This week we have been mostly digging holes...
Week four of the Sherborne build and the first week of young people and Youth Centre staff helping on the site. The main focus this week has been digging the holes for the car tyre piers. We needed 11 holes in total and, as mentioned previously, the clayey and rocky soil had been baked rock hard in the recent heat. The week before we had considered wetting the ground to see if it made digging any easier, but didn't because we thought it would just make things messier. By Monday this became fairly academic as the first rain in weeks had done the wetting for us. And it really did just make things squidgy and no easier to get out.
This week we have had many wonderful young people on site, digging holes by hand, ably assisted by Darren, Helen, Mike and Anna (and anyone I've forgotten to mention) from the Youth Centre team. Darren's Dad, Perry, at Castle Estates, kindly loaned us a second wheelbarrow to get the muck shifted. Tom and I loosened up some of the soil with the electric breaker, however by far the bulk of the work digging holes was done with good, old-fashioned hard labour. It was amazing to see how readily everyone pitched in and enjoyed the work.
Various treasures were uncovered during there digging (nothing to alert the authorities to I hasten to add). A few nice fossils, some old nails and metal work, and my personal favourite - an old style ring pull from a drinks can that I was sure would be of interest to those born after such things had been firmly attached to the cans involved. As well as finding treasure, it was decided some things should be buried in the build for good fortune and for our descendants to perhaps marvel at in the future. A time capsule has been prepared, to place in one of the piers, containing information about the Youth Centre, the build, and all of the people who have taken part so far, and a recent coin will be placed in each hole too.
Just before Thursday lunchtime all of the holes had been dug and we moved on to sorting the tyres into correctly sized piles of three, ready to place into the holes. Thursday afternoon was very pleasantly taken over by a break to watch all the young people who had been doing a circus skills workshop putting on the most marvellous show of tightrope walking, plate-spinning and assorted clowning about.
Next week we have a sculptor and wood carver coming on site to work with groups of young people to carve two of the chestnut pillars we will have on the porch at the front of the building. Tom and I had spent the early part of Thursday morning fetching these chestnut poles from Dorset Fencing Supplies - and visiting Dave Partridge of Dorset Hurdles, coppicer and hurdle maker extraordinaire, in the woods at Bloxworth near Wareham, to pick up an order of hazel pins, for pinning our building's straw bales together. I always say Dave has the nicest office I've ever seen, as whichever wood he is in, it is a simple canopy over his work in some of the most beautiful Dorset woodland. On Thursday afternoon we also managed to pick up some larch that Tim Dunning, also of the Dorset Coppice Group - like Dave - had kindly sourced for us.
On Friday we needed to get the chestnut poles stripped of bark, ready for the carving on Monday. Once again Perry from Castle Estates came to our rescue by very kindly lending us a drawknife to get bark off.
As well as tamping some gravel into the base of all the holes to firm them up ready for the tyres to go in, time was also spent gluing and screwing together the remaining sections of the bottom ring beam. We now have one complete circle! We have now also ordered the rest of the larch for the ring beams and have had to go as far as West Sussex to find it. In the greater scheme of things this is still not too bad a distance, I suppose (about 100 miles) and if we'd had more notice I'm very confident we could have got it all within fifty miles of the site.
On Monday we'll start building the car tyre piers. We are filling them with 10mm shingle to give us a capillary break under the timber work of the building. If you haven't come across capillary breaks before tune in next time to find out all about them!
Please comment below or get in touch with your thoughts on the build progress so far.
First weeks of the build...
Well it's been an extraordinary month on the Sherborne build. You may remember we are building a straw bale roundhouse. It's being built with community involvement and will become a community building. Going from so much planning and preparation into actually being on site has been very exciting indeed. Here is an update on the first weeks of the build.
We started off earlier in July by setting up the site. First of all the fencing was delivered and set up so we could keep the site secure.
From the middle of the month, Tom - my nephew - arrived as the first official addition to the Huff and Puff Construction employee list. We marked up the site and began to remove turf from the build area.
There is a lot to set up on a construction site. On this site we are using the Youth Centre's facilities for the welfare of those on site. We have designated fire and first aid points and a double gazebo - kindly loaned by Sherborne ArtsLink - to give us protection from the elements.
Having sampled the soil on site I knew we had about 30cm of a clayey topsoil, with solid clay below. We dug the hole for the first pier - I say we, but Tom did most of the digging - and it took about a day. This was chiefly because the ground has dried out so much and it's really hard going. We have 11 piers in total, so a rethink was required (one which you'll see later, in the form of a hired breaker).
We moved on to cutting the timber for the ring beams. The building will have two timber structural ring/box beams. One beneath the straw bale walls and one above. These fix the bale walls in position and tie the whole structure together. Whilst straw bales are really easy to put a curve in, timber is not. With a circular building the ring beams call for a lot of curved sections to be cut. I'll go into the technical details of this more in later posts. For the top and bottom of the ring beams we are using SmartPly OSB3, 18mm thick. SmartPly is the current green building OSB of choice because it is manufactured without any added formaldehyde. Building suppliers can probably source it for you even if they normally have a different brand.
In order to get the template cut to the right size, we laid out a section of board on the marked up site. For all the complexities circles bring, it is great to be able to put a stake in the middle of the site and work out sizes just by running out a piece of string, rather than having to make complicated calculations. A section was marked up on the OSB board (a 2440mm x 1220mm sheet) and cut out to be used as a template for all the other sections. By working out the exact internal and external circumference for the OSB element we were able to work out how many section we needed - 8.8 in our case - and so another template was made up for the final, ninth section, to complete the circle. It took probably two or three days to get these sections cut.
Our first volunteer arrived this week in the form of Robert. Tom cut up noggins that will rung from the inside to the outside of the OSB sections and Robert glued and screwed them up into pieces two high, to give us the 240mm internal height we need in the ring beam. Although it was extra work to do this, the full size we wanted wasn't readily available - and it is normally cheaper (and stronger) to fix two pieces of wood together rather than to use one solid piece. The glued up pieces were set aside to dry.
That brings us up to Friday of this week. After weeks of sunshine we actually saw a bit of rain. I took cover in the gazebo to make up a jig so we could assemble the curved ring beam sections and noggins reliably. We have 36 sections to do in total, so although this took a while, it should be time well spent - plus we can use it future too. Offcuts of OSB were used to create sections for the noggins to slot into, so the tops can be glued, then a curved section fitted on top and nailed and screwed into place. Then the complete section can be removed and the next one made up.
I hope you are enjoying reading about the build. Please do leave comments via the comments section below, or use our contact form, or Facebook if you'd like to get in touch or get involved in the build.
There is a bigger gallery of photos here (and a frequently updated album of all the project photos on Facebook here -):
Sherborne Big Build - Go, Go, Go!
Our Sherborne big build will be - drum roll please... at the Sherborne Youth and Community Centre!
The project is for a seven metre diameter straw bale roundhouse, and will run from now until October. The centre, on Tinney's Lane in Sherborne, is a community hub for both the young of Sherborne and the local community, all of whom will be invited to take part in various ways.
Local charity Sherborne ArtsLink are overseeing the project, working with the youth centre team, with funding coming from the Big Lottery Fund. Huff and Puff Construction have been engaged as principal contractors for the project and I've sought advice from the best in the straw bale business - Straw Works and Strawbuild - for advice on the design of the build.
As well as helping to build the roundhouse - currently being called the 'Art Cabin' - there is a schedule of art activities in progress, for the young people of Sherborne to create artistic works to go on and in the build. Already underway is a project to create a stained glass window that will be a focal point in the far wall, opposite the door into the building.
You can read the Western Gazette article here: http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/Sherborne-youth-center-builds-community-art-cabin/story-21342624-detail/story.html
Here are a few photos from the site and more updates will follow very soon. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments below. It's all very exciting!
Sherborne Big Build - Launch Tomorrow!
The Sherborne Big Build is officially launching tomorrow! Beg, steal or borrow a copy of the Western Gazette to find out the location!
Or alternatively check back here because I'm bursting to tell you more!
In the meantime here is a photo of the site marked out ready to go. Can you guess where it is?
Another update tomorrow with all the details!