Speaking of floors - copied from the old forum-
We are now doing an experimental floor a step beyond the CBRI light duty concrete floor - guess we need a cool name for our variation --- How about "Glenn and Kathy's cheap and easy light duty concrete floor" :-/ - OK - so a good name is hard to come up with.
Mike Oehler used an earth carpet floor system, he just graded and tamped the soil then put the plastic and carpet over that.
The light duty concrete floor from India mentioned by Ken Kern, with the plunger posts is also durable and cheap to make - one inch thick concrete over Hessian or burlap.
http://www.countryplans.com/bbs/messages/7258.html
Based on the above CBRI floor, we made some experimental major modifications. We used sacrificial wood forms to work the laundry and bathroom section of the floor we were ready to finish at this time. The plunger piers will hold the floor even if the wood deteriorates.
The loose soil is filled to the top of the forms. The last 1/4 inch or so is filled with sand and graded even. I set my finished level to be about 1/2 " above the top of the wood. Sand fill stops at the top of the forms - the floor will be a form of ferrocrete -similar to stucco but a stronger mix. The advantage-- we used 4 small wheelbarrow loads of concrete mix to do about 90 square feet and less than one sack of cement. We added fibermesh to the mix for reinforcement. Comparable standard construction would have used over 1 cubic yard of concrete and about 6 bags of cement. We mixed cement with a fast setting anchoring cement called Rockite to speed up the set and for higher strength in the cool weather. The holes are pounded as deep into the ground as the digging bar will go by repeatedly picking it up and forcing it down - appx 2 to 3' centers on the holes-- they varied in depth from 4" to 12". They were made with the blunt end of the digging bar in the right foreground of the above photo.
Aquapex, waste lines and washer outlet box were installed along with romex as it was easier to do before the floor went in. Water lines were tested before being covered also. Aquapex can be installed directly in the soil.
A pine box will be built over the utility lines. The bathroom walls will be wired, insulated and plastered as we wanted a rounded room. The bathroom walls are non-bearing so framing was only used for the insulation cavity and to get the rounded shape. The single thickness board walls have 2 1/2 inch foam board -foil covered on the outside of the wall.
There are many accessories available for Aquapex that make plumbing with it fast. The angle stops go directly on the pex as does the washer box.
The entire bathroom floor is sloped to the shower drain from slightly to moderately in the shower itself.
To speed things up the plunger piers were filled with premixed dry ready mix and a little water then tamped - the concrete that is dry will set up from ambient moisture in the soil. Posts and studs are set on rocks, drilled with a rotohammer and an anchor pin pr set or 60d nail driven into the hole in the rock. This works similar to a post and pier foundation. I put a French drain under the floor to keep moisture away from the wood. Boards along the walls on the outside are to give backing to the stucco and earth plaster wall as backfill is installed and to give strength to the framing. All construction is done in a manner that will allow settling or use of green boards without problem. Typically the natural ground here is rock to near rock or claystone so does not have a settling problem.
Shower pan liner and aviary netting are now in place over the smoothed sand. I used the aviary netting in place of the Hessian of the CBRI floor. The concrete of the plunger piers joins the aviary netting and will be joined to the cement of the finished floor. The concrete supplies compressive strength and firmly grips the aviary netting which I used for tensile strength. Each square inch is tied to the other square inches of the netting with 8 wires - 1/2 inch weave - I assume this will be sufficient to support much more than 40 lbs. per square foot assuming each wire to have a breaking strength of at least 100 lbs -rough guess. If I'm wrong and it breaks, I get dirt on my foot and fill the floor with more cement. Add the tensile strength of the fibermesh - similar to hair added to old plaster and you get even more strength.
Boards span the sand and netting to prevent roughing up the smooth surface while finishing the ferrocement floor. Note again---the soil under the netting is not compacted - in England they use a rototiller to loosen it- settling of this layer in the future is what gives the insulation space. It is only solid enough to support spread out weight and the ferrocrete.
