When we finished laying the first layer of earthbags for the cellar walls we felt like “that’s done … on to the 2nd layer” … turns out that wasn’t the case … instead more preparations.
First we had to do finish the first layer by putting in the retaining walls. That required leveling the soil (by adding more soil and tamping it) and then putting down a layer of gravel (and tamping it). It greatly enhanced our sense of the structure and how it is built into the hill. The retaining walls acts as a funnel which converges on the outer door.
Then it was time to finally prepare the 50 bricks to hold down the barbed wire (stay tuned to see what these do as we move up the walls) and then to put in the first layer of barbed wire. That went fairly smoothly.
With one level of the walls fully down we could not loger roll wheel barrows into the structure so we had to finally put down ramps over the two door frames.
The last task was to put in place the ventillaton pipes that would provide fresh, temperature moderated air into both rooms. This required positioning the pipes, creating supporting earth ramps that gently rise from the intake (built into the retaining walls) into the cellar rooms, covering the ramp with sand …
… and finally connecting and laying down the pipes.
now we are finally ready to get started with the second layer of earthbags.