My Fathers House

The 50th Anniversary

by Dave DeLaurant

Text and images 2009 David J. DeLaurant All rights reserved.

The DeLaurants moved west from Nebraska in 1947, in search of a milder climate to aid moms recovery from tuberculosis. For the exodus, dad built a 20 aluminum house trailer, the modern equivalent of a covered wagon. Mom, dad and Kermit lived inside this hot, crowded can for their first three years in Fresno, California.

Housing was scarce in the years following WWII. Affordable housing meant small and uncomfortable. The DeLaurants moved from their trailer into this tiny rental house, where dad began planning a real home.

Laurice DeLaurant had some definite ideas about his familys future home. First and most important, the materials chosen had to be cheap. Clich or not, dirt was the cheapest substance available.

The pamphlet reproduced above was kept with some of dad's early construction sketches. He may already have heard about soil cement, but I'm pretty sure that the design of his house came information he found right here. He once mentioned that he had originally considered compressing (ramming) this material into forms, but experimentation showed that it had sufficient strength when poured (puddled) and allowed to set like concrete.

After locating and purchasing a suitable lot for $500, a detailed layout was worked up. Wall thickness conforms to the soil-cement pamphlet, which recommends 12" thickness for 8' height. As his drawing shows, the longest running walls are buttressed with intersecting walls to stay within the recommended 30:1 ratio of length to thickness. Note the chimney and extra kitchen window in the early elevation at left.

There wasnt much room in the construction budget for machinery. Dad cobbled together the mixer shown below using a circa-1900 gas engine, which was later restored and put on exhibit at a local automotive machine shop.

The formula for dads mud was approximately nine parts clean soil to one part Portland Cement. Kermit says dad also added a coffee can of quicklime to the mix. The soil had to be free of leaves and roots, which meant he had to dig deep.

Thick walls require a lot of dirt, which eventually resulted in a big hole in the ground. Making a virtue of necessity, dad straightened and plastered the walls, put a roof over it and made it into a storage cellar.

Every building needs a solid foundation. The footing for the load-bearing walls was made of conventional reinforced concrete for maximum strength. The concrete slab floor was poured after the walls went up. This view nicely illustrates the layout of the load-bearing walls

The soil-cement walls were raised in multiple courses approximately 6" high. The single set of forms was reused for each course.

Dad used hundreds of US Army surplus tent stakes to brace his forms. As you can see at left, the soil-cement courses were reinforced with fence wire, salvaged brake-rods -- whatever structural steel dad could come by cheaply.

As the courses of soil-cement rose, dad placed short lengths of iron pipe in the mud; these formed tubular voids that served as conduit for electrical wiring.

Mom demonstrates how the mud was worked into the forms. The work of lifting wet dirt was much too strenuous for mom or pre-teen Kermit, but both contributed to the project however they could. Mom got a job with a major hardware store, which allowed dad to purchase materials at a discount. When money was especially tight, mom and dad sometimes borrowed from Kermits newspaper route earnings.

As the walls rose, the openings for windows were roughly framed.

The walls kept gradually rising, 6 at a time. Keep in mind that each wet layer was poured into place using ramps and an old wheel-barrow dads strength and stamina at that time was damn near heroic! And he was doing this on evenings and weekends while working full-time at a local rug mill!

The walls were finally completed in 1952. Windows and doorways had a reinforced concrete lintels, and the last course was a 'bond-beam' of conventional reinforced concrete. Dad finished framing and sheathing the roof just as Eisenhower was elected for his first term. Years later he found the beer can that he toasted our new president with in the attic. Next came the composite shingle roof and the exterior plaster and paint.

Making things secure and weather-tight was vital since occupation was many months in the future. This view shows the sheathing before painting, and boarded openings. Note that the electricty is already installed. The interior of the house served as an enclosed shop where dad could both work and safely store things between jobs.

The twelve-pane living room window disguises the fact that, except for the bathroom window, every glass pane in the house is the same size.

As with the interior floors, the front porch slab was poured long after the walls went up.

Here dad stands beside the two exterior doors. The back door was purchased unframed, while the front was made by dad using leftover pine sheathing and plywood. The large windows in both doors were necessary for to provide additional indoor light.

Dad adapted the ancient Roman hypocaust concept by using a system of iron pipe embedded in the floor slab to serve as both concrete reinforcement and as a means to circulate hot water to heat the house. A second water heater was used exclusively for this purpose.

The big day came in November, 1954 when the DeLaurants finally moved into their new home. Some of the interior rooms would not be finished for many more months, but our family had written its last rent check. And since construction was stretched over such a long period, mom and dad were able to pay for things as they went along not only were they now rent-free, but also debt-free!

Dad never stopped making improvements and, in some cases experiments. Case in point: in the 1980s he had a brief fling with the idea of backyard hydroponic gardening. He put together this greenhouse from salvaged materials and set up surplus drums as a gravity irrigation system. Unfortunately there were serious problems with maintaining pH that dampened his enthusiasm, and the greenhouse was left to slowly rot away.

In 2002 mom had a gardening crew remove several dead trees and dads numerous junk piles, including the decaying skeleton of the greenhouse. The workers were surprised to find a rather large opossum living inside. Five steel drums completely filled with used motor oil, which he talked about recycling but never did, required careful and rather expensive disposal.

Another of dads household projects was an improved trash incinerator, constructed from firebrick and a salvaged 50-gallon drum (he loved surplus steel drums!). The design worked so well that dad looked into filing a patent, which was the purpose of these drawings. A friend did some research and discovered that the basic concept was already covered by existing patents. Backyard trash burning came to an end in the mid-1960s, due to air quality problems in the San Joaquin Valley.

In the 1970s, dad pursued the more environmentally-friendly practice of solar water heating. Dads system used a parabolic trough reflector to heat a blackened iron pipe, through which water circulated to a storage tank by convection. The whole system was constructed from salvage for under $25, had no moving parts, and except for occasional resurfacing with aluminum foil, required zero maintenance. It was still in operation as late as 2001.

In 2004 the house that Laurice DeLaurant built stood as solidly as in November 1954. Mom had a new clay tile roof installed in 2003 -- this compliments the Spanish 'mission' look of dads original design. Dad couldnt have fully anticipated every consequence of his design decisions. He built for the long term, but wasnt afraid to make daring choices -- some worked, some resulted in problems later. Since he liked fixing things, such problems may not have been entirely unwelcome. He made a special place for his family, and I will lay odds that it will still be here in 2054 -- which is more than I can say for myself.

Thanks old man!