Trip Diary Extracts - July (cont.)

19 July 07, La Betranmatz

I was a bit worried when I arrived that I would not have much to do here after all, but mum, Eric and I spent all of today planning the chantier for the little building behind the house where mum thought of putting the bathroom. The maçon called today to say he would take over 5.000 euro, so we looked at it and decided to do it on our ow. Together we thought of all the steps needed, I made a for the next 7 days, there'll be a roof taken down, a wall destroyed, a new wall built, a new roof put up. We looked at the material we have - windows to put in the new wall, beams - and eventually, bit by bit, it felt like we had a real project taking form. It's definitely plenty of work for my time here. What I'm a bit worried about is that we're not taking time to consider building in energy-saving items - like a solar shower for instance. I don't yet have the knowledge. It would have been good to know how to make strohball walls [compressed straw and mud walls] instead of building a wall out of classical parpaing. What I'm happy about is that we're making sure to keep whatever we take down intact so as to reuse it, either immediately or later.