Roof

Roof beams and columns

It's the 4th of December and we've given ourselves a very nice christmas pressie - we've ordered the roof beams and columns.

Our local carpenter has these beautiful Spanish pine trunks - gorgeous aren't they? They're approx. 17-20cm in diameter and come in .5m increments starting at 3m up to 5.5m.

We need 2 columns for the main hut area and 2 for the round room (door). Until we lay the concrete footer we're not sure how tall these need to be, but they'll be a maximum of 2.5m. So we've ordered x2 5m trunks.

Then the biggy is the centre beam to sit on top of the columns in the main hut area. This needs to be 6m long. And luckily the carpenter now has 2 6m beams stashed away somewhere. They told us a few weeks ago they couldn't get 6m lengths so we'd been thinking of using an old telegraph pole. There are loads around here. But the collection and transportation of them was getting very complicated so we're much happier getting these from the carpenter.

Lastly for the roof beams in the main hut area x20 4m trunks.

Y ya'ta! Ordered, done, excited!

Insulation and condensation proofing

We're trying to find a natural insulation product that is rigid enough to stand on. We've looked at both wool and hemp but neither of the products we've found are rigid enough. We may be looking for something that doesn't exist, but if it is out there and you know about it please tell us.

As we've had no success with the natural route yet we may have to use either styrodur or neotherm which are available locally.

Potable finish

To ensure that the bitumen doesn't leach chemicals into the water we need to find a product to paint on the roof.

We've spoken to a local fibre glass water tank builder who uses a paint to finish his tanks with. He's tried it on a piece of rough coated bitumen for us and it seems to stick well. It's available in a huge selection of colours.

The other thought we had was the plaster called Mojacar Blanca which is manufactured locally. This is a waterproof plaster used traditionally to finish the houses in Mojacar that are only allowed to be finished in this particular colour of white. We're not sure how well it would stick to bitumen or if it would leach chemicals into the water.