Winter

It seems I've been away for a while. Many people visited over the holiday season (or were visited by us), and the winter snows have been regular enough to keep me away from the building site. I have pressed about 1/3 of the total estimated 10,000 blocks needed for the shop project. These are sitting comfortably under a huge double layer tarp awaiting their turn to be stacked in the walls.

My good friend., Peter, gave me a hand pressing blocks while he was visiting around the shortest day of the year. In return for the physical help, I began to teach him how to drive a tractor (a must for everyone with a doctorate in chemical engineering).

Here is a picture of Peter at the wheelHe is rototilling the soil that I dug out of the foundation trench.

Peter also helped me make a small modification to the block press. We were having problems with the soil hanging up in the hopper (the big white cone on the top of the machine). To resolve this problem, I purchased a 12 volt industrial vibrator from Vibco (you can image the problems with searching for industrial vibrators on Google). The little orange machine, shown in the following picture right above the wheel on the frame of the press, shakes the hopper about 3000 times each minute, causing the soil to smoothly drop into the press. The result is less time spent poking at the dirt in the hopper with a long stick and more consistently sized blocks.