solar heating on its way - in September

Today I was working with Paul to make the walls of the building that should - god willing, and much later this year - have the solar panels on its roof and the pool machinery inside.

My role is builders' labourer - fetching the blocks, sometimes mixing the mortar, bringing the sand and cement down from where they are stored, cutting the concrete blocks to size. Paul does the skilful stuff - getting the blocks level, upright, at right angles - in fact all the real building work.

But this is what it looks like now:



The long wall at the front is now at its finished height (80cm). The solar panels will be angled back at 45 degrees to slope up to the other long wall, which when finished will be about two and a half meters high.

The building site is being inspected by the youngest grandson Isaac (asleep as usual, but he is only nine weeks old) with his mum, Jane. The walls you can see were just one day's work, and - as we also had to go down to the builders merchants to get more sand, more cement, and the timbers for the roof - it was really quite a good day. On the other hand I'm going to have to get yet more sand tomorrow (though we do probably have enough cement now).

By the end of the day the sun had come out and it was pretty hot, so I rather hope we've finally got to the end of this rather rainy patch we've had for the last week or so.