SB: Our eastern Ontario 2 storey load bearing project.

[Hank Carr <hank@dna.ca>]

We've made much progress since our last posting to this list.

For those who missed the conversation a couple of months ago, we are
building a load bearing two storey straw bale home in eastern Ontario. 
We are pouring a thickened edge floating slab foundation and using
cement/lime/sand plaster on our walls.

Our structural engineer asked us to switch our design to face stacking
instead of edge stacking for a number of reasons not associated with the
relative strengths of the two construction methods.  His research this
winter apparently confirms that edge stacking is at least as strong as
face stacking but has not been published or faced peer review so he was
uncomfortable stamping our drawings based on his results.  His
discomfort apparently comes from the nearly 40 foot (11 m) long clear
span structural trusses we are using and the fact that we have 24 foot
(7 m) tall and 29 foot (9 m) tall straw bale walls on two sides of our
great room.  He has also changed two of our bearing walls into
engineered beams and posts to save concrete in the slab.  In order to
maintain our interior dimensions while stacking the bales on their faces
we have expanded the outside dimensions of the building by five inches
all around.  He has suggested several construction details which we will
share once the drawings are stamped, likely tomorrow or Monday.

Our CBO is waiting for the stamped drawings to issue our building permit
but assures us that he will issue it immediately when he gets our
drawings.  He has given us permission to proceed pending the permit.

Our excavation contractor has hauled in, sculpted, and compacted 500
tonnes of crushed rock ranging from 6" down to 5/8" minus.

Our concrete contractor has the foundation forms up and left as many of
the 2x4s in one piece as possible so that we could reuse them.

Our friend the plumber and his father the plumber were out on Friday and
helped me install all the plumbing that goes into the gravel under the
slab.  Our CBO was out and seemed happy with the preparation of the
gravel, envious of the conduit we are installing (he wishes that he had
some conduit in his own slab), and impressed that we were using trap
seal primers on our floor drains.  He said he thought we were pretty
confidant about what we were doing and that he really didn't need to
come back until we were well into the project.  The town office is only
four kilometers from the construction site so we've given him a blanket
invitation to stop by any time he likes.

Our septic contractor shoud be installing the septic system in the next
couple of weeks and we're expecting our well contractor to do his thing
in abour the same time period.

We are still planning our first mass bale raising in the second or third
week of June.  Anita's got a list of a bunch of people who have
expressed an interest in lending a hand.  If you're in our area and are
interested in coming out to have a look or to lift a few bales, email us
and we'll keep you up to date.  We're easily accessible from souther and
eastern Ontario, western Quebec, and northern New York.  We're about 30
minutes south of Ottawa and about 90 minutes west of Montreal.  There is
a great little camp ground called Wildwoods about three minutes from the
building site if you wanted to make a vacation out of your visit. 
They've got serviced sites, RV sites, a pool, tuck shop, and showers.

Ben Polley handed out a bunch of fliers for us at the Cottage show in
Ottawa a few weekends ago.  A couple who picked one up discovered that
they are building a straw bale house just down the road from us and have
stopped by and introduced themselves.  They are students of Chris and
Peter and hope to gain lots of hands on experience working on our
project this summer.

For more information, check out our web site at www.dna.ca/strawbale of
drop us a line at hank@dna.ca or anita@dna.ca.

Hank.

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