solar tube research

7.5.2011

BUILDING NEWS

The scaffolding needed to pour the concrete roof arrived on Friday morning on a big truck. It is now sitting around the house on pallets waiting for someone to come and put it up. Once the truck had left Edd and I headed into Melbourne. Our plan was to visit the Skylight shop in Airport West and then go to the shop in Bayswater where our windows are being stored.

The skylight shop had a really good display of different sorts of solar tubes. They had set up various rooms from to be like normal house rooms and lit them with solar tubes through the roof. The staff really looked after us and gave us a piece of tube so that we know how big to make the holes through the concrete roof. There were different makes of tube to choose from but we ended up feeling like Al that the heavenly intelligence one would suit us best.

There are about five solar tubes in the house back passage so this was an important factor to find out about. The next job took us right across the city and back to the window people. Edd showed them Peters glass designs and they gave us the template to use for cutting out the corners of the big windows. They were said that it was no bother for them just to supply the rectangular pieces of glass.

OTHER NEWS

It is getting so dark in the evenings now, the light is almost all gone by six o’clock in the evening. It is colder too and the wether was bad enough for me to stay indoors long enough to get the accounts up to date. We are actually not as badly over budget with the building as we feared.

Edd is still working on the cow fence and spent today digging the old insulated cables out from under the ground so that he could re-use them under his new gates. They are needed to carry the electricity for the fence. We are still recycling old fence posts, which is help.

I have been working in the garden weeding and mulching along the orchard fence line. I have now almost done this area and so far the new citrus and avocado trees that I planted are doing OK. They need a lot of protection from the rabbits who are still as destructive as ever. The vegetables in the raised bed are doing best. They are covered by a net too so even flying perils are kept off. This has top be the way to go.