Stuck caravan, broken concrete & car woes

No more Ford Galaxy: The morning after getting back into Aberdeen, our trusty Ford Galaxy gave up the ghost. We were pulling onto a roundabout when the gearbox failed. Several people helped us push it onto the verge, we got it to a local garage who were very pessimistic. After a day or two we accepted the inevitable. We got one of our children to post up my driving licence and passport and to scan the V5 document and email it up so the car could be legitimately scrapped. It did us sterling service for 9 years and we clocked up 120,000 miles in it, including loads of runs between Aberdeen and Lowestoft.

We borrowed cars from Jill’s parents for the duration and hired a car to get us home.

Concrete cleared: We got back on site and made ready for Ric to arrive again. We put the new cover over the vent in the caravan. We checked out our broken concrete. George had done his stuff. The concrete pile was even more vast, but for the first time in 40-50 years, the courtyard was open. It transformed the appearance of the place, it looked much more spacious, but also much less sheltered – it is twice as wide as it is deep and it will need screening from those penetrating south-westerly winds. He had also just about cleared the concrete ramp down to our southern boundary.

Soil screener: As is his way, Ric had  been thinking ahead, to work out how to distribute the increasing log-jam of spoil that is spilling out of the steading. This is shortly to be made quite a bit worse as we dig out our drains. The undesirable options are to a) pay someone to take it away or b) dispose of it, as is, on our property. What would be much better is if we could separate topsoil from subsoil from granite from concrete using a screener. We had made enquiries locally and no-one seems to hire out tractor- or digger-mounted riddlers.

So Ric decided to make a simple static screener,  an inclined mesh panel that he could drop spoil on to. As it rolled down the incline, soil should drop through, stones & concrete would roll off the end. He had brought up a panel of mesh, it looked like safety walkway mesh, the sort of stuff you might find on fire escapes. He commandeered the I-beam sections from our scrap metal pile, that George had pulled out of the silage pit walls and de-concreted. Armed with his welding kit, he spent a happy half day fashioning something that looked very much like a Star Wars creation.

He tested it with a couple of digger-bucket loads of spoil and it worked! It did a very good job with our comparatively gritty subsoil. He lugged it to one side until we have time to start clearing the site.

Moving the caravan: A high priority was to get our caravan into a more permanent position, in the courtyard area, so that we could fully plumb it into services. So when the digger arrived, we got going. It did not go to plan and would have been funny if it had not used-up a full day of three people’s time.

We knew we needed to pull it forwards through the gap between the concrete pile and the north-east corner of the steading, round by 90 degrees, then down the side and another 90 degrees into the courtyard area. We measured up and it all looked good. We used a webbing strap to attach the caravan to the digger and pulled it to the gap. Where it promptly got stuck fast.

We got it pushed back out of harm’s way and cleared the bits of concrete that had jammed. We tried again and the same thing happened. And again. Ric got seriously annoyed and attacked the concrete pile with the digger, to make more room. It was much better after that, but the caravan still jammed. We realised that the wheel nearest the steading was dropping into a hollow and making the caravan lean into the steading. So we packed the hollow with scaffolding boards and after a bit of huffing & puffing, the caravan lurched through the gap enough to pull it round the first corner.

To be fair, the rest of it only took an hour or so and we got the caravan jacked up and level in time to head back for R&R.

The following day, we found Ric had already got the gas bottle connected and temporary water and power back on. The caravan had a distinct slope to one side, I borrowed a car jack and lifted that side up onto concrete blocks. It was better, but not completely level, the jack was not quite powerful enough.

Between visits

We had some organising to sort out between our July & September visits. September is all about finishing the foundations and cracking on with our drains.

• We wanted a fridge for the caravan and kept an eye on Gumtree & Freecycle. Success, we picked up a rather battered but workable fridge that would fit into the available space. We talked to Ric about building a non-mechanical screener to separate soil from stone/concrete in our burgeoning mounds of spoil – he figured that a sloping grid would allow loose soil through and leave stones to fall of the bottom. We had asked around about mechanical screeners, but they seem in short supply in that area.
• We wanted to fix the roof of the caravan where a cover had broken off during delivery. I tracked down the part and ordered a replacement.
• I clarified several points about drains, gullies and guttering with the architect. This included how to get two pipes out of the building that could not go through doorways – one for our cloakroom near the front door, the other to take a second drain out of our main bathroom. He confirmed that we should dig under the foundations, lay a concrete pad, build up with blocks either side of the drain and put lintels above. We should then pack dry mortar into any gap to finish off. Ric was hoping for a less technical solution.
• I looked for a septic tank and was immediately asked why we would not use a mini STP. I had an exchange with the architect who said that without a suitable water course on our property, an STP would not be suitable. I left it at that, we will have to go with our raised drainage mound.
• I contacted Aberdeenshire Building Standards to find out how to arrange for a drain inspection, when we were ready. I got a contact.
• We nagged George into agreeing to break more concrete – specifically the concrete ramp, the wall across the courtyard and the accessible I-beams sticking out of the ground from the silage pit walls.

So we packed the fridge in the Ford Galaxy along with 4 fruit tree Jill had acquired, stowed the dog and headed back up the road…

Concrete, Steel, Glass & Brick

And a whole load of stuff that we really want out of our way…

Concrete & Steel: Over Christmas we agreed with George that he would break concrete for us. I emailed a plan for the first bits and by the time we visited at Easter, he had got a large chunk of it done. He charged us for 1.5 days + £50 for the breaking tip he hired – but had run out of time to finish the job. In fact whilst we were there, he was too busy to come and collect his money, so I gave to his dad for safekeeping. He had cleared enough to let us get our water supply installed.

We found out why the big silage clamp wall would not just push over, when he tried at Christmas – it had half a dozen I-beams up the height of the wall at regular intervals, buried in the ground. Looking at the shorter stretch of wall, I spotted two more. George had uprooted one, it had a massive cube of concrete at the base. When he gets time, he will carry on and will uproot the remaining beams.

Glass: We noticed at Christmas that there was broken glass all over the site, particularly in courtyard. This time, Jill collected bags of broken bottles from the ground behind the bothy. There were quite large numbers of shotgun cartridges as well, we wondered whether it was a sport for a former tenant to drink beer and shoot the bottles. We turned our first compost heap and kept finding bits of window glass that we had missed when we cleared the courtyard the previous summer.

Brick: Jill found a large cache of red bricks, right in the centre of our Knotweed patch. One had a makers name on it and we reckon they are local, either Cruden Bay or Ellon – a bit of a surprise to us that bricks were even made in Aberdeenshire. They are about double the size of standard bricks. We have the choice to crush them, or to re-use them as a path or wall. They might be quite old, so they may become our pathway in our polytunnel, when we finally get one.

Planning for 2015

We are rather more than a year into our project and have a clearer idea of what we want to get done in 2015:

• Get the temporary electricity supply sorted, this is mostly getting Luke the electrician to do his stuff.
• Finish the fencing. Two things, firstly putting posts in the fence between ourselves and next doors, secondly closing off the open gap on the north side and installing the gates. We need George to have cleared the concrete from the area and to dig holes for three strainers and two gateposts.
• Clear concrete, this a job for George. He thought he could get two days in January to break the long silage pit wall and the concrete ramp to the south of the steading. He would pile up the concrete for us. We need to remove the concrete lintel embedded in the east leg of the steading so that the wall across the courtyard can come down. There is then the hardstanding and shed bases. We would keep some of it to stand materials on.
• Get the water supply installed. We will contact Cadgers Plant Hire, Clola, to run the pipe under the road, they did the same for the Aitkens. We can do the steading end ourselves. We are waiting for Scottish Water to produce a quote for their bit.
• Buy equipment and tools including scaffolding, roof ladder, large angle grinder, concrete breaker.
• Get a demolition warrant. Steve Brown says he is on the case, should submit mid-January and we should have it some six weeks later. This allows us to start removing the roof of the steading.
• Remove enough roof to allow Ric to start on the stonework, assuming he is available. We want to see if the slates are good enough to re-use, possibly on the bothy. The roof timbers will add to our firewood pile.
• Demolish the faulty gable end.
• Foundations for rebuilding the gable end.
• Re-build the gable end.
• Re-apply for planning permission, mostly Steve Brown.
• Get the building warrant, mostly Steve Brown.