Foundation–The basis on which something stands or is supported; a base. The basis or groundwork of anything. An underlying basis or principle for something.
An overview– The previous straw bale house chronicled on this blog was the first section of two parts of our whole building plan. The first half is designed as an in-law suite for my mother, with a shared art studio space, and this second half that we are just starting will be bedrooms for us and our kids and a garden level living space. The 3 acres that we have contains a lower open feild where the pond and gardens are situated, a forested upper area, and a sloping face of bedrock in between. Since we don’t want to clear the forest or use up valuable growing space, we have designed the house to be built on the rock. The first half sits at the top and overlooks the pond and gardens, and the other half is separeated into two floors, each built like a terrace from the garden level up to the existing section and attached with an enclosed walk way. The total square footage will be about 2,000 square feet.
We are building with as much attention to natural materials as possible. We are using sustainably sourced or salvaged resources whenever we can. The walls in this half will be straw bale with clay and lime plasters, with a living roof, just as in the first half. We are aware of the imprint of building houses these days and the huge amount of toxic off gasing that occurs with many conventional materials as well as the chemically saturated waste that ends up in the landfill. However, since we are building within the boundaries of building codes and needing to meet the requirements of engineers, architects and inspectors, there are just some things we can’t avoid. Natural building can be a tag that is placed on our house as a whole, but I think it is important to state that not every aspect of the house is “natural”. Such as, for example, the foundation.
The second half- There are not many places in Canada where you could begin to build a house in November. Of course, we didn’t plan to start at this point, but the process of aquiring the permit took longer than we expected. We learned from our previous build that everything will take longer than expected. Amazingly, the weather has been quite co-operative, allowing us to complete the form work in one week, and giving us the sunniest day of the month on the day we scheduled the pumper truck.
There is not much about the foundation that would fall into the “natural” category. We hired an excavator to dig the footprint, and rented a large rock drill with a giant, gas powered compressor to drill out 140 holes in the bedrock, each ranging from 16″ to 24″ deep and filled with concrete grout and rebar. We purchased a lot of 2×10 and 2×4 lumber as well as some plywood for the forms that we hope to re-use again in the framing if possible. We set five runs of rebar inside the length of the footings and stem walls with a 1′ grid of rebar in the higher walls and snap ties every 2 feet, and placed knockouts of pvc in the footings wherever we need drainage, septic, and water runs. We hired a concrete pumper truck and 3 truck loads of concrete. We set anchor bolts every 3 feet in the top of the concrete to attach the framing. The engineer is happy, the geo-tech is happy, the building inspector is happy. This is not terribly extraordinary in the world of regular construction, in fact it is quite standard and even a “small” job. To me it seems rather complex, requiring a lot of effort and money to create forms that become deconstucted and a structure that is largely unseen in the end.
However, this crucial first step is the foundation upon which we will begin to build up our visions of a beautiful, healthy, comfortable, sustainably functioning and lovingly hand built family house.
Inspirational Village 