A successful work party

Last Saturday we were fortunate to host a work party to help us get the 6th lift complete and get the walls to 12 feet tall.  We started the day with help from Matt Jolley and his son, Sebastian, on the wall and the mixers at sunup. 

The sun is rising and Jeremy and Matt are already putting rocks in the wall

Jacob and Sebastian ran the 2 mixers for the morning.  Jeremy and Matt stayed on the wall.  We had another family come help around 9:30, the Wards (Nancy, Mark, Stewart and Electa), and the 4 of them divided up between helping get materials on the wall, sand around rocks and filling buckets of materials for the mixers.  Susan Pauls arrived a little later and jumped right in too!  We kept a good system going and managed to finish the rest of the west wall and all of the south wall in a little over 3 hours!

Electa and Stewart on the left, Jeremy in the middle, Mark and Matt on the right.  Everybody on the South wall!!

Unfortunately, after our lunch break around noon, the Wards had to leave.  We scaled down to 1 mixer and Amber started mixing.  Susan was a huge help until she had to leave at 3 or so and we finally finished the East wall as the sun was setting. 

Susan filling sand buckets for the mixer (Amber)

Putting the finishing touches on the East wall.

As a bonus (that I forgot to take pictures of), my cousin Jessica Bartlett came up to visit too!  It was amazing to get to see her again.  I only wish I'd had more time to talk and catch up.

We are officially 12 feet tall!  The process of moving forms up for the final full layer has already begun and continues all this week.  We are racing cold weather and pushing to get the stonework done!

Building update - 10 feet tall!

Sorry for the radio silence - we've been pretty focused on the stonework for a while now.

When we last left the story, we were at 2 feet tall.  As we were enjoying the first 2 feet of stonework, we started working out how we were going to move our forms up the wall.  We quickly realized that the easiest thing to do would be to make another set of forms (so 2 complete sets) so that we could always stack the new form on top of the one we just filled.  Since each layer is wired into the wall, as soon as the concrete sets up it is locked in place.  That way we don't have to create some kind of stilts to prop up the forms while we lock them in.  So, we stopped and spent a week building a second set of forms.

This time, we made almost all of them without the plywood face.  All of the new forms then went on the inside of the building where we have garage doors to stop the concrete from coming in.  This saves a TON of weight when moving the forms up and made assembling the new forms go much faster.  Then we had to re-set the original forms around the stonework we had just completed so that we could stack the new set on top of them.  From there, we have been leap frogging forms up the wall!

Setting up the second lift

We have found that we can do approximately 1 linear feet of stonework per person working per hour..  That means that one 2 foot lift around the 104' of perimeter wall for the house takes about 100 person-hours of work to complete.   It takes an additional 60ish hours to cut the garage doors, move the forms up, level them and lock them in place.  That brings the total labor required per lift to around 160 hours.  There are 7 full lifts in the house, so you start to get an idea of how much of a time commitment it is.

You can see the stones sitting over the forms where we finished the first corner to 4 feet tall.

The first couple of forms set up for the third lift

The inside of the house set up for the third lift.  You can see the open front forms here.

Our amazing friend, Doug Dubois, came out to help us get to 6 feet tall!

Jeremy carefully lays out every stone on the ground before it goes in the wall.  We call it the county's biggest game of tetris.

Forms up for the 4th lift

We put steel headers over every door and window to help support the stonework.  Here they are primed and ready.

Setting forms for the 5th lift.

Inside of the house at 10 feet tall.  You can see the stones sticking up where we've already filled the forms for this lift.

Moving forms up for the 6th lift!

Another amazing friend, Matt Jolley, came out to help us get the first wall to 12 feet tall.

We were profoundly fortunate to have scaffolding loaned to us first by a neighbor and then by Jeremy's grandparents.  I hate to think how much harder it would have been without the platforms!  We currently have use of both sets and that is making the work go well, although it still gets harder the higher we go.  We currently have about half of the wall up to 12 feet tall and we hope to get the rest of it done this weekend.  Then we can start setting up for the last full lift!  Keep your fingers crossed for us!