Hi and welcome back. In case
you're here for the first time, we are right in the middle of
building our new family home. In the last videos we saw the completion of the
frame construction and took a look around inside. This time we'll be putting in a garage that
will double as a base for our upstairs patio, that will connect with the
living room-kitchen area. First, let's talk about wood. After the framing was done I noticed that a lot
of the wooden posts had been intentionally split, with a deep cut running right up the
full length on one side, so I asked our carpenter about it.
He told me that due to
extremes of temperature and humidity in Japan, thicker posts are often intentionally split to prevent the natural cracking that occurs when the core of the wood expands and contracts
at a different rate from the outer surface. These cracks can in some cases compromise
the strength of the wood but most of the time they just damage the aesthetic. So to prevent this, it's common here to pre-split prominent wooden posts on the back side, leaving
the side facing the interior of the room intact. The wood can expand and contract over and over
again, but the front side stays looking nice. This process is called "sewari" in Japanese,
which literally means "back splitting". This is apparently done in other places as well,
but I'm pretty sure it's more common here. Congratulations on those commenters
who guessed or knew the answer.
And while we're on the topic, let's talk a little
more about the wood we're using for this project. These support columns are all
"hinoki", Japanese cypress. This wood is extremely durable, and since
it's considered sacred by many people here it's been used in the construction of shrines
and temples for more than a thousand years. It also looks and smells great, which is why we'll
be using it for our upstairs flooring as well. One place hinoki isn't used is for horizontal
beams, mostly because it's really heavy. For these awesome chunky beams up here,
we went with American pine. Strong but lightweight, and I really like the
way it looks up there. Oh yeah, our carpenter Oh yeah, our carpenter was just telling me that due to the pandemic-era home construction boom in the U.S.
And also China, this kind of wood is almost impossible to get now
in Japan. Our timing on this project was perfect. Well, flooring and support beams aside,
the most common wood you see here is cedar. Lightweight and easy to work with, soft but still
quite durable. Inexpensive, and definitely the eco-friendly choice since it all comes from one
of our local mountains here in central Japan. Cedar does have a few drawbacks as well. It's not
as strong or durable as a harder wood like hinoki, and since it's quite soft it also scratches easily.
It also tends to have a darker, reddish or yellowish color, which isn't really what we want for the dominant look of our home interior. Still, local and low cost is always good. So although it won't stand out much once the construction is finished, there will be a lot of cedar in our house. Well, I'm on my way to work now, but today
actually is the day they're gonna put the garage up, so this is the last time we're gonna see this
particular view. I wanted to be here to see it but uh, yeah, yesterday I took the day off actually,
for that, but we had heavy rain and it was postponed till today. And today I can't take
the day off. I have elementary school classes to teach. So I'll check up on the progress when I
get back from work today. All right, "ittekimasu"! Well luckily for me my mother and father-in-law's
house, where we're also currently residing, is just across the rice field and they were kind
enough to take video for me while I was at work.
It's a bit hard to tell from this
distance but the frame of the garage, like the rest of the house, was all
built using the traditional Japanese jointed construction style, so they're not using any fasteners such as nails or screws. Can you see that? Once they get the
beam in place they're using a mallet to hammer it down securely into its joint. Okay, let's move in for a closer look. Well, construction seems to
have wrapped up for the day. And I am really excited to go
and check out my new garage. Although this garage patio was built after the
rest of the house, it's actually a central part of the plan. Basically we started off the whole process with the design for our living-dining room patio space, and then kind of worked out the rest of the plan afterwards. Right now I'm imagining family barbecues,
chilling up here in a hammock with a good book, and of course sipping some tasty locally
brewed craft beer on a hot summer evening.
Only a few months to go. So do you know what this green stuff is? You probably guessed, it's insulation. And as you can see, it goes around the whole outside of the floor of our house. But the middle of the house, you
will notice there is no insulation. So my question is, why? Why have we only placed insulation around the outer perimeter of the house and left the concrete in the center exposed? If you have a guess, write it in the comment section and I'll
let you know the reason in the next video. A hint for anyone who's seen the
previous videos in this series. It relates to our solution to one of the
design priorities I listed back in part two. So what's next? Well, a lot actually. I admit I've been a little slow getting these videos up, and as a result we are a couple of months behind
the actual construction progress.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to compress time a little in the
next video to catch up. How does "plumbing, wiring, insulation, windows, and flooring" sound? That's right, things are really moving along… Not without the occasional hitch, of course..