Patching up our driveway

We hired a digger and dumper from Ellon Timber, to sieve and remove spoil from out courtyard. We borrowed the dumper at intervals to run loads of our hardcore up our driveway, patching up potholes. Ric sieved four loads for us, for shallow repairs and we used un-sieved for the deeper potholes. They all got compacted down for several days before we had a day of rain. I was a bit surprised that it had all locked down well and even survived an Ellon Timber truck delivering timber and rooflights to us. Some of the repairs were rough, but definitely better than bouncing around through the potholes. We need at least another 8 loads to finish tidying it up. It is a temporary fix until we can afford to get George to use his big digger to break up the current surface, add in more hardcore, then roller it down for a permanent fix.

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Clearing the courtyard

We hired a digger & dumper, to clear the piles of spoil in the courtyard and to get it levelled up. This did not go wonderfully to plan as we have had regular soakings over the last couple of weeks, which has really delayed us and added to the cost of the exercise. Ric repaired the giant sieve he made a couple of years ago, but has had to be quite brutal about pushing material through, so it has had maintenance every couple of days. About four-fifths of the material has been spread amongst our trees, he has raised some of the low points in the courtyard, but it is still all a bit of a quagmire.

We worked on the door steps into the courtyard, facing the concrete blocks under the granite sills with granite before we can get the doorsteps concreted into place.

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Kerbing our driveway

Our garage door is in the gable-end wall that directly faces our shared track, as it runs in a straight line from the north. At the last minute the track curves away into our immediate neighbours property. We need to build a short driveway  to run from the track down to the garage door. In the fullness of time we also need to provide several parking spaces and room for fire trucks to turn, so the driveway area will be much bigger that we need simply to get to the garage. We have laid a linear drain across the front of the steading to catch surface water running off the driveway, but we also want to stop it running off the track onto the driveway.

So we need to install kerbing that roughly follows the boundary of the track. It is to run from the north-west corner of our property , right down to the north-west corner of the steading itself – some 20m in total. We bought standard height concrete stones for each end and low stones for the rest, with a single left-hand and a single right-hand drop stone between.

Ric used the digger to excavate a foundation trench over most of the length, temporarily leaving a short section for us to drive over. Unsurprisingly, the ground was very heavy going, having compacted down over the last century or two. We generally followed the boundary, with a shallow diversion, or kink, onto our driveway so that we can get over the kerb more cleanly when heading down to the garage area – otherwise we would run wheels along the kerbing for quite a length rather than over it.

We cranked up the mixer and spent several half-days producing medium-strength concrete that we barrowed over and dropped in the trench, to a level 100mm below the finished surface. We even got rid of small pieces of our surplus rebar mesh. Once the concrete had gone off enough, we mixed sand-cement mortar and bedded the kerbstones onto the foundation. The following day we mixed more concrete and haunched it up against both sides of the kerbstones. Once the ends had gone-off enough to support the weight of the car, he excavated the middle section and we built that up.

We had been very concerned that we would run out of cement and blockmix before we finished. As it happened, we finished the cement and had only a barrow-load or so of blockmix left over If we have not done a good job, we will find out the hard way when the next lorry runs over it! Meanwhile, we know that water falling on the track can no longer run down onto our driveway.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Grounds: Hedging prep & other things

We do not want to wait five years to move into the steading and then stare at devastated ex-building site for the following years whilst a garden establishes itself. We will mix building with gardening. For example, our relatively short winter visits will be good times to prepare for planting and for landscaping. In the summer months we will do what we can to keep the grass, nettles and perennial weeds under control.

Hedging: The small Rowan trees we planted back in the early summer are thriving after their months of neglect – the tree tubes have done their stuff and the ground is clearly suitable.

So we plan to start a full hedge along the northern boundary and part of the eastern boundary, around 65m total. We want to get it in the ground in November. Hopefully this will be starting to look hedge-like and sheltering us from the north-west thru north-east by the time we move in.

We want the hedge to be nature-friendly, with season-round interest – we will not keep it closely manicured. It also needs to be not poisonous to the cattle and sheep down our eastern boundary. We have our eyes on a ‘Saxon Mix’ from Hattens Farm Nursery, Fressingfield, Suffolk. This is 50% Hawthorn mixed with Hornbeam, Field Maple, Bird Cherry, Cherry Plum, Spindle, Blackthorn, Common Dogwood, Common Privet, Alder Buckthorn, Common Buckthorn, Wild Pear, Holly, Dog Rose, Guelder Rose, Wayfaring, Hazel, Amelanchier Lamarckii, Crab Apple and Oak. We might look at less of the Hawthorn and more of the others, plus we do have some of our own cuttings of different species.

Finding Hattens was serendipitous, we came across an online catalogue of theirs by chance, they may be local to us but we did not know about them. Their prices are very reasonable. They import their stock from the continent starting end-October and have delivered orders to north-east Scotland.

As preparation, we had bought two 50mx2m rolls of weed membrane (‘heavy-duty woven weed control ground mulch landscape fabric’). One was enough to do the whole northern boundary and extend round the corner. We later used part of the second roll to carry on down the east side until we ran into a pile of granite rubble (the remains of the demolished steading internal walls). We strimmed the grass down a bit, then laid the membrane as close to the fencing as possible. We weighted the edges and middle with a selection of our ex-roof timbers.

We look forward with interest to seeing whether it has knocked back the grass by the time we get to plant the hedging. We did not have the time or materials to actually mulch the membrane – something we will probably want to do once we have it planted up.

A burning question: How long will it take to plant the 350 or so bare-rooted plants? We are hoping to take a long weekend in November, flying up on a Thursday evening & back on the Sunday evening, with three days solid on the ground.

Rhubard: Our Rhubarb is looking quite happy, still nestling in the two old tyres that we figured would protect it from the wind and undergrowth.

Rabbits & Hares: Earlier in the year we had a rabbit that looked as though it had been crossed with a domesticated bunny – it had interesting dark patches on it’s fur. No sign of this, I expect it was predated. We did, however, have a very tame hare & rabbit that kept a close eye on what we were doing throughout the fortnight. This rapid turnover of rabbits and hares is very typical of the area – we simply do not have a systematic problem with them. I expect this will change once we start providing them with cover, but we are expecting to protect our veg plots from rabbits and wind. We will also make sure we use tree guards on our hedging.

Geese: The geese appear to be year-round, flying pretty much daily between the Ythan estuary, Meikle Loch and Strathbeg.

Japanese Knotweed: The Knotweed had grown a lot from our May visit, but was not more than 3 feet high where it did not get sprayed the year before (because it was too tall). This was around 30 square metres. Where we did spray, there were a small number of small re-growths.

We left it a week and sprayed it just as it started flowering. It did drizzle and rain a bit later in the day, we will find out next time we are up whether it had long enough to soak in and do its stuff.

Japanese Knotweed – Decline, but not Fall

I know it is early days, but our Japanese Knotweed infestation looks to be a shadow of its former self.

The copious amounts of brushwood-strength glyphosate we sprayed last September look to have hit it hard. This despite not being able to attack much of the middle of the area because it was above our heads. We now have a large circle of absolutely bare ground – no perennial or annual weeds – with a moderate scattering of rather sickly looking new growth. I think the glyphosate must indeed have worked its way well through the rhizome system, even into the area I cut back.

It is early in the season, and towards the middle of the patch it is already a metre high, but it is nowhere near as scary as we were expecting. We will spray again in September, but meantime we broke the new growth off at ground level, being careful not to leave the broken ends in contact with the ground – we will see if this weakens it, but still allows enough new growth to treat in the Autumn.

It does make me wonder if the plant may have been bigged-up by the Knotweed-killing industry, for their own purposes – heaven forbid.

Next for 2015

We will be back at the steading in mid-May. We have discovered cheap flights from Luton to Aberdeen – it is a 2.5 hour drive to Luton, so probably 5 hours door-to-door, less than half the time to drive. Flights are evenings so we can travel up in an afternoon and travel back after a days work. We can borrow a vehicle to get backwards and forwards to the steading. It does mean we will travel light. We cannot get my trusty toolbox on the plane, but we will post a box of essentials to Aberdeen before we travel. This includes our backpack sprayer, hammers, pliers, bolsters & cold chisels and the like.

We have a range of things to do:

1. If the knotweed is tall enough/has enough leaves, spray it with glyphosate.
2. Get a petrol strimmer and knock back all the other perennial weeds, mainly nettles ground-elder, thistles and docks.
3. Get our electrician, Luke, to install a couple of sockets in the meter box.
4. Cut up the concrete lintel that that is embedded in the corner of the East leg of the steading, this frees the way for George to remove the concrete wall and break the concrete in the courtyard. I estimate the beam weighs about a quarter of a tonne, so we should be able to put two bays of scaffolding underneath it, put a couple of jacks in between the planks and the beam, then cut the beam up into manageable chunks. I will leave the embedded bit in the steading wall until we are tidying up the stonework. I will need to borrow or hire a Stihl concrete saw.
5. Put some lengths of timber across the joists we exposed over Easter to brace them, so they will not collapse when we remove the other side of the roof.
6. Continue working on removing the roof. We will try and speed things up by sliding the slates down the roof, using a timber to stop them falling down to the ground.