Stone House -
A Guide to Self-Building with Slipforms
"A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words"
Most of us have probably heard that wise old saying and only a full colour picture can make those thousand words really come to life. In order to help the pictures and words in Tomm Stanley's book, Stone House - A Guide to Self-Building with Slipforms come to life, we have assembled more than seventy of the home's construction photos here on this web site, in full colour. Most are photos directly from the book but as an added bonus we’ve also included some that are not seen in its pages. Enjoy your visit!
Do you dream of building your own home? Even if you're not building with stone, Stone House - A Guide to Self-Building with Slipforms is still for you. Alternative building advocates will love the eco-friendly approach that Tomm takes when building as much of the house as possible from locally sourced materials. Topics relevant to all self-builders include:
- Clearing a new site in preparation to build;
- Laying out foundation lines;
- Passive solar principles and how to use them in designing a home;
- Sourcing and using local materials;
- Methods for wood finishing and restoring recycled windows and doors.
If stone is on your agenda, with Stone House - A Guide to Self-Building with Slipforms in hand, you won't need to be an expert stonemason or for that matter, even have much trades experience at all to build your own house with one of the world's most traditional building materials. Stone House - A Guide to Self-Building with Slipforms contains all the information you’ll need to successfully build a stone home for yourself; from clearing the raw building site to topping the stone walls in preparation for roof framing.
Tomm Stanley uses an instructional narrative to lead readers through the process of building with stone and slipforms. This is the first book dedicated to slipform stone masonry in many years and its stone masonry-specific topics include:
- Traditional stonemasonry and slipforming techniques;
- The unique slipforming methods Tomm used in his own home’s construction;
- Basic geology and where to source suitable stone;
- Concrete and plaster making techniques;
- Moulding methods for a range of concrete applications.
There’s even a section on the usage of metric measurement written especially for Americans from the view of an American, now living in a metric country.
Have a sneak peek inside of Stone House with Amazon.com's Inside the Book program.
"Like the marriage of stone and masonry, this book mixes lively narrative with practical how-to information to create something strong and beautiful. Slipform construction combines natural on-site materials with adaptable, innovative methods, and Tomm Stanley takes the state of the art one step further, offering some new techniques based on his own experience in building his home. Stone House will inspire and encourage prospective stone builders all over the world!"
Ben Watson
Senior Editor, Chelsea Green Publishing
"With so little information in print on building rubble wall houses with the slip-form method, Stone House is essential reading for anyone contemplating using this kind of construction. If your interest in the topic is confined to the armchair, Tomm's account of how he and his partner built an improbable but not impossible house is still engrossing reading."
Australia's 'House and Home' magazine
Issue 72, March 2004
"As the house takes shape, so does the readers impression of the author. Tomm is not reluctant to talk about some of the difficulties, frustrations and disappointments along the way, which are exactly the sorts of things that anyone contemplating a similar project needs to know. Even if you don't immediately plan to start building this is the perfect book to put in the 'when I get around to it' section of your bookcase, or better still, in pride of place on the coffee table to tempt all comers to set out on a personal construction quest of their own."
'New Zealand Growing Today' magazine
January 2004
About the Author
Tomm Stanley was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, raised in Orlando, Florida and since 1991 has been working overseas in places as diverse as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Antarctica. Now a corporate trainer and management consultant, Tomm’s building trades experience began as a youngster at the side of his father, a professional insulator in his younger years, on home maintenance projects. Tomm later worked as a home and commercial buildings maintenance contractor and was a materials supervisor with the U.S. Antarctic Program at both McMurdo and South Pole Stations. Tomm now resides in the hilly region of Banks Peninsula, near Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand. He lives in his self-built, solar and wind powered, off-grid stone home.
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