Hi everyone
It’s been a while, I skipped a couple of weeks to get things going on our project!
Last time I wrote we had finished 3 slices of the roof. In the meantime, we finished the 4 next ones and completed the roof.
Eventually we were able to do a complete layer in one day, the second one on top the following day, and move the wooden structure the third day.
We held off laying the last slice to finish the front wall (and be eventually able to attach the ceiling to it), making a door lintel out of cinderblocks and reinforced concrete.
The suspense was high whether we would have enough bricks to finish the project and it turned out we had just 3 extra at the end!
One of the bricks revealed a handwritten signature which turns out to mean “Ludwig Herman”. We are still investigating who and when :)
Next, we will spend many hours cleaning the grout from the inside to free the bricks and make nice regular joints. Then we will insulate the outside with a pond liner and cover the root cellar under a thick layer of dirt.
See you soon!
Are the gaps between the bricks there for a reason? I would have thought the support for the arch would have come from them touching more then just the mortar.
Oh yeah good question! That’s not staying like that. According to the building theory books I read a jointing in an arch can be anywhere between 5mm and 10mm of mortar inside (1/4’ to 1/2’) and up to 25mm outside (1 inch)
The empty space will be filled completely with mortar next week. It was a huge mess when laying the bricks vertically against the wooden formwork, we noticed how ugly it looked when moving it off after laying the two first slices.
The plan is to use some kind of piping bag and inject the mortar precisely in the gap, then smooth it uniformly. There are different shapes, we haven’t decided yet which one we will use:
We ordered this device to inject the mortar:
and some powdered iron oxide to give a darker tone to the mortar, we like it better with the color of the bricks. When all this arrives, we can continue