December 3rd

Wires, wires, wires...

Think I must have threaded around 600m of electrical cable of some description over the last week or so: 3x 2.5mm ring mains, 2x 1.5mm lighting circuits, satellite cable to 3 rooms, cat6 ethernet to two rooms, earth bonding cable, telephone cable, 6mm cooker cable, thermostat cables ...

All looking neat and tidy between the joists. 

Sparks Paul wired up the tails to the new consumer board. 

No holes allowed in the membrane so cable is taped on

And now the plasterboard can go on... signs of progress

Building Progress - November 14th

 Quite a bit happened outside at the end of Oct and beginning of this month.

'Staytey' gets roped into some raking.

The wood burner is installed. Mmmm... toasty

The walls get the 'battening' treatment and the floor goes down upstairs.

The battens on the exterior walls have 50mm of solid insulation behind.

 

The gang: Joc, Mike, JD and Dil rake the whole plot prior to seeding.

 Nearly done.

The grass seed goes down and some flowers find their way into the borders.

All the windows and door are fitted - this is the view from the bedroom window.

OMM 2013 - Howgills

This year, we clearly were not up to competing but went along to help out with some marshalling. The OMM was in the howgills in 98 were we had out best ever placing - 2nd overall, 1st Vets and 1st mixed team in the Short Score class. It was VERY wet and windy, with only 17% of the 'B' class making it through the weekend.

The weather was much fairer this year. Especially on the Saturday:
 

A sunny checkpoint for 'C', 'D', MS and SS classes. Saw hundreds of teams.

Windy and wet on Sunday on one of the Elite checkpoints. Saw 27 teams and sat in the tent for 6 hours.

October break

I used to call it half term, but when you're not teaching, it's just a break from the building.
Went to the Lakes for a few days before helping out at the OMM (this year in the Howgills).

Keswick, Derwentwater and Cat Bells from Latrigg.

 Autumn colours.

On one day we did Grisedale Tarn to White side on the Helvellyn ridge.

 Heading up the gill next to Seat Sandal

 Grisedale Tarn a bit further up

 Looking towards Grisedale from Dollywagon Pike

Somewhere near Lower Man on the way down

You can just see Grasmere in the distance

Another day we did something new by Ennerdale - over Caw Fell and down the Steeple Ridge. Uncanilly still and warm for October.

 

 Not a single ripple on Ennerdale Water.

 Plenty of mist and a plague of Crane-flies near Steeple.

 We managed a couple of longer runs: one up to Skiddaw House from Keswick and another over in the Caldbeck Fells - Carrock Fell being very mushy to get to.

 Skiddaw in the background

The track just below Skiddaw House.

October 15th

Major landmarks achieved in the last week, had a lot of help though:

Laying screed is a job for professionals, especially over undefloor heating.
46 square metres laid in around 3 hours.

At last ... a level, moisture free, warm floor.

Glad I didn't have to dig the trench for the cable to the pond. 

Glad I didn't have to dig the pond.

  Glad I didn't have to move the two-tonne slabs into place

5th October

More help

JD came round and got the old render off another part of the old house - it pretty much fell off as it had been put onto a previous smooth render. Not sure how we're going to get better adhesion when we get it all re-rendered.

October 3rd

Underfloor heating - what a great place to put your radiators!

Last couple of days have seen us starting to get the pipes down. The screed covering is booked to be laid on 12th October so we need to lay all pipes, get manifold hooked up, filled with water and pressure tested by then.

Here we've put down the insulation and upstands next to the wall. 

Starting the pipe runs - 150mm apart and not to go under the ktchen units, hence the gaps. The pipe is fixed onto a light steel mesh with standar zip ties. Hard work on the fingers tightening 300 of the blighters!

The underfloor radiator in the lounge. We needed two seperate pipe runs as each coil is only 100m

Next week Nigel (Mr Groundworks) will be in so we need get all remaining render of this part of the property and tidy up the garden a bit.

Mike gets going with 'Kango Hammer' on the render.

Joc burns the last of the rotten floor joists and roof timbers.

Dill adds the capping stones to her lovely gabion wall.

September 29th

Tanking... tanking... tanking

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! How I hate the tanking.

It's not so much hating doing the work, more hating spending time (and heaps of money) on something that I'm not convinced will work. I mean, how can sticky tape (it is pretty sticky I must admit) stop water seeping into the screed when it's laid?

Here is evidence of one thing that may stop it - under the floor membrane is a drainage system that will collect any condensates and drain them to outside. This vertical piece is a rodding point in case of crud build up and a blockage.

OK... it will work, It had better work!

Not much has happened outside recently - nearly all windows and door are in and next week Nigel (Mr groundworks) is coming to do the final levelling of the heaps of topsoil and stone spoil hanging around the place. Then we can seed the future lawns and get things a bit tidier outside.

A fair bit has happened in the lounge since I took this photo but it does show the door in the process being blocked up - this opening will become a half sized window cos we need all the light we can get into the lounge as it's in the middle of the house.

September 21st

Snake in Chimney

Today fitted the flue liner in the old chimney. This was only £18 per metre for a double layer stainless steel flexible liner (904/316 stainless). The insulation sleeves to wrap around it were £19 per metre and were made from rockwool within a light foil jacket.... work that one out?

It needed 4 people to fit it. 3 inside pushing the flue up and wrapping the insulation sleeves as it went and another one on top pulling the rope attached to the nose cone.

The suspending cowl was ace. 

One worm drive clip to attach the flue to the cowl and another to fix the cowl to the pot.

The register plate holds the 'stove pipe to flue connector' in place. 

 All finished off with an oak beam.

All we need now is the wood burner. Tricky decision as there are now loads to choose from. £1100 for the 'bees knees' ultra-efficient from Clearview with which we can duct the combustion air directly from outside... or the £299 cheap China import cast iron stove. You can buy a lot of logs for the price difference!

September 19th

 Wildlife

I once saw a Goshawk remarkably close at New Fancy - I wouldn't have known what it was if there hadn't been a 'twitcher' on hand to photograph and later point out the differences between it and buzzards on his amazing zoom-lensed camera. He'd been there for hours without seeing one and one miraculously appeared within minutes of me arriving. 

We see a lot of deer, particularly when out running or biking on the the more remote trails. We get a lot of visits from deer in the garden too - one just after Joc had planted out some new lettuce seedlings. We now have a deer proof veggie patch! Our new apple trees have been virtually nibbled to death and one night I startled a huge stag on the driveway as I was locking up for the night, but so far have only managed to get a fox and badger on the infra red webcam.

We've seen little of  the much maligned boar - mostly at twilight or night time. You do see a lot evidence of them though - generally in the form of grass verges that have been ploughed up by their strong snouts when looking for tasty morsals underneath.

Today however, we spotted a cheeky group of 6 in broad daylight at around 12 noon near the busy cycle centre.

They weren't the least bit nervous of us or the cars on the road. 

Apparently people insist on feeding them and petting them which is making them bolder.

I think they serve bacon butties in the cafe.

September 19th

Tanking.

The old walls of the original cottage (lounge and one wall of kit/diner) are rubble filled traditionally built stone walls around 450mm thick. The mortar has the consistency and stability of mud - don't think much lime went into it. These walls were built on larger foundation stones directly onto the sandy soil. Moisture rises up from the ground and gets into the stone walls - this will create damp patches in any plaster we put on the them. If the stones were larger and more even, we could perhaps have used silicone injection damp prevention but they are too small for this and the wall contains too many voids.

Our way round this is to use a membrane that you attach to the walls. This will have vertical timber battens laid over the top and then plasterboarded. Now... any moisture in the stone may condense on the membrane and run down to the ground. This water has to go somewhere or it'll build up and eventualy create pools of water on the floor. Therefore, we've placed drains that run along each of the walls which lead to outside. Any condensates we get will hopefully simply drain away. 

The membrane is fixed to the wall using 10mm plugs that have integral sticky rubber washers - these prevent water from behind the membrane coming through the hole you've made in it. The plugs have holes in them that later allow you to screw battens to the wall.

The theory of al this is fairly simple but in practice it's quite fiddly. All the plugs need to be in line at 600mm intervals. Finding stones that will take a 10mm hole is tricky. We've also got a lot of openings and several bits of wall that stick out into the room and a fireplace to tank around, which makes for a lot of folding and taping.