Water works

Much of the last few days have been about the rainwater collection system. After going down to the neighbors and dragging something close to 700' of 1 1/4" hdpe pipe off a giant metal spool (that I had to run a chain through the hub and chain to a fence post while Melissa drove the truck and pulled the hose - sparks flying, lots of noise - no pictures though) we started connecting the rain gutters to the tanks.

Here's the pipe going from the south roof to the western tank:

And here's the eastern tank with the hose connected to the northern roof. You can just see it going along horizontally above the ladder:

Here's my screening system for the gutter spouts: 1/4" screen, with two sets of window screen behind it.

Tomorrow, shopping for parts for the 'first flush' compoents.

Some real boring stuff

Melissa took a picture of clay soaking in buckets of water, getting ready to be put into the wall mix. Not very exciting, but informative:



Me working on the mortise of the loft cross beam. Boring, get it?

A bunch of different stuff getting done

We're back in the wood notching business, working on the loft structure. How nice it is to work inside a nice room.

Melissa has been redigging a terrace in the garden, and discovered that a lot of redwood roots are coming up to the good soil... so we decided we needed to put in some barriers, in addition to the gopher wire. Here it is getting started:

I also had a success with the gas generator, where I figured out it was actually putting out too much voltage, so that the well pump wasn't running properly. Feels good to figure stuff out.

Progress is slow, but keeps happening.

These pictures were taken right before we put the 199th and 200th batches on the wall. Here's Melissa checking out the 'cold box' in the kitchen wall:



And here's Jack and Melissa checking out the bathroom mirror that's already buried in:

Ka Yun was here to Work!

Ka Yun came up for a weekend of hard work and fun. We got her making cob right away, and she started pushing us to go faster. She was the first to start the 'cob toss' process, to speed things up even more. If you look close, you can see one in the air here:

She also did some scuplting. This is a shot from outside the 'second' bedroom, through the window. Walls looking pretty good, huh?

We also picked the first apple off the dwarf tree, and had a taste with lunch. makes a nice picture, no?



Since Ka Yun helped build the earth oven back in the day, we always plan on a baking day when she's here... so pizzas all around!

Cleaning the Yurt

yes, seems strange, but we figured it was time to clean off the yurt and add some preserving chemicals. That meant me, on the ladder, scrubbing the thing one day:



And the next day spraying on and rubbing in the "Aerospace Protectant", which is really just fancy-pants 'armor-all' that you can buy by the gallon. Still the yurt does look better, and may just have some better UV protection.

Putting Thor through the Paces

Our friend Thor came up for the weekend, and we made him do all sorts of stuff. He was on hand for the (first) tank moving, which took the tank close to 100 yards down through the woods with no machines, and got it into position on the pad I dug last week.

Actually, we had help from Lauren also (shown in this picture) she came up to help cob, and ended up getting roped into moving the tank.

But, we did actually cob as well, doing some interior walls, and good batch of exterior as well.

The Next 22 Tons:





and, another day older and deeper in debt. well, older.

A window and a lack of a pile

First piece of glass gets buried in as a bathroom window today:

and, while we're getting a delivery of sand tomorrow, this shows that we burned through the first 22 tons delivered back in May.

Progress Charted

Here's Melissa showing how high the walls are on either side of the front door:

Here's the interior walls; she's leaning against the living room wall, but you can see the wall between the bedrooms behind her:


The banister wall around the liquor cabinet:

and the bathroom walls on the lower level. You can also see the shelf/nook where the bathroom mirror is going to go:

Big bunch of tree work

I realized I had to take a leaning tree down that was potentially going to fall someday on our future water tank. This created a huge amount of more work. Maybe you can see me standing down at the one end of the main trunk of the tree I cut in this photo:




It actually hit another tree as it fell, and broke off a bunch of that one too. There's basically twice as much wood that needs to get cut up into firewood behind me, further down the hill. Sometimes being frugal and making sure to use our resources as carefully as possible really makes a lot of work. I've got to cut it all up, haul it out of the valley, and then split it up, stack it, and someday burn it. yeow.