Labor Day Weekend- Sept 4th through 9th- Deviation to an Earthbag concept

This weekend, I had a choice in climbing up one of the 14er's near Aspen, going to Guatamala to summit an active volcano (Fuego), or working on my summer project up in WYoming. Guess where I decided to hang out! Isn't that would you would have done???


It was another great weather weekend up in WY. I got up around 2PM on Saturday and started working on stabilizing the walls with an earthbag process. Instead of buying the polypropylene or burlap bags, a landscaping supplier (http://www.weedbarrier.com/) sold me a woven landscaping cloth. 15' X 360' of it as a matter of fact -figuring this will get me further than buying 1000 earth/sand bags at a time. So far, the process is working out well. I'm mixing approximately (5-5-1) 5 shovels full of dirt, 5 - gravel and 1 - portland cement. Once it's all mixed (dry), you shovel it into the cloth (of varying lengths) and fold it over. From here, you flip the open side over, facing the ground - wet it down, place and shape it, then tamp it down to set it.

I was able to complete almost half of the pit (back wall and foot space) within a day and a half. Monday I was hoping to get further but the weather kept me from working. The windy Wyoming weather lived up to its reputation. WELCOME TO WINDY WYOMING - HOME OF THE TUMBLE WEED, TUMBLE RABBIT, TUMBLE COW, TUMBLE TREE, TUMBLE HOUSE .... - The weather was supposed to reach 60 degrees and it might have been, but the wind chill was bitter and obnoxious. My hands were numb from walking across a small portion of the property at 9AM. I decided to head back to Denver and hang out with some folks visiting - one friend from high school (leaving Tuesday) and my cousin (leaving Thursday or Friday).

I've included a pix of some of the tiles I've collected over the past few years. These will soon have a home within the seating area of the firepit and possibly other places, if people decide to put them elsewhere. There are piles of other items I hope to incorporate within the walls. If you have some things that you'd be willing to donate to the pit, drop them by. I'd love some unique things - like dinosaur bones, fossils, shells, plastic molds to make cool designs, anasazi anything - well you get the idea. And the list goes on!

For fun, I've included a picture of my neighbor's project. I might have mentioned that I have some copycat neighbors. When they saw what I was doing, they dug a pit for themselves the following week. We are now in a competition to see who can finish first. We both started this weekend and we'll see who wins. It might be them since they can work on it every day. They've chosen to go the more traditional (pouring concrete) way. I'm afraid to tell them anything more - what else will they copy? hee hee

Once the stabilization of the walls has been completed, stucco or a concrete layer will cover the earthen walls and will be the base for the final mosaic finish. More to come. Have a great week.

Weekend of August 28th, 2010

There's nothing like starting out a weekend right. My neighbors invited me to a bar in Laramie -Friday night- where we watched a country-funky-bluegrass-ish band. Holland Wofford. These guys are really fun to see live. Thanks Gayle and Dennis.

On Saturday morning, I woke up with ambitions of making huge progress and then realized that I didn't have all the materials that I needed to complete the wall building around the circumference of the firepit (If I would have thought about what I actually had up at the property, it would have been a pretty simple deduction -duh). In reviewing my per-dic-a-ment, I considered some alternatives. My initial plan was to stack bricks or pavers along the wall and fill in the gaps behind with concrete/cement. There's a lot of bricks or pavers needed to fill a firepit with a diameter of 16 feet and walls around 2 1/2 tall!!! After completing a section, I looked at the large gaps that would need to be filled in with concrete and felt that the way I was going about it didn't really make sense. I needed to come up with an "easy" way to make a stable wall that would survive the Wyoming winds and freeze-thaw actions up at 8300'. I was also not sure that making a top heavy concrete wall was the right way to do this, since the tops of the walls have eroded away. It finally dawned on me that I have almost all of the materials that I need to make these walls very stable using earthen building techniques. Following the earthbag concept, I planned to fill either woven poly-propylene bags or burlap bags with a soil-sand-gravel mixture to make solid walls. This methodology would fill in the bigger gaps near the top of the walls, where the walls have eroded in from the weather and usage. It will also allow me to make solid edges at the top of the wall when I finish over it with a concrete-stucco like finish.

Since I didn't have the earthbags to complete this over the weekend, I trenched out more of the kitchen and shed perimeter. I hope to have this perimeter foundation poured in the next few weeks.

This is all I have for now. Until next weekend (which is actually tomorrow!!!) . So much for finishing the weekend out as it started!!! It was a pretty fun weekend overall, considering.

Did I mention that we found a lost border-collie and eventually got her back to her owner. Cricket and I drove through Vedauwoo proper and the campground for a good hour or more trying to find her papa. It turned out she escaped from a ranch down the road.

I was also reunited with a friend that I knew and climbed a little with when I lived in Laramie (something like 13 or 14 years ago~).

Hopefully someone who is reading this silly blog, and considering their own earthen project does not have to struggle and back track quite as much as I have. Luckily, I don't mind this and have been learning a lot about the process and myself. I've worked out the bugs (or at least some of the bugs) for ya~