Our first attempts at a slate wall, using a cob mix as mortar, have turned out rather well. This will act as a damp proof course for the strawbale wall above. Evie has laid out the lower course for the next section – below – and with any luck we’ll...
Another extraordinarily wet volunteer day on Monday, but undaunted, the team made a start on the cob and cordwood wall at the front of the roundhouse. In the morning we learned how to cut wine bottles in half, using a glass cutter and hot and cold water, and then...
For a day off, it has been a very industrious one. In the morning I cut another load of cordwood ready for Monday’s volunteer group to continue building the front wall of the roundhouse.A potato harvest has been long overdue, so we raided our plot and came back...
After six days work, the roundhouse is really starting to take shape. Three quarters of the roof has been boarded out, and will be the visible ceiling from inside. The outside will be covered with old sheet or tarp, then strawbale, then pond liner, then more old...
Well I never thought we’d do this as quickly, but today the roof frame went on with surprisingly little fuss. In the morning we completed the henges and finished the wallplate – below and had a practice run with the reciprocal frame at ground level so...
Day three on our roundhouse build, and we have made excellent progress. Today we prepared the supporting posts by charring the ends of them in a fire, before dropping them into the post holes dug on Monday. Clinton, Chris and I backfilled the holes with slate,...
After my last post on Cloughjordan – the eco-village that isn’t, I couldn’t help wondering that surely I couldn’t be alone in thinking that it was a soulless place that really had missed the point. Turns out I was right. There is even a website...
When we began the process of looking at how and where we’d like to live, we started as close to home as we could, and that turned out to be ‘The Village’ at Cloughjordan. Hooray, we thought, a cutting edge eco-village at least if not exactly on our...
After the success of our recent treebog building weekend, we’re moving on to slightly more ambitious things, and the construction of a little post and beam timber framed building, which will have a reciprocal frame roof.Today we began by marking out and digging...
It is funny how chance encounters can take you down unusual routes in life. Seemingly unimportant events divert you along paths you didn’t even know existed. I can’t remember the first time I saw Simon Dale’s ‘hobbit house’ on the net,...
Well, after two days frenzied activity, here is the new treebog. Thanks to all who helped bring it about – it is truly a thing of beauty, and should settle nicely into its woodland setting. We used sawmill skins almost exclusively to build it, and its the first...
We are in the throes of designing our dream hovel, to be created somewhere in deepest Wales, from timber and strawbale. It’s really hard when faced with a blank canvas and a tiny budget, but here is our creation, which will be a timber framed affair with...
