2014 was an intense year with lots of hands on work. It was challenging and extremely fun to see the plans come out of the paper and the building of the natural house come to shape.

Hereś a general summary of the activities:

- Earthworks 1: access road to house site using pile of old constructiond debrie. We mannaged to clean the higher plateau of a 15-20 metric ton debrie from a previous demolition we inherited with the land into a smoother road access to the actual building site. The problem is definatley the sollution!

- Earthworks 2: house site preparation, with separation of clayish earth near site for wall building, digging of the near house pond, digging of pool site. We managed to store good adobe earth since the site has a magnifically clayish red soil. The poor amount of sands led us into looking for sharp river sands nearest to the site when preparing earth for wall building.

- Giant bamboo harvested in 2013 dry season intended for pilars and roof was poorly stored. It was also a big issue trying to imunize it, so we decided to cycle it into other structures. We were so lucky to have access to some Eucaliptus old grown trees that needed to be fallen near the site. So, in exchange to the service of removing the wooden material, we earned all the posts and rafters for the reciprocal frame, also aproximatly 60 sq.m. of 3 cm boards roughly cut with the chain saw. The work would be muuuch harder without the help of one skilled chainsaw operator, Maurão.

- 2.5 thousand adobe bricks made using the earth separated with the excavator, dark river sand (2:1) witch was inherited from the previous owner and was found when digging for the access with termite clay and palm sludge as aditives (we also experimented with cal on some of the bricks). For increased structural integrity we added roadside mowed straw (abundant and free for hauling after the rainny period) and wood chips with horse manure from a local horse farm.

- A french drain was dug around the house as moisture barrier specially under the superadobe walls for the bedrooms. This was the sector most succeptible to water. A 100 mm pipe with holes on bottom leading to light downslope covered with stones and small pebbles (brita), geocloth and than the wall. We ended up not making concrete base for those walls, only stabilized earth 10:1 with cement. The first row was painted on top with cement soup. The high clay content mixed with rock dust used for paving that was free for hauling near the site seemed extremely stable after pounded, giving us confidence that the walls will endure a long time if excess superficial water is diverted from its base.

- Superadobe was done with a high density polyetilene on a raschel net developed specifically for wall building that prevented the need for extra care in the finishing and plastering.

- We used arroxim rafters scavenged from a demolition free for the ahuling to do the ceiling with the eucaliptus plank boards sliced from the trees with the chainsaw. The idea is to put on a water resistent membrane and plant it to wild flowers and grasses.

- The adobes were layed using reclaimed wire that was inherited from the garbage and debrei cleaning of the site as reinforcement every 2 or 3 rows, since some of the not lad bearing walls are connected only to the wooden posts.

2015 season will start soon. Hope I can find a way to upload some pics.