Friday, September 2, 2011

Shower House UP dated

After hauling and stacking many locally collected rocks (all within a mile) in the heat of the Texas desert summer, the shower house walls are at a finished level. All in all, I estimate it took between 40 and 50 man and woman hours. Since this wall is a dry stack, it will one day fall down, maybe tomorrow, maybe in 300 years. I just hope it doesn't happen while I am showering. 
The shower now has privacy. The temporary water collection bucket makes it easy to distribute the used greywater to the trees that surround the shower house. 

I spent a day helping a new friend work on a concrete floor in his hand built strawbale house. Greg Donner is here for a year to work on his paintings in an inspiring and distraction free setting. I try to sit in on friends' projects when I can in order to pick up new skills and inspiration. Greg then talked me into going to the hot springs in our national park, which I never would have thought of as a summer option, but any temperature water is a respite in this unrelenting Texas summer . 

Good friends and fellow off gridders Kevin and Zoe stopped by for morning coffee and a tour of Don's Domeland. Kevin and Zoey are also coordinators for our recycling program in town and have been naturally living by example out here for many years.

2 comments:

Dani said...

Very cool dry stack wall!

How do you fill your shower bucket?

trevor.reichman said...

I fill the shower bag with rain water stored in my cistern, although there has been a serious drought here and so I've been topping off the cistern with water from town. The bucket just catches the used shower water.