Rufus Laggren wrote:I don't know about grounding, but I wonder if those boots will last long enough for anything like that to matter. They're good for keeping  your feet dry-ish for a few hours now and then and not really designed for continuous rough duty.   Seems like if you tore  up leather boots in a normal day, the rubber ones will probably follow on to the recycle bin pretty quick. Not real nice to your feet, either - a day in those, you take them off around people and you might end up magically alone... Dogs could start sniffing around you, though. <g>


Cheers,
Rufus

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll try them this week and see how it goes.

There's always the frequent sock change option.

So many of the workers around here are in rubber boots all day. Perhaps they have the same issue.

The quest for the perfect footwear continues!

Hey All,

I've got an emf earthing question/idea, plus boot troubleshooting.

I get a lot out of grounding for health-- I sleep on a grounding blanket from earthing dot com, wear earth runner sandals, go barefoot, and make/wear leather boots with grounding copper rivet on the sole.

Plus I need to wear zero drop minimalist soles cause it makes my knee issues basically go away.

Recently my leather boots got torn up on a new job landscaping full time, mostly weedeating on hills and pushing a honda mower fast, and I'm wearing my rubber boots starting tuesday.

I got 8-9 foot of zinc coated steel chain, made a loop midfoot and around my heel, the from the heel connected chain up the back to dangle against my calves.

Chain is used in electical industry to ground carts and components.

My goal is to achieve almost 24/7 grounding and to avoid the boot foot rot from sweat, which is up until this point why I almost never wear rubber boots.

I also just got a bunch of new xl wool socks that go up above the top of the boot, and plan on changing 2-3 times per day and see if it helps.

Some theorize sweat is attempt of body to find ground, though I imagine that rubber boot on a hot day doesnt help.

Anyway, there's my idea.

Please let me know if you've got any suggestions.

PS

I dont want to put a rivet through the sole cause they're nice waterproof boots.

Another option is screwing a plate to the sole and running a wire up the back and connecting to something that is more skin comfortable, but the chain seems like possibly a more elegant solution and actually isnt causing chafing issues dangling against my calves.

PPS

My real goal is to design new footwear that is basically a covered minimalist sandal that would count as closed toe for work insurance purposes.

I think about starting with an earth runner sandal base and possibly incorporating a foot wrap furoshiki vibram type foot cover, but for now I had the boots and the chain was inexpensive.

Anyway, cheers.

Forrest Little of Wet Spun Building dot wordpress dot com

We're Moving!

Across the yard!

Hey All,

Wanted to share a few updates.

We're midway through the roof of our new barn for the lumber mills, shingling with Solexx,  a corrugated plastic material.

We got turkeys and I made a new gate/fence to enclose them..

The cyllindrical rolling scaffolding served their purpose, and I've been converting them to round compost bins.

And over the last couple of days I've been enclosing some grapes, black berries and thimble berries with a new lattice structure, (not pictured).

Hope you're all well.

Forrest

Hi All,

Happy Spring. We're pausing with the mill house construction to get some more garden beds in. Amoeba shape, egg shaped and round. They're pretty quick to do, and this is the first time so we bet they'll get even quicker. More at wetspunbuilding.wordpress.com.

Forrest

Hi Lito,

That sounds great. I look forward to it.

Best,

Forrest



Hi Nancy

Thank you for the recommendation. I will look into Azby brown. Speaking of hempcrete, I'm also very curious about nettlecrete.

Best,

Forrest

Hi Josephine,

You're so welcome. Judging from what you said, vitamin c to bowel tolerance http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html and sleeping on a grounding mat from earthing.com would be likely useful in responding to the oxidative damage associated with a lung situation. I've got my parents, a grandparent, and myself using these tools for very positive results for chronic pain and immune system stuff. At the very least worth looking into. Its part of what we're doing with the buildings too, trying to mitigate oxidative damage by having grounded floors.

Cheers,

Forrest

Hi Josephine,

Thank you for your question.  

First thing that comes to mind is maybe it would be best to use the shed space for things that do not need to be heated and leave it separate, because then you wouldnt have to mess with permits.

A monolithic dome "ecoshell" is a small shed available on monolithicmarketplace.com, but its a kit that is essentially an inflatable bag they spray with concrete to get the dome, and still needs fasteners and foundation. Its also vastly smaller than the shed you've got, 8×10, so doesnt really go far to solving the issue. Maybe contact them also to see if they have some ideas.

Our method could work, the block would be that you'd have to find people to do it and currently no one is trained and we dont travel. We've attached to wooden walls with a curved wall as an interface to the round building. Basically we nailed a board the thickness of the wall we wanted to a stud on the corner of the house, then attached our woodcrete forms to that and poured woodcrete right up against the stud on the house, between house and the round building we built next to the house. There are some pictures on our site. Then the round roof needs to be interfaced in some way with your current roof, and the correct flashing for waterproofing will be a must. Once things are attached you'd need to cut away the existing wall betwen the two buildings, likely at one end or the other of your home.  Our woodcrete requires extensive curing time so it needs to be fully cured before the wall is cut away. We are currently in the process of doing this, with a work in progress building connected to the house but the wall to be cut out is still there. You would possibly want to reinforce whatever wall you attached to, with extra framing.

It would be unlikely you'd find a carpenter to do something like this, as its way outside the box, as they say. Plus a significant labor cost would be involved, even if you had a local saw mill cut the lumber like we do in thin strips and cutting out the blocks for the roof, the shingles, etc.. We havent done something like that but a mid range estimate might be 35k if we were doing that for a customer. Who knows what a miraculously open minded builder would charge for something similar. Currently we arent really connected with other round builders, but it would be worth it to contact others even if they're not in your area to see if they know of people who are in your area. If you've got any interested adult people around, it would probably be cheaper to send them to a 5 quarter trade school and then have them come back and do it for ya to save labor costs.

Regarding health stuff. Please disregard any of this if its outside your worldview, simply my shotgun approach I share with everyone who mentions health. Wanted to make sure you were aware of doctoryourself.com, a great source for diy megavitamin therapy including high doses of vitamin c; fasting with Dr Jason Fung, a Canadian kidney specialist curing people's insulin resistance with intermittent and continuous fasting; Earthing.com, source for electromagnetic grounding info, anti-inflamatory practice; and ketogenic diet, specifically the book Primal Body Primal Mind, all about the importance of dietary fat from animals and the risks associated with sugar. Also Psych-K, brain hemisphere synchronization, similar to the effect of prayer or meditation. I mention these whenever anyone brings up health stuff. I totally get it if any of that might be outside of your worldview, but if any of that happens to be useful I wanted to share, as health is my other main interest.

Thank you again for your message.

Cheers

Forrest

Hi Gordon,

We've been talking about some of the issues you raised with water tanks. Thank you for your comments.

Regarding the woodcrete tanks being porous for potable water. We're thinking a food grade potable water liner inside the tank would be the best bet.

Regarding a tank for non potable water, or approaching a potable water solution, we could use our forms for concrete, remove the forms and then possibly add a bio sand filter component for extra safety. Anything we would be doing with woodcrete would have that commercial plastic potable liner.

We're not really working with with epoxy so we havent achieved it either. But we are interested in doing epoxy doors.

Thanks again for your comments.

Forrest

Hi Kate,

Re woodcrete ingredients:

That article, http://www.themoldstore.info/concrete_formulas.html, references perlite but is a general formula for any light weight concrete, just switch out perlite for the sawdust or chips.

That article was the one Eric read to figure out what to use. For us, using doug fir sawdust from the bandsaw, we're doing half the recipe: 8 gallons of water, 47 lb bag of cement and 18 gallons of sawdust, (three and a half 5 gallon buckets of sawdust). Fresh or dry sawdust. The really old sawdust which is more like dirt on the ground, thats going to need less water.. With drier sawdust you might need a bit more water.

For clarity, we're using half the concrete in the above recipe on that perlite link, arrived at by experimentation. Also we're not adding sand. If we added sand, it would be able to be finished, but our sandless stuff is impossible to finish, ie, grind down or smooth out while wet. The way we do it its great for wall fill and subfloor.  Keep in mind it takes an extended drying period. If you use twice the concrete like they say, much speedier process.

Now this is all for sawdust. For yardwaste chippings like fir branches, it might need less water. We dont mind the fir needles either. Also we use other yardwaste chippings, which behave differently, needing more or less water.

Hope that helps

Forrest

Hi Lito,

Thank you so much for your compliments. At some point if you become interested in paying us a visit and find yourself in the area we would be happy to schedule something. I must say I am quite a home body these days for the peninsula but that could change.

Its funny, I had the phrase "artisan trades" on my mind for years between graduating with a psych ba and going to trade school. I narrowly escaped grad school and sort of fell into this working with my buddy Eric, who really came up with everything. Now I get to join in on the fun of developing the techniques further. I'm really happy to be blending my artistic side with my developing practical side. Its kind of surreal to hear that word artisan, since it really seems to be the path I'm getting to go down after so many years of a vague notion that it was important. I wish more people in my generation had the opportunities I've had to start over, in a way, doing something concrete.

As for woodcrete, if you google moscow idaho and woodcrete you'll get a mother earth news article of a guy doing a home in 1978. I havent heard anything about how that home is doing today. Eric was mentioning its pretty popular in Australia as well. When I was in carpentry school all my professors were concerned about the rot issue of wet wood in the concrete, but I'd like to think its over blown. Industrial woodcrete is made by adding the wood to concrete, drying it, then breaking it up and re adding it to more concrete for a more uniform product. Perhaps that would be better, but I havent seen any comparison. Apparently its bullet proof..

I added Mr Chickadee to my youtube feed and am checking out his stuff. Thank you for the recommendation.

Your experience in South Africa suggests to me that the woodcrete might be plenty durable over time, if portland cement and wood shavings are comparable to mud and grass in strength. Wild to think about, since we stress so much in carpentry about engineering and think that our structures are superior to mud and grass.

Regarding natural furniture, all I can think of is live edge furniture. Thats keeping the shape of the tree rather than milling into dimensional lumber. I've done 3 benches like that recently, out of logs that were too bent up to make good shingles. Alder trucks for legs. I'll have to think to take some pictures for the site. There was a guy in my class who was obsessed with that sort of technique, combined with epoxy and rocks to make a sort of river or beach water surface in the middle of a slab. Oh there's another term, slab wood furniture.

Great to be talking,

Cheers,

Forrest

Hi Josephine,

Thank you for your feedback. Hopefully as this technique becomes more popular it will become available and affordable in your area. Part of the idea is that its cutting the cost of housing because of the efficiency of building round, using uncured wood that never had to be shipped, etc. Again, thank you for your encouragement.

PS I dont know if you've already found monolithic domes, but they seem like a pretty popular option these days. Might be worth a look. One thing good about not living in a traditional yurt is that the kits dont last as long as a traditional house.  We're trying to help bridge the gap between round and long lasting.

Best,

Forrest

Hi Isa,

Thank you for your comment!
Those are great ideas for getting things to fit. We’ve also thought about making furniture with the same curve as the wall. Thoughts! Enjoy Yurt Life

Best
Forrest

Hi Kay,

Thank you for your comment!  Yeah we really like working with the stuff, seems to be structural and insulating. I would imagine that woodcrete would be all right for water storage if you then coated the walls with shotcrete. And I wonder about using just wood sprayed with shotcrete instead of a woodcrete filled wall. The monolithic domes are fabric forms sprayed with shotcrete, though they also have rebar and basalt rope to get curved reinforcement. Water is a lot of weight, I bet some simple experiments could get one a baseline for whats going to fail or not. As for rotting, using a foodgrade plastic liner would likely be in order. Also there are concrete additives to achieve waterproof, or traditional lime plaster has a waterproofing technique with soap scum and polishing. I was just talking to Eric about it, and he’d like to say the woodcrete wall coated with concrete would be structural enough, if we were doing it. Others results may vary

Best, Forrest

Hi Kathy,

Good to be talking to you on the other site. Thanks for your comments!

Best,
Forrest

Hi Pearl,

Thank you so much for checking out our work! Ideas! Exciting

Forrest

Hi William,

Yes! Its a spiral roof. Thats the only one we've put woodcrete into so far. We nailed a tarp to the underside and it held it up pretty well. The spiral part is the purlin, made of strips of 3/16×2 douglas fir, built up about an inch thick. They're on top of the roof trusses, held apart by parallelogram shaped purlin blocks. Basically its just a surface to staple the shingles onto, but it also seems to really beef up the roof structurally. We had one tip over on us when I was first getting involved, basically we were trying to do low impact on a really mucky area. The roof acted like a basket, as if you had one tipped on its side. No damage at all.

Yes I'm sure it'll all get colonized Really curious what mycelium will do. There's actually a concrete additive thats a bacteria that poops out limestone. I wonder what effects our colonies will have..

Saw dust beds! Yeah the trouble around here would be finding some that hasnt been seasoned by the chickens..

And yes, same thing for the floors just horizontal rather than at a slope. And the purlin and blocks become like a wood rebar of sorts for the woodcrete and a thin layer of cement on top.

Yeah thank you so much. I'm really excited about getting to so more with round.. It seems to fit well with my life. Happy to be chatting!

Forrest

Hi William,

Thank you for having this conversation with me

Yeah the furniture question.. Interesting idea on a springy bed.. I suspect we would make a bed platform like we make our floors.  Essentially radial trusses between concentric ring beams like in our roofs but flat, then we cover the top with a tarp and staple on a spiral of 3/16x2 strips from the center out, spaced by 1×1×2 blocks, and pour woodcrete on top and in all the spaces of the spiral. Then, well, we've talked a lot about straw beds. Personally I sleep in a hammock. I should add, one of the things we're going for is the grounding or "earthing" concept, so having a bed and floors that were naturally grounded to the dirt would be a goal for us. Right now I just use a groundung mat.

Yes the framing... I call it advanced advanced framing. Its so much less material. We havent gone down the road of trying to get an engineer on board yet, but for lumber grading a lot of issues come up with longer boards, so with our shorter blocks perhaps it will be an advantage. Certainly seems like a more forgiving design with a ton of redundancy.

I like the pie slice idea. Thats definitely a way to get straight lines, though knowing us we'd probably do something silly like do a curved wall.

Yeah wood heat, masonry/rocket stove are all on our minds. We also are toying with the idea of a propane light as a primary source of heat once we get our insulation levels figured out.

My buddy did a round roof with 3 smaller round walls in a triangle undereath, currently its used for a wood shed and storage. Yeah I could see a differently shaped wall system, though it really seems like a great strength advantage having those curves. I think with square we're back to traditional or advanced framing, but maybe not.. There is a house where I live with a round roof and square walls. It sounded like everyone went crazy who lived there.

Yes transparent wood, thats an excellent idea. Maybe if we started using our cabinetry saw.. Our band saw goes down to about a 1/16, sometimes we get close to that for the center of the spiral on the roof. So far ae do lattice, maybe experimenting with a transparent screen is in order soon.. Maybe woven or like a more geometrically regular wattle.

OMG a living a building. We are very very interested in this and were experimenting with alder. We are also very interested in mycoblocks and getting an innoculated wall that would be structural. So cool you've got your daughter on board.

The great thing about staples is if one goes into your finger you've still got a finger and no hospital visit. Soon if not quite ready yet, pneumatic staples will be a great way for her to do things like that. Also we are very interested in string and rope, knots and lashing as an option.

I havent done any hoop houses yet. Will have to look into it.

Thank you again so much for your compliments and questions. Its great to be talking.

Forrest

Thank You Michelle and William!

William, as to your questions--

Garden walls, yes, forms for woodcrete.. We're thinking of the 3/16×4 strips as wood "fabric" forms. We use 1x1 stakes driven into the ground in the shape of the curve we want, and then staple it all together with roofing staples from pneumatic guns. Most of the structure is held together with roofing staples of various sizes, except our posts are held together with 16D nails. We pour the woodcrete into the walls and it acts like poured plywood with a similar resonant sound when you hit it.

Savings versus wasted space aside, I think there are 2 distinct advantages to round buildings. One is structural integrity for earthquakes and wind. Another, for me, is feeling better in a round building, and assuming that curves are better for plants. They have a soothing quality.

As for furniture, yes, it may be a pain in the butt. We've been thinking of round backed furniture instead of cabinetry, have the capacity to do so but havent started yet. Also, poured in place cement counter tops are a good option for the curves.

Regarding lay out question, yeah I imagine open floor plans would help with that and also heating the thing. We havent really gone there yet because the closest thing we've done to a home is a small yurt cabin and a sauna, but we are thinking a lot about using wide roof over hangs as auxilary space, perhaps for things that dont require as much heat; putting the whole thing part way in a hill like a wofatti house; and/or attaching a curved greenhouse for solar gain. Also sleeping pods.  Think glamping or healing retreat center accomodations.

Right now we're cutting material to do a new saw mill. It will be 3 overlapping round roofs in a slight curve, with one taller in the middle. Pictures to come in the next few weeks. My buddy is testing the new truss system at the moment.

Speaking of roofs, at the bottom of wetspunbuilding page there is a video of our roof spinning. One advantage of our system is that during construction we put the whole roof on a hub with bearings, and it spins until we attach the walls. That way we can get up to height and stand in one place, turning the roof and attaching blocks and bands. Saving a bit of labor not having to walk around the building at height.

Thank you for your interest!

Forrest

Hey All,

We're on the Olympic Peninsula in WA State making round buildings and other such curved walls out of thin strips of wet sawn lumber and a lot of 1 and 2 inch thich boards that we cut ourselves. We see a lot of application for chicken coops, raised beds, garden walls, yurts, sheds, and whatever else can be round or curved. Since we have our own lumber mill and chipper we have ample chips to make woodcrete, which we often put in our walls. I just graduated trade school in Carpentry in Seattle and I'm working with my buddy who is pioneering this process of doing light weight, curved carpentry as a retired builder who was looking for a method that wouldnt tear up his body so much.

We also cut our own shingles, and make good use of Solexx (corrugated plastic) for letting in light. Future directions are heading toward geothermal green houses, underground buildings and inviting carpenters to learn about off grid living, something my buddy has been doing for 30 years.

wetspunbuilding.wordpress.com for pictures of our work. Feel free to message me on here or there with any questions, or post a comment.

Cheers and Happy Spring.

Forrest