GRaND HouSiNG_______

SUMMER SWINGS!

2009-11-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

Grand House as playground:
photos from a fourth-year landscape installation this summer!

snaps by: Andrea Hunniford.

Home/land Security

2009-11-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

Home/land Security Opening Saturday November 21st at 6 pm - beginning at the School of Architecture and ending up at the Grand House for an outdoor film showing!

The Grand House is ecstatic to be participating in the Home/land Security Exhibit curated by Jeff Thomas. The main exhibit is at the UW Render Gallery on the main campus of the University of Waterloo, in co-ordination with Andrew Hunter. The exhibit engages the work of local artists on issues of homeland, public land, private land, land rights and security, and ideas of land ownership; notably engaging a Six Nations perspective.
In support of this work, the Grand House is currently hosting an installation by Jamelie Hassan, and will also be the site of a film screening outdoors on Ainslie Street, on Saturday November 21st. The screening is being held in co-ordination with the exhibit opening and a panel discussion on the work at the School of Architecture. Join us! More details to follow.

Following is a statement by Jamelie Hassan on her installation work.

Crown Land Beware

Prior to my conversations with Jeff Thomas about his Home/land Security project, I had been in an antique market in St. Jacob's and saw a fragment of a wooden fence with black text that read CROWN LAND BEWARE on it. I bought the fragment to consider it in a future work. Later a group of us involved in the Home/land Security exhibition met in Cambridge with Jeff Thomas and Andrew Hunter. Laura Knap was at the meeting and suggested we make a visit to Grand House Student Coop to consider this location as well for potential exhibition site - I was struck by the Grand House site, in particuliar the "ghost" steps. I had been thinking about the use of wooden survey sticks which are white with red tops - I kept coming back to this idea as Jeff talked about surveyors & mapping - public space, private property and land issues. I was thinking of ways to use the survey marker sticks within a stucture somehow on the obsolete steps at the student’s housing co-op. I decided to create a gate-like barrier/screen with wooden sticks which I painted red and white and install this structure at the based of the steps. The structure includes the found CROWN LAND BEWARE fragment and also a half wheel wooden fragment which I found in a flea market in London. This structure was built with the technical assistance of Ron Benner.

Three original found survey marker sticks were installed in the UW Render gallery, situated with a photo from family archives and photographs I took of the The National Museum of Beirut, with a soldier guarding this site. In Lebanon the security barriers - which continue to be in use - are painted red & white. There is an obvious link with security measures.

-- Jamelie Hassan, London Ontario.

Grand House [hearts] North House

2009-09-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

Best of luck to GH Members Chris Black, Andrea Hunniford, and Andrew Haydon; to our fellow UW architecture and engineering folks, our beloved electrician Robin (Red Electric), and the rest of the team as they head to the Washington Mall with their cutting-edge solar-powered house. You guys are doing amazing work!

Our small but sincere corn harvest

2009-09-16T11:28:00.001-07:00

Planted and lovingly tended by our resident Sasketchewanian.

Defining Innovative

2009-09-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Grand House is featured this month to define "innovative" at the University of Waterloo. Check out our article on the UW website !

In other less surprising news, the garden continues to produce many zucchinis.

The Grand House meets Papua Indonesia

2009-07-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

Our t shirt recently made it to the other side of the world on the back of one Dave McKinley, a long-time GH carpenter. Dave recently completed a few weeks of volunteer work in a very rural area of Papua Indonesia! (How much do you wish you were in this photo?)

Gardening Sunday!!

2009-06-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Breakfast to fuel up before the big day.

Susan, John, and Ava survey the scene.

The first task was to move out the sand pile left over from plastering.

Melissa and Giuseppe work on the path. Melissa : "I feel myself returning to my Irish potato farmer roots".

12 cubic yards of topsoil to be ferried about by wheelbarrow and raked out for the garden areas. The rest of the soil area on site will be remediated and improved with plantings.

Terraced beds are built into the hillside, and wheelbarrow loads of topsoil are brought down site to fill them in about 6" deep. Reena, John, Lauren and Kit finish up the morning's work.

Straw is spread above the beds as mulch; the small mounds of earth on the slope are for creepers like squash, cucumbers, and zucchini.

Gravel left over from the rainwater tank installation, and reclaimed p.t. timber steps make a good path. Anna and M'lex finish it up.

John and Chris tackle the weeds beside Roseview Ave.

Andrew and Anna against a late afternoon sky threatening rain.

We put down newspaper and topsoil over the weeds, to ready for Chris's corn plantings (interspersed with zucchini plants). Put it in the history books: Man from Sasketchewan plants his first corn seeds in Cambridge Ontario.

Laura nestles in some pepper and tomato seedlings

Our new snaky path and gardens! We couldn't believe how much we accomplished in the day.

Rainwater tank - backfilling and first collection!

2009-06-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 11: The beginning of another day of major transformation. Before.

Ferrying more gravel down the site...

The overflow pipe in place.

Once sufficiently covered in pea stone, the cistern is completely swaddled.

The inflow pipes are put in place.

It was raining as we hooked up the pipes... which meant the instant gratification of getting water in the cistern right away!
(this inflow setup was obviously temporary).
On the right, you can see the trickle of water coming from the filter overflow.

The gravel over and around the cistern is complete.

.. the final grading, at last. 2" of rigid insulation (4' wide) went in over the length of the inflow pipe - you can just see it peeking out at the far left.

Big thanks to our project sponsors:

Unit Precast for donating their labour (co-ordinating and installating the pump system)

ZCL for donating the massive fibreglass tank!

...

and to our excavators and earthmovers, Alltask Property Improvement.

Rainwater Tank Hookups

2009-06-15T18:56:00.001-07:00

The plumber and electrician met on site with the folks from Unit Precast / RH20 to co-ordinate their systems. On the left (below) is the filter chamber, and on the right is the tank access manhole.

the pump

installing the inflow pipe

looking down into the tank

the tank outflow connection, through which water is sent back to the building

Here is the filter system in place. The white pipes are the overflow . The upper pipe is an overflow at the filter - about 5% of the inflow water drains away immediately, to get rid leaves and any other matter that might find its way along the eavestrough. The lower pipe is an overflow directly out of the tank. (Inflow pipes still to come.)

Big thanks to our project sponsors:

Unit Precast for donating their labour (co-ordinating and installating the system)

ZCL for donating the massive fibreglass tank!

The Patch

2009-06-15T17:51:00.001-07:00

After some back-and-forth, it was decided that it would be most expedient to get the tank fixed by a local marine repair person rather than the Quebec-based manufacturer, ZCL. Our retired professor (and expert boat-builder) Mike Elmitt graciously stopped by to assess the damage and explain the basics of fibreglass work. Then one fine Saturday morning Mark and Bill came in to get the job done.

They built up three layers of glass fibre and resin to level out the break.

... and then topped it off with two layers a large patch over the whole area.

... and we were ready to go again.

The Backfilling .. and the Stall ...

2009-06-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 20th > The slow backfilling process began. Pea gravel was layered in 18" thick around the tank, followed by the filter fabric, then 'a' gravel. Gravel was ferried down site scoop-by-scoop in the excavator's shovel. Native soil was only used to fill in the far corners.

Everything went swimmingly ...

... until right at the end of the day when, after much careful work, the excavator's bucket clipped the fibreglass tank, cracking it.

Luckily, the puncture was not big, and was above the overflow: an area that will never have water directly against it. Not a serious wound, but a stall in the process until we could figure out how best to get it fixed.

Craning in the tank; how the rainwater system works

2009-06-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

The rainwater tank arrives!

. . . divertimento . . .

A brief description of the tank and rainwater collection system:

Tank Construction: Fibreglass
Capacity: 25 000 l.
Dimensions: 19'8" long x 8'6" dia.
Supplier: ZCL Composites (donation)

The system: All of the eavestroughs on the house run to a single point at the north east corner of the building. From here, rainwater drops into an 8" inflow pipe that runs underground toward the tank. The large diameter of the pipe is to prevent it from freezing up in winter. Near the filter, the 8" pipe breaks into two 4" pipes, which feed into the filter.

A submersible pump sits in the tank to move the rainwater into the house. The pump intake draws in water from within the middle of the water volume (not directly from the bottom of the tank). A layer of sediment may collect right in the bottom of the tank, and can be cleaned out periodically.

The rainwater will be used for flushing toilets and for outdoor watering. In the future, we hope to be able to use it for laundry and showers. Regulations don't currently permit these uses.
If the tank level drops too low (although this is unlikely, given its size), a float in the tank tells a solenoid valve in the house to switch over to city water, until the rainwater levels are replenished.

The rainwater collection system is also an important part of our site storm water management strategy. No storm water is sent off-site to city sewers. We have maintained permeable surfaces throughout the site; swales direct rainwater and allow for infiltration. The small amount of overflow from the cistern moves through a shallow swale and percolates into the ground.

. . . now, back to the feature presentation . . .

Unit Precast's craning truck snuck the tank through the canopy and brought it down site as far as it could reach ...

Then, the excavator picked it up and very carefully swung it into place.

...and everyone breathed a sigh of relief to see it settled in!

Big thanks to our project sponsors:

Unit Precast for donating their labour (co-ordinating and installating the system)

ZCL for donating the massive fibreglass tank!

Rainwater Tank Installation + Earthworks, Part 1

2009-05-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

After much hauling of steel and wood to clean up the site, and equal parts planning and figuring, the upper half of the Grand House site began its final(?) major transformation on Monday, May 19th. Just for the record, it's nice to see some "before" shots of the area; the landscape that most people were familiar with. Hey, just for the fun of it, let's go back to the very beginning; that time before time of 2004:

. . . then a view from the top of site circa fall 2008, and a shot from the third floor balcony sometime this past March, followed by the view down site taken the morning of the big dig.

The day was perfect: clear, warm, and dry. Just before 8 am. the machines started arriving. There was a giant excavator pulling up the earth with a 4 foot wide hoe, and a bulldozer pushing it up to the top of site to form the parking area. Before too long, a heavy-duty tamper arrived on the scene to pack the driveway soil in place.

Depth surveys were taken as the hole grew deeper. We were looking to dig the hole to about 16'8" below the level of the second floor deck.

The cistern we were preparing to accommodate is a fibreglass drum 8'6" in diameter, and 19'10" long, and is surrounded on all sides by 18" of pea gravel. Given these dimentions, the hole created was a few feet better than 12 x 23. To add extra adrenaline to the process, we knew we were working with a pretty narrow triangular space between water and sewage lines, and looking to duck under the gas line with the inflow pipe.

.. yes, the kid running that giant machine looks very young but he was incredibly talented and deft. It's pretty awesome to watch folks who can maneuver such a huge piece of equipment so precisely and gently.

... a little work by hand to make a nice, smooth, rock-free base ...

... then grading the slope, and lining the excavation with heavy filter cloth in preparation for the tank! In all, an enormous volume of earth was extracted. Much to our pleasure, the somewhat friable site soil behaved wonderfully: there was almost no caving along this deep, straight-sided excavation.

Next ... the tank arrives!!

~ laura

The REAL shed

2007-05-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

I mean, come see it yourselves this sunday, JUNE 3,
but here's a preview (during construction)....

What a great class.

c

post001

2007-05-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Oh hi, didn't see you there. Welcome to the Grand House 'web-log'. Here we will give frequent updates about the Grand House - how we're doing (okay, I guess), when the meetings are (there's one tonight), et cetera. Got feedback? Leave a comment. Want to say 'wassup'? Leave a comment. Want to buy ten thousand million bales? Leave a comment with your visa number. If you are like WTHeck is the Grand House??? you can check the 'About Us' section in the sidebar, or our website or you can ask us personally via leaving a comment.

__GRaND HouSiNG_________