House Tomorrow

I am slogging through the slowest internet connection on the planet because I have to tell you about the straw-bale house going up tomorrow. Finally! Sort of perversely, the one-month anniversary of the earthquake is tomorrow. It all at once seems like a month is way too long to have taken to get to this point, and like it can't POSSIBLY have been a month already. But, here it is, at 3:34 tomorrow morning... Incidentally, in 1985, the last big earthquake here like this one (an 8.0 near Valparaiso), they had a 7.2 aftershock over a month after the initial shock. Here's hoping that doesn't happen again.

As I have mentioned before, an amazing friend rallied his architectural and engineering coworkers to help us rebuild one of the employee houses, which we are doing with straw bales. Tomorrow we are expecting almost 20 people to show up and help us raise the walls! Somehow even though I've always tried to reach out to people in need, it's still striking to a) be the one in need and b) have people reach out to us. Not only are they showing up, but they have arranged for their own housing (seeing as how we don't have any) and food. I am floored by the generosity of all of these people.

Despite the way it sounds, a straw bale house is not just a square fort made of straw bales stacked in line. In fact, it's a rather intricate procedure. First we had to make a solid foundation. Luckily the foundation of the original house was not damaged in the earthquake, so we were about to keep it. It had to be leveled out, and yesterday the guys finished pouring that cement. In a weird twist, I was doing some measuring around the foundation when I found an inscription from the original maestros:

Ok, blogger and my ridiculous internet connection are not agreeing with me posting a photo, so here's a link--

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3701524&l=8e9dbee3a4&id=795878287

The original foundation was laid 50 years ago to the date! So weird. It's a sign of some sort, but I can't quite figure out what... (maybe that our straw-bale house will be leveled by an earthquake in about 49 years and 11 months?)

Once the foundation is done, you have to set a wooden frame for the bales to go on. Under this frame, you must put some sort of waterproof barrier-- we used tar paper. The whole purpose of both of these is to prevent water from seeping in and ruining the core of your straw walls. A mirror of the bottom frame is made to lay on top of the straw bales once they are up. This helps compress the bales (making it more sturdy and fire retardant) and make an even surface for the roof. We finished both frames today.

Additionally, since you don't have a wood structure for the windows and doors to sit in, you have to create one for each window and door. This is what Nick and I have been up to all week, and we just finished the last frame today.

Tomorrow, at sunrise (don't cringe... the sun is rising at almost 8 now), we'll head back out to get everything started for the group that is coming. What we have to do is set all of the window and door frames on the bottom wood frame, put steel rods all around to spear the bales as they go up (thus making the house even more seismically stable), and then finally start loading up the bales. At some point during the day I have to run to the "nearby" town (35 mins) to get things for tomorrow night-- as a thank-you, we are having a lamb roast for everyone.

So that's our progress in a nutshell. I have LOTS of pictures already so as soon as we're back in Santiago, I will upload a step-by-step of the house.

Oh. Did I mention that we have to drive to Puerto Montt on Monday? For those us you not brushed-up on your Chilean geography, that's south, way south. Like, at least 12 hours south. We have to go pick up a ram... yeah, more on that later....... when does the fun stop?????