SB: rooves

["souscayrous" <souscayrous@wanadoo.fr>]

First, let me admit to the gross deception I am perpetrating on this list; I
am not building a strawbale house! I meant to, honestly, had been
researching it for the last few years (mainly through following the posts of
this group) but, as is often the case with the best laid plans...I fell in
love with a pile of rubble that I am beginning to rebuild stone by stone.

I shall be laying earthen floors (linseed oil and beeswax finish),
clay/straw wall plasters with lime plaster finish, hydronic floor heating
(perhaps unnecessary), masonry heater (of course): everything a fashionable
strawbale house is wearing this season; just no straw bales.

But I am undecided by the roof. Between the outside wall and the first set
of arches is roughly eight feet, as is the next span between the first
arches and the next set of arches and then between this second set of arches
and the opposite outside wall is roughly 16 feet. I am just looking for the
simplest, most elegant solution (aren't we all) that will provide an R value
of 20-25 and as little finishing/decorating on the inside surface (having
reroofed my current house I have learnt the lesson of leaving insulating,
detailing, decorating to the last from the inside). The roof will be
finished on the outside by canal tiles and I would like to use some of the
hundred or more volunteer Lombardy poplars on the land as joists to support
the insulation and tiles. The soil of the land is a decent clay loam and I
also have some large, bamboo-like canes growing in the wetter areas that
could be used to carry the insulation load between the poplar joists
(similar to the cannissa of SW USA/Mexico? And certainly from the evidence
of the many derelict old farm buildings here in France, an old and
widespread rural technique).

Now I know I am building the answer to my question in the way I have set out
the above (poplars to span walls, cannissa to span poplars and both to carry
weight of clay/straw mix and canal tiles) but I don't want to look at the
poplars and cannissa for the rest of my life, and I also suspect the
inevitable gaps between the cannissa will be too much of a temptation for
our flying, crawling, hopping brothers of the insect world.

So, what I'm asking is this; how do I use the above natural, local materials
to provide protection from rain, cold, insects and too much back breaking
work?

Of course, if someone else has a completely different 'simple and yet
elegant' solution, I'd love to hear them too.



Souscayrous










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