Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Pardon me while I dust off here.... *cough cough*. Been awhile.

We have water onsite now! Not only do we have a well, but it's artesian! Pushes itself right out of the ground at about 8 gallons per minute. The well drillers punched down to 300 feet through tons of silt to find anything that was more water than silt. This water will require a settling tank to make it clearer: it's clear enough for me right out of the well pipe, but I'm not sure a steady diet of even the little silt that's in it now would be good for me.

Since the well drillers had to go down so far we're pretty much stuck with not doing anything else major this summer. Whatever else gets done will be me and a shovel. We had kind of hoped to get the plumbing and pad put in for the first permanent structure. Instead we'll be building a well house around the well head.

Monday, March 7, 2005

I am surprised at how well I'm making it through the winter. I expect there will be some days soon where I won't be able to get out of the driveway due to snow becoming slushy, and then again when the mud thaws out and gets deep. But, other than those expected conditions coming up, things have been pretty comfortable.

Michael has started making up a "recruiting page" hoping to encourage people who might be interested in helping out to contact us. We're also enthused about people who just want to come visit to see the place. We will need advance notice due to our continuing minimal facilities, so that we can rent portapotties if we need them. Too, if you think you might like to visit or live in the Outpost, or, eventually, the castle or village, mention it! We were thinking about setting up some kind of reservation system and might as well get started!

The web address castlethornwood.com now will get you the first page of this website. It turned out the store website was costing me more than it was making. I'm now working on the next incarnation of the Castle Thornwood gifte shoppe.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

What a summer! Record breaking gorgeous, hot and dry. Fall has arrived with a thud. While Anchorage got about 5 inches of snow yesterday we only got rain with some slush in it: nothing stuck to the ground here. By the way, that's a record breaking early snow for Anchorage. We live in an interesting time! Change happens! Even in weather patterns.

Even with all that gorgeous weather I sure didn't get much done here. The little house seems to be quite livable so far. I still have some winterizing projects that I think will keep it livable all winter, I hope!

Thanks again for all the notes in the Guest Book!

Wednesday, June 2, 2004

These are the latest bricks after 5 days of drying (minus one day of getting sprinkled on when I forgot to put the cover on). I'm happy that the dark red blob of clay/silt is keeping some of its color; it has turned a reddish orange so far. One of the odd things that has turned up: the papercrete bricks from the very first batch I made of them have a shiny surface and it looks like this set is going to do that, too.

Why is it that everybody I know seems a little bit odd?

This has to be one of my all time favorite inventions: a mosquito wand, or raquet, or whatever. I don't care what you call it, but it's great! Finally! An effective personal weapon to use against mosquitos!



More pictures here.

Friday, May 28, 2004

I couldn't wait: I bought a bigger paint stirrer and stirred up the paper slurry better. Still not great, but better! The screen is plastic screening we bought to screen the windows of the pickup a couple of years ago. It works great for draining slurry!

These bricks are, from the left, cement + sand + paper, clay + sand + paper, and clay + paper, with the cement and sand, and clay and sand being 1:1 volume proportions while the paper went from 1 to 4 in volume proportions to the other ingredients. And it's the paper slurry I was measuring into the mixes, not dry paper.

The chicken coop will go here. I started digging out for it yesterday. It will be about 4' cubed with cob on the south for thermal mass, papercrete and paperadobe on the north and east and wattle and daub on the west side. The roof will be papercrete with removable insulated lids over the nesting boxes. Over the flat roof will be a sloped translucent fiberglas panel to help keep the removable nest box lids accessible. The run will extend to the east (the direction the photo is facing).

I'm thinking about trying to sponsor a cob building workshop on the property next spring, 2005, in May. If you're interested let me know!

More pictures here.

Saturday, May 22, 2004

I'm really proud of the cob minus the fiber bricks: A fine looking set of bricks if I do say so myself! The fiber adobe and papercrete bricks look pretty ragged with their paper not slurried well enough. Oh well. Michael took home with him today the sturdy plastic 55 gal. drum we plan on using for the papercrete mixer so he can install the mower blades and motor. I can hardly wait!

This is my rain gauge stuck out where there are no trees overhead to interfere with its rain collection. It's been dry the last 3 days, which isn't unusual for May and June. The first part of the week we had .3"... just enough to settle the dust.

I don't know how this picture will show up online, but it's a picture of some clay that I'm hoping will affect the color of the finished cob or fiber adobe. I'd love for it to keep some red in the final dried color.

Today, Michael and I used his GPS gizmo to try and map out our clearing and its relationship to the old fields, where the castle will be built eventually. There is a swampy area between the two areas that we want to cross with a series of boardwalks to make taking goats and cutting equipment to and from the fields easier. Our plan is to use the goats to do some of the brush clearing while we work on the larger trees ourselves. Unfortunately we forgot to take the camera on our walk. All kinds of neat flowers are blooming! I'm hoping I'll get out and do that walk tomorrow with a camera.

The other thing we did was put up the stakes for a fenced area for the dogs, and the chicken coop. The dogs aren't going to like being cooped up where they've been able to run free all this time, but it will be a great thing for the traffic on the powerline trail. Today, as we were just getting back from our traipse through the woods and swamp, a couple of neighbors on horseback were going by. All of a sudden the dogs weren't tired any more. *sigh* My apologies, again, to those neighbors!

More pictures here.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

I built my computer table today for the little house. Since I'm running out of money and 2"x2"s I made the legs for the table out of birch trunks, the slender tops of them anyway. It seems pretty sturdy so I think it will work ok. Also, I made some more bricks, this time papercrete and paper adobe. I had set the newspaper bits to soaking Monday. Today, after an hour of stirring the torn up newspaper bits and water with a small paint stirrer drill bit I still had legible pieces of paper in the mix. Maybe a blender would do better for my small test bricks! I made the bricks anyway, but I'm not at all happy with them. I'll have to redo them when I get a better stir mechanism. My cob bricks are no where near dry yet, but drier and still looking very solid and impressive.

The buds on the wild roses just kind of appeared today. I'm just sure if I had sat out there and watched them I could have seen them forming! If tomorrow is sunny like this afternoon I wouldn't be surprised to see a wild rose flower or dozen! I tried to take some pictures of the buds, but you really have to use your imagination to be able to see them in the photos. Oh well, the flowers will show up better when they pop out.

Pictures of the desk and (really they're there!) rose buds are at the bottom of the page here.

Monday, May 17, 2004

These colorful buckets have in them my hard earned sand and clay soil. I sieved the sand and ended up with a pretty decent bucket of sand, plus a bucket of gravel. Then I "harvested" some clay-ey soil from one of the spots where I had already collected some for a jar test. This sounds so easy and quick but I spent the better part of the day getting it done. The rest of the day was spent building test bricks....
I have to say it was really fun messing with the mud! Even in this tiny beginning to my education about cob, fiber adobe and papercrete, I can already see how this could really work! I've already experienced mixing in too much water, too little water, and I finally managed to mix in too much sand. I have to get some kind of mixer for my paper... I just couldn't produce slurry stirring by hand.

It occurs to me that the two previous paragraphs might not make sense to some people. For more on the subject of cob and papercrete please see Charmaine Taylor's Dirt Cheap Builder website. My first project will be a small cob chicken house, then a papercrete roof base for the semi-permanently roofless wood shed. Both of which will follow my building of the computer table. Do I have projects??? For more photos from Thornwood click here.

Sunday, May 16, 2004

At long last it looks like I will be moving in to live on Thornwood this week! This will be my house. Even though this particular photo is from 2002, it still looks pretty much like that. *sigh*
These Pansies even beat the Dandelions to bloom!
This house is along the route to Thornwood. I was able to talk to the owner a few years ago, who told me his Uncle and wife and friends had built the house. He said his Uncle called it his "6-pack house" since the way it was built he would invite a bunch of his friends out for a weekend and they would drink beer and put up rocks. Looks pretty good for the construction method! For some close up pictures of the walls and a corner click here.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

It's been awhile! Pictures of the T-Shirt are at http://www.castlethornwood.com/T-Shirt.html along with other things on other pages of that site. Yes, the store is up and operative, finally. I'm offering some odd things, but maybe someone will be interested! People who might be interested in bulk things like leaves or wood to work can send me an email... we'll work out some kind of deal.

As far as I know there isn't any snow left on Thornwood. There is still a little left at the west end of some of the lakes in the area from the massive drifts that accumulated during this winter's wind storms. Everything else is beginning to look like summer. I love the smell of spring!

I just discovered Yahoo Photos and put some up at http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/helenelope/my_photos. I have 2 albums there, one of The Dogs and one for pictures of different plants and things around the site.

My sketch of The Outpost plan, and some of the buildings plans are here.

If you're interested in coming to visit please let me know and I'll stock up on drinking water!

Thursday, October 31, 2003

The Castle Thornwood T-Shirt (#1) has arrived! Pictures soon! And, Happy Halloween!

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Ta daaa! The Castle Thornwood Gift Shoppe is now open. I'm not even sure all the buttons work yet, but at least it's up. It will be about 2 weeks before the first set of t-shirts are done, so it will be after that for pictures of them to appear. I can hardly wait!

I've been putting in some time cleaning up this site a little. Details, so many details!

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

Our thanks go to the folks who leave us notes in the Guestbook, and send us encouraging emails! Yes, we would be delighted to have volunteer labor, and no, we're not progressing very fast. The idea of having T-Shirts and other things made up with a Castle Thornwood logo is brand new to me: what a concept! I'm now researching prices, etc., for that little project.

What we've put our energy, money and time into these past couple of summers has been "the outpost". I've been scanning photos and will have them up on the website soon.

Thursday, February 14, 2002 continued

We think now we will begin construction of the castle with the Great Hall and Kitchen, with a few other rooms to make it basically a rectangle long ways North/South. With that built, we will have a place for ourselves to live and for lots of other people to come and go as they please, as well as a site to rent out for events (weddings, parties, etc.). Then we can build on from there. It's the plan for now....

Thursday, February 14, 2002 (Happy Valentine's Day!)

(What follows is an email we just received. Thanks, again, to the author!)

Bravo! I (and probably millions of others with the faintest connection to elevated peerage in the past) have thought of building something in the great outdoors, that amounts in concept, if not in actual appearance, to my 'castle'. I wish you all the best in your endeavors.

While going through your building plans description, I noticed several things which you may already have been made aware of, but which I thought I'd bring to your attention just in case. Following are excerpts from the description, and my thoughts follow the asterisks below each.

The Castle foundation will be a rebar-reinforced concrete double footing: the outside footing will be 2' wide and 2' deep, the inside footing will be 16" wide and 2' deep. On top of the outside footing will be an 18" reinforced concrete wall and on the inside footing the wall will be 1' thick, with 3.5' separating the two walls for a total of 6' from outside face to inside face. The two walls will be joined at 8' to 10' intervals by 8" thick reinforced concrete walls, the voids to be filled with rubble.

**Two things here. First, iron in concrete over the long haul will rust. The imbeded rebar may eventually cause problems in footings with as much weight on them as yours will have. Have you thought of using particulate fibreglass-entrained hardened concrete? The fibreglass particlulate should give the concrete the same or even better extra strength offered by the steel. There are even new carbon compound materials which may suffice. Secondly, a footing may be likened to a boat floating on a sea of earth. If the cargo is not too heavy for the boat, it won't sink. The footing is designed to float the structure on its supporting matrix. It includes not only the concrete boat, but a 'hill' of matrix below that sloping outward at approximately 45 degrees from its edges. This hill may not be disturbed when the boat is poured above it, or it may become too weak to support the boat. From your description, I don't believe the footings are big enough to support the walls and additional structures you intend to place on them. I'm sure you meant that the footings extend from the outside edge of the outside wall footing to the outside edge of the inside wall in a continuous surface, otherwise the walls would eventually cave together between the concrete intervals and cause weakening and cracking...interfill notwithstanding. But the outside edges of the boat do not in my opinion extend far enough to have it float under all that weight.

The Great Hall will be on the East side of the castle. It will be 50' wide and 75' long with a large open-front fireplace in the center of the East wall. It will be hammer-beam construction, 43' tall in the center, with 10' wide galleries along the sides 8' off the floor.

**With all that airspace, I would choose a 3-sided gallery 12' off the floor to keep the 'open' feeling of the hall's 'great'-ness.

The Great Kitchen will be South of the Great Hall. It will be thoroughly modern, antiseptic, well lit, of commercial grade, 20'X20', with 2 large ovens, at least one large microwave oven, 2 full sinks, 2 refrigerators and 1 full size freezer, a commercial size dishwasher, and lots of counter and storage space.

** There are specific requirements here for which consulting an experienced chef or cook, the department of health, and/or a restaurant designer/architect would be helpful. Plan to have your oven and grill space hooded with built-in extinguishing equipment. Plan for approved ventillation In addition to your two full (that means 3-tub stainless nowadays) sinks, you will need at least three handwashing sinks in a kitchen that size, and a kitchen staff washroom.

You will probably also require a cold room, cold storage room (another cold room for things that are not needed every moment), and a walk-in freezer. Considering your desire to add as many organic elements as possible to the castle, I have a great suggestion for the cold storage room, one I intend to use for whatever I can eventually build my own 'home-away': Create log walls and a wood floor (one-way drain in the middle...minimum slope) both covered in modern plastic non-porous approved kitchen material. in a12' X 12' X 15-20' deep excavation that has a separate entrance with an outside stair. Roof over the excavation to leave a 10' high interior with the same material under a log ceiling, and bury it. In the winter, slide big blocks of ice into the 'fridge cut from the local river/lakes through a chute which can be closed and insulated with a couple of bales of hay during the warmer weather. When the blocks have formed the floor (about 2' deep) and a low wall (about 3' high by 2' wide) around the room, cover them in at lease two inches of sawdust. Then put shelves into the room. The ice should last at least a year, perhaps more, without melting.

There will be a 20'X20' storage area under the kitchen including a wine cellar with access via dumbwaiter and stairs.

**This might be a good place to build your walk-in freezer and cold strage room.

Either on the ground floor of the SE tower, or in a structure against the outside of the south wall, will be our waste management and water treatment plant. This will be a Living Machine(tm) built by Living Technologies Inc. and operated by us as trained by them. ($150,000)

**Having the waste treatment plant accessible by the castle's attackers outside the wall will enable them to bung up your waste disposal system. Notwithstanding the fact that you are extremely unlikely to suffer this grave misfortune, it might be a good idea to closely examine the system for both pathogen and grey water disposal. I was quite concerned by someone's plan to use grey water to bolster the pond ice in the winter. That cannot be good for the pond or its inhabitants, winter or summer. Perhaps a little more research in this area is indicated.

Part 2. Construction of housing and group facility.

Tavern/inn

design and bid procedure

construction

Other housing: 2 preliminary structures designed as general medireview town dwellings with ability to bunk several people. Future use might be as a dwelling, dwelling/shop, or a summer labor bunkhouse. Eventual village size to be about 12 to 15 structures.

Drill well.

Waste management will be with Clivus Minimus composting toilets.

** I hope you will eventually have more than two houses. Thatching will give you a long life spell on your roofs; and provide lots of living space for small animals, birds, etc., which can be kept out of the human spaces by proper building techniques. I can envision a winding road with a tea room, ferrier/blacksmith shop, several homes with neat little gardens in front (and veggie gardens in back), gift shop, general store, tavern, etc. What a treat!

Wednesday, November 21, 2001

The electricity works! and today I finished drilling the holes in the top of the little house.

I've brought my scanner and zip drive out and installed them so, hopefully, I'll be putting up more pictures of the site soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, 8 Nov 2001.

This past summer our shed was broken into at least twice. Several things were stolen, of course. So, this fall, Michael and I arranged things so that while he's still working and living in Anchorage, I'm staying at my Mother's in Wasilla and working on getting the "summer bed room" built into a tiny winter-proof year 'round abode. I am learning lots about electrical connections and carpentry, things that will come in handy later anyway.

After the 3 lights I have are installed, and soffets are cut (ask somebody what a soffet is; I did!), then I'll be ready to insulate!!

I went into Anchorage yesterday and Michael and I shopped for winter clothes. Insulated Carhardts seemed very appropriate! Finally this week we are having winter weather: temperatures from minus 20 Fahrenheit to highs of 10 degrees F. or so. It's been clear and beautiful for the 8 hours of daylight we have now. Snow is about 1 foot deep and very light and fluffy so far: we haven't had the miserable thaw/freeze cycle we had last year, yet. I may get to use the snow shoes that the thieves left in our shed!

The dogs are not terribly impressed with the string I strung around the immediate building site as a fence. I'll keep working on impressing them, but a fence of some sort is on the to-do list. Now, they have to nap in the car if I'm doing things where I can't keep an eye on them. Which is most of the time I'm there, since I'm working on the inside of the "house" now.

This diary thing was suggested to me by a visitor to the web site. I don't know that I'll put things in every day, but will try to update it fairly often. We'll see how it goes...