For the past few months I have made monthly posts in the ecoTrain community mostly documenting moments like the one captured in the image below of the breaking of big boulders with the fire & water method. This is a tactic that is traditional in the area where we live and is something I have covered previously here.
In short, the fire & water method for breaking up rocks is one in which a fire is made over the rock or boulder and let burn for many hours. Depending on the size of the rock this can take anywhere from 6 to 8 hours and is best done on a cloudy, sort of rainy day in summer, or even better, during winter. After so many hours of fire the rock is extremely hot and, ideally, will begin to crack when suddenly buckets of cold water are thrown over it.
More often than not we also had to hit it with a sledge hammer to really get the boulder to break apart. This was a super tedious task that I am so glad we are done with for now.
There is a definitely a positive side to all these rocks and boulders! With such materials we have the building blocks to create a very sturdy base for our future tool shed/tiny workshop. And last week we got to work on the first 50 centimeters (around a foot and a half) which we constructed out of rocks and a cob mixture.
This cob mix needed to be very sturdy so we made sure to add enough sand which creates the structure to this natural mortar. Keep in mind that this workshop will have a nice overhang on the roof and thus will be fully protected from rain and the sideways rain we sometimes get during summer storms. If there wasn't much of a roof it would be important to add lime to the mix.
As you can see there is a white string that marks the height of this first layer of rock wall as well as guides us to keep the wall more or less straight. This is natural construction so it won't be totally exact but rather, naturally straight. From the height of this string and above we are going to continue with a cob mix and add recycled windows and bottles for a lot of natural light.
Hopefully we will begin this work in the next few days. Expect another installment of Natural Building Diaries soon!