Stone House

A Guide to Self-Building with Slipforms

Tomm Stanley

“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

You won’t need to be an expert stonemason or even have much construction experience to build your own house with one of the world’s most traditional building materials--stone. 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 building site to topping the stone walls in preparation for roof framing.

While providing a wealth of information on a range of relevant subjects, 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. Topics include:

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.

Photography in the book is supported by an on-line series of full color photo galleries: www.heartbeatnursery.co.nz/stonehouse/

About the author

Tomm Stanley was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since 1991 he has been working overseas and is now a corporate trainer and management consultant. Tomm has 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. He now resides near Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand with his partner, Sabrina. They live in their self-built, solar- and wind-powered, off-the-grid stone home.