Feb & 2-4 Mar 11

Silence is golden

As you know, Dave has been working on the 'ship while I've been looking after our animals and getting our current house ready to sell. Yes, we do hope to be in a position soon (well, sometime this year) to move into the Earthship.

Consequently my mind has been elsewhere and I haven't been keeping this site updated, tccch! And after all Dave's hard work too. So here's an update...

3rd - 5th Feb

Sometime in January we made the decision to go with the cork bits rather than sheets. This means the Valencia company supplying it can guarantee that it comes from their fsc managed forest. It also means we have to build a frame to hold the bits and cap it with plywood so we can walk on it.

Dave phoned around for plywood prices and started boraxing the wood for the frame. He also picked up the sample reja bars we ordered so we could work out how to fit them into the skylights.

24th - 26th Feb

Dave worked on getting the reja bars into the first skylight then went back to cutting and boraxing the wood for the frame. I've probably said this before, but I'm going to say it again, if you can get pre-treated wood it'll save you days of work.

2nd March

Now you get to see some piccies as Dave remembered to take the camera!

Firstly, here's Gianni and family who visited the 'ship for the morning. They're pondering building an Earthship in Sardinia.

Here's those loveley rejas in the skylight boxes - a splendidly neat job Dave He's also added extra height to the boxes to allow for the 2cm extra depth of insulation. The cork suppliers said to add this to allow for the cork being in bits rather than pressed into solid strips. Even with the extra depth, it still works out much more affordable in bits than strips.

3rd March

Dave had two visitors today as well, Mihai and Franziska who have been staying at Sunseed.

Franziska helped finish the front face ceiling planks...

... while Mihai dug the hole for the gas pipe ...

...then they both helped start building the frame for the insulation.

Dave got home at 8.30pm pooped!

4th March

Some friends mentioned a while ago that the Almanzora Valley Garden Club they belong to was interested in us doing a talk on Earthships at their meeting today. Of course, we said, thinking it would be a cozy little chat to 20 to 30 people, max.

I prepared a few notes and some piccies in Powerpoint and then found out, the night before, that the club has about 160 members - eeeek! (I've subsequently found out that it's actually more like 400 members).

They meet at one of my fave places - the Museo Gilabert in Arboleas - which has a large conference hall, and it was getting on for nearly full - double eeeek!

Anyway, filled with complimentary cake and coffee, we went for it. The audience was so friendly, they didn't heckle and were very kind when we had a few gliches in the slide show. We'd like to say thank you to all for your patience and interest. We hope you enjoyed it.

We were so impressed by the club that we've joined as well, does that make 162 members now? ;-)