A Tribute to Courage & Friendship

The dam has felt the ripples of its maiden voyage…

Paul and Peter have built an absolutely beautiful jetty, a place that we will spend many special moments for years to come. The jetty is a tribute to our friend Paul Doran’s courage, and as a celebration of his wonderful friendship… a real piece of art that embodies an immense amount of love. A variety of natives have been planted around the front with reeds in the waterline, and it has already become an orchestra of frog and bird calls. We can’t wait until all the plants have matured enough for us to take the wildlife protection bags off them.

The McMansion chook house is nearly finished, with double lined tin for insulation and an apex for good ventilation. The five hens we plan to get should be very happy indeed, and the one rooster even happier no doubt! Six new fruit trees have also been planted in front of the chook house, which were kindly donated by our neighbours Ben and Magali.

We visited several straw bale houses during August and got loads of handy hints from the owners. One of them won an award for the most energy efficient house in Tasmania, and we have decided to work with the designer of that home, Guy Greener. We also met two couples who are building within 15km of us next year, and I’ll be practically full time helping on their projects during 2011 to gain the experience we need to build our own home.

During these house tours we met Priscilla Lane, a 59yr old lady currently building a straw bale home about 30 minutes from us. She was so inspirational that I want to help her as much as possible too, and have already spent two days on the project. Priscilla, her daughter (Mel) and I moved this massive stack of straw bales.

And placed them under the shelter of the roof, which will keep them dry and make them much more accessible for buidling the walls.

Mel then made “biscuits” with half damaged bales to fill small gaps in the walls…

And I started bashing some of them into the walls…

Here’s Priscilla upside down on the top of a straw bale wall, hammering cement sheeting into the gaps to stop mice from getting into the straw… she’s so motivating!

It was such hard work (even my fingers were so sore it was hard to type the next day), but also very enjoyable and extremely rewarding. I’m really looking forward to spending next year helping to build other peoples’ houses, and am increasingly excited about building our own one day.

We also went to another Transition Franklin meeting during the month and met some more fantastic neighbours, one of them being Ben and Anna. We went to visit their property the following weekend and were absolutely astounded by the mini hydro energy system that Ben has built on their creek, pumping out 27kWh of pure clean energy simply from the flow of the water. There really are some very wonderful people and exciting projects surrounding us in our new world down here in Tassie Mania :o)

Our own home sweet home (the garage) is coming along nicely. Because we used fibreglass pink batts we wore full protective gear, making it difficult to lay the insulation in the ceiling because our safety goggles kept fogging up. When I say we, I really mean I – Karim refused to go anywhere near the stuff! Because we’re building the house with straw bales we won’t need wall insulation, and plan to use something healthier in the ceiling.

We hired a plasterboard lifter for $40, which aided the lifting of 6m sheets of plaster board onto the ceiling enormously. With the help of Matt we managed to lay all the insulation and fit the plasterboard in the ceiling in one day.

A few days later, one of the volunteers helped install all the insulation in the walls.

Then Matt came back and helped fit the plaster board to the walls, so it really looks like a liveable space now.

Karim has also fitted float valves and switches in the water tanks so the pump turns off automatically when the top tank is full, and doesn’t pump the bottom tank dry, which involved stripping down to get inside a tank half full of water when it was only 6^oC outside!

Plumbing the garage continues to be the most challenging project to complete before we move in December. It’s impossible to get a professional plumber without a plumbing permit from the Council, and the council won’t issue temporary occupancy permits to live in a shed unless you submit your house plans at the same time (which reassures them that it really is temporary). We don’t have house plans yet, but have contacted the Council and told them that we’re working on the land with the Conservation Volunteers and desperately need somewhere to wash and adequate toilet facilities. It looks like that was enough for them to consider a plumbing application.

The next biggest challenge is designing the waste water system and getting it accepted by Council, because of course we want a reed bed system rather than a typical septic tank. We also want to make sure it’s designed adequately so that it will also deal with the waste water from the future house. And then of course we actually have to get the reed bed system constructed in time. But we will remain positive and continue to tackle this project the best we can. All the wonderful visualising you did for us before we built the dam worked beyond our wildest dreams, so please start visualising a fully approved and thriving reed bed system :o)