It always seems like when I sit down to write my next entry I will be committed to getting the next one up faster than last time. How foolish of me :) heh heh, time flies when you have hundreds of things on your mind.... anyway here I am, happy to be writing and posting new updates to the journal. on with the program...

ah the courtyard, even though we could have waited to put the courtyard floor in until later, we really felt with the porch done, that we should just get all the ground work completed. This way when we begin framing and going up, we have a nice finished surface to work on. Also with another winter looming, we didnt want the courtyard to end up being a big muddy mess.

First thing we needed to do was grade the dirt so that there was at least a 1/4 inch per foot of slope toward the drain which we installed. The drain is just a standard 12" box sewer drain from home depot that allows rocks and debris to be caught and not go down the 4" pipe. Once the ground was graded, we put in approx 2" of base rock to have a nice solid footing for the bricks then laid out some vegetation barrier cloth to keep weeds and plants from coming up in between the brick. Here is a picture of the cloth with some sand put on to keep it in place.



Then we put in about 2-3" of sand graded with the existing slope to dry lay the bricks into. We decided on a herringbone pattern which, it turns out, is one of the more difficult patterns. But the results are well worth the effort. We manually hauled about 1500 red clay bricks to the site by truck. Clay was chosen so that in the summer it could absorb water we spray on it and act as a small evaporative cooler for the area as it lets the moisture out slowly. We also preferred the look and feel to the concrete pavers. The layout has a soldier pattern around the outside of the octagon with a herringbone filling up the rest. Alfred became the master mason, after a couple cracks at it he quickly mastered the angle cuts!



As you lay you have to make sure that your slope is still going in the right direction of the drain and enough to drain properly. A brick is placed then pounded into the sand with a rubber mallet.





A photo of Stephen laying out the bricks.



After they were all installed, we poured in a bunch of sand and swept it to get the sand into the cracks. This makes the floor solid.  Concrete was also poured about 2" along the perimeter of the bricks to lock in the metal lathe for the outside wall. We also put in a nice custom concrete/rock pattern around the drain area.



Unfortunately, I dont have a nice finished picture when it was nice and pretty red. Here is a photo though with sand all over it. I will post another nicer picture down the line :)



We were very happy with the way it turned out. The courtyard now officially feels like a special place and we can start to imagine how nice it will be sitting out there reading or having a dinner.

After that, we started installing the Hardy Frame Panels. These are 10' tall and 18" to 2' wide steel panels used to provide all the shear and lateral structural bracing for the house. Since it is a strawbale house and doesn't have wall sheathing like OSB or plywood, the house needs to be braced against wind and earthquake loads. These pre-engineered panels are excellent for that purpose and are fairly easy to install. Nice thing is that you don't have to custom build some X-bracing steel contraption that needs to be custom engineered.

Here is a photo of Alfred bending the bolts that were cast into the foundation to straighten them before installation.



Here is a close up of one of the huge bolts for the 2' panels they are 1 1/8" diameter bolts which go deep into the footing.



Tightening the bolts with the little room they give you inside the panel is a challenge though. We finally figured out the best way to do it since a huge socket wrench wouldnt fit. We used a big wrench which fit on top of the bold vertically and then put a steel stake through the other closed side of the wrench to turn it and thus tighten the bolt. Hard to explain, but here is a photo.



And a photo of two south side panels installed! Once they were tightened down they didn't need to be braced. They were not going anywhere.



The rest went very smoothly, and the site became known as steelhenge... hah hah!





All of them up.



It is seriously an amazing feeling to start seeing the building go vertical after looking at the project on the ground for so long.

Next, we had to chalk line out the exact dimensions of where we wanted the outside and inside walls to be lined up before installing the wood framing. This process is crucial to having your walls be in the correct place and takes time measuring and double measuring things. Out in the field nothing ever seems to line up perfectly... but it was pretty close and we were very happy there were no incorrect wall dimensions. 



Well, the next installment of the journal will show the installation of the 4x4 pressure treated sill plates which get bolted to the foundation. After that, the corner box columns and all the post/beam framing! Fun fun fun! Oh BTW the rains are coming and we need to get our 400 straw bales from Dennis LeGrande somehow in storage before that!