28: Heating Coil

After the first finished layer of the floor was dry to the point where it wouldn't stick to our shoes at all when we walked on it, it was time to lay the heating coil.

I had purchased 300 feet of the heating coil on ebay for about $40, and I don't doubt that it was made sometime in the 70s or 80s and had been lying around in someones garage or warehouse all this time. An internet search provided no information about the coil, much less the company that had manufactured it... But, it looked like it was in good working condition, and new electric radiant floor heating coils are five to ten times as expensive, so we proceeded to wire it up the only way we could think how and hope that it worked.

Fortunately a heating coil like this is an extremely simple thing - it takes 220 volt power, and you literally just connect one end of the coil to one of the hots on the 220 switch, and the other end to the other hot on the switch. When you flip the switch, electricity runs out of the switch, through the coil, and back to the switch. It creates heat by virtue of the fact that the wire is waaaaaay to thin for the amount of current that is being put through it, and the resistance causes heat.

The last thing I want to say about the heating was that after this experience with radiant floor heating, I am a HUGE fan of it and probably will not use any other heating in anything I build in the future (except a woodstove, of course). It is super-efficient, it keeps your feet warm, and you can keep the air temperature much lower and still be comfortable since you're not just getting convective heat transfer through the warm air, but also radiant and conductive heat transfer as well.

Here's some photos:

The heating coil pinned into the layer below with big metal staples:



The coil leads coming out of the wall:



The coil leads where the appear in the wall and where they will connect to the switches:



The thermostat and the switches (there are two heating zones on the floor, each controlled by a switch, and then the thermostat provides a master control. That way the zone under the bed can be turned off for the night to minimize EMF while sleeping):

27: Door

While I was waiting for the first finished floor layer to dry to the point where it was leather-hard, I started prepping the door. I had managed to secure this giant salvage solid core front door for free, but it was just way too big and had to be cut down. The initial dimensions were 7 feet 4 inches tall by 42 inches wide. We cut it down to 7 feet even and 32 inches wide. In retrospect, I wish I had been able to find a smaller solid core door that did not require the cutting down, as I think the cutting down (widthwise) damaged the integrity of the door handle/latch and that the door won't last as long as a result.

First we sanded it:



Then we beeswaxed it:



The beeswax does make it look beautiful:



Then we built the jam, which I don't have any photos of since my camera started having problems at that point.

26: Subflooring and first finished floor layer

After finishing the lath, it was time to start thinking about the flooring. This part was one of the two most interesting parts for me (the light straw-clay insulation being the other) since I had never done it before, and didn't even really know how you were supposed to do it. I bought a pamphlet from online for a couple bucks - one by Bill and Athena Steen. It was very helpful, but you can only get so much from a few pages of text and some line drawings. So, like a good science student I decided to do some experimenting.

With the same earth I used to make the light straw-clay, I made a couple test tiles of different formulations with different amounts of sand:



As you can see one of them cracked much more significantly than the other, so I went with the uncracked formulation:



Then, with the finish floor formula figured out, I went ahead and started putting in the subflooring. The subflooring was just straight earth, pulled out of the ground moist, but not moistened any further I raked it smooth and then tamped it with the tamper. The subflooring layer ended up being about 4 inches thick:



After the subflooring layer was solidly tamped, I mixed up a batch of the final finish mixture and applied the first of the two finish layers. This lift was about an inch thick and was much wetter than the subflooring. Here's a wheelbarrow of it:



And the first corner getting filled:



Chris troweling it smooth:



A little tamping just for good measure:



And finally Harper in his blue hat playing with some cracks that had formed in the first finish layer:

25: Lath (part 2)

After getting all the electrical installed and ready to go, the next step was closing in the walls completely by putting up the second half of the lath. When we cut the first half of the lath, we cut the second half at the same time, so this part went pretty quickly...

Here are some photos:

Dan helping wash the mud off the first layer of lath and the windows:



A few shoots of wheat growing out of the wall as it is drying:



A finished corner, with only the wainscoting piece missing:



Chris and the finished lath around the door:

24: Electrical

Ok, so here's some photos of putting in the electrical. Overall this part of the building process was pretty conventional. The two things that I did that were different were 1) I used conduit in the walls instead of romex to get some electromagnetic shielding and to keep the wires away from the light straw/clay, and 2) I did not install any electrical on the two walls of the house that the bed touches, again to keep the emf down.

Ok, here's the photos:

Chris running some conduit:



The future home of the lightswitch:



The conduit going over to the desk:



Chris marking the location of the exterior boxes:



Chris and the lightswitch (apparently photos of Chris are more interesting than photos of electrical):