The Adobe Floor is complete!

Wow, it was a hot week to be lugging around heavy stuff, but the adobe floor is in, leveled, and drying!  A rough calculation shows that I moved around 8,800 pounds of materials, with a little help!  Actually, we moved it twice: once to add the clay, sand, water and straw to the mortar mixer, and a second time to wheel barrow the completed batches into place.  Enjoy the photos:

The first day's progress: four batches.  What's that in the lower right of the adobe?

Cat Prints!  The curious neighborhood feline that likes to visit my barn evidently wanted to see how solid the new adobe material was.  Answer--not very!  Come back in a couple weeks and  it will feel like concrete.

Day two was slow because of all the plumbing penetrations

Moving along on day three, also showing a few tools of the trade.

On day four, a Wednesday, there is hope that I'll finish on Friday and be able to enjoy my Saturday.

And on day five, it's looking like I'll finish easily  tomorrow.

And the payoff... Finished!

It even looks like the photos in the books!

Adobe Floor Preparations

There are several layers that need to be installed before I can start with the adobe:

Four inches of pea gravel.  The discoloration is due to the gravel being slightly damp from the previous day's rain.  Note the hand tamper: that was a lot more work than I'd anticipated.  If the space had been bigger, I probably would have considered renting a gas-powered tamper.

The next layer up is the 6 mil polyethylene vapor barrier.  However, before I installed that, I pre-fit the first layer of foam (1-inch thick) and cut holes for the pipe penetrations.  This photo shows how I used the foam as a template to know where to cut the vapor barrier for the pipes.

With the poly in place and stapled up the wall, I taped the vapor barrier around the pipes using Zip Tape.  I don't have a picture, but the corners are folded like Christmas wrapping but on the inside.  Since the goal is to make the poly as air-tight as possible, it's better to avoid cutting: hence the corner folds.

This shows the second layer of 2" foam in place at the other group of pipes.  At R-5 per inch, this provides a total of R-15 under the radiant slab.

Practically done:  The joints have been taped, and spray foam has been added around the pipe penetrations.  The last thing to do is glue the side foam panels down and tape the side joints.  It was only a matter of a couple hours until the first load of adobe mix was flopped down and leveled.  More on that next....