Building a new house

It has been quite a week of weather, with NE Wales making the national news along with Manchester and central northern England as flooding followed two days of torrential rain (Tuesday and Wednesday) falling on already sodden fields. Nearby, a bridge over the River Clwyd between Trefnant and Tremeirchion, built in the mid 19th century, was swept away. Here on the hillside we were fine, benefiting from recently checked gullies and cleaned-out roof-valleys and gutters.  Yesterday we visited the plot, using the Landrover to negotiate the still rain-affected minor roads. This was the view through the windscreen just outside Gellifor. We were very surprised to discover that, in spite of a week of bad weather, Pat had been at work, and that most of our block and beam sub-floor is now in place. Elizabeth stands in her usual place near the ‘front door’, with views in turn from west, north, south-east and south-west (2). In other news, our preparations to move crawl forward. The shipping co...

After the completion of the footings and the installation of the internal sub-floor drains, we knew that work would stop for a Christmas break. Here we are now in mid-January, back in COVID lockdown, and having had some extremely wet weather with three days of snow. We visited the site one icy morning to find that the worst of the mud had been covered with some fine hardcore so for once we didn’t need our wellies. Today we dropped by and discovered that some deliveries had taken place. We now have the reinforced concrete beams for the block and beam floors, packs of wall insulation and some shallow concrete blocks. We shall have to see how long the builders’ break lasts.