of questions about what Sunray experienced regarding
  > mold with his planking and cupping of the wood and cracking.
  > ... I need to speak with the man himself. Do you have his
  > number?


He and his wife split up, and he was living in the garden at Sedro
Wooley. He was going to quit building and get into chiropracting or
acupuncture or something. He went to India or Nepal or a place like
that and got bit by a mosquito and was really sick. Every now and then
I'll hear a little story from somebody.

The most recent info I have may be a good bit out of date:
        Sun Ray Kelly
        13470 Janicki Rd
        Sedro Woolley WA 98294
        360-856-5482
        360-854-0413

If those don't work, and I don't think they will, you could try
checking with Catherine (if you didn't already when you talked with
her), who may at least be able to put you in touch with folks that he
likes to hang out with. Ask her how to reach somebody at that Hot
Springs community... Mimbres, I think. He likes it there. And Salami
might know how to reach him, which would be the simplest answer of all.

Not to disparage Ray or scare you: bluntly put, beloved by so many
though he be, he has something of a bad reputation among some
builders, natural and otherwise, who have more, um, professional
levels of construction expectations. His work is fantastical, though
not always fantastically sensible in terms of building science and
performance, and not always executed as carefully as it might be. (But
isn't the same true of all of us? Except for RT.)

That said, I think that 1) Ray's work is a wonderful inspiration, and
2) the lapped ceiling could be made to work all right if you're
definitely wed to the idea of it.

(Here's where I'll start totally talking through my hat. I would
strongly urge you to get knowledgeable feedback about anything I say
before you decide that it might actually work. This list is a good
place to start, which is really the only I'm posting it.)

I haven't been able to clearly visualize exactly how everything in
your roof works together: near as I can figure, the cherry beams are
running lengthwise, parallel to the ridge; the tamarack purlins are on
top of those and are placed running upslope and down; and the planking
will be lapped on top of those purlins. Then a vapor barrier
(probably), then bales, an air space, then more planking, then a
membrane-lined living roof.

Is that right?

Personally, I'd for sure use a vapor barrier above the planks, as
you'd planned. You're in Wisconsin, man! And for it, I'd probably use
Grace's I & W, or pond liner, or some other rubbery membrane. Almost
certainly nonlocal, toxic in production, and expensive. Yahoo. Fan
though I am of earth-plastered bales, I wouldn't - especially given
the amount of time and effort you're putting into this place - do what
you described: "What if I lapped the boards and set the bales up top
with a 1/2-inch or so coating of clay slip dried first and let
diffusion do the work of protecting the bales?" I'd definitely seal up
the bales with an earthen render, though - considering the price paid
in reduced thermal resistance and increased fire vulnerability for not
doing it. Not to mention habitat creation.

But before I put on that rubbery sheet, I'd create vented air channels
running up to the ridge. I'd probably use something on the order of 1"
saplings, spaced closely: an inch or two apart. Besides giving the
moisture somewhere to go (while simultaneously making more
wood-on-wood joints for it to gather, yes), they should also help
diminish RT's "slow-motion karate-punch" at least somewhat.

Up at the ridge, something can be devised to deal with the moisture
vapor, be it a humidistatically-controlled heat-exchanging exhaust
system, a fan blowing the drippy air back down into the room, or
what-have-you. The gappy planks could be turned into something more
like an asset rather than a distinct liability.

If I chose a non-adhering material for the sheet barrier, I think I
might try to buy a few decades by creating a slippage-layer between it
and anything it would rub against (the saplings)... perhaps by folding
a few layers of some inorganic stuff like recycled lumber wrap, RT's
darling. Or, if I chose to make the membrane out of something like
Torchdown (Pete Fust's darling), it would be adhered directly to those
saplings, negating the abrasion concern.


Far's Casa Chica's lapped roof boards go, I wouldn't use them as a
gauge. By the time I left there was still no weight on them. No bales,
no living roof. Just some pinon needles and berries on top of a tarp.
More than two years after you were there for that colloquium, Pete
finally got around to putting the torchdown membrane on it; prior, it
had been covered by tarps. I think RT's concern about lengthwise
cracking, which depends on having significant actual weight pressing
down directly on the planks, might have some validity. I'm certain
that the structure will handily carry the load you intend to impose (I
say with great authority, since you've already got enginoidal
blessings on it)... but what he was talking about is different.


The argument pops up that having them ceiling-insulation-bales setting
on an impervious membrane without providing for drainage (even though
it's a sloped surface, that might not qualify as drainage to some
people) is just asking for trouble. Could be. Question is: If there's
catastrophic roof failure (a leak), does one want the water running
into the house, carrying all the mud plaster with it? Maybe.

Could do what a lot of people who lived in soddies and thatchies and
other leaky-roofies did: hang fabric like a false ceiling. It catches
any loose dirt or bugs that drop down; and when there is a leak (or
several), the water goes to a low spot before it drops, making it easy
to put a pot under.

But if a person's going to hide the ceiling that way, they might as
well just use well-detailed sheetrock and be done with it.



'Bout them bales-as-roof-insulation: Are you going to build in some
kind of access to them? Are you going to rig up moisture monitors for
them? And perhaps most important, how are you going to seal them? I
used to think that a clay-slip dip would be sufficient, but now I'm
not so sure that's enough. For fire, probably, but not air movement.
It's gotta be solid and continuous and well worked into the bales.
Unsealed, the R could be diminished by half or more by virtue of air
movement. They'd pass vapor a lot better, though. (A sudden image
flashes into my head of a southern bale in long skirts, holding a
parasol, saying, "Ah've got the vapors, dahlin'.")



--




My personal playsite:
http://www.potkettleblack.com

__

Rob Tom wrote:

   One or
combinations of the preceding can result in failure of the membrane in
a few short years if not sooner.

****I just read Mark P's  moisture article he linked everyone and in talking
with Catherine Wanek and reading Rob Tom's thoughts about the long term
vulnerability of the a sheet membrane, I am wondering if a sheet membrane is
really needed. What if I lapped the boards and set the bales up top with a
1/2" or so coating of clay slip dried first and let diffusion do the work of
protecting the bales? Since there is a similar coat of clay slip at the top
and three inches of vented air space above the bales wouldn't vapors find
their way out just like in walls if not better?

Then Rob wrote:
#2.
It's not clear from your description what the lapped joints will
look like but I'm guessing that you're referring to laps along the
longitudinal edges of the boards,  in clapboard fashion.

****Yes the boards are longitudinal running perpindicular to 10" on center
4" thick perlins. My
understanding is the perlins are carrying the load and the clapboard
provides a stiffing function.
RT wrote:
In high humidity situations, wherever there is wood tight against
another material, the joint holds moisture, usually leading to mould
growth and possibly eventual rot.
****This is my concern as well. I had thought of an initial borax spray and
then over the course of the winter the wood would dry and the wood being
thin would send the humidity back out to the environment. By not using a
sheet retarder this would probably help.
RT:
  This would be
like a slow-motion karate-punch to the board wouldn't it, leading to
the board likely cracking along its length if unsupported across it's
width ?

***I did have the system engineered so I am comfortable with the bearing and
stress issues.



   RT wrote:

  The botom line, IMO is that lapping them a la SunRay (although I've
never seen what SunRay actually does, I'm going by Chuck's
description only) would seem to be bad detail on a number of fronts.

What do other people think? Many of you have seen and worked with Sunrays
system. It seemed to work fine without cracking. Catherine and Pete's Casa
De Chica has no cracks or problems with the lapstrike.

RT wrote:
It might be better to leave a gap as a reveal to create a shadow line
for visual interest and spline it with thin strips of 1/8" Masonite or
somesuch (salvaged doorskins from discarded slab doors  etc. ?)
Such a detail would mean that each board would yield more
coverage, ultimately leading to reduced wood usage.

I like the idea but due to the irregularity of the perlins and the shrinkage
issues I am skeptical that there would be any predicatable dimension to cut
a 1/8" or whatever dimension. It would perhaps be a plaster or wood putty
that would have to do the trick.

RT wroteL

It should be obvious that some strategy will be needed to minimise
moisture movement at the ceiling area in a ColdClimate building
where vapour pressure will be highest.A sheet membrane is usually the
easiest solution in that it acts as an air
barrier and a VDR. In buildings where drywall is used on the ceiling ,
often taping/caulking/paint is effective enough that a sheet membrane
becomes redundant.

**** See my first coment, again this was my first thought as it is
convential wisdom, now I am wondering since many have concluded that a good
coating of plaster can act in this capacity.
Don't know, would sure like to see some discussion on this highly timely
topic for me.


RT wrote:
         " No one has ever died from exposure to moulds"
a statement which should be good for a head-bonking thread here in
the future.

***There have been serious mold issues in buildings in Madison in the past
year and I believe people getting sick.

Thanks for your thought responses!

Chuck

---
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Lower Case Dave said:
> i can hold
>the temp in there at 500 degrees for a week which would dry those suckers
>out all the way.   im assuming that it would be better to dry them whole >log
rather than cut up to minimize any warpage or twisting eh?

Sounds to me like they might be charcoal after a bake like that. <grin> And no,
it's better to dry rough cut boards (not quite finish dimensions) than big cants
or logs.

Ahem,
As a tree grows various tension and compression stresses are set up in the wood
which balance each other - or else the tree falls apart or falls over. When we
cut the tree apart the dynamic balance is disrupted locally in the cants timbers
or boards we make. Sometimes the new piece happens to be fairly evenly balanced
and it stays straight and true. Other times the stresses are way out of whack
and the board or whatever warps, bows, checks, splits etc. Reducing the moisture
content of the wood adds further complexity to the equation. I'm no expert but
experienced sawyers can shade the odds of getting true lumber in their favor by
paying attention to signs in the tree's growth patterns. The rest of us get
lucky - more or less.

And RT said:

>I'm pretty sure that slow, and not-too-hot kiln-drying is better than >really
hot and fast.

>Also, now that we're all Greenies in Y2k2, solar-assisted air-drying would
>seem to be more sustainably-correct than a fossil-fueled kiln drying >process.


Yep, slow dry. Air drying is best but considered TOO DARN SLOW by lots of folks.
On the other hand you don't want to cook the bejeepers out of your boards
either. Drying can be speeded up by controlling the moisture and heat in a
closed area or 'kiln'. Key word being control. Rather than drive all the
moisture out as quickly as the fuel budget will allow, it's better to coax the
moisture out a bit at a time. This allows the wood a chance to adjust or recover
from some of stress imbalance that's created as the moisture leaves so you get
truer lumber and less of a "killed" aspect to the wood.

The suggested cycle is: warm up the air in the kiln ('cause warm air can carry
more moisture - dew you get it - yuk yuk); when the air loads up with moisture
exhaust it to the outside; let the kiln and contents cool down for a spell so
the wood can 'adjust' a bit. Repeat until the MC is where you want it. A
variation is to kiln dry part way to the desired moisture content and then air
dry the rest of the way.

As to the solar assisted idea: Guess what? The warm up, exhaust and cool down
periods loosely work out pretty good as a diurnal cycle which makes solar kilns
for relatively small batches of lumber just about ideal. Do a Google search for
"solar lumber kiln" and you'll find more than you ever wanted to know including
a little bit of really useful information. Once you get the basics in mind it
shouldn't be too hard to come up with something locally that will work okay
using poly sheeting (recycled - nach) or perhaps as RT might be just about to
say: discarded patio sliders. A PV panel driving a small 12V fan can do the
exhaust part while the sun is shining and it turns itself off automatically too
just in time for the cool down.  Adjust the exhaust part so you are getting
enough heat inside and let 'er go. For oak I imagine you don't care about
setting the sap as you might with fir or pine etc. You might want to get it hot
enough a couple of times to kill any little bugs or spores that have taken up
residence. Pay careful attention to stickering and check the MC periodically.

For a large lumber drying operation where you may have a pile of money telling
you what to do - the solar kiln approach probably won't look too attractive but
for small batches where nobody is screaming at you "time is money" or somesuch,
I think it's pretty slick.

After your boards are dried you can then take 'em down to finish dimensions. If
you resaw them after they are dry you may loose a few due to the stress
equilibrium stuff going on when you open them up.

Have fun with it,
Marcus

***
On cutting slate here is some RT on the subject, culled from my archives, which
I'll post here to save him the trouble:
<quote><snipped>
They were originally school chalk boards. (I've contemplated buying some
to make a billiards table for when I reach old age and will have nothing
better to do than fleece old geezers of their pension cheques.)

Slate cuts easily with an abrasive blade in a circular saw and corners
can be rounded over with a carborundum stone mounted on an angle grinder.

It is certainly suitable for window sills as it is a traditionally used
for that purpose in places like Indiana and Vermont where slate is
quarried and as we all know, slate-shingled roofs provide service for
periods measured in centuries rather than years. The large size of the
chalkboards would enable one to cut pieces that would do the entire sill
of even the widest windows, without any joints which could provide a
route for water to get into the bales below.

                  ===    *     ===
Robert  W. Tom          Kanata, Ontario, Canada

Rob Tom wrote:

> If you're going to use concrete to make the sills, precasting them
> face-down in polyethylene-lined forms in a shop where proper
> moist-curing conditions can be maintained for a month or more would be
> about the best way to achieve good results, and combined with a Xypex
> or siloxane treatment would probably be close to perfect as far as
> concrete goes.

I would say that this is something that there has been a lot of
interest in, beyond the sill itself, many questions come to us
regarding how to install/mount them into both non lb and lb wall
assemblies.  Since RT has been so eager to get me to post photos to
yahoo album, I might suggest that he also start an album and consider
throwing a sketch or two in there with some details on how he might
carry this out.  This would seem like something that might be of
interest to other listmembers, would you say so?

And speaking of photo albums, I've posted several new photos in our
album - just so I live up to my promises.  Since Satomi has been
appearing on this list and been the subject of conversation, I thought
I would keep it going for a while more by posting two images of some
artwork done on the walls of one of our buildings.  FYI the white
background her black figures are painted on is a plaster done with
white clay and marble zipped up with a little casein and a tiny amount
of linseed oil.  The idea was to provide a surface that would be
unaltered and provide a stable base for aqueous paints.  As for what
she used to create the figures I can't say as she did them when no one
was looking (and of course when no one knew).  I would suspect that it
is artist grade Japanese lamp black or something equally exotic, but
we'll have to wait and hear from her.

The other photo is of a clay molding done around a window on the other
side of the same building where Satomi did her work.  The yellow color
is a local clay.  The wall surrounding the window is finished with a
lavender clay that is also local.

B...
>
>
Athena & Bill Steen
The Canelo Project
HC1 Box 324
Canelo/Elgin, AZ 85611
absteen@...
www.caneloproject.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

that slate is a good idea,  up here in N minnesota we have a lot of it
exposed...  east of here actually,  along with some of the  oldest,  or
oldest,  i forget,  bedrock in the world.  there is a pool table
manufacturer somewhere over that way,  and id be willing to bet they would
have some perfect sized peices on hand.  when it comes to cutting tho,  if
its an inch thick,  i suppose id have to rent a masonry saw from the rent
all.

as for the greeness of kiln drying in my kiln...  yes,  sorry,  i tend to
forget sometimes that i have some rather ungreen tools at my disposal.
when we tend to want things in a hurry,  the greeness of them gets lost.

ill look into the slate,  and the cement.  slate would be rather cool,  but
i could actually create a mold for the cement that would have various
contours to it.

thanks,
d

--- "david morrison" <davjen@p...> wrote:
> as for the oak i have,  it IS white oak,

Somewhere in my travels, I recall having gotten the notion in my head that the
heartwood of White Oak is rot-resistant and as such, have used it for tasks
where its hardness and durability are desirable.

When left in large chunks to dry, it does tend to check badly though (a
characteristic which does contribute to its "tough" appearance which I prefer to
the "prettiness" of Red Oak) and may not make it the best choice for an exterior
window sill if water penetration to the material below might pose problems,
which in the case of straw, would probably be a "Yes".

>i can kiln dry it if need be in my larger pottery kiln.
>  im assuming that it would be better to dry them whole log
> rather than cut up to minimize any warpage or twisting eh?

It's been a while since I've thought about the technicalities of dealing with
turning trees into lumber (ie I forget the ideal temps/drying time for KD) but
(from my days as a former cabinetmaker, I've never been fond kiln-dried
hardwood, because it seemed "dead" and brittle (kill-dried ?) as compared to
air-dried (tough and alive)lumber when worked with handtools.

I'm pretty sure that slow, and not-too-hot kiln-drying is better than really hot
and fast.

Also, now that we're all Greenies in Y2k2, solar-assisted air-drying would seem
to be more sustainably-correct than a fossil-fueled kiln drying process.

> a thought just crossed my brain,  i suppose i COULD pour cement
>sills in my shop and install them after theyre cured.

If you're going to use concrete to make the sills, precasting them face-down in
polyethylene-lined forms in a shop where proper moist-curing conditions can be
maintained for a month or more would be about the best way to achieve good
results, and combined with a Xypex or siloxane treatment would probably be close
to perfect as far as concrete goes.

Another approach may be to check out the local building materials recycling
facility  and see if they have any slate chalkboards (ie from demolished
schools) usually 1"-1.5" thick by 5 ft or more in each direction wide x long) or
other suitable stone. The backside of the slate chalkboardswill sometimes be a
natural cleft texture rather than ground smooth.

i should mention too,  that this roof of theirs is a very nonconforming
shape.  rounds,  circles, ups and downs,  and the boarding they used was
bent over the natural beams they used to support the whole of  it.

d

one thing that came to mind in reading sir toms reply,  is that some
neighbors of mine did what  i suppose amounts to a board and batton type of
ceiling/roof,  where they took 1x8's and put them down leaving an inch or
two between boards,  then going over the top side of that with narrower
boarding to cover that slat.  the end result on the inside is a nice look.
nice bright boards with gaps between,  nice shadows etc...  if youre going
to worry about moisture and mold,  then i suppose that lapped zone would
give a  point to worry over.

they used regular old fiber insulation and eventually put one of those
rubber roofs on top after the rolled roofing failed,  so there aint a bunch
uh weight up there.   that being said,  their ceiling has held up swell over
the  past 20 years or so.

d

on Dec 27, 2002
"david morrison" <davjen@...>

	 > N. Minnesota. I found a diagram for a double hung window

	 > The rest of them measure in the range of 4 foot wide by 3
	 >foot tall.  3 equal sections, leaving the middle section
	 >unopenable and the two side sections swinging inward to
	 >open.

	 > sill .. I have some oak I can use, and figured that should
	 > stand up well over time,
	 >The oak I will be cutting today, a year ago my horses
	 > barked about a dozen decent sized oaks which I left up
	 >to dry. Im going to lop a few down today and bring them
	 >back to the shop to start milling them into lumber for
	 >windows.

David;

First of all, unless the oak is White Oak , it would be a poor choice
for the window sills .  Red Oak would be ant fodder within two or
three years.

Red Oak would also be a poor choice for window sash. It's too open
grained & end-grain porous (you can blow bubbles in a glass of water
through a piece of Red Oak)  with the result that it is surely bound to
distort, either causing bad joints that will leak air & water  and/or
possibly cracking glass.

It's also unlikely that the lumber will be dry enough if it hasn't been
sawn into boards, stickered and air-dried for at least a year or three.


Second, double-hung (or any sliding windows & doors) are not very
good when it comes to preventing air leakage at the edges of the sash,
as big a factor in heat loss and discomfort as is conduction through the
glass. ie There has to be a certain amount of sloppiness of fit in order
to allow the sash to slide.

Casements or awnings which can be pulled tight to compress the
weatherstripping  makes for better windows. Opening-outwards
awning type windows are the best because they can be left open for
ventilation when it's raining out.

I'll leave the lengthy subject of the glass for the windows for another
time/person as I've yakked enough for today.

       ~~~ * ~~~
          Rob Tom
   Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<ArchiLogic@...>
(winnow the "chaff" from my edress in your reply)

Please visit http://www.theHungerSite.com daily

on Sat Dec 28, 2002 7:39 pm
"Chuck & Linda" <clearned@...> wrote:

	 >...Wisconsin ... tamarack perlons on our curvy
	 >  Cherry Beams.
	 > ... lay up oak planking milled 7/16" to ride the
	 > tamarack wave.
	 >  on SunRays wavy delights he lapped the planks
	 > over each other. I was planning on doing this but
	 > since it leaves a 7/16" rise every 5" or so inches I am
	 > wondering about whether the friction at that point
	 > where the wood laps each other, will wear down
	 > the vapor barrier.

	 > My other option is to not lap them and accept that
	 > there will be a crack between each board where vapor
	 >can rise up to meet the Tu-Tuff. What I am wondering
	 > about is whether this would create any moisture problems
	 > between the cracks?

	 >So to sumarize:
	 >1. will the laps wear down the vapor barrier?
	 >2. lap the planks or not?
	 >3. and yes or no on vapor barrier?

Chuck & Linda;

#1.
From past observation of cabinetwork (ie made with lumber dried to
less than 7% moisture content) which has been sealed with a finish on
all sides & ends, a generalisation was made that one could expect to
see 1/32" of movement across the grain for every 2 inches in width,
due to seasonal changes in humidity.  ie for a 5 inch wide piece of dry,
sealed, wood,  one could expect the wood to regularly expand and
contract at  least 3/32".

For boards used in a ceiling, I'm guessing that if they are sealed with a
finish, it would only be on one face and if some forethought is
exercised, possibly the end grain, leaving almost 50% of the board
surface to do what it is that hygroscopic materials do  (albeit the end-
grain is where most moisture gets sucked up and released).

So will movement due to the seasonal humdity cycles eventually
abrade a hole into the Vapour Diffusion Retarder (VDR) sheet
membrane ?  I suppose the answer would depend on how long one
expects the building to last.
25 yrs ? Maybe not.
50 yrs. Maybe yes.
100 years. Probably.

However, wood movement due to humidity changes probably isn't the
only thing that will stress the membrane. Every time the wind sucks,
there will be movement and abrasion. Every time the temperature
changes. Long-term creep of the membrane itself.  etc.  One or
combinations of the preceding can result in failure of the membrane in
a few short years if not sooner.

#2.
It's not clear from your description what the lapped joints will
look like but I'm guessing that you're referring to laps along the
longitudinal edges of the boards,  in clapboard fashion.

In high humidity situations, wherever there is wood tight against
another material, the joint holds moisture, usually leading to mould
growth and possibly eventual rot.

In Chuck & Linda's scenario, drying would have to occur towards the
inside since there is a VDR on the backside ostensibly preventing
vapour movement towards the outside.

I can think of 2.5  ways that that drying would occur:
  (1) temperature on the backside of the planking higher than the temp
on the roomside and
   (2) The temp on the roomside being really hot at the same time that
        the humidity is really low.

Another issue is that ship-lapping provides support for the board only
at small areas at the edges. It sound like Chuck  & Linda  intend to
load the boards with bales-and-who-knows-what.  This would be
like a slow-motion karate-punch to the board wouldn't it, leading to
the board likely cracking along its length if unsupported across it's
width ?

And, if fastened improperly (ie nails or screws at both edges) the
boards would split even without being loaded.

The botom line, IMO is that lapping them a la SunRay (although I've
never seen what SunRay actually does, I'm going by Chuck's
description only) would seem to be bad detail on a number of fronts.

It might be better to leave a gap as a reveal to create a shadow line
for visual interest and spline it with thin strips of 1/8" Masonite or
somesuch (salvaged doorskins from discarded slab doors  etc. ?)
Such a detail would mean that each board would yield more
coverage, ultimately leading to reduced wood usage.

#3.

It should be obvious that some strategy will be needed to minimise
moisture movement at the ceiling area in a ColdClimate building
where vapour pressure will be highest.

A sheet membrane is usually the easiest solution in that it acts as an air
barrier and a VDR. In buildings where drywall is used on the ceiling ,
often taping/caulking/paint is effective enough that a sheet membrane
becomes redundant.

Since Chuck & Linda's ceiling will be comprised of boards with no
sheet membrane, the boards would have to be assembled/sealed  like
the hull of a boat in order to be effective at minimising moisture
movement into the insulation where it will reduce its insulative
properties, likely result in mould & fungal growth and possibly
subsequent rot.

Which brings up a point that Bruce, King of Sausalito mentioned on
the GSBN List before he skeedaddled of to Australia to el Lupo's
Wino Festival:
         " No one has ever died from exposure to moulds"
a statement which should be good for a head-bonking thread here in
the future.
       ~~~ * ~~~
          Rob Tom
   Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<ArchiLogic@...>
(winnow the "chaff" from my edress in your reply)

Please visit http://www.theHungerSite.com daily

David wrote:
if you have a table saw,  you could slap on a dado blade ...

David the planks are green and I anticipate they will shrink 1/16 inch
leaving an 1/8 space if I butt them or do as you suggested. The other
problem with that is the tamarack perlons are sometimes 1 1/2 inches higher
than each other, it can look like a roller coaster or the hills of New
England.
Someone on another list suggested I use Ice and Water shield as its tougher
than Tu-Tuff.

Chuck


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if you have a table saw,  you could slap on a dado blade and cut lap grooves
in the boards so they would lap and seal,  with out the bump up.  a little
extra work, but not so bad.

d

Greetings from the Wisconsin Frozen lands,

Its good to be back on the list!

El Nino has been good to me keeping that snow away allowing me to progress
on getting my tamarack perlons on our curvy Cherry Beams. It all looks sweet
and now its time to lay up oak planking milled 7/16" to ride the tamarack
wave. I have a couple of questions for the strawbale sages.

From my experience of helping plank one of SunRays wavy delights he lapped
the planks over each other. I was planning on doing this but since it leaves
a 7/16" rise every 5" or so inches I am wondering about whether the friction
at that point where the wood laps each other,  will wear down the vapor
barrier. I was thinking of using Tu-Tuff#4. vapor barrier. My other option
is to not lap them and accept that there will be a crack between each board
where vapor can rise up to meet the Tu-Tuff. What I am wondering about is
whether this would create any moisture problems between the cracks? It is
still warm there at that spot as it is the bottom of the
strawbales(Strawbale roof insulation) so it seems like there wouldn't be a
dew point there.

I have been planning on a vapor barrier on top of my planks as I will have a
fair amount of moisture in my house due to our greywater greenhouse, though
we will use a energy recovery unit to expell moisture. I was wondering what
people thought about not using a vapor barrier. There will be 3 inches of
air space above the bales in the roof with more planks and waterproof
membranes then straw and soil and plants. I am thinking use it but I just
thought I would ask.

So to sumarize: 1. will the laps wear down the vapor barrier? 2. lap the
planks or not? 3. and yes or no on vapor barrier?

Thanks for any thoughts,
Chuck Learned
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david morrison wrote:

>Second,  If there are any of you out there that have built windows for your
homes,  I'd be thrilled to hear what style windows you made,  and any tips you
might want to pass along.  Remember, I need a window that will hold up well in
the cold of N. Minnesota.
>
David,

Let me first say that our new home is not strawbale so you might want to
discount my response - but we do have 1 foot thick exterior walls, we do
live in a climate like yours, and we DID come up with some interesting
windows which might be of interest.

Our home is on a lake in northern Wisconsin so we wanted lots and lots
of windows.  We ended up
with 654 square feet of glazed area.  432 sq.ft. is fixed glazing and
222 sq. ft. are openable windows or patio doors.  The fixed windows are
all hand made and the openable units are all manufactured.  I have tried
on some of our prior homes to build openable units but there were always
problems of one sort or another.  The cost of  the clear wood necessary
to make really good openable windows, plus the time required for all the
mill work makes manufactured vinyl windows awfully attractive to me.

I think the most unique thing about our glazing, both fixed and opening,
is that everything is thermopane glass - then doubled.  In other words
all the patio doors are thermopane glass but  have an inside door and an
outside door (one on each side of the foot thick walls).  Thus, every
window or door opening actually has 4 panes of glass between the outside
and the inside of the house.

Openable windows.

I discovered that the cost of a double layer of less expensive
(Crestline and Wenco) manufactured windows and doors was the same as one
set of high end units (Anderson, Pella) but the R factor achieved by the
doubling of two cheap windows was significantly higher than the R factor
of one high end unit alone.  I used vinyl windows and patio door and
just had to make sure that I only selected those models that had the
installation (nailer) tab equidistance from the inside and outside of
the window.  This makes the units fully reversible - in other words they
can be installed on the exterior side of the wall as well as the
interior side of the wall.  There is only one slight modification one
has to make, and that is for the patio doors.  The nailer tab on the
bottom of the unit must be removed for installing on the inside of the
wall.  This can be done by scoring the vinyl with a sharp exacto knife
and then bending and breaking off the tab.  The unit will then sit flush
against the floor.

Fixed windows.

Our 432 sq. ft. of fixed glazing is all based on 2' X 3' thermopane.
  Being a cheapskate at heart I searched around and found a supply of
about 160 of these units that had been removed from a federal building
in Chicago which was being remodeled.  I had to remove the units from
their wood and aluminum cladding as well as clean all the caulk and
butyl installation gunk from the glass (that's 320 sides of 2' x 3'
glass - which took nearly a week to do).  But at $3 per unit delivered,
it was well worth it.  (I did break about 8-10 of them in the the
process of taking them apart however.)

These fixed units are installed in simple wood frames made from treated
5/4" x 6" bull nose decking.  (Those of you who are shy about working
with treated lumber may want to explore an alternative wood.)  Outside
"stops" (which also act as the finish frame of the exterior side of the
window) were cut from 1" treated stock and the stop which holds the
bottom of the glazing was cut at a 15 degree angle for water run off.
  The bottoms of the side stops were then cut at the same 15 degree angle
to make a nice fit over the bottom stop.

I had made some fixed windows in the past and had always had trouble
maintaining a good caulking seal between the glazing and the "stops" or
framing (the wood and glass shrink and swell at different rates which
results in gaps in the caulking over time).  So what I did for this
installation was cut strips of 6 mil plastic wide enough to lap over and
cover the entire joint from the exterior siding on the house/over the
5/4 x 6 wood frame/and then on over about 3/4" of the window glazing
itself - equal to the lip of the "stop" which would hold the glazing
from falling toward the outside.  These strips were pressed into
caulking applied to the finish siding all around the window openings and
also to caulking applied to the 5/4 x 6 wood frame.  Then the exterior
finish frame/stop was installed on all four sides of the window opening,
covering over these plastic strips and leaving about a 3/4" lip
extending toward the inside of the window to hold the glazing from
falling toward the outside.

Then, going inside the house, a bead of clear caulk was run all around
the "lip" of 6 mil plastic which was just to the house side of the lip
of the finish framework.  The outside thermopane was then lifted into
place and pressed solidly against that bead of caulk and the outside
finish frame/stop.  Unfortunately I can't draw a detailed picture - but
looking from the side you would have a sandwich of 1) the outside finish
frame/stop, 2) a layer of 6 mil plastic, 3) a bead of clear silicon
caulk, 4) the outside thermopane.

The inside thermopane was then prepared by installing  a strip of 1/2"
wide, 3/8" thick  foam weather-stripping around the perimeter of the
window (on the flat surface of the glass itself, not the edge).  The
thermopane was then turned over and on the interior side of the glass a
strip of 1/2" wide glazing putty (huge rolls of the stuff are available
from most glass supply houses or window contractors) is installed around
the perimeter of the window (again on the flat surface of the glass, not
the edge). The thermopane was lifted into position (the foam
weather-stripping now sandwiched between the inside and outside
thermopanes) and pressed firmly into place and held temporarily while
the inside finish "stop" was nailed (or you could use screws if desired)
into place.  Looking from the side again you would see a sandwich of 1)
the outside finish frame/stop, 2) a layer of 6 mil plastic, 3) a bead of
clear caulk, 4) the outside thermopane, 5) a strip of 3/8" thick foam
weather-strip, 6) the inside thermopane and 7) the inside stop.  (I hope
this makes sense - these things are always hard to describe without
photos or pics.)

One small note, the thermopanes should not rest directly on the wood of
the frame but rather on thin (usually about 1/8" thick) rubber or
plastic spacers.  I made mine (following the advice of a local
  professional glass installer) by cutting 1/8" Plexiglas in pieces about
1 1/2" wide by the depth of my glass sandwich (two thermopanes plus the
foam weatherstrip).  These spacers are simply laid in place on the wood
frame, one at each corner of the glazing, approximately 2" in from the
corner.

While our fixed window configuration was totally experimental, it seems
to have worked quite well.  We are going into our third winter now and
the concept of caulking the glass to the 6 mil plastic rather than
caulking the glass to wood seems to be a winner.  We have no detectable
drafts anywhere around the fixed windows and no detectable water leaks.
  Just as a precaution I did go around every window and install an extra
bead of caulk over the joint between the outside bottom stop (the one
cut at 15 degrees) and the glazing itself.  This is the area most
susceptible to rain/snow which drips down the outside of the glazing.
I'm guessing I'll have to redo this every few years due to shrink/swell
but I just feel a little more comfortable knowing it is there.

If you want any more details I'll be glad to provide them either on the
list or you can email me directly.

Dewey

Mikal said- (some snip) The only thing that saved the day was
the fact that the vault peak, which was exposed to direct rain for
hours,  was covered in thick clay plaster. Even though the surface clay
was so  eroded that the surface was down to exposed straw and sand, the
bales underneath  were bone dry.


For those of you who just read this message  about Mickal J's  SB, the
images of Frank I sent were of  that SB vault, with the great , sticky
blue gumbo clay being put on by Frank and volunteers.

Ms. Charmaine  Taylor/ Taylor Publishing
http://www.dirtcheapbuilder.com    http://www.papercrete.com
PO Box 375, Cutten (Eureka) CA 95534
707-441-1632     tms@...

For the rest of you, I got this message from Mikal Jakubal who is
building a straw bale vault in northern California (where it rains a
lot) and thought it would be of interest to the rest of the group.

B...

from Mikal Jakubal
prior message snipped:
Good thing, because if I'd stayed I wouldn't have gotten the
message from Fran that some of the tarps had blown off in the big storm
and
the house was getting soaked. The were gusts up to 70mph and 24" of
rain in
three days. I got that message when I was in Bakersfield, CA at around
2PM on
Saturday. I saw the headlines on the SF Chronicle and decided I ought
to call
and check. Got home at midnight and was up on the roof till 3:30AM
fixing
things. Couple days later I had to dig out sections of the upper vault
that
were hot composting. Put the propane heater on other places where it was
mostly surface wet. The places that got soaked but weren't composting I
just
left to deal with in the Spring. The only thing that saved the day was
the
fact that the vault peak, which was exposed to direct rain for hours,
was
covered in thick clay plaster. Even though the surface clay was so
eroded that
the surface was down to exposed straw and sand, the bales underneath
were bone
dry. The water got in when it ran down the vault to the area that wasn't
plastered and soaked in there. Had the peak been soaked, it would have
been
nearly unrepairable

Mikal


Athena & Bill Steen
The Canelo Project
HC1 Box 324
Canelo/Elgin, AZ 85611
absteen@...
www.caneloproject.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi all,

Lovely thread, although I feel a bit like a voyeur.  Its good to know all the
people that were once so vocal on the Crest SB list are still out there.

I thought I'd just mention  that Orion magazine is located in an online
version at:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/index_om.html

Great publication.

The article Bill was referring to may be found at this exact site:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/archive_om/Berry/Local_Economy.html

Have a good day.
-Bill Campbell
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
William Campbell, Ph.D.
composer, teacher & performer
SoulBill@...
(520) 818-9218
<A HREF="http://www.WilliamCampbellMusic.com">www.WilliamCampbellMusic.com</A>

>
> Good to hear from you Duckie Boy,
>
> I had a bit of a cathartic experience (another in a long and
> continuing series of them) when I read a terrific essay a couple-three
> months ago by what's-his-name... uh... the ostensible Kentucky farmer
> - Wendell Berry, that's it - called "In Distrust of Movements,"
> reprinted in a local sustainable ag magazine. (Here we go, I've found
> a copy of it online from a different place:
> http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/issues/berry198.htm )
> I had hacked down a version of it - totally without permission - for
> the TLS anniversary issue in lieu of actually writing something, but I
> suspect it didn't get used. And rightly so, probably. (Has that issue
> mailed? I'd been led to believe that there's a picture of me flashing
> my pearly whites in it, in some kind of Memorial Hall Of Fallen
> Editors piece.)

How was it cathartic?  If you want to take it a step further, Orion
Magazine (www.orion.com - I think) has another article on their site
under the new issue section by him called "Local Economy."  That's in
case you need a little extra oomph to finish the process.  And by the
way, was that a recent photo they published?
>
> Anyway. The disembodied head of M J Epko says "feh." I gots me a life
> again, or am starting to.
>
> Touring the Ecovillage at Ithaca shortly after we got to the area, and
> then on the ASES tour soon after that, we found that there's a sturdy
> little streak of natural-buildy sorts around. (And the biggest PV
> installation on the east coast, too: on the roof of the public
> library, downtown Ithaca.) It even turned out that there's a natural
> builder's group that meets once a month, at a different place each
> time. Finger Lakes Natural Builder's Group, I think they call
> themselves. A wonderful bunch of smart, caring, active people. The
> most recent meeting had a slideshow from Josh Jackson, a
> Massachusetts timberframer pal of Paul Lacinski.

Have you met with Clark Sanders?  If you haven't it would be well worth
the visit.
>
>  "Breathability." Apparently there's a German
> source of some fairly consequential air infiltration numbers through
> straw-clay walls, and that's evidently fueled the long-held
> speculation about straw-clay walls acting as giant heat exchangers as
> well as providing air changes. I don't know the source - or if it
> cites density, pressures, and perhaps most importantly, if the wall in
> question was a system: that is, plastered. If anybody has input about
> that, this skeptic is interested in learning more.

Perhaps if you could cite the study it would help discuss it further.
Let me add though a few comments about straw/clay as a wall system.  In
the words of Frankie Andreson, who was the subject of a few emails a
couple of days back, "why would anyone want to build walls out of that
stuff?"  Basically, what he was trying to say in his direct and to the
point manner, was that in the recent German movement to resurrect
natural methods, it was the first system that they experimented with.
After finding it very labor intensive and a number of other things, in
general, they switched over to clay and wood chips, clay and other
stuff that could be more easily mixed and poured into forms without so
much rigorous tamping.  In general, given the option, the last few
times Frank has stayed here with us, the bulk of his conversation and
focus has usually been on sawdust and clay.  It's a really easy mix to
work with and it makes really nice blocks.  Another one we have done is
pumice and clay which is also as easy.  Basically, anything that is
insulating and that can be tossed in a drum mixer with a clay slurry
will work.  So I would say, that in my humble experience, that I would
concur with him fully, that why do it if you don't need to.  I know he
includes it as part of demonstrations or if someone else really wants
it.
>
> I've been looking for money work - finding tons of it, and accepting
> almost none.

You might try Chelsea Green again in that they essentially have gotten
rid of everyone there and are retooling the company.  It went back into
the hands of the original owners.  I see below that you already know
that, but why not give it a try.  It might be a much healthier
situation than it was.  And why not contact Mother Earth News directly.
>

And as always, I can say, that when I have time, I love to read your
rambling, never-ending, tales of natural building.  You have a
marvelous touch when it comes to staying in touch with just about
everything.  Which leads me to say that with so many different natural
building methods, etc. etc. out there and with all the folks who are
socially concerned that there ought to be a place where all can debate
the worth and value of their belief systems and methods.  From my
perspective, what I see is something along the lines stated by Wendell
Berry in the Distrust of Movements article, is that the tendency is for
people to latch on to their favorite natural building system and then
hold on for dear life excluding everything else in the process.  I
think there is a strong need to tear down some of these rigid divisions
and let there be a much better flow of information between these
different groups.  Perhaps you might explore some ways that could
happen.

B...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> SB-r-us-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
Athena & Bill Steen
The Canelo Project
HC1 Box 324
Canelo/Elgin, AZ 85611
absteen@...
www.caneloproject.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

It wasn't clear then; and after all this time, still, who knows.

- - - - -

Thanks, Beel, for the heads-up on this new Social Club. I stopped
following the CREST list about the time I resigned as editor of TLS
and got the hell out of New Mexico... has it already been, like,
almost three years? I miss Salami! - and will encourage her to sign up
here if she hasn't already. I'm so totally fortunate to have friends
like you people.

I haven't made it out to northern Washington state yet, or even South
Dakota. Now established (after a fashion - and possibly only for the
winter) in Ithaca NY with the Dearest One (though I'm writing from the
in-laws' in Maryland), I recently tried subscribing to the CREST list
again several times over a couple weeks, but never received the
autoreply confirmation thing. I found out through the grapevine that
it evidently had died a mysterious death; then, well afterward, saw
the same notice Wolfie did (wish I'd had the scratch to make it down
under, sigh) at the CREST website about the lists being restored
sometime soon. Took 'em long enough to say something about it. Don't
know if things are fixed there now or not.

As for me, I'm thinking that fresher is probably better as far as SB
lists go. Before I left the CREST list all those moons ago, it somehow
had become not nearly as much fun as it once was. I assumed the
problem was my own, recognizing that while I'd once had a sense of
goofball humor and giddy wonder and boundless hope and puppydog
enthusiasm for mud and sticks and straw, the bizarre path I'd chosen
ended up leading me to a bad sort of spiritual exhaustion and
frustration. I'd developed an un-fun, self-righteous attitude -
possibly as a ridiculous attempt at self-defense - and it definitely
(dis)colored my view of everything.

But out with the bad air, in with the good. I've been increasingly
successful at letting it go as time goes by, and that rosy-fingered
dawn lights the sky again. (Everything is always about me, for those
of you who don't know me, or who may have forgotten, or haven't
heard.) (I suppose it probably is true, though, that at least some
part of the apparent downturn of the CREST list could be traced back
to that knob who took over listmomming from founder JoE.) ("Principal
Says Foot Is Self.")

I had a bit of a cathartic experience (another in a long and
continuing series of them) when I read a terrific essay a couple-three
months ago by what's-his-name... uh... the ostensible Kentucky farmer
- Wendell Berry, that's it - called "In Distrust of Movements,"
reprinted in a local sustainable ag magazine. (Here we go, I've found
a copy of it online from a different place:
http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/issues/berry198.htm )
I had hacked down a version of it - totally without permission - for
the TLS anniversary issue in lieu of actually writing something, but I
suspect it didn't get used. And rightly so, probably. (Has that issue
mailed? I'd been led to believe that there's a picture of me flashing
my pearly whites in it, in some kind of Memorial Hall Of Fallen
Editors piece.)

Anyway. The disembodied head of M J Epko says "feh." I gots me a life
again, or am starting to.

Touring the Ecovillage at Ithaca shortly after we got to the area, and
then on the ASES tour soon after that, we found that there's a sturdy
little streak of natural-buildy sorts around. (And the biggest PV
installation on the east coast, too: on the roof of the public
library, downtown Ithaca.) It even turned out that there's a natural
builder's group that meets once a month, at a different place each
time. Finger Lakes Natural Builder's Group, I think they call
themselves. A wonderful bunch of smart, caring, active people. The
most recent meeting had a slideshow from Josh Jackson, a
Massachusetts timberframer pal of Paul Lacinski.

And speaking of Paul, he'll be leading a springtime bale-stack at the
upper-middle-class Ecovillage (on Rachel Carson Way, natch) after he
gets back from yet another stint in Mongolia. I wonder how alarming it
is for those unsuspecting Mongols when that booming voice of his comes
rolling across the steppes like thunder. Paul's so cool.

We also attended a small timber-frame raising not long ago in
Trumansburg - where Bob Moog developed his synthesizer and set up a
storefront shop for his manufacturing and distribution. Pics (of
timberframing, not synthesizers) at
http://www.potkettleblack.com/natbild/lyons.html
for anybody interested. No commentary, no instruction... just a few
actual photos of a few actual people in the act of assembling a timber
frame. The guy that cut it had never cut a frame before, and hadn't
even done any heavy building. He just got it in his head to cut a
frame for a long porch on the back of his house, went about teaching
himself how to do it, and did it. (An old photo of Moog's Trumansburg
storefront, for you imaginary disappointed ones:
http://moogarchives.com/trumans.htm )

There's other projects around, most notably an ongoing straw-clay
cottage project. There was some little discussion stemming from it
about that hoary beast, "Breathability." Apparently there's a German
source of some fairly consequential air infiltration numbers through
straw-clay walls, and that's evidently fueled the long-held
speculation about straw-clay walls acting as giant heat exchangers as
well as providing air changes. I don't know the source - or if it
cites density, pressures, and perhaps most importantly, if the wall in
question was a system: that is, plastered. If anybody has input about
that, this skeptic is interested in learning more.

I don't chase after this sort of stuff - reports, projects, and like
that - anywhere near as zealously as I used to... and I find that I'm
happier for it. Things happen as they should. Maybe not always as I'd
like; but they do happen, if I just let them. Having said that, if I'm
lucky I'll get to meet Clark Sanders one day while I'm here in the
upper east coast.

I've been looking for money work - finding tons of it, and accepting
almost none. Most of what I'm "qualified" to do is impoverishing stuff
of the sort that perpetuates the culture of excess (I heard Wm
McDonough explain his view that the way we use the word "consumer" is
seriously flawed: anything that goes to a landfill hasn't actually
been "consumed"), where gruntworker productivity goes multiples of
times farther in improving the quality of life for people farther up
the food chain than their own. (A close self-examination at this point
would reveal what a haughty two-faced whiner I am, so I'll assiduously
avoid that.) And so, clinging steadfastly to a set of principles that
don't really do me any particular good, I'm still unemployed. I have a
couple webclients, but nothing that provides a living wage. I nearly
had something good with Cornell University Press, but in the end I got
mired in their "short list of three." I had a wonderful response from
Stephen Morris about doing something - anything - with Chelsea Green,
but now he (and just about everyone else) is outta there. There was a
brief flurry of possibility when I was contacted by an editor at
Mother Earth News, but that mysteriously went nowhere. Stuff like
that. Obviously this can't go on, and eventually I'll get smart and
figure out what to do about it, get ambitious, then do it.

Meantime, life churns ever on, with we things squirming blindly around
in its hollows and recesses.

Enough pointless chatter. For the moment.



Oops, no, maybe not. (Once I get these things started, I don't seem to
know how to make them stop.) The local natural builder's group doesn't
have a listserver: they have a volunteer guy who maintains a list of
addresses in his email program and redistributes stuff. I don't know
why they do it that way. Anyway, I mailed him something after the last
meeting to send around, but it didn't happen. Possibly I sounded like
a know-it-all jerk outsider acting too big for his britches (which I
think in my enthusiasm I sometimes do though I never intend to - it
was especially bad a couple years ago when I'd become utterly dour),
or possibly it didn't happen because I neglected to tell him that I
wanted him to send it around, or both.

Anyway, there may be something interesting or useful to somebody here
on this list, or not. (Probably not - there seems to be an inordinate
number of exceptionally well-informed people here.)

Appended message follows:

- - - - -

I tell ya, these meetings... THAT's what natural building is all
about: people. In Minnesota, when I first got into this stuff, I
couldn't find a local community - or much information that wasn't by
and for deserts. Later, my time in that ghost town in the middle of
nowhere-southwestern-New-Mexico was interesting and ultimately
fruitful... but as it happened, made for a particularly unbalanced
period of my life. Fortunately, I did get out from time to time to
participate in some way-cool doin's.

The reason for this email: I meant to put something together for
general distribution after the last meeting, even though nobody asked
for it, to point at info on the internet pertinent to some
conversations I had with people, and the meeting's topic, hoping it
might be helpful. As so many things do, though, it ended up by the
wayside. This time, I'm doing it while I'm still fresh.

These are some things I happen to know about. I may or may not have
been directly involved in any of them in some aspect.

Picking up where Josh Jackson's slide-show left off, here's an
insanely cool fork in a massive roundwood timberframe; note that it's
been scribed to a rock at its base. This is Sun Ray Kelley stuff...
the kind of person William was probably referring to before the slide
show when he good-spiritedly mentioned "those wacky west-coasters."
http://www.strawhomes.com/build/here/now2000/tour/15.html
Also note the nonlinear straw-clay wall lower on the page. Some action
shots of that wall being made the previous year are here:
http://www.strawhomes.com/build/here/now1999/tour/04.html
General views of that structure-in-progress:
http://www.strawhomes.com/build/here/now1999/tour/03.html
More photos of that timberframer's work:
http://www.potkettleblack.com/natbild/sunray.html

Josh mentioned Alfred von Bachmayr's straw-clay mixing machine, which
he called "the worm." Here's some photos:
http://www.strawhomes.com/build/here/now2000/tour/08.html
An introductory article to straw-clay by Frank Andresen is here:
http://www.networkearth.org/naturalbuilding/clay.html
Something Frank wrote in '97 about woodchip-clay:
http://www.foxmaple.com/proclay.html
Robert Laporte and Paula Baker-Laporte, and the straw-clay Econest:
http://bakerlaporte.com/econests/
(Note the link to the New Mexico straw-clay building code... er,
"guideline." I consider this yet another building-code failure. Of
course, New Mexico is the only place in the world to adopt strawbale
codes that flat-out reject load-bearing; however, apparently anybody
who wants to can get a variance just by asking, so that's A Good
Thing. Maybe just the introduction of straw-clay has merit, even if
the execution of the code has flawed aspects.)

Regarding the breathability of composite wall systems, there's a
fascinating report about the permeability of various
plasters/stuccos/renders, including earthen. The information, while
(curiously) indicated to be in specific reference to strawbale, should
be equally applicable to any wall system. A synopsis of the study is
available in pdf format (Adobe Acrobat) from the CMHC, which is sort
of like the Canadian equivalent of HUD, at
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/publications/en/rh-pr/tech/00-132_e.pdf
The full report is available in hard copy from the CMHC - free to
Canadians, but at a cost to us 'Murricans. However, a draft copy of
the full report can be downloaded from the Masonry Heater
Association's special collections library:
http://mha-net.org/msb/research/CMHCsbplaster.pdf
A post to an email list points out that air permeability and vapor
permeability aren't the same thing:
http://www.repp.org/discussion/strawbale/200110/msg00172.html
There's an article at
http://www.strawhomes.com/bonus-articles/strawter.htm
which is again about strawbale but contains info pertinent to other
materials and systems (in fact, often derived from other materials and
systems in the first place) - facts and figures about air migration,
specifically regarding moisture vapor but also applicable to air
changes and whole-structure "breathability." (Even though I was the
principle author of this article, I may not be as completely convinced
about some of it as I once was.)

Three helpful articles about earth plasters, and one about earth and
straw generally, by Keely Meagen, Cedar Rose, Carol Crews, and Athena
and Bill Steen:
http://www.strawhomes.com/bonus-articles/earthplaster.html

A brief article about an evapo-transpirative wastewater system along
the lines of a Living Machine:
http://www.networkearth.org/naturalbuilding/wick.html
Living Machine?
http://www.livingmachines.com/
A science-based intro to composting toilets, with a decidedly less-fun
throne-side manner than Joe Jenkins:
http://www.networkearth.org/naturalbuilding/toilets.html
Oh, and by the way - speaking of Joe Jenkins - for those who don't
already know, The Humanure Handbook is online in its ENTIRETY. Free.
Give it a read.
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html

A Natural / Alternative Building Photo Gallery I put together:
http://www.potkettleblack.com/natbild/

That's all that's coming to mind at the moment...

- - - - -

End appended email.



Oh, something else - Has anybody seen the DCAT
CD/video/soon-to-be-DVD? How is it?



Alright, I'm stopping.



My personal playsite:
http://www.potkettleblack.com

Yep Frank finds us Americans are a little fruity-earthy-groovey!  He was
out in Briceland  CA plastering on Jacubal's SB vault, and we got a
chance to talk  ( and I got real muddy too, BTW, drove 3 hours each day
for the privilege of "assisting" by shoveling /sifting, mixing, and
hauling clay buckets for the master while he worked, and I was glad to
do it!)

Frank can't travel with tools such as sprayers as a "tourist" so he has
to use what his employers can provide

I pestered him to write a book or booklet on clay methods and he is
convinced he doesn't have enough experience, he sent me a ton of images
from his slides and I really want to get these up on the web in some
orderly display, most are of his brick makings, and a bunch are him
plastering the vault. I will post a few url links below.

After using a sprayer just for a few minutes I am completely sold on
  using them for all base coats...wrist/trowel action is very taxing on
the arms and body especially for 3 coat work INSIDE and then OUTSIDE,
and then ceilings!!!... so anything  to free up precious time and energy
is welcome, and the FUN is in the finish coat work anyway
http://www.papercrete.com/claysoakPit.jpg    bales for clay soaking pit

http://www.papercrete.com/valulplasterclose.jpg   edge of vault plastered

http://www.papercrete.com/frank18blockmaker.jpg   handy single earth
block maker

http://www.papercrete.com/FrankAndressen.jpg   ole frank

  http://www.papercrete.com/FrankonVault.jpg

http://www.papercrete.com/Frankplaster2.jpg
<http://www.webcom.com/crtaylor/FrankGuySB.jpg>

http://www.www.papercrete.com/Frankplaster1.jpg
<http://www.webcom.com/crtaylor/Frankreading.jpg>

http://www.papercrete.com/Frankroof1.jpg


Wood Chip and Clay walls- article by Frank
http://www.foxmaple.com/proclay.html

German clay barns restored: Clay barns
http://www.centrevillesettlement.com/claynogn.htm

Ms. Charmaine  Taylor/ Taylor Publishing
http://www.dirtcheapbuilder.com    http://www.papercrete.com
PO Box 375, Cutten (Eureka) CA 95534
707-441-1632     tms@...

Hi All,

Found an interesting 1998 article on the Web about professional clay plasterer
Frank Andresen who gave a very interesting talk and slide presentation to a
bunch of us at Canelo a couple of years ago. The part I remember most from that
evening was a scene where a kind of debate had broken out about the pros and con
of mechanization in applying clay plaster. Frank uses a sprayer and compressor
to apply base coat and prominent in the
*machines-are-loud-smelly-and-break-all-the-time* was Kelly Megan who wrote this
all up for TLS in an excellent article a few issues back. At one point Frank's
slightly German accented voice cut through the conversation: "After trowling on
a thousand square feet of base coat - Mother Earth is no longer speaking with
you!" Everybody rolled around laughing and we went on with the presentation.
There were amazing slides of some of Franks restoration work in Germany and USA.

<qoute>
Frank Andresen and the Strawbale Revolution Strawbale construction was first
pioneered on the plains of western Nebraska in the 1890s. And it has come into
vogue again as more and more Americans look for alternative methods of building
houses that are both affordable and long-lasting. For German clay-plastering
expert Frank Andresen this growing movement has offered a niche in which he can
put his skills to good use.
<unqoute>
http://cybertraveler.org/strawbale.html

First of all to Charmaine who wanted to know what I thought about the
Tirolessa sprayer.  I liked the simplicity of it, it was compact and
easy to use.  The person who brought it down did so with a 5hp
compressor that for the high straw mixes was a little on the weak side.
   I would think, and Bob Bolles (who owns one) told me so, as did
another fellow from Colorado, that an 8hp unit is much better.  I would
agree in theory, but since I haven't tried it that way, can't say for
sure.  Ask bbbbBob is what I say.

And then another piece of business stuff for Charmaine which is my
wanting to ask her if she would be willing to peddle calendars for us.
If so Charmaine, let me know and we can talk details.  As for the
calendars, they are off to a great start.   The biggest input came from
the auction conducted by Wolfey at his convergence where he managed to
extract $1,800 US dollars out of 12 calendars.  I don't know how he
managed that act of wizzardry, but we have since offered to make him
our business manager.  That chunk really helps in that the basic costs
were a little high, we have a chunk to pay off before we start
generating any funds to be used for worthy causes.  Chelsea Green
publishers, (they've reverted back to the original owners that were
there when we did The Straw Bale House) took a 100 for New Year's
gifts.  So if you still need calendars, don't be shy, don't think you
missed the boat, by all means order some, even we think they're good.

Then a question for BillyBobChrist......  Would you like to take over
this list or are you happy where it is.  I saw your post, but couldn't
really tell what you were saying except that I whinned good enough to
RT.  "Whinned," how bout "seductively feeeding him goood ideas?"
Anyhow, if you did, could, etc. would there be the capacity to post
images as is now the case with the Yahoo site?  I think that since
digital cameras are becoming more common, it would greatly enhance
communication if others could put up some photos about what they are
doing.  I really wouldn't want to miss the demise of straw bale icons
into depths of winoism.  So would there be any advantage to having you
do it or would it make more work for you?

To the rest of you, how bout as Rob suggested, sending invites to
others who you think might be interested?  His first message to the
list "in the beginning" contains a sufficient amount of info to paste
into an invitation.

B....

Athena & Bill Steen
The Canelo Project
HC1 Box 324
Canelo/Elgin, AZ 85611
absteen@...
www.caneloproject.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Holas mes amis;

Just in case any of you thought I was lyin' in the invitation that
was sent out to you, I managed to wring-out this tear-stained excerpt
from a message which Beel sent to me recently in the aftermath of the
annual Canelo Project Fiesta:

Beel wept:
============= copied without permission==================
[snip]

...the list is down, plus slow and doesn't like it when discussions
stray off the permitted topic, why don't we assemble a lively bunch
of folks, good humor types, not too serious or important, who would
just like to communicate with one another, and periodically send out
interesting pieces of news, info or gossip, etc.
In my case what that would mean is that instead of writing Rob or
someone other lost soul out there a synopsis of what's happening down
here, I might send it to 20 to 30 others as well

[snip]
============== end of hijacked message===================

And there you have it. A new SB List has been born, a phoenix rising
out of the ashes of the beloved SB List at CREST.

I was only able to invite 50 of you to join (Yahoogroups limit) but please feel
free to invite any of your old CREST Listbuddies/buddettes and let's see if we
can get the membership up to two bazillion by Christmas. (or 800 anyway.) Hokay
? Hokay.

PS: I nominate Dion to be the ListMom of this List since he was doing
such an excellent job with the CREST List.
         ~~~ * ~~~
          Rob Tom
   Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<ArchiLogic@...>
(winnow the "chaff" from my edress in your reply)

Please visit http://www.theHungerSite.com