Office Refit – Wanaka Wastebusters
Jan0
Mooted quite a few months ago I finally managed to find an accomplice, the extraordinary Gutter Man – Tony McCutheon aka Gromme, and get the office refit project for Wastebusters well underway last week.
The goal was to increase the productivity of the office space by providing storage for each work space and some division between them. I adopted a rule of 1m3 storage per 1m of desk space, which is a lot but reflects the fact that the office space is connected to the best second hand shop in ~ Wanaka? The world?
Storage is provided by the vertical cases which also split up the desk space. The traffic way around the central island is also now blocked to provide a private (Simon!) workspace. Walkways only work if there is enough room to transit without interrupting which there wasn’t in this case.
All construction is from seconds 15mm plwood from Trademe, some of which was… er… very second rate. To be expected I guess. It all screwed with superscrews so it can be re-configured or dismantled easily at a later date.
Below is the quick Sketchup representation I did to convince everybody it would work, and below that some pictures of it in progress.
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- New printer station with paper and toner storage above
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- Before - all deskspace is linked and storage is mostly under desks.
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- During refot - Storage towers are in place and extra shelving.
Mechanisation of the lightearth process
Nov0
I have been doing quite a lot of research into how we can speed up the lightearth/strawclay/lightstraw process for some up coming projects. This video is the best example I can find so far of more advanced production. Exciting stuff.
This video Features Tyler Buck, Tribal Construction and The Jackpine Collaborative.
Light earth wall experiment progress
Oct0
As part of the conciliation of things into satisfying projects the greenhouse project has morphed into a lightearth wall proving ground.
Ever since I read Gernot Minkes book and then encouraged Bis to make his walls I have been convinced that lightearth (or straw/clay or light cob) is a superior infill system to strawbale for buildings in the New Zealand temperate climate. It offers sufficient insulation, thermal mass and a lower footprint.
The posts have been in the ground for over three years but the design has stuck – an off angle roof tuned for solar performance while hunkering down to the south (where the cold comes from). The south wall will be 220mm thick light earth with firewood stacked under the oversize eave – hopefully offering enough mass and insulation to let us grow some citrus inside the building.
The idea is to test the performance of the lightearth wall in a very demanding environment - high humidity and spraying water every day should provide that. I will put some temperature data loggers in the wall and on either side (I’d really like some humidity data loggers too but haven’t found any cheap enough).
More later as it evolves.
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- The roof framing in place. The south side of the roof is recycled galv corrugate - the thick soft stuff (which looks like it came on the first ship)
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- The rear wall has top and bottom ... er .. kinda bond beams. The footing will be a hybrid 'welsh' stone footing and metal flashings. I am fighting my first inclination to use concrete with a desire to experiment and build a structure which could be dismatled as easily as it is built.
Insulation – Round 2
Mar0
My house is the first house I designed and therefore comes under the ‘allowable mistakes’ section I guess. I mistake is only a problem if is not assimilated into future practice, and of course remedied.
One of the biggest was not sealing the strawbale wall top adequately, combined with the curved and therefore gappy nature of the surfeit it resulted in way too mch air movement through the rafter cavity. The roof is insulated on the exterior of the waterproof membrane so the dew point can not be inside but with the rafter cavity running some brisk natural air-con the insulation never really got to do its job.
So, the problem sat in my draft addled head for many years. How best to inject insulation with the least amount of work and maximum impact.
I found Paul Kennets house insulation project very inspiring but I didn’t really want polystyrene inside the house where it could rain down through the micro gaps in the T&G ceiling. But the method made sense.
My belief is that an unwanted singular thing can be a problem, waste I guess – but a lot of an unwanted thing is normally a resource I started looking for insulation options from the wastestream. It didn’t take long to find bedding grade polyester fibre insulation offcuts through the Christchurch waste exchange Terranova. Toby and I needed a shipping container so as it was travelling empty I took a day to fill it with free insulation in Christchurch and ship it down.
So the last few months has been the occasional session of ripping up 30m3 of insulation and blowing it into the roof space with a Ryobi leaf blower on suck (over 200kmh muzzle velocity!). Kinda noisy and mindless work but it already seems warmer.
Clients
