second day of our STRAWBALE BUILDING Workshop...

We're only on our second day of building, and we're ready to raise the walls tomorrow... it's incredible how fast this kind of building goes... I'll not say much as the pictures will speak for themselves :-)
We finished Lyna's Yurt on Sunday by the way... But my mind was already on the preparations for the workshop... that gave me time to do all the shopping for building material that we would need before thursday...

By the way this is the yurt's floor finished, I forgot to take a picture of the yurt set up... it's a really beautiful one !!!
Thursday morning we had some time to introduce ourselves to one another and Lesley gave us a little introduction about building with strawbales...

then...hands on work...first thing we had to do was to clear out the place for the building (it's behind the kitchen for those who know)

Then, determining the direction (south facing), and squared it properly... with a nice frame Jo built :-)

Edy and Zven making sure the guiding string was levelled...

we had to put some more dirt on the east part, to roughly level the ground before setting the tires... and to hold that dirt, we made a wall with tires filled with dirt... it worked perfectly !

then, Lesley thought it would be nice to make some steps with more tires... beautiful!!! Great idea !!!

here Nuno with Lesley...he came with his partner and kid, to help Lesley, and gain some more experience, cuz he is gonna start running courses himself...

Meanwhile, me, Jo, Zven and Xico went to the woods to chop some eucalyptus which would support the floor .... in the end, we all got to the conclusion, after the carpenters (Edy, Jo and Zven) tried all kinds of ideas to use them, that the best would be to get some straight ones... so I had to go to Fundao (city nearby) again and get that, together with the tin plates for the roof...

nice and functional steps... Kiara is passing by...she's Lua's daughter who came to spend some time with us and also help Marcia in the kitchen... they are doing a great job... there's Fatima also , who is actually from the village nearby, Povoa de Atalaia, who also comes to help in the kitchen... she's a funny one ...
And that was the first day...

First thing next day was to lay the tires which would be filled with gravel and would support the beams under the floor...

There are the beams... we still needed little adjustments to level it...it's really hard work to fill in these tires with gravel... it's literally makes us "tired" :-)

a wise patch from the carpenters... so we can use only 2 boards on a row... everything well supported... it's amazing the ideas we come up with when little unexpected "problems" come up :-)

And the floor starts to appear...

Checking if the bales would fit the floor or if we needed to do some cutting... no cuttings needed...perfect size!!! The floor it's 5x3m, by the way ... and we'll have a 2 meter "varanda" on the east side , where the earth oven will be...

next step was to prepare the place where the bales would be piled up... with huge nails up ...the board on top is just a safety measure till we start laying the bales tomorrow... the truck straps are on place so we can tight and compress the bales as much as possible before laying the roof...

So, this is just the end of the second day...and this morning we didn't do much because we couldn't use the eucalyptus logs and I had to go and buy the squared ones... tomorrow we will lift up the wall... probably in the morning, and we can start with the roof already ... Isn't this great ?!!!

It's taking a bit more expenses than I was expecting though, and we didn't have enough people to cover all the costs, so we'll be happy to receive any donations for this purpose as I had to borrow some money to buy all the material (around 1000E)...
Let me know if you can help us on that... little is much, so I'm not expecting big donations from only a few...
I'm still considering if we'll be able to put on the insulation or not... it's quite expensive, or a much longer hard work with sheep's wool or recycled coark...


Anyway, I'll try to post as regular as I can, to avoid a really loooooong post at the end... I hope you are enjoying this as much as we are :-) Be inspired !!!