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 technique 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 as I needed time to do all the shopping for the building materials 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 it was mainly hands on work... The 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... What a great idea !!!

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

Meanwhile, me, Jo, Zven and Xico went to the woods to chop down 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 to get that, together with the tin plates for the roof...

Such 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 as well, who is actually from the village nearby, Póvoa de Atalaia, who also comes to help in the kitchen... she's a funny one ...
And that was the first day...

First thing the 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 literally made us all "tired" ...

a wise patch from the carpenters... so we can use only 2 boards in a row without the need to cut them... everything is 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...

next step was to prepare the place where the bales would be piled up... with huge nails sticking up ...the board on top is just a safety measure until we start laying the bales tomorrow... the truck straps are in 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 amazing ?!!!

I´m having a bit more expenses than I was expecting though, as 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 whether we'll be able to put on the insulation on the roof or not... it's quite expensive, or it can be cheaper, but requesting harder work with sheep's wool or recycled cork...


Anyway, I'll try to post as regularly as I can... I hope you are enjoying this as much as we are... Be inspired !!!