Oct 2013

Masses to tell you about this month

We had a 2-dayer then a 4-dayer at the 'ship, so lots of things done. Firstly, Dave finished putting the triangular windows into the dome. We've used EPDM under the windows and along the outside ledge with chicken wire on top which will help the final layer of papercrete to stick.

Fitting the rubber seal

Metal flashing with rubber sealer

Bottle brick work finished for now

I finished the bottle sunburst above the entrance and the bottle infill above the front face windows.

Planter can wall

In between helping Dave with windows I made a good start on the can wall to complete the large planter. I've used cement for this for strength, although I think the papercrete would probably be stronger - it's certainly more flexible so less prone to crack, and a whole lot nicer to wok with.

Egg and chips break

Our neighbours, Pete and Maggie, who are partial to egg and chips for Saturday lunch came over on their quads and made egg and chips al fresco! I must say it's the best egg and chips I've ever tasted, and all off the back of a quad.

Pete the incredible quad chef

Chips glorious chips

Flashy flashings

Don't you just love hammerite?! The metal skylight flashings had started to rust almost as soon as we fitted them so I took them home, rubbed them down and did a coat of hammerite silver grey, now they look like new again.

Round room earth cliff

When the digger came all those years ago and dug out the round room he did it slightly smaller than we had planned, just to be on the safe side. But the soil is rock hard (in fact a lot of it IS rock!) so Dave is now going round the walls and taking them back to the 30cm earth cliff necessary. It's hard work involving boys toys machinery but it's worth it. Unfortunately for Dave my right arm is still hurting from the RSi so I can't help him much. In fact he's having to do most of the heavy work - but he is getting bigger servings of chips!

Cool work

Pete (of egg and chips fame) is an electronics whizz and has put together the freezer to fridge converter thingy-ma-jigg that we've been wanting for ages. We've been trialing it for the last 3 weeks and it's a marvel. Our old conventional front opening fridge freezer uses 1.5kwh of electricity per day. This new chest freezer that is now acting as a fridge uses approx. 0.1kwh of electricity a day. We'll get another to use as a freezer, as an A+ rated appliance it will use approx. 0.5kwh per day, saving us 0.9kwh per day for both fridge and freezer. Although it's not as convenient as a front opener I think it's worth foregoing convenience for the amount of electricity it saves. Considering we're looking at a 6kw solar panel system you can see why we're so excited about this

Chest fridge with converter electronics

Electronics panel