My House

Links:      

Pages home, 2, 2a, 2b, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,  21,  22,  23,  24, 25, 26, 27,  28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70,  71, 

Lolita's House   for brother John   

This is Charity, short hair & female too

each kitten has a white spot on its tummy

My four black kittens have been trying to help me build the house...LOL I throw roots I dig up out of  the way and they go jump on them and carry them back... One has long hair but the others are hard to tell apart.. and I haven't named them.... But they are funny to watch!

Elizabeth, a dear friend just named my kittens for me... Faith , Hope , Charity and Luck .. LOL Don't know which is which, except the littlest one is a girl (all fixed) so she should be Faith, and the fuzzy one (long hair) will be Hope. Thanks Lady... that works for me! They were born 14 Feb. 2005...

New kitten Scoop cat

He was dropped off and couldn't have been over 4 weeks old. He barely had teeth, I bottle fed him.. I don't know why people are so cruel!   Got him Jun 2006..

Scoop turned out to own my heart... He was a love and a delight, one evening I watched him stalk (Just like a lion) 6 full grown dear.. it was so funny...

On May 19, 07 my heart died, Scoop died of the dreaded Tick disease of Cytauxzoonosis.  

I miss him so....he used to run in to my trailer jump up on the desk and put his front paws on my chest thrust his little head up under my chin and then sit there sucking on his tongue thinking he was nursing on his momma... He slept in the crook of my arm at night.. he had become like a person to me.. full of love and trust...

Hopefully, the remaining 2 living cats will not get ticks on them. I am now usng frontline from my Vet. and I'm misting their coats down with a cream rinse solution (people hair cream rinse..) ticks hate it. Pray it will be enough. as the ticks are infected by feeding off of Bob cats and I can't hunt the whole state of MO to get rid f them...

Hi,

 I'm starting my blog out with the statement below I really started clearing back in Feb of 2005, but it is needed here so you understand what I'm doing.

Nelda

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Statement

I am building a house of foam using the straw bale building concept. 

12 August 2005

I was asked a question on cheap-shelters@yahoogroups.com which is a mailing list that discuss different methods of building cheap houses..

"Sorry, I missed them.  I didn't make the connection.  I remember reading
that you were using foam but I thought that was for something else.  Sounds
interesting -  where do you get these blocks?  Do you have to put in
structural members to support the roof?  Why is your foundation so wide?"

Answer:

First... CLOSED CELL FOAM, was being used as a flotation devises for the docks in the lake of the Ozarks. Environmentalist got a law passed to protect the fish and birds because they were eating the foam. So NOW all foam must be encapsulated.... so all old foam must be removed...(by 2008)  The Dock building places have to pay extra for removal of the foam to the dump. special processing.... They (the dock building places) will bring it to you FREE! (Locally)

STRAW BALES  do not use structural supports... Why would closed cell foam?? In Straw Bale.... the complete wall becomes the support for the roof same here.....You have to cap it though..

There is no foundation except under the wall the fireplace is... the two doorways (North/South) and the center wall... The center wall ditch I am digging is about 3 ft but the foundation will be about 2 ft wide by 4 inches
deep  then have cement block built up to the level of the east wall so that the wall will retain my dirt floor. the reason so wide to retain the dirt floor. That wall will be wood and support the shed roof I will be using, it
is  High in center going lower at the east and a second shed roof going lower at the west this will make it look like a peaked roof. which I can not make by my self...

The Walls will be encapsulated by cement when the house is finished. Then I guess they will also become part of the structural support of the roof.

Does that explain it better?  Will it work? I have no idea... But I'm trying it!
Nelda

Starting with pictures of where I live.

This is the dirt road I live on, this is looking south.

This is center 

this is where I live....see the 12 ft trailer to the left beside it is my 27ft RV... the pile of foam above is south of the RV. (yes that is another foam pile on the right just past the white building and flag.)

This is looking north (standing in front of my trailer). Just below the hill is my closest neighbor... We buy water from him. the the dirt road going to the left goes down the hill to the west and other properties. (black spot in road.. one of the kittens.)

10 July 2005:

I started clearing land this spring (Feb. 05) I hand weeded the area this took about three weeks. Then had two 30 - 40 ft oak trees cut down, cut up into firewood and hauled down to my sister's house.

Standing in front of where I'm building look back at where I live. Left side see the hose right side see the hose.. Those pictures connect. The road is to the right.

I then had a friend help me do the corners so that it was square... I hand dug the corners so that cement pads would be at each corner...He insisted stating that the corners would be the support for the roof, but he does not understand the concept of strawbale housing. The whole wall supports evenly. We did use a transit for the upper corners, but he quit when I insisted that there would be no pillers on the corners to support the roof beams. But thats better because he wasn't putting any upright rebar for the foam to connect to the foundation pads....but I can get around that... (I was paying him $10.00 an hour, so you would think he would follow my directions)

Here is my blueprints (if you can call them that....). But it will give you an idea what my house will be like.

S

E    W

North

Going to put some windows in south and west wall

Had to change the east wall due to a tree stump... and will still try the circular wall for the porch..

July 12, 2005....

The area on the left is just an alcove, where the first drawing was a straight wall, I had to jog out to the left (east) to get past two large tree trunks that I could not remove from the ground. So the foundation jogs at the tree trunk then straightens, then goes back to the normal north south wall. You'll understand when I get the pictures on line. The porch, sits on a hillside and overlooks where my sister has her house. the east wall faces the dirt road. About a month ago, my sister saw a mountain lion between where my house is and her house... yes we are in the country!

back side of foam stack see the bucket in foreground? that's the north east corner of where the house goes. second picture is standing same place and looking west down the hill toward my sister's house... 

Standing below or west of the house site, looking up the hill the road is on the other side of the stack of foam

looking south across the house site

Link to next page

To get back to my website!

Link

~~~~~~**~~~~~~

*********************