I have never built a stone wall in my life so as things naturally progress, improvement comes with time and experience. By the time the foundation was complete we were actually very good at it. The foundation wall is solid stone and mortar. I began with stones on hand and mixed up a bag of S type mortar one bag at a time. In hind sight we could have saved considerable cost by buying a bag of cement and mixing it with quality sand as needed. As it is the mortar we used was suitable for structural strength above or below grade. Sticks of re bar were placed vertically every 3 feet or so. This would give us a our needed support for the first row of straw bales. I basically mixed up a bag in the wheel barrow with a hoe as seen in the picture, dumped it over the gravel and laid the largest stones in it out flat ish making the base row. The foundation wall is a full two feet wide to accommodate the straw bales which were 16-18 inches. The cob layers that coat the inside and out vary in thickness totaling 3-5 inches on each side depending. To be honest the wall varied also between probably 20-24 inches and the height was determined by my knee. We wanted the walls to be safe from moisture elements so knee height was necessary. Our site is actually sloped as well so the foundation wall varies in height. It is not level all the way around either. There is one section that slopes which creates a cool effect!
The first season I built alone. By the next spring my wife Jessica, was willing to help to expedite the process. The stones you see here were collected along side our road and from a neighboring property that had stones lying around and yes I had permission! The smaller ones came right from the ground as I dug the trench. You can see that the base was built from large stones. I would lay them out and then move them to the side in the same fashion and then reassemble with mortar. The first season ended with the wall about half complete and I confess, it was pretty ugly...but strong. For this post we are going to move right on into the next season. As the snow melted and spring did its thing it was time to get back to the wall. I had a job and a family to support so building time was divided between one or two jobs and everything else. We had homesteaded just two years prior and were still building our little house at the same time. Needless to say it was a very exhausting time.
This picture is taken just to the right of the door. I really felt like my skills were bombing and I really hoped I would figure it out soon since my wall was getting uglier and uglier!
I managed to make my way around to the back side which is where I ended and we began! Jessica got in the truck, took the kids and returned from the local river with a load of nice smooth river stones which was the beginning of the next great phase. With some nice stones wall building began to make more sense and as you will see it also began to look better! We finished the wall in the spring of the following year. It turned out just dandy and you will see more pictures of it as we move on. I'm getting bored rambling on about the foundation so lets just move right on to the next step! Part 5 Cord wood and Straw bales! It gets more interesting from here!
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