going potty

We really need the rain that we are having and the garden is loving it. However, as we don't live on the land and Rick is up the mountain with the truck it means I am walking backwards and forwards to the farm, leaving the house when it is fine and then getting drenched.......

so today I have been mostly potting on all the plants at the house.



There are a lot up at the farm that are in the cold frame, hardening off and nearly ready to go out. The next lot will go up to the farm as soon as I've planted out what is up there and made room.

milling, part one

All the wood too big for the chainsaw mill is at the local sawmill. where rick spent a day and a half milling with the guys there.







There are still alot of pieces left in the forest rick has to mill on his own.



A lot of work to do before construction can begin

out with the old in with the new

I'd picked our first young broad beans the other day and made a risotto. I always cook too much of everything, always worried there won't be enough, so the following day, I made the left-over risotto into balls (well lumps actually) coated them in fresh egg and fresh breadcrumbs. Served with freshly picked leaves from our cut and come again salad bed and chipped up the last of the parsnips...

foundations

foundations are their very own thing. everything needs them, everything is reliant upon them doing their job. skimp at your own peril.

i thought long and hard about the type of foundations i was going to need. i had plenty of time to think, plenty of time digging to think. i had several ideas, some of them were possible, some of them weren't. given that i am trying to build on the side of a mountain, i hoped i would be able to tie into the bed-rock and not have to dig deep footings.

there was one other issue, other than ground conditions that helped determine the finish height of the foundations, that was the two extensions that have to be segued into. i needed to finish at something the right height in order for this to happen. that meant i couldn't go too far into the ground, or too far up.



i wondered about shallow trenches infilled with crushed stone i had reclaimed from clearing the over-site, but in the end i didn't have to dig any trenches, but build forms. i set a level from a building line i described in-front of the old main building. dug down until i hit solid ground and excavated back, into the mountain, on that level.



even though the grade beam (a strip foundation laid at ground level) wasn't that deep, i used 4 continuous lengths of 10 mm rebar to ring round the foundation. at pre-described intervals i set in formers where i want to tie down the timber frame into the foundation with threaded bar.







given the relative small size of each section of the foundation, its distance from the road, and its cost, there was no chance or point of getting a ready mix delivery. so i had the dry materials delivered, mixed it, poured it and set it.



this is the chute i constructed to ease getting the sand and stone down, to save me having to barrow it, and to get it to the only place i could house it.





my feeling about using concrete in building houses is this. keep it in the ground. i'm not building an NCP carpark. its just not necessary, and there are far more preferable ways to construct. unfortunately, here in Portugal, it seems to be regarded as the only material to construct with. i would like to show people that that just does not have to be the case. that there are friendlier, more tactile, more efficient, cheaper, sturdier, more versatile materials available. principally timber. but then i would say that, i'm a carpenter.



in total, it wasn't more than 15 cubic meters of concrete, which isn't a lot if you have it delivered. mixing by hand is another issue. but in overall terms not that big a deal.



having said that, concrete is a superb material for foundations, and i would not eschew it, just on the basis of apeasment to green lobbyists. my rationale whilst building this house is that it has to be as cheap as possible, essentially free if it can be, aswell as fulfill all the structural requirements and be as aesthetically pleasing, and as finely built as possible, to the highest achievable standard. be as green as you can be, but you don't have to be an idiot just for the sake of it. use the right material for the job.





i stepped the foundation to help prevent the ingress of damp or water onto the timber frame, effectively creating a gutter all the way around the frame.



i'm writing this to show what you can do when you set your mind to it. knowledge you can come to. ideas you can find. heart, you need to have.

Mobile home

The truck came today to take away all the bits of timber that Rick can't mill himself, they should have come yesterday, but as we all know now, that's Portugal, and nothing happens when you expect it. Only having to wait an extra day is nothing.











There is still a pile down by the house which apparently will be picked up on Thursday, then the big milling can start next week.

over-site clearance

it wasn't until i had removed the vast majority of the main building that i could see the extent of the problem that lay ahead. the centre section of the back wall was built up over the existing rock face, which projected out over a meter toward the front of the building. you couldn't see this until a large area of stone work that sat at the base had been removed, this effectively had been acting as a buttress.



looking at the extent to which it ran, it didn't appear that it would be possible to remove and rebuild just that section without undermining the rest of the wall, so i decided, instead of leaving in the back wall, to remove it.







from this point it was possible to see more clearly the extent of the ground work necessary to clear the over-site and dig out where necessary for the foundations.



way back near the beginning of site clearance i was hoping to get away without having to run in a concrete foundation. i was hoping that there would be sufficient bed rock to toe into to act as a foundation, or to be able to dig out trenches and fill with crushed stone, as i had done with the terrace wall. however site conditions wouldn't allow for either option. because of the nature of how slate is formed i had every aspect of the process running across the site where the foundations needed to be. in one place it was soil mixed with rock, in another mud, in another slate, next to that mudstone, then rock so hard it must have been gneiss, then slate. it all ran in seams, but not evenly at the same elevation across the site, more rippling in and out like raspberry ripple icecream. (oh god if only there was such a thing here). that left very little alternative but to excavate each run on a very individual basis. remember all this was done by hand, good old pick and shovel work a lot of the time, the breaker when i needed it, and a lot of wheelbarrowing, no mini digger, no skips, no grab lorry.

just clearing the over-site i estimated i removed 30 cubic meters of rock rubble and earth.

knobs and knockers

I've been taking photos of knobs and knockers, not all from Portugal, but anyway. I liked the idea and I like both the words; knobs and knockers, meaning of which, is lost in translation as I discovered when in France last weekend. My obsession rubbed off on the people I was staying with and the people I met, who all said they will never be able to pass a door and not think of me!!! nice




this, I know is not a knob or a knocker but I liked it because we had a similar one on the house I grew up in (only in English!!)

and this, cos it's lovely,