It has been the third day of work to try and get the Piggie Cage done. Wasn’t as productive this time as it started to rain and there wasn’t quite enough cut lumber; I ended up trying to attach welded wire on to the front…I don’t really have the right tools to work with it (except tin-snips), which made it a painful and prolonged process of fitting. I was grateful when it started to rain so that I had an excuse to stop. But we must soldier on for the Piggies!!
Here is the photo for the third day of construction…
Bad Weather and Union Trouble Has Delayed Construction of the Piggie Four Seasons Hotel ($1100 per night); Riots Are Breaking Out in Piggie-opolis and the Mayor Has Been Threatened!
The saw is going to have to come out again for the fourth day and hopefully the weather will allow further work to be done. The cage is starting to get heavier each day and it will be interesting to see if it is as “movable” as I would like, especially once the Piggies are in it.
It has started getting cold today; I suppose it is about 20C (from the usual 35-40) but it feels like it is below zero. My feet are cold, I’ve got to wear a wooly hat and the only way to keep warm is to move around. I can’t believe I actually am living in the Tropics.
With that aim in mind, I finally started on the new and improved, movable, self-feeding Guinea Pig Cage. The frame is made with 1″ Nargusta reduced from a 2″ by 4″ with a table saw. It is four feet by 10 feet and will be two floors. I haven’t decided wether I’m going to call it the MGM Grand, or the Bellagio, or Bel Campo, or maybe the Wild Orchid…
Side View of Future Piggie Five Star Accommodation, $900 per night!
We bought a 4-in-1 Paper Log Maker from Amazon to make paper bricks which will be used as insulation for the inside wall of our house. Right now, we are experimenting with different materials in order to find the best material combination for our purposes. Our first go just consisted of scrap bits of paper, cardboard and newspaper; we basically stuffed a 5 gallon bucket full of paper and filled it with water up to the top. After 24 hours, the paper was soft enough to be shredded coarsely by hand. On searching through the Internet, we found that some people actually purchased paper shredders for this purpose and put shredded paper into buckets of water. Our method is preferred because it doesn’t involve the need to purchase another piece of machinery. As an interesting aside, the main use of this contraption is to produce paper logs for burning. I have not found any one else trying to construct with it.
Paper Mashed Up by Paint Stirrer.
After 72 hours the paper was getting gummy and sticky. Next, we buzzed the paper with a paint stirrer for about 3-5 minutes to get a uniform paste of paper and water. The mixture was then packed into the brick log maker and then the handle was pushed down to squeeze water out of the bricks. We noted that the mechanism did not entirely squeeze all the water out of the bricks and it required the adequate drying time after to remove all the water. If you push the log-maker too hard down, the handles bend.
Brick Maker with Paper Mash.
We made our first 4 bricks about one week ago; so far, they are still drying. The weather down here in Toledo, Belize has been partially sunny but still interspersed with rains. Our aim is to make the paper bricks in the dry season here so that the bricks will dry faster in the hot-baking sun.
First 4 Paper Bricks.
In our next experiment, we will try more card-board (since this material is actually easier to find down here from all the Chinese grocery shops) and a bit of lime (calcium hydroxide) to act as a binder.
