Let the fires begin!

Fireplace here?

Friday we had a fireplace foundation and a blank space in the northeast corner of our living room. Today we have a fireplace.  Over the weekend Joe Tibbets of  Southwest Solar Adobe held a Rumford Fireplace Workshop and our adobe home was the host site. This was a hands-on, working class.  Our fireplace was the class project and everyone worked really hard.

Deborah gives a hand.

The class consisted of masonry contractors, builders, adobe professionals, and owner/builders. It was great to see how the women were so eager to jump in with their trowels, get their hands dirty, and lay bricks.  As the fire box began to grow and was capped by the unique throat sculpture, the class  left our signatures on it for posterity.  But three professionals from Soledad Canyon Earth Builders, guided by our instructor Jim Buckley , were at the heart of the creative design and construction effort.  They built the arch forms, pieced together the brick trim (fashioned after a similar fireplace spotted by Sassy in Santa Fe), and dressed up the masonry.  Thank you Jim Buckley and Soledad Canyon!!!  

Artists at work.

Signed throat.

The unique thing about the Rumford Fireplace (named after Count Rumford who wrote about them in the 18th Century) is that they are tall and shallow (ours is only 12" deep), and engineered with a sophisticated streamlined throat to eliminate unwanted turbulence and exhaust smoke without loss of heat.  No grate is used in a Rumford, the fire is built in teepee fashion against the back wall of the firebox.  The fire burns hot and clean, minimizing the buildup of creosol in the chimney.  Ultimately, stucco will encase the body of the fireplace, leaving the brick arch outline the firebox.  A matching brick ledge above will give us a place to hang Christmas stockings.  So, fun was had by all and we have a beautiful, super efficient fireplace to warm our living room during those cold winter nights in our Land of Enchantment.

JR, Himself, Antonio & Raul

Jim on top of things.

Our new Rumford!

The Walls - Day 4 & 5

Once the Tierra Laja crew get rolling the walls grow quickly. Doug, the owner of Dunn Rite Electric, is working right along with them, gouging out the wiring runs and chopping out space for the outlet and switch boxes as the walls go up.  With the fireplace workshop coming up they want to get as much done as possible so the walls would be ready to lock into fireplace that will be build.  Here they continue to lay adobe even as a storm approaches.  You can see the tent ready for the workshop over the weekend.

The Walls - Day 3

More adobes in the mud today.  We had to hold progress to the 5th coarse so the electrician could run the wires through the walls to the outlets for the exterior walls.  Never-the-less, one gets the definite impression that a home is rising up.

Among all the hubbub, Lorraine is still working her magic on the floors.  Looking east, the utility room, 2nd bathroom, and hall floors are all bricked in.  Here she is working on the two back bedrooms.

The Walls - Day 2

The beautiful adobe walls are starting to show their character. The first coarse is made up of cement stabilized adobes, according to the Santa Fe County Adobe building code, but each coarse thereafter is made of natural adobes, i.e., dirt. Each block is melted to the next with a slather of mud. When dry all of the adobe walls are like one solid slab of earth. If the owner, that's me, had delivered the window and door bucks (4"x10" rough cut timbers) in time we would see them installed as the walls grow. However, the timber is coming in three days so, until then, we will build around their absence.

Poor Lorraine, the floor lady, after enjoying the piece and quiet of our home site all to herself for a week, now must work around the adobe crew of 9. Now only the very early morning hours and late evenings are hers alone.  But she is very thankful the adobe crew put down plastic sheets to protect her beautiful brick floor.  The light colored brick shown is the brick she has crafted this morning, not exposed to the overnight rain.