So after banging out the T&G for our main floor ceiling, we had a really epic deck for knocking back cold drinks in the sun. As an upper floor though it was far too flimsy with a mere ¾” of Douglas fir bridging 5 foot spans.

If this was going to support my many thousands of books in an upstairs library then it would need some serious beefing up.

So I humped 130 fourteen foot 2X6s up onto the deck and began building a lattice of joists to carry the load. The engineer specified 16” centres for the joists but since he’s never seen my Earthscan book collection and probably doesn’t own multiple sets of Das Kapital, never mind Janson’s 3.7 kg, 1168 page History of Art, I decided to go with 12” centres in most places to add even more meat.

I also framed overhangs on the east and west ends that rest on the exterior posts and beams to create covered areas below. That sounds easy, but it really wasn’t. On the back of a week of 14 hour days in the sun, it felt right to share the pain and ruin my electrician’s sailing holiday by having him drop everything and wire for the downstairs lights.

Rough wiring in, I filled the joist bays with bats of Roxul Safe’n Sound mineral wool insulation as a fire break and sound dampener for when Mia’s 14 and cranks the Justin Bieber of 2025. On top went 964 square feet of ¾ plywood, with the last screw of 3000 sunk at 9 pm, eleven hours before the roof trusses arrived and were plopped on top with a crane.

Was building the subfloor structure exciting? A life changer really. At least as thrilling as reading this post. There’s six minutes of your life, gone, forever. All to look at some guy put in screws and stuff insulation.

Next up, cranes and high angle antics. Really, I swear on a stack of Kapital, it’ll be exciting.

Rough wiring

Wood. It’s expensive on many levels. As it probably should be when you cut down a venerable living thing and slice it up into boards and sawdust. Vital ecosystem, carbon sink, cubic metres of cash, something to chuck into your woodstove.

 

It depends on your view point.

 

So I set off to find some flash but affordable wood for our house ceiling that met a number of environmental, economic and aesthetic objectives.

 

Rule number one: no old growth.

 

So I ring up on mill on Vancouver Island near Ladysmith and request a quote on some tongue and groove planks. I’m very specific: ‘Douglas fir or red cedar, no old growth.’ Mill man responds: ‘is there any specific reason why you don’t want old growth?’ as if it’s the most bonkers thing he’s ever heard.

 

If I have to explain to someone in 2015 why my house cannot possibly justify cutting down a 500 year old Douglas fir tree then is there really a point in going on? Sure it’s British Columbia and we’ve diligently cut down 99% of the old growth Douglas fir over the past 125 years so hell ya, why not go all in and turn those remaining ancient 200 foot tall behemoths into flooring for wankers?

 

So I move on to mill man two. An FSC certified mill near Parksville. Plenty of wood, all young second growth, all from monitored woodlots. Good start. Mill man appears highly motivated. Even better. So as we’re discussing micro V versus flush milled tongue a groove joints I spot some dust covered lifts of lumber in the back of a vast warehouse.

 

‘What’s that?’

 

‘Oh some flooring. I think it been sitting back there for eight or ten years.’

 

‘Hmm… would it work for a ceiling?’

 

‘Can’t see why not.’

 

‘Hmm…’

 

So I’m back a week later. Mill man is very keen. I suspect the bank is circling overhead, talons glistening.

 

‘You can have two lifts for $1700, including tax.’

 

‘Including tax, eh?’

 

‘Yep.’

 

‘For all 1900 square feet?’

 

‘Yep.’

 

So handed the mill man an envelope of freshly extruded plastic $100 bills and the wood is mine.

 

Over 6,000 lineal feet of mostly clear [knot free] second growth Douglas fir tongue and groove flooring, seasoned after a decade of collecting dust in a saw mill warehouse. Somebody’s long forgotten dream floor that never happened, now destined for our ceiling.

 

So the recipe for great early summer T&G: cut board to length, pound tongue into groove, nail, repeat 600 times while developing that neck tan.

So maybe while killing time between packed buses, flossing your teeth or changing a nappy, some of you in Melbourne, Singapore, Auckland, Nashville or Biggleswade might have been wondering what the hell has been going on?

Blog entries as regular as a Saturday hangover in London climaxing in torrid prose about power planes, drilling jigs and threaded rod and then nothing. Nada. Pure radio silence.

City bred greenhorns. Perhaps they threw in the towel on this folly of a house build and overly ambitious micro farm? Maybe Rob dyed his grey, grew a real beard and shed ten years, abandoning the good life for the better life of East Vancouver hipster. Karen trading her plenty-of-sweat-required 1/3 acre veg garden for two square feet of containered micro-greens on a fourth floor balcony. Cleaning the country living out from under her nails and sipping a latte while posting earnestly ironic photos of Mia in skinny jeans on Pinterest.

Na, none of that happened. Though I’m still working on that beard and Mia and her jeans are pretty skinny.

You may recall in my last instalment back in early June, we’d just finished our heavy timber post and beam frame. After basking in glory for about ninety seconds, thoughts turned to winter. Sure late May flowers blanketed the roadsides and Karen’s garden burst with the promise of ten thousand green shoots already a month into what would become a five month drought. But in my mind I saw only the spectre of November gales lashing down, turning a year’s work to rot.

The vision was powerful, the way forward clear.

You can’t live in a wood frame with no roof so it was time to stop the self-congratulatory B.S. and get hammering. The solution to cold night sweats about rain half a year in the future? A five month diet of ten hour days. As a consequence, I ended up too shattered to type, think up witty things to say or bother with showering.

So what follows over the next half dozen blog posts is a heady tale of high angle acrobatics, repetitive stress syndrome, 30,000 nails, an epic builder’s tan and the tendency to Shanghai unwary visitors into lifting something really, really heavy. All in the bid to get that bleeding roof on.

Next up, how we got our (tongue) and groove.

From this

To this

 

11 mm of wood between me and the completion of our heavy timber frame.

 

A yawning micro gap mocking me on the Hillary Step of nine months of hard post-and-beam graft from above the fourth of five posts over which sat our last and longest beam. A beastly 27’ 7” (8.5m) chunk of Douglas fir felled by Thor and intended to support the entire east end of our house.

 

Somehow in the complicated layout of the beam flats, incorporating two distinct horizontal planes to negotiate a long gradual taper, I made an error. As the post top elevations were spot on – triple checked with the optical builder’s level – I probably introduced the error in layout when transferring elevations onto the curved surface of the roundwood for the flat contact surfaces for posts.

 

Perplexing that 11 mm.

 

But no matter.

 

Nothing the Makita power plane couldn’t turn into compost toilet shavings in 90 seconds flat. Never mind that the 400 kg beam was suspended by two ropes off an excavator bucket perilously close by. My neighbour John was on the controls, keeping the timber steady while giving his dog Libby a head scratch.

 

A snowstorm of fine fir flakes off post five, a mere flurry off post four and a paper’s thickness off post three. With a flick of the wrist on the joystick John shunted the beam half an inch and it settled down on the flats. I reshot the beam top elevations and it was level within 5 mm across the entire length. Well within the variability of the roundwood. Chuffed, relieved, ecstatic.

 

An hour later we’d popped the last 6×12 joist into place in the northwest corner. A slightly complicated affair with one end on the roundwood, as with the other 14 joists, and one end terminating on a block on top of a three-ply 2×12 door lintel in our 45 degree wall. I jacked the joist into place and tapped it onto its marks, the top flush with the outer stud wall double plate, east-west variability of 3mm across the length. A satisfyingly tight connection after the inelegant final beam fitting.

 

Later in the week, after a site visit from our delighted structural engineer Kris Dick, I screwed the joist in place with a half dozen 12 and 16 inch GRK structural screws. The post and beam drilling jig was put into action for the last time on the five connections on the east beam and the post and beam frame was complete!

 

Nine months, thirty-five roundwood posts and beam sections, fifteen 6×12 joists, five built up 4-ply 2×6 posts, 4 plate steel flitch plates, 66 bolts 12 X ¾” , 26 pieces of 5/8” threaded rod and steel backers, 5 galvanized post brackets and 10 half inch bolts and 21 custom made plate steel post tie-downs cast into the foundation last year.

 

The next day I took down most of the cross-bracing and the shape of the house revealed itself to us in all its sturdy glory. Strangely it somehow doesn’t look like that much work now that it’s done, but maybe that’s the point.

 

Thanks to my dad for helping put together the built-up posts and east external stud wall while on holiday. Special thanks to John, our neighbour, for lifting each and every timber at least a half dozen times with his excavator. Your generosity knows no bounds.

 

Straddling two ladders, 80 kg of Douglas Fir on my shoulder, I lowered the timber onto a flat spot chiselled on the round beam. A satisfying thunk onto its mark 1 inch (25mm) below the string line, the bones of the upper floor complete.

Time for beer.

For the past two months I’ve been measuring, sawing, chiselling, and sanding the 15 epic joists that will support the most vital bits of our house like our bed and the library for a couple of thousand books.

Milled last spring, the 6X12 inch joists run perpendicular to the three parallel rows of round wood beams running through the house.

Each joist interfaces with the round wood at a custom cut curved notch that adds both stability against earthquake racking and enabled me to remove any remaining elevation error caused by the variability and taper of the round wood.

This means that the upper floor of our house should be perfectly level with twin goals achieved; the roof should go on square without any twists and crucially, Mia’s marbles shouldn’t roll across her room and under the bed.

The timbers are still raw with the saw blade marks from milling, juxtaposed against the organic curve of the peeled round wood. Chiselled by hand, lifted by machine, nudged onto their marks with muscle. The interface between the natural and the machine made.

I recommend lifting timbers with your shoulder. It’s the antidote to decades of desk dwelling.

Check out the photos below for the step-by-step in case the urge takes you.

 

It’ll be a berry yummy place in a few years.

 

In the aftermath of ‘The Big Mess’ late-winter-hugelkultur project, great strides have been made in our quest for a fruitful future.

 

Over the past month we’ve planted our first three apple trees of what will probably be many dozens. We picked up some one year olds on M7 rootstock at the Nanaimo Seedy Sunday from Denman Island Heritage Apples.

 

A Vander Pol Red cultivar that originated in Oregon in 1903. A Spigold cultivar developed in New York State in 1962 and said to produce a ‘large golden fruit flushed pink-red. Firm, crisp and juicy.’ But most intriguing, a Lady. Good for cider or eating and while first described in France in 1628, is believed by some apple anoraks to be one in a handful of apples favoured by the Romans.

 

Karen also completed the two blueberry hugel beds. Our friend Jen, another veteran of the London teaching trenches over on a visit from Vancouver, helped Karen tuck the Duke and Elliot blueberries under a blanket of high-acid Douglas fir saw dust mulch from our wood milling last year. Here they can grow and do their lush blueberry business until they start producing in another year or two.

 

The final perennial project of the early spring was a raspberry bed that Karen dug in with canes from our neighbour John’s prolific and delicious patch.

 

A house update is coming soon, but in the meantime check out the fruit of Karen’s labours.

 

 

Moat-like and bramble-choked, a drainage ditch dug long ago surrounds our garden, the most valuable asset in our quest for food self-sufficiency. Who dug the ditch and when is unknown, but over the past few decades parts of it have succumbed to the relentless creep of the surrounding red alder.

A pioneer species that colonizes open ground, alder has many benefits. There’s no finer wood for smoking wild West Coast salmon, alder roots host nitrogen fixing bacteria that improve the soil productivity and it breaks down quickly in the earth feeding mycelium and the soil ecosystem.

In the northwest corner of our garden the alder roots clogged the drainage ditch leaving that part of the garden flooded and soggy into the spring, delaying planting and potentially competing with food crops for nutrients.

The solution?

Our neighbour John, his excavator and my chainsaw.

Two blokes and a machine can make one hell of a muddy mess in the middle of winter, and we did. A shocking mess.

So what to do with a two dozen alder trees, branches and root balls? Bury it of course.

John excavated two long trenches in the garden to Karen’s specification. I bucked up the trees into three foot lengths and Karen buried the evidence. A layer cake of red alder, top soil and in a few weeks a thick dusting of acid-rich Douglas fir sawdust from last year’s sawmill work. It’s the future home of our blueberry patch.

Known as Hugelkultur in permaculture circles, this sort of large scale raised bed provides innumerable benefits. Rich moisture retaining substructure to hold water during the dry summer months while keeping plant roots out of the wettest levels when the water table is up during the winter rains. Over time the alder will break down and feed a complex soil ecosystem, which will massively benefit the blueberries.

So out of destruction erupt nutrients and the sweet promise of luscious anti-oxidant rich food.

It’s still a mess though. We couldn’t bury that.

 

 

 

There she be!

Earlier this week, my neighbour John worked his excavator magic and we slotted the last interior beam into the NW corner of the house.

One end is bolted to a 3/8” thick flitch plate, cut on a water jet table in Nanaimo by Unlimited Fabrication. The other end rests on a ladder until this coming weekend when I’ll add a built-up post of four 2X6s that will ultimately be housed inside an 18-inch thick wall.

Over the past few weeks I’ve also had great success with the giant Ikea connector for the posts and beams. I’ve avoided being flung from a great height or having my wrist snapped by my massive drill and there’ve been only a few minor alignment issues with my drilling jig that were resolvable. I’m delighted given the tight tolerances of 0.05” and challenging materials and circumstances.

External east and west posts and long beams to support the upstairs overhangs will be added after I shape and install the 15 epic 6 X 12” joists I had milled last spring.

I also built a work bench for shaping and sanding the joists. The base is 2 X 4” cribbing with a beastly bench top of two spare joists. When the joist work is done I’ll pop my compound mitre saw on the bench for chopping framing sticks.

Last Saturday I moved three of these 120 kg / 270 lb joists with my mate Archimedes and a few pieces of log as rollers. Nearly 10 months of air drying and the moisture level is at 21% near the surface and they look stunning.

Next job is to set-up string lines for levelling the joists where they meet the beams and to start notching and sculpting them to fit.

 

 

 

Whoosh!

An epic flame and the Tall Boy kettle rattled towards a boil, 28 litres of Pilsner in the making.

The graduation of my all-grain brewing from the kindergarten of an 18 litre pot and homemade double bucket lauter tun to a post-secondary 60 litre kettle and 40 litre converted Igloo cooler mash tun complete with false floor and ball valve for easy sparging.

Let’s not forget the Barley Crusher roller mill for crushing the malt now arriving on my doorstep in 25 kg bags. All part of the Mother of All Brewing Equipment Orders I placed in November from Ontario Beer Kegs and Hop Dawgs that included 60 kg of malt, a dozen different hop varieties and two dozen yeast strains.

Lest all of this sound like the hopped-up pub banter of beer-anoraks [which it is], simply know this: when it rains on Gabriola and the house building stalls, the beer [wine or cider] making commences.

I see it as time well spent on the house build.

Instead of chiselling or hoisting beams I’m laying down hectolitres of crisp Czech Pilsners, malty Munich-style lagers, heady porters, enduring session ales and fresh milds to bend the rubber arms of volunteers who will be press-ganged into cob floor building and light clay straw mixing this coming summer.

Absolutely nothing says natural building like free beer.

Bring on the rain or the sun. We are happy either way.

Beer anoraks read on, everyone else skip to the photos

 

Pilsner recipe (28 litres)

Adapted and modified RU Kidding Me? Pils from Papazian, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, pp. 301-303

5.75 Pilsner malt, crushed
332 g aromatic malt
62 g Saaz hops (60 min boil)
31 g Hersbrucker-Hallertauer hops (30 min boil)
6 g Saaz and 16 g Hersbrucker-Hallertauer (1 minute boil)
Whirlfloc (Irish moss) 10 min boil
21g Saaz hops for dry hopping while lagering for 4 weeks
White Labs Pilsner lager yeast WLP800 (two vials)
OG 1.046-50
FG 1.010-12
35 IBU

Mash all grains in 12.5 litres of 68C water for 45 minutes at 68C, raise to 70C for 15 minutes, heat to 75C, drain and sparge with 11 litres of 76C water.

60 minute boil with hops and Whirlfloc added as above. Cool wort to 23C, sieve and sparge into fermenter. Aerate well and cast two vials of yeast. Ferment at 13C until fermentation visibly stops, rack and add dry hops and lager for 3-4 weeks at 2-13C. Clarify with gelatin if necessary a week before bottling. Prime bottles with 175 ml of brewer’s sugar dissolved in 300 ml of boiling water.

Drink immediately or age for up to 6 months.

 

 

The moment of truth.

 

Standing on a plywood platform held up by an excavator drilling a hole through our first Douglas fir beam. The high-torque drill precariously balanced between sucking the auger into the timber, snapping the shaft and jamming it forever or breaking my wrist and flinging me onto the rocks below.

 

A month of planning, selecting and preparing epic foot thick beams from our finest timbers, fabricating 15 kg flitch plates of 3/8” plate steel to join beams over posts, sculpting post tops, laying-out and chiselling beam-post contact points, levelling, plumbing, bracing and double and triple checking.

 

And it all came down to this moment.

 

Executing a perfect intersection of a 3/4” hole bored 24 inches down though the beam and into the post to take a 5/8” threaded rod and a huge 1-1/2” hole bored horizontally to take a machined steel backer.

 

Tolerances of millimetres, potential hang-ups legion, vessels bulging in my head innumerable.

 

The whole house build hinging on a jig I banged together out of scrap lumber with bushings fabricated by a retired Gabriolan machinist down the road. If it works we are on, if it’s buggered, there’s no Plan B except to live in a tent.

 

Smooth as silk the threaded rod sank into the hole and spiralled downward into the backer deep within the wood. The largest DIY Ikea connector on Gabriola in action.

 

We have achieved beamdon!