Hi guys!
I entered the Hamadryad project to a contest a few weeks ago…
I had to go to a selection day and last week I got the anouncement that Hamadryad has been chosen to be one of the four projects in the final !!!
That’s good news because this way we are able to reach and inspire more people to act green!
All of you guys could also help me a hand and support Hamadryad in this contest by becoming a member or a fan…
Just visit this page: http://www.samengroener.nu/nl/groups/1596
and push on the “Aansluiten” button to become a member and get Hamadryad green! (see picture above)
All people who are actually supporting Hamadryad AND who are a member on the site… gain one year of free green electricity if Hamadryad is winning the contest !
Greetings,
Carl aka Wolf
Although it was never my goal to use my blog as a Wake-up call, I just can’t stop ignoring all the messages spread around the world these days… Messages most peope just keep ignoring over and over again.
We have come to a point where environmental facts are no longer questioned. Even all big Oil producers have began to admit our world is running dry on oil!
Although I wish we would have ran out a long time ago, I’m worried about the furure of us, Homo Petroliensis…
10 liters of oil is about the same energy as 1 year of physical labour by 1 man. What do you put in your car every month? about 10 years of physical labour? (I know.. I’m guilty too)
But what is going to compensate for all this when we run out of oil?
Number one oil consumption goes to food! Imagine what happens!
And we no longer doubt it is going to happen … not in two or three hundred years, but the most realistic estimations give us TEN YEARS before our oil supplies have diminished to half of what it is now (let’s not talk about how many more humans there will be on earth at that time).
So, people, be prepared… in ten to twenty years the world for you and me will look a little bit different… you’ll have to be able to survive by being more self-sufficient… growing your own vegetables.. offcourse you’ll have to take the next 10 years of pollution into account when you’re talking about the quality of your vegetables, the air you’ll be breathing, the water you’ll be drinking,… By then there will be war for energy everywhere, their will be nature disasters we can only have nightmares of right now… The netherlands will allready be flood for a part and there will be more and more methane coming out of the frosted soil in Siberia…
In fact we would be extremely lucky if our human race would survive in the next 100 years…
For most of you people all this seems so hard to believe.. it seems all exagerated… well… Here’s your WAKE-UP call… it’s not! And if you open your eyes, read the reports, think logically and stop putting your heads in the ground you would also understand that we have taken our consumption and way of living just one step too far… And I’m part of all this as much as you are.
So, people, let’s start doing something about all this !!!!
For those who really need to have information from official resources, you can always check out this report:
http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_get.php/1084/1268396336/heads_in_the_sand_print.pdf
I’m inviting all of you to be a part of the solution… So please join any Transition Network in your neighbourhood or start your own !
Make the big turn-over happen and start opening your eyes.
Allright, you guys! Are you up for a brand new update on the construcion of the house???
* cheer, cheer and the crowd goes wild *
As I was allready stating in my last message: it was a loooong winter… so don’t expect any miracles…
Before I can start carpenting the wooden skeleton, I had to make a central support for the roof. At first my architect wasn’t really fond of the central support as he wanted to keep the main area open… But I convinced him it would have some advantages:
- A central support makes building the skeleton allot easier. It also allows reparations to go easier and faster (for instance when a tree falls on the roof and breaks some beams).
- I integrated the chimney inside the central support, so my fireplace will be in the center of the house, which is not only pleasant when you are sitting around it with friends, but is also better for the heat-distribution (certainly because I will use a stove working on radiation heat)
- A massive concrete beam is not only a durable solution, it also contributes to the thermal mass of the building. Especially because it will receive heat from the massive stamped earthen floor in front of it.
- And finally the central support can be considered as an “archetypic” (does this word exist in english?) element in the house: When you take a look at big Mongolian yurts, old indian settlements or some african huts who were supported by a main vertical beam. And in most of those traditional ‘houses’ the fireplace is at the center of the place. I’m also planing to make this chimney-support a real piece of art! Sculptures all around… I’m really looking forward to that!
Some pictures and explanations:
As you can see there are some rebars sticking out of the concrete box. These rebars are necessary because the chimney will have to carry a huge load of the green roof. And it will ave to resist windloads on the roof. The rebars were connected every 30 -to 40 cm with a horizontal “ring” to avoid them bending outward.
To keep the rebars at the right distance and position I made a wooden mould and pulled the rebars into place using a rope. Oohyeah! Everytime I needed to add a new rebar to lengthen an existing one, I overlapped them by 40cm’s.
As you can see on this picture I created an opening on this side of the chimney. This opening will be running up to about 1m80.. this is the exact height of the stove I’ll be using. Inside the opening I’ll put water hoses that will be jamed between the chimney and the stove and will (hopefully) heat up water in winter. If it isn’t clear now, it will get clear later on…
You can also see how I used double insulated INOX tubes for the smoke-canal … The piece which is included here, is a T-piece. Normally it’s not used this way… but you guys know I don’t like “normal”, hehe, so I turned it 90 degrees. Why? Well normally the T-piece is used laying down… one tube going up to the chimney, one tube connected to the stove and one tube going down for the removal of ashes. In my case it didn’t seem wise to remove the ashes from underneath the chimney, this is why I have a tube going up to the chimney, another one going to the stove and the one that’s normally facing down, I directed it horizontally… This way I can clean the chimney on the other side of the chimney in stead of underneath it. It also allows me to place a stove on the other side of the chimney if I would like to… more possibilities!
I used PVC-tubes to make a circular mould around the INOX pipes… I was planing to pull them out afterwards, but they seemed to be totally stucked in the concrete…
To make the chimney I couldn’t make a mould all the way up and poor it right away… when concrete falls from a height of more than 70cm’s it starts to de-mingle (again: is this a word in english?? well. you get the point 
)
So everytime I got 60cm high, I let it dry for some days and put up the new mould on top of it, overlapping about 10cm to the existing concrete block.
When an INOX smoke-canal gets warm it expands … this is why you need to use a double insulated pipe. Their are two main drawbacks when using double insulated tubes:
1. They are sooooo expensive!
2. When you pour concrete around the pipe and something goes wrong in due time, you won’t be able to replace it and you are stuck with a broken chimney.
So what did I do about it? I put up a single insulated pipe all the way up to the roof. And I insulated it myself. To do this I had to put a PVC tube around the INOX pipe and pour around it. When the concrete was half-dry, I pulled out the PVC tube, creating a concrete canal which I filled up with insulation material. I could leave the PVC-tube inside the chimney and use a new one for every pour, but that would just be a waste of materials.. Pulling out the tube wasn’t easy… It was impossible by man-power… even not with two men… so I had to be creative. I drilled two holes through the top of the PVC-pipe and put a rope through it, making a loop. I put a horizontal beam throught the loop and let it rest on my ladder (as you can see on the picture above). Putting all of my weight on the other side of the beam, the tube slowly started to rise out of the concrete block.
At this stage it was prutty easy, but it became REALLY difficult going up… I found myself hanging a few meters above ground on the horizontal beam to get the tube out. Most of the time this happened when it was allready dark and sometimes even when it was storming… but it sure was fun! 
This is Troy and me getting ready to put up the next mould!
The most difficult mould to make and get up there!
I want to thank Troy and Bert for doing a great job on the mould and helping me to put it up there!
TROY, WOLF, FREEBIRD !!!
And the result:
** To view an overview of all building steps up-till now you can go here: House
Hi all !!!
As the sun is comming back into our daily existance, I also woke up from a loooooong hibernation!
Our winter has been very long and cold. I haven’t been able to do allot on the Hamadryad project. Since a few weeks however Belgium started to melt and I got back on track!
I also re-found the spirit of blogging, so get ready for the first real updates on the evolution of the Hamadryad project! I have kept a video-archive of the past few months and I’ll put them online soon!
A Canadian man, named Troy, came all the way from germany to help me out with the construction. He was the launch of the new building season at Hamadryad! With his enthousiasm he reached another friend of mine, Bert, who is also regulary helping me out in the forest now. Troy sadly had to return after a week because of personal reasons. He allready send me a mail he’ll return to soon to come and be a part of the Hamadryad project !!
Thank you, guys! This is what’s it all about!
I want to start this first blog of the (construction-) year with a message from Jeremy Rifkin, who not only indicates the urgen to a new way of living, but also reaches us a possible solution to prevent the destruction of the world as we know it (beginning in about 20 to 40 years)!
Keep your eyes on this blog, because the next couple of weeks I’ll try to put on some updates!
Greetings!