Memvrani

Sunday 23 January 2011

The last week has been busy in the yard, and then it rained for three days.  We got to Lefkas on Friday morning and collected insulation and wood to start the outside of the shed.  We also went back to Lefkas on Friday evening to see Constantine, in the hope of finalising the plans for submission to the planning authority.

Apparently the planning authority has recently been a headless chicken, as the October elections streamlined the bureaucratic structure of the island by removing seven mayors of small districts and replacing them with one overall mayor based in Lefkas town.  As part of this process a separate bureaucracy which included the planning office has been dismantled, in order to bring it under the central mayoral umbrella.  Knowing this, Constantine hasn't been too busy with the plans because there was no point.  Now, though, it seems we have a green light again.

We arrived at the office at 7 pm and stayed until 11 pm - and didn't get anywhere near finished.  More to do next week.  The cob cottage is growing bigger in tiny, apparently unavoidable increments, and it looks lovely on the plans - whether we'll ever get it built is beginning to be a worry, though.

On Sunday it stopped raining, so we took the van load of insulation and membrane up to Goat Bottom to start on the back wall of the shed.

Greek note: The word for membrane is 'memvrani' - I find it curious that in translation, the word has changed by how it looks, not how it sounds.  In written Greek, 'v' looks like a 'b'.

The word for breathable (as in breathable membrane) is something like apneu-oosa (apologies Constantine, I probably got that wrong).  This is memorable because of the pneu - which makes sense of pneumonia, but why pneumatic?  Tyres don't breath, they just have air in them.

 The shed walls will be lined with silver foil, then stuffed with insulation, then covered with the memvrani, and then we'll nail up tongue and groove as an outer skin.

We had the winebox inners for some of the foil lining, and a big roll of cooking foil for when they ran out.  I was surprised how far they went - nine boxes yielded eighteen sheets, which filled about five of the wall sections.  This would've been a quick and easy job, if it hadn't been for my cheap Lidl staple gun: which would do about eight staples before jamming.  I would then spend five minutes opening it up, unjamming it, retrieving the staples from where they'd been flung by the spring loading, and start again.  Get to the top of a rickety ladder and it would jam again.  A fiddly job - thank goodness Dave wasn't trying to use it - it would've been flung into the brambles within minutes.

We used up the left-over insulation, some of the rockwool which we don't like but don't want to bin - surprisingly it did most of the back wall, with only a few bits of the left over polyester to finish off.  So the back wall is insulated and we haven't even opened the two new packets. 

After the insulation we installed the membrane, and stood back, it looks remarkably like a proper building, clad in its waterproof skin.  One wall ready for tongue and groove.

We rounded off the afternoon by walking about a bit.  Here's a close up of a little bit of our land.  The rain must have brought up the moss.  I know it's not very good grazing, but isn't it georgeous?

[Note to Mum: If you double-click any picture it should enlarge to full screen.  You can then use the 'back' button (top left corner of screen) to close it again.]

And I took this picture for Dave - he is fascinated by these 'pitcher plants' - they are carnivorous flytraps.  The fly walks inside and falls down the slippery throat to drown in the bottom, where the plant digests it.