Bond beam and buttresses done!

So many updates! We've finished the bond beam and buttresses with no problems. They look fantastic! Hired a local guy who does all sorts of custom jobs for farmers in the area.

Zilla checking things out and making sure the guys are working hard and being safe.

Packout

This summer's weather has been crazy. Right now it has been way too hot during the day to do anything without getting heat stroke and thunderstorming at night (which means no tire pounding; if you use wet dirt then as it dries there will be airspace and the tires won't be fully compacted). We've started on the second round of packout (using a cement mixture to fill in the tire walls so they're flat).

We're trying to focus on the parts of the wall where the buttresses will go, because those need to be flat enough that the cement won't be able to escape when the buttresses are being poured.

First tires of the season!

We've finished up lots of odd jobs around the acreage during the past few months. Put up 900 ft of pagewire fencing, built a shed for the goats, set up the bunnies outside for the summer, took the pink fluffy insulation out of the rabbitry (the rigid foam insulation works really well so we've kept that in), leveled the floor of the rabbitry, and now started back up with tire pounding.

We just have 18 tires left along the front south wall to finish up. These ones are small (205's; just used to support the windows that will go in that wall), so should be relatively easy (not like the rows of 265's!)

Spring has sprung!

The snow has melted and there's mud everywhere...We've got a few projects we need to take care of this spring before we can get started back up on the Earthship build. The next step is the concrete bond beam and buttresses, and we'll likely get to that around June, depending on how fast we finish up our other projects and of course depending also on weather.