Kensington Hempcrete Home: October 2015

My sister Sarah and partner Matt came to Grant's rescue a couple of weeks ago to help with the second last gable end!! I wasn't much use except in feeding the crew! I am looking forward to writing more in the next entry!

Over the Queen's birthday long weekend Liz, Rich and family came all the way from the Peninsula darling to get us moving with the ceiling! (that will be another post). My brother Paul came down from the hills to also lend a hand. What a weekend of work. Sometimes things go according to plan, other times they don't. This time everything went swimmingly, my kids looked after their kids so all kids were happy. Rich obviously worked very hard as he was tucked up in bed by 9.30 on Sunday night...sorry about working you so hard Rich! As I am typing this Grant and Alan are out the back working. Alan (Grant's dad) is a serial offender (helper), so much so that he had to go overseas for 6 weeks to have a break!

Liz and Rich came over for the Queen's Birthday long weekend. Many years ago on this weekend,
Liz and I would have been excitedly going to the snow together!

Rich was on mixing duty, as you can see it is not a clean job!

Liz spent most of the time in the rafters

Over the school holidays our friend Susan came over to help us do some hemping, I know she helped out from the kindness of her heart, although I suspect there may have been a little bit of pressure coming from us! Simone (Grant's sister) and her daughter Jazz dropped in to say hello and were promptly put to work. I sometimes wonder why we haven't had many visitors! Alan (Grant's dad) has helped an enormous amount recently, unfortunately he ended up in hospital with a bout of Pneumonia - he assures us it wasn't due to us working him too hard!

Grant had some time during the school holidays and steadily slogged away. We really feel as though we are getting there (wherever there may be). Ok, what I mean by that is the walls are nearly to the top! We haven't started the ceiling, however we are now starting to work on hemping the gables. Details of that will be in another blog entry.

Susan working towards the eastern gable end

Simone hauling up the hemp to me (bit scary up there)

Jazz helping me hemp up high

Alan, Grant's dad has helped out many, many times and even though this photo is somewhat
grainy it is not indicative of the quality of his work!

Mum (Margaret) was pleased to be helping out on Saturday 21 March,
2015, therefore making the honour board! Mum filled the conduit with hemp
while I used the conduit to fill the holes in the walls left from the formwork.

I haven't written anything for a while as we have been really busy with hempcreting during the day and various Christmas things on at night. Grant and Sam have been the consistent workers, working many hours every day, often until dusk. The hempcreting itself is relatively quick, the greatest time seems to be spent setting up the formwork. As time goes on I presume that will also quicken.