Building a new house

The forecast for last Friday was pretty poor, with named storm Babette threatening much of the country with flooding. It's important to put the relatively minor problems it brought to us into perspective: elsewhere in the UK a handful of people lost their lives in flooding incidents, and very many lost possessions and the use of their homes for months ahead. We woke early to the sound of rain drumming on the skylights, and outside Andy the stonemason arrived as daylight broke, quickly assessed the situation, and within 5 minutes left. I then discovered that in the dining area our apples and oranges were floating in the fruit bowl, with water dripping from the ceiling around a light fitting onto the dining room table, something that years ago happened to the same table in our Heaton Moor home when a tap washer failed in the bathroom above. Having searched out buckets and pans, and dropped the light fitting to provide an easy route for the water, I had to find some rectangular contai...

It's 6 months since my last post, and 16 months since we moved in. We always knew that we would have to wait a while for things like the stone boundary walls and the woodburning stove - a combination of waiting for much-in-demand craftspeople and supply delays. Now we have a few things happening again. We have gates - galvanised steel gates made locally and, in the case of the ones at the front of the house, hung on posts which will be enclosed by stone boundary walls. Closure fixings for the side gates are still to be fitted. We also have our woodburning stove, though it is still awaiting installation. We know that our underfloor heating is so efficient that we will probably never actually need to use the woodburner, but it will be there for occasional entertainment, as an additional focal point in the room and as possible back-up in case of a long power-cut. One concern we had last winter on the few days when the external temperature dropped significantly below zero was for the ...

At least a couple of years before we left the old house up the hill, I bought from a friend a 'new, other' greenhouse, in other words a collection of aluminium extrusions and pieces of glass which had never been assembled but which were not in their original packaging. I was assured that everything was present, and my checks suggested that the assurance was well based. When we left the house up the hill, the aluminium and glass went to our hired shipping container at a local garage and emerged a few weeks ago to experience further hazardous transportation to this new place. Following our return from our very pleasant campervan trip to Spain, it was time to try to put it up. At first I worked without instructions, as I couldn't find any markings to tell me the make or model. Drawing on my Meccano-dominated childhood experience, I managed to get most of the aluminium structure together before finding a faint label on a pack of glass, enabling me to exploit the wonders of the ...

Well, to be more exact (as we knew the container would fit in the space assigned) would we be able to crane the container from the lorry to its resting place, given that we knew that there was very little leeway underneath both a major branch of our TPO lime tree and the telephone cable installed to the front of the house from the telegraph pole across the road. This container is twenty feet long, eight feet wide and eight feet high. Steph arrived to help (and, it turned out, to talk to the lorry/crane driver in Welsh). The latter looked very dubious indeed about the job, but was relatively easily persuaded to give it a go. In the event, unsurprisingly, he turned out to be a master operator of the HIAB crane fitted behind the cab of the lorry. Admittedly, a short section of dead branch did part company with the tree, and the lifting chains had to be released from the jib and subsequently reattached to allow it to pass behind the telephone cable, but the whole job took only about twenty...

The second half of this week has been dedicated to finishing the blockwork for the walls at the front of the property, completing the laying and grouting of the granite cobbles, and, today, the laying and compacting of another fifteen tons of crushed stone to form the foundation for the final gravel surface, which will be reinforced by plastic 'crates' (of which more in a later post).  Stef and Graham enjoyed a spell of good weather and finished the block and sett work, also removing the majority of the stone and earth spoil which had accumulated. Today Lee and his assistant arrived after the delivery by Lelo of the crushed stone, bringing a drive-on roller. They worked throughout the day to remove the remaining spoil and level and compact the foundation surface for the front driveway and parking area. across the entrance: foundations for stone walls and the tarmac path which will have a resin bonded finish we will have an outside bed to plant - all the concrete blocks will be ...

A few more days' work, and we have the block foundations for what will be the stone walls at the front boundary. The design has changed slightly because of the difficulties of digging a foundation near to our enormous lime tree, so the planting bed which will be outside the main wall will now be rectangular rather than triangular - not a significant problem, as we shall still have easy access onto the strip of land behind the beech hedge where the storage container and greenhouse will go. We are now awaiting the delivery of the container and the completion of the gravel surface with the reinforcement grids which will protect the roots of the lime. one of the easier concrete deliveries reverse the wagon - fill the trench just need to get the speed right a quick wash-out job done meanwhile, more painstaking pointing of the setts the outer wall's inner skin advances skip to the construction of the inner wall foundation, showing the size of the exterior planting bed the outer stone...