Sorted

Last night we had the mother of all thunderstorms - long, loud and accompanied by a deluge. The rain came through the holes in the grungelow roof where the cruck frame is braced against the rafters and I had to deploy a bowl to catch the water coming through the ceiling in the hallway. On the plus side the sealant along the battening on the tarp worked and the only water that got into the structure was through the open ends. We can now start to put the straw bales into the strawbale house, well at least in the centre portion of the house, and install the purlin and first floor joists which will lend further rigidity to the structure.

We need scaffolding to get high enough to be able to build a temporary frame to which we can attach waterproof membrane in the voids for the gable end wall windows and so reduce the rain getting inside. Scaffolding will also allow us to finish battening down the tarp. Once that has been done we will be able to get cracking with laying the bales and putting in the upper floor. Until the schedule went belly up we had planned to hire scaffolding to get the temporary waterproofing, external lime plastering, sarking, breathable membrane and tiling done in one stretch. That's not now possible. We need scaffolding now and then again in April for a few months. Having done some research we decided it would be cheaper to buy some second-hand scaffolding. Apparently if you require scaffolding for longer than 12 weeks then you are better off buying and then reselling when you have finished with it. So that is what we are going to do. We have bought 24m of second-hand Kwikstage scaffolding with a platform height of a little under 5m. This is sufficient to extend along the length of the two plinth walls. Richard the crane is going to Devon to collect it for us on Monday. Fingers crossed we should have all the roof covered by the end of next week.

#strawbalehouse #strawbalewoodlands #tarp #sealant #scaffolding