The rainy season is here, and with all the construction projects going on in our construction tent, we decided to order a larger (wider, longer, taller) construction tent to give more space for both projects and storage. The new tent dimensions are 5m × 12m and 3m tall.
Protecting a mobile floating house from lightning strikes
Having added lightning rods to both of our non-floating houses on our land along with the appropriate binding and grounding, I have struggled to figure out how to similarly protect BaanLoiNaam, our floating house. This isn’t just an academic issue. One of our neighbors had their house burn down this year due to a lightning…
An interesting folding counter top in the kitchen of the floating house
The floating house is quite small, so we are thinking up all kinds of ways to reconfigure the space to keep it open and clean when we don’t need furniture cluttering things up, but still have the convenience of that furniture when we need it. So here is a nifty folding counter top in the…
Composting hacienda is finished and ready to begin using
Last time I posted about the composting hacienda, the roof was up and the walls were partially done. Since then, we have finished the walls and added rain gutters and 1200L of drums to collect the rain to use for keeping the compost appropriately damp. Here are some pictures from the construction: You can see…
Putting the takob trees for the living gazebo in the ground
Less than 2 weeks ago, I transplanted the takob trees into pots of our home made compost, and they have grown quite quickly. I’m a bit concerned that the leaves of these plants don’t look exactly like the takob tree leaves. I’m not sure if the baby leaves are noticeably different than the adult plant…
Main kitchen and kitchen in BaanLoiNaam finally taking shape
We finally had time to finish most of the shelves in the main kitchen recently: The part by the door has a clear roof for natural light: While the workers were working on the shelves in the kitchen, we went ahead and did the kitchen in BaanLoiNaam also: In particular, this idea of Praew’s was…
Transplanting the seedlings for the experimental living gazebo
After planting the “takob” seeds for the living gazebo project and seeing them sprout, I figured it was time to transplant them into bigger pots this weekend. Here are a few photos… Here were the seedlings before we transplanted them: I’m targeting 16 saplings, two for each corner of an octagonal gazebo. I decided to…
Planting the trees for an experimental living gazebo
I wrote recently about an inspiring video where they discussed growing a building from living trees rather than constructing it. So I decided to go ahead with a first experiment with the “takob” trees that grow quickly on our land. So we took some berries from the trees and planted them in a multiple section…
Growing a building from living trees
Yesterday, Praew showed me this fascinating video on YouTube: This architect uses living trees to grow the support structure for buildings over the course of several years. The crazy part is that the trees are alive for the lifetime of the building, so he needs to imagine how the building will evolve as the trees…
BaanRimNaam now has a fence to keep the dogs in
We finally got around to building a low fence around BaanRimNaam to keep the dogs in. We’ve been keeping the dogs inside the house at night and they go nuts playing in the morning (every morning). It will be really nice to be able to let them out and know they can’t run too far…