Timberframe Bent-Raising at Wabi Sabi

NOTE: all photos are clickable for a larger view.

Two of the many things I love about Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage are these:

1. When you need help, folks come a'runnin'

2. A variety of building methods, techniques, and philosophies are embraced, encouraged and supported.

Yesterday was a good example. Wabi Sabi, a food cooperative with Thomas, Ziggy, April and Ali as members, hosted a bent-raising for their under-construction kitchen. Joined by work exchangers Jacob and Jonathan, they've been working hard getting ready for the big moment. 

It was an impressive set up.  I apologize in advance for the poor photos - I did the best that I could with my goofy outdated camera (hint to Kurt: I need a new one!) while trying not to be crushed to death under beams that surely weighed a zillion pounds. Additionally, April was shooting video that will soon (I suspect) be posted on Ziggy's blog,  at A Year Of Mud. 

The building is being built with the timberframe method: the method of creating structures using heavy timbers jointed by pegged mortise and tenon joints. So here was the challenge - to get this peg into this hole (one of these on the north and south sides of the building),

and this little piece of rebar into that little hole, on the middle post. 

Which doesn't sound like such a big problem until you realize that these pegs/rebar are supporting these mondo huge beams. Here is a view from the other side.

In the photo above you can see how they have rigged up a pulley. Attached to this crossbeam are the three posts which are being lifted into place. We hope.

Here (above) the crew of volunteers gets instructions from Thomas. He's the one on the right in the dashing bonnet. In the background you can catch a glimpse of Wabi Sabi's temporary kitchen, complete with "clerestory" windows.

Katie, Jordan, Claire, Jacob, Maikwe, Jenny, Marqis, Kate

About this time Thomas yelled "PULL!" and so they did. At the same time the other half of the crew, below, supported the beam with notched 2x4s.

Snack, Tim (boots only are visible!), Craig, Dan, Travis, Ziggy

This is when Ziggy called to the rope pullers "oh! Watch out for the sweet potatoes." OK, Zig. No problem. You can see that Jacob and Jonathan ran around the garden patch to pull while not stomping on dinner. Good job!

Meanwhile, Pug supervised. He did an exemplary job.

While the crew with the 2x4s supports the beam (the rope has been tied off at this point) Ziggy and Thomas check to see how close (or how far) the pegs are from the holes.

The pegs are close! First they adjust the one on the right (south), then move to the middle. This takes a lot of crowbar action and careful support from the 2x4s. Jacob get ready to grab the "persuader." Talk about perfect names for things. The Persuader must weigh at least 20 lbs, and is bigger than Rhode Island.

I realize that this looks like a photo of Ziggy's lovely behind, but it is REALLY a shot of all of the careful aligning being done. Jacob is persuading, Thomas is working the crowbar, BETsey and Marqis are supporting with a 2x4 (as are Snack, Tim, Kurt, DAn...). An impressive group effort!

The pegs pop into place. Kurt and Thomas screw in supports. 

And we're done! Which is when the playing begins. Below, Kate demonstrates the power of persuasion on Tim.

Thanks for reading. More soon! 

Love,

Alline

The Wind Turbine Goes Up! And Then, Comes Down...

This is the tower arriving way back in February 2010. It was very cold that day.

Here's Kurt unloading the tower. He has a good time no matter what he's doing. I like that in a guy.

On July 13, 2011, after a two years of planning (we tend to multi-task so stuff takes a while - see photos, above), we finally raised our wind turbine. It was an amazing, exciting, eagerly awaited event – those in the community who weren’t helping were watching, which was easy to do, as it went on for several days.

We purchased a 100’ tower, which in its previous life was a radio tower at the local hospital. While the tower came with a gin pole (essentially a lever designed to help raise the tower) we still had to figure out how to get the whole thing to work.

Everything at DR is essentially an experiment – when it came time to raise the tower the crew found that there wasn’t quite enough cable to raise it. So with the gin pole alllllllllmmmmmost there, a series of cable extensions were added. It was quite a show.

Below are a few picture with details. I realize that is it not a very comprehensive explanation of how to raise a tower, but it's the best I've got.

The 100' tower rests on the ground. The gin pole is that thing sticking straight up in the air. Welded to the tower at a 45-degree angle, it is used as a lever to raise the tower. At the far end, in the DR driveway, the turbine is being installed.

Robby and Tom work on attaching the blades of the 3,000 watt turbine. Tamer and Armand, visiting while making a documentary on communities, film it all.

This sucker is BIG. At least for us. And no matter what they say, size DOES matter.

Lots of folks took turns ratcheting the tower up. No wimpy fuel-powered winches for us, no sir-eee! Here Robby demonstrates his manliness.

Slowly the tower went up and up and up. It was very cool to watch. And then, it stopped.

We had run out of cable.

By now the gin pole was really high, and pretty much out of reach. The Mercantile Tower Brain Trust went to work. How to get someone up high enough to attach more cable? Hmmmm. What if we brought out the tractor and put Tom on the bucket? FANTASTIC idea!

Thomas and Kurt providing ballast while Tom climbs.

Tom, defying death at every turn, perches (happily) on the tractor bucket to add yet another length of cable. The gin pole is to his upper right, and soooooooo close to the ground.

I secretly think that they (Tom, Thomas, Kurt, et. al) LIKE the drama of projects like this - finding ways to make seemingly impossible situations work out just dandy. They were psyched, and having a good time.

The crowd looks on anxiously. L-R Kristen, Claire, Haley, Meghan, Armand.

They scrounged up more cable and attached it. We continued to ratchet up the tower. And we ran out of cable. Again.

So they attached more.

Dave and Thomas connecting the cable extension.

After fiddling around a bit, the tower was up, the blades were turning in the breeze and power was being collected. It felt like a freaking miracle.

It was an incredible high to look up and see those blades turning, generating power (remember, we don't have TV and so tend to be quite easily amused). We designed the Mercantile's power system to run on both solar and wind - in tandem they are a great duo. Where we are located in Northeastern Missouri it is almost always windy when it isn't sunny. Because the system is fairly large (we have 28 batteries to fill) the power grew incrementally - at first we weren't even sure that the system was working. But it was, and slowly the batteries filled up.

And then came a big storm. On July 28th, the wind blew over the top portion of the wind turbine. Normally we would have been devastated, or at least tremendously bummed. But that morning when we woke up we realized that Baloo was dying, and the wind turbine seemed a lot less important. It was a good lesson in priorities. And also a lesson in the need to make sure the tower one uses is strong enough to hold the turbine placed on top.

Don't let this happen to you.

So now, a few weeks later we're making the time to work on the turbine yet again. We ordered more blades (to the tune of $2,090 - eek!) and they're waiting to be installed. I'm not quite sure how the crew plans on taking down and putting up the whole thing again. But they'll think of something, and it will definitely be entertaining. I'll keep you updated!