Stephenson Castle

Another owner-built castle!  I came across Stepehnson Castle being built in Ohio.  It loos like the owner is doing quite a lot of the work themselves, and perhaps is doing the contracting as well.  They've elected to use Azar Block, a CMU product that is similar to Faswall block in the way that it is designed to be dry-stacked and assembled very quickly, but Azar is strictly concrete, not a composite type material.

Anyway, the site for the castle is in blog form, and you can see the castle being built.  It's definitely worth a look.

UPDATE:  I was able to contact the owner, and he was kind enough to share some information about his castle building so far: 

 

As for my castle, the website is about 2 months behind on updates.  But, should be updated in the next 2 weeks.  I am not skilled in any construction at all.  My previous skills include building a pine wood derby car and a bird house in scouts.  So, my project moves slow and I spend a lot of time on the site siting scratching my head.

 

As for the planning, I search typical home blue prints after blue prints until I found one I liked and resembled a castle.  Of course I looked at many different options for building and was leaning to ICF, but was afraid of doing it myself and having a costly blow out of one of the forms.  So the local concrete supply company had some samples of the Azar block and gave them to me.  I was sold when I got home and played with them.  I was shocked at the unit price of $3.25 each.  However, after a year of waiting, and they could not move them, I had over 9000 blocks available to me at $1.25 each.  So, I bought as many as possible, 2 1/2 truck loads. 

 

I have tried to do 99% of the work.  I did contract $600 of work for a trackhoe and licensed septic installed to draw septic plans to be submitted to the county.  I also paid $125 to get the first course of blocks laid level, after my test footing came out un-even.  Ever thing else, I have done my-self with the help of typical construction DIY books. 

 

As for the Azar block, my test building, AKA the water tower I find the product excellent to work with.  They are 42lbs a pice which makes a lay person like myself cringe every time I think of laying more block.  The first six or seven courses went up fast.  The ones higher up slowed us down due to the weight.  I did discover, these CMU shed small chips of stone and concrete which do cause un-even places.  Now, I watch carefully and dust off all new courses as I build up. 

 

I wish I had more skills because I see my dreams and money sometimes vanish when I can't figure out something I want.  Like, I am not sure how much rebar to use.  I have been told by masons and contractors that I am wasting money by using to much, but I joke that my castle is going to be around for thousands of years and well with all the rebar and concrete I am using, its not going any place any time soon. 

 

In the main keep, I might hire more skilled labor to figure things out like ceiling beams and roofs. However in the water tower and carriage house, I am building myself working out all the bugs... hopefully!

Great info!  It good to know that there are folks that are not experienced in construction out there building a castle, and doing it as inexpensively as they can.  Stephenson Castle is going to be high on my watch list, especially as we hope to follow a lot of the same route he does.