Courtyard cleared, despite the weather

The latter half of May and June to date have been unseasonably cold and wet. May, for example, was in the top quartile for rain days and the bottom quartile for average temperatures for the last century – so says the Met Office for the ‘Scotland East’ region. This coincided exactly with us hiring the digger and dumper from Ellon Timber to clear the spoil from our courtyard. This was initially for a week, but dragged out to three weeks. We got the area cleared back in May 2017 after it filled up with spoil from drains and foundations the previous year. It filled again, but more so, in September 2017, when we excavated the floors to lay the concrete slab.

Ric repaired the soil sieve and over the three weeks got the whole lot sieved and cleared, some 70 tonnes. The soil component got distributed over the ground south of the bothy, including our proto lawn and under our washing line. The stone and concrete joined the existing piles beside the bothy. He took the opportunity to put drain gullies in either side of the courtyard, in line with the ends of the east & west wings. He ran them into our existing surface water drainage pipe. We levelled up and knocked pegs into the ground to ensure a slight slope towards the drains and Ric roughly levelled it all up. He was a bit short of material, but when we have decided where we want paths to go, we can use the scrapings to finish the job. It is a big relief to get it cleared up and it is much easier to visualise what we might want to do with what is a big area.

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Our first door threshold!

Although it was not a priority, Ric found time to experiment with door thresholds, using the external door onto the courtyard from the kitchen area. Like all the other doors onto the courtyard, the opening is original, with quoins already in place. He measured up carefully and trimmed one of our 150mm thick lintels to door width + 50mm. He used the angle grinder, rotary hammer and medium breaker to chisel out grooves at the base of the door opening on both sides. He trimmed the ends of the sill to the width of the grooves, then simply slid the sill into place. The top of the sill is positioned at finished floor level, so the door frame can lap directly onto it. When we get round to it, we will concrete under the sill, then pack any remaining gap with dry sand/cement.

In doing this, we made our final and irreversible decision on floor thickness above the concrete slab! Originally, we were expecting to be pushed for height inside the steading, this is looking to be less of an issue. So we will abandon the idea of the (comparatively expensive) gypsum-based self-levelling screed, which can be as low as 40mm and go for the (comparatively cheap) standard sand/cement screed, minimum depth 65mm. We assumed 70mm, with 15mm for floor covering and the 100mm insulation – 185mm total. There should be a big cost saving for us because we will not need contractors to do the work. It will allow us to screed the floors at our own pace, in particular no penalty for creating the finished floor in sections.

Almost the last bit of our surface water drainage…

At the end of work last September, Ric extended the top of our north run of surface water drainage, past our new garage door opening and round the corner, to form the last gutter downpipe. He had thoughtfully included a socket to connect a linear drain across the front of our garage door opening and front door opening. We bought the drainage channels last year, bar a silt trap, which I ordered a week or two ago. As soon as the silt trap arrived, Ric dug out a shallow trench, laid a concrete foundation and installed the drainage channels. This leaves us in the position where we can go ahead and complete our driveway off the track into the garage door opening, including tying it in to the trackway. We will discuss it more once we are up there, we are still thinking about cobbling at least some of the area.

I had thought this was the end of the surface water drains, until Ric decided we would need to look at draining the courtyard – the pipework he put in last year is for gutter downpipes. He is, as usual, right.

Fixing minor flooding

Ric is in residence and is tackling several bits of unfinished business from last year, awaiting our arrival later in April. High in our thoughts was tackling a couple of areas of poor drainage. At Christmas, after a wet-ish early winter, we had standing pools of water at the south-west corner of our plot, slowly killing our hedging. This corner always has been marginal; immediately over the boundary into the next-door property, there is a patch which has had standing water on several of our visits. A second wet patch is at the north-west corner, immediately up from our driveway off the shared track. This has been a problem since we bought the property, is small, but is also killing the hedging.

After a wet winter, Ric confirmed that the flooding is a biggish deal, worse than at Christmas.

The other place that had standing water, when we bought the property, was the north-east corner, with water running off the field immediately to the north. As we suspected last year, this is no longer a problem, having squared up the boundary when we put our fence in. The whole east side is in fact slightly higher than the west side.

So Ric tackled what looked like the tougher nut to crack – the flooded south-west corner. He used the digger to cut an experimental trench, it promptly filled with water and he could not see what he was doing. He thought about if for a bit, then had a light bulb moment. He recalled that when scraping out the area where we plan build the drainage mound, he had dug out the top end of a field drain running downhill to the south. It was below a shallow ditch that ran alongside the extensive concrete ramp we inherited, now broken up. At the time, he had covered over the end of the drain and half-forgotten it. It was a quick job to dig a trench at right angles to this, parallel to our southern boundary, lay a couple of lengths of perforated pipe, tie them in to the field drain, cover in pea gravel and re-fill. This French drain started work immediately and after a day or so the flooding was no more. The field drain appears to be in excellent condition, with plenty of capacity.

Just about in the middle of the photo is the top end of the field drain that we dug out last year

This shows the junction of the perforated pipe and the field drain, before covering.

The junction of the perforated pipe and field drain has been covered with plastic.

The first of the pea gravel that completes the new French drain.

The north-west corner was a simpler job, that he had already prepared for. He ran a drain across our driveway last year, to intercept the field drains severed when our water supply went in. This continues to work very well. He had left a spare socket at the top end of this and had left it open. So he dug a short extension trench up to our boundary and tapped into the flooded area. With more perforated pipe and pea gravel, he got that fixed and re-filled.

We will wait until next winter and see if we have any further issues.

A Recap & some odds and ends

We were in Aberdeen over the Christmas and New Year period, mostly for social reasons, but with the intention of opening up two more windows in one of the steading walls.

Ric & Geoff had  stayed on for some time after we finished our September stint. We missed the last pour of concrete, in the east wing, and whilst they had made good progress on blockwork before we left, there had been plenty left to do. So our first visit was a chance to catch up on progress and check the state of the site.

Floor slab

We now have all our sub-floors in place. They had done as good a job of the east wing as they had on the rest. All are within a cm or so relative to each other and across each slab, apart from the garage floor which is 15cm higher and is the finished surface. We had not cut the expansion joints that the warrant requires us to do, for any continuous area over 30 square metres. Technically they are needed to provide a line of weakness in the event of contraction, to avoid random cracks across the slabs. However it had been raining whilst the slabs were laid and they were all under a cm or two of water when we arrived, so I expect there had been little scope in between for expansion/contraction. There were certainly no signs of any cracking, although the top few mm was starting to spall off in place, assisted by freeze & thaw. I expect we will cut the slots when we re-start work in April 2018.

Floor slabs

Blockwork
All our replacement walling has to have an inner course of standard concrete blocks laid on their sides i.e. 212mm wide. In the time they had available, Ric & Geoff got every opening that needed blockwork built up, mostly to lintel or sill height.

Having had misgivings about the whole issue of demolishing walling and rebuilding it, I was heartened with how well the blockwork tied in to the existing walling. For example Ric had started to sort out a particularly tricky piece of blockwork where the east wing joins the north wing on the courtyard side. We had removed a lot of granite because it was in poor condition and the adjacent door opening was a fairly shapeless 3-dimensional gap. He had cunningly tied in a column of blocks to form a neat internal corner that we can key quoin stones into, to form one edge of the door opening.

They had got two concrete structural lintels in place over the main bathroom window and had the padstones ready in several others.

They had embedded strips of stainless steel mesh into the blockwork at intervals, to tie into the new stonework. This means that when Ric is next up we can paint on the liquid DPM and get started on stonework, assuming we have our replacement sills and lintels. I am hoping that, once we can get the structural lintels on top of new granite, we can block out the wallheads ready for roof trusses separately from getting the outer, decorative granite lintels in place – if we need to. I expect that, if we want to go for getting roof trusses on by the end of the year, we will concentrate on building up the load-bearing walls at the expense of the gable-ends. Again, if we need to.

New/rebuilt walling

Wind

We had worried a little about the gales in November and the cold snap in December. The good news was that the only wind damage was to our builder’s fence panels, that were mostly horizontal, and to our electricity meter cupboard, where the door had completely blown off. The latter unsurprisingly had damaged hinges but I sort-of put it back together and leaned a solid lump of wood against it until we can do something more permanent – possibly some sort of strap that we can use to hold the door in place. As for the fence panels, we stood them up and used a couple of stout timber props tied into the panels to stop them blowing over again. I hope. We were particularly pleased that our shrub-guards netting survived the gales, having blown away twice over the least year!

All our shrub guards passed with flying colours! They survived the gales.

Drainage

It has rained quite a bit in the area over the last few months and we noted that…

1. Our flooding problem in the track and driveway area is completely fixed!
2. The short section of hedge on our north boundary right next to our track is still under water and we will want to run a short French drain to connect to the one Ric installed last year across the driveway.
3. The east boundary that had flooded around the time we put our fencing and hedging in, was not too bad, mainly because water is no longer running off the fields the other side of the fencing.
4. We will need the planned linear drain in front of our garage door, because water was coming of the track and ponding up. Not much, but it will make a big difference.
5. The mystery excavation under the boundary fence between ourselves and the holiday let had filled with water to 40cm below ground level. I expect that simply reflects the water table in the winter and explains why…
6. The bottom of the plot around out soakaway has some flooding, including a section of boundary hedging. We do need to look to a) do a bit of landscaping to make sure it does not pond up and b) see if we can help get surface water off site a bit quicker.
7. The concrete sump that our septic tank temporarily drains into had water up to 40cm below ground level.
8. A small point, but the drain cover is now in place over our concrete surface water tank, there is one less thing to fall into now. We did not get round to clearing the sludge out from the tank, I need to hire a bilge pump at some point.

So we are clearly not quite there yet, We need to do some minor drainage engineering. Given the high water table, we will be very interested in how our raised drainage mound performs as and when we get it in place.

Caravan and stove
The caravan was in good shape and did not look wind-damaged, but is starting to look green from algae. The drain cocks Ric has installed in the water supply meant the water heater was completely emptied and should be good to go next time we are in residence. The stove was installed in the caravan and Ric had had a test firing of it. The stove does look tiny, but we have high hopes for it.

It looks tiny, but is was highly recommended.

The stove pipe should be a good radiator.

The double-layer section o fpipe should preserve teh roof where it goes through!

Rodents
We have a bit of an issue with small furry mammals. They had got in to the caravan again and must have been desperately hungry. They had found the gauntlets that came with the stove, made of some sort of leather, and had consumed quite a large chunk of one of them. They had even come across a pair of ear defenders in the bothy that were not out of chewing range; They had eaten their way through much of the soft plastic – the foam soundproofing and the vinyl over the earpieces!

The bothy doors
When we built the bothy doors, two years ago, I made them a bit of a tight fit. By the time we got up this time around, the wet weather had made them expand a bit too much and we could no longer close them. I borrowed an electric plane from brother-in-law Bryan and took several mm off one door and painted the edge with preservative. It mostly sorted the problem, there is one point where it catches a little, I will see if it still a problem in the spring.

The tools for the job.

A satisfactory conclusion…

The weather
Having been up in the area off & on over 30-odd years, I got in the habit of expecting one or two falls of snow over Christmas/New Year. For whatever reason though (and yes, I do believe in man-made climate change), the last decent fall was way back in 2010.

• In 2013, when we first discovered the steading, the weather was chilly and variably windy and damp, but not cold enough to snow.
• In 2014, when we were putting up our fencing, it was well below zero, but still, dry and sunny, apart from one day of wind and sleet.
• In 2015, when we put the new doors on the bothy, it was chilly and damp.
• In 2016 when I dug out an inspection chamber do re-route some pipework, it was again chilly and damp.
• In 2017 we had the first significant fall of snow over the period, in seven years. We only got an inch or two, but it stayed for days, iced over and became quite a hazard. The combination of uneven ground, a capping of ice, melt-water and poor grip on my work boots meant that I landed on my bum several times a day and got quite adept at collapsing gracefully. Driving on the local back roads was exciting and the floor slabs became like skating rinks.
• I had left the dog’s water bowl outside and it had a good crust of ice on top. I lifted it out and observed an impressive array of ice crystals that had grown at angles down into the water.

Not much depth of snow, but it iced over and was lethal.

This layer of ice was on teh dogs drinking water bowl. These amazing ice crystals had grown down into the water!

Drain-related stuff

Performance of our surface water drains
The Aberdeen area had been very wet for the last month or so – a real test of our surface water drainage system. The good news is that the front of the property is now well drained. Diverting the ruptured field drains, damaged when our domestic water supply was installed, into our surface drainage system has worked.

To an extent the drain has transferred the problem from the top end of our property to the bottom. When we got on site, the area around our soakaway had some standing water and soft ground. Some of this could be surface water that could not run off because of our earth-moving. It went away whilst we were on site and had not returned when we left. Ric checked the inspection chamber very recently, after a couple of days of heavy rain, it had about 30cm water in it, he was comfortable with that. Related to this, our concrete sump at the bottom of the property (that used to drain an extensive concrete ramp) has the highest level of water in it that I have seen. We will check water levels at Christmas and decide what if anything needs to be done.

Drain cover for our concrete tank
Ric had dug out space to access the concrete tank, for cleaning and pumping. He laid the concrete around the entrance earlier and took the opportunity to fix a drain cover mounting in place.

The space under the manhole is open to the tank. We never got round to getting the sludge out of the tank, we will need to hire a pump to get it out through the manhole.

Designing our garage forecourt
With the floor slab in the garage, we are planning access from the trackway. The garage is at a lower level that the trackway and we want to limit the possibility of flooding. At the same time we need a large and level enough forecourt for two car-parking spaces and the turning area we need to provide for fire engines.

Our thoughts are to install shallow kerbing along the boundary edge of the trackway to limit run-off down towards the garage. We will run paving downwards to a low point in front of the garage and install a linear drain that extends from the garage door across to the front door area – 8 metres total. We will put a sediment trap in and drain it into our surface water system. Separately, Ric completed the last segment of surface drain during this visit, a gutter downpipe running just round the corner from the garage door into a spare socket we left for that purpose. He included the extra connection for the sediment trap/linear drain.

The last run of surface drain, for the furthest gutter downpipe

The drain runs from the downpipe into the socket we left in the main drain

Ric added an extra fitting for our linear drain that willrun from teh front door to the garage.

Porosity testing
Thinking about our raised drainage mound: I have a copy of ‘the’ report on how to do the drainage mound that will dispose of the effluent from our septic tank. It describes a falling-head percolation test for the sandy material we plan to use. The outcome is the ‘Grant time’ i.e. how long it takes to drain 500ml water through 200mm sand in a 110mm drain pipe. It must be between 15 seconds & 120 seconds and must relate to the ability of the ground under the mound to distribute the effluent (called the Long Term Acceptance Rate) – a more-porous mound over less-porous ground could allow seepage over ground. We will test for the LTAR at some point.

I checked our locally supplied builders sand, sharp sand and the quarry dust we used as blinding. All are way too slow to use – 420s, 290s and 220s respectively. We need to look at sourcing a fine gravel and a coarse sand that we can mix to get the characteristics we need.

The 110mm pipe has 20mm depth of the test material. The scourer sponge on top is to stop water disturbing the top layer as it is poured in. The bucket has a hol in it so water drains out of the gravel once it has flowed through.

Tidying loose ends

I was in Aberdeen for 8 working days near the start of July, to clear the decks before getting our floor slab laid in August/September.

Catching up with progress: Ric had got a lot done after we headed back south.

The monumental task of clearing the courtyard is well under way.

A large chunk of the courtyard cleared and levelled.

Almost all cleared!

The soil screener is remakably effective, separating concrete & stones from spoil.

This is our uncrushed concrete pile.

This is the hardcore that replaced much of our concrete pile.

In the background, the screened spoil is being re-distibuted.

 

Complete the gable-end foundation
Ric had time on his last visit to lay the missing foundation for the north-west gable-end wall. I was to do the blockwork and associated concreting. The foundation is rather complicated. It includes:

1. The foundation for the gable-end proper, to support the wall to one side of the future garage door. This is two leaves of blockwork, 50cm wide and some 2m long.
2. The foundation of the adjoining wall on the single storey section, also two leaves of blockwork. This is set back 22cm relative to the gable-end and is about 1m long
3. Tying this foundation into the Front door foundation, which is single leaf blockwork.
4. The back of the gable-end foundation tying into the internal foundation that is to bear the structural timberwork for the floor joists, roof trusses, stairs and garage wall.

I measured up from as many reference points as possible, marked out the lines to follow and got going. As usual with working below ground level, I used a 1:4 mortar with plasticiser. I got the first two courses in place and filled the section with two leaves with 1:8 weak concrete. Next day I did the two remaining courses, thickening the mortar to get the required height. Because I am not sure of the finished ground level, I left the outer leaf at the same height as the inner one, I will raise it later if needed. I ran the gable-end blockwork along the full run of the foundation, it may need trimming back when we sort out the garage door, depending on what size opening we need. Anyway, it was then straightforward to run the front door and internal foundation blockwork to meet the new blockwork. Two days of effort in total.

Two courses of blocks in place.

Up to full height, four courses of blocks.

On the left is the missing wall onteh north wing, running up to the front door. On the right is the gable-end foundation running up to the garage wall.

The gable-end foundation blockwork filled with weak concrete.

The north wing foundation filled as well.

Bridging the gap between the front door foundation blockwork and the new foundation.

The foundations all joined together frpm front door to garage door.

The internal foundationthat will support our garage wall, the roof and the stairs is also connected. It needs some reconstructive surgery itself, when we get round to floor slabs.

Run an air pipe for our woodburner into the steading
Our woodburner will be used during the colder months to 1) heat hot water and 2) power the underfloor heating, supplemented by the air-sourced heat pump.

The warrant specifies an 18kW Boru Carraig Mor double-sided stove model (i.e. has glass-faced doors both sides). We did say in our conversation with the architect that we would be interested in a double-sided stove, located between the kitchen/family room and the lounge/dining room, so that we could heat both directly. However, double-sided boiler stoves are a rarity, probably for good technical reasons. We have struggled to find good reviews of this model, it is not particularly efficient (73%) and Boru stoves in general do not seem to be well rated. We will pass on it and find a higher-efficiency, better rated model. A plus for it is that it puts 13kW into water and 4kW into the rooms. With our levels of insulation that is probably about the right ratio. The majority of boiler stoves put less into water and more into the room, so we will still be quite restricted in our choices.

Whatever we decide on, we need to provide it with a source of air from outside. We decided to run 110mm pipe down then under the north wall, up into the hardcore under the slab and run an upright through the slab. The outside upright will need a cover of some sort to keep water and animals out.

I could not do the whole job because of a big pile of spoil on the inside of the wall. I dug down on the outside, then under the wall to as much over 50cm length as possible, so that the pipe would stick out the other side when we got the inside excavated. I cast a 200mm slab of strong concrete under the wall, put 100mm concrete block each side and five sections of 100mm x 50mm lintel across the blocks. For the last three lintels, I rammed dry-ish mortar up to the base of the wall, I will sort out the first two from the other side of the wall later. We were concerned about water getting into the pipework, so I dug a channel downhill to the main drain running conveniently close by and filled it with pea gravel.

I used slotted drainage pipe for the horizontal under the wall, to stop water accumulating in the pipework, the rest is to be brown pipe. I filled up the area around the pipe to lintel level with pea gravel, then covered with spoil. Less than a day of effort in total.

Hole dug down and under the steading wall from the outside.

I broke through into the surface water drain, you can see the gravel.

The concrete pad is in place below the wall.

Gravel in place to allow water to soak back into teh surface water drain.

The blockwork and lintels went in on the pad, the slotted horizontal and brown upright pipes are in place, with gravel around teh upright and spoil elsewhere.

The hole backfilled with gravel and spoil to above lintel height.

And all levelled up to finished surface.

Cap the wall heads with mortar
Back around Easter time, I got one wall covered in a layer of 1:4 mortar. This is to protect the wall head from rain soaking down into the core of the wall and freeze/thaw damaging the structure. It also provides a flat surface to lay the blockwork that will raise our roof by the 40cm specified by the warrant – to give us enough headroom in both upper and lower floors. I even got some of the blockwork in place, but had to abandon work on it because of other priorities – demolishing the gable-end wall and filling the soakaway, as I recall.

On this visit, I needed to get the remaining wall heads protected with mortar, though I knew I would not have time for the blockwork, which we cannot complete anyway without all our lintels in place.

I started on the south wall of the north section (single-storey), then did the higher walls in the west, then east sections. It took seven builds of one- or two-bays of scaffolding to get the job done – much of the time taken was constructing and dismantling, relatively little was mixing and applying the mortar. The south wall was in poor-ish condition and needed some reconstruction before laying the mortar. The others were in much better condition and quicker to sort out.

I mixed a barrow of mortar at a time and used a large flexible builders bucket to get the mortar up the scaffolding. I then poured the mortar onto the wall heads and spread it using a bricklayers trowel. I got the mortar horizontal across and along the wall to within 5mm or so using a spirit level for close-up and a scaffolding plank for the overall levels, then moved on. The whole thing was quicker and easier than I expected. Two days effort in total.

At the start…

The north wing walls need quite a bit of patching up.

This is where the roof has shed water onto the wallhead and damaged the lime mortar.

Cement mortar laid with no more than 10mm variation in height.

Now moving to the west wing.

The west wing wallheads are in disctinctly better condition than the north wing walls.

This teh north win with blockwork on one side and the new capping on the other.

Weeding
This was not planned. From a full clean out in April, our fencing, hedging, orchard and shrubby area was inundated with perennial weeds – mostly sow & common thistles, cotton (Scots) thistles, nettles, grasses, goosegrass and docks. Most were getting ready to flower, but had not done so, so I figured they could be safely composted.

I hand weeded the areas with plants we wanted to keep – all the areas with weed membrane and woodchip mulch. I made several useful observations: 1) the woodchip mulch is starting to break down and compost, meaning weeds are starting to take root above the membrane, 2) grasses creep over the edges of the weed membrane and grow roots through into the soil below, 3) many of the thistles are finding the slits in the weed membrane, pulling them up is easy and brings large amounts of horizontal tap root with them and 4) the stones we use to hold the membrane in place accumulate enough soil to allow weed seeds to germinate.

The rest of the plot I could & did strim. Our strimmer, a Stihl FS-40, is a brilliant, very capable, piece of kit which takes 2mm line. It excites our dog wonderfully. It is too light for the mature docks and cotton thistles, I used a spade to slash these off at ground level. I do need to look around for a better-designed slashing tool.

The north run of hedging + weeds.

The east run of hedging + weeds.

The south-east corner was particularly overgrown.

The fields outside the fence were overgrown.

Field boundaries sorted!

Weeded on teh left side, unweeded on the right!

I broughtthis Acer up with me and planted it in place of a deceased schrub.

Our shrubby patch needed tidying up.

Our rochard-to-be was also getting drowned by weeds.

This Bramley has fruit on it!

One of my more impressive barrow-loads of weeds.

Adn teh compost heaps were full!

All looking much better.

This is one of our copper beech trees.

Spare time
Unusually, I finished ahead of schedule. I had a full day to do the odd jobs that had been lurking in the background. Amongst other things, I tidied the bothy and hung loads of hooks, to store shovels etc..

Hooks to hang most of our building tools, plus the strimmer.

It may not look so, but this has been majorly cleaned up!

Tidying up

Most of our concrete pile has gone, we have hardcore. Lots of it!

George eventually contacted us to say that he had found someone who would deliver crushed concrete for £8.50 per tonne and take away our waste. He arranged a day, arrived with his digger and over the day got 10 truckloads loaded. A sort of downside was that the crushed concrete was more compact than the broken concrete, so around 19 tonnes arrived for every 15 tonnes taken away. We still have a big pile of broken concrete.

So we have plenty of hardcore – 186 tonnes of it. My rough calculation is that we have around 240 square metres of hardcore to lay, to a minimum depth of 150mm = 36 cubic metres compacted. So the uncompacted volume will be 40+, a bit less than half our pile.

Taking the remaining pile of broken concrete and the large areas of hardstanding round the north and east sides of the steading building, I expect we have converted about half our concrete to hardcore.

Ric reckons the hardcore is good for the floor slab, but a bit coarse for dumping on the track. He did talk about it with George, who said that he could use a digger to lift the existing track surface, incorporate the hardcore and get it compacted. Our track is some 450m long, the section nearest the road and shared with West Byreleask Steading is in good condition, so we would need around 375m sorting out. If it is 3m wide, that is 1125 square metres. Adding 120mm hardcore would use 140 cubic metres, just about what we would have after a second exchange for crushed concrete. George thought it would take a couple of days to sort the 100m stretch of track that is used by George Senior (our neighbouring farmer) and which is getting rather rutted.

The trucks made a mess of the concrete on the hardstanding between the concrete and the driveway. I expect this will get worse as we get concrete mixers on site for the floor slabs.

Our concrete pile is a lot smaller than it was, but still disappointingly big.

However, this is what 186 tonnes of hardcore look like.

Landscaping

Disposing of the spoil that we have generated over the last two years has been a challenge. Most of it, Ric has screened. This is slow and boring, 30 tonnes or so per day, but very effective. Ric piled the separated stones/concrete ready for us to sort through. He put the topsoil to one side. Once he had leveled up the area leading to our raised drainage mound, and cleared the courtyard of rubble, he put a whole load of screened subsoil back into the courtyard and leveled that up to a safe distance below DPC level on the foundation blockwork.

In sorting the courtyard, he uncovered a run of salt-glazed clay pipes heading from the steading towards the concrete tank. There is a lateral running off part way down. It looks as though they may have connected to a similar pipe we uncovered when we dug out the door foundations last year, in which case we should find more when we scrape down the internal floor to below slab level.

He had cleared the loose material in the north leg of the steading, broke and removed the concrete and scraped & screened the cobbles just under the concrete. He ran out of time to excavate down to floor slab level.

The soil screener played a heroic role in the big tidy-up!

In the mid-ground was the foundations of a former wall.

This pipe headed to the concrete tank across the courtyard. One branch headed up to a doorway where we had uncovered more pipe. The other looks like it heads to the west wing.

Surface water drain just about complete: Having leveled up the courtyard , Ric jokingly said that it was larger than some building plots he has worked on. Then he dug into it to run the missing trenches up the east and west sides to the south-facing wall, ready for the downpipes that will drain the south-facing (single-storey) roof. He put junctions in, to get to the side walls, for downpipes for the east- and west-facing (2nd storey) sections of roof. He warned us that the pipes on the west side are shallow and will not bear vehicles crossing them – not likely to happen, anyway.

And that was it, apart from one missing link: Getting an extension to the north-west corner of the building for the very last downpipe. This needs to wait until we have dug up the track to divert one of our problem field drains and got the foundation for the demolished gable-end wall in place.

 

Unwelcome delays: The digger from Buchan Power Tools broke down twice, with burst hydraulic pipes. They were a bit iffy when the second one happened, but took the old one away and let us use a more-or-less brand new one – which was much better for what we wanted – lifting spoil into the dumper. I ordered materials from Ellon Timber to let Ric get on with something whilst he did not have the digger, they arrived way too late, minus a couple of essentials.

Ric just about ran out of diesel, arranged with George to fill the jerry cans and did not get them back for several days. Ric eventually cycled in to Ellon with two of our 5l cans and filled them, to let him get something done.

On the plus side, he was only rained off for a couple of hours. Generally he had sunny but cool weather.

Another unwanted drain: Just before he headed down to Cornwall, Ric dug out the foundationless area under the recently demolished gable end. He uncovered a glazed drain that runs at least 8m under the steading, probably much further down to the edge of our plot. It looks older than the steading, whilst the brick structure (that alerted Ric to a problem in the first place) was probably a more recent addition, to channel water into it when the silage pit was built. He is suggesting we could keep it as a drain, I doubt the architect would want that. Anyway, he dug out below the soft ground and laid a 200mm foundation slab with mesh. It butts up to the front door foundation but is a bit deeper. At least we know why the front door foundation flooded when we dug it out.

I still think this is where we heard running water when we first bought the property, it must still have been active. In which case, it may be the drain that the architect knew about and wanted us to divert. In which case the land drain we discovered under our foundations last year is a sort of unwelcome bonus.

This is the uncovered pipe, with a bit of tube in it to indicate where it runs.

Ric dug out soft ground to prepare teh new foundation for the gable-end.

He had time to lay the concrete and mesh. The rest will wait to next visit.

What next? We had not quite got as much done on our priorities, as we would have liked. I will aim to be back up for a week in July, whilst Jill is on holiday. I will do the blockwork for the new foundation and carry on with capping the walls.

Ric suggested I phone our youngest brother Geoff, to see if he could take a working break in September, to help get the floor slab laid – he had seen Geoff at work & felt he would make a good job of it. I phoned Geoff, he thought he could combine it with a holiday, in which case Ric would do another block of work, arriving a couple of weeks early to be sure that we got all the floors scraped down and cleared. That way, the two of us could barrow whilst Geoff finished the slab. Sounds like it might all be on to get a floor slab in this year. In which case roof trusses the following year would be a distant possibility.

Gable-ends & drains

More destruction

As agreed with the architect, we demolished the gable-end wall with no foundations at one end. It faces north, overlooking our driveway and the shared access track.

We put two bays of scaffolding, 2 tiers high, across the front, giving us a top platform just the right height to remove the top-most capping stones. I put boards at convenient levels to lug all but the largest stones down. I used the chain hoist and webbing straps for the really big ones. Smaller bits of stone I chucked off the side and periodically barrowed to a pile the other side of our driveway.

At the top of the wall, I made slow progress because the chain hoist was very slow to use, however the mortar broke apart easily – our pry-bar was more than equal to the job. As I worked down, the hoisting got quicker, but the mortar was progressively harder. I stopped once we were below wallhead height, I would have needed to use a breaker to carry on down and Ric could finish the job with the digger. I worked the wall back towards the west corner, allowing room for the garage door and quoin stones. I did clear the unsupported stonework on the east side right down to ground. It was overhanging part of our drains and at several points I used a length of rope to hold stones in place to stop it all collapsing.

I have no headfor heights, this is about my limit!

First we got the capping stones down and put to one side.

We used the chain hoist to get the nig stones down.

Slow old work, getting this far took more than a day.

I put the stones to one side – a pile of big ‘uns and a pile of little ‘uns.

The area over the excavated foundation more or less took itself down!foundations

This doen enough to let Ric get in with the digger.

And the job is about finished.

The soakaway: Our surface water soakaway needs to hold 16 cubic meters of rubble, to give around 4 cubic metres of free space. This is what the standard calculation says we need, to cope with our 200+ square metres of roof plus a steady flow from our diverted field drains. Our high water table meant it would be a 4m x 4m x 1.3m deep hole in the ground near our southern boundary, allowing for 30cm cover.

The hole was scarily large, we cleared suitable lumps of ready broken concrete from across the site but ran out, with what looked like a puny pile in one corner of the hole. We moved over to our big concrete pile and scavenged all the bits of easily-breakable hardstanding that George had piled up there. I did duty with the sledge hammer to break them to size. We could have used the hundreds of tonnes of large blocks of concrete, but it was much harder and more thankless work. We started with wheelbarrows to get the rubble to the soakaway but were relieved to get hold of the 1-tonne mini dumper truck – life immediately became a little more attractive. The hole was rather more than half-filled before we ran out of easy stuff to break. Ric took pity on us and lifted fresh hardstanding in the courtyard, which lasted us almost to the finish. We foraged further onto the concrete pile for the last three dumper-loads.

It was a miserable job, over four working days – with lighter work to break it up. Ric had worked in parallel on the drain to the soakaway and ran brown pipe into the middle of the rubble, 30cm below the final level. We spent a while getting a level surface to the rubble and it was done.

It was remarkably effective. Being somewhat jagged, the broken concrete locked together with plenty of open space, yet was firm enough to drive the loaded dumper onto. We ordered weed membrane to go on top, Ric will finish it off with subsoil and then topsoil after we have headed south.

We used upmost of our easily-breakable concrete.

Fortunately we had mechanical assistance.

Here is the surface water drain running into the soakaway.

Ready for geotextile & soil to cover.

Surface drains ‘getting there’: Ric dug the drain trench back up the plot from the soakaway, to the junction he had buried last year. He put an inspection chamber in, not far from the soakaway, so that we can monitor how the whole thing performs. He broke two holes into the big concrete tank, to run brown pipe downstream and upstream. We used pea gravel to lay and level the pipes, topped them with gravel and filled the trenches. A neat operation that took around a day, plus time to cement the drain pipes into the tank.

We have a near-complete surface water drain. We are missing two extensions into the courtyard and a bit that we cannot do until we divert our field drain.

The end of teh surface water drain.

The drain heads back upto an inspection chamber.

Then up to the big concrete tank.

Here is where it goes into the tank.

Easter Visit

We arrived on site a week after Ric had been obliged to head south for a fortnight. We agreed a shortlist of priorities for the following weeks: Start capping what is left of the walls with mortar and blockwork, to protect them from another winter of rain and ice; pull down the north-east gable-end wall (the one with half the foundations missing); finish the surface water drain including filling the soakaway with rubble; clean out the concrete tank; screen spoil, distribute it and level up the courtyard; prepare for the floor slab. Too much to do in the time we have, but we will see how we get on.

Caravan: We planned to stay in the caravan most of the time, with twice-a-week visits to Bucksburn. We brought a 3KW electric heater up with us, swapped our empty gas bottle and got hold of a third one. The first night we were freezing, we went to a supermarket the next day and bought second duvets as well as missing utensils. Once we mastered the art of putting the heating on at the right time, we were very comfortable and quickly benefited from the extra time not spent driving to and from Aberdeen. The water heater was wonderful, good hot showers, reasonable flow rates.

Mobile Coverage: I have changed my mobile service provider from EE to Tesco Mobile. I can usually get two bars of 4G in the caravan and because I can use all my data for tethering, I have better connectivity than in Bucksburn.

Jill is on Vodafone, which also has decent reception. This got tested out for real whilst we were there. Jill’s sister, Vicki, and family were on holiday in Iceland. One of them ended up in hospital and needed a scanned image of their EHIC card. We persuaded Jill’s mum, Lesley, to find the card then to get one of her friends to take the photograph and email it to us. Jill forwarded it using MMS to our niece, Lucy, at the hospital in Reykjavic. Job done. We can use our caravan in north-east Aberdeenshire as a global communications hub!

Misty: Our blue merle collie cross was suspicious for a day or so, but got to appreciate being able to get out of the cold and wet. She spent all day being excited by anything and everything going on. As last year, it took its toll – she got so exhausted she was reduced to lying in her basket to eat her food. We supplemented her diet with extra dog meat.

Caravan: We sorted the longstanding niggle about the caravan sloping to one side. We bought a 4-tonne bottle jack and I cut some plywood shims. I crawled underneath the caravan to where we had put the frame on concrete blocks last year, I jacked up the low side and pushed the shims in. It pushed the side up about 3cm and that was enough to sort out the tilt. I also greased the jacking points, which were getting quite rusty and difficult to turn.

Garden: It is a great time to be in the area, with spring springing. Jill had planted daffodils and snowdrops last year in what we had hoped was a safe area, they were in bloom.

Hedging: She gave all our hedging a good spring clean. She removed the tree tubes, cleared debris and weeds away and pruned them. A remarkably small number had died. Most were bursting into life and had not yet been cut back to tree-tube height by rabbits/hares. The latter may have plenty of other food at the moment, hopefully the hedging will get big enough to simply out-grow pests. We used a tray of hedging plants that Jill’s mum had been bringing on, to replace those that had not survived.

Orchard: We extended our future orchard in the south east corner. Jill had found another end-of-season bargain online and ordered four new bare-rooted fruit trees – apple ‘Falstaff’, apple ‘James Grieve’, apple ‘Ashmeads Kernel’ and plum ‘Victoria’. Driving up, we had stopped at Morrisons in Berwick-upon-Tweed and bought one each of cherry ‘Morello’ and cherry ‘Stella’. They are now safely planted.

Broken Glass: We did another sweep of the grounds removing broken glass that had surfaced since the last clean-up – we are still filling a bucket or two over the course of a year.

Japanese Knotweed: Had not broken the surface yet!

Rhubarb: We cropped it for the first time and stewed it!

We added a second lot of fruit trees to our orchard.

Raised drainage mound: We took time out from our more physical tasks to pin down where we would build the raised drainage mound that will take effluent from our septic tank and allow it to soak away through our otherwise not-very-permeable and high-water-table grounds. There was not a lot of choice, we found a 10m x 7m area where the concrete ramp had been, a safe distance from our boundaries and soakaway, avoiding our area of new fruit trees and the established ash/sycamore trees. Ric worked out that we could minimise the visual impact by flattening the area uphill of where the mound will be, by dumping screened spoil and levelling it. The mound will either line up with the levelled area, or will stick up a bit, but not much. What we are not sure about is whether it needs to be separated from the levelled area by a trench, or could just be an extension of it. I will check with the architect at some point.