Purple thumb and dog sympathy

I’ve got about half of the patio outside the sun porch laid.  About half of the bricks have been locked in with the gaps filled with sand.  I won’t work any more sand between cracks until I have the last of the bricks laid and the perimeter skirting done.  I got just enough done to stabilize the bricks where we walk.  That’s enough for now.

A word to the wise . . . when using a dead blow hammer to settle and level bricks, try and keep your thumb out of the way.  Chloe’s willing to offer sympathy, but is expecting hugs in return.  Ah, dog love.

Stair ladder

On TinyHouseBlog today was a story about Brookside Cottage, a tiny little house that looks to be about 14×20 with a second story bedroom that’s about half the width of the house.

What struck me was the very narrow stair.  I’ve seen alternating tread designs, but this was the most simple to construct that I’ve seen so far.

I also been pushing Terry to find a mortar mixer for mixing the eps-crete.  I don’t nag well and this is something he doesn’t feel invested in, so that small project is going nowhere.  I really need to learn to nag.

Yesterday I opened paint cans and ground foam and I plan to do more today.  I’m trying to stockpile so I can do wall building every other day once the weather improves.  We had snow and hail the first week of April followed by lots of rain.  So much for the mild northwest weather.

Corner sink and sideboard island

I subscribe to the tiny house blog.  This morning they had a really nice article on living large in a small space which included a picture of a kitchen that I really like.  I like the rustic feel and the ideas for maximizing the small space but better lighting is seriously needed.  The kitchen has a lot of appeal nevertheless.

The layout would rock if the fridge and the stove switched places.  Every time the fridge was opened to get something out when preparing food, you’d be on the wrong side of the door.  If I were to use this layout, I’d get a fridge with the freezer on the bottom and set the door to open in the correct direction for flow.  The sideboard also needs a counter that sticks out over the stool.  If you sit there to eat, there’s nowhere to put your knees.  There should be crown molding or fascia to seal off the space above the cabinets.  That space is a total dust catcher that would be impossible to keep clean without long handled implements.  The gap doesn’t add a thing to the design.

There’s a lot of positive stuff in this kitchen, but with many kitchens, there’s a break between the designer’s vision and best function.

Pump house layout

I’ve been thinking about the pump house, how I’m going to construct it, building the walls, how the cover for the well is going to work.  I’ve got some of the details ironed out.

I need the pump house for a variety of uses; water storage, canned food storage, root cellar, wintering over plants, water treatment.  It’s got to be multipurpose or there’s no point in changing what I’ve got.

Right now we have the pump house sitting on top the well which makes servicing anything about our water supply situation problematic.  The outside dimension of the pump house is 6’6″ square.  The interior height of the pump house is between 3 and 4 feet.  Anything done in the pump house is performed squatting, sitting or kneeling.  Ugh.  If we needed to service the pump, we’d have to lift the roof off the pump house to pull the pump out of the well.  Double ugh.

So, a new pump house is the plan and it’s my task for the summer while Wadly’s working.  I did the research this morning for a building permit and the building I’ve planned comes in at 196sf, under the 200sf threshold for requiring one.

There are two walls of the new pump house which will sit on the well curb.  I can put posts in the ground set in concrete for the three outside corners, but the posts for the three inside corners must be mounted to the well curb.

To mount the posts to the curb I will need to drill holes in the curb and mortar in rebar at the post locations.  I can drill the posts and set them over the rebar pins.  I’ll need smaller holes between the posts for fastening the reinforcing wire.  If I don’t have an impact drill by then, I’ll need to rent/purchase one.

The new pump house needs to have room for a pH conditioner, two 36 inch diameter storage tanks (165 gal ea), a carbon filter, a uv filter and shelves for canned goods.  I’d like to put the chest freezer in there as well.  I don’t know if the heat generated by the freezer compressor would cause a problem.  I’ll have to look into that.

I also have to look at what I’m going to do for a floor.  I want to keep the room connected to the ground to moderate the temperature year round.  That will involve insulating the ground around the pump house and well out about 6′.  I plan to strip the surface cover back and spread bentonite clay to seal the area around the well anyway, so there’s no reason not to lay an insulative layer over that.

I’ll probably pack crushed rock inside the pump house footprint to provide a level base for the floor, then  I can lay whatever material I choose as my floor surface over that.  Concrete may be best, with a central floor drain that exits out away from the well.

As you can see, I’m still planning.  The more I explain it, the more the bits I think about and the more my plan comes together.  The eps-crete walls are a given.  That stuff rocks.

Because the eps-crete can be packed into the wall from just one side, there’s no reason the other side can’t have a full height form.  Because the packing has to be done is section depths of about a foot to insure full coverage (no voids), multiple forms would be required for the working side if lots of height is to be achieved in one work session, but that isn’t a problem.  The forms are very light and can be put in place in minutes and can be made out of scrap.

The key to doing a bigger chunk of wall at a time is the mixing.  A mortar mixer is going to be necessary.  A regular cement mixer will not work as the mix is so light it doesn’t mix.  The paint sticks to the side of the barrel and never mixes in.  Doing a whole wall by mixing one wheelbarrow at a time just isn’t efficient of time or effort.

At some point I should push for us to purchase a mortar mixer.  I see the need.

Left - treated. Right - straight from the well.

I’m working on plans for the new pump house to be built this summer.  Part of that planning involves making room for water treatment.  I had Vil Hafoka, a water treatment specialist for Water Doctor of Washington stop by yesterday to help nail down some details.

While Vil was here he tested our water.  Iron is non-existent, the water’s relatively soft (hardness of 2), TDS is 28 (good).  pH, though, was off the scale acid.  In the photo you’ll see two tubes of water.  The left is out of our drinking/cooking water cistern (filtered water with oyster shell in the bottom to moderate the pH).  The pH is about 7.4 which is within the range of normal human body pH.

The tube on the right is right out of the well, unfiltered, untreated.  It’s testing at below 6.0 using my test chart which starts at six.  Vil’s more sophisticated test puts the pH below 5.5, registering between 5.2 and 5.3 but still running off his scale in acidity.  Anything below 5.5 is considered hazardous for continuous ingestion.  <wince>  I’ve known the pH of our water is an issue, I just didn’t know it was this much of an issue.  It’s a good thing we’ve been treating it for drinking/cooking.

We already treat everything that goes into any of the fish tanks with oyster shell to adjust the pH.  What I haven’t been treating is ALL the water we pump out of the well (animal water, laundry, showers, etc.), which is what I have to start doing.  I’m thinking it’s better not to wait until the new pumphouse is up sometime this summer before I make this happen.  I need a home-grown system that will fix the pH . . . now.

Because adding oyster shell to our little storage cistern is producing pH safe water, there’s no reason I can’t build an efficient yet inexpensive system using oyster shell to adjust our pH on the fly.  Here’s the plan.

I have a 8′ long piece of 4″ schedule 80 (thick walled) acrylic pipe which will make a great see-through filter body.  With fittings I’ll see if I can build a flow-through oyster shell filter.

With the pipe mounted vertically, I will have to plumb an inlet line at the bottom and an outlet line at the top.  The outlet where the treated water leaves the filter needs a cleanable screen to keep the oyster shell from being washed out of the column.  The inlet will have an inlet strainer to keep the oyster shell off the inlet to let the water disperse into the oyster shell.

The top of the tube will need a cleanout plug mounted to a Y.  One branch of the Y can be used for the outlet and the the other can be used to restocked the filter with shell.  Easy parts list with everything schedule 80 to handle house pressure (60psi).

• 4″ Y, end cap and plug
• 2 4″-2″ reducers, one for the inlet, the other for the outlet
• 2 2″ connectors, one for the inlet, the other for the outlet
• Inlet screen
• Outlet screen
• Can of the appropriate cement
• Two adapters to connect inline to existing piping.
• Oyster shell tofill within 10″ of the top
• Mounting hardware to get and keep the pipe vertical

That’s the plan, subject to change as Lorr and I work this out.

Burners integrated into the counter top

I’ve been on a “small house” research kick.  I’ve run into some really interesting stuff (1)(2), but disappointingly, no built small houses that really use space as wisely as I think it could be used (note links with neat apartment stuff).  I haven’t seen very many Murphy or flip type beds or unconventional space saving stairs or . . . you know what I mean.  I don’t see a lot of people taking lessons from the Japanese on space management.  I’ve seen some really crafty stuff from that nation.

I did see a video of one guy’s apartment that really maximized the space using a custom built-in.  That was cool.  But I’ve seen a lot of tiny houses (marketed specifically as “tiny house”s) that used conventional storage to consolidate.  Ho hum.  And not very efficiently.

In some of my later wanderings through the www, I ran across a narrow house built from a stack of four 20′ containers.  In the corner was a fairly small circular staircase that punched through all four containers all the way to the bathtub on the roof.  <wince>  Yeah, I’m gonna throw my naked parts right out there for all to see . . . NOT.  The really brilliant thing I saw in that whole setup, aside from the really crappy use of space, was a counter with an ingenious integrated gas stovetop.  It was BRILLIANT.  Okay, other than if anything sloshed or boiled over it would run across the counter unchecked.  That could get really ugly.  That could be fixed by pressing a very shallow pan into the counter where the stove was installed or pressing a small gently rounded rib around the perimeter of the burner location.  Let’s say the burners integrated into a flat (unrelieved) countertop is a great idea, just not the best idea for people who really cook unless you’ve got a way to trap the spillage.

Modular gas, three burner or four

I saw one cook top that was set so everything would sink down into the countertop so only the nubs of the burners, knobs and pot supports stuck up.  That was pretty cool.  I don’t know how you’d clean any gunk out of the crevasses around the burners and knobs and the price was more than I could swallow at $4k, but it was pretty cool regardless.

Then I found a European company that made modular cooktops specifically designed to be integrated into a countertop.  NOW we’re talkin’!  And they make an induction top as well!  And they come with an integrated drip pan.

If you search on Foster gas hob you’ll see another couple styles, one with round burners in a curved stainless counter, another with three square burners in another curved stainless counter.

This shows the fence staple holding the reinforcing wire in place. The post is wrapped with tar paper and the staple is nailed right through the tar paper into the post. It's not nailed in tightly so the fill can wrap fully around the end of the wire.

Because we’re nearly to the top of the reinforcing wire, our next step is to add another section of reinforcing wire above the current layer.  I’ll do that after this course has had a couple days to set up and I can strip off the forms.

This is the last course of eps-crete I can add without putting up some sort of scaffolding to stand on.  That’s a pretty nice milestone!

Today’s mix went really well.  We’re getting better at prepping.  We’ve switched over to using two half-gallon stainless bowls as measures.  They’re easier to fill AND easier to empty and clean.  We’re using one for the wet stuff and one for the dry which simplifies things greatly.  I also pre-measured and pre-mixed the paint and water so I had no waste and no mess during the eps-crete mixing.

Cleanup was much easier today and the bucket of warm soapy water used to wash us up during the build wasn’t needed.  That says a lot for the improvement in our method.  I’m hoping this wasn’t a fluke because last time we did this, it was a mess.

West end of wall

Top down section

We’ve gotten another section of the wall done.  This one’s a lovely celedon green.  Wadly’s off to shop and have coffee with a friend today so I’m not expecting anything productive to happen around the farm.

Here’s the west end of the wall as well as a top-down cross-section so you can see how the eps-crete infill wraps around the post.  In the future, when I extend the building west, the foundation will be extended.  I should have wrapped the foundation around the inside of the post as well.  Hind sight.  I also should have done my electrical run and fastened the four-gang box to the 6-6-10-10 before putting the infill in place.  Again, hind sight.  This stuff is easy to shape after the fact so I can run a channel for the conduit and box before I build the next wall.  It just would have been much easier to fasten it to the reinforcing wire BEFORE doing the infill.  This is definitely a learn-as-you-go project.

Tedi supplying perspective

We have snow today for the second day in a row.  I’ve got the eps-crete forms moved and the paint mixed and I’m ready to put in another layer of eps-crete but . . . yeah, snow.

The picture shows one course of eps-crete in varying hues of red and white below two courses of gray.  The next two courses will be a nice celedon green.  The color is irrelevant. It’s free latex paint in the mix which is being elegantly and effectively recycled.  The wall is going to have a surface coat inside and out when it’s complete.  I plan to use lime plaster on the bedroom side and some form of exterior stucco on the sun porch side.  When I get to planning those coats I’ll start worry about color.

While I’m stuck inside I’m doing research.  I ran into this page on making lightweight concrete.  They use a mixer and the recipe results in a much soupier mix than what I make.  Theirs is pourable.  Mine isn’t.  It is common knowledge that, with concrete, the more water you add, the weaker the resulting product.  I’m not saying their recipe is bad, but the extra water would also not allow me to use the super light forms I’m built.  They pull the forms in hours, not days which I think has to do with my recipe using both latex paint and more eps in my mix.

My recipe and system works.  I like the result I’m getting with the mix I’m using.