breakingground Archives

Breaking Ground

Third-years finally broke ground on Rosie’s site! With help from Mason Hinton, the 3rd-year crew transported tools and supplies from Ophelia’s Home site to the new job site.

Mason drove the Bobcat over to Rosie’s site to install temporary power. With power on site, they are now waiting to get the trees removed in order to get to work!

Electives Continue

While studio work marches on, so do history classes and field trips with Dick Hudgens. Most recently, the 3rd-years took a short trip out to Greensboro to visit our neighbor Ian Crawford’s home, “The Oaks.”

Before Thanksgiving Break, the class also visited the Molette Bend Plantation Home, where Dick was the head architect of the designs for historical preservation and adaptive reuse.

Woodshop Class also continues, and the students have just about wrapped up work on the library carts. Peter and Laura are in the final stages of adding wood finish and wax to their finished product.

While finishing the carts, they are also working on designs for their third and final project, a small wooden lamp.

The semester will wrap up soon! Stay tuned for one last blog post before our current 3rd-years head out of Newbern and back to Auburn!

Hale’s frozen over! Since then, it has melted, soaked, dried, and soaked again. Classic Hale County. But Myers’ Home team broke ground in the fury of it! You may have heard it here first, folks.

Putting a shovel to the ground takes a lot of prep. First they got the dirt on site conditions. This involved first surveying the area. Though not before saying hello some new, sorry moo, neighbors.

Gyro the Cow says “when’s the dirt moving?”

Survey the scene…

To begin, both Myers’ Home and Rev. Walker’s Home teams went to Steve Long’s Survey School at Newbern’s own Morrisette Campus to learn the site level basics.

The thesis women learning to set up the transit stand

All learned to set the transit to read site elevations on the story pole — the measuring stick. On site, they will draw a grid to measure points and build a topography map. This team went with 80’ by 90’ at 10’ increments for their site grid.

Recording the first corner of the measured grid on site

A well-informed student home-builder tests their soil strength with the pocket penetrometer. Riley and Judith dug four holes on Myers’ Home site at intervals around the footprint. They then took density measurements at descending points spaced 6” apart. The penetrometer is plunged into the wall of the soil and a reading is taken in tons per sq. ft.

Riley digging a 32″ hole for the pocket penetrometer

The team recorded bearing capacity and observed conditions of the site. This informed a plan for excavation and soil replacement. To make this home stable, they’re building an island of engineered soiled. This raft will be a solid bed of engineered dirt, reliable red soil with a definitive bearing capacity.

After speaking with Joe Farrugia, Rural Studio’s consulting engineer extraordinaire, a plan was in place for site excavation and refilling.

Batter up, batter boards!

The team had to place batter boards though before site excavation. At first glance, batter boards are unassuming scrap pieces. The builders level these to near-perfect tolerance around the site. They hold squared strings marking each edge of the footprint of the building.

String is tightened at specific points to mark square edges on site

With the guidance and helping hands of batter board guru, Steve Long, Judith and Madeline set boards for the excavation crew arriving the very next day!

The transit is used to measure height and level the batter boards

Can you dig it?

The following morning, the local excavating team made their appearance at sunrise. They removed over 2′ of dirt from the area marked by batter boards. Eight (eight!) truckloads of strong engineered soil then arrived, placed in 6″ lifts in the hole. This new dirt was smoothed to ideal home-building elevation (well above the water table) and left to settle as another wave of rain rolled in.