Ferrocement Garage - page four - Eco-Living Design Services

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Ferrocement Garage - page four

Cultural & Ecological designing

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	Here's the rear quarter view showing several batches each on the rear corners. Lighter areas are early batches, darker areas more recent batches. The darker wavy bands are the overlap areas between batches, smoothed with a sponge once the newer batch starts to set up. The irregular curved overlaps are stronger than straight line overlaps would be.
The outside is almost completely plastered, with only a portion of the front arch remaining. The inside has been partially plastered on both sides. Various temporary wire and rebar braces, some flagged for safety, are still visible. The plastered-in-place embedded door hinges can be seen, as well as the fillets where wall meets footings.
	Fully plastered inside and out. The curved shape of the East wall as it widens out at the rear portion of the structure can be seen in this view, as can the part that rises up and over the lava slope coming down from the right. The wavy bands between plaster batches remind me of the patterns waves make in beach sand as the tide ebbs.
The West wall's slight curves can be seen in this fully plastered view from the front. By this point I had already decided not to try a ferrocement roof and the curved roof rebar pieces have been removed. They did work well to stabilize the armature during plastering while they were still in place.
	The edges of the wall surfaces were too small and sharply rounded to plaster with a trowel. A gloved hand worked well to smear the plaster into the edges of the mesh and lath and around the rebar. Here I'm plastering the top edge of the wall above the rear door. The "Odjob" mixing drum and its lid can be seen in in the distance to the right of my hand.
The same technique, in closeup view, being used to plaster the vertical edge of the front door opening. Before plastering an edge this way I carefully bent and/or trimmed protruding sharp ends of wire or lath to fit the curve of the edge. The lath especially is very sharp at the cut edges and could potentially tear through the gloves as they are used to press the plaster into and around the edge.
	My original ferrocement roof design was for an asymmetrical arch. When I decided to switch to a wood-framed and metal roof I wanted to keep that shape as much as possible. After some pondering I realized that I could do that by using a stringer and curved-batten roof framing method, with the stringers supported by asymmetrical trusses supported by the side walls. Here the stringers are being placed...