Pumphouse August Update

This is for you Steph and Steve



As you can see in the photos the pumphouse is coming along quite nicely. We are almost done filling in the last two wall sections, one using plaster over reed mat, and the other more straw-clay wattle. Straw wattle is where you take a handful of lengths of straw then coat that bunch of straw in clay by rolling it in a clay slip. Then you take that snake and weave it around upright sticks or other pieces of wood which are attached at the bottom and top to cross beams.





Anastasia and Romney, a guest from Oregon, worked out a wave motif to be sculpted around the bottom of the walls, more sculpture is also planned. We are also trying to find some nice blue and green bottles to put in the last bit of wall, like in Madrone house (Deleh's).





The plywood sheeting part of the roof is done. Anna, a visitor from Germany, helped Anastasia get that up, we still need to put the shakes up on that. For shakes to work as a rain proof roofing material the roof needs to be a steeper pitch, so plywood is being used under them with tar paper over that.