ADVENTURES OF THE CANADIAN FAMILY ROBINSON

Sorry I have been a bit slack on posting this past week!
Here are some pictures of the framed in bond beam and the pour with the 50 M concrete truck. You can see the aircraft cable loops that are under the bond beam, these are embedded into the concrete now and will be tied into the foundation ones to help “earthquake proof” our home. As far as poring concrete, we calculated how long it would take us to do it by hand (at least 5 days) so cost wise it was worth having the pump truck come. It didn’t take long to get the 3m of concrete into the bond beam. We will be tarping the walls overnight tonight since the forecast is for rain. Tomorrow we will let it set for the day then forms will come off the concrete on Wed. Then onto the 2×6 framing which will take somewhere between 3 and 5 days, then onto roof trusses!! They will be delivered early next week so will start going up a week from now! It is starting to feel like a house and the reality is sinking in that in a matter of a few weeks we will have a roof over the house , (thank goodness with the rains coming!) And be onto the final cob and then the interior!
I also added some pictures of our shrinking clay pile and wood shavings pile!!
Today it has been 2 years to the day since we moved into our 5th wheel. What an amazing two years it has been, we have grown way stronger as a family and are so excited to be living our dream and be closer each day to finishing our home!

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We are DONE the cob up to the bond beam WAHOO!! It was 18 days of cob to make it up to that point which is 7 feet high in the lowest section on the south wall and higher on the East and West walls. After such a big push the wall will need about 4-5 days of drying time before we can start the hammering etc required to get the framing up for the concrete bond beam as well as to harden enough to hold the weight of the concrete. The bond beam has the purpose of tying our foundation in with the aircraft cables to the bondbeam, they will run diagonally and will in an earthquake make the home “move” together.. We have changed the plan for above the bondbeam after having a chat with Kris our engineer. We will be framing a 2×6 load bearing wall in the center of the concrete bond beam and will cob the 20 inches around it. This will give us 3 walls of cob now instead of the previous planned infill wall. We looked at what the change would do as far as heat loss and the calculation came out at less than a 2% change. And it will also speed up the process since the light clay infill has been more labor intensive and slower than our cob. While waiting for the cob to dry out enough (which is happening fast tonight with the wind ) we started on plastering the outside of the North wall. I added some pictures of that, it is now fully plastered (no pics of it done yet) and well on its way to drying. The scratch coat of plaster that went on over the lathe was a cob mix with higher straw that was chopped smaller by driving over for longer with the bobcat. We are really happy with how well it went on over the lath and will be plastering the inside of that wall once the roof is on and we are sure the infill is dry enough to cover on both sides. We have also spent some time with the kids plastering Curts light clay woodchip infill studio.The LOVE it!! It has gone really well and since its a framed 2×6 wall not the thick 18 inch wall on the home the infill is almost dry enough to plaster both sides already..
So here are some pictures

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We are ALMOST done our cob up to where the concrete bond beam will be poured!! We are so excited!! We have Kris Dick our awesome engineer coming by in the morning tomorrow for a quick visit, we are going to check with him about making a change above the bond beam. We have not been 100% set of doing the double framed walls up there with light clay woodchip infill. So we are hoping to switch it to 2 x 6 framing on the center above the bond beam embedded in the 20 inches wide of cob. We are having a blast building with cob and it is going up super fast for us. With our amazing crew of Curtis, Gord, Eric, Ben and Daylon working the past two days.. 12 yards of cob have gone up a day. Crazy.. We are so happy with the progress we are making and will keep posting pics as we can. We are about 3 weeks away from having a roof on!!!!! Here are some pictures and also some of the goats enjoying eating the hay off the scaffolding and trying to figure out how to climb on it! And a pic of our test patch of plaster on our north infill wall, (it is sticking AMAZING! And a picture of me working on the lathe on Curts infill studio. We will start the cob floor and plaster on it this weekend..

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Thanks friends who came out to cob with us today xoxo Wish I took the camera out earlier and also brought it to the river for the swim afterwards too!

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