MASONRY HEATER

This post will most certainly require a later update, but I wanted to get things started.  The masonry heater will be our primary heat source.  I mentioned before that it's like a wood stove built out of masonry, but that's a simplistic explanation.  It's based on a centuries-old European technology, like the Scandinavian tulikivi, the German kachelofen, or Russian wood stoves (I don't know what they're called, much less how to spell it).  The principal is that a small fire is lit and burned quickly at very high heat, approaching 1600 degrees.  The exhaust gases exit the firebox into a secondary combustion chamber, then drop to the base of the heater before finally leaving through the chimney.  The result is a very complete and efficient combustion, which delivers 85-90% of the wood fuel's heating potential to the huge mass of masonry that encapsulates the heater.  The chimney is then sealed off, allowing the heated mass to radiate into the surrounding spaces.  Theoretically, we'll fire the heater once a day and otherwise benefit from the residual heat.  It's an old technology, but clearly a bit complicated, so we brought in the expert.

This is Tom Trout, an enigmatic masonry heater builder from the mountains of western North Carolina.  He's built heaters all over the region and even trained masons in Japan.  He was a real hit on the job site when he showed up with his wood-fired hot tub.

This is the lower wall of the masonry heater, with the ash-dump door in place.  The quarter radius bricks at the top center are the sill of the firebox opening.  Needless to say, we've got an intricate pattern worked out for the masonry veneer on this masonry heater.  Our masons love our patterns.

Tom made me cut my own corners for the firebox opening, and I'm pretty proud of my work.  These are all cut from the quarter radius brick, and the mis-alignment is due to the lack of the mortar joints.  Obviously the finished opening will be  quite a bit larger, these are just the four corners.

Meanwhile, back inside

Work has not ceased indoors, although most of the excitement is outside.  We've been working on the second floor closets.  The interior walls are all aromatic cedar, which was harvested and milled within 20 miles of our job site.  The exterior walls are white oak, again locally harvested and milled.

This is the closet wall, seen from the outside, with the interior cedar surface complete.

This is the same wall, from the inside.  You can see the incredible color and grain of the aromatic cedar

This is the exterior, white oak surface of another closet.

We used an alternating lap at the corner, which creates an interesting pattern in the wall.

 

This is an interior corner, at a wider angle, exaggerating the alternating pattern.

RADIANT FLOOR

It's probably time to discuss HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, to the uninitiated.  My wife and design partner, Amy, hates air conditioning, and I'm ambivalent.  It does make me feel clammy indoors and then overwhelmed when I go back outside.  Our climate is a gray area.  It does get hot in the summer - up to 100 degrees in the extreme - but we're at the foot of the mountains, so each night a cool wash of air comes straight down the valley and drops the nighttime lows into the 60's.  Our cooling system, therefore, is fairly simple:  a whole house fan for nighttime ventilation and circulating cool creek water through the slab, just down to the dew point.  Amy does like heat, however, so this system is a bit more complicated.  Our primary heat source will be a wood-fired masonry heater.  It's essentially a wood stove made of brick, and I'll share more about this decision later.  Our second system is the radiant floor, powered primarily by a wood-fired, exterior boiler.  This will serve the first floor topping slab only, and will be supplemented by radiators on the second floor. 

The radiant floor piping layout, with plywood walk-boards to keep from squashing the radiant pipe.  All pipes originate from and return to the mechanical area to the left.

The beginning of the topping slab.  We're pouring a 3" 'topping slab' over the original 4" rough slab.  We wanted a finished concrete floor and were concerned - in hindsight, justifiably - with building over the finished floor, so we framed over the rough slab and then poured the finished floor on top.

The topping slab begins to spread...

 

The first area is leveled with a vibratory screed and allowed to begin to set.

The topping slab is complete, and finishing has begun.

And this is the completed, troweled slab.  Next is a final buffing the next day and a coat of sealer.

MORE BRICK

I mentioned in the last post that I expected the masonry work to be a long process, but I don't think I fully understood just how long.  We're about 8 weeks in now, and still going.  But you'll see from the photos below that this is not your average straightforward brick job.  This first image is one of the compound cuts they had to create to work around our column bases...

Steven's masterpiece.  Each pair of columns had about 4 similarly mutilated bricks around the base.  This was particularly tedious work.

Here's how it fit's against the column base

exterior stairs, now complete

Work on the pavers begins.  This is a herringbone pattern, with a 'norman' size brick, which makes the pattern a little more pronounced.

Pavers again, with the stair in the background.  The wood-fired boiler will go in the niche to the left of the stairs.  We needed a heat dump, for excess heat from the boiler, if it's not called for inside, so we ran radiant pipes in the bench against the stairs.  This should be a cozy seating area in the late fall / early spring.

Looking back toward the entry

And down toward the spillway terrace

Another stair, with our new dog, Thelma, in the foreground.

This is the spillway terrace.  It doesn't make sense yet, but eventually we'll have a dam across the creek and the spillway will flow right past this terrace.

Okay, so I liked this stair.  Sorry for the redundancy.

That's John, grouting the joints.  The pavers were first laid in a mortar bed, allowed to set and then grouted, much like tile.  This is because the brick we used is very dense and has a low initial rate of absorption (IRA), compared to the typical southern red brick that our masons were accustomed to.