A flying visit

We had planned a while ago to fly up to the steading over the late-May bank holiday. We wanted to meet up with our granite lintels and sills, however this was not to be. They were delayed and Ric headed south early because there was not a huge amount to do. We went ahead with our visit because we had bought the tickets and car parking, got the dog booked into kennels etc. It was a sound decision – we had four days of wall-to-wall sunshine, low winds and moderate temperatures – warmer and sunnier than down south.

We had a bit of a mare getting home, though – we got back 13 hours later than scheduled. We got to the airport just after 7pm for an 8.35 flight. At 8pm we were told it would be delayed until 10.20pm, then 11.20pm. Then, after 11pm, someone spotted that flightradar was showing the incoming flight, having circled over the airport for a while, heading back over Dundee. We knew it had landed in Glasgow before it was officially announced that a) it was going to refuel and then b) that it was too foggy to land in Aberdeen, so our flight was cancelled. We were near the front of the queue at the Menzies Aviation desk where one hapless individual had to sort out over 100 concerned passenger, so we had only an hour to wait to get sorted out. We had little choice – wait two days for the evening flight out from Aberdeen or transfer to Glasgow for the 7am flight to Luton. So we taxied across to Glasgow, arriving 5am, got our flight out, got a train from Luton to Gatwick, transferred from the south terminal to north then got a bus back to the long stay car park. We knew which zone we had parked in, but it took about 40 minutes to find the car, we had not noted down the row number. Anyway it was a fairly quick run home, getting back about 2.30pm.

Back to the steading: We decided at the get-go on two areas of work – tidying our hedging and carrying on with concrete blockwork.

Weeding & tidying

With spring well underway, our hedging needed weeding and tidying up. In fact we could usefully have run the strimmer over most of the garden, but I had taken it south last year so we could keep our allotment in order. I will take it back up in July.

Jill worked her way round the entire plot, pulling weeds, removing tree guards, removing dead stuff and replacing the guards. The failure rate is still reasonably low, even in the areas that flooded over the winter, probably less than 1 in 10 overall. Most plants have broken well clear of the tree tubes and are starting to bush out, but for whatever reason, we have patches where they are languishing – it may be the wrong species in the wrong place or just poor ground. We had problems over the winter with the wind blowing some of our tree netting over and the rabbits had chewed the bark off a couple of our fruit trees. We will look to do a proper inventory later in the year and buy a small batch of replacements. We will probably not do anything where one plant has failed, we will expect the others around it to fill up the gap.

Concrete Blockwork

Ric had left the mobile bay of scaffolding in the master bedroom area of the west wing, for us. I carried on from where Ric had left off – he had constructed the north gable-end as high as the sill for the upstairs window, then worked around the west wall getting blockwork up to old wallhead height. I blocked out a shortish length of original wall to new wallhead height (four courses of blockwork, 2 across the width of the wall, 2 along). I then worked on the south gable-end. This had been taken partly up to ground-floor lintel height last September. I built it up level to old wallhead height, going round each corner and tying it in to the original walls. I then extended just the gable-end upwards to the same height as Ric has with the north gable-end i.e. to sill level for the upper story window. We ran out of time & mortar to do more, with just two blocks not mortared into place. Looking at the gable-end that we have part-raised to new roof height, we will need a few more blocks to tie the gable-end in to the raised blockwork on either side wall – at worst we might need to use wall-ties.

We can carry on with the concrete blocks, getting the west wing gable-ends completed, raising the last piece of old wall to new wallhead height and blocking over the new piece of wall we finished in the east wing. Beyond that we need to get building the granite skin in front of the blockwork in the remainder of the east wing. And that needs us to have the lintels and sills.

Looking at my spreadsheet, we have bought 34 pallets of blocks to date: 2912 concrete blocks, with around 450 not yet used. Six pallets-worth of 10N ones went underground to get our foundations up to DPC. The rest have been 7N and above ground level. With the tops of two gable-ends to complete and nearly  half the wallheads still to raise, we might only need an additional 600 blocks – another 7 pallets! I doubt we will be sorry to see the end of them. In theory every single one of them will disappear from view.

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!

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.

The Festive season

Planning: We had done a little planning over the run up to Christmas. We were to be in Aberdeen for the best part of two weeks, but with little steading time.
I needed to correct the problem Building Standards pointed out with our foul drain – swapping a 90 degree bend with two 45 degree bends in our backdrop to the main bathroom inspection chamber. I bought the extra bits to take up with me.
We renewed our public liability insurance for the site.
I endeavoured to contact Stevenson & Kelly, who are based near Balmedie and manufacture roof trusses. This was not initially successful with my emails getting lost. Once I got a direct contact email address, just before Christmas, I was in.
On site:

We had put webbing straps over each end of the caravan, attached to large granite boulders, to stop the caravan blowing over. One strap had worked itself off. Both showed wear marks on the caravan skin where metal parts had rubbed against the metal skin of the caravan. Clearly we had had strong winds between September and Christmas. I put the missing strap back and wrapped padding around the metal parts to stop them rubbing directly.

I had had a roll of heavy duty windbreak netting delivered, to put along the southern boundary, which is where our strongest & most regular winds seem to come from. It was a perforated plastic mesh rather than netting, I used a pack of removable cable ties to fix it on.

I dug up the main bathroom inspection chamber, disconnected the backdrop and pulled the rodding point out from the chamber riser. Oddly enough, the two 45 degree bends fitted exactly where the 90 degree bend had been and I was able to slot it all back together, switching the junction that included the rodding point round 90- degrees so that it provided access down the backdrop rather than up the drain into the steading. No trimming to size needed. I did not have a spare riser, so I put the one with the rodding hole on top of the other one. We can swap it back out next year if needed. I took photos and emailed them to Building Standards. They did not reply before we left to go south, so I filled the trench up to the level of the second riser.

We had realised that we did not drain our water heater back in September and feared for it. Quite rightly. I put the water back on and noticed drops of water appearing underneath. I pulled the cover off but could not see where the water came from. I did track it down – a pinhole in the pipe that takes heated water out of the combustion chamber that carried a tiny jet of water over the wall of the cupboard where it ran down. I consulted with Ric and decided that there may be other leaks waiting to show themselves – we will buy a new heater.

Out daughter Mairi & boyfriend Ian were up and wanted to do something – I gave them breaking bars and got them to open up the missing window in the south-facing wall of our single-storey section.

I planted out our four bargain fruit trees bought last May – Egremont Russet apple, Worcester Pearmain apple, Bramley’s Seedling apple and Merryweather damson – in our orchard patch in the south-west corner of our plot, we had laid out the weed membrane last September. I used our roll of plastic mesh to make rabbit guards for the trees. We had to sort out the area of conifers we had planted on the north side of our plot last September. Most of the rabbit guards were leaning at angles, two had removed themselves and were on our concrete pile. It looked as though they had been wind-blasted. The conifers had suffered badly, but we patched up the guards and put extra stakes in to hold them down.

Right at the end we went over to see another couple who are converting a steading, the far side of Ellon. They are living in a caravan with their two children, have an L-shaped steading and 4.5 acres of field. They have a sheltered access from their caravan into a large shed/workshop. They will work with a builder to get the steading watertight, rather the way Ric is helping us out, then finish the rest themselves. It is good to know others who are in a very similar position to ourselves. They are even expected to build a raised drainage mound as well!

 

This is what the straps should look like.

This is what it looked like on arrival, it got fixed.

Heavy weight windbreak in place!

The leaky water heater.

Misty keeping a close eye on my efforts.

Backdrop corrected as per Building Standards.

Ian & Mairi at work opening the new window on the south wall.

Done, about 70 cm above expected floor level.

Weed membrane in place for our to-be-orchard.

And r first four fruit trees planted.

Our shrubby area on the north side of the plot.

Getting settled in

Our caravan was as we had left it and we quickly found the value in being able to shelter from rain showers. We assembled the cement mixer and got the level set up & calibrated.

Levelling up for drains: Before Ric arrived, we did an exercise checking levels in the steading itself. It is indeed very level, we will not have any steps up or down within the steading, despite the existing flooring being quite irregular. We checked the amount of slope down to the bottom of our plot, this is of particular interest to whether our plans for drains were going to work. We thought they would, just about. Once Ric was on site, we did it properly. We set up a datum point, with a stainless steel screw, in a corner of the bothy, near ground level. We established secondary datum points within the bothy, then levelled up the paths of the drainage. This confirmed that we could get away with 110mm pipe at 1/40 slope, keeping our inspections chambers at acceptable depths and allowing us a standard septic tank, but with an extension neck.

Checking the warrant plans: We spent most of a day going though the plans in great detail. We had a lot of questions we needed answers for. We drew up a list and agreed we would see if the architect could run through them with us.

Grounds: We had arranged delivery of  a second load of woodchip a couple of weeks beforehand and spent a happy day barrowing it round to the exposed weed membrane in our runs of hedging. Once again it ran out before we got everything covered over, we will need another load at some point. It is wonderful stuff, I recommend it to anyone. It keeps weeds down, it keeps the ground at a more even temperature and it looks presentable. It does not blow away even with gales. A quick inspection of the hedging revealed quite a low failure rate from all three of our plantings – less than 5%. Most of the plants which had put growing tips above the tops of the tree guards had been nibbled off by bunnies/hares, some were clearly less palatable and were growing happily.

Our areas of grass, nettles and other perennial weeds were rampant. The Japanese Knotweed was greatly reduced in area again and was at an early stage of growth. We planned to leave it until September to spray again, when it as full growth and is flowering.

Setting up the caravan: Ric was keen to get the caravan set up, so I acquired a 19kg bottle of propane gas and a variety of fittings to run a temporary water supply using 25mm blue pipe from our standpipe. Once he arrived, he spent a couple of evenings getting the water and a temporary electricity supply connected. He checked out the gas system and got the Morco gas water heater running. The only thing missing being the plumbed in toilet and water waste – these will wait on getting our foul drainage installed, a job for September.

Tools & equipment: A cursory inspection of the areas we need to dig foundations convinced us that we either hire a concrete breaker, or buy one. We hired one the previous year and it worked out about £70 for two weeks. We clearly had a lot of use for one and I had had an eye on the cheap Titan breaker that Screwfix sell. I knew someone who had bought it and swore by it. I bought it, for a penny under £150. We treated ourselves to another wheelbarrow, more shovels, a pickaxe, a fork and plenty of builders buckets.

Working with Aberdeenshire Building Standards: There are a limited number of points at which Building Standards need to inspect our work, the first being the drains. However, our architect advised us to keep records of everything we do, to demonstrate that we are following best practice and standards. So we will take loads of photos of our building activities and have them available if there is a dispute about what we have done.

Before the main event: The grand plan for July is foundations, for September it is drains. Once we had the digger, however, we wanted to open up some of the new doors/windows in our north wall – ‘slapping’ them, as they say…

So Ric pulled rubble out of the wall where our front door needs to be. We quickly twigged that it is immediately where our new water supply comes to the surface. We took care, but suspected that once we dig the foundation out, our water supply will fall into the trench.

We needed another new opening, for a window, where an old doorway had been blocked up. In true Aberdeenshire fashion, the mortar and blocks were just about indestructible. After a lot of trying, the entire column of blocks parted company with the granite either side and came out in one piece.

The third opening was another old door, that we had opened up last year, but it needed widening to break off the cement and brickwork that would otherwise be visible once it is converted to a window.

All an essential step on the way to re-building, but it once again made the steading look even more like a ruin!

More hedging and trees, also a Building Warrant

We were back in the area for a few days at the end of May, again making best use of the bank holiday. Over the last year or two we had been bringing on an array of shrubs and trees that were destined for the steading. Come the late-May bank holiday, we decided the time was right. So we drove up in the Ford Galaxy, jammed tight with potted trees and shrubs. We also saw an interesting addition to our water supply, I expect Cadger must have been back after we left in September. We think it is to help stop it freezing up…

Our own shrubs & trees: Being effectively container grown, they mostly had proper root balls, so our hedging technique was not suitable – we had to struggle with a spade, digging out as best we could in the usually stony ground – slow and dissatisfying.

Our conifers mostly went into a patch on our north side (that we had covered with weed membrane on a previous visit), not far from where the caravan is at present.

The trees we planted at 5m intervals along east and west boundaries, continuing from the ones we planted the previous November. We gave them proper tree stakes and rubber tree ties. Most needed two of the spiral tree tubes, or the solid plastic tubes that we had acquired at home and brought up with us. Several of the trees had sentimental connections. We had copper beeches from Spilsby, where I was born & brought up and Bucksburn, where Jill was brought up. We had a cherry plum that a friend of ours in Lowestoft donated and so on. We had a couple of cherry plums that Jill’s Mum, Lesley, had propagated from trees right next to Slains school. We ran out of room, so had to do another stretch of strimming and putting down weed membrane, this time a bit of a way along the southern boundary from each end.

Caravan: We had had a message from William at Nia Roo that the truck delivering the caravan had trouble because of waterlogging where our track runs onto our property. So we were unsurprised to find the caravan put up against the north wall of the steading on the concrete hardstanding. There was quite a mess. The drop off the track was well rutted, a couple of our fence panels were fairly smashed up – I think they used the panels under the wheels of their truck to get it back on the track. Finally, quite a few of our slates were on the rutted area – they were in small pieces. Again they had probably used them to get their truck out. We also saw bits of broken plastic – a vent cover over the shower on the caravan roof was no more. We were not well pleased. We tidied up the broken slates, flattened the fence panels almost back to normality, filled in the ruts, then levelled up the caravan and checked it out.It was fine inside but obviously nothing was connected up. Still very nice to escape into during showers and for lunch breaks.

Hedging, caravans & more

We took advantage of the Easter bank holidays to get a full week away for only a couple of days of leave.

Hedging: We had ordered more bare root hedging in advance from Hattens Farm nursery, again it had arrived a short while before us – only about 200 plants this time, enough to get down to the southern boundary on both east and west sides. It was similar mix to before and we had a few of our own that we packed in our hand baggage. It was all much easier than back in November. It was warmer, less windy, less wet and the soil down the garden is much less disturbed and built-on. We did exactly as before: used the fencing tool to make holes, water the holes, drop the whips in with a bamboo cane, heel them in and put on a tree tube. We did not bother with the microrhizal fungi, we will keep an eye on how well they do. What was a bit of a pain was that we ran out of canes and tree tubes before the end, about 30 plants had to take their chances with the rabbits & hares.

 

Windbreak netting: The existing netting was in good condition, sewing it on with garden twine seemed to have done the trick. So we did loads more until we ran out of netting, getting the east side done and most of the west side. It took days, but it was done. It was quite breezy whilst we were doing it and we were quite surprised how much warmer it felt nearer the ground.

Bothy doors: Our new doors had dried out properly and were fine, we stuck another coat of woodstain on. I borrowed a chunky angle grinder from brother-in-law Bryan and cut off the upper rail that held the old doors on. Then we were able to break the doors up, chucking metal on the metal pile and timber on our firewood pile.

 

Caravans: We had been looking ahead to when we would be up here permanently and wondered how readily we could get a good quality second-hand caravan. Where we live in Suffolk, there are loads of holiday parks and they are easy to come by. We tried several places. One was on Gumtree, where they said they had a caravan for sale in Fraserborough that looked a decent price. On phoning up, they were actually in Stranraer and only the first 100 miles were free delivery. We tried again and found sellers in Mintlaw and Newmacher both of which are OK for us. Once we were back in the area we took half a day out to go to Newmacher and twigged that it was a caravan park that we had noticed years ago because of its name – Nia Roo (try it spelled backwards). The sorts of caravan we could afford were very much hidden away at the back of the site. However there was a choice of at least 5, mostly about 20 years old. We could not really decide between them – they were quite different but never having stayed in a caravan, we did not know what was important. We took loads of photos, headed back into Aberdeen and consulted Jill’s sister Vicki. She graciously came out with us the following day, checked them out and picked the one for us. It almost certainly was the right choice, it was 12′, not 10′ and had three bedrooms, separate shower and toilet and a decent sized lounge & kitchen area. It was rather more expensive that we had anticipated, however ‘William’ did discount it and threw in transport for free – £3,750 in total. We left it with him, went back to the steading and marked out where we wanted it dropped off, close to the bothy. We headed back south before it was delivered.

 

Our Owl Box: A library borrower at Bungay library made us a an owl box that we brought up by car recently. This was the first time we had tools to fix it up in a tree, so we did. I believe owls are fussy about where they are prepared to go in and out of a box, we will see whether it the box ends up  occupied

 

 

Progress on our Building Warrant: The architect was true to his word and progressed the warrant queries slowly. He had fate on his side. The Scottish fire brigades had recently reorganised to a single national service. In doing so, they omitted to appoint any fire marshalls. Part of their job is to advise on fire safety in new houses and because ours is large, the architect was expecting that we would have to something out of the ordinary – for example install a sprinkler system, install fire curtains in the roof space or have a ready supply of water for a fire engine to access i.e. a pond or tank.

After a due period, the architect pulled in a favour from an old contact – he decided that we do not need to make any extra provision, after all.

A flying visit – more hedging prep

We were in Aberdeen over the weekend, for a surprise Spa day for a niece’s 18th birthday present. I excused myself well in advance and made myself useful. We had decided to extend the hedging and had bought two more 50m rolls each of 2m weed membrane and 1.2m windbreak mesh.

I inspected the windbreak mesh I had put up over Christmas. Parts of it had already suffered from the relatively few cable ties holding it to the netting and was mostly hanging loose, getting shredded against the barbed wire and pig netting. We needed a better way of fixing it on. I got some garden twine from Parkhill nursery, fashioned a rough needle from some stray wire and tried ‘sewing’ the windbreak to the pig netting along the top and bottom. It was slow, but looked a lot better than before. Again, time will tell…

Then it was back to laying weed membrane down the remainder of the west and east boundaries and weighting it down with boulders and bit of roof timber.

I re-discovered down the east side that we had not cleared up the old fencing from when we realigned the boundary (to get rid of the odd bulge in the north-east corner). It runs in a straight line, obliquely towards the south-east corner. So I spent a happy few hours picking off the barbed wire and pig netting, then pulling out the old fence posts. There were two strainer posts that I could not hope to get out by hand, we either need a digger or to saw them off at ground level.

Meanwhile some of the hedging we planted is already developing buds. Also the woodchip has stayed exactly where it should, despite the winter winds.

Bothy doors and Woodchip

We went up to Aberdeen for 2 weeks over Christmas, on the understanding that most of it was social – our steading time was limited.

Replacing the Bothy doors: The main thing we wanted to get done was replacing the doorway of our bothy with something a bit more functional. The current doors should slide apart on runners; one side is stuck shut, the other opens a few feet only. They are falling apart. We have, up to now, used a bike lock through the handles to keep it secure – it is anything but.

I got hold of two ledged & braced pine doors, some more structural timber to make a frame and wood cladding and suitable door furniture – all from Jewsons in Aberdeen, because Ellon Timber is closed over the holiday period.

We could not remove the old doors with our limited toolbox, we forced them apart enough to expose the full opening in the wall. We will sort them out when I can get hold of an angle grinder.

Anyway, we made a simple framework to sit within the opening, screwed to the wall and to the remaining timberwork above the doorway. I hung the doors in their part of the frame, then we cut the cladding board to size and nailed it over the rest of the framework.

I was at least able to use the decent SDS drill that had been my Christmas present!

There were two downsides. The weather was pretty gloomy and we do not have power in the bothy, so we were literally working in the dark. The other was the temperature – it was too cold to use woodstain and for it to dry out properly, but we had no choice. So we put two coats on and left it all tacky.

At least we have a semi-secure entrance, with easily locking doors.

Woodchip mulch: We had searched for someone who would supply large amounts of woodchip at a reasonable price. We had been partly successful – Aberdeen Tree Services is, unfortunately, based in Huntly – they only occasionally operate in our area.

Fortunately for us though, they did a job just before Christmas near Mintlaw and were able to deliver a satisfactorily large pile just after we arrived – 3-4 cu m for £130. So we spent the best part of two days barrowing it over our weed membrane to a good 2-3″ depth. It made it look a lot better, will keep the ground damper/warmer and will keep weeds down. There was not enough to finish the job, though.

Hedging done

So we arrived in Aberdeen with a challenging objective. The best sort, so I have been told many times. Our 300+ bare root plants were waiting for us, we got them out on site ASAP and got stuck in. We loaded the car, borrowed a range of garden tools, stopped by Parkhill nursery for microrhizal fungii powder, then headed to the steading.

The theory: We had done our homework and knew in principle how to plant bare root hedging properly. Dig a hole for each plant, add compost, place the whip in the hole, water it well and fill in.

With 100+ plants per day to get in the ground, we doubted we had the luxury to pamper them this much. The less-desirable method was to make a narrow hole deep enough to drop the roots down, water, then heel in – much more realistic, provided we accept that we might have a higher fail rate.

The reality: Being a long-established site, there is a lot of very compacted trackway across bits of the site. Where there is soil, it is highly variably stony but always bouldery. There is buried concrete in places. There is a drainage issue on the north boundary of our property, with waterlogging and runoff into long-standing puddles.

My assumed preferred tool for making holes had been a borrowed spade, it took five minutes to realise that it was useless over almost the entire area. The ground was way too rough and we had to make massive slits in the weed membrane to get the spade in.

I adapted. I found our chisel-ended fencing tool and was able to use it to make narrow holes around 20-30cm deep, levering apart boulders and stones in the process. We only needed slits in the weed membrane around 15-20cm long. I filled the holes with water and let it soak in. We used the microrhizal fungii powder on the roots, inserted the whips into the holes along with a 3′ bamboo cane, then heeled the holes closed. We finished off with a clear plastic spiral tree guard. It was fairly brutal work and variably slow.

Once we had a rhythm going, we worked with batches of 10, 15 or 20 whips at a time, a sort of mass-production.

The weather was not helpful. Day one was really breezy. Day 2 was heavy rain all day. Day 3 was dry but very windy – at one point the whips were flying out of their planting holes as fast as we could put them in.

The finished result: We were pleased with what we had done. We planted two staggered parallel rows about 50cm apart, with plants spaced at 50cm intervals. We generally put them in groups of 5 of each species together, with quite a few exceptions. We had way over-estimated how many plants we needed and ended up putting down more weed membrane on the west boundary, from as close as we could get to the steading to halfway down the plot. This included the trench Ric had thoughtfully dug out of the ex-trackway, back in September. We broke into our Mark 2 compost heap, barrowed well-rotted compost into the trench and shovelled whatever soil we could get hold of over it. We got that planted up as well, including the screening trees at 5m intervals.

A nagging concern is how well the plants will respond to the fairly inhospitable environment many of them have been planted into, we await spring!

We barely got it all finished in time to head back to Aberdeen and catch our flight back south.