On the verge of summer


Long time, no update!

We’re on the verge of summer now, finally more light and lighter evenings. All migrant birds are almost back, still waiting for the swifts and swallows around here. Trees are going green.

Work has been ongoing on many fronts, house, growing beds, recycling house, etc. Late February we finally go delivery nr 3 from Palmatin. This time with doors, windows, roof, floor boards, terrace boards. The driver only spoke Russian but it worked out fine anyway.

2016-02-29 11.50.00
2016-02-29 12.50.57

Two of the windows unwrapped. Sturdy, triple glazed windows from Estonia. Really heavy as well but with some ingenuity and manpower we got them into the house the following week.
2016-03-04 11.10.02

Blue front door 🙂
2016-03-04 14.15.18

To get doors and windows up to the second floor I built an elevator. The heaviest glass doors weighed over 150 kg so it was a bit nervous to hoist them with the winch and thin wire.
2016-03-04 16.58.12

Contraption to prevent to window from falling out when we lifted it into place.
2016-03-05 12.19.00

First window in place! They look really nice. Great space on the windowsill.
2016-03-13 12.44.50

BBQ break. Worked fine to light the BBQ in the greenhouse, as long as the top windows are open. A bit smoky otherwise..
2016-03-18 12.18.39

One day I found this baby hare in the house. Probably placed there by the mother during the day. It stayed perfectly still as instructed, I wish our kids would listen as good. The next day it had moved to some other place.
2016-03-24 14.58.36

A lot of super heavy OSB boards were delivered.for the roof. Good thing we had the winch to lift it all up.
2016-03-28 13.54.37

One of the heaviest glass doors in place on the first floor terrace. The terrace floor boards will be at the same level as the door eventually. We have started mounting the vertical insulation beams as well, they will hold 200 mm insulation and then the facade boards.
2016-03-28 13.55.44

Great, big door! The floor inside is a bit lower, we’ll need a step once the real floor is in place.
2016-04-15 08.52.12

Time to get water! The drilling jig was really fast and reached 90 m in a few hours.
2016-04-15 08.54.07

Unfortunately no water was found during drilling…
2016-04-18 14.18.30

A fracking specialist was brought in to sort out the well. He lowered a pipe with a cuff which sealed off the hole at 21 m. After that he filled the hole below the cuff with water and applied pressure. Starting pressure was 130 bar which quickly went down to 80 bars, i.e. the bedrock cracked below the cuff. Water! After letting out the water from the fracking we started getting water from the rock. Eventually it has been estimated to 1400 liters/hour which is quite a lot. Good. At first it was milky white from the pulverized rock. Now it has cleared out nicely after pumping for some hours.
2016-04-19 14.39.36

Another area we want to get going is the infiltration/growing beds so we can start growing something. After all, it is a greenhouse. First up is 45 m x 6,1 m EPDM rubber membrane and fiber cloth to protect it.
2016-03-24 15.00.52

Starting on the first bed, step one, clean up! I have lined the bed with insulation boards we had lying around after the foundation work. Might keep the beds slightly warmer = longer season.
2016-03-31 15.14.06

Laying some tubes for the incoming water in the recycling system. The three black PEM tubes will feed each of the three beds with water. The grey pipe will feed back the filtered water from the bottom of the bed to the recycling house, then it’s pumped up through the next PEM tube to the next bed.
2016-04-19 16.00.01

Protective cloth in place of the gravel with the rubber on top. The gravel has a slight lean to it so water will collect at one end. The rubber will be spread out to catch all water after being filtered. Drainage pipes connected to the grey pipe in the previous pic will lay on top of the rubber at the bottom of the bed and collect the water.
2016-04-20 15.00.24

To be able to install the water recycling system, tanks, pumps etc. as well as the control system and tanks for the well, we need to get cracking on the recycling house. Finishing up the LECA walls by pouring a reinforced concrete beam at the top. The wall became slightly too high so we had to cut out ca 5 cm of the top U-shaped blocks. Then also saw down into the block to create new U-blocks. Much work.
2016-05-07 10.07.23

On the western wall there is no wall crest to place the roof beams on, instead they have to rest on this 2×9. Linda is cleaning out the holes for threaded rods.
2016-05-07 14.23.47

Finally time to open the package with the beams. They have been there since last summer, a bit nervous if they had survived. But they still looked like new! A few small places where the wood had blackened by water.
2016-05-07 15.05.26

First one in place. At 6 m long it weighs a few kg.
2016-05-07 15.58.04

Threaded rods in place. Secured with chemical anchor which gets good grip in the LECA and concrete after cleaning the holes.
2016-05-12 21.33.51

The 2x9s supported by vertical 2x4s to give even more strengths. More screws were added after this pic.
2016-05-14 11.43.39

Linda fastening the third joist.
2016-05-14 14.30.06

Everyone gets a go! Lova trying the compressed air tools. The bolt pistol made it a lot easier and faster to get all the screws in place, just wished I had a bigger compressor, it had a hard time keeping up.
2016-05-14 14.30.20

Good thing Tomas had time to help, 13 beams x 80 kg each was a bit much to move around the greenhouse and lift up.
2016-05-14 16.32.19

Starting to look like a roof! Photo from the first floor terrace.
2016-05-14 17.14.48

All beams up on the roof, just some more screws to secure them. 60+ huge wooden screws still to go, each beam used 12 screws. Now it should survive a hurricane.
2016-05-08 16.10.30

We have also had time to start laying some floorboards on the first floor. Solid pine boards at 28 mm. Looks really nice.
2016-05-13 12.16.42

Skis still out… Might be time to put them away for the summer. Temperatures are starting to become a bit high in the greenhouse now, but OK when the big doors are open and the breeze comes in.

Planned activities going forward is getting the water working. Anders Solvarm (http://www.ecorelief.se) is working on getting the needed hardware for the recycling system so we can get that going too. Hopefully the recycling house will be watertight after this weekend, will be nice to have come that far. Material (gravel, sand, peat, coal etc) for the beds needs to be ordered.

We are still waiting for material from Palmatin, a bit slow to get responses from them, especially from their stair manufacturer. Still to go is stairs, balconies, facade boards, ceiling boards, more floor and terrace boards.

One thought on “On the verge of summer

  1. Sjukt kul med uppdatering! Shit vilket coolt bygge, ser med spänning fram emot flera posts under sommaren då jag tänker att det kommer att hända massor =)

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