Looking towards the east:

North East corner, showing the roof apex. Also, proof that I had a level on site (not necessarily proof that I used it):

East Barge, it isn’t quite square, there’s 25 mm variation in the width of the gap between the fascia and roofing iron.

These are turn-ups to stop the wind blowing water up the roof, under the flashing. I have no idea how this is supposed to be done, I just did what seemed appropriate.

North West corner.

Some ideas on flashing for Glenn. Click on them to get a bigger image (same for all the photos on this site).

There’s been some progress over the last few days as Tony kindly let me build while the weather was good. I was hoping to get the roof on, but didn’t get there. The detail that goes into making sure it will be weathertight takes a while to get right. Today it’s raining and I’m spending the weekend in the office working on Funding.

My mother’s coming to visit in about a month and it would be great to get the building finished by then. There’s still quite a bit to do though - roof, door, windows, cladding, ceiling, flooring (pavers), etc…

Most of the framing is done. Took a couple of days leave for a 4 day weekend and worked solidly through. Next is getting the roof on to protect from rain, etc. Had a spell of good weather but there’s rain coming.

Framing with Macrocarpa is hard work. Most of the nail holes have to be pre-drilled or the wood splits. But it’s turning out as a very solid structure.

I got a couple of students to clean up the bricks. They were pretty slow but it was worth doing because it has speed up the laying. These second hand bricks are really slow to lay (I think I mentioned that last time). I’ve got all corners (the tricky bits) and one long side up to 7 courses high. I’m aiming for 10 courses - I don’t think I’ll run out of bricks but I may not have the patience to lay that many.

Here’s the current progress (tonight I did a couple of hours work in the evening under floodlights).

A post comparing fears of the working class and middle class on Dave Pollard’s blog How To Save The World got me thinking about how lucky I am to be able to pursue my eco-lifestyle. I guess most people, even if they wanted to, just couldn’t take a couple of years and few thousand to set up a ‘permaculture back yard’.

Is sustainability just a whimsy of the middle/affluent class? Can we reasonably expect people who are only just getting by, fearful of unemployment, illness and crime, to have the mind-space to care about thier ecological footprint? Once I’m set up in my own backyard it would be interesting to explore ways to make such a shift easier for others.