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The Project: A 2,163 square foot house utilizing dry stack concrete block construction with a central courtyard and based on the Spanish colonial-era missions in San Antonio. The Challenge: Can a forty-something married couple design and build an attractive, efficient and mostly paid-for house while remaining sane, solvent and married? With no actual prior construction experience? Hmmmmm - let's check in on our Contestants and see how they're doing... |
| A return visit by the Texas sun after rainy weather means we get a cheap and easy tie-in with our installment's title for this week as well as some more work on the roof over the barrel vault arch, seen here supporting my 175 pounds of gracefully aging packaging. Come along and I'll show you what we've been doing... |  |
| A good look at the ferrocement roofing components we're working with here. Visible are the 6 mil plastic sheeting (overlaying the wire roofing deck and 2x6 joists), one or more layers of chicken wire and several layers of nylon mesh fabric. The cementitious binder is a mixture of 1 part Portland cement and 2 parts sand with a small amount of nylon fibers added to the mix. This is hand-troweled into the supporting elements in several layers and allowed to cure. |  |
| We bring the cement and nylon mesh around this screen block set into the side of the arch. The ferrocement provides the house with a monolithic roof covering which eliminates much of the leakage common with shingles or other built-up roofing systems. |  |
| A closeup look at what the nylon mesh fabric is doing for us. There are no cracks visible after the curing process, ergo no place for water to enter. This is directly due to the nylon mesh, which provides enough structural stress relief to largely eliminate the cracks which are a normal part of the curing process. |  |
| The top of the screen block seen above, with a closeup of a piece of pexflex tubing (used for mobile home water supply) run through the cement. Each of the 4 screen blocks set into the arch will have a heavy-duty covering which will be hinged at the top of the block. These covers will be raised and lowered through a wire rope and counterweight system operated from the living room, with the wire rope running through this tubing. Low tech but built for the long haul works for me... |  |
| Want to see a rough floor plan?Want to be notified when we post new pictures? Just e-mail us! Want to see the rest of the story? Click on Gimme Shelter Home Page. |
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| Next installment: Camelot or Camel Lot? Click HERE |
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