The grass over my head IV

Plumbing is one of the least exciting aspects of a house at the best of times. When your house only has an eight square metre bathroom and one sink, it’s hardly worth mentioning.  

So all that remains is the roof.

          A house’s weakest point is usually its roof. Not mine. Once I had the grass established, it would weigh anything up to three tonnes when saturated. Not even a Sumo-wind was going to be able to toss that. But, of course, at the moment my roof weighed ... nothing. Well, almost nothing, consisting as it did of a single sheet of rubber. Until I had the sods up there, I was going to remain worried ... even with insurance.

          But what was the best way of sodding a roof?

          Some people recommended buying soil and planting seeds. Carrying soil would be reasonably straightforward, but it had the decided disadvantage that it would again be at the whim of the weather. One good downpour before the new grass had established itself, and I could have a lovely green moat encircling my house.

          Others recommended buying ready-made turf strips. Although this would make for a quick job, it was an expensive option. There was also the question of whether normal turf would survive the harsh Central weather. Besides, I wanted my roof to blend in, and a rooftop bowling green simply didn’t seem like the right option.

           No other ideas were forthcoming. Though someone did suggest I simply retain an unembellished butynol roof. This idea was immediately rejected on the basis it was not only a strangely kinky concept, but was also no longer feasible since I’d only glued the edges, and the thought of an eternally flapping roof certainly didn’t inspire me.

          The best solution was also the most obvious one. Dig my own sods from somewhere close to the house, and carry them onto the roof. It would be hard physical labour. All-in-all 10 cubic metres of sods would need to be moved from their current location on the ground -where, in a ‘normal’ building-inspector kind of world, they would forever remain - onto a steeply-sloping roof six metres high at its peak. But local sods were not only guaranteed to blend in, but to thrive in the conditions.    

So I found a relatively flat (and apparently rock-free) expanse of grass behind the house (carrying stuff down is always easier than carrying stuff up), marked off 100 square metres, then gave it a crew-cut with, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, a pair of scissors.

Once complete, I stood in the centre of my property’s first, and probably last, clipped lawn and contemplated the task ahead. Ten Cubic Metres of sods. It was enough for a tennis court or three cricket pitches. Ten Cubic Metres of sods raised to my roof. Raising the Titanic would be a cake-walk in comparison. Sodding my roof would be a feat of engineering equalling that of the Pharaohs building the Grass Pyramids of Cheops. They at least had gangs of slaves ...

          Slaves ...

          What I needed was my own chain gang of sod-raising slaves!

          Unfortunately, private slavery had been outlawed, and the purveyors of public slavery were unwilling to assist. The Department of Conservation failed to see the ecological merits of my grass roof, while the Department of Corrections couldn’t fail to see the security de-merits of my property. The Department of Commerce claimed slavery was none of their business. While the Department of Social Welfare claimed slavery no longer existed, though they’d be happy to send me a copy of their Compulsory Unpaid Labour Discussion Paper. The Department of Maori Affairs wanted to know if I was using their land. While the Department of State Owned Enterprises tried to sell me some of their land, along with two power stations, TVNZ, Mount Ruapehu and the National Archives. And, lastly, the Department of the Interior, citing demarcation issues, claimed they could only sod inside my house, otherwise they’d risk upsetting the Department of the Exterior.

          So, no slaves. Abraham Lincoln has a lot to answer for. I’m sure if he’d been a New Zealander, he’d have been a North Islander. But I did have friends. And what good are friends if they can’t occasionally be used for hard manual labour with no other reward than the sheer satisfaction of knowing they’d helped out a friend in desperate need?

It would be just like the “good old days” when everyone clubbed together to build each other’s house. Just like the Amish or the Seventh Day Adventists (whom I’d once witnessed converting a disused section into a church, complete with landscaping, in a single weekend). Though our efforts would more likely resemble the Seven Dwarfs, and our song probably wouldn’t so much be “hi-ho, hi-ho” as “oh-no, oh-no”.

          The call went out. Get out your gumboots, and BYO shovel for the mother of all dirty weekends.  (Don’t you just hate people who say things like that? But instead of raising hell, Cain or even hats, we’d be raising sods ... and a few glasses when it was all over.

          Saturday morning was fine and warm ... hot, in fact, and as the sun sizzled away the morning mist, the first willing workers started arriving, armed with shovels and enthusiasm aplenty. By mid-morning we’d attained our full complement of ten, and after some initial discussion about the optimum approach, we began the excavations. Based on my own complex formula (otherwise known as guesswork), I estimated the roof should be completely grassed over by the end of the day ... all going well.

          Everything did go well. We quickly established co-operative combinations according to personal preferences and strengths, with a natural, efficient routine slowly emerging from the chaos. Ideally, we could have simply divided into rotating teams of diggers, bearers and stackers, maintaining the momentum throughout the day. But there were other considerations. For one, it was my roof, so I was anxious to oversee the most crucial part of the process - placing the sods, packing them together and filling any gaps with loose soil to maintain moisture and allow the sods to eventually knit together to form a single carpet of grass. For another, the distance from the excavation to our starting point along the front gutter required all ten of us in the chain, so the digging had to be alternated with spurts of carrying and stacking.

          We hadn’t reckoned on the toll such heat, combined with the heat-reflective capacities of the black butynol underfoot, would exact. Without frequent, spontaneous breaks for liquid refreshments and Minzion refresh-ment, we simply would have perished. Each hour would find us all sitting naked in the creek like living sponges soaking up the coolness.

Having no neighbours has many advantages, not least of which is we can freely skinny-dip in the creek, or lie on the rocks like fur-less sunbathing seals. Actually, there’s nothing stopping me from being a full-time nudist here except the weather and my personal predilections. But I have no desire to extend the realm of my pagan nakedness, or to invite nudity into my house ... and especially not my kitchen. So, although I don’t believe in restricting such natural pursuits to the confines of naturist retreats, I’m not about to join a Sunseekers Club because I just don’t want to sit where other naked people have sat, or to eat lunch opposite someone drooping chest hairs in his soup.

          So, despite our best endeavours, the encroaching evening found us all exhausted and dirty, but with only the front half completed. As we relaxed in the creek, letting sore muscles unwind and the heat dissipate from our naked bodies, the sense of anti-climax was almost palpable. Despite being extremely grateful for their charitable efforts, I couldn’t hide my vague sense of disappointment. Was that all we were capable of - a miserable half a roof? My mood was further undermined by a sudden grim revelation - it had taken 10 people an entire day to do one side, so how long would it take for me to finish the other half - alone.

          Yet, just as I’d under-estimated the amount of work involved, I soon discovered I’d also under-estimated the commitment of my friends to finish the job. Where I had assumed a day’s work was a sufficient price to ask, everyone else had assumed they were there for the duration (or at least the rest of weekend). Tomorrow we would finish the job. Together. Though I was jubilant, half-heartedly trying to prod our lazy companionship into party mode, exhaustion quickly claimed us all and a warm silence descended over my half-grassed crowded house.

          Sunday arrived, fresh and new. We were all weary, tired, but optimistic. Today we were an experienced sodding team. Today we would finish. Because we were now doing the closer side, there was suddenly enough of us to maintain a constant flow of sods throughout the day. With three people digging, five carrying and two stacking, the sod-level progressed perceptibly faster, racing the shadows towards the apex as the sun slipped across the sky.

Despite the continuing heat and extended sodden pauses, the sudden rocky ground and broken shovels, the army of sods marched onwards. Until, finally, the last sod was levered from the ground, lifted, passing through nine grimy pairs of Sherpa hands as it scaled the lawn Everest, reaching the summit as the exhausted sun sank beneath golden poplar sheets. And as we gathered at the apex, it was wedged into place with a final, whooping flourish.

          I would have ended the day there, contentedly exhausted, but the sod-raisers had other plans. The job was, they insisted, still unfinished. There were gutters to complete, gutters which would probably take an entire day alone, but only a few minutes together. It was no use arguing, so we unrolled the coil of Novaflow pipe (ridged plastic pipe with drainage holes), laid it out in the gutters and with a conveyor belt of buckets, covered it with local river gravel.

          I had a grass roof!

          We adjourned to the weir and sat in the water drinking champagne as the day’s heat gently dissipated.

          I had a grass roof!

          I was bubbling with elation and gratitude. And as I looked at the flotilla of beaming faces bobbing in the narrow lakelet, I realised the relationship between us had subtly altered during this weekend. We had undertaken a project together which, in everyday terms, had been a monumentous endeavour, and we had succeeded. We had shared each other’s lives for two days and been drawn closer, enrichened by the experience. The faces looking at me now were the faces of friends.

          As night descended on my grass roof for the first time, I lay in the darkness thinking about my house, my life. When I began this journey a lifetime ago, both were barely-imagined ideas, rough outlines filled with nothing but the potentialities of what each might become. Each step, each nail, each board, each moment, each thought, each adding to the whole, building on the past, building towards the future. Both had withstood the winds of change and the winters of discontent. Both were now much stronger for their passing.

          And I thought about Marion. When she’d left, I’d believed she’d taken all purpose with her. Taken meaning itself. But eventually I’d realised she had only taken her purpose, her meaning, because destinies can’t be coupled together to run on a single rail. The US juggernaut had been derailed, but that wasn’t the end of the line, simply the beginning of two separate, private journeys, on different tracks and travelling under our own steam.

          In the end, the different paths we’d chosen had merely been detours, because here we lay, together again, side-by-side. But now we were individuals with individual aspirations, separate lives. Lives we treasured. Lives of our own making. We were travelling on parallel paths, and could, if we chose, accompany each other on the next stage of the journey. All we had to do was hold out our hands.

The grass over my head III

Before I could consider plumbing, I needed a sufficient, guaranteed water supply. Until now I’d been filling bottles of water from the small tanks at the shed for drinking and cooking, and washing myself and my clothes in the Minzion.

Although my building permit had specified a 100 square metre water catchment area and a 2000 gallon tank, I was seriously considering alternative arrangements. After all, things had changed dramatically since then. For a start, I was now living by myself, thereby reducing my requirements by half ... or should that be a third, considering I still, theoretically, had to allow for that extra imaginary water consumer? I had also rejected the notion of having a flush toilet, thereby further reducing my theoretical requirements by another substantial amount ... though that unwanted invader would probably still find some ingenious way of consuming his/her quota. And above all, I had in the duration become an “existing house”. Or at least that was my interpretation of the circumstances.

          The first issue - living alone - wasn’t such an influential one, because I was hopeful it would only be a temporary state of affairs. I had no intention of becoming a total recluse or to start some hermitic religious order consisting entirely of just me. So I wanted to ensure my water supply was more than adequate for any number of permanent residents or guests.

Several locals I knew existed solely on rainwater, and although they managed to maintain a constant supply for most of the year, during longer dry spells they often needed the fire brigade to supplement their supply. Of course they also had a flush toilet and weren’t unduly concerned with issues of water conservation, so it wasn’t an entirely appropriate comparison, But it did provide a minimum ball-park figure of 1000 gallons. If I wanted to be guaranteed of an all-year consistent supply, allowing for extra occupants and a fire-fighting reserve, a capacity of 2000 gallons would, after all, be ideal.

          The second issue - a non-flush toilet - made a greater impact. In fact, the flushing toilet has had a huge, and largely negative, impact on the entire planet. Divested of responsibility for their own waste, flushers are largely able to ignore the consequences of their actions, allowing vast quantities of valuable nutrients to be washed into the sea instead of being returned to the soil, causing water pollution on the one hand, and forcing farmers into fertiliser dependency on the other.

It’s just another brick in the wall separating civilisation from nature. We have demonised dirt, embarking on an unholy germicidal jihad which renders our homes unfit for human habitation. We live our grand illusion, confusing disguising with destroying, because shitting, even when it’s into foaming blue ponds while surrounded by the scent of wildflowers, remains shitting. And despite our best efforts, germs remain ever-present and everywhere.

          Waitati has no sewerage system, and its proximity to the sea often excludes both septic tanks and longdrops. As a result, the traditional bucket system - urinating in the garden whenever possible (the smell of fermenting urine not being one of life’s sensory pleasures), and shitting in a bucket located in an outhouse - is often the only option. This not only gives you hands-on experience in waste management, but brings you face-to-face with the consequences of your lifestyle.

Although burying a bucket of smelly, soggy shit is by no means a joy (especially when you discover you’re trying to bury the shit in an already-occupied spot in the garden), it does bestow a certain sense of satisfaction (not to mention superiority) ... though by no means enough satisfaction for me to choose such a system when it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

Luckily, through my involvement with the Environment Centre, I soon discovered there were equally eco-friendly yet far less hands-on systems such as composting toilets. This, I decided, would be the ideal system for my house. No mess, no fuss, and every six months I could remove valuable compost for my garden. Of course, I wasn’t entirely convinced it would be such a hit with the building inspector, but I would face that problem when I came to it.

          The third issue - being an existing house - was also highly relevant to my decision-making. While I’d struggled on to complete my house, new building regulations had been introduced. Rigid building codes and regulations were abandoned in favour of a more flexible approach, an engineer’s certificate now all that was required to validate the structural integrity of any house design, no matter how alternative.

Although this new era of flexibility didn’t affect me directly, indirectly it created a grey area around my little project. Because although more flexible, the new regulations also required each building to be issued with a completion certificate before it was officially considered finished. But my house had been commenced under the old regulations, so I didn’t need a completion certificate. And since my house wasn’t waiting for any final stamp of approval, it must be, in theory at least, an existing house ... which seemed to make anything possible.

          So I consulted the building inspector, requesting a visit to discuss my legal plumbing obligations. The new model inspector was far more affable than the original model. Though he was also seemingly uncomfortable in my presence, spending his entire visit pacing the verandah and gazing across the creek as though longing for the freedom of the open plains. He was quite unperturbed by my plans to dig a semi-permanent long-drop. (My long-term aspirations for a composting toilet temporarily shelved when the mere mention of the word seemed to spark fanatical fires in his disbelieving eyes, like mentioning Salman Rushdie to an ayatollah.) Or my plans to substitute a septic tank for a simple grease-trap. Being so isolated, I could, he finally admitted, do almost anything I wanted.

That was all the encouragement I needed.

          As a new house, I’d been expected to build a water catchment and rely on rainwater. But as an existing house, I now felt free to explore other options ... options which catered to my needs rather than those of some mythical future occupant. The most obvious of these was to tap into my creek’s limitless supply. Simple. Waterpump + pipe = endless supply + no worries. But, of course, nothing’s ever that easy...         

          In the water catchment alternative, gravity was an accomplice, pulling water from the skies, down through the valleys between rolling corrugated hills, dripping, flowing, weeping circles in a dark concrete sea, ever down to splash in gleaming silver fountains, spiralling down, then away. Now it would be a relentless foe, begrudging every droplet dragged upwards, digging in its heels at every turn, wrapping each glistening rebel with heavy chains of friction.

In travelling from the creek up to a tank located high enough above the house to generate enough water pressure, the water would scale a height of approximately fifteen metres and cover a distance of eighty metres - which meant one hefty (ie expensive) pump was required. But it was, at least, possible

          Of far greater concern was the location. Most water-pumps are designed to push water not pull it, which meant it would be necessary to install it close to the creek. This created a power supply issue - requiring either a separate meterbox (hardly warranted by my meagre requirements), or a long extension cord (hardly a soothing proposition for an electro-phobe).

It was further complicated by the fact the Minzion is a deceptively placid companion. Normally it meanders merrily along - a constant, calming flow - it’s minor ebbs and flows providing a familiar, reassuring accompaniment to the cycles of life. Sometimes a little fuller, burying the poplars’ autumnal acne beneath a soft beard of silt. Sometimes a little deeper, dragging sodden, swollen bagpipe sheep down to play with the feasting orchestra of eels. Sometimes a little faster, gurgling and gargling detritus from muddy cavities beneath its stony teeth.

But it often bows to the river’s urgency, it’s level rising up to eight metres in mute acknowledgment of the Clutha’s dominion. And, occasionally, it tosses aside restraint altogether in an unexpectedly passionate outburst, overturning cosy familiarity in a single dramatic gesture and replacing it with renewed respect and a certain wariness.

          So, under normal circumstances, pumping water from the creek seemed like an inconvenient and expensive option, requiring a large pump, lots of pipe, and lots of carrying whenever the creek backed up or flash floods threatened.

But these weren’t normal circumstances, because instead of remaining in Millers Flat, I had moved to Dunedin to establish an Environment Centre.

It was entirely due to my involvement in the Centre, that I had met Roy Martin, a local inventor whose 1978 award-winning invention was, coincidentally, a self-propelled water-turbine. And it was entirely due to Roy’s generosity and enthusiasm (plus the fact he still had one of his original display models available) that I was able to consider installing one of his turbines in my creek. It would require no major installation, no electricity supply, minimal maintenance (and compared to modern pumps, its working components more closely resembled a bicycle than a car), and it would theoretically run forever. The only slight hitch would be to get it to the site.

          Because, despite all its obvious advantages, installing an old model had one minor disadvantage. The turbine consists of a two-metre long fibre-glass tube encasing a long shaft encircled with propeller blades (water races through the tube and spins the propellers to create enough power to operate a pump). The space age had still been in its infancy when this particular model had rolled out of Roy’s garage workshop, so no aluminium or plastic or carbon-fibre or even lightweight stainless steel was used in its construction, resulting in a huge, 240kg, unwieldy monster made of the finest quarter-inch steel.

If the Apollo rockets had been built like this they wouldn’t have made it to Detroit, let alone the moon. So it was guaranteed that the installation would be an adventure rivalling anything NASA had contemplated.

          Ideally, the turbine needed a metre fall over its 2m length, which automatically excluded placing it directly at the foot of my property. The fact the creek often remained backed up to this point for long periods of time, made this site even less desirable. So we’d have to take it around the corner to the first viable waterfall located where the creek narrowed to a few metres width.

The only problem was the path along my bank, slippery and steep at the best of times, wasn’t wide enough to accommodate both us and the turbine, while the opposite bank was impenetrably gorseous. But with the creek fortuitously backed-up, we (me, Marion, Tania and Gerardo - who was currently organising to export the turbines to Argentina, so was keen to not only have some installation experience, but also to make a promotional video) decided to ‘simply’ float the turbine to its final resting place aboard Gerardo’s dilapidated, slow-leaking dinghy.

          Balancing the turbine on the beached boat was accomplished with a minimum of fuss, and with two extra buoys (the empty butynol glue cans) tied to its side, just to be safe, the entire barge-like structure (looking like Free Willy’s worst nightmare) slid majestically down the muddy bank, wobbling once as it plunged into the creek. Then, when it seemed it would continue slipping beneath the dark water to be lost forever (or at least until the river receded), the buoys pulled on their reins, stalling its dive and slowly dragging its bow back to the placid surface. It was floating! But no sooner had it discovered its unexpected buoyancy than it also discovered an inconsolable imbalance, rolling onto its side as Gerardo and I leapt into the icy chest-deep water to try and prevent it from sinking.

          Fortunately it didn’t sink, and we eventually succeeded in floating it across to its final resting place. After building a minor dam, with sandbags and stones, to raise the level another few feet and funnel most of the water through the turbine, we gently lowered it into place ... and WHOOSHhhhhh the propellers began spinning madly!

But spinning propellers is one thing, pumping water up to the desired height was another. So we attached the end of the pipe, and though the propellers slowed considerably as it battled gravity to climb the pipe, the pump continued its relentless throb, sounding like a paddle-steamer convention.

When we followed the water’s progress upwards, finally arriving at the end of the pipe at the watertank, water was gushing out. Instead of the anticipated trickle, it was a torrent - 18,000 litres of water a day with enough pressure at the end of the hose to water my entire garden from a single point. My water ‘problem’ not only solved, but roundly thrashed, leaving me contemplating a future of meandering streams, fountains and waterfalls dotting my property, bringing lush, green life to every corner.

          Of course this is only the expurgated version of the great turbine saga. This is no place to detail the amount of pipe kinked in the process, or the number of holes created when Gerardo tried to ‘fix’ the kinked pipe. The effects of two months silty submergence on a water pump will also remain unspoken, and the ramifications of a Roy Martin turbine being dragged forty metres across rocks during a floody rage will be my secret. And it’s certainly not the place to contemplate lessons learnt, re-learnt or even unlearnt in the process, like “don’t stick anything into rotating objects”, especially not large wrenches in steel propellers. I’d believed, until that moment, that this was a universal rule, passed on by mothers everywhere ... but apparently it’s not a big hit in Argentina.

          I had water. A seemingly endless supply. It was about time I started using it.