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The Mud Room or Entry Way is an important room in any house and indespensible in mesa country. We're known for our mud!
It provides an airlock for the house so you don't loose all the heat or lack there of when entering or leaving the home.It also
provides a water proof place to get those rain or snow covered clothes off that is protected from the weather.
This room like the office room will have a dome roof as designed in the new Hut Earthship. See the Dome page for construction details.
The mud room rear wall is the south side of the western cistern, you can see the ladder behind us leaning on the exterior of the
cistern.
The tire wall to your left is an arc that steps down from the level of the cistern bond beam towards the front door frame. The tire wall on the right is the front wall and you can see the greenhouse framing on top of it. The double can wall that will separate the mud room from the interior of the house has not been started yet.
We have started the tire infill on the out side tire with concrete. We are
infilling the inside and outside of this wall with concrete because it is an outside wall and the doesn't directly tie into the bond beam at its lowest
point next to the door frame. On the right inside the door frame you can see the double can wall has been started, the pink solid insulation is
sticking up between two parallel can walls. The conduit for electrical must be installed while you construct these walls. Jan is sitting on top of the 8x8
ponderosa pine header(logged locally) that will end up being buried in the bond beam that encircles the room. If you didn't notice you can see that
the glass has been installed in the greenhouse front face. Above the glass the face is made of from top to bottom parallel 2x4, 2x12 and 2x8's.
Giving us a 22 inch solid platform to mount the solar panels to when were ready.
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Here is a better shot of the double can wall as it goes up between the front
face and the rear tire wall. You can see the door frame for the interior door. All door frames are treated wood. The header above the door is
made of local cedar. The holes in the pink insulation are locators for some bottle art. The small white pipe that descends at an angle on the back tire
wall is the condensation drain from the cistern silt hub. Once its hooked up we can start collecting distilled water.
The can wall has now reached the bottom of the green house roof. The
double can wall is also done on top of the out side tire wall. If you look closely to the right of the door frame you can see another bottle art piece.
Its pretty hard to make it out from all the cans. The bond beam has been poured and now encircles the entire mud room. You can see the redwood
plates embedded in the beam. These are for attaching the vigas for the ceiling and to attach the dome to.
The vigas have been set. They are attached by drilling two 9/16 " holes through the viga and into the redwood plates. Then put a generous dollop of liquid nails in the holes in the plate. Drive a
piece of 5/8 " rebar through the viga and into the plate. This will stop any lateral movement, the soon to come concrete dome and perimeter can wall wrapping around each viga will lock them down for good.
Here's view from the front. We are ready to start on the Ferro-cement dome roof and exterior cement plaster.
Ferro-Cement Domes
SSA is hot on the use of Ferro-Cement domes. In order to promote the use of Earth Ships in 3rd world nations, the dependence on wood had to be reduced. The roof uses probably
half or more of the wood used in an Earthship so it was a good place to find alternative methods. Actually they have been using Ferro-cement roofs for awhile ALA Shell House, but now its
starting to become part of the standard package.
I modified the attachment method to accommodate the use of vigas on our ""Hut-Type" office and mud room.
The second bond beam has been constructed and poured that locks the vigas in place. Its behind the top 3 rows of cans in the can wall that encircles the Hut. The details for that process are on
the Office/Dome page. On the left side of the picture you can see that the greenhouse parapet wall is completed and ready for cement plaster. We will plaster the parapet walls and dome at the same time.
We have put the ceiling deck down on top of the vigas. On the mud room we used cull lumber from the local lumber yard. All the boards that are too bent to sell. The next step is to construct the
skylight tube/box, you can see it in the middle of the rebar cage. Once the skylight is firmly in place you can now install the rebar cage. Our process ran like this.
First figure out how many pieces of rebar and about how long they need to be to complete the cage. We had to wire two 10 ft pieces together to get the correct length.
Drill a 5/8 " hole through the roof deck and into a viga at least 6 inches. Inject some liquid nails into the hole. Insert one end of the 5/8 rebar into the hole, from the other end bend the rebar
around in a half circle so it contacts the side of the skylight box near the top. Find the point where the end of the rebar should penetrate the roof deck, drill, glue and insert. Attach the rebar to
the skylight box with screws and bailing wire. Do this in a star pattern that will place the ends not more than 3 feet apart. Every where the rebar crosses another piece of rebar wire it together.
Then place horizontal runs of rebars(circles). We just needed one about half way up the dome.
Once that sall tied together, cover the cage with stucco netting. We are almost done with the netting in the picture below.
Here's another view of the cage. On the left side of the picture you can see the parapet wall on the greenhouse better from this view also.
One of the problems I've heard that concrete domes can exhibit is sweating on the inside during the cold weather. SSA recommends attaching insulation next to the concrete. So we
left a small opening in the stucco netting and attached R12 to the inside of the netting. We tied this tight to the netting which allowed us to apply the cement plaster directly onto the netting
and rebar instead of using cement soaked rags. I though the rags prevented the cement from enveloping the wire and rebar. Using the insulation as a backing allowed the wire and rebar to
be embedded in the dome, thus a stringer structure. At the same time that we attached the R12 to the dome, we laid two layers of R28 on the ceiling deck, each layer rolled out 90 degrees to each
other to prevent the seams lining up. Which gives us an optimal R60 insulation in the dome ceilings.
Here's a view from the inside as we are attaching the undulation to the netting. We made the attach hardware from roof disks and
rebar ties cut in half. One person poked a hole into a roof disk, one cut the rebar ties, and a third stuck the half tie through the disk. We made a few hundred in about an hour. Installing the
insulation was a two person job, one inside the dome would hold the insulation up against the netting and poke the half rebar tie through the insulation, the person on the outside would then
bend the wire so it was securely tied to the netting or rebar.
The picture below shows the dome ready for plaster.
Here we're starting the first coat of plaster, We had to be really careful with wetting the insulation. If you don't get it wet enough the plaster will dry to fast, if you get it to wet the insulation will fall
apart! The first couple of coats look pretty rough, but as you apply more the dome gets a more round and pleasing shape.
First coat done. Don't forget to scratch it! The next step after this coat dries is to build the can parapet wall around the dome to catch the rain water and direct it into the cistern.
Here's the dome after the 3rd coat of plaster. The next and final coat will be tinted cement plaster.
Another view
The office room on the east side of the house is another Hut like rooms with a concrete dome.
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