3rd Posting - The Beginning of the Walls

Friday and Saturday, Lynn, Jerry and I started building walls. The work is fairly simple, but labor intensive! Filling and tamping, filling and tamping... After the bags are stapled shut they are placed on the wall and when a row is complete they have to all be tamped solidly flat, which virtually locks them into the adjacent bag. When the tamping is completed, two strands of 4-point barbed wire is run the entire distance of the row to 'hook' in the next row above. Tying down that barbed wire is probably the most dangerous part of the job! Of course we had to put in temporary frames for doors and later we'll do the same for windows. The door in the back of the room is for an eventual root cellar or tunnel into the hill for natural 'air-conditioning'. Not that A/C will be necessary with this construction method! You will also notice extra bags added in strategic places along the wall and corners. These are buttresses to add extra strength to the vertical position of the walls. The buttress on the back wall will actual be a bigger formation with benches all the way around.