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Do It Yourself Folly Tower

John Bryant from Australia first contacted me around the Winter of 2006. He had recently visited the great gardens of France and England with his wife and had fallen in love with English follies, towers, eye catchers and garden buildings. Having spent his career in a white collar role, and knowing next to nothing about rogue architecture or building, he decided to follow in the footsteps of the great folly builders of the 18th century and create his own. He drew up plans for a new folly tower to be built -by himself- on his own land and no doubt within sight of his residence. What follows is John's remarkable story in his own words..

BACKGROUND:

"My wife Annette works part time at Mt Tomah Botanic Garden, a "cool climate" garden about 100km west of Sydney. We live on a beautiful 25 acre property in the Blue Mountains World Heritage National Park where Annette has developed extensive gardens of her own. Our property is at about 700 meters elevation, so we can grow Northern Hemisphere shrubs and trees.

To say that Annette is a garden "nut" is a gross understatement, and in 2003
she dragged me off to France and the UK to look at "the gardens".

Initially I wasn't interested at all, but when I got to England I fell in
love with the ancient architecture as I wandered around the abbeys,
cathedrals, castles, eye-catchers and follies.

When we got back home I thought it would be great to have a Folly in our own garden, so after Googling around I finally found Headley & Meulenkamp's
"Follies, Grottoes & Garden Buildings" book; I became obsessed!

As a career "white collar man" I had never built anything in my life before,
so I decided my Folly would have to be fairly straightforward. I didn't
want to just throw money at tradesmen; but rather I wanted to do 100% of the work myself.

So I put pen to paper and devised a structure that mimicked the typical
"English Folly", and in February 2004 I had a draughts man draw up my plans
and lodged a Building Application with my local Council. The Town Planner
looked at the plans and said "Gees mate, I've been in this game for 40
years, and I've NEVER seen one of these before".

The Council did not want to approve the Folly, because it offended their
regulatory nine metre height limit, which I argued was for rural sheds and
the like, NOT for attractive "garden features".

After many arguments, debates, site visits and compromises, I finally got a
Building approval nine months later.

The rest is history, as per the photographic record.

First step was to select a site and excavate a level area for the
foundations.

The Engineer specified eight pier holes, each 400mm in diameter and 2 metres
deep (to be filled with concrete). These foundations would act as a keel
does on a yacht, and provide stability when high wind loadings buffer the
Folly walls.

After the pier holes were completed, I had to dig the circular footings by
hand. The slab would be 500mm deep, with reinforcing steel everywhere
(including down the pier holes)

At one stage I got the Flu, but carried my shovel to bed so that I wouldn't
lose sight of my goal!!!!

Next to the folly site, electricians Trevor and Peter Peterson installed a temporary power supply. Trevor was the brains behind the installation of the spotlights, - as shown in the photographs at the foot of this page.

I then welded up a steel "cartwheel" that would be dropped into the
excavated foundation hole. This "cartwheel" had eleven steel tie down rods
standing vertically, in the exact positions they would need to be in order
to rise up in the middle of the walls.

After placing a damp proof plastic sheet over the excavation, with steel in
place, I was ready for the concrete.

The concrete truck couldn't get to the Folly site as the land was too steep,
so I had to hire a concrete pump to push the concrete about 60 metres down a slope to the excavation.

I talked a couple of mates into helping me on the concrete pour, to make
sure we got it into position and level before it went off.

Just after we finished the job, it poured with rain. But we had it finished
just in time. (Note the steel tie down points sticking up out of the slab)

I laid my first block on 1st January 2007. I decided to build my Folly out
a block invented in Australia called "Timbercrete". It is made
predominantly from waste sawdust, cement and sand and looks like sandstone,
but it has EIGHT Times the thermal performance of a traditional double brick
wall (see http://www.timbercrete.com.au).

I welded 3 metre lengths of steel tie down rods to the small tips that were
poking out of the slab. To get the diameter of the walls constant and in a
perfect circle, I rigged up a steel pole with an aluminium arm swinging off
it. All blocks were laid at the end of the arm, which was the exact radius
of the Folly.

Timbercrete can be nailed and screwed like timber, so I Tek screwed a
length of "hoop iron" on every second course to add structural strength.
Also included inside the walls was a (green) copper lightning conducting
cable, which would eventually be connected to the lightning rod on the peak
of the roof.

Special "power point" boxes were incorporated, and the wires brought out of
the walls as required.

I made up a timber template to construct the archway over the main door.

The door turned out pretty well...

When I reached the top of the first level, I installed Stringybark (eucalypt
hardwood) beams to form the bearers for the first floor.

As the structure grew, I laid the electrical wiring inside the walls, and
also embedded one end of the stair treads in the walls.

I kept inserting stairs in the walls as building progressed:

An electric winch (covered by canvas due to rain) was used to haul blocks
and mortar up to the working level.

There were three large windows planned for the top floor, and a steel lintel
and posts were needed. A local fabricator made these up to my sketches.

Finally the walls were completed, with the steel lintels and posts
installed.

September 2007. The fabrication of the "cone" shaped roof was a challenge. The starting point was a number of steel "hoops" that were bent from 50x6mm flat bar. A number of these "hoops" of varying diameters formed the framework for the roof.

Galvanised steel sheet (1.5mm) was cut and welded to the "hoops" to form
five sections, which once bolted together would form the roof.

The five sections were assembled using a crane.

The exterior of the steel roof was covered with fibreglass shingles. These
are normally applied with nails onto timber sub straights, but with the
steel Folly roof I had to drill and pop rivet the shingles. I devised a
platform that hung off the front of my tractor to provide an elevated work
surface.

Once the shingles were on, the crane was called back to pop the roof onto
the top of the walls.

There was apprehension as to whether the base of the roof would match the
top of the walls..

Earlier on we had a couple of false starts due to the ground being too soggy to allow truck and crane access, but a week of fine weather saw the ground firm up enough to give it a go.

I felt like a woman giving birth (with contractions coming every couple of minutes)!

Would the roof fit? Had I made a mistake with any of my measurements?? Were the blocks flat and positioned in a perfect circle? Were the twelve protruding tie down rods in the exact positions?

As the crane swung the cone up onto the top of the walls, we experienced one glitch, where the top of one of the tie down rods prevented the roof from seating squarely. A few minutes with an angle grinder saw the problem rectified, and the roof finally settled down perfectly.

One year and one day after laying the first block, the Tower yesterday reached “lock up” with the installation of the roof cone!

After unhitching the chains, we then lifted the small top cap (with copper lightning conductor) onto the top of the cone, and the job was done.

Hats off to Bill “Hillbilly” Johnson who got his truck and crane into a very difficult position on sloping, semi-soggy ground, and also to Lance Bennett who did an absolutely fantastic job fabricating the steel cone to within a few millimeters of “perfect”.

The three panoramic windows on the top floor were fitted with 6mm curved,
toughened, smoked glass that had been ordered from New Zealand. A cherry
picker was hired to lift the glass into place and secure it. Amazingly, it
all fitted almost exactly. (The old adage "measure twice cut once" was
proven in this exercise!)

The exterior is now completed, with only interior fit out (stairs, floors,
etc) and landscaping still to go.

The Electricians came back and completed the internal wiring of lights and
power points, and while they were at it I had them install spot lights
around the exterior to highlight the structure at night.

I have called my structure "The Perfick Folly", named after our property
which is also called "Perfick". The word "perfick" is taken from the
English TV show "The Darling Buds of May", where "father" sits in the spring
sunshine, glass of red wine in hand, with family gathered around him, and
declares life is "perfick"!

As I sit on the top floor of my Folly, glass of red wine in hand, pondering
"the meaning of life", I too can declare that the good Lord has made all
things "perfick"!

I think you will agree this is an outstanding folly building achievement indeed. John tells me he would be happy to give advice to anyone who wishes to go ahead and build their own folly, he can be contacted by dropping him a line. I have watermarked his contact details into the larger photograph of his tower via the link below due to the spam mail spider robots that crawl the internet.

Visiting:-

Built on John's own private land, I would imagine visiting his tower would require his very special permission!

 

 

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