Friday, July 18th
Sunshine or rain?
It's very hard to plan outdoor chores with the unstable weather we're getting this year. Things get a bit complicated when we try to reopen the front part of the roof. We have to keep the tarps at the ready to cover it all up as soon as it starts raining. We're working on changing the angle of the front face so that it's perpendicular to the ground instead of to the 1:12 pitch of the roof. It'll look nicer and be better for the roof ventilation. We're also relocationg the rain gutter onto the roof to make it invisible. I found that idea in Rob Roy's excellent book: Earth-sheltered Houses.
So far, we work mostly on our own, except a couple of days last week when we had a very interesting visitor. Orelvis, a vegetable farmer from Cuba, is in Quebec for a total of 10 weeks to visit all kinds of sustainable development initiatives. Thanks to Alex and Tye who speak Spanish, we were able to exchange a lot of information. With their help, we applied the first coat of mud stucco on the huge wall of the North-east wing by the door on the second floor. We also removed all the straw from the shed, the cats had used some of it as litter last winter. The moldy one got dumped on the roof to compost further. We have to figure out a way of organize and insulate the shed so we can all share the space happily. We're thinking of reserving a corner for the vegetable oil filtration system we'll need to feed our latest acquisition: a Toyota Land Cruiser that we are converting to run on this cleaner fuel.
This summer, we're still spending a lot of time playing in the mud. On the second floor, all the furniture has been moved away from the walls. Tuesday, I got started on the last coat of dirt/clay/straw mix to even out the walls before the lime plaster. On teh first floor, the woodstove has disapeared (actually it's for sale). A 3 inch high wall delineates the contour of the Rocket Mass Heater. We will fill it with Perlite to insulate under the stove and bench. We built the core outdoors, without mortar, to test our calculations. As you can see in the picture where the flames don't move up the wood but horizontally into the burn tunnel, it works great.
A few more brief news:

• We emptied our composting outhouse for the first time. The whole operation takes only a few minutes and is really easy with the direct access at the bottom of the pit. In the photo section, you can see the compost pile just in front of the panel door that closes off the pit. It's covered with straw and a couple of pallets to keep animals from getting into it. It will mature like until next summer.
• The stairs between the two floors is finally completed and we're very proud of the result after a whole year's work!
• On a sadder note, our wringer/washer let us down. We're in shopping mode, looking at energy efficient, front loading models... to be continued.