We celebrated Jean's Mother-in-law's birthday with a trip out to Wimberley for dinner and a show. Here's the end of the dinner part I don't have any pictures from the show but it was Godspell which has special significance for Jean because back in her acting days her troupe performed it.

Our friend, Ben, came in from Houston for the weekend. Ben wanted to do a hike so we drove out to Pedernales Falls State Park(30-40 miles southwest of Austin). Kevin, Ben's friend who also lives in Austin, joined us for the day. This summer has been significantly more mild than those in recent years but early September is still a little bit crispy for an extended hike. We did about five miles before retreating to the water. Forging the river. Last November when we came out this crossing was impassable. Ben, Kevin and Jean hiking the park boundary Back across the river A stay with Jean and Aaron inevitably leads to board games. You've been warned.

The plan is to put in a rubble trench foundation. A rubble trench is a trench filled with rubble or gravel. Clever eh? The benefits are of the rubble trench are: No concrete required. The trench will be filled up to grade level and the building will be built directly on it. The rubble drains water away from the building. A moisture barrier. Water will wick up through the soil and concrete through capillary action. With a rubble trench they are air gaps that stop the wicked action. The rubble trench distributes the weight of the structure. Sounds great except for the whole digging the trench part in hard packed caliche soil. Caliche is a soil that has been cemented together by lime (calcium carbonate). Lime will prove useful later in the building process but for digging the foundation, not so much. Fortunately, we just have to get below frost line which in central Texas is like 6 inches. We're going for a depth of 12" - 18". For the job we rented a trencher which...

As a test project for working with earthen materials I'm planning to build a small tool/storage shed. For the wall system I'm using cast In-situ Adobe T-brick technique. With traditional adobe, bricks are made in large forms on the ground. Once the bricks have dried they are used to construct the wall. With the T-brick method individual brick forms are used to make the bricks in place. These rectangular forms measure 12-18" long, 12" wide and 8" tall. In additional there's a another 8" tall piece of wood attached to bottom of the rectangular form (See image below). When constructing the wall, several forms are place end to end on the wall and packed sequentially with Adobe mixture. As, a block firms up the form is removed and placed at the end of the row. In the next layer, the block locations are staggered so that gaps in the layer below can be filled in. This also serves to lock the layers together. Take a look at this article regarding buil...

I went to a Roundwood Building Workshop this weekend. Roundwood is timber that is left as logs rather than being cut into planks. We constructed a shelter for a cob pizza oven (yet to be constructed). The timer is a mix of red cedar and ash juniper. Before doing anything with it we had to take the bark off it to prevent insect infestation down the road. The night before the project leaders charred the end of the posts that would be put in the ground. The charring is another insect infestation prevention measure. Getting the cut ends charred is of particular importance. The post holes were dug to a depth of 2-3'. We also half buried a couple of dozen roofing nails in the charred end of each post for additional stabilization. The cool thing about roundwood is that you can use features of the tree(like this limb) to add beauty and support. This limb will provide support for a girder. After we got the posts in position we back-filled the holes with decomposed g...

Enjoyed a fabulous day of wine tasting at award winning vineyards in Fredericksburg with friends.  Thanks www.texaswinos.com for a great tour!

Here are some pictures from our recent visit to the UK: