Roofing the kiva was fairly straight forward. Before I started setting the beams in place, I burned all of the ends, stripped any remaining bark, knocked off any rotten areas, and passed the entire logs through a fire. This was done to reduce future rot, discourage insects, and kill any termites that might be in the logs. There weren't enough logs in the pithouse to supply all I needed, so I obtained about 15 more by pulling up an old fence line at the edge of out property. The bottoms of these juniper posts were badly termite eaten. They also went through burning.

Stripping bark from fresh primary beam with adze. I needed two new beams to span the north-south dimension on top of the cribbing and defining the sides of the roof hatchway. These I purchased from a local sawmill.	Fire curing beams from pithouse and fence line. This process is fairly self explanitory. Just burned the ends and passed the middles through the fire to kill any resident insects.
Fire cured beams from pithouse and fence line.	Primary beams seated on top of pilasters. Note that I built them in. This was to keep them from rolling. Also note that I didn't cut of the ends at an angle with a saw so that they would fit snugly.
Primary beams seated on top of pilasters. this is the first layer of cribbing consisting of the four posts and two primaries from the pithouse.	Secondary beams cribbed on top of primaries.
Upper layer of cribbing. I decided not to continue cribbing upward. For every inch I added at this point, there was another inch in height I would have to add to the enclosing wall on three sides of the kiva.	Shakes spanning bench roof. The individual bench roofs were covered with shakes spanning the bench width from the tops of the upper lining walls to the primary beams. These shakes were set into mortar at both ends.
Bark covering bench roof. Daub was pressed into the cracks between the shakes thwen the whole thing was covered with a layer (about 5 cm thick) of juniper bark. This was in turn covered with dirt, small stones, etc.	The kiva enclosing-wall was built last. Cracks between the cribbed beams were filled with shakes and daub then covered with a layer of dirt, followed by a thick layer of juniper bark, finally covered with another layer of dirt. The last construction was the masonry hatchway lining and the retaining wall.
Finished kiva.	Finished kiva.

Interior Finishing and Use

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