The Boiling Wells roundhouse roof- eight months on.

Here's a couple of images of the repaired roundhouse roof, eight months after the last of the sedum had been laid. It's looking good! 

We had to put some black net around the back of the roof, as a fox or some other wildlife was getting up there and pulling up the sedum mat to look for food. The very dry summer last year also gave the roof a bit of a hard time and meant that a few buckets of water needed to be thrown over it. However, it has grown well to cover a lot of the timber terracing and hopefully next year will see it flourish again.

The Boiling Wells roundhouse roof, July 2013

The repaired roundhouse roof is looking great at the moment, so I thought it might be nice to put a picture here so that you can see how it turned out.

It's  now midsummer in this country and the sedum has started to grow to cover the wooden terracing on the roof. It is in flower, so lots of bees are visiting it. Given the tough times that bees are having at the moment, that's a happy sight  to see.

The rest of the site also looks good at the moment. Teams of volunteers have repaired a lot of the steps and cleared the paths. It's also shaping up to be a bumper crop year for fruit, even the fig tree has some great-looking figs on it.

Willow weaving and a little living sedum roof on the strawbale urinal roof at Boiling Wells,St Werburghs, Bristol

We had a bit of sedum mat left over from repairing the Boiling Wells roundhouse roof, which meant that the strawbale urinal building could also get a living roof ready for the 'Spring Celebration' on Saturday!

Just thought I'd post a few images of it here:

While Simon and the Tuesday woodshop crew were putting the finishing touches to this roof, in another part of the site a group of young people were busy weaving our willow hedge, to tidy it up ready for the summer. Most of them have been to Boiling Wells before and it's great to have them back again:

Finishing the roundhouse roof rebuild at Boiling Wells!

Today, the last of the sedum mat was fitted onto the roof of the roundhouse. Hurray!!

The terracing timbers still look very new, but hopefully their appearance will mellow at the same time as the sedum grows over them, so that eventually the whole roof will look more 'organic'. The terraces seem to have helped solve the problems of the ridiculously steep pitch that the roof has in places. The roof also doesn't look too regular and symmetrical because the timber frame isn't, which I like.

There are three different kinds of sedum in the mat. Here's a picture of some of it:

We left sedum off the compartments just below the windows, as rainwater running off them would probably wash away any growing medium and plants during heavy rains. Hopefully the gravel will baffle such water flow a bit.

Now to get on with the next bits to be done: sorting out the cordwood wall and fitting doors.

The cordwood wall was put in unseasoned. As it has seasoned the wood has, of course, shrunk so that some of the pieces can now be pulled out of the wall completely. A lot of it is also ash and plum, both timbers which woodworm is very partial to.

I'm planning on spraying the wood with borax solution to deter worm attack and then lime rendering around the pieces. It may take a while, but it will sort out the shrinkage problem and I prefer the look of the lime render to the cob, to be honest. Lime render is also tougher than cob, which can be scratched away with a fingernail in places. I'm not sure when it will be done, as a lot depends on funding and  the number of helpers available.

Watch this blog to see how things go...