Diary of a modern day pioneer couple

Upon James' brilliant idea that he was bored and needed to build something like a house, garage and stables, we sold our 100 acre farm between Goulburn and Marulan and bought a 200 acre farm between Gundaroo and Collector, just outside of Canberra. We are now living on the new farm in a caravan with no electricity, no sewerage and no running water! This is our story. James and Tracey

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Location: Gundaroo, New South Wales, Australia

Monday, October 22, 2007

Span this

As you can see from the photo above, we've been working on the pergola area out the back of the house. The spans just defy the imagination - span from left to right is almost 9 metres, the height is about six metres and the width is about 6 metres! This section of the house has been quite a challenge. It's hard to tell by the photo, but essentially all that is holding those beams up is pressure - and that's about it. Gravity is pushing the side rafters against each other and they in turn are holding up the middle beam. While putting up the third set of rafters, we discovered that the scaffolding was in the way so we had to move it. When we did this, one of the rafters collapsed (remembering that all that was holding it up was pressure) which caused the middle beam and one of the opposing rafters to shift and twist - disaster!! Took us about two hours to fix and reposition everything during which time the stress and scariness of it all decided to pour out of Tracey's eyes. But with a lot of patience from James and a lot of sniffles and snot from Tracey, we managed to get it fixed again.

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