Day 34 - preparing for the ground floor

Today was a short day, with Bruce arriving late morning from Dublin and we decided to have a bonfire tonight in the space that will be covered by the Octagon room.

We did manage to construct a few more panels, and to sort out a lot of loose ends in order to prepare for putting the floor panels in place. Additional timber was nailed to the edge of the beams, bringing them to the full thickness. They are now ready to take the floor panels.


Pat borrowed a digger and we filled in the excavations for the district heating pipes and water supply, and cleaned up the site quite a bit.


With a little effort and a few boards nailed to the threaded rods at the top of the cellar, and some more wood to prevent anyone falling backwards into the cellar, the building site was made "safe enough" for a bonfire.

Day 30 - out of the ground and into wood

A great day, working dawn until dusk, in beautiful dry weather, and finally finished with concrete and working with wood! We spent the morning cutting wood for the perimeter beams.

A machine was brought in to back-fill the excavations around the cellar and the perimeter pears. We also emptied the remaining water from the base of the cellars and cleared out all of the silt, rubble and concrete that had fallen in. It is great to finally have a clean flat site and finished cellar thta will hopefully dry out over the next few days

We assembled the wood for the centre of the perimeter beams, finally giving a sence of the shape and expanse of the buildings.


The perimeter beams will consist of 4 pieces of 225x44 lumber (9 by 2's as they call them in Ireland) but we only fixed the central 2 pieces, nailed them together temporarily, cut notches to counter sink the bolts and drilled the vertical fomles with a hand auger. It was a real joy to work with hand tools on the site everyone else had gone home, watching the sun set.