The DarthCoin Citadel - part 3
2024 - A difficult year that slowed down the whole construction, but still with small steps forward.
After the Part 1 of the story and continued in summer 2023 with the Part 2 building the 3 walls with earthbags, that wasn’t finished in time, in the summer of 2024 tried to finish it hoping that I could put a roof on this half of the whole house.
STAGE 5 - 2024 - Finishing the earthbags walls
Unfortunately in May 2024 I had an accident and one of my fingers was ripped off. Helping a neighbor with his cows, trying to keep still the head of a cow with a cord, the cow moved her head and ripped off part of my finger.
So until July I could work, waiting to be cured, closed and also was very painful all day. Now is OK healed nicely and can work with it. Is a bit shorter but is OK.
My plan is to have 21 rows of earthbags on each wall, but because I have to put the roof with some lean inclination to the right side, for the water and snow to fall down, I will have to put 23 rows on the left wall and 20 rows on the right one. The roof will be fixed on the left stonewall, pushing all those rocks and the gap between the house wall and the stonewall will be filled with more rocks and dirt. The whole roof (isolated against water leaks) will be covered with dirt for flowers (especially anti-mosquitoes species) and nice green grass, maybe some strawberries.
What you see in this picture is only half of the house, the back side. The front side will be continued when I finish the roof on this backside part and will be done with a big nice window on the right side (where the sun enter all day long), a fireplace on the left side (is already started) and a nice stonewall in front with 2 windows and the door. The right side (where you see those rocks sitting in the grass) will be a nice parcel for strawberries and flowers, continuing up until on the roof.
When I came back to work in Aug 2024 (July was raining a lot and I could work), I had to rebuild some levels of bags that were fall down during the winter, because of too much rain and snow and also I didn’t had time to fix them properly.
I continued with putting more bags levels, quite hard work because at this stage I had to fill the bags on top, carrying all the way the buckets with dirt, a lot of walking and also not so handy to plaster them. Anyways, slowly advancing. August was also really hot and some weeks I didn’t work too much. Just relaxing. Lazy but still bringing up the earthbags up to the 21 level.
In September I came back during a good weather window but the dirt was still wet so I couldn’t make more bags. It remained only 15 fucking bags to finish the top level.
Why? I had again another accident !
I fall down from the top of the earthbags, slipping my foot on the wet grass and my knee was twisted. Fucking heavy pain. I had to wait one day until I could walk more or less fine, but still in pain. I had to walk back 8 km with that pain, through the forest and rocks, crossing 6 times the river. So again a long period of time I couldn’t go back to work.
But in the end in October I went 3 days and I made a small stone wall, at the entrance, next to the house, to keep a nice level of dirt where will come more strawberries.
This stonewall will be continued until down to the yard following the entrance stairs, will be like a small garden wall surrounding the house. It’s a lot of work finding the proper rocks. Not all are squared and you have to find the right ones to put together. So is more like a time consuming work than hard.
Later, in was preparing some beams for the roof, not fixed, just for testing them and see how long they are to fit in the right place. Remember I have to put them also to sustain the stonewall on the left of the house.
Maybe, if the weather is nice, in November I will go to finish them to clean and paint with protection paint against bugs and rot. Also to finish that entrance wall and maybe the chimney, that is only half finished now.
And that’s it for now, is raining continuously and I can’t get back to do something more. If it stays like that, the winter is coming fast and will not be able to do more stuff this year. Luckily I could covered and secured properly the earthbags walls and will not be winter problems.
Inside looks and feel pretty cozy, the tarp is acting instantly like an insulator and keep a warm temperature inside. I could sleep inside but still don’t want to because now is more work to on top and around and will be difficult to keep the stuff inside.
Let’s see the next year, maybe finally will be finished and start looking like a proper house, now is more like a stupid bunker.
Interesting numbers and fun facts:
I dug the dirt, full of rocks and boulders, during 4 years (only few months in the summer)
I used only a bucket to carry the dirt, like 10 m away and pilled up building a huge hill, separating the small/medium rocks from it and making a separate pile of rocks.
see on the right side the pile of rocks and on the left side the dirt hill
just imagine that each rock was extracted by hand, one by one from the dirt I dug and carried to this pile. Was a hell of work done!
all these boulders you see here were dug up from that hill, by hand, no machinery
each earthbag was filled up with filtered dirt from rocks, using an empirical filter :). Again the remaining dirt with rocks was carried back and used to reinforce and isolate the walls from the back of the bags, but most of it was pilled up in another place (for later use). A lot of moving dirt around. Actually my whole activity was moving dirt LOL 😂😂😂😂
The house in total will be 7m by 3.5m and 2.5m height. The 1st part is 3.1m x 3.5m. Will have also a small porch at the entrance to sit on a big boulder / bench and watch the rain in the summer :)
I calculated that I dug up like 15 tons of dirt and 5 tons of rocks. Like 2 big trucks.
In the first 2 years I was counting (just for fun) how many rocks I extracted. At rock number 1523 I stopped counting because was insane... :)
Each earth bag contain aprox 30kg of dirt
Until now I piled up 298 earthbags, that means 8940 kg (almost 9 tons!!!) of dirt filtered and carried around
I estimate to have like 15 000 rocks piled up, later to be used as pavement and walls.
I still have to put like 100 earthbags on the right wall (under the windows) and a small part on the left wall next to the chimney.
I still have to add like 3-4 tons of dirt+rocks around the house and on top, to isolate it nicely and make a rounded shape.
Still remain to build the front wall with those big boulders. Will be a hell of job and I have no idea (yet) how will be done. But I think will be next year. I do not have time this year for the 2nd part of the house. I am in a hurry to put the half of the roof first, winter is coming and the earthbags must be covered and prepared for the winter and sun.