Slipform Stone Masonry: Building a Slipform Stone House from the Bottom Up

we began this construction project by dismantling an old trailer house that was on the jobsite it only took a few days and we managed to reuse or recycle about 80% of the materials in the structure then we excavated a hole for the basement of the new house and recycled the lumber and paneling from the trailer house in order to build a formwork to pour the footings the installation factory near us used to throw all of their scraps out on a big free pile and we hauled home many many truckloads of those panels then slice them in half with a hot wire and improvised our own insulating concrete forms around two sides of the basement the south and east facing walls would be exposed above ground so we put the insulation on the inside of the wall and went up the outside of the wall with concrete and stone on the north side we left a couple of gaps in the wall so we could tie in support walls that would later bear the weight of the fireplace on the main level we purchased insulating concrete forms to form up these two little support walls which cost as much as the rest of our farm work for the basement put together the big challenge with our improvised insulated concrete forms was to feed all the tires through from one panel to the other we used lots of recycled two by fours and two by sixes to hold the whole thing together and then we called everybody we knew to help them pour the concrete we did have one blow out during the pour but fortunately it was in a short section of wall where it was easy to repair the damage and shovel the concrete back in next we built window frames from the scrapped insulation panels then installed them on the walls and started doing stonework up around them we built the house with the aid of students and interns that came to learn a slip form stone masonry and other alternative building methods we constructed a deck on the east side of the building from scrap metal recycled from the old trailer house that used to be on the site on the inside we hauled in a little more fill dirt and leveled the floor then tamped it down hard we covered the floor with a layer of plastic then rolled out tubing for radiant heat and covered it up I used a log wizard to peel the bark off of the long beam that would span the entire length the house we install the support logs underneath it and then rolled the cross beams in place fitted them carefully and pin them together with rebar once all the logs were leveled then we installed 2x6 tenon groove decking to make a solid floor from above and a beautiful ceiling from below next we did a little more stone work to bring the stone walls up level with the top of the floor and the forms come off we always have to go back and chip off any extra concrete on the face of the wall and back on the inside we made our own tear tiles out of sand cement dirt and dye which we later came back and grout it with a mix of fine sand cement lime and waste paint we hauled home many more loads of scrap insulation panels and started work on the main level of the house we constructed the walls out of six inch thick panels first then hot-wired the scraps and added another three inches to the outside of that it is important to keep the wall moist to help the concrete cure properly window frames must be carefully leveled and secured in place before concreting up around them we found a set of old stairs at the dump that we incorporated into our scaffolding system by the time winter hit we had made substantial progress on the main level of the house in the spring of 2006 we started out by building a cinderblock wall out of junk cinder blocks that would later be hidden behind the fireplace then we got serious about the stonework and finished up the walls for the main level of the house we originally intended to do stonework at the base and then transition into straw-bale for the rest of the structure but we never found a good place to make the transition so we ended up doing stonework all the way to the top which is very beautiful but also turned out to be very labor intensive every rock and every bucket of concrete has to be lifted up and up and up to the top of the house the funny thing is I had passers-by didn't always know that it was new construction and started asking us if we were fixing the old place out we built a loft in the back half of the building leaving open ceilings in the front half I chose to build this barn style roof partly to get the spacious loft upstairs but also to reduce the spans between the beams so that we could bridge across the top with our insulation panels and not have wood framing cutting through the insulation of the roof new insulation panels would have spanned from beam to beam all in one shot but with our scrap pieces we had to create a sandwich with OSB on the inside in the outside and two layers of six inch thick panel scraps sandwiched in between them we mixed up two part pour foam to fill up any voids in the insulation to attach the second layer of insulation panels we had to use eight inch long screws that would connect from one panel through to the other to hide the edge of the insulation we built rim boards entirely out of scrap lumber hauled home from the dump although low cost and very well insulated the roof turned out to be a very labor-intensive project which we spread out over most of the summer I got a good deal on some heavy-duty steel roofing from a local recycling center and then added a few thin rusty pieces for trim on the front and back we installed new windows and added a barn wood trim to close in this main part of the house in 2007 we started by framing the interior walls with recycled lumber from the dump and then we roughed in the plumbing and electrical work I wish I could say that we were on the homestretch of this project by now but instead we excavated on the south side of the house and poured extra wide footings to support the double stone walls of the greenhouse with all the experimental design and construction aspects of this house it turned out to be significantly more labor-intensive than the first stone house that we built and I am immensely grateful for all the help of everyone that came along to participate in the process fortunately the sloping South Face of the greenhouse gave us a lot of room on the floor with relatively little stone work going up the greenhouse has six inches of beadboard insulation sandwiched in between the two stone walls and pieces of rebar skewered through the insulation to tie the two stone walls together believe it or not just about all of the rocks in this house came out of the hole that we dug for the basement the only problem was that we used the big rocks first being stuck with smaller and smaller rocks as we went out we installed a couple of heavy beams across the front and then built the window frames out of rough cut lumber we constructed the greenhouse roof the same as the house roof with two layers of scrap insulation panels sandwiched between two layers of oriented strand board or OSB we also built in installed a couple of solar water heaters into the South Face of greenhouse such that the hot fluid could thermo siphon to a tank up in the loft concurrent with the greenhouse construction project we also built the front porch on the west side of the building using junk cinder blocks underground and stonework above ground you the French porch is also insulated and serves as an airlock to the front door of the house back on the inside we plastered the walls with a mix of second-hand plaster joint compound tile grout and paint acquired from thrift stores then we sifted more dirt and made terra titles across the entire main level of the hell we installed an old bathtub and stucco the shower surround and later came back and sealed it with a coat of white epoxy in the kitchen we installed some secondhand cabinetry reinforce it well and then poured concrete fly-ash countertops on top of that in 2008 we really did not do that much on the house but we did wrap up some of the finishing details including a handcrafted stairway up to the loft in appearances at least the house looks almost finished we installed an experimental grey water treatment system in the greenhouse and started planting crops we installed tile work on the landing going down to the basement as well as tiles in the white window wells throughout the house in the spring of 2009 we constructed the masonry fireplace in the main room of the house it has six horizontal runs through the baffle system that extract heat from the smoke before it goes up the chimney you and building the fireplace turned out to be a bigger project than I had anticipated requiring the fall time labor of two people for six weeks to build it but the end product was worth the effort as the fireplace became the centerpiece in the hearts of the home in the fall we took on the last major building project on this house which was to tie in the garage with the house the original steel garage was kind of Ken wapis with both the house and the street so he started by squaring out the slab and then basically built the new garage while the old garage was still in place and full of stuff rather than do the whole thing in stone work I built two walls out of cinder blocks which I obtained for free from the scrap pile at the factory and then added a little bit of stonework at the corner to visually tie it together with the house only the front wall of the garage was built entirely of stone we built the new garage while simultaneously dismantling the original one then we mixed up some stucco mortar and stuccoed over the cinder blocks to get an end product that has some of the beauty of the stone masonry but with a lot less labor we put a false front on the garage and then constructed a shallow sloping roof hidden behind it inside the garage we built frame walls out of scrap lumber and insulated the lower section with sawdust and lime and the upper section with fiberglass insulation salvaged from the dump I added an insulated garage door and that about wraps it up Oh

Channel: Thomas J Elpel

Views: 986,512

Rating: 4.7954922 out of 5

Keywords: stone, masonry, slipform, slipforming, passive, solar, house, alternative, construction, internship, building

Id: -csxSe9jEeY

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2012