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Building the systems room and the greenhouse was a challenge. The extreme exactness was required because we would be fitting very
large glass panes into it. Large and heavy thermo pane units don't take well to out of square frames.
The construction of the greenhouse followed the initial framing of the systems room. The Earthship volumes call for constructing
frames and attaching the joists from the front vigas to the frames.
While taking a seminar in Taos Michael demonstrated a new method involving creating a scissors with one front 2x6 and one 2x12 joist. You mount the bottom of the 2x6 to the front plate and hang the joist to a joist hanger on the plate attached to the front viga. Then step down east to west mounting each front redwood 2x6 and mating 2x12 joist until you reach the west end of the greenhouse face. It takes much measuring with tape rulers, levels and string lines to get each section square and in plane.
We constructed the system room first. It mounts to the front of the east cistern and the front tire wall and provides a solid
frame to attach the greenhouse to when we start on that.
The system room turned out to be not quite square which encouraged me to slow down somewhat when doing the greenhouse.
Below we have built the short cripple wall on the front wall and are mounting the first "A" frame. One side sits in the
front face, the other one the south side top of the east cistern. I started with the center joist.
Here's another view. This was a No-Accident zone. Lots of ladder work with heavy timbers.
Once we got the first one on and set the rest followed fairly fast. Too fast
as it turned out. The challenge of course is to get a flat surface on the front(south) side of the "A", while mounting the north side to a circle!!!
Perpendicular and square would be nice to! You can see the cripple wall below the A frame. A window, bottle wall and outside utility access panel is planned for the openings in it.
Once we got the Systems room framed up it was time to start on the
greenhouse. The first thing to do was to provide a surface to mount the 2x12 trusses to. The exactness of planarity and square required for a long
lived front face(the glass will crack in time if its not perfectly flat and supported evenly) precluded the possibility of mounting the joists directly
to the viga. So we attached a 2x12 to the face of the viga in plane with the roof joist and adjusted it to be within 1/4 inch of parallel to the front wall
plate. We are installing the braces between the viga and the front truss. once done an "X" pattern will brace the viga.
After getting the 2x12 fascia on the viga in place, we can start on the front
face. Our precision is set to 1/16 inch for square. By insisting on this during the constructing we actually ended up with about 1/8 of inch. Which
I thought was well within spec. We will use levels and strings to stay in plane. The framed and sheeted systems room give us a good solid structure to brace to.
Below are 3 pictures of the almost finished framing of the green house.
We sheeted the roof of the greenhouse as we went along to give us a place to work from and to stabilize the structure.
The semi round room to the east of the system room will be my office.
With four foot vertical windows mounted on the wood plates. The roof will use the same construction methods as the new Hut design.
Here's an inside view looking west through the system room and greenhouse.
Here's the front view before we pulled the last of the braces off.
It took a couple days to cut and install the stops. But the big day finally came. GLASS DAY!!! I was so nervous! What if the glass
wouldn't fit?? We set and mounted all the windows in a day. The glass company delivered the glass. One guy and he had never set glass this big before!! So 3 of us figured it out real fast.
The ladder in front of the house is sitting on the metal sheeting being cut for the cistern lids. The Systems room has been roofed with two layers of asphalt roofing. The white PVC pipe sticking
out of the middle of the front wall is the black water drain.
Now that the middle is done its time to get going on the two end Huts, the Mud Room and the Office.
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