The Wellhouse

I started building a new wellhouse around the existing one back in August.  I dug an 18" deep trench and filled it with rubble and rock, then laid down a stem wall of broken concrete chunks, often referred to as urbanite.  Then I ran a couple of courses of rock filled bags, and the rest of the bags have a good sand/clay soil mixture.  I'm about halfway there.

Two weeks ago I laid on the first layer of cob plaster over half of the bags on the south side, mostly to protect them from UV.  In working with earthbag building before on our laundry room, I had the unfortunate experience of haveing several of the bottom layer bags disentegrate, spilling their guts everywhere.  Not good.  It takes suprisingly little time for these bags to disentegrate in summer sun.

Once I get the walls to roof height, I plan to tear down the existing wooden wellhouse and then roof the new earthbag wellhouse.  The new wellhouse will be about 15' in diameter and only just tall enough to allow a stock door to be framed in.  Eventually I will brew and ferment in this building.