The Desert Smells Like Rain

When it rains in the Chihuahuan desert, all of a sudden there is a wonderful fragrance from the creosote bushes that fills the air.  The rain fell all around our site while we were working on Tuesday afternoon.  We could see it all around the horizon.

I worked on the vault some on Saturday and Sunday, but the truth is, masonry is not my forte. I had a hard time keeping the angle of the adobes right.

So on Tuesday I worked on the plaster.  Also, on Monday Tom and I and a friend went to Marfa in the afternoon, and I arranged to show some black and white photographs about the work of the Adobe Alliance in Marfa next fall, during Chinati weekend, in Building 98.

My other job was to do the cooking for the group.  We had many pleasant lunches under the ramada.

But the house really glows in the late afternoon and evening as the sun goes down.  Then, it was truly magical to sit under the ramada and have supper watching the mountains in the distance change colors.

Adobe Workshop: Sunday

Work continued on Sunday unabated.  I thought you might like a little orientation to the house and its spectacular setting.

Here is a drawing of the house. The main building has four Nubian vaults, connected by a large hall with a flat roof.  There are two vaults to the west of the hall, and two to the east.  The hall runs north-south.

(The courtyards were built a bit different than the drawing shows.)

Here is a view of the south elevation of the house.  A pleasant ramada shades the back patio.

Here is a view from the east, showing the domed guest house and the east courtyard, off the kitchen.

An agave allee leads from the ramada on the south side to a fire pit.

The house is off the grid, so it is powered by solar panels and a windmill.

The views from the roof are especially spectacular.  You can see another house with adobe vaults and domes in the distance.

Ok, back to work.

Work continued on the parapet on Sunday.  A cool pulley was rigged up to get the plaster up to the roof.

Mud continued to be slung at the parapet and smoothed down.

On the west side of the house, emerging masons worked on the vault over the new office space, under the guidance of El Maestro.  Also we got our old scaffolding back so we could fit under the vault.

Progress on the vault was slow but sure.

More Adobe Building, part I

Last week Tom and I went to West Texas, near Presidio, to work on an adobe building, the same one I was working on last fall.  We worked on the Nubian vault for the new office building, and we re-plastered the house.  The workshop was organized by the Adobe Alliance.

Traditional adobe buildings require re-plastering on a regular basis.  This house had not been re-plastered in several years, and torrential rains and hail last fall had damaged the plaster and stripped a lot of it off.

Also, the Nubian vault over the new office room was not completed last fall, so we were working on that as well.

Here you can see the end wall, and the unique angle at which the adobes are laid up to form the vault, when making an adobe Nubian vault. 

Tom and I got there on the second day of the workshop.  The other workers had spent the previous day testing some adobe samples, with different mixes of sand, clay, straw, and prickly pear juice.

On Saturday morning, we studied the samples on this little building to see which one cracked the least.  If there is too much clay in the mix, the plaster cracks.  The sand prevents cracking, but too much sand can make the plaster not stick well to the walls.  All clay and sand are different, so adobe plaster workers have to experiment to determine the right mix for each situation.

The photograph below shows how the domed guest house.  You can see how the rains have washed away the plaster on the windward side.

The plaster workers began re-plastering on the parapet of the house.

The job involved sweeping away debris that was loose, and then splashing water onto the parapet with a wet brush.  Then the plaster could be slapped onto the mud parapet and smoothed with the hands.

By the end of the day, the plaster crew had finished re-plastering the parapet, and they had started on one of the vaults.

Meanwhile, the vault crew was attempting to erect a scaffold to fit under the vault in progress.

This scaffolding, while very nice, was too tall to fit neatly under the vault.  We couldn't reach the top of the vault easily, so we ended up getting the old scaffolding that we used last fall the next day.

Still, we got a few new courses up on the vault.

We mixed the mortar for the vault in a wheelbarrow, using just screened  clay and sand, and water.

All this work made us tired.  Theo photographed his mom and me and Tom, resting in the living room.

Of course it also made us hungry.  I cooked a pork loin for supper, with a cream sauce.  I had bought a big one at Costco in Houston, and I froze it for the trip to West Texas. In order to fit it in the freezer, I had to bend it a bit.  So when I took it out of the cooler on Friday night, it looked like this.  (Some viewers may choose not to look at this picture, as it involves violence and nudity.)

Adobe Abode, Part II

I uploaded some photos to my flickr site of the adobe alliance workshop near Presidio, TX.  These are black and white photos that I shot on film, in a medium format camera and a view camera.  You can see them here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonstoney/sets/72157622617749789/

Adobe arch

One day some of the participants in the workshop made an adobe arch.  They made a form out of adobe bricks, arranged in a sort of post and lintel way, and they draped some black plastic over the blocks. To make the form more rounded, they packed some clay and straw on top of the  adobe blocks, under the black plastic.

Then they stacked the adobes and mortar in an arch shape over the form.  (It's also possible to use a plywood form.)  It dried for a day or two, and then we tested its strength.  It was surprisingly strong!

We decided that it was a triumphal arch for a dog. A dog could run through it after catching a rabbit, for example.  But the dogs that were there wouldn't try it out.

Carlos house

Somebody left a comment asking some questions about the house in Ojinaga that I wrote about a few days ago. I can't figure out how to respond directly to comments in Blogger, so I will respond here.

The house does have a lime plaster, but I'm not sure if it's the same as the plaster on the Kern house. I think it has two vaulted rooms in front. Not sure if it has any flat roofs or not.

I have one picture of the interior, showing the squinch that supports the dome.



Simone Swan explained to us how the squinch works and how it is built. The purpose of the squinch is to enable the builders to put a circle on top of a square: it makes the square building into an octagon. When the walls reach a certain height, a form is used to build a little arch in each corner, over the form. Then when the arch is dry, the wall is built up to the top of the arch, creating a new octagonal wall on which the dome rests.

Oregon cob; Jesusita Jimenez

On Friday we had an Oregon cob demonstration. Oregon cob is another form of earth architecture, developed in the Pacific Northwest, but based on ancient building techniques that were used in Devon and Cornwall in England for centuries, and also in the southwest of Ireland. In cob construction, you don't make bricks and then stack them, as in adobe construction; it's a "monolith," in the sense that the wall is like one big adobe brick that has been formed gradually. You start forming a "course" of cob on top of a stone foundation and you work all the way around the foundation; then when that dries, you trim and shape it a bit and start the second course.

The first thing to do is mix the clay and sand, just as in adobe brick making. The clay and sand are shoveled onto a tarp, and then mixed together by rolling the tarp. (Both were sifted first through a 1/4" screen.) The clay makes the mixture stick together, and the sand gives it compressive strength and prevents cracking.

Then you add water and mix with your feet.



Straw is added to give tensile strength to the mix. (Sometimes manure is used also because it too has fibers in it. The fibers in manure have been chopped up a bit more, obviously, by the animal's teeth and digestive system.)



Finally the cob is shaped into a loaf-like shape on top of the foundation. The cobber uses his thumbs to push down into the cob. This causes the cob mass to cohere, and it also creates a surface for the next layer of cob to stick to. It's a bit like a wet mushy lego.

It's interesting that walls can be formed without bricks or even forms .

Cob walls are often very thick, as much as 24" thick. The first course is often wider than subsequent courses; the walls can taper as they go up, but usually they are never less than one foot thick. A rule of thumb is that for every one unit wide the wall is, it can't go over ten units high, but in practice, according to our teacher Stevan, this rule is sometimes violated to no ill effect.

A thin coat of lime and clay is often used as a plaster on the outside and inside of a cob wall.

Cob houses usually have framed roofs, but it's possible to make an arch by corbelling the cob inward gradually. I'm not sure if cob vaults are possible, though.

Simone watched the cob demonstrations in a beautiful North African style robe that she sewed herself from fabric she bought in Ojinaga. (More about that later on my other blog, All Fibers, All the Time.)

Later that day we met with master adobe craftswoman Jesusita Jimenez. Jesusita was the project manager for Simone's house and several other adobe houses in the region. She is retired now from adobe building, but her influence is still felt in current adobe construction. Her craftsmanship, precision, and speed in adobe masonry are legendary. She is shown here with El Maestro, Sevan de la Rosa, our teacher during the adobe workshop. I'll write more about what Jesusita had to say in my next post.

Keystone

It's not all hard labor at the Adobe Alliance workshop. The other day we took a day off and went to Chinati Hot Springs near Ruidosa, TX.

Chinati Hot Springs is a remote little low-key resort on the border between Texas and Mexico. Vaux le voyage!

The next day we achieved a milestone: the first keystone at the top of the arch. Efren, a master mason, quickly cut a small adobe with a trowel to make it fit the space perfectly.


We made a field trip to Mexico and looked at another adobe house with vaults and domes. It is smaller, and it is not finished yet: the doors and windows have not been added yet.

This house was not built by the Adobe Alliance.



The owner is from Lebanon, thus the Middle Eastern style of the building.

Third day of vault building

On the third day at the site, we made some significant progress on the vault. Two more workers arrived: a mother/daughter team who had worked as roofers, Judy and Carly.



Our crew is predominantly women, but our teachers are two young men, Stevan and Sandro. Sandro collects vintage Volkswagons:
The blue Volkswagon truck brought the adobes from Ojinaga to the site.

We talked a lot about the fact that this workshop is made up almost entirely of women: a young architect from Boston, Eugenia; a landscape architecture student from Oregon, Lee Ann; a developer from California, Deborah; another builder from Greece, Gina; a homesteader from Georgia, Kay; a would-be adobe home-owner, Leslie; and me, writer, photographer, and farmer. There is also a man here, Brian, who is making a documentary about Hassan Fathy, and a film-maker couple, Claudine and Tom. Carly and Judy were here for two days. Here is Kay's hand in a picture that shows clearly how the adobes are laid on top of the wall at an angle to form the vault. The bottom adobe has been cut in half and trimmed at an angle to fit the bottom of the wall, so that the next adobe will overlap the previous join.



This is the first Adobe Alliance workshop that has been almost all women, and there's no one answer as to why this is so, but perhaps this sign on the back of Sandro's car might offer a clue:



Adobe is earth-friendly, affordable, and hands-on. Women with little construction experience can build houses for themselves with it. It probably helps also that Simone Swan and Jesusita Jimenez have been at the forefront of adobe education now for ten years.


Two years ago when Tom and I visited Simone at her house, she was getting ready for an adobe workshop. I helped Jesusita and a friend build the most scenic privy in the world. The solar pump for the well can't pump fast enough for many flushes a day inside the house. But who cares when there's a view like this from the privy: