fish out of water.

I was told architecture was a boys club. But when I got into architecture school there were more women than men. And when I got hired on at a firm in Charlottetown we had a party, because my arrival tipped the scale, more women than men.

On site, I expect alot and nothing from the men I meet. I expect them to be crass and I don't expect them to be helpful. But over the last couple of years on a variety of sites I have met nothing but amazing people. Only once have I ever had to put a guy in his place.

So where is all of the stereotypical 'girls shouldn't be on site' crap? It is in society. So next time you meet a girl taking on 'the wrong' job and you think she 'really?! a girl!', think again. Thank you kindly to anyone reading this who has helped a fish out of water and Thank you to all of you who see the quality of work and not the gender.

Thermal mass

Put thermal mass in your house, in the right place!

Thermal mass is the capacity of a body to store heat (wiki!). Concrete, rocks, water ect, hold heat (and cold) very well. You can use this to regulate the climate in your house!

A floor is a great place to add thermal mass. Concrete floors with absorb the heat from the sun and release is slowly over the day; with shading, they will stay cool in the summer. Sometimes people put thermal mass in the wall, which is a good idea, but if you have too much the heat leaks out of the building! You can also build thermal mass into your a stove!

Check out Masonry heaters or rocket stoves. They use a small fire to heat alot of mass and stay warm for a long time. The Chinese use to build beds in the this fashion to stay warm in the night!



In this project they are testing a different idea. They have dug a sand pit in their greenhouse and are laying piping through the floor. Excess solar hot water will run through the pipes when it is not in demand. The sand will store the heat for a later date.

Foundations

The footings and slab on grade were poured when I got here. As follows,



The stub walls are made of Durasol block (Made in Canada!). It is similar to a cinder block but, they use waste wood fiber to replace some of the portand cement. And they insulate is with rock wool (an insulation make from industrial waste). One of the hardest products to spec green in a building is the stub wall. Where the wall meets the floor is the location most susceptible to mold in your house. This detail is very critical. I have spoken with a variety of green builders that spec Durasol as their choice stub wall material.

Straw Clay Building

For the next 6 weeks, I will be writing from a Timber frame straw clay building site in Lethbridge, Alberta. We will be using local/nontoxic/renewable materials to build a 4000sf retail building. (adjacent to a timber straw clay residence, seen here)



Stick framing is how the majority of the North American housing stock is built. In this process, many small stick are nailed together to create a skeleton for the building. Timber framing however is a traditional method of building with large dimensional lumber using joinery to attach the timbers. (The following is Not the timber frame I am working on, but it shows the scale of Timber to people)



In the following image you can see the corner joinery and the complete straw clay infill.



You can see images of the project I am working on at http://www.harvesthaven.com/newbuildings/workshop_sofar01.html

Once the timbers are all in place we will be adding the roof and then the straw clay. To fill the spaces between the timbers, you build a skeleton to hold the straw clay (I will detail that more at a later date). The straw is coated with clay slip and compressed into the wall.



I will be posting more details on all of these steps throughout the next couple of weeks. I must get to bed, I have cows to milk in the morning!

New Book

I picked up "House Thinking; a Room-by-Room Look at How We Live" (by Winifred Gallagher) at a used book store in Halifax. It is about environmental psychology; our relationship with the spaces we inhabit. Sure we know that the grocery stores are arranged to make us consume more by putting the most frequently needed items at the back of the store. But how can we arrange space in our residences to make us happier? more relaxed? feel secure? (There are actually people out there measuring this information!) Environmental psychologist Grant Hildebrand suggests all we need is a combination of five characteristics, prospect and refuge, enticement and peril, and complex order. Robert A.M. Stern observes that 'Many of us end up buying the house we hate the least.' Ouch.

It can be so simple, take a look around your home. Maybe all you need is a well lit space for reading in your living room; Perhaps it would help to rearrange your dining area so that your circulation paths are clearer; Maybe you could use a window with a view... It doesn't take a major overhaul to change the relationships we share with our homes. But you do have to work at it...