During a long session, starting this morning at 10am, we assembled and
mortared all the pieces of the air tunnel together and finished about 2:30pm
with the lids going on!

We needed to mix two loads of mortar as we just ran out at the point of
having done the two rows of the walls. So all the remaining mortar, after
finished cementing down the concrete blocks on as lids, we spread it out all over the
whole Earth Tube Mixing Chamber and down the slope of the air tunnel to seal
and cover up the joints.

Earth-Tube-Tunell-Mortered-Together-2

Earth-Tube-Tunell-Mortered-Together-1

We will now let that all set for a couple of days to harden, then start
chucking in all the remaining hardcore and sandy soil around the area to
build up the levels again, ready for the foundation!

In the meantime, we start doing the Energy Modules!!

Today, it was the day of slicing many concrete blocks to create the air
tunnel from the Earth Tubes Mixing Chamber to the house! The jigsaw puzzle
was very complex with a three dimensional aspect to it, both sloping
downwards, curving around and also widening out too!!

There was at least 17 cuts made, using a 9inch diamond disc in a high
powered angle grinder machine.

Erth-tube-tunnel-blocks-cut-to-fit-1

Erth-tube-tunnel-blocks-cut-to-fit-2

Erth-tube-tunnel-blocks-cut-to-fit-3

We need to go and buy two more concrete blocks to complete the “lid” to the
tunnel. That’s tomorrow’s job along with mortaring all the pieces together
into one smooth solid unit!

After we have finished the sewage pipes (the filling in of their trenches),
we started with the adjustment to the Earth Tube Mixing Chamber and the Air
Supply Tunnel construction.

The foundation slab is all set and very nicely done!

Earth-tube-Concrete-finished

We managed to get the end segment off the chamber with only having to
destroy one of the concrete blocks. Now we are planning the procedure of
what blocks to go where and what angles to slice certain blocks to form the
downward slope of the tunnel exiting from the mixing chamber etc. etc.

On Monday, we will resume and finish this task and then fill in all the soil
and the remaining hardcore material back in around the chamber and tunnel
and compact it all to build it up to the required level for the main house’s
foundation etc.

This morning, we mixed up 3 bags of cement and 18 buckets of ballast and
poured the lot into the open area we had all stuttered and ready. This slab
will form the base for building the tunnel from the Earth Tube Mixing
Chamber to connect to the house, thus bringing in fresh air from under the
garage via the collection of large 6inch diameter tubes!

Earth-Tube-Tunnel-Concrete-laid

After lunch, we will smooth it off and cover with plastic sheeting to keep
it moist against the hot Sun and dry weather we got at the moment.

Today, while we waited for the building control inspector to visit us, we
got on with making adjustments to the Earth Tube Mixing Chamber. We had
originally constructed it several years ago and since then we had shifted
the whole house position 300mm closer to the Loke and also put it 100mm
deeper too! This meant that the chamber, constructed with solid concrete
blocks (430mm by 215mm by 100mm wide) was slightly out of position and we
decided to adjust the design of the chamber. Instead of the connecting
“Tunnel” coming out the side like a letter T, we have moved the connecting
tunnel to the end of the chamber, and will have it sweeping around and
coming into the correct position from the Loke side of the house, underneath
the main house foundation. We have it sloping down and curving around to
fully go under the 150mm thick foundation strip and arrive exactly in the
corner of the utility room.

All this is for our fresh air supply for the house, the concrete tunnel
measures 450 high by 250mm wide to allow the maximum flow of air with
minimal resistance.

Today’s job was to dig dirt and soil out for the route and insert in shuttering to form the foundation slab to build the tunnel upon.

Earthtube-tunnel-foundation-shuttering

Tomorrow, we will make up a quantity of strong concrete and pour it in and
while that is setting, we can get on with filling the sewage trenches.

Where the earth tubes get close to the house we have built a block work chamber to concentrate the air flow down too a smaller tunnel to pass under the foundations of the house. The chamber is 300mm below the path round the house.

Day 18 – Saturday 28th August

Continued to cover the earth tubes with more sand by moving the excess from the right of the L. But while compacting the fill a LARGE section of the back wall collapsed (It had not collapsed at all before even while digging out). It took hours to remove by hand.

We finished the day with all the sand distributed around ready for the heat pump pipes.

Day 1 – Sunday 29th August

Installing pipes for Heat pump.

Started the installation of the heat-pump pipes by labeling them 1-6 for future connections. Then bundled them up for the first 4.5m (to connect to the house) and attached them to the righthand earth tube. Started to lay them out in the trench and the rain came again!! Oh well we can watch the Grand Prix guilt free…

Day 16 – Thursday 26th August

Rained all day! But we did buy a submersible pump for the rainwater tank.

Day 17 – Friday 27th August

The rain yesterday caused a few small wall collapses and eroded some casms in the walls.

So after a little clean up we continued to place the last tubes. All tubes were inserted by luchtime.

We have decided to cover the joints in the corner with a piece of plastic as the rain water soak-away will be directly above these pipes and we don’t want water getting in. By the end of day we had covered all the pipes and compacted.

Day 15 – Wednesday 25th August

Another day in the pit. We thought we would be able to finish installing the tubes today. But soon after we started digging out the remaining sand a LARGE section of the pit wall collapsed.

This set us back a bit… Using the Kanga Kid (KK) we moved the collapsed material to the right of the trench and compacted it into a mound.

We could now continue to put tubes in… We actually managed only 2 tubes today before the rain came again.