West wall thought-bubbles

OK, brace yourself because there some drainage coming on.

This is some drainage. It took a long time to dig. The ground was hard and rocky.  Moving on.

Drainage.  Try not to hyperventillate.

We've learned that we can only do a few hours of actual wall building each weekend, especially if there is non-wall work to be done.  Everything else takes ages.

 But we had a bit of a crack at the west wall.  We started on the easy centre section, but there are challenges above, below and on either side, which I'm sort of looking forward to, but only because I am insanely over-confident that the mud will show me how to solve the problems.

I don't know yet how to build the corner between the south and west walls.  You can't reach it from the inside.  On the outside, we could nail up some formwork easily enough, but we wouldn't be able to reach inside much more than a hand's depth. I've left lots of bamboo sticking out of each wall into the corner to tie the walls together, which is good, unless you are reaching in from above, in which case it's just an obstacle.  I'm actually thinking of doing it freehand - just slapping the mud on the outside and hoping it stays there until it dries, then smoothing it out with render later.

West wall thought-bubbles

How am I going to bury the cables for the solar power system?  I made this impressive wiring diagram,and planned all the components, and now I just don't trust it.  Who am I to build a power system so confidently I'm burying the wires?  But the thing is, the battery will sit right next to this section of wall, so I have to make a decision and go with it, otherwise I'll end up looking at a finished wall with a cable in one hand and a drill in the other.

We have started to build the verandah on the west wall, starting with the footings.  TJ dug out three neat square holes, and created some heavy duty formwork, then I mixed some concrete, which was a new experience.  We poured it together, sinking the little metal stirrups to exactly the right height using string lines set up at exactly the height of the wall footings. We tried to get them to within 1mm of the right spot.  I don't know how builders do it - it's difficult.

Verandah footings - see, above the word "word"?

I thought I'd be making walls as fast as I can to take advantage of the milder season, and try to get the building enclosed before winter. But starting the winter garden and preserving autumn produce happen in the same limited weekend time, so we're just going to accept a more sedate building pace.

42 bottles of sunshine