All walls reached the 2 meter high level. Day and night animals keep an eye on our progress.

Slowly and in between rain showers we go on with block gluing. So far the rainy season does not bring as much as water as last year but we have some more weeks to go. And don't get me wrong, it's still a lot. 

We reached the two meters high level for all walls (load bearing as well as space/room deviding) now. 

Every other meter we bring in double rebar to strengthen the load bearing walls even more. So, yesterday we started to bring in the 2 meter level of rebar and started the preparations to make the lintels above future doors and windows. 

Some days we cannot work because of the rain or the blocks being to wet to glue. 

After a tropical rainshower we have to take out the hundreds of liters of water on the floor with floor squeegees. Last week I bought already the third one because at the concrete floor they wear out quickly. Some days we have to take out the rainwater three times a day and that's a bit boring and time waisting to be honest. 

The reason Thai build in a different way. They make first poles to carry the roof and after that fill up the structure with the walls. So, they can work 'dry' in the rainy season. 

This morning I bought 'half glass blocks'. At several places we bring them into the walls. At two places, right (living room wall) and left (bedroom wall) of the entrance, we bring them in two meters high to get some daylight effects in the rooms. 

So the coming weeks we hope to finish the second layer of rebar wall reinforcement and make the lintels. After that the load bearing walls have to go up till 3 meters high to be ready to start with the steel roof construction. 

During daytime we get our three dog inspectors on a regular base to check if we go on working. During the nights not only our cctv camera's but also some owls keep an eye on our progress. 

By the way, we installed a letterbox and I changed my main address in Thailand from Chiang Mai to our place in Surin. 

Frans Captijn

email:   pyramidhousethailand@gmail.com

Solar (street) lights and more for our Pyramid Retreat

September already again. After a, till half of August, rather 'dry' wet season monsoons are back again. These cause isolated heavy to very heavy rains in our area and, like last year, may cause flash floods and overflows near waterways and lowlands. Our passion fruit and bananas like the rain and are doing well.  

With the monsoons also electric power breaks are back. Sometimes a couple of times a week. We are happy all our structures have emergency lights for about eight hours and for several main functions of our site we have the generator.  

We start the generator after a power break of 10 minutes or more. 

Last two weeks because of the rain we had to slow down our building activities a bit. Still we have the load bearing walls and the inner walls all up till 1.6 meters high now. 

We have to start using scaffoldings to go on and higher up. We need to have a bit of patience to pick up the scaffoldings because at the moment again we cannot use the muddy road. 

Like it seems now we will get (and hope for this) a concrete road next year. So we have to deal with the regular 'lock down' situations. It is the way it is. 

Every meter up we reinforce the load bearing wall blocks with double rebar. The rebar for the 2 meter high level load bearing wall reinforcement and for the lintels to make is waiting.

We cleared our pond of an overflow of floating plants. Strange this year all the lotus flowers are gone. We think because of the many fishes that are in the pond. Only a waterlily is left. We are happy a Kingfisher, maybe the one we rescued last year, is back again at some days. 

Once we bought some solar floodlights of a not well known brand. They broke down after a year already. Again the lesson to pay the price for the decission to buy 'cheap stuff' : "Cheap is expensive". 

We changed them for Philips floodlights now and bought even two more of them and four street-lights of the same brand as well. Hopefully they last much longer. 

It's good to have them especially for orientation on and around our site during nightly power breaks. 

Frans Captijn

email:   pyramidhousethailand@gmail.com