20-22 Apr 2012

Many hands make light work...

Well, I'm not sure about that, thumping a tyre or chunking out a wall and carting the soil up to the berm is heavy work. But when you have lots of people on site it certainly makes it more fun. We had a lovely weekend with Sean, Martin, Dag and Danny who came and spent 3 days with us. And we got loads of work done - thanks guys!

Inside back wall Sean and Martin worked their socks off taking the inside back wall to 30 cm from the tyres. We relented and brought in an electric thumper to help with this job as there's a lot to take off and some parts are solid rock. Sean's idea of hanging plumb bobs as guides was genius. It's so close to being ready.

Danny moves mountains As fast as Sean and Martin were taking soil off the back wall Danny was wheel barrowing it up to the berm and filling in around the water tank. We've decided to fill in the outlet ditch with rocks so any overflow runs away from the tank quickly. Which allows us to rearrange the sandbags to get a gentle slope to the west side of the tank.

Back to tyre bashing

We couldn't have new people on site and not get them having a go at filling tyres. Just as well we need to increase the height of the west entrance wall. Everyone had a go, here's Martin and Dag pleased with their work.

Bitumen over sand bag walls

Sean covered the sandbags with bitumen to protect them from the sun. These will be painted white once we've finished the whole run and soil and rocks will fill in around.

Water tank lid

Sean cut a hole in the centre of the water tank lid with the jigsaw and helped me make the wooden lid for it.

Then Danny and I got happy sniffing the fibreglass glue as we stuck the funnels on. Not sure how else to describe these, but suffice to say it all goes towards making the first stage filter for the water we're going to collect from the roof. For our first attempt at fibreglassing I think we did an excellent job.

Geodesic Dome

Last but definitely not least, the second layer of the geodesic dome was finished - yehey! This involved lots of carpentry and lots of photos as we were all helping to get the first section in place. Then Dave worked with Dag and Sean to complete the round. We love it - and it's contagious because Sean, Danny, Dag and Martin all say they want one on their earthships!

Beautiful energy

A big thank you to our lovely April volunteers - you brought a wonderful energy to the earthship. We enjoyed you being with us very much.