Constructing with nature🌲🌳

Hi diy lovers,

In the Promised Land, family, friends and volunteers start to come in summer time, giving so much life to the land and helping us around.

As we compost the manure, we decided to create a dry toilet for visitors, separated from ours as we dont always know the habits of the people that come.
Today I will show you the step by step creation of this beautiful space.

Close to the house, remains an old stone foundation which probably functioned as toilet also in the past.
We started to dig around the foundation, giving us mud for the walls.

We mixed the mud with water until we have the desired consistency.

We plastered the foundation with mud and fixed the stones that were falling over the time.

For the walls, we used recycled oak beams from the barn in combination with old bricks that we have from the old chimney of the house.

We start measuring, cut the beams to size and make joints to connect them.

We attached them to the stone foundation with a thick layer of clay.

We continue with the vertical and crossing beams, creating a frame, making our way up to the roof.

In the next months, we are creating an extention of the house in order for us to have shower and dry toilet for winter time, so we took the roof tiles from that space as we have more for the new bathroom project.

We placed small beams horizontal in the roof in order to hold the roof tiles.
We used the roof tiles to measure the distance in between the small beams.

We recycled two old windows and placed them holding with frames.

Once the roof tiles are placed we start with the brick-clay wall, by filling the beams frame.

Before adding mud in the wall we make it wet with water to stick better.
We make also wet the bricks in water and press them into each other with mud in between working our way up.

For the front wall, we use glass bottles reflecting such a beautiful sun light inside.

We have so much fun playing with the mud and connecting with Mother Earth and all her abundance.

For the construction of the whole building we just pay for the small beams in the roof.

We will leave it dry for about one week and make the last fine layer of clay plaster, bring gravel for the floor and create the platform for the dry toilet.