This post is all about erecting the steel arches and rebar for the radial roof vaults. This process took us a few weeks to get done and really looked great. I’ll put details and a lot of pictures down below, but first, the time lapse videos…
The Video(s)
Yes, I had to break this one into two videos.
Here is the first 6 vaults going in…
And here are the remaining 4 and a final walk thru.
The Gallery
A picture is worth a thousand words, so lets talk about things in the context of a gallery…
We passed the inspection without any trouble.
Another exterior view
After chisteling out the concrete for the hole, I also cut that piece of rebar and then cleaned it up nicely.
I had forgotten to leave a whole for an 8 inch duct to get thru this concrete wall. So I had to drill one out.
The kitchen vault before starting on the dining room.
This is the fresh stucco on the outside of my office window.
While I worked on Steel, Sherri worked on Stucco…
We welded each steel arch to rebar pegs (#5) drilled into the concrete ribs.
Pic of the first 3 vaults in
A sunset view from the bedroom roof
View from the bedrooms
This room as 3 vaults and covers 90 degrees of the circle (the fish eye lens flattens it out). Eventually, we will have our TV in here, etc.
This room was easy to work in because of the nice floor.
David in the playroom
I needed all the vaults to be the same height, so I used a laser to set the height of the scaffold when it was out in the uneven dirt. Then we set the steel arches a fixed distance above the scaffold deck using a car jack to make the final adjustments.
Here I am just trying out one of the steel arches to see how it “fits” and how it looks
In this shot you can see rebar arches lined up and ready to go while Sherri continues to work on stucco.
While I was focused on the steel arches, Sherri looked after stucco work.
Michael helping me work on one of the vaults.
The kids treated the place like a jungle gym
While working on the living room vaults, I looked down and noticed that the steel columns had filled with rain water. So I drilled holes to let it all out.
It sprayed for quite a while.
Close up on the bedroom dormer stucco
It was nice having a skid steer to move heavy things around.
In this case, we got a delivery of 2 tons of rebar and i could just move it to where I wanted it.
I bought a much smaller tractor to replace the skid steer and it couldn’t even lift one of these bundles.
Working under the vaults felt a little surreal at times
A closer view
IN this view, you can see my form material experiment
We knew that we would eventually need to attach formwork below the rebar, but I wasn’t sure how well my options would hold up to the environment…
I ended up using just the un-urethaned brown board, more on that in an upcoming video.
We celebrated the 4th from the roof with some friends…
We bought a Kubota to replace the skidsteer. It has only 1/3rd of the power, but it won’t tear up the ground.
Here Sherri is putting the rebar chairs up in the guest room ceiling.
The top of the guest vault. This one already has the lath, etc. and is ready to shoot.
Not sure why I don’t have any video footage of the guest room being done. Maybe it will turn up later or maybe it is lost forever.
Shot from the kitchen looking toward the dining room and living room
In the kitchen taking a pick of the dining room. The kitchen island will go under that concrete rib
In the dining room looking toward the living room
Standing in the living room looking toward the kitchen…
Backing up with the camera
Just another shot
The living room, dining room and kitchen are all open concept
This post has two videos (because I had too much footage) and a lot of good pics in the gallery.
The videos
The first video is about applying the scratch coat. This actually took most of the time because we spent a lot of time trying to make everything nice and smooth over the rough shotcrete and lath walls. After getting the wall the right shape, we would use a special tool to “scratch” the stucco so that the next layer would have nice ridges to grip on to. Here is that video.
The second video is for the brown coat. This is a smoother coat that we applied over the scratch coat. It was easier because most of the work to get the right shape was done with the previous layer, but it did have the challenge of getting a nice smooth finish, which was particularly tricky because we were not out there for enough hours at a time… Here is the video to explain.
The lessons learned
We really learned a lot of useful stuff while doing this project and it certainly can’t fit into the videos, but I’ll try to put some of it here….
I’ll come back and fill this in later (promises promises)
The Gallery
This is the part most of you wanted to see anyway… I try to tell a story with the captions.
Because the videos focus on the inside work, it is easy to forget that it was winter outside…
This will eventually be the guest room, but for now it has no roof and is essentially outside.
Here we are outside the north side, looking back toward the south thru the playroom apse door.
This is the north side of the house
This is actually the center of the house, but without a roof yet, it looks a lot like outside.
Here I am using the water sprayer to apply the scratch coat stucco.
We would mix our dry ingredients (sand, hydrated lime and portland) on a tarp.
In some spots we had to pack a lot of stucco in to fill the gaps between two layers of lath.
Some times the place got a bit messy…
We did a lot of mixing…
The skylights would freeze, but only in the section above the dirt level. Once we insulate them, this problem should go away.
Sherri playing with the dog while I mix
Sherri definitely did her fair share of stucco work
We took lots of pics like this before the stucco went up so we could remember where the electrical conduit and other hidden things were… Just in case.
Fresh scratch coat on the walls of the master bedroom.
Sherri checking out the camera. They often leave me these little shots to find when I am editing.
Mud dauber wasps had started building on our walls. We had to put a stop to that.
The entrances to the mud dauber wasp nests.
Lots of pics like this from the GoPro. Hard to decide which ones to throw away.
Working together
Working away in the hall and bedroom
Family time
The bedrooms were warm and humid, even though it was well below freezing outside in the middle of winter. We had no heat, but did occasionally wet the walls down with hot water.
This is a rough corner. Clearly the stucco was hard tooled with no interest in making a nice fillet. I would need to fill this with stucco instead.
The first step is to attach a board, then we pack it with stucco or mortar.
Here it is after packing with stucco…
Then we scratch it so it can hold the next layer better.
Then we can strip off the wood and stucco that section also.
Here it is after scratch coat in the fill section.
Looking toward a long evening of hard stucco work
At the end of every evening, we would need to head outside and wash out the tools.
The master bedroom with scratch coat.
The back end of the master bedroom, really the master bath, with scratch coat.
Another angle on the master bathroom scratch coat.
After we ran out of sand (those huge piles), we started buying pre-mixed stucco for $6 a bag. This was a pic of the delivery from Menards.
Another one of Sherri being silly for the camera when I am not around.
We got pretty good at ceilings during this project. Just a little slower than walls.
We tried the hard rubber float on this wall when it was still too soft and it pulled off some bits of the brown coat (so you could see the scratch coat). But I kind of liked it, so I put the date in and left it like that.
The OSB formed sections were pretty nice already with lots of good texture, so I just skipped the scratch step and applied the brown coat directly. It also went over the steel studs without a problem.
A birds eye view of the hall ceiling with fresh stucco on it.
The stucco in the foreground has been sponged. The stucco in the background is just troweled on.
Sherri Showing off her sponge finish (on the right side)
This is Davids bedroom, so we made sure he got some stucco time in.
On the floor, we mix one bag of portland, 1/3rd bag of hydrated lime and 25 gallons of sand. In the wheel barrow we add water and 1 qt of thinset to make it sticky.
Here you can see brown coat over scratch coat
Occationally, stucco falls down. This is how our faces look when it happens.
One of the bedrooms after the stucco cures and turns mostly white.
Master Bedroom with browncoat stucco patches. Each patch is one evening’s work.
Sherri also stuccoed the office, but I didn’t record any of it on video, so it didn’t make the timelapse movie.
In the previous two segments, we put dirt over the shotcrete and then added our waterproof insulating umbrella. In this segment, we put an additional layer of dirt over our umbrella, then plant grass and work on the retaining walls.
For your viewing pleasure, here is the timelapse video…
Video
Lessons learned
As always, not everything makes it into the videos. One part that didn’t quite make it was adding the layer of blocks along the top edge of the wall above the back door. That wall is an ICF wall, basically 6 inches of reinforced concrete poured between two sides of insulation. We put a good amount of blue max waterproofing on the top edge and then I made sure that the billboard vinyls (17 mill reinforced) also overlapped the edge and I mortared 3 layers (about 12 inches) of block along the top edge to hold it all in place… I thought this would be good enough. However, water finds a way… It was able to get between the ICFs and the concrete and run down the inside of my wall all winter… I’ll need to tear those blocks off and put in some continuous metal flashing at some point.
When we started laying it out, I assumed that the experts would know what to do. Of course, they were pretty uncomfortable with my not having a detailed plan, but were nice enough to work with me. So, the first lesson learned was that I really should have come with a plan and not put that on the contractor. As it turned out, I really didn’t bring enough blocks to for that back wall. Some sort of math problem. So that was my second mistake. The compromise solution was to turn the blocks side ways and lean them back against the hill… I know this is not ideal and I already expect a lot of negative comments on Youtube. I decided the only way to overcome that was to put a lot of concrete and rebar behind the blocks to tie them together and form a continuous dam. This chewed up a bunch of time, but it is over a year (two winters and two springs) later and the wall is so solid that the mortar hasn’t even cracked.
Other tricks up my sleeve
Sherri was concerned that someone would fall off that boulder wall, in fact, she always calls it the “death wall”. She insisted that I put a rail along the top and bottom edge. I wanted that rail to be as slender as possible and decided I could use copper pipe for posts and rails. This isn’t against code if I don’t put a walking path within 6 ft of the rail. When used as the posts, the copper pipe would be much easier than a wooden post to attach to the boulders… Just drill it in. The problem is that it wasn’t really stiff enough. I found that “L type” copper pipe was quite a bit thicker and stronger, but I still wouldn’t want to rely on it. I also found that 1/2 inch L copper fits almost perfectly inside 3/4 inch L copper… This made it more than twice as stiff, especially if I filled the gap with epoxy… So that is what I did. The last problem was that the holes were not drilled perfectly vertical (that is harder to do than you might think), so you see they are a bit off plumb at the start, but later we were able to bend them vertical.
The Gallery
Here are some pics, mostly just old scenes since this wasn’t really a photogenic stage. Enjoy.
These boulders were used to keep the dirt on the roof from spilling around the front… You can also see the billboard vinyls, some carpet, etc.
Walking with the dog
Walking to pick up the camera…
When building a stone wall like this, you often need to spread the stones out as you search for the perfect one. That leads to this sort of messy chaos.
Michael being goofy for the camera before turning it off.
Sometimes we forget to turn off the camera at the end of the day and bring it back into the shop still on… I saw the little red light flash as this pic was taken. I included it so you could see how the shop looks.
The shop, on a clean day (not usually this clean) viewed from the front doors.
Cleaning up the north wall… On this day, I arrived just at sunset, so the first few pics are quite nice.
This guy had seen my stuff on line and also happened to work in Aerospace at one of my customers… He wanted to come check it out and volunteered to help me out to make up for the tour time… That worked for me. He brought his little brother also.
David likes to jump from the death wall… Climbing it is also fun. Hence Sherri likes to call it the death wall.
