Day Twenty Five

October 26, 2023

adobe

many pack(y) out

phillipino boxer turned politician. a bad pun. i’m tired.

we packed out the interior with the first layer of adobe. you don’t want to layer it on more than 2 inches, and you want to let it dry thoroughly (3-5 days) before you do the next layer. ultimately, you might wind up doing 7 layers, but they aren’t all 2” think.

the recipe for adobe? we’ll use the 5 gallon bucket recipe style of earthships - half bucket water, 2 buckets sand, 1 bucket of sifted dirt.

this is how we sifted the dirt -shovel it through mesh attached to a simple frame. the bottom of the clear plastic sheet would feed into a bucket (not in the picture) so when you shovel through the sifter, most of it gets directed into the there.

and how do you get the adobe on the walls?

after the adobe, i helped hang a drip guard over the outer greenhouse wall.

so it’s interesting. i’m contemplating projects at home and i’m looking forward to them. which is, in a very large way, due to a boost of confidence as a result of this build. and it occurs to me that it’s not a confidence derived solely from accomplishing large tasks - pounding tires, mixing concrete, working with metal, etc. - but also from observing and accomplishing smaller tasks, like putting a screw through metal into underlying lumber while standing somewhat off-balance on a ladder. having watched a crew member do it, i observed that it’s not always an easy thing to do, and sometimes it takes a seemingly large amount of effort to get it through the metal. if i hadn’t seen it, i might’ve tried, put a lot of effort into it, and then felt that i had somehow failed or didn’t do it correctly.

i had a direct hand in nearly all parts of the roof, particularly the metal.

lastly, the daily walk around. we hung a door! and the berm is up higher.