Click here to view in your browser

Purely a Building Update

Dear Friends,
 
This is a building update – for those of you who like to be kept up to date with the Prayer House building…

When we last wrote, the walls and the ceilings had just been plastered. A couple of weeks later the electrician came. He installed the fuse box and tested all the connections to more than two hundred and fifty power sockets and light switches. We don’t have plugs or switches in the walls yet – that comes later – but we do have power in the building and light bulbs hanging from the ceilings that we can switch on and off via the fuse box.

For many months now we’ve been working our way towards finishing the floors – not with ceramic tiles or wood – that will happen next year, God willing – but covering the floors with a final layer of concrete. We had concrete floors before, but they were basic, rough and uneven, and over the past several months different contractors have installed pipes, ducts and cables on them.

There were 3 different contractors who came to work on the floors. The first was the insulation supplier, who put down insulation material to protect against sound and heat loss. This was mostly Styrofoam, 15cm in the basement and 5cm everywhere else.

Then the plumber came. He installed over 3km of underfloor heating pipes on the basement and ground floors, and radiator pipes on the top floor. These were laid on a reflective foil so that the heat moves upwards.

And finally, the concrete supplier came, who covered it all with concrete!

The concrete guys were amazing. They used a special “dry” concrete mix, made up of sand, cement and water – of course you need all of these(!) – plus a special liquid polymer and a handful of nylon fibres. They were mixed in exact quantities in a very expensive machine and pumped out via a pipe into the house. Then, using lasers, levels and another machine, the concrete was levelled out and smoothed. The result was almost perfect. These floors are hard, smooth and level. Each floor has an area of 192 sqm, and the level does not vary by more than 2 millimetres across the whole area. That’s pretty amazing in my book and I must confess I was quite impressed!

Completing the floors was a big step forward. Now they are dry and everything inside them is sealed. When you walk around the Prayer House, it’s beginning to feel like you’re in a normal building. It doesn’t feel like you’re standing in the middle of a building site anymore! Praise God!!

Some of you may have missed our video of the concrete going down which we posted on facebook - if so, click on the video link above.

This is what the floor looks like now...

Where Do We Go From Here ??

The weather is getting colder… and winter is approaching. We want to get as much done as possible this year and there are many different ways, we could go forward…

Outside

The first is to work on the OUTSIDE of the house, which hasn’t changed at all this year as our focus has been on the inside. There’s a small gap between the walls and the roof – and this is where birds fly in and out – and to close this gap we need to put Styrofoam and soffits on the outside of the building. It would be great to do this before winter, but it’s a big sum of money and the builder doesn’t know if he’ll have time to do it.

Nevertheless, we’ve decided to move towards this goal by ordering roller blinds for all the balcony doors and windows. These will be installed on the outside of the building in October. We have to do this BEFORE the builder does his part – so by doing this, it keeps the option open.

Central Heating

One thing we want is to get some central heating working in the building before winter. This means buying a boiler, a 300-litre hot water tank, and to finish off the plumbing. You might remember that we don’t have any sewerage connection here. We haven’t installed a cesspit yet, but the plumber says we don’t need a cesspit for the central heating, because it’s a closed system.

So, we’re definitely going to go for this, and we’ll meet the plumber next week to find out the costs. It’s also possible to have underfloor heating in the basement and on the ground floor, without having radiators on the top floor – we could put those in later. In preparation for this we’ll lay floor tiles in the boiler room, and we hope that the boiler and hot water tank will be installed at the end of October or early November.

More Work Inside

There are some very skilled workers here in Poland, but they get booked up way in advance, sometimes 6 months, some as much as a year. A couple of months ago we asked Daniel to come in November and December to build the ceilings on the top floor. These include the very high sloping ceilings in the Prayer Room. Daniel and his colleagues worked in our little house when we built it 3 years ago and they did a fantastic job. We’ve also asked him to prepare the walls and ceilings – more than 1500 square metres – ready for painting.

Another person we’ve scheduled to do some work is the tiler. Like Daniel, Wieslaw also worked on our little house. He lays tiles beautifully – a real perfectionist – but he gets booked up a year in advance. We’ve asked him to come in January to tile the lounge, dining room, kitchen and office (109 sqm). Cathy’s already chosen the tiles… and we hope to buy them in December.

So, you can see much is happening on many different fronts. There’s still a lot to do, but praise God we’ve seen some wonderful progress and step by step we’re seeing the Prayer House develop.

We started building just over 2 years ago, and this means we’ve just entered our 3rd year. Sometimes people ask us, “When will it be finished?”. And most of the time we reply, “We don’t know!”.

A lot of things happen in the bible on the 3rd day…

Jesus was raised from the dead on the 3rd day. He changed water into wine on the 3rd day. Queen Esther approached the King on the 3rd day, etc. So, if a day represents a year in the bible, as it often does, then our 3rd year could be very significant!

With love and blessings,
Mark and Cathy

For those who would like to partner with the Lord in building the Prayer House:

United Kingdom (£)
UK bank account for non-gift-aided donations:
Account holder: Fundacja Living Stones
Account no: 14740466
UK Sort-code: 23-14-70

For UK Tax-payers:
Please give through Stewardship (no account needed)
https://www.give.net/livingstones/oneoff

NEW EURO BANK ACCOUNT (€)
Account holder (Kontoname): Fundacja Living Stones
IBAN: DE32 7001 1110 6051 6403 39
SWIFT / BIC: DEKTDE7GXXX

For more options (incl. Paypal and Polish Zloty Account)
See the donate page on our website for the all the various possible options of ways to give: https://livingstones.com.pl/donate.html

Fundacja Living Stones
ul Boczna 4
32-600 Brzezinka Oświęcim
Poland
+48 519 433 612
f.livingstones@gmail.com
www.livingstones.com.pl

You are on this list because you have asked us to keep you up to date with what we are doing.
If you no longer want to receive these emails, then please unsubscribe below.