Yeso Spraying

Holiday time is over and my daughter has returned to the UK so back to some serious work. Due to my inability to stay on my feet without breaking them, we have got a little behind with the work on the cave. We are due more visitors at the beginning of August, and I do not mean the odd one or two I mean a lot, mainly teenagers, who are all rock musicians and are doing a tour of France and Spain. Before you think we have taken leave of our senses, the group are being brought by a good friend of ours who is a Youth and Community Worker from the area where we used to live. One of his functions in life is too help young people to help themselves and explore every facet of who they can be. One of 'Joe's' project is a recording studio and providing the young people somewhere they can receive tuition, suport and advice. We believe in Joe's work 1000% and will support and assist where we are able. My other half's son Rick will be in this party of musicians.

Now given the volume of people, who will mainly be camping on the top of our mountain, and also given, that we only have one bathroom, my thoughts are.......this is going to get messy. Our great need was to get the additional living accommodation finished or somewhere near and at the very least get another toilet and handbasin functioning. This is where the panic set in as we knew that we had no way in hell of getting the place covered in yeso, in such a short space of time. Let alone get the tiling done and the bathroom fittments in. Our savious came in the guise of a spanish builder who, as it turned out also was a yeso sprayer. Now we had heard of this but for some reason had not been able to locate one, until now.

180 bags of special yeso were ordered for the job, this yeso is specially made to be used with the yeso spraying machine and it is called yeso de proyeccion. At 8.30am yesterday the yeso sprayer and his crew arrived to commence work.

This is the machine, it is quite large, and has a constant feed of water and yeso, which means that there is someone with the machine all of the time. It looks like a big blender, and the bags of yeso are poured into the top through a grille where it is mixed with water and then fed into the the long hoses.

This is a top view of the grille, the inside looks a bit like the inside of a twin tub washing machine with paddles constantly mixing the yeso and the water

This is the yeso sprayer in action. He does small sections at a time and keeps the nozzle of the hose close to the wall, which greatly minimizes the splash back effect.

He was very careful around the electrical sockets, although we have not connected the power yet to this area. He was also very careful around the door frames and window frames. We removed the window, shutters and doors before he began.

This is a view of the bathroom showing that the contours of the rock were still visisble but well covered.
This is a view of the larger bedroom showing the effect that was acheived.

More views of the bedrooms.

These are views of the cave lounge and where we have had to stregthen the ceiling at one point. The void that can be seen will be blocked up and we will hand yeso this area, when it is completed.

This final shot is the other end of the cave lounge which has a tunnel/passage way that leads into what will eventually be the office. The area to the right near the tunnel/passage way it where the TV etc will go we are going to dig a shelf out to house the various other bits and pieces and then finish with yeso by hand.

We are delighted with the finish as the newer addition to the property has the same finish as the previously unrestored caves, so it all ties in very nicely. So there you have it Yeso spraying, not exactly cheap but we did have five rooms sprayed and it only took one day. Worked out at about €500 per room including materials.