11 Nov 09

Meeting the neighbours

It was lovely to meet our nearest neighbours, Maggie and Pete, this week. We stopped off on our way through, their house is about 1km from the 'ship. Dave and Pete talked wind turbines and solar panels as Pete and Maggie have both, while Maggie and I talked about permaculture. What lovely neighbours to find, although we were so busy chatting I forgot to take a photo, ooopsey.

And so to work By the time we'd finished our chats and said hasta luego to Pete and Maggie it was time for an early lunch. Then we could put it off no longer, the beams that were cut last time needed to be pinned in place. Dave got stuck into this task as it really didn't warrant two people. He still needed to do a bit more fine tuning of the joints, then after approval from the head designer (me) drilled the holes to take the rebar pins. I think he's done a lovely job, they look neat but rustic enough to match the other joints. This completes the bond beam for the round room which means we can ask the carpenter to start constructing the metal structure that will form the domed roof.

Architects and almonds

I spent the day picking almonds, not much to show you really, 1 sack for about 20 trees. A couple of the trees were full and took ages to do, others being only small trees anyway, took no time. When Dave finished his work he came and helped me pick the last few trees, which we've never got round to picking before. Then, just as we were finishing the architects turned up for our meeting. And what a good meeting it was...

Phase 1

Alicia and Daniel, the two architects, had a meeting with Pablo, the town planning officer for the Sorbas area, last week. It went very well apparently with Pablo still interested and positive about our project. So we've given them the go ahead to write up all the paperwork needed to put in the first phase for building permission.

Just to clarify to those who haven't been to this site before. We already have Planning Permission for this project. The Building Permission is the next stage and will make sure that what we're building is fit for use in the eyes of the law. This is where it got a bit tricky with the earthship as it's so different from a regular house. The architects are involved because they have studied the earthship construction techniques and are going to go through the Building Regulations making sure that where the earthship techniques aren't in line with the building regs, the ultimate purpose for the regs is being satisfied - phew, did I explain that ok?!

Butterflies

Ok, who will be the first to upload and butterfly their image for this project? Dave spent ages writing the software so we'd love to see it working. Go on, be a devil, go to Butterfly Faces and get uploading.