On Recent Occurrence and Activity

Greetings, dear reader! A lot has happened since my last journal. Springtime in Hale County is always busy with excitement as the weather improves. Short and cold days gradually turn sunny and quietly cheerful. The cows are particularly pleased as their fields begin to turn green again with fresh and tasty grass. Cats like myself take to basking. The students welcome the shift. Jeans are replaced with jean shorts, toboggans with sun hats. Moral appears to be high. What follows is a synopsis of recent events.

View to Field by Reverend Walkers Home

Ground Breaking News

My crew has been hard at work pushing the design of Reverend Walker’s Home to a new level of detail. Progress is swift and we look forward to breaking ground within the coming days. But before the shovel meets the dirt, there is a lot of rigorous preparation that needs to happen to ensure a smooth process. The team has been putting together a series of construction sets ranging from batter board drawings to plumbing documentation.

Batter board plan
batter-boards documentation
Jig for footings drawing
pier bracket jig

Last week, our friend and mentor, Steve Long, joined us on site to put up our batter boards! Batter boards give us the ability to make exact measurements during the building process. In the next couple weeks, the boards will help us with marking for earthwork, slab formwork, setting columns, and positioning plumbing stub-outs.

Students doing batterboards
distant students set a batter board
Addie through the site level
a site-level’s view of Addie
Paul through the site level
a site-level’s view of Paul

Milling

In addition to studio and site work, Adam Maggard, an Auburn University Forestry and Wildlife professor and Extension Specialist in Forest Systems Management, brought the Forestry Department’s portable wood mill to give a demonstration to students and faculty, mill two trees that were felled on Reverend Walker’s site, and to inspect the studio’s own portable mill. With Adam’s help, as well as Rural Studio Alum Will McGarity, and Professor David Kennedy, we milled cedar for a closet, and pecan slabs for exterior benches.

becca mills wood
Becca operating the mill
pecan slabs
pecan slabs
cedar boards
cedar boards

Windows and Hatches

An important component of Reverend Walker’s Home is a light & ventilation unit we are designing and building. The system takes the components of a single-hung window: light and ventilation, and separates them within an overarching frame. The goal is to produce a system that is more durable than the windows that are typically within budget.

single hung window
typical single hung window

The system features a fixed frame glass panel next to an operable ventilation hatch, which is covered by bug screen. By separating these systems we can potentially create a product that is comparably priced, and more airtight than conventional windows.

Reverend Walkers Window Unit
Reverend Walker’s Home unit
section drawings of unit
current iteration: sections through window and hatch
window unit plan
current iteration: plan of unit

After many iterations and with the help of Keith Cochran from Wood Studio, this is the current state of the system. It is a shop-built painted cypress frame containing a fixed glass window and an operable cypress hatch. We will be testing this design with a full scale mock-up in the coming weeks!

Taterhead the cat
Taterhead

That is all for now, dear reader. I implore you to return for more information as I continue to document our endeavors. My evening tuna is being served in the officer’s hall, so I must leave my crew to continue their work. They are a self-sufficient and hard-working bunch, and I trust them to meet and exceed my very high expectations.

Respectfully yours,

Taterhead