Honour Board - so many helpers

My sister Sarah and partner Matt came to Grant's rescue a couple of weeks ago to help with the second last gable end!! I wasn't much use except in feeding the crew! I am looking forward to writing more in the next entry!

Over the Queen's birthday long weekend Liz, Rich and family came all the way from the Peninsula darling to get us moving with the ceiling! (that will be another post). My brother Paul came down from the hills to also lend a hand. What a weekend of work. Sometimes things go according to plan, other times they don't. This time everything went swimmingly, my kids looked after their kids so all kids were happy. Rich obviously worked very hard as he was tucked up in bed by 9.30 on Sunday night...sorry about working you so hard Rich! As I am typing this Grant and Alan are out the back working. Alan (Grant's dad) is a serial offender (helper), so much so that he had to go overseas for 6 weeks to have a break!

Liz and Rich came over for the Queen's Birthday long weekend. Many years ago on this weekend,
 Liz and I would have been excitedly going to the snow together! 

Rich was on mixing duty, as you can see it is not a clean job!

Liz spent most of the time in the rafters

Over the school holidays our friend Susan came over to help us do some hemping, I know she helped out from the kindness of her heart, although I suspect there may have been a little bit of pressure coming from us! Simone (Grant's sister) and her daughter Jazz dropped in to say hello and were promptly put to work. I sometimes wonder why we haven't had many visitors! Alan (Grant's dad) has helped an enormous amount recently, unfortunately he ended up in hospital with a bout of Pneumonia - he assures us it wasn't due to us working him too hard! 

Grant had some time during the school holidays and steadily slogged away. We really feel as though we are getting there (wherever there may be).  Ok, what I mean by that is the walls are nearly to the top! We haven't started the ceiling, however we are now starting to work on hemping the gables. Details of that will be in another blog entry.

Susan working towards the eastern gable end

Simone hauling up the hemp to me (bit scary up there)

Jazz helping me hemp up high

Alan, Grant's dad has helped out many, many times and even though this photo is somewhat
grainy it is not indicative of the quality of his work!

Mum (Margaret) was pleased to be helping out on Saturday 21 March,
2015, therefore making the honour board!  Mum filled the conduit with hemp
while I used the conduit to fill the holes in the walls left from the formwork.

I haven't written anything for a while as we have been really busy with hempcreting during the day and various Christmas things on at night. Grant and Sam have been the consistent workers, working many hours every day, often until dusk. The hempcreting itself is relatively quick, the greatest time seems to be spent setting up the formwork. As time goes on I presume that will also quicken.

Sam (you might recognise the T Shirt Katharina)

My brother Paul came to help, loaded up with extra
gloves and masks for us to use.

Sam, Toffee, Oliver and Fynn

Matilda helping out

Barb, our architect (will need to get Barb around again
 so I can include a better photo). Thanks Barb.

Oliver and Sam creating some formwork using OSB

Alex and Grant

Oscar

Lisa and Mick are repeat offenders, they were over to give us a hand on the 30 Dec 2014

Dee Dee helping out on New Years Day

Not that you can tell but this is Grant's Uncle Ian
who was there sloggingaway on New Years Day

Visit from a fellow hempcreter

We received a call from Kirsty Wulf, a fellow hemp house builder who is at the other end of the construction phase, you can check out her blog on the link. Kirsty, along with her partner Ben and young son are on holiday visiting family in Victoria and dropped by. It was perfect timing, not only was it great to meet another builder, it was also great to get their reassurances about how well we are doing and how great our walls are looking.

I decided to post a short video of Kirsty opening up a lime bag. It seems obvious now on how you open one. We have been using a blade to hack at every bag..this was a mini revelation, worth sharing.

Are we mad part 2....

I suspect I will continue with the 'are we mad' theme. When building the hempcrete wall it is important to protect it from direct sun for the first week or so and also from driving rain. Well that is all well and good until you have a very large and heavy tarp protecting your newly built wall and 100km/hr winds. As we watched the tarp bashing into the walls we were nearly in tears. It was too dangerous to remove the tarp because we could easily have been knocked off the ladder with a wind gust. Grant spent a near sleepness night wishing there was something he could do. Instead he dreamt of looking under the tarp and finding the entire wall had collapsed...thankfully it was just a dream.

The tarp has knocked bits of hemp from the wall but when you take into account the severity of the winds it held up remarkably well. Just the odd divet to patch up. We are now very unsure of the benefit of using a tarp at all, it seems to have caused more problems than it has fixed. Klara from the Australian Hemp Masonry Company has provided us with some suggestions on patching these spots so we will have a go at repairing the wall soon. The suggestion includes using 1:4 solution of bondcrete (lime binder) to water and use this to replace the water in a small mix.

We now have to prepare for rain, the slide is just an immediate measure to keep the water away from the wall until we buy some temporary downpipe.

Damage caused by the tarp bashing the walls

It's always satisfying to be able to use stuff lying around the house, in
this case it is a slide!

Not a perfect solution as it doesn't catch all the water from the box
gutter. I will try to improve this, heavy rains are expected this weekend.

I placed the water pump in here so that the water can be pumped away.

Safety around lime and the occasional hospital visit

As I write this entry Sam and Grant are still out working....after all it is only 8.15pm.

We have had a couple of minor injuries, a lime burn on the wrist for Grant- that resulted in just a quick visit to Emergency. Normally you wouldn't need to go to hospital for that, however Grant likes to work until dusk, at this time of year that is about 8.30pm. Dealing with the burn included washing it clean for at least 20 minutes and using a waterproof dressing over a few days. Lime can be very irritating when it is damp on your skin and then gets rubbed in. Grant generally wore an old long sleeve top that worked well until a little bit of lime got in, the shirt would meet up with a pair of disposable gloves and sweat, things then started to go a little pear shaped. The trick is to not let the lime get to the stage of it irritating you. Don't try and quickly finish a job and deal with the lime later. Once you feel it irritating your skin you must stop work immediately and rinse it off.  Sometimes you can only appreciate these lessons from experience.

Some of the other safety issues that you should be aware of when working with hemp:
When chatting to Klara from Australian Hemp Masonry Company she recommends that everyone working onsite should be wearing a dust mask and when you are near the mixer you should also use ear muffs (I suspect it is not necessary with our mixer as it is quite a small one and not that loud-no louder than my Kenwood Chef in fact). A very handy tip that will now become part of our 'safety' routine is to use diluted vinegar  for regular hand washing, as it is acidic and helps to neutralise the lime.

While Grant was at the hospital, the treating doctor gave him a tetanus injection once Grant told him he was building a house. This turned out to be a very sensible idea as he had a small run in with a power drill the next day.

I have been working in a Tshirt and shorts. I am wearing those cloth gloves that look like they are dipped in rubber. Over the top I wear a pair of gardening gloves with sewn on sleeves that reach up past my elbow. I also wear glasses and have tended not to use a face mask unless I'm working directly with the dry lime. If you are working with dry lime a face mask and glasses that seal around the eyes are essential. So far I have haven't had any issues.

Matilda flicked a little bit of hempcrete mix in her eye on Christmas Eve. We used the saline wash with limited success so I got her to jump in the shower for 20 minutes and face the water with her eyes open as much as possible. Meanwhile I rang the Eye and Ear Hospital and they recommended she come in after having her shower eyewash.  The hospital saw her promptly and tested her eyes for alkalinity. Matilda's right eye was 7.5 (the alkalinity of the body is between 7.2-7.4), they numbed her eyeball and then gave it a really good wash with saline, Matilda spent most of the time giggling. I wouldn't be confident of being able to wash out all the lime from the eye at home. My very strong recommendation is that if you are working with lime, wear protective glasses. Although you get treated extremely well in the hospital, it is best to avoid if possible.

These are the style of gloves I use. I wear these underneath, and the
long ones over them.

Found these gloves at the Vic Market at the hardware stall

A friend joked that I am the only woman who buys beauty products
at a hardware store, however this stuff has saved everyone's hands.

The first hempcrete mix

If you'd asked me where the first mix would be placed, I can't imagine that I would have said under the box gutter. Luckily, I spent some time chatting to Wayne the plumber about our storm water layout, and he explained the sequence for installing the roofing and guttering. Turns out that the box gutter had to go in before the rest of the roof could be completed.

I had hoped Wayne would get the remainder of the roof on before the material was delivered, and the only weekend available beforehand was the weekend that I was also helping out on a Cub Scout camp. So the first mix was shaping up to be a rushed affair. It was Sunday lunch time before I could make a start.

As we didn't have any MgO board for the ceiling yet, I decided to install a temporary formwork to hold up the hempcrete. I would have to take it down after curing, so just in case the hempcrete did not support itself, I stapled some hession under the rafters first. A good move as it turned out.

It wasn't until we were all set up that I realised we didn't know the ratio of hemp, lime and water for the ceiling mix. I had the instructions for wall mix, but not the ceiling mix. Pity it was the weekend.

I reasoned that if the ceiling mix only used half the lime, then I would only need half the water. I reasoned wrong! It was pretty clear that the mix was too dry, so after a mild panic, we quickly tossed in an extra 1 1/2 litres. It seemed that the mix was holding together a bit better, so we placed it.

Sam worked the mixer, and Shelley helped move the tub of mix. First mix, first accident. The handles of the tub weren't strong enough and a tub load narrowly missed Shelley as it tipped out all over the floor.

Otherwise, everything went smoothly and we mixed 2 1/3 bales of hemp. It's now over a week since the hempcrete was placed, Wayne didn't make it to finish the box gutter, so I checked it out. It's a bit friable on top, but it has bound together somewhat. The big test will be when I try to remove the formwork below, but that won't be for some time yet. Meanwhile, I hope the plastic will keep tonight's rain off our first attempt.

Planning the electrical set out

Sometimes it just isn't enough to plan things out in your mind. You have to see it to figure out the problems. So it was for our electrical set out. We are using wall boxes to create a cavity behind the power points and light switches and conduits for the wiring. Hempcrete and wiring don't mix, so these measures keep them apart.

After Brendan the electrician installed nearly all the points in the extension, I noticed a troubling detail. The knock out in the wall box where the conduit enters the top was less than 10mm from the front face of the wall box. With the 25mm conduit on the inside of the frame and only 50mm of hempcrete cover on the inside, that would leave 25mm down to 7mm cover on the conduit. The risk of a crack along the line of the conduit looked too great.

Nothing for it but to relocate all the conduit to the outside of the frame and bring the wire into the back of the wall box through the noggin. Most of the positions worked out well, with a few tricky spots to work out with Brendan tomorrow.

All the conduits had been fitted with steel saddles. We could have painted them with Ormonoid, but it just seemed like hard work. Luckily I noticed plastic brackets on a trip to Bunnings, so I replaced them all as I relocated the conduits.



We nearly forgot the electric highlight windows. Hopefully we've got everything covered now. I don't want to think about gouging out to add an extra conduit after the hempcrete walls are built.

Preparing for Hempcrete

Look at the trusses, some were put up today. We had the weekend to do some painting before the trusses went up. Hempcrete is made up of hemp and lime. Lime and steel are not compatible. The lime will cause the steel to rust, even galvanised steel is not protected. What this means is we have to paint every nail plate, nail and every bolt with bituminous paint, that's a lot of painting. You can see below the black paint on the trusses.

Another thing we have to do to prepare for the hempcrete was to tilt all the noggins on the frame. We had to cut through one of the nails on each side so that they could be tilted at around 30°. If the noggins remained horizontal it would be difficult to infill hempcrete under the noggin, whereas when they are angled the hempcrete should fill more easily. There is quite a lot of preparation!

The noggins have been tilted and renailed

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Tilly helping to paint the nail plates

Portal Frame is up

Grant painted the hardwood with an oil based primer that will form part of the portal frame. Although the wood will be completely surrounded by hempcrete the reason for painting it was to reduce the risk that tannins would leech on to the concrete and stain it. Any steel surrounded by hempcrete has also been painted to avoid the steel being corroded by the lime. Nick our builder (Caedman Construction) recommended a double paint treatment to protect the steel, Dulux Weathermax and Durebild.

Builders have covered the concrete with some plastic to avoid any (...further) damage.

Nice to see the scaffolding being used. We bought this a number of
months ago and it has been stored under our house until now. We
figure it was better to buy it and then sell it later rather than rent one
as we will need scaffolding for an extended period.

The portal frame was put up today. After a number of weeks of very little happening it has been great to see action happening at the back of our property. I'm a little stunned by the size of the frame. More things are to come tomorrow as the wall frames and trusses are to be delivered.

The footings that will form part of the link between the old house and
the new space.

Cripes....it looks huge!

Dogs on concrete

Toffee and some other local dogs have been enjoying running across the cleared back yard, from dirt piles to concrete, they haven't cared. I may have made a mistake letting them run on the newly polished, yet unsealed concrete.  Time will tell. I probably shouldn't have trampled over the concrete with muddy boots either..or jumped in the puddles.

Molly did a face plant in some concrete dust from the polishing.

Juney and Toffee discuss who's ball it is...it's Toffee's obviously!

Threw some water over the concrete to get an idea of what it will look
like, needs a little more work.