And they all fit! A little work needs to be done here and there to even the up before we put braces on the corners and fit strapping at 50cm intervals to hold the walls together. Already the walls feel more secure.
Archive for July, 2007
We managed to recruit Steve, Norman, and accidentally Joaquim, who just popped by to deliver our new wind up radio and found himself directing action as the box frames went up
We managed to level the walls by taking off the bales of the seventh layer, putting wedges in underneath and then staking them.
We tried to put the box frames on the walls only to find the south facing wall was not level. So we took them off and will attempt to level them. The reason for this is because bales in Portugal are not as standard as ones from UK or Spain.
Have a look soon to see how we resolved this!
The seventh layer has been going up the last three days and is quite tiring as we have to lift heavy bales onto the walls being careful not to move them. Today we finished that but not before we noticed some “bale frenzy” (where you get carried away and the wall creeps out). So we took down three layers and pulled six stakes out and rearranged them so now the wall is straight.
You might have noticed that we have used some customsized bales in our walls. This is neccessary just like it is with a brick house. We have a tool called a baling needle that you thread with baling twine and poke it through the bale. You need to measure where the needle goes in and where it comes out so you can have a bale say 60cm long. You would measure from the top of the bale both sides and keep trying until you get ot right. Hope fully the pictures will help explain.
Another essential job is to make wure the face of the bale is flat other wise you will have big gaps between your bales. We do this procedure on wvery bale so the bales match up very nicely.
Some flowers, fruits and vegetables
Our first job this morning was to saw and fit plywood to the door and window frames to support the seventh layer of bales:
And then we started to put the seventh layer of bales up.
Thanks to one of us getting up early and getting on with things
While the other had a slower start
we managed to complete the last corner
At this point we have run out of bales and tarp, so a lunch at o cantinho is in order before we go and collect some more and think of ways to keep the rain at bay.
Thanks to some fantastic help over the weekend and good company when it rained, we were ready to continue this morning with the last corner. We got three rounds of bales to go, but are just about to run out of Adelino’s stock. . . we’re going to measure some up this afternoon so we shouldn’t be delayed too much.
The rain gave us a chance to do non bale related things like sleep and research roof building, suppliers of lime putty, and alpacas. After three days, this unseasonable downpour seems to be over and we can get back to work. It was a bit of a slow start this morning, and the camera has run out of batteries so photos will depend on whether we get enough sun to use the solar charger.
The flooring arrived, along with two strong men to move it, just in time before the rain started.
Some photos: