Old Adobe Hut

This is an old adobe hut within easy hiking distance of our lot that apparently was once used in conjunction with cattle or horse ranching in the area. At some point somebody covered it with cement stucco. It is now in disrepair and not used any more that I can tell.

You can see Thompson Peak in the background of this picture, as well as the beginnings of the house we are building (just below the tip of the arrow).

You can also see the cement stucco over the short mud adobe wall in the foreground. The wall was broken long ago, but the adobe underneath has held up pretty well against the rain and wind.

This is a view from the inside of the hut showing the sun-dried mud bricks and the wood door frames. The primary walls were completely intact, and I think the building goes back to at least the 1940's ... maybe earlier.

Exterior Stucco

Note: We originally (and naively) planned to stucco the house ourselves, but common sense eventually overcame us and we ended up sub-contracting the job to a local tradesman. The shear weight and effort involved to cover 11,000 square feet of wall would have killed us. It was an interesting experience to try to teach myself how to mix and apply stucco, though, so I've left the information below pretty much intact in case anyone else might be interested in doing their own small job ... or stupid enough to tackle a large one.

We want to have the surface of the exterior walls have a stucco appearance. After investigating all sorts of alternative approaches (synthetic stucco, one coat stucco, etc), we decided to use a traditional 3-coat system for its durability and cost-effectiveness. The only problem is that we've never done it, and there is quite some knowledge and experience required to do it correctly. There is lots of contradictory information on the internet, but most sources pointed to the following system:

1. Metal lath securely fastened to the substrate. In our case we'll use one or two layers of wire mesh screwed every 12 inches to the metal furring strips of the foam wall panels. I was thinking of using two layers of mesh perpendicular to each other to assure a good grip of the stucco to the lath so that the inner layer forces the outer layer to stand off the foam panel, but some tests I ran later proved that was unnecessary..

2. A first layer (called the "scratch coat") comprised of (by volume) one part portland cement, one part hydrated lime, and three parts sharp sand (relatively coarse). Many sources recommended the inclusion of some sort of fibers as a binder in this layer to reduce cracking. I found out that although fiberglass is often used for this, the alkalai in the cement literally destroys fiberglass within about three weeks, making it functional only during application. Nylon or polypropylene holds up indefinitely and provides long term integrity. A company called Nycon (www.nycon.com) sells nylon fibers for many concrete applications in both small and large quantities, so I bought a few packets for my tests (see below). I applied a scratch coat layer both with and without the nylon fibers. The fibers made the stucco easier to apply and gave no shrinkage cracks. The portion without the fibers showed some cracks wherever the underlying lath was not lapped well.

The scratch coat gets raked horizontally with a serrated trowel before it sets too firmly to provide a mechanical bond for the next layer.

3. A second layer (called the "brown coat") comprised of one part portland cement, one part hydrated lime, and four parts sharp sand. This layer goes on as smoothly as the coarse sand will allow, which isn't very smooth although it can be troweled flat. I played around with applying a section, letting it cure for a couple of days, and then applying an adjacent section. I wanted to see what the effect on cracks and appearance of the joints would be. Cracks don't seem to be a problem (yet, anyway), but I found it useful to feather both edges of the joints (at different times, of course) with a wire brush to virtually eliminate any visible lap.

4. A finish layer (called the "finish layer", surprisingly enough) comprised of one part portland cement, one part hydrated lime, and three parts #30 silica sand (very fine).

Most sources called out the use of rods and screeds to achieve flat layers, but I found that the sand grains pretty much set the layer thickness if you let them, and the only leveling required is if the underlying wall surface is uneven. Our foam panels are holding pretty true, so I don't think that will be an issue.

So I built a 4ft x 8ft artificial wall using 2x4's and plywood, covered it with lath, and started trying to teach myself the art of stucco work. The results can be seen in the picture below. Most of the panel now has the finish layer on it, which we'll use to test various methods of colorizing. I left all three stucco layers visible in this section of the panel for illustration and also to see what happens to each with time and weathering.

Terrific Adobe Style Home

The Habitat for Humanity organization in Sierra Vista sponsored a tour of some local homes last month, one of which was this terrific adobe-style home that's on the National Register of Historic Places. It part of the Kinjockity Ranch, which was built by a very wealthy fellow back in the 1930's and is located about a mile north of us. I'd love to capture this same warm, rounded appearance with our house, but I don't think we'll be able to with the construction technique we're using. Still, I plan to steal a few ideas from what I saw as I was going through it.

Here's a picture from inside the house. I believe this room was added more recently, and it has the same feel we hope to build into our home, with maybe a few less decorative items.

Addendum: The Kinjockity Ranch has now been sold to a developer, and the new property is being called Kings Ranch Estates. From what I've been told, the developer is planning to convert this old adobe home to an upscale restaurant.

Palominas Parade

We actually live in a small community called Palominas, just a few miles south of Sierra Vista. When I say "small", I mean small. Our son played in his grade school band, which happened to be marching in the local Christmas parade. We went down to watch it, and this was one of the more colorful floats.



Apparently anyone who has the inclination is able participate in the parade. Here is living proof of that. During a temporary lull in the parade, these two characters (man and donkey) took turns pushing and butting at each other. It was pretty funny to watch.

Cold Living in the Storage Building

While we build our own house, we are staying at my inlaws' storage building that they built prior to beginning their own home next year. One side holds an RV where we eat and sleep. The other side was originally intended to be a workshop, but we have converted it to temporary "living" quarters and have installed a couch, satellite TV, washer/dryer, and a water bed. The building isn't insulated, though, and it isn't heated with anything other than the small space heater that is visible under the table, so it gets damn chilly in there during these winter evenings as we watch TV. Here my wife is bundled up in just about everything she could find, including a skull cap. My son is wearing a black ski mask with eye slits and has a down comforter wrapped around himself.

Some day we'll laugh about all of this, just as you are no doubt doing now as you view this.

We received some snow just before Christmas. The storm dumped another couple of inches just after this picture was taken, but most of it was gone a few days later.

Stow Concrete Mixer

The normal way to build a house with ICFs (Insulated Concrete Forms) is to put up several courses of the panels and then bring in a concrete pumper to push the grout through a heavy hose into the blocks. It is a very quick and effective way to do it if you can afford to put everything up at once and brace it well. My wife and I wouldn't be able to do that, since the two of us would take a lot longer than a normal crew, and we didn't want to invest a lot of time and money into bracing. Putting up the panels a few at a time meant that we'd either need to bring a pumper out to the lot several times (big expense), or we'd have to mix our own concrete and pour it little by little ourselves (lots of heavy work). We voted for the heavy work and bought a commercial 9 cubic foot concrete mixer. We went with the electric version with a 1.5 hp motor since we had electricity at the lot already and felt that it would be a lot less hassle than dealing with gas tanks.

Speaking of hard work ... each mixer load will use almost 100 pounds of portland cement, 250 pounds of sand, 250 pounds of pea gravel, and 60 pounds of water. To fully complete the house, we will need to mix approximately 1000 loads. I believe we're looking at a few months work here. Before you write us off as being sadly deranged or merely stupid, keep in mind that we dug 355 feet of 2ft by 2ft trench in a rocky hillside mostly by hand ...

We bought the mixer over the internet, by the way. Cool, huh? It was delivered to our door in less than a week.

Bull and Ravine

This is a range bull that showed up one day. My wife thought it looked thirsty and gave it some water, which of course caused it to hang around for several more days before finally wandering off. This picture was taken about 30 feet from our living quarters.

A large ravine runs across the entire southern edge of the lot. This view shows a portion of the ravine looking eastward. The national forest boundary is just to the right of this picture.