Fed up with soggy everything!..

[zion-diy]

How do you all deal with rain,rain..and more rain while building.Hubby and I are building our house, plans just from my head,on a very,very tight budget, in the Ozarks..We have tarps, and more tarps on stuff.We are working as fast as 2 ole,tired,very sore and gimpy people can work.Seems like we will never get this thing shelled fast enough.What should we do about moisture,mold, etc once we have no more rain inside? Native lumber loves water, then loves to curl.We started in January, with a budget of $17000, and have purchased all the big ticket items...I hope. Love this forum, I have been watching from a guest view since Sept. Learning from you'al as we all build.  

Here's link to some pics I quickly posted, will fill the album later...

http://toycars.tripod.com/zion_house

[glenn-k]

Nice project.  I am also tired of rain - finally got a good week in last week.

[Amanda_931]

Me too.  I mostly wish I had the bigger water tank hooked up at the barn.  

And a not-too distant source for bigger (fiberglass?) tanks--or enough--young!-- friends likely to actually want to spend three or more days doing a ferrocement tank.

But one of my neighbors thinks he can bush-hog most of the field up at the top of the hill.  The one with foot-deep plow ditches all over it.  And it's way too soggy to work.  And one of the biggest drifts of poison ivy/oak I've ever seen.  Even I may break out the roundup.

But enjoy the rain while you can--seems like the Ozarks are drier then we are, and we are frequently in drought in the latter part of the summer.

[Jimmy_Cason]

Yep, The rain sucks...
So far, I had to buy 20ftx40ft tarps from Wal Mart 3 different times.
This past weekend We had 5 inches of rain.
That ment one more trip to wall mart to buy a wet-vac.
Do you know that 1" of water on a 20x40 area is approx 300 gallons?
I dont know if you guys have seen that newest wet vac, It will suck the water then and pump it out through a 50 ft.garden hose.
It sure beats opening the tank and dumping it each time.
I have a little mold starting in several areas down stairs.
When i am done I will pour bleach over the entire floor and let it sit for a few hours then wet vac it one last time.

Btw, WELCOME TO THE GROUP! AND WE LOVE PICTURES! Your place is coming along fast for starting in Jan.

[Daddymem]

And here we are needing rain badly...'course now that my project can finally start...we'll probably get soggy too  

[Sassy]

Welcome!  For 2 tired, gimpy people, you've accomplished an amazing amount in a short period of time.  I fall into that category, too.  Glenn, amazingly, can climb up anything, carry extraordinary amounts of weight & outwork the young guys who work with him!  If you met his mom, you'd know why... she is working full time as a postal worker, has remodeled their house, built cabinets, etc etc & is still in the process of remodeling.  She has so much energy, it's incredible!   and now she is going to the gym on a regular basis... I won't say how old she is as she doesn't like to tell anyone, but you'd never know it...  

I think we are about finished with the rainy season here.  We need the rain, but it sure does slow down the building process... (good excuse to get on CountryPlans   )

With that said, I had better get to work!    Glenn's been up since 4:30am - had to drive back to the Napa area this am.    

[cecilia]

Reading about 'soggy everything' forced me to remember when we first began building at The Duckpond.

Everything had been dry (it was then autumn) until the day we poured the slab!! Of course. Then we had weeks of wet. The soil is all clay - the type that grows onto the soles of your shoes/boots until you are walking two feet taller than normal.

Our framer was ready to begin the job and he asked if we minded if he ordered a truck load of wood shavings to spread around the building site. These arrived and were spread quite thickly. Timber was delivered - and kept clean as no mud had been walked onto the slab when the crane dropped it.

As more rain fell, the shavings compacted into a sort of solid series of pathways around the growing house. Mud was kept to a minimum and the framers were pleased to be able to keep their tools and materials clean.

Whenever we have to do a bit of digging where we'll be walking, I always look for a few bucketsfull of shavings/sawdust to cover the mud.

Do you folk ever do that - or do you have other methods to keep the mud at bay?

cheers
cecilia
www.duckpond-design.com.au/theduckpond

[Amanda_931]

I can remember crafts fairs in Nashville (there's one this weekend) where they put straw down.  By the second day it smelled right sour, and was nicely coated with loam.  Loam certainly was one of the things there.  (Although the English translation of one of Gernot Minke's books on earth building consistently and annoyingly uses the word "loam" for clay/sand subsoil.)

Bark mulch from the sawmill that has an automatic bark shredder is one of my favorites.  

Quite inexpensive.  Although if I wanted to both load and unload shavings, I could probably go over to friends' woodshop.  They don't like to put them in their gardens, so the  composting toilets are about all they use them for.  Paths might be good.  Especially in an area where there is lots of poison ivy.

[jwv]

Wow, what a beautiful place.  And what's this stuff about being 50-ish?  I'm -ish too!   I guess I have slowed down a bit and Sassy, my MIL is the same way.  Works circles around me! She turns 80 in June; she'll be helping us paint and clean etc, when we finally move too the new house.

Keep the pictures coming, we love pictures.

Judy

[Sassy]

Cecilia, sounds like you have the same type of clay we have here... I was planting roses yesterday, had dug the holes & then filled them with water-when I walked around them placing the roses & covering them with the dirt, my feet kept getting heavier & heavier... I didn't get much taller cuz I kept sinking in the mud...

We get lots of wood shavings - from our sawmill but also have rec'd several truck loads of shavings from a local company that cuts down trees & brush & runs them through the shredder.  We could put that down on the ground when it is really muddy - sounds like it almost makes a sort of "cob" material... does it hold together later when everything is dry?  Kathy

[Amanda_931]

If you put stuff from the chipper down with a bit of hydrated lime and mushed it up with the mud for a few days it might really really make a path.

According to one of Charmaine Taylor's antique pamphlets.

We were south (or in the afternoon north) of the storms that came through today while a neighbor took his bush-hog to the incredibly overgrown field up the hill.

Now I'm about to have to haul water up to the tomato plants.  Oh, well.  

[Greg(Guest)]

We are also building a house in the ozarks (1-1/2 story from plans) by oursleves and the rain is driving me crazy - it would not bother me so much - but I am working on the foundation now and the mud is driving me mad!  I can not wait to have the floor down so we can start to make some progress.

[glenn-k]

Great way to get rid of the weeds, Amanda-- machines are nice that way.

[Amanda_931]

Friends in the south part of the county got a couple of inches last night.

Looks like I got it tonight.  Although I wasn't home, and it was still raining when I came in so I didn't look at the rain gauge.