"Mini-interview" With Stephenson Castle Owner

Not really an exhaustive amount of information, but certainly good info nonetheless.  You can gather the rest of the info from his blog at Stephenson Castle, and what we have at SYWBCE here.

EDIT:  He's also shared one of the latest construction pics.  Looks to be moving along very quickly for a one-man job.

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.