A lot of progress has been made on the equipment house for the pond. I was really hoping to post a photo with a completed roof but we had some very rainy weather that our contractor wanted to avoid. If he had not decided to skip one of the sunny days earlier in the week, I’m sure the shingles would have been on before the weekend. We did push for the roof to have the plywood on since we wanted to get the rotary drum filters into the equipment house.

We opted for a pyramid hip roof which provides excellent protection against strong winds. Our farm always seems to be a little on the windy side. On Friday we had some very strong gusts and one broke off a large limb on one of the trees in front of the house. Hip roofs are not that great for snow but that’s not really much of a problem here. 😂

I think the pyramid hip roof has an asian feel to it. Low profile, visible rafter edges. We considered leaving the edge of the rafters uncovered but thought it might look too unfinished and busy.

Wood panel was installed on three sides and the pond builder had to go buy a few samples of stain. I spent most of Friday evening painting and comparing sample panels. It was a difficult decision to make but I wanted something similar to buildings I saw in Kyoto. The wood buildings I saw were a little on the darker side.

Saturday was a rain day. Very disappointed that we couldn’t get any work done. However, Easter Sunday came with a lot of sunshine. Pond builder and pond builder’s son moved the two profi drums into the equipment house. The door opening is only 36 inches so the larger profi drum just squeaked through.

There is plenty of room in the equipment house for the profi drums and bakki showers. The bases for the profi drums will have to be built next. We’ll have a reinforced shelf for one bakki shower to feed into the pond from above the surface of the water… and the second bakki shower will be returned under the water. At least that’s the plan right now.

I spent my afternoon staining the house. The open wall will be covered with polycarbonate and reinforced with two V-shaped metal rods. The concrete will be painted black and all the roof parts will be black. I think the plan for the back door will be a sliding barn door again.

We have a little panel that needs to be created on the left side of the front face. We will be installing battens which might be stained the same color, or maybe even black. I plan to have some sort of wood onlay decoration placed between the battens. My friend will be cutting out some 10 inch sakura blossoms, and they will most like be stained black.

The cold rainy weather has not affected the vegetable garden too much. Most of my summer vegetables are living under the protection of deli containers or plastic drink bottles. I also have a number of seedlings still living indoors. My garden feels so organized right now!

So it was a very exciting weekend for us. Still lots of work to do but we’re getting closer to hooking up equipment!