How to Build a Village House in Armenia

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Just some general comments and pictures about how village houses are built around Yerevan, Armenia.

The basic ingredients for foundation, walls, and floors are concrete and tufa (a calcium carbonate deposit). Fortunately for Armenia tufa is common, cheap, and comes in many colors, giving their towns and villages a much greater range in color and variety than other soviet style buildings in other parts of the world.

The foundation is laid as a perimeter about 2 feet wide. The outside and the inside of the foundation are laid with some sort of course broken rock with at least one flat face. These are mortared together and the interior between is filled with concrete as the walls go up. They usually build the foundation up about 2-4 feet above the ground and then fill the interior of the foundation with gravely soil....often it looks like more soil than gravel.

Above the foundation, nice rectangular faces of tufa stone are laid...it often looks like it is a single course of maybe 12-16 inch stones. Since the edges are often dinged up the mortar lines are heavy and no attempt is made to make the mortar lines pretty. Some of the interior walls appear to be made of narrow cinderblock type material.

The cement ceiling pour is formed with a set of poles, holding up boards above which is cardboard. Cement with stone is then poured along with rebar. The rafters are made of reused lumber often scabbed and sistered together with pole supports about half way along their lengths. Rafters are set about 3-4 feet apart. A set of widely spaced narrow board purlins are set on the rafters. Crimped metal roofing is then nailed to the purlins. Most roofs appear to have a bottom layer of formed sheet metal used to divert water to some sort of spout at a corner. Broken pumice is added to the ceiling as insulation and more mass to keep the house cool in summer and warm in winter.

Doors and maybe windows appear to be set in metal frames and are made of wood.

The gravel in the house is then wetted down prior to putting in a concrete floor. No tamping appears to be done. A water level is used to set the height and old pipe 1 inch or so pipe is set into small piles of concrete so the top of the pipe forms a level line for the floor. Pipe are set in parallel lines spaced about 2 feet apart across an entire room. Concrete (4 parts fine sand:1 part cement ...no stone) is poured between the pipes and a square piece of channel iron is used to screed the concrete flat. After the concrete is set but still green the pipe is removed and concrete is used to fill the resulting spaces.

After wards it looks like the wiring is recessed into the walls and some sort of cement stucco is used to get the walls nice and smooth and flat. They are then painted as is the floor. The exterior of the house is almost never stuccoed or painted. If you do see a stuccoed village house it often appears to have been an old one built of mud brick or odd stones.

Bathrooms all have a shower and a central drain in the center of the floor. No tubs.

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Photos

Foundation Wall
Note that one side is being mortared in place but the other remains to be done

Pile of Tufa Stone
Dumped and ready to be made into a wall

Ceiling and Tufa Walls
Note cardboard still stuck in place.

Attic Roof Supports
You can see some of the pumice going in at the back.

Leveled Pipe for Floor
The rest of the pipe has not been laid but you can see where it will go.

Comments

[Ann]

what a lot of cement
Wow - looks like these houses are made to last -- Ann

[Ann]

alternative building techniques
Did you have any discussions about straw bale? -- Ann

[Kappy]

armenian house building guide
..enjoyed Gale's email alot! thanks..and happy birthday Izzy!..this building entry must be from Sam?...cool to see the Armenian process...laying of the pipes makes lots of sense to me.....today is the 7th day of 90's..finally storms tonight should cool things off!