Its late here, hardley enough time to pound out a post, but I need to catch this blog up pon developments before I let that slide over to yet another day.

First of all, you learn a lot when you are actually doing it. For years I have been interested in green design. There is nothing in the world, however, like actually constructing a place, or trying to teach you how difficult the process actually is. There are so many areas ripe for green internvention. Some of them have obvious imrovements. Others present perplexing problems. This will be a real help with the work on K house begins.

For example, I am learning about PVC, and septic fields. Moving water, or sewage, requires pipes. Pipes are something that I thought little about prior to grappling with the surf shack. Now I realize, there are choices to be made. PVC, which is so toxic it has been pulled off the shelves in UK toys, or copper, which is a heavy metal which can lead to poisoning, lead, see copper, or various other matierals. PVC, it turns out, is only toxic when molded, but is generally considered safe when straight or not superheated. Interesting. well, what about the primer that holds the pipes together? Do I want that in my drinking water?

As I said, so many questions.

Paul and I held a design meeting this Monday to implement the breakthrough of turnign the design along the slope, to decrease the hieght over the ground, and decrease the depth of the house for airflow. This Paul immeditely translated into a simple and really strong design, with one corner of the shack completely open. Paul and Scott also persuaded me to add an indoor toilet. Frankly, a little discussion into which I was ambused by Vera, Pooneh, and Rebecca regarding the prosepct of relieving oneself on a box in the woods was all the prodding I needed to consider more fully a more gentile manner of waste disposal. Problem was, we now need a septic field. Paul and Scott presented a very simple system,a 3 foot pipe with a trap leading to a 50 gallon trash can fulled with water, then a PVC pipe out of the can with a cap and holes bored in that drains into a septic field. Its simple and effective.

Tonight, I had a talk with a one Bob Long, a plumber in Washington state and father of a colleague of mine. He was very helpful in talking to me about our plumbing system, and generously offered to sketch a system out over our floor plan. I will send him the plans tomorrow. In addition, he offered to ask a friend of his who specializes in septic tanks and field for the most basic approach possible. This is extremeley useful since, accourding to his daughter Ash, there are a lot of people in the area who build one room hunting cabins that they use seasonlly. Almost precisely our situation. This is reall wonderful.

And Paul wins the gold star for his work yesterday. I dont know how he did it, but he tracked down a teak seller in Costa Rica, EcoTimber I believe it is called. He then wrote an email explaining our situation, had it translated into spanish, and sent it on. he then began a long series of eamiles with thier sales representative. In short, I think we might, through Pauls efforts, have a commited supply of timber ready and to be deposited to our site before we evern leave. what a relief.

Other interesting things involve tinkering with showers and cisterns. Paul and I went over some ideas to build a resevoir in the drain pipe to provide water for showers and dish washing during the rainy season. This will be useful for imlementation into K house. I think we will need a much larger cistern though, and bury it. Although Guillermo and I discussed a resevoir off site, used for watering the grounds. So far, for the surf shack though, we are totally off the grid. I also saw some solar laterns, going for around 80 dollards which charge in 12 hours and burn for 3-7.

This is so exciting.