11 Jun 11

Wood protection

We were joined today by friends Sandra and Bill who live near Albox and Sarah and Andy who are spending a month with Sunseed.

Sandra and Bill have made a greenhouse out of 1.5ltr plastic drink bottles (and won prizes for their early tomatoes grown in it) and a pool shower cubicle out of drink cans. Wombles after our own hearts!

Here they are doing the final coat of borax on all the roof wood. Between the 6 of us we did the whole roof.

From left: Andy, Bill, Sandra and Sarah.

Dousing

We've also been shown how to douse by Sandra and Bill - is there no end to their talents?

The pics below show us doing our control - where you walk towards a bottle of water, thinking water, and see what the dousing rods do for you, this lets you know what to expect when you find hidden water.

Sandra demonstrated, then we all had a go. I was blown away by the results. I always thought that dousing was done by experts and didn't ever think I'd be able to do it - but I did, and so did Dave and Sarah. And then we tried it with metal too (both my rods crossed for water, but only the left rod crossed for metal) and our auras.

Then we went walking around the land - and all found water in the same places. It was amazing. Bill then showed us how to gage how far down the water was. The consistency in findings was amazing, have I said that already?! It ties in with the layer of hard rock that we know exists because we've dug into it for the Earthship and the vegetation and lay of the land.

Thank you Bill and Sandra, the way you taught us was inspiring.

Plastic, not so fantastic

After the fun of dousing we went back to boraxing, and got through the last section very quickly.

Sarah, Sandra and I then started to clear the perimeter to get down to the the top layer of tyres. It's amazing how much soil had built up over time and how set like concrete it was!

Then it was all hands on deck to lay the plastic which will form the first vapour barrier. Sounds easy eh? Well don't be fooled like we were. It actually meant lifting the wooden frame and rolling, pulling and cajouling the plastic under... without tearing it or falling down the skylight holes. We started at about 4pm thinking it would take an hour, at 6.30pm we eventually finished - pooped! And after all our shouting - mind the hole!! - who trod in the hole? Dave. Luckily the plastic was thick enough to take his weight, gave us all a scare though.

We'd like to say again a huge thank you to Sandra, Bill, Sarah and Andy for their hard work and persistence. And for still smiling for the last photo of the day - mind the blxxdy hole!!