I like alternative and traditional building systems. You may not have gotten that impression from my enclosure topic. But it's true.

That said, I have been doing a lot of research on clay systems.

I am working on designing and hopefully soon building a traditionally built Swiss style frame for some extra shop space, and I want to use a traditional method to enclose the frame as well.

That said, right now I am looking at a system employing a clay infill covered with vertical boarding on the outside and lime plaster on the inside (or maybe boarding on the inside as well)

For the clay infill, I am considering pre-making the infill in the form of largish clay bricks which will already be dry by the time of raising (which right now the goal for raising is fall of 2011) and will be stacked between posts spaced at about 6 to 8 feet, with a brüstungsriegel (don't know exactly what to call this in English) spanning between the posts at the wall's midpoint, or perhaps two of them between every post for added support of both the infill and the siding.

I have a few questions about this, though.

1: How exactly should the clay slip be made? And what consistency should be used if I will be making bricks and not filling large cavities all at once.

2: What is a good way to cement the bricks together? Would just fresh clay do the job? Is there a preferred method? I don't want to just dry stack them, as this would leave gaps that could (and therefore would) create drafts

3: Would it be a good idea to coat the insides of the timbers with a thick slip so that the infill gets 'stuck' to the timbers a little more, or is this not worth the added effort since the expansion and contraction of the timbers will negate this anyway.

Efficiency isn't really too great a concern on this particular building. It will be heated with wood and at least initially not cooled at all (we'll see how long that lasts come summer time!)

However, the discussion of efficiency is certainly welcome. Part of the reason for using this system instead of strictly traditional infill of straw-clay or fired brick is to test the feasibility and performance, and to see how well it works in this climate, and also to see how it works labor wise.

A possible variation to this for efficiency purposes would be to have two layers of woodchip-clay brick with a cavity between them which is then filled with cellulose, a method I have heard of already so it is not my own I know. One layer of bricks could be set on the outside of the frame so that it covers the timbers, and have 2x4 nailers embedded in it somehow if siding is to be applied. I know of an old house that burned down a few years back that was structural brick, 12" thick solid brick walls, with a 2x4 framework added to the exterior so siding could be applied (it was an Amish house originally, that's why the brick was covered with siding)

DL, are you using 100% clay for the bricks? Or lighten them up with sand, straw or wood chips?

1: I have used a mixer on the end of a 1/2" drill, same as used in the drywall business for mixing compound in the 5 gallon buckets. On a small scale use 5 gallon buckets larger scale use garbage cans or an old bath tub. Raw clay, not dried and pounded to a power, it is nice if it can sit in a pile for a year for frost action to break it up a little. Place the clay in the tub and let it sit for a while, overnight if possible and go at it with the beater. Wipe it into a cake like batter or even a little more thinner like paint. For light clay and straw you should be able to stick your finger in the clay slip and just make out your finger print. You can always add more water or clay to gain the right mixture. Screen the slip before you use it, to filter out the unwanted grit, just pour the slip through the 1/4" screen into a fresh container.

2: Having no experience in clay brick and clay mortar, my guess would be a sand and clay mixed mortar. I would also be curious how a lime mortar would function?

One of the functions of lime mortar is it is the weak link with the older bricks the mortar will fail before the brick, for it is softer, allowing things to move a bit, then reheal. Where if you use a modern mortar which is harder in combination with the older brick the brick will fail which is not so good. If using lime as the mortar for you clay brick would the brick fail as they could be softer than the lime mortar? I take it that your brick will be unfired.

3: I have seen, at Fox Maple, where they used a rabbit cut into the face of the post to form a key for the clay infilled walls, in hopes to stop the draft. I would use such a technique to try to stop or slow the air movement at the post. I'm not sure of the size of the key, 1"x1" perhaps and maybe with a chain saw.

One of the draw backs to clay is it has to fit into a time line to allow the clay to dry before frost can harm the undry wall. Brick made in the spare time allow the wall to be built with a wider window. Probably not in mid winter.

I like this stuff too.

Tim

I've always thought clay / wood chip / hemp / whatever bricks would be a good use for melding 'alternative' methods into contemporary timelines. One could make the bricks on of offsite - maybe under a temporary greenhouse roof set up with cross draft fans or sealed with heat, let them cure, then stack and add to the frame. Would the bricks be easy to cut / trim to gables / eaves / door / window sizes?


If you are planning wood siding... why not frame up a 2x4 or 2x6 wall that is the module of your brick? Stack the bricks inside the stud bays... then somehow be sure you stuff any cracks, maybe a skim coat? Or a 2x2 framing inside that is filled with cellulose?

Sorry I should have clarified, my question about the slip was not how to mix it, but more about composition, such as do you just use clay and water, or would it be good to mix some kind of reinforcing or anti shrinking agent like sand or lime in as well? And about thickness.

And yes, the intent is to make the bricks with a mix of slip and woodchips, using as high a ratio of woodchips as I can manage to make the whole assembly both lighter and better insulating. As you may imagine, I produce lots and lots of woodchips! And furthermore, I don't throw anything away that I think may be useful. So I have lots of woodchips. The original intention was to build myself a furnace that could effectively use my waste products for heating, but I like the idea of using them for building better. Especially those chips produced by hand hewing timbers.

The German method when using a brick infill is to cut a v-groove in the posts, and give the bricks that butt up against the post a corresponding protrusion. This anchors them in and also stops a draft. A key would work if I were putting the mix in wet, so it could slop into it, but dry brick won't do that so well.

I did find that for adobe brick, the mortar used is the same mixture used for the bricks minus the straw.

I like the idea of using bricks because it means that I don't have to let the house sit around for 2 weeks while I wait for the clay to dry. I can stack the brick in, maybe wait 2 days if that for a skim coat to dry, and go right ahead with siding and finishing. IT also means I am much less dependent on the weather, and can fit this into a practical time schedule much better and so become much more effective and profitable. For this project it means I can raise my frame and stack the bricks during the fall or early winter or spring when work is slow and I have time to spend on personal projects

My thought with using the slip as mortar was that it would re-wet the outside edges of the bricks and maybe cause the assembly to somewhat melt together. Also I thought of a method of tying two rows together after I posted this that would make the infill more stable than if it were a single layer or 2 layers stacked next to each other, especially if the bricks are tied into the timber via a groove.

I am thinking right now that it may work to stack the bricks with a little sludge between rows and between layers, and against the timbers to seal the whole mass as much as possible, then plaster over the whole panel with some more sludge to fill any cracks, prior to whatever topping off method will be used.

Bmike, I am not quite sure what you are trying to describe in you post, could you please clarify for me?

The chips from the boring machine are very nice as well. I have a few garbage bags of them waiting for the right time. I sweep the floor clean and collect them after boring. I also place a box under the timber to catch them as I knock them off the top of the timber.

The slip should be thin as paint and just a coating is needed on the woodchips or straw and lightly placed into the brick form of slip form on the wall. Depending on the climate and conditions 2 weeks will not be enough time, thickness is the major factor, the thicker the wall the more time to dry like all summer. Bricks allow more surface area and quicker drying times, too, a real advantage. I should adopt this method.

I know that when August wraps up drying time increases. I can see a greater drying time with my sundried blueberries toward the end of the month. Twice as long as in the first half of the month. Days getting shorter, cooler, we are approaching my favorite time of the year.

It is said a green house will gain you a climate zone south this would add to the drying time of bricks, maybe a late summer project.

Tim

To me, shorter drying time is not the only advantage I see to making bricks. The biggest advantage I see is that it allows you to make the bricks well before they are needed. You can produce the infill at the same time you are cutting the frames, or even well beforehand. This means it doesn't matter if the bricks take a month to dry (in the case of wood chips, faster drying time is advisable for straw, because straw tends to rot easily) because I have several months before I even need to use them. The major disadvantage I see is that you need a large area to store them and dry them out.

I really like the idea of making my infill out of my waste from cutting the frame and hewing the timbers. Right now I have a great abundance of wood chips, and I will only be making more!

I have another question or two...

What are the different properties of gypsum plaster and lime plaster? I know lime is superior, but I don't fully understand why, and my inquisitive nature forces me to seek the answer...

Also, does anyone have any experience with clay roof tiles?
As part of the traditional system, I am considering covering my roof with rectangular clay tiles, and was wondering if any of you had any experience using a clay roof. At this point though, I am considering using regular asphalt shingles instead -because they are readily available and look reasonably similar to the rectangular tiles. I know they're not ideal but they will work.

Can't help with the gypsum question. One feature of lime is it has the ability to heal small cracks. I don't know if gypsum does this?

Autogenous Healing - When hairline cracks develop in the mortar, hydrated lime reacts with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This reaction produces limestone which helps to seal the crack and fill voids in the mortar. This explains the increased moisture resistance noted after six months of curing in two studies.

Ratios for mixing clay and even lime can vary depending on the clay content of the soil and the type of clay, moisture content of the added binder is also a factor, dry sand, wet sand, dry chips fresh chips. It is advised to do test samples with different known ratios to find the best sand to clay mix, ranging from 1:3 to the other end of the spectrum 3:1. As stated the ratio depends on the clay content of the soil used. So mix according the material at hand. To answer your first question, it will depend on the soil "you" have. My ratio will be different. Test blocks and more test block and it will be revealed.

I find one reason for the lack of use with natural materials is they are not a ready mix, like Betty Crocker cake mix. You have to fool with them, something todays society doesn't have the time for.

Home made cement roof tiles, no nailing required. Slate?

Tim

Hi,
regarding gypsum and lime, they are both calcium carbonate or calcium magnesium carbonate based products - so limestone, dolomite, seashell, bone, even eggshell. Gypsum, also known as plaster of Paris, is calcium carbonate in powder, so pulverized dolomite lets say, form, and was developed as a faster drying and simplified version of lime for stucco work and has really no mechanical or binding uses. When the calcium carbonate is processed in ovens to around 900 - 1200 degrees C, (The process goes further but I cannot really explain in English), carbonic acid is cooked out of it and it is converted into calcium monoxide. Water is added which converts it into calcium hydroxide. Calcium hydroxide is the white, or slightly off white when it comes from seashells, powder that you would buy at the shop as lime. Once it is used, the process begins to reverse itself as it takes up carbonic acid from the environment and reverts again to calcium carbonate. So after 100 years it will be harder than it was at 1 year or 50 years.
It is not only self-restoring, it is self regulating in that it takes up and releases water from the air, it is somewhat elastic as you would see if you ever walk through the streets in Amsterdam and it is a disinfectant - good for painting the stall and chicken coop - among other very fine qualities. The big disadvantage is that once it is processed it begins to revert and so cannot be kept indefinitely.

If you do use lime in your clay mixture that is fine but be aware that you cannot then reuse it, whereas without lime in there the clay can be re-used.

On your other point, I've got clay tiles on my barn, and have used them in other situations and depending on specifics they can be an ideal roofing material.

Thanks for the info about plaster!

I was wondering primarily for use as an interior finish of the walls panels. But it's good to know too for future reference.

Here is a clay block wall in a workshop I built some years back, as a sort of limited illustration for the topic as there were no timbers involved in the wall construction.

The blocks are compressed clay with a fairly corse agrigate - up to roughly 4 mm- of river sand and hemp or flax (once the fibers from the dried plant stocks are removed, this by-product is left over, lets say the shredded outsides of the stems. I made a pile the other day with my daughter when we were making rope).

The mortar is more or less the same stuff the blocks are made of - even breaking up and using the blocks themselves is ideal because as mentioned, the mortar has a certian relationship to the brick/block used and should not just be arbitraily chosen.

I understand the idea about using woodchips as a filler and I'm sure it has been done but I am sceptical about using it for this purpose. Wood chips don't seem like a very stable medium and wood shavings seem rather useless because the fibers are all shorn through. It takes me more effort to pull apart a stem of flax or even a piece of straw then it does a shaving of wood and wood chips and shavings attract moisture. So there are no structural advantages to wood and what's more they may weaken the structure. As for the insulating value of wood we all know that it is a shitty insulator whereas straw is not bad and hemp and flax are very good insulators particularly regarding sound insulation. I've just never heard of anyone who regularly works with clay and has easy access to wood chips and shavings using them in combination. For many of the same reasons I don't dispose of my wood chips and shavings by using them in the stall or chicken coop I wouldn't use them in the clay. Wood chips are better destined for smoking your ham or covering your path.

I am sitting here thinking of this idea of bricks... What other materials could conceivably be used to make infill bricks

What I mean here by an infill brick is a brick or block of some sort that has a relatively high insulating value that is intended to be used in the space between framing members, and does not necessarily have any structural strength of its own -not something that has to be able to support a roof structure in other words.

Perhaps a bit of historical reflection would be in order here...
In the Middle Ages, Europeans devised a number of methods of infilling their timber structures. Just about everybody came up with wattle and daub.


Bricks were also used later on, particularly those bricks that were of inferior quality and so w=could just be tucked away somewhere inside a wall and covered up.


Since the days of the first Viking settlements, Icelanders built timber framed houses that were infilled and enclosed with huge turf walls several feet thick


Medieval Scandinavians built Stavverk buildings, such as the great Stave Churches that one could say employed a wood infill, as the boarding on these buildings are placed between the framing timbers, not on the outside.


Central Europeans used at times a similar system


This occupies a strange gray area somewhere between infilled timber frames, boarded frames, and log building.

Other techniques used in the past include Stone infill, mud bricks, and so forth.

In the 1960's and 70's, Germans were faced with the prospect of repairing a large number of half timber buildings that had been damaged during the war, and patched with temporary and inferior methods afterward. This sparked a revival in traditional methods, and also great innovation. It is from this that the light clay infill methods developed.

Now I am thinking of straw and wood chip blocks in terms of blocks of rigid insulating material stacked between timbers. Thinking on those terms, I wonder what other materials might be usable in a similar sense, particular natural materials or waste products.

So I have thought of a few materials that might possibly be made into bricks:
Cellulose
Charcoal
bast fibers
Cambium, or inner bark, of certain trees
sawdust, as opposed to woodchips
tire shreds

All of these would be used in conjunction with some type of binding agent that would also inhibit burning, and most would also require something that would protect against insects. Things like clay, lime, or cement (remember, there are types of cement other than portland)

Of these, I know a bit about the thermal properties of charcoal.
Charcoal is produced by forcing volatile chemicals out of wood, leaving behind almost pure carbon. In the process of forcing out the chemicals and leaving behind carbon, a lot of 'extra' space is left. The piece of coal is about 60 to 75% the volume of the piece of wood it once was, but only 20-30% the weight. That means it is now mostly air. You can tell this when you pick up a chunk of charcoal because it is very light relative to its size.
To make charcoal you have to heat wood up to at least 500 degrees fahrenheit, and the finished coal can retain this temperature for hours or even days after it is removed from the kiln. In addition to this, you can be holding a piece of coal in you bare hand while it is flaming red hot just a few inches away and not be the least bit uncomfortable.
It does tend to put off a very fine dust, and it is also really flammable. But I think that enclosed in clay both of these problems could be dealt with (straw for example can have both of the same problems. If you don't believe me, try working in the loft of a barn where straw has been stored. It's very dusty) I have seen already where a trailer load of straw from the field spontaneously erupted into flames because of the heat produced by the stacked bails as they dried. I have also seen barns burn down for the same reason (and I have seen grain bins explode when being loaded with soy beans when the bean dust ignited from friction or static electricity)

Wow great post.

I've been thinking about this too. I haven't liked clay bricks or straw/clay, or adobe or rammed earth for us here in the NW because low R value and maybe not so good in the rain (not to mention earthquakes). However, in keeping with my desire to use local materials, I've been thinking about pumice. There is a lot of this red pumice mined around here for gravel roads. It's full of air, it's light weight, combine it with cement and you have a strong light weight warm wall, yes? I believe there is a man in NM doing something like this:

http://www.pumicecrete.com/Hybrid-Building-Applications.htm

I read somewhere that this infill methods will have approximately r-2 per inch of thickness, compared to Owens Corning rigid foam insulation which has r-5 per inch.

Here's some r-values fro comparison:
Extruded polystyrene 5.00 per inch
Expanded polystyrene 4.00 per inch
Polyisocyanurate & Polyurethane 6-7 per inch
Blown in Cellulose 3.70 per inch
Fiberglass Insulation 3.14 per inch

compared to the estimated 2 per inch of a light clay infill.

However, R-value alone doesn't tell you the whole story. Clay also acts as a thermal regulator, meaning it holds on to heat. That means that heating systems don't have to run as much to keep a building in a comfortable temperature range. However, a light clay system likely won't do this enough to be of much consequence.

One thing about charcoal that I did not mention earlier that could be a possible drawback is that it is highly absorbent. However, charcoal will absorb a certain amount of chemical and then simply stop absorbing. To my knowledge, it does not then diffuse those chemicals into the air later. It likes to hold on to them. Which might actually be a good thing, the wall might absorbe the various toxins that are floating around in a home when it is first built such as paint and glue solvents, and so forth.

This weekend I plan on making some experimental bricks out of a variety of materials such as Charcoal, Wood chips and shavings, straw, and maybe waste paper. I also plan on subjecting them to a number of tests once they are dry, like testing their fire resistance, conductivity (not very scientifically though) and how well they hold up to water. I'll post my results when I have them.

Here a some pictures of my experiment.

I made some bricks using clay and charcoal, and experimented with different ratios of clay and coals.

I have decided that it works best if you have a really wet slip, as it mixes in with the coals much better. Too thick and the clay tends to get stuck to a small clump of coals and won't mix in very easily. Too thin, however, and it will be too weak.

You can see in my picture of the formed up bricks where I changed the mixture a few times. It is better to have a little too much clay than not quite enough of clay, because if you do not have enough it is far too difficult to get the bricks out of the form without them crumbling.

Sloppy slip

real wood charcoal, made in my own kiln[

Smaller pieces work best, which is good because they aren't useful for other the things that I use my charcoal for!

The mix

the form, a little oil on the sides helps the bricks to come out easier

lets make some bricks! A small batch of 25 bricks made for test purposes.

Hi,
regarding clay in general, you must distinguish between different compositions in relation to its use as a building material. Maybe these distinctions will come back in America if this material were to become more generally used again. In England what is commonly used in relation to building is called, loam, (here called leem). This is a clay based material, containing aggregates for binding, (clay is the binder but a binder must necessarily have something to which to bind), strength and stability. Sometimes fillers are added for insulation, weight reduction, increased mass or structural advantage.

The only use for more or less pure clay, which is the inert remains of what was once organic material, in relation to building would be in the form of a sort of rammed earthen floor - unless you want to include baked tiles. Even these floors were traditionally stabilized. First of all, like Tim Beal writes there, by letting the natural clay stand under protection out doors for minimal 1 year - better three - to degrade imbedded organic material and break down it's inherent structure, and then further with the addition of horse urine and/or old beer, adding lime to increase hardness.

These floors can be adopted even for modern housing but in my opinion are better suited for barns, stalls, workshops. There is no better floor than this for a blacksmith's workshop, being fire and shock proof.

That said, there is this clay floor and there are composite clay, (in American terms), floors. That just means the material has been adapted to whatever particular conditions call for where it is used. And if I were to claim to be making a point at this point it would be that the uses of clay in making buildings are pretty limited. If I were to add anything practical that would be that a person can come to some conclusions about the ground under his or her feet with a simple test. Put some ground in a clear glass jar, let it settle, and it's possible to see its composition and their ratios to each other as the various components separate into layers .

Don Wagstaff

Soil is a general classification of various amounts of primarily Clay, Sand, and Silt. These three materials are essentially the same thing broken down to varying degrees, which are various mineral crystals that vary by region. Certain minerals break down easier and so are more likely to be in clay (lending clay its unique properties) while others (such as quartz) don't break down as easily and are more likely to compose sand. Thus native minerals will determine your soil type, its ratio of sand clay and silt.

Soil can contain suspended amounts of decayed organic matter such as peat. But peat itself or other organic materials are not a true soil. Organic materials suspended in soil are beneficial to farming, and it is the suspended particles that contain the nutrients needed to grow plants. The soil itself primarily affects drainage characteristics.

Loam is a mixture in varying degrees of Clay, sand, and silt. A medium loam has nearly even mixtures of the three. Loam therefore contains aggregate and binder premixed for you, so it is tremendously useful.

in Indiana a we have a topsoil that is a medium loam of some sort, with an subsoil that is clay, the deeper you go the purer the clay. The topsoil can vary over a very small area from a high clay loam (especially on 'clay knobs") to a silty loam, to a sandy loam in lower areas.

If you are to mix in straw, than you should search for a high clay loam. You can use straight clay, but you might want to mix in some sand as an aggregate. Even fired clay bricks must contain aggregate for stability. Modern bricks are 50% clay and 50% ground shale. Older bricks were made of soft clay with at least 25% sand.

-This knowledge of soils comes from growing up in a life where the soil is very important, and so knowing the soil is important.

For my bricks, as an example, a very high concentration of clay was desirable. That is because I have an aggregate already present, charcoal. So I need primarily a binder. A small amount of sand is good but not vital. I do not want a good loam because it would not be 'sticky' enough or strong enough.

By introducing lime, you are increasing the calcium content. we do this all the time on our fields because we have acidic soil (because our land was mostly peat bog 100 years ago) Calcium hardens the soil, which is why we use it for walls, and if you have a loam of a neutral pH then it will kill microorganisms. In acidic loam it will actually encourage microorganism growth which is one of the reasons we use it for farming. microorganisms are a vital part of the life cycle of a plant, but not as vital in your wall.

here is a handy diagram from Wikipedia showing the soil types and how the relate.

Hi D L,
you are right to point out that these characteristics can also be inherent and are not necessarily a product of any particular recipe.

You call your charcoal, (an interesting idea), an aggregate, comparable to sand, crushed seashell or gravel.... Why not a filler in the category of straw or flax...?

Here is what I have found are some of the working properties.
Too much sand and there will be no strength.
Not enough sand and cracks will develop.
Too much water and there will be excessive shrinkage.
Too little water and the mixture will dry out overly fast and not harden or adhere properly.
Mineral additives, namely vermiculite or too much lime in my experience, weaken the bond of the clay.
Albumen, egg white, casein, are examples, increases the fastness once it has dried, that is it will not give off dust when you rub it so much.

It will be interesting to hear how your bricks come out when dried.

Don Wagstaff

The biggest problem I had using the clay subsoil was that our red clay is very dense and fine-particled. This means that when you start to mix it with water, the clay will absorb a certain amount of water and then proceed to clump together. I experimented to see if this could be avoided, and it made no difference whether I first ground the clay into a fine powder or just threw in large lumps. So it took quite a bit of effort to get it to mix evenly without too many lumps. In the future I need to use a method other than hand-kneading as this take a very long time.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200390030_200390030

Tim

http://gallery.me.com/donwagstaff#100133/P1010236&bgcolor=black
Don

Waterproof?

Looks nice, and I'm sure it smells wonderful. That is if it is wood tar.

What will you be using this for?

This fall after the fields have been cleared I am planning on doing at least 1 tar burn, using the Scandinavian funnel-bottomed pit kiln method. There is a lot of wood on some huge piles back along the creek behind us here because the local airport did some work all along the creek bed to improve their drainage, due to a large extension of the runways. I hope to get a good deal of both tar and charcoal to use on my project, coal for the blocks and tar to seal off the timbers.

About the bricks, they are drying quickly, and will be dry by the end of the week no problem, possibly by Wednesday. At this point, they are remarkably lightweight, which is good. I will take some weight measurements when they are thoroughly dry and try to come up with an 'average'.

At this point, I would feel confident in saying that the risk of the charcoal being a fire hazard or dusting off (charcoal dust is bad) is very low. I am quite pleased with the way it bonded with the clay.

I have made one observation, however. Charcoal pieces cannot be larger than maybe 3/4", and preferably should be much smaller than that. IF they are too big, they are problematic and like to flake apart inside the clay.

Hi,
yes D L, I would just refere you to the comment section on my personal web pages for specific questions. Using the search option helps.
home

tar making details

Hello everyone tonight:

I just thought that I would add a little to this thread

I once examined a very early school in the Maxville area we opened up one of the walls to observe how it had been constructed--the timber frame had been raised and the exterior had been covered with vertical boarding and batts. Then on the inside the cavity had been filled with clay bricks and bedded with a clay mortar, to the front face of the timberframe.

The window and door frames were placed in the walls ahead of the placement of the clay infil. Horizontal wood strips were placed in the rows of clay brick infil at about 24" intervals to attach the interior wall covering which in this case was very wide handplaned 1" beaded pine boarding, which was painted a lovely red colour

Above this interior horizontal boarding the clay filled wall had been plastered with a LIME plaster it must have been a beautiful wall in its day

NH

Hello,
This process sounds very Dutch to me, especially what you wright about setting the window and door frames in their place and filling in around them. It is still done this way today only not so much with clay anymore.

Greetings,

Don

Northern hewer, where abouts was this schoolhouse? You said Maxville, but I have no idea where that is... Also, do you have any pictures?

The panel and plaster wall does sound beautiful, wish I could have seen it in its day.

Don, does anybody put the windows and door frames in AFTER the walls are infilled?

About the bricks. They are dry, and have been for quite some time. It only took them maybe 3 or 4 days to dry out. They are remarkably light weight, but not quite as strong as I want. I haven't yet been able to test their insulation values to me, but observation would tell me that it would be fairly good. In the future, I need to break the coal down into a bit finer of an aggregate, I believe this will make the mix stronger, more stable, and easier to work with and pack in a form. And the easier it is to pack into the form, it seems, the easier it is to get it out of the form in the right shape.

Hello all:

Maxville is to the northeast of Cornwall Ontario here in Canada,
and was colonized around 1784 by Scottish United Empire Loyalists, who was part of a large contingent of displaced persons who remained loyal to the British Crown after the war of Independence.

I suspect that the building had scottish charcteristics due to the founding fathers, but they did bring other building ideas such as Dutch trademark techniques and incorporated them in their new buildings at that time.

There were the large anchor beam barns, and some swing beam barns sprinkled throughout the area, and by that I mean "Upper Canada" area that stretched from the Quebec border to Kingston Ontario, along the St. Lawrence, as far north as Ottawa on the Ottawa river, the capital of Canada.

Getting back to the school itself it had a very crude attic area with just round and spit logs crossing the building to support the ceiling

Lath and plaster was applied to these crude supports and with some manouvering by the part of the tradesman trued up the underneath side to hide all the roughness.

There were 4 layers of floors one on top of the other as they wore out, as far as I know the building has disappeared unfortunately, But I did some video work at that time, and copies of my work are stored in the archives at UPPER CANADA VILLAGE, I did retain a copy for my own records.

I was hoping to reconstruct the building in entirtey but time caught up to me and the best I could do was to try and preserve information for future generations

NH

Hi,
Still, what you write is consistent with my experience of typical construction the way it is practiced by the Dutch. And it seems pretty characteristic of how they build.
Here is a picture of a house I renovated just up the road, although the pine planking is new. Originally there was only chicken wire there and then the roof tiles. I even have out in the barn, floor boards like the ones you describe, one layer of many stacked on top of one another, waiting to be put down here in the house.
Is this something like what you have seen?

Greetings,

Don

Hi Don and others tonight:

Well Don not exactly, the roof structure is different the rafters in the Maxville school were just vertical sawn 2 by 5's
half lapped at the peak and pinned.

I am perplexed about the chicken wire under the shingles that is unusual for sure.

Tarring wooden shingles was widely practised here in Upper Canada in the early days of settlement

I forgot to mention that the system of early settlement here in Upper Canada saw the religious groups settled separately. the french, scotch, german, and irish respectively, and I suspect the building types sort of melded together.

NH

The chicken wire... Yes, this was a luxury that is not present in most buildings and probably was supposed to keep smaller flying birds and other vermin from coming in under the roof tiles.
These straw bundles, looking a lot like whisk brooms, on the other hand were mostly meant to prevent blowing snow coming in from between the tiles.




Greetings,

Don