Tag: straw bale construction (Page 2 of 2)

Roof started, bales arriving

19 June, 2016 / Jason

There will be no food photos, look-at-this-sunset photos, or archaeology photos in this post. (Apologies if any of those are your thing.) Around here lately it’s all construction, all the time.

There will of course be some cat and dog photos. I am not a monster.

One section of the main beam in place

Previously we showed you the central spine of the building: a series of beams, sitting up on columns, that help to hold up the roof. These beams and posts were only half the story though. Another series of even bigger beams has to go up on top of the first one in order to form the ridge of the roof. The longest section is about 5.5 metres long, and getting all that wood up there was probably the toughest and scariest job we’ve done so far.

Main beam complete, plus a rare summer storm with rainbows

In the second photo you can see how the ridge beam looked once it was secured in place. You can also see that we get the occasional dramatic summer storm.

And from another angle it’s clear how close the building is to the pool. We’re hoping that will turn out to be a good thing as the roof itself, with its wide eaves, will provide some much-needed shade on the pool terrace in the late afternoons.

Sirem and Koray taking a break by the pool; ridge beam in the background

With the ridge beam up we were ready to start work on the roof, which meant a final big timber delivery. Here’s a stack of six-metre planks ready to be used as rafters.

Rafters delivered

The rafters need diagonal cuts on each end to get them to the right length, plus a “bird’s mouth” cut to make sure they sit nicely on the top rail of the wall framing. We’ve also been sanding the bits that are going to remain visible once the insulation and the ceiling panels go in — it would be a shame to hide all that nice wood behind a plain white ceiling.

Evening shot of the first few rafters installed

The roof structure starting to take shape

Of course Cezmi went up on the roof to inspect it

The roof isn’t finished yet, but it’s already made a big difference to the site. Even a partial roof provides a lot of shade and the rising summer temperatures are easier to bear now we can get out of the sun. The cats and dogs have noticed this too and are hanging around even more than usual.

Zeytin is always helpful

Cezmi takes a break from his supervisory role

Tea breaks are much more pleasant in the shade

It’s harvest time for wheat farmers in the area, so we’ve been buying straw bales while they’re cheap. So far we’re paying 9 lira, or about £2.15 per bale, delivered. (Apparently if you leave it too late in the year, the price goes up quite a lot.) The first batch was 80 bales that came up on the back of a tractor trailer, but we’re going to need about 500 in total for the building. And another 500 later for buildings two and three, but that’s a future problem.

Straw bales arriving

For now we’re storing the bales in what will one day be the cafe kitchen. You can see some ceiling joists in the top of the shot, as the kitchen will have a little storage loft above it.

Straw bales stored in the kitchen

Here’s a view from inside the cafe area, looking over at the doorway to the kitchen. Those two interior window structures on the right will eventually become the bar (a very important feature).

Looking across at the bales via the kitchen door and the bar

Sookie, mother of kittens, has taken to disappearing on mysterious multi-day journeys now that the weather is warm. She decided that sleeping on straw bales was a good enough reason to come home though. It’s always a relief to see her back safely.

Sookie returns

We decided on old-school wooden planks over OSB or plywood for the roof. One reason is that real wood will hold up better if there is ever a leak. Another is that sections like the verandah roof and under the eaves (where there won’t be any insulation or ceiling panels) will look a lot nicer in real wood. And the cost worked out about the same as OSB anyway.

Roof planks going on

Another view from the pool area

After all the rafters and planks are up, the next steps are gutters, waterproof membrane, and ceramic tiles, in that order. Then we can get to the fun part of stacking those straw bale walls.

Deliveries

30 March, 2016 / Jason

Let me warn you up front: this blog post, and probably future posts for a while, are going to be variations on the theme of “look at this thing we made!”

With that said… I am learning, too late in life, that a huge part of construction is just moving stuff around. Here are three of our most recent deliveries, more or less neatly stacked.

Bricks

Steel

Timber

That last one is not just a gratuitous night-time shot: the timber really did arrive late in the evening. In fact it was delayed for a week or so longer than we were expecting. The 10cm x 10cm pieces on the right are chemically treated to resist moisture, and those took a while to get hold of.

It wasn’t really a problem though. We have so much to do if we’re going to hit our target of real guests by late summer, so we just worked on some landscaping instead of timber framing. This next shot is yet another Sketchup model showing our plans for around the pool. A steel railing to stop people falling off the terrace after one Tuborg too many, and on the other side a little pavilion surrounded by gardens and incorporating two built-in seating areas. In summer we’ll hang some canvas or cotton at the front of the seating area to keep people in the shade during the hot afternoons.

Some of the planned landscaping around the pool. The shadows are as they would be on the summer solstice at around 4pm.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that we haven’t really decided what’s happening at the back of the pool: probably a wooden fence with a lattice to grow climbing plants on. It would be nice to have a rendered and limewashed brick wall but we’re thinking it’s a bit too close to the edge of the hillside for a heavy wall to be 100% safe. Anyway, here’s the progress we’ve made in the last week on the seating area.

Poolside seating pavilion, under construction

Koray, the guy you saw welding a door in the previous post, is now working with us full-time. We really needed some more people power if we’re serious about opening the first two rooms this summer. One of the first things he did for us was to install that door.

The door Koray was welding in the last post, now safely installed.

The machine room door, now safely installed. (I did the twirly bits, honest.)

Koray has also done great work on building a stone retaining wall up the left side of the driveway, as well as a dozen other things.

Stone retaining wall on driveway nearly finished

Which reminds me, a big thank-you to my cousin Stephanie and her partner Mick. They visited a couple of weeks back and helped carry a lot of the stones into position. (We are officially becoming terrible hosts: “Had enough breakfast? All done? OK, great, now carry this 40 kilo rock.”)

At the foot of the stone wall there’s a concrete gutter. Previously this ran into a large hole that connected to the storm-water drain. Health and safety concerns suggest we shouldn’t leave a large hole lying around long-term, so I got to improve my bricklaying and rendering skills by building a drain cover. We tried using powdered dyes to colour the rendering coat: two scoops of red, four scoops of yellow, and one scoop of black. Not too bad a result if you like the Santa Fe adobe look.

Here’s one I made earlier: drain cover. Note modernist grille made by welding scrap rebar pieces together.

Here are a couple of photos of things we’re making with all those deliveries. The bricks are for parts of the guest bathroom walls. We’re still committed to straw bale, but we lost our nerve at the thought of the waterproofing needed to be sure that a straw bale in the wall behind a shower would never get wet. So the external walls of the bathroom, and the wall between the two bathrooms, will be brick. Still, they’re big 30 x 20 cm bricks with some air holes in them, there’ll be a double wall, and the 10cm gap between the inner and outer wall will be filled with polystyrene insulation. It won’t quite be as good as straw, but should still be reasonably well insulated.

The first two guest bathrooms laid out with bricks. Each bathroom is about 3 metres by 2 metres: big enough for everyone?

The steel is for pool terrace railings as shown in the Sketchup picture above. They’re nearly done; they just need some twisty decorative bits (“ferforje” in Turkish) and a coat of black paint and they’re ready to go in.

Pool terrace railings under construction

And all this welding seems to be catching: Sirem has now joined the party. It looks like she’s been doing it for years, doesn’t it?

Sirem getting in on the welding action. (Thanks to Stephanie for the photo.)

We’re still some distance away from the straw bale and plastering stage, but we’ve done some more testing recently to decide between clay plaster (which has the benefit of basically being free) and lime plaster, which stands up to moisture a lot better. I think we’ve decided on the lime plaster solution, but it’s a shame to have to say no to the clay as the texture is really nice.

Plaster testing: three coats of mud plaster

Plaster testing: three coats of clay plaster on a straw bale (second coat still showing at the top there)

Plaster testing: two coats of lime plaster on a straw bale

The pool has been properly filled and we are pleased to report that it didn’t fall over or spring a leak. There was even a warm day in late February when I was stupid enough to try a first swim. The pool was very nice but the water needs a bit more sun on it, I think.

What the pool looks like now

And finally, a few shots of plants and animals to show that it is not quite all-construction, all-the-time.

Spring returns: almond blossoms in the neighbour’s garden

Zeliş relaxing

Zeytin is in a good mood, as usual.

Cezmi, Sirem’s sister’s cat, maybe now our cat, who believes he is the construction site manager

Thanks for reading!

Planning permission is go

22 August, 2015 / Jason

Big news: the council has finally granted planning permission for our revised four-hotel-rooms-plus-a-house idea. Like every bureaucratic process it took longer than we expected or wanted, although we did get some reassuring feedback on the structural soundness of our designs. Anyway, we’re really glad it’s all sorted, and now we can move on to getting quotes for the concrete-slab foundation work and the pool.

Now we can build all this!

A while ago we passed our one-year anniversary of being here. It would be great if more had happened up in the orchard by now — at the moment it’s just the fig trees, dry grass, marker pegs, and one steel telegraph pole with a light and a power connection box. But we’re optimistic that with all of the red tape out of the way, some earth should start getting moved around very soon.

One thing that we did manage to finish before the one-year mark was the kitchen. I know it has been drawn out over many blog posts, but it is now finally, properly finished. Here are some shots showing the tiled worktop and the finishing touches on the woodwork.

High-angle view of the kitchen. Hope everyone likes the tiles.

The kitchen sink view looks out into the street at tractor-wheel height.

The kitchen sink window looks out into the street at tractor-wheel height.

Free-standing cabinet between the fridge and the door. Plus added cat (Maya).

My mum and dad came to stay with us for the first half of August — we are trying to talk them into coming at a less outrageously hot time of year for their next visit. But it was good seeing our progress through their eyes, as they were last here almost exactly a year ago. Dad was extremely helpful in the garden, as he was the first time around. And they talked us into taking a seaside break for a few days: the first nights we had spent away from this place since we arrived. (A huge thank you to Sirem’s sister Çisem for holding the fort and feeding all the animals while we were away.)

We spent three nights at the Panion Park Hotel in the coastal town of Guzelçamlı, close to the entrance to the Dilek National Park. It was a really pleasant, quiet hotel and we can recommend it. They have a lovely pool and an equally lovely bar by the pool. They’ve only been open for six years and we were impressed with how well their landscaped garden had come along. Lots of ideas to file away for future reference.

The view from our room in the Panion Park Hotel. Great garden.

What else have we been up to? A recent carpentry project was the door to the second bedroom. The old door was a bit of a mess and we had to lock it with a very amateurish chain and padlock around the handle. More importantly, the doorway was much lower than it needed to be, with a small window over the door for no good reason. More than one taller visitor had smacked their head on the low lintel (sorry, Mark). So we came up with a plan for a full-height door that included a central window with shutters for extra ventilation in summer. Sketchup again, of course. We think it all turned out OK.

New door from the outside, shutters closed.

From the inside: going for a medieval look with all the black iron hardware.

And with the shutters open to let in a breeze.

The weather has been really hot, of course, but never humid. We found that the sun was tracking so far north that we weren’t getting enough shade on the sedir in the middle of the day. So we’ve rigged up some sheets to make it feel more pleasant.

Dealing with the heat: sheets as shadecloth.

The grape vines do well in all that sun.

Summer also brings the insect population to life. (Which is mostly fine, honest: even the wasps have their role in pollinating the figs.) One day we found some ants struggling to lift something up the wall and into the garden. Turns out they had stolen a cat biscuit, and were cooperating admirably to get it back to the nest.

The ant helpfully standing on the biscuit must be the one in charge, surely?

And to conclude: some readers will be unsurprised to learn that our four kittens have not found new homes yet. We still haven’t named them, because we are clinging to the (perhaps foolish) belief that we’re going to successfully give most of them away. In an effort to show potential adopters how cute they are, here are some photos at 2 weeks and at 5 weeks. Incredible how much the ears grow over that time.

The tabby one.

The black one.

The white one.

The grey one (who Sirem refuses to give away).

Why everyone needs an air compressor

11 November, 2014 / Jason

It’s a busy period at the moment. There’s just the two of us here, and we’re trying to get the rest of the renovation done on the farmhouse so we can switch focus to the straw-bale construction up in the orchard.

Of all the tools we either brought with us or bought here in Turkey, I think the most useful is the air compressor. I used to wonder what these were really for: why would anyone want a big supply of compressed air?

Compressor in action.

It turns out that the reason you want compressed air is because you can use it to do almost anything. Instead of buying lots of small tools like drills or sanders with individual electric motors, the idea is to have one big electric motor that fills a tank with compressed air, and then use the air to power lighter, simpler, hopefully cheaper tools.

Gauges, valves, copper pipes… it’s got everything!

In truth, we haven’t thrown away all our electric saws and drills. But the compressor lets us run tools that don’t always have an electric equivalent. The most dramatic are probably the two nail guns we own: scary! We also have an air-powered staple gun which is incredibly handy for things like upholstery.

For instance: we like our Toyota Hilux, and it will carry a lot of cargo. But one of its few weak points is that you don’t really have a boot. There’s nowhere to lock up your bags or shopping out of sight. So we built a removable tray cover out of basic timber and board, but made it look more professional by covering it in black vinyl. We wouldn’t have been able to do such a nice job of stretching the vinyl without the power of the staple gun.

Truck tray cover: timber and oriented-strand board covered in black vinyl.

We hope it looks professional.

Another air tool that’s going to get a lot of use in the future is a mortar-and-plaster sprayer we had to order from the US. This is going to be a life saver when it comes to the hard work of getting all those straw bale walls covered in three coats of clay plaster.

We tried the sprayer out for the first time on a smaller job: covering a brick wall at the front of the house with cement render.

It’s a clever tool. You dip the bucket into the wet mortar mix…

… and then the compressed air blasts the mortar out onto the wall.

Rendered in no time; will look much nicer once limewashed.

If we hadn’t had to stop and manually mix up additional mortar a few times, the job would have been done in ten minutes. It’s a really smart and simple tool.

Speaking of plastering, we’ve also started to experiment with using the clay-rich soil from our orchard as a plaster base. The oven at the back of the garden was looking a bit worse for wear, so giving it a new coat seemed like good practice.

Fresh coat of earth plaster (just dirt mixed with a bit of ash) on the clay oven.

In that photo, you might spot some cracks forming in our plaster coat as it dries. That was both frustrating and encouraging: it means that the plaster mix we get from simply digging up our soil is actually too rich in clay. We need to add some sand and maybe some straw and lime to perfect it. Further work needed, as the scientists say.

What else have we done lately? We worried that Zeytin (the dog) would not be warm enough as the nights got colder, so we gave her a clear plastic curtain to help keep her body heat inside the doghouse.

A curtain to keep Zeytin warm. Yes, we are soft-hearted people, I know.

And here is a shot of Zeytin looking like a fugitive in a wanted poster.

And here is a shot of Zeytin looking like a fugitive in an old “wanted” poster.

The next big project is definitely finishing the kitchen. It’s embarrassing how long I’ve put that one off. It’s not that we don’t have a kitchen; it’s just that it’s mostly made out of bookshelves and it doesn’t have a sink in it yet.

Thanks for reading. As usual I will close with a random selection of pictures.

Sirem wanted me to post this shot of some marigolds just to show that they are still in bloom.

More bounty from our neighbour’s garden: we fried most of these peppers and froze them to use over the winter.

A moody-looking sunset over our village.

Straw bale fire testing

12 July, 2014 / Jason

A few posts ago, we saw that straw bale construction holds up well to earthquakes. What about fire?

Turkey is dry enough in summer that you can get fires in the pine forests up in the hills, so you never know. And a lot of people’s first reaction to the idea of a straw bale wall is that it would surely be a bit flammable. Are we in danger of losing our hotel bungalows to a fire that comes sweeping down from the mountains?

Loose straw obviously burns very easily, and so cleaning up on the job site is important. Straw in a bale doesn’t burn as well as you would think, because it’s hard to get oxygen in there. And once you get 40mm of clay plaster on them, straw bale walls turn out to be surprisingly fire-resistant.

Here are a couple of videos. The first one is from Australia and shows a really dramatic simulated bushfire with temperatures of over 1000 °C pitted against a pre-fab straw bale wall. Temperatures on the other side of the wall stay at a comfortable 35 °C. The second video shows more of a backyard test but it gives a good impression of how the thick coating of plaster helps stop the bale from burning.

The plan

2 June, 2014 / ighadmin

So what are we planning to build, exactly? Here’s a “before” picture showing what we’ve got to work with. Our fig orchard is that area with the trees up on the hill, and the courtyard with buildings on the left is the farmhouse where we’ll live while we work on the project. Towards the back of the picture you can see a cutting where the road goes up to a nearby lake and on into the mountains.

Plan showing the orchard and farmhouse as they are now.

Plan showing the farmhouse and orchard as they are now.

We want to build a six-room hotel, with the rooms grouped into three pairs. Each building will be a generously proportioned bungalow, and each room will have its own secluded verandah. We also need a swimming pool (of course!) and a kitchen with a terrace for serving breakfast, etc. Here’s our current plan for how it will all be laid out. That’s the kitchen and terrace at the bottom centre of the picture, and you can see a couple of pergolas giving shade for the garden. There’s also a low wall that runs along our southern boundary. Most of the verandahs will look out across the pool and to the south. Plenty of room on the roofs for solar panels, too.

Plan showing how the different buildings will be laid out on the orchard block

These pictures were done in Sketchup 2013. It’s a great free-to-use 3D design program and we totally recommend it if you’re building anything from a bookshelf to a house.

Straw bale construction

28 May, 2014 / ighadmin

We’re planning to build our guest accommodation using timber-frame straw-bale construction. We’re doing that for lots of different reasons. We think it looks great, e.g., in this straw-bale house interior from New Zealand.

The 50cm+ thick walls will make excellent insulation during the hot summer months, and it’s a cost-effective green-building idea. It also fits in well with local Turkish architecture: many houses in the village are made from kerpiç (adobe bricks) and once we’ve covered our straw bales in clay plaster, the walls will look very similar.

One final reason: Turkey does get the occasional earthquake, and we’ve been really impressed with how well straw-bale houses hold up to earthquake testing.

Tag: straw bale construction (Page 2 of 2)

Roof started, bales arriving

Deliveries

Planning permission is go

Why everyone needs an air compressor

Straw bale fire testing

The plan

Straw bale construction

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