Week 3 - Sustainable Building Day 1

Bohio construction

Day 1- posts

2/2/09

Monday started our week of sustainable building. In this week we will learn some basic skills, that include how to use a carpenters square, level, tape measure, skill saws, and drills. I already knew how to use these tools, but it was great to see others who havent learn how to, and its always good to get an overview again.

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Themes of the week: foundation, structure, roofs, skins, and floor. Five themes five days.

So as you can guess monday is about foundation. Foundation is handedly the most important step in constructing a building. With out a solid foundation all your work has a greater chance to fail in the further step. A solid foundation provides the straighted path for your buildings succcess.

Traditional Foundations

1. Rocks, earth, clay, tree(treehouse)
2. Stilt house ie: palapa structure
3. Substrata- firm rocky ground, no organic matter.

Modern Foundations

1. concrete slab ob grade- rebar, concrete mesh, forms, concrete footers
2. piers- large cylinders of concrete in the ground- good for poor soil area's ie; swelling clay, sandy soil, this technique allows you to add strength to poor soil

Concrete is made of 1 part cement, 2 parts sand, 3 parts gravel, and H2O to make it right consistancy.

Cement is not that great of a sustainable product. Fly ash a by product of a cleaning solution for pipes in a certain industry is a great sustaible alternative to cement.

Alternative Foundations

1. Rubble footings- reused portions of old concrete, concrete rubble footings. savces time money and resource. you would need to build a wider footing when useing a rubblw technique.
2. Rammed earth- if soild condition is right. clay, mud, gravel, sand. Use a tamper to really compress it together.

After the lecture and notes and some nice food to eat, we headed out to the Bohio site. A Bohio is a traditional structure that the Taino indians ( natives of the caribbean before columbus came and busted them up) used to construct. Our main project for teh week of sustainable building si to build one of these.

It is going to be a octagonal in its lower shape, 20 feet across, 20 feet high at the center, the walls are only about 6 feet high so the majority of the structure is going to be the thach palm roof.

Today we set all the post in their places.

First we found true east, and measured out the distance of 10 feet from the center pole then tied a string to the center pole and with a stake, drew a line in the ground 10 out all the way around the center pole. Then measured the the distances on that line to find the where the poles would be placed.

after a proper use of technology and a little sweat we started droping them and leveling them out.

Well im trying to post pictures and even some videos of this project but it wont let me at this point. So come back at a latter point if your interested to see what i am talking about.

Peace