 | | Workers secure the roof of the ecoDepot |
Today I finally hit the roof. The ecoDepot had a visit from Andrew Stunnel MP, the Lib Dem front bench spokesperson for local government. Only a few days since my last visit but, as usual, the place is barely recognisable. It’s like seeing a nephew or niece once a year, sort of familiar but everything’s grown.  | | Andrew Stunnel MP (centre) |
It’s not just wooden frames and straw cladding now. The building is encased in scaffolding. Caterpillars tuck themselves away in a chrysalis for a few weeks while they undergo a costume change, strap on a couple of pairs of wings, undergo a paint job, grow a set of antlers or antenae [I can never remember which]. Same thing with the ecoDepot. Except for the antlers, of course. Downstairs we found a neat panel of lime rendering on one of the panels, a proposed finish coating for evaluation. It’s a really natural-looking surface, a rough warm chalk.  | | The building's cocoon |
Upstairs it’s party time, the largest bouncy castle I have ever seen, dozens of massive inflatable cushions. I suddenly remember the Italian for bouncy castle, ‘grande castello gonfiabilie per giocare’. Why should I know that, you might ask. Three years ago I produced the score for a television series called ‘Medici – Godfathers of the Renaissance’. Part of my job involved writing a series of songs, operatic arias, choral works, etc. With Italian lyrics. The music part was fine but the lyrics… In the end I surrounded myself with a collection of mafia songs, four collections of Italian love poetry, three dictionaries, two phrase books and a partridge in an albero di pera.  | | Grande castello gonfiabilie per giocare! |
Anyway, back to our bouncy castle. It takes a little while to work out what it’s for. The answer lies above our heads. The roof is no longer a thinly spaced set of glulam joists. A team of roofers are walking around carrying timber. The bouncy castle is for them in case they fall. Which brings an image from an opera... There is an opera, I forget which, where at the end the heroine kills herself by leaping from the battlements. There was a production in the UK where some smart Alec slid a trampoline into place shortly before the grande finale. The diva sings her last poignant lines and leaps to her death… only to reappear several times, to the bewilderment of the grieving audience.  | | Wool roof insulation |
As the photos show, the roof is insulated with wool. While the project has had to be very careful about what we can achieve with our budget (we don’t have bottomless pockets) we have done all we can to introduce environmentally friendly materials. We calculate that we have saved 1746 tonnes of CO2 emissions by doing this. Next week the cedar shingles will start going onto the roof of the ecoDepot. Also coming next week are the first of the photo-voltaic cells (solar panels). These will be going onto the building next to the ecoDepot. While I have so far concentrated on the ecoDepot office building, other buildings on the site are also contributing to the environmental sustainability of the site. More on that in the next blog. Christian, 7/7/06 | 
