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!

TLC for walls

Measuring the walls: The walls in our east & west legs of the steading need extending upwards with concrete blocks, to raise the roof trusses and ensure enough height in our upper storeys. Our single-storey section will also have the blockwork, to maintain the proportions of the roof. During our last visit we marked up floor levels and worked out lower and upper storey heights. This confirmed that, with separate raised-tie trusses and shallow easijoists, we will have minimum 2.2m ceiling upstairs and down.

During this visit we need to check whether the truss-bearing walls are 1) straight, 2) level and 3) parallel, so that we can make sure our blockwork will be fit to bear the roof trusses. We already knew that one wall on our east two-storey section has a bow in it and is not vertical. So I used a surveyors tape measure, the level & staff and a builders line and spent a part-day scrambling up and down ladders.

Our conclusions:

1. The single storey walls in the north section are straight and level, but systematically get closer together by 20mm west –> east over the 22m length. Not bad! The north wall is 30mm higher than the south wall. I am counting on that not actually mattering too much, but will aim to raise the level of the mortar capping before I do the blockwork.
2. The west section is in a bad state with only sections of wall remaining at wallhead height. What is there is level, straight and parallel, within a few cm.
3. The east section is more complete and the east wall is straight and level. The west wall is equal distances from the east wall at each gable-end, but bows out within a few metres of the south end by 120mm max. Otherwise it is level. The blockwork needs to accommodate the bulge without risky overhanging inside or out. It will need to project over the inside face of the wall by some 60mm, over the few metres of maximum bulge.

The architect designed the roof to let us take up this sort of variation without affecting the appearance of the roof, as well as lifting the inside of the roof. The raised-tie trusses have two lengths of timber on the ties, one above the other. The lower bears on the blockwork, the upper carries on down and over the edge of the wall. We will trim the ends of these timbers to line up with a fascia that we can fit the guttering to. The soffit underneath we will shape to fit the variable line of the wall.

Tools for the job: Ladder, surveyors tape measure, builders line, level & staff.

Checking how straight the walls are.

Capping the walls: We will start capping the walls even though we have not got any of the doorways/windows sorted out. These will need sills at the bottoms, quoin stones up the sides and lintels over the tops.

The lintels include four 100mm wide x 212mm high structural lintels over each opening with minimum 150mm support each end, aligned with  the inside face of the wall.

In the single-storey north section, the structural timbers are at the level of the base of the blockwork and the roof timbers will hide the lintels, elsewhere we will need decorative outer lintels.

Many of the existing granite lintels are cracked, we will be looking far and wide for replacements.

If we can find enough good granite, we will cut stone sills, rather than use the concrete ones the architect designed in.

We got the scaffolding out and constructed four bays along the north-most wall. I used the builders line and a long scaffolding board to establish the high points in the wallhead, confirming they were suitably horizontal. We mixed barrow loads of 1:4 mortar with plasticiser and built-up the hollows in the wallhead with stones and mortar. We levelled it out horizontally between the high points using a spirit level. It was reasonably quick and it went off enough after 8 hours or so to start on the blockwork.

Loads of 1:6 mortar.

I used a bucket to lug it up.

The wall needed a bit of work to level it up.

The mortar down and level.

Not a bad finish.

Blockwork on the wallheads: The blocks are standard 7N 100mm x 212mm x 440mm. I laid two courses, longways across the wall and aligned with the inside vertical. On that I laid two courses laid lengthways, again aligned with the inside vertical. The result was not pretty, but satisfyingly perfectly straight and level. I did not get the wall finished, other priorities got in the way, but it looks like the blockwork will not be a headache.

By my calculations, the north section will have walls around 2.4m above finished floor. The trusses will give a lie-in long enough to install 5 50cm x 90cm velux-style roof lights along each side. Then a level ceiling between, around 2.8m above finished floor level. Should be impressive and, with a room width of just over 4m, I really hope it does not look as tunnel-like as some of the steading properties we have checked on the ASPC website.

A truck-load of blocks.

The first two courses were laid cross-ways, aligned with the inside edge of the wall.

Then two courses length-ways on top. Total lift, 44cm.