Stone building, all summer

Since May it has been stone stone stone on the main house. With João Camula, of Granitos Camula, as our stone mason, wall after wall was taken down, rebuilt - using stone on site and a few imported from nearby. We used hydraulic lime and sand as the mortar in every case. Here's how it has progressed on one of these walls, in June.

Picking apart a wall. They carried on taking it down to ground level.

João and Amançio getting the first stones into place for the new wall

View from inside, where the stairs will be built,
one day, from ground to first floor.

Day 2 or 3, new wall coming along. New door decided upon
as well:)

Wall completed, as seen from the
East side of Adega, with new handy shelf thing integrated.

Same wall from above. So here you can see the adega
section from West view.  Timber frame and straw bale walls
to follow, hopefully in October. 

How to build stone steps / Como fazer as escadas em pedra

Driven nuts by uploading pictures one by unbelievably slow one onto this blogging thing, never having the time, etc. has meant I rarely post anything anymore.  So here in video format, though it's hardly saved time!!

So here, in pictures that move together our story of chopping up vast chunks of stone that were nicely available right next to where we needed some steps and something done about the eroding hillside.
Fortunate we have been (and grateful we are) to have had Gary over these weeks to teach us the confidence to just go ahead and start, and to understand the main things we have to get right.

New terrace building - learning the art of the ancients

Gary comes from the Northwest of England, the "Black-country" he calls it. He arrived with us after 4,000 km around Europe and North Africa - on his bike. Bicycle, I might add.

Along with some impressive camping gear and an indomitable spirit, Gary brought the skills of dry stane dyking: building walls without mortar.

I'd been trying to figure out how we were going to build our retaining walls for countless tonnes of earth we'd moved from the main house ages ago. And I wanted to build a new terrace for bamboo experimentation...

Back in December last year Aljo helped me build a ramp and a temporary wall, but the Spring rains turned this into a muddy rout, and we lost most of the soil we had surfed down the ramp.

Ali and Thea arrived at the same time (from the Wwoofer volunteer network) and Gary took charge and led an impressive 2 week course-in-practice of the art of walling. Ali became an avid student, jumping up from a hasty lunch to get back onto those stones, "like a 3D puzzle" he delighted. (Later he would have energy for couple of sets of doubles on our newly found village tennis court which has to fill in the slot of an evening surf at the end of a hard day).

Gary is fiercely principled about walls and walling. In fact he says that if you stick to the main Principles your wall will work. Here, from memory, is what I think they are

Princple 1 - every stone needs two good faces :) (:!

No not smiley ones but hey. One face is external, is that which is seen and perhaps brings a smile - or at least deters a grimace with accompanying complaint "Jeez, how foul the frontage of that there stone, how bulbous, out of place". Actually, it seems to be only other wall-makers who actually notice wall quality, stone and face selection (I too have become an obsessive).

The other face we need to think about is the top, which offers itself to the stone above. This should be as flat and horizontal as possible. If both these faces don't cut it, then find another.

Principle 2 - Drive the rain out.

If possible, the external face should be angled so that rain is directed outward, rather than allowed to pour back into the wall. Like tiles on a roof I suppose.

Principle 3 - Two on one, one on Two.

Obvious right? (each stone should rest on at least two others and it in turn is pinned by two others above it). Thus stones are anchored on a couple, and weight of the many bare down upon the one. A more solid base. It might be obvious, but until now we hadn't twigged.

Principle 4 - Follow the line.

Each course has to stick to a determined direction, or line, between two points, but it also has to be slightly leaning inwards to counteract the force of gravity pushing down. Each time you start a new course of stones remember where the front edge of the next course of stones above will sit. So, if you have a stone with a curved front edge, push it out further than you would expect, so that the stone above can "keep the line" above it, otherwise the higher one will have to sit back too far, which has to be recovered later with more difficulty.

I'm sure I've missed out loads, and I didn't even have time to participate in the wall shown here, but I did on the next one...

Overall, it's been incredible to see how we can actually change the space around us, forge whole new faces onto the mountain our land inhabits.

OK, photo upload has gone haywire on this post, so will need to send them to an online album or something.

House build begins with Stone and Hydraulic lime

Planning permission finally arrived early May. First off we need to take the adega wall down, insert foundation stones, get it square (full 90 degrees) to the main house (so the roof of both buildings fit together properly). João our stonemason was actually the one to point all this out (architect and engineer didn't seem to notice). Here he is, left, with his new toy doing his thing!

Day1: Wall comes down in bits. João stashes the main big stones strategically, then digs ditch for the foundation stones. No cement foundations here - pedras de Porinno (vast granite lumps, from about 30km away).








Day2. Re-align wall so that it sits at a proper right angle to the main house. Tools used: some string and a bit of right angled metal. Foundation blocks in.



Day 3. Wall starts to go up; first 70cm or so. Site for door chosen. First mixes of hydraulic lime (full strength: NHL5. This stands for natural hydraulic lime by the way. It's not actually pure lime, it has a bunch of clay impurities in it, or baked clay basically. Which means we don't need to add pozzolans. Hmmm, lime needs more discussion than this. Soon).



Day 4. More wall goes up. New window bearer chosen (chunk of granite that the window frame will sit on). Lime mortar going off nicely within 24 hours. Sand - lime mix used was more or less 2.5 sand to 1 lime. Nada mais.














These slabs are the foundation stones. João put them in that trench he had dug and that was that. No faffing with cement foundations and all that.


João thinking. About this window. Used to be a door there. And steps will go on the other side. So it can't be too low. Nor too high...















By day 6 João realised we should maybe have taken out all the rubble from inside first... uh oh. No problem he exlaims, we'll dig it out through the doorway. Within 20cm or so we found nothing but bedrock, so we hired a compressor and drilling thing and hammered away for another 4 or 5 days. Slow, grinding work.















Conrad and his Pa Jon (and daughter Lula) visited during all this, and Jon muscled in there with the rest of them - at 70 and still as strong as the next guy!

So up until today we've been digging down: to around 30cm below eventual floor level so we can fit in all that underfloor stuff. And now we have to learn all about floors - and if we want to avoid cement and plastic (DPC) we have to think carefully. So far we're thinking thus: 1. 8cm small river stones for drainage and capilliary break (so water can't come up). Some kind of geotextile that prevents moisture - if it's somehow made it up past the stones - but allows floor to "breathe". 3. Insulation, maybe cork, maybe 6 to 8cm. 4. Limecrete floor with underfloor heating at about 7cm. 5 final cover, lime and broken tiles, like in Roman times. Which sounds good in the Lime Book.















These photos show how much rock we have to get through...


Mainly, we've been learning about hydraulic lime mortars: how they work, how they don't. We've found the best mix when you mix water and lime first, for 5 mins or so, then add the sand, slowly, and water bit by bit till you get the right consistency.