Miles City, Montana Day 6

June 29, 2009 from chromasomatic.com

It’s Monday and it’s back to work. What a well deserved weekend break that was. Week one was tough. I met up with one of Josh Weiner’s friends on Saturday and he took me canoeing down the Yellowstone river and later we had a killer bbq with his family and friends. Thanks Scott, it was an awesome time.

So week two is starting off pretty good. On Saturday, some of the Earthship crew put the trusses up. Today I got to work on the roof all day. We decked the trusses with 5/8″ plywood and then installed the battery box (where the batteries that are charged by solar panels are stored), the vent box (windowed vents that let hot air escape that create a convection current that pulls cool air from the cool air ducts in the house), and the plumbing vent box (all exhaust for the house gets piped up through it). Tomorrow the vigas (shaved and sanded tree trunks) are going to be mounted to support the rest of the roof.

We had a bit of drama at the end of the day when one of the buttress column forms failed and came crashing down with a whole lot of concrete. A handful of crew came to help and some of us (Andrew and myself) documented this minor disaster.

Front view of the Earthship with trusses and roof deck installed