Above Ground

Finally we are making some progress that is visible. Up until now the money invested is mostly buried below ground in water, borehole and electrical reticulation. The computer illiterate fireman managed to get someone to tick the online fire approval section in our application and our plans have now been finally passed! The tempo of activity is up quite dramatically and we're set to work flat out with a short break in December. The progress on the foundations has been dramatic. We started on the foundations in late July and today they are compacted and ready for the reinforcing and concrete. On Monday the reinforcing arrives and by Friday, it should be assembled, in place and ready for inspection. Monday week we are hoping to pour the foundations for the house and later that week for the utility building. The ground is generally quite soft and the progress is rapid, which explains why there is so much reinforcing in the foundations. Bar a couple of small really hard spots with rock, there has been little to slow the progress made.

The sieve is in place and we have stacked the soil ready for sieving. However, the sieve aperture size is 10mm and this is producing fairly course material something we don't want. We will replace this with a 6-8mm aperture section and this should address our problems. Surprisingly when you use a manual sieve, it produces a smaller sieved product but this is a result of the angle of the sieve. The effective aperture size of a sieve on a steep gradient is much less than it is when it's horizontal. But this you only realise when you do the field tests.

We have installed a gate, much to the annoyance of our neighbour whose staff cross into our property to access the main road. But there has been quite a bit of pedestrian traffic across the property as it is used as a thoroughfare to cross the river. We are concerned with all the building equipment and materials on site that we will be targeted by the local shoplifting network. So the gate is just a small deterrent. It's in but not yet fully functional.

In the meantime, I have received a sample of the uPVC material that will be used to make the double glazed windows. It was an especially quick and efficient delivery from China and it was more to check the colour than the quality. And it's perfect. The grey layer in the rammed earth complements it perfectly. There is a choice of window components and I'm going with the 'top chinese brand'. I've just included 'internal shutters' which are effectively louvre blinds set between the panes of the double glazing. There is no cleaning of them as they are hermetically sealed. Fantastic. They're controlled using magnets and I'm sure I'm going to get no end of grief from them. But despite this, the total window cost is USD10,000 including the 7m section of hinged panel doors 3.3m in height. I had a local quote just for this door section and it came in at USD8,000. That is only for the folding section which is only 2.4m in height. The 900mm panel above the folding section is an additional cost. Seems the locals just love a good rip off.

The food forest tree list has been finalised and it seems that we will be planting around 590 trees. Now we are waiting for the minimum temperature to hover above 10degrees Celcius and then the planting will begin. Next week has been set aside to get the irrigation fully functional and this should be complete by the end of the week. We've made a small dent in the 30 tons of manure but the farmyard smell still lingers around the site. The frogs and birds have recently gone ballistic with their nest making and calling suggesting that spring has sprung but today we were hit by a cold snap to remind us that winter is not yet over. But the winter of waiting is definitely behind us and there is an invigorated spring in everyone's step.