Building up the front door

The front door area had concrete blockwork on the left side tied onto existing rubble wall. The right hand side had been completely demolished, so was just concrete blockwork up until it met the north-west gable wall, which had also been demolished but had the concrete blockwork up to the height of the upstairs window sill. The gable wall is set 20cm forwards of the front door wall.

Stonework
We worked courses along both sections of wall, one per day. We used our best red Peterhead granite quoin stones rescued from the former (now demolished) farm house on the next-door plot. We kept the stones symmetrical either side of the front door, but generally used bigger stones on the gable wall, so it got higher more quickly that the front door. We put five courses up and had reached lintel height for the garage door, but added another course to the front door to get it to the same height.

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Front door lintels
The front door lintels were the same as our other windows, but longer – a third concrete structural lintel in front of the two over the concrete blocks, then the decorative granite lintel. We filled the gap with concrete. So we are now able to build the concrete block raised wallhead above the front door and put the remaining roof trusses on.

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Lintels – good news and bad news

I had badgered Lantoom Quarry about making sure the 41 granite lintels would arrive at our local builders merchants, Ellon Timber, the day I arrived. They had been vague, saying they would tell me if there was a problem, but not confirming they had despatched them. So the morning after I arrived at the steading, I nagged Ellon Timber and again got vague suggestions that granite lintels may have been dropped off. In the end I got fed up with vagueness and drove across to look.

There were indeed granite lintels – 18 lintels on two pallets, making up one consignment. I got on the phone to Lantoom and invited them to find and deliver the remaining 23.

Meanwhile I got Ellon Timber to deliver what they had, as soon as possible. They got on site the following day. I checked what was delivered with what we ordered and was heartened that all the odd-sized ones had been delivered, except for the 2.7mx300mmx150mm garage door lintel. So what was missing was that one and 22 of the 1.6mx212mmx100mm lintels.

Lantoom got someone on the case, they sent me a list of what they thought was missing. It was nothing like my list, which I sent back. The following day then emailed me to say that the missing granite was in Liverpool, would be sent up and that they hoped it matched what I was expecting! It arrived at Ellon Timber after I had headed south again. I expect it to arrive at the steading imminently.

What mattered, though, was that there were enough lintels of the right sizes to crack on with the east wing.

The new granite was sold as ‘silver’ in colour and it is noticeable paler than the grey Aberdeen granite. It is rather harder and is good quality, with a definite ‘ring’ to it. Even thin offcuts are remarkably tough. We do not forsee any problems bearing the weight of rubble wall above them. In the case of the big garage lintel, we will lay our second steel Catnic above the granite lintel anyway, so that it does not bear the weight of the wall directly. We expect the new granite to weather and blend in with the old – we already have quite a bit of red Peterhead granite that will be mixed in with the majority grey Aberdeen granite – when dry it is not strikingly and obviously different. When wet we might get a more distinct effect with the three colours of granite, I sort of look forwards to finding out!

The lintels were delivered in their natural split state with unfinished, irregular surfaces. They were accurately correct in length and height but not necessarily a regular thickness. The 100mm lintels were consistent to a cm or so, but the 150mm ones varied between 140mm and 180mm. The latter are mostly for door thresholds, we can accommodate the different thicknesses because they will be bedded onto concrete. We are going for a rustic effect and will not level out the irregularities.

July visit

I was at the steading for a full week in early July, with Ric. The aim was to prepare for our September visit, where we want to get roof trusses up on the east wing and, if practical, part of the north wing.
To summarise where we are with the east wing…

• West wall (facing the courtyard): We rebuilt the doorway and installed lintels over the door and small window in April, then built rubble wall above the lintels to old wallhead height. We still need to lay blockwork to raise the roof to the design height.
• South gable-end: The parapet and retaining stones will need raising to the new roof height but can be done after the trusses go on. At the same time, we need to remove the stub of a concrete lintel that was embedded into the courtyard corner.
• East wall: The pre-existing doorway has been blocked out as a window and we completed the stonework up to sill height back in April. Last Christmas we opened out a section of wall to install two windows. The backing blockwork for one window is complete, the other is not blocked out because we plan to install quoins for a splayed window and do not really know how that will play out. We need to do the stonework (sills, quoins, lintels) for all three windows, complete the backing blockwork, lay the rubble walling, then raise the wallhead to the design height with the four courses of blockwork.
• North gable-end: This needs one side tidying up, replacing missing quoins and the retaining stone (for the coping). The parapet will need raising to the new roof height, but can be done after the trusses go on.

So most of the work on this block translates into:

1. Getting possession of the 41 granite lintels we ordered in March from Lantoom Quarry, Liskeard, Cornwall.
2. Converting three of the lintels into window sills for the three window openings down the east wall of the east wing.
3. Installing the sills, building quoins up the sides of the window openings and placing concrete (structural) and granite (decorative) lintels.
4. Completing the inner skin of concrete blocks up to old wallhead height, where we had demolished original wall.
5. Re-building granite rubble walling in front of the concrete blocks, around and over the window openings, up to old wallhead height.
6. Lay the four courses of concrete blocks above the walling, to raise the roof to the designed height.

Ric was confident we could do it, I was prepared to give it a shot. Being mid-year in northern latitudes, I could allow myself as long working days as I could stand – it gets light at 4am and dark after 10pm!

I brought the strimmer up with me to tame the grass, nettles, docks & thistles, but quickly realised that it was a bit late. The hot, dry weather meant that the perennial weeds had seeded and gone over already and had woody stems – strimming them would be dissatisfying and not very useful.

2018 shopping list

As far as we know, we need to buy the following:

• Granite lintels, cills and thresholds – from Lantoom Quarry
• Around half our concrete structural lintels – Having bought a whole load of 1.5m and 1.8m lengths a year or so ago, we need to get 18 x 1.2m, 8 x 1.5m and 8 x 1.8m ones. We can do this by buying 4 x 3m & 10 x 3.6m lintels and cutting them.
• An initial tonne of NHL 3.5 lime.
• A truckload of sand, probably from the Bridgend quarry near Tipperty, for lime mortar
• A heavy canvas that we can arrange over scaffolding to protect us and the walling from the elements.
• A tarpaulin to cover the sand.
• A truck load of 440 x 215 x 100 concrete blocks
• DPC and other sundries
• Locking castors for our scaffolding so we can run a bay around the concrete slab for working inside.
• A silt trap so we can install our linear drain in front of our garage & front door.
• Blockmix, sand & cement to build a concrete apron in front of the garage up to the linear drain.
• A bilge pump to clear sludge out from our concrete tank

Depending on progress with walls, we may need:

• Structural timber to support roof trusses at each end of the north wing (where we demolished the internal rubble walls)
• Timber for wallplates, truss clips, tie-down straps etc.
• Roof trusses
• Sarking boarding
• Breather membrane and tape (may be a cheap temporary fix to protect the roof, to be replaced when we are ready to slate)

Methinks this will stretch our finances until we can sell our current house and I retire.

Cills & lintels decided!

With the open season for building approaching, weather permitting, we really need to sort out cills & lintels, so we can start building upwards.

We made no progress getting reclaimed granite so will go with Lantoom Quarry, Liskeard, Cornwall. The irony of the cheapest option being at the opposite end of the UK is not lost on us!

What we need
So we have to create 18 windows and 6 doors.

17 windows and all doors need lintels – the large (3m x 3m) window will keep its concrete lintel, which Ric has suggested we can bush hammer to get to a finish consistent with the granite lintels. The lintels for the windows and 5 of the doors will have 215mm high, 100mm deep profiles with 150mm bearing each end. The garage door has a 2.2m span so we are looking at a 300mm high, 150mm deep profile and 200mm bearing each end. Most of the lintels will not be load bearing – the 2 downstairs windows in gable-ends will be, as will 2 doors and 5 in the east/west wing walls which will bear around 1m of wall above them.

All doors, apart from the one for the garage, need thresholds. We will get 215mm deep, 150mm high profiles and will embed them into the openings by 25mm each end, to lock them into the quoin stones.

All 18 windows need cills. We will get 215mm deep, 100mm high profile lengths, again embedded 25mm each end into the quoin stones at each end. The big window we can do as two cills jointed in the middle. In fact, three of the shortest lintels will be off-cuts from the thresholds, so will be 150mm high.

The practicalities are:

1. The garage lintel needs pre-ordering, with a 6-8 week lead time, the rest is stock.
2. Total weight is likely to be between 4 and 5 tonnes, with shipping costed by the pallet/tonne.
3. We will split the order in two. We will get all the granite for cills, thresholds and for those lintels that will be built over first. The lintels for the garage and those for the north wing, (which will not be built over, they will fit at the top of the wall behind the soffits. This should mean we can get going as soon as we get on site.
4. On first calculation, the first batch would be just shy of 3 tonnes, the second batch around 1.5 tonnes.
5. We will need the carrier to unload the lintels at our end!

This all comes at a price – around £4,000. The slight comfort is, this is less than we would have spent locally, for lintels alone.

Alternatives to granite 1 – cast stone
For a bit of due diligence, I looked at prices for cast stone lintels/cills. These are made from crushed stone in a cement binder. My only real objection to them is that they invariably look too clean and perfect, where we want/need a more rustic appearance. There is no problem getting the right colouring and, when weathered, they would probably blend in well enough. We could probably bush hammer them, but…

Without wanting to embarrass them, one manufacturer sells 1.6m non-load-bearing lintels for £136.70 inc VAT against the Lantoom price of £73.03. Another sells them for £52.80. I expect the latter is more typical, some 28% cheaper.

For fairness of comparison, we will need to trim the granite sills, cut out drip lines and finish any cut surfaces. This would be mostly our labour, which we do not cost, but would include some Ric time. So possibly another £1,000 on top of the £1,000 price difference.

Alternative to granite 2 – concrete
Fortunately the architect did not expect us to use concrete outer-facing lintels, if we did, these could be around £58 for a 1.5m length. He did specify concrete sills: A basic 1.2m (4ft) length is around £47, the 1.8m (6ft) length is around £74. On aggregate, this would be a similar saving to cast stone. I am a bit surprised it is as costly as it is.

Next step
Safe to say, using granite is still an easy decision, even with a £2,000 premium. Once we have agreed the details with Lantoom, we will press the button, for a first delivery in early April.

More on lintels and cills

In between getting our Suffolk house in good order, to sell, we are still looking around for Steading lintels and cills.

Finding reclaimed granite is tricky unless you live somewhere close to where it is sold. Decent sized pieces occasionally appear on Gumtree and eBay but invariably need the buyer to collect. It looks as though it would take years to amass material for our 21 openings, plus an out-size one for the garage door.

New granite lintels
So we looked for new granite. We found a few places online and after a good deal of effort, filtered them down to ones we thought were serious. I tended to not bother with the ones that mostly sell granite worktops, so I came across Caledonian Stone and thought no more of them. I found a place on eBay that sold new kerbstones that might have done for cills, but were on the thin side. We discovered Lantoom Quarry, Liskeard, Cornwall. They have a good range of split-face lintels in three different colours and they publish their prices. Ric had bought from them and trusted them, but we wondered whether there was somewhere with similar prices but more local. We were not making much headway, so I revisited some of the earlier prospects. I looked again at Caledonian Stone and was surprised that they are based in Peterhead, just up the road from us.

They have a smartish website with a chat feature, I gave it a go and got contact details for someone who could give us technical information. He replied quickly, they do indeed do 2500mm and 3000mm lintels in grey granite. They are 290mm x 100mm profile in a range of finishes. They are priced between £250 and £300 each + VAT. I worked out that we would need 18 lintels (excluding one for the garage door,) the bill would be over £4,500.

I checked back with Lantoom and was almost shocked to find that 2100mm and 2400mm lintels were between £50 – £65 + VAT. We would need 21 lintels excluding one for the garage door, the bill would be no more than £1,400. Ric checked directly with the quarry on delivery costs. The lintels would weigh about 4 tonnes and cost £400-£600 + VAT to transport. Still around £2,000 for the lot, less than half the price of the local supplier. We might look at Caledonian Stone for their 3000mm x 290mm x 100mm lintel, for the garage.

The good news is that the lintels are stock items, we can order them once we are at the steading in April.

The garage door lintel
Which led us to ponder on how we would incorporate such a long lintel into the gable-end wall, without damaging it and risking the wall above not being supported properly. Suppliers are reluctant to give safe loading data, which is probably very variable for what is, after all, a natural product. After a quick Google, we found a simple calculation to estimate breaking load for stone lintels:

Breaking load = 2 x breadth x depth x depth x modulus(of granite) / length

They conveniently gave a modulus value for granite. We had to convert to Imperial units and convert the answer back to Kg – the breaking load would be approx. 5900kg. The same website gave us a working assumption that the safe static load would be 1/6th of the breaking load, approx. 980kg.

This is nowhere near enough on its own, however we looked last September at a Catnic box beam with supporting shelf, which, with a second one behind it supporting the concrete blocks, would easily be strong enough. The downside being that we would see the supporting shelf from below. Lantoom quarry suggested that the granite lintel could be self-supporting i.e. placed directly on padstones on the wall either side. We would place a Catnic directly above the lintel and push mortar in the gap between them. The Catnic would bear the weight of the wall above.

Ric suggested DPC between lintel and Catnic, then lifted up behind a couple of courses onto the inner leaf of blockwork. Any water that ran down within the wall would run out over the edge of the lintel, not behind it.

Cills
I am following a prospect for reclaimed granite kerbing to use as cills, but am not getting much of a response. We will give it a bit longer, then look at what Lantoom Quarry have. Ric suggests getting cills that are 50mm wider than the window openings and lintels that are 300mm wider. This would give us more scope for cutting longer pieces of granite in two, reducing costs significantly. He is asking Lantoom Quarry about 300mm x 150mm profile granite to see if that would be suitable.

Quoin stones, cills and lintels

With the blockwork for our new walls heading sky-wards, we must turn our minds to the decorative lintels & cills for our 5 doors and 18 windows and to the quoin stones we need for them and for the four wall corners that need to be re-built (both the gable-ends that we demolished). We have until March next year to get what we need, so that Ric can get going in April.

Terminology
I was brought up on ‘lintels’ and ‘sills’ and have found that ‘lintols’ and ‘cills’ are in common use in the area. I may not be consistent in my usage!

Structural lintels
We are sorted for these. We have already bought more than half the (concrete) window/door lintels. We will order the rest as 3.6m lengths and cut them to size. We will get a couple of steel lintels for the garage door.

Decorative lintels: The existing ones are a mix of concrete, granite and wood (which are still in very good condition). Many of the granite ones had cracked, I believe we have six which can be re-used. Our 3m x 3m big window in the east wing will keep the current concrete lintel, so we need to source 17 new ones, typically 1.2 – 1.8m wide, 200mm tall and 100mm deep. The new garage door will have a steel lintel with a shelf to support a decorative lintel, this would need to be 2.7m, although I did hear of someone using two shorter ones and covering the gap with an ornamental crest.

Our building warrant assumes granite lintels. We may have some big-enough loose pieces of stone on site. Otherwise we need to look around – a problem when we are down south. For example, I contacted someone on Gumtree who has a pile of granite from a demolished building in Aberdeen, he did not have much of an idea whether it would be suitable, we need to go and look. We also found someone with lintels they wanted to sell for hundreds of £ each. We will do what we can.

If we run out of time, we will look at cast granite i.e. granite that has been ground up and reconstituted with a cement binder. Inverurie Precast Ltd, for example, make a full range of products, we may need to go and see them. My concern is that most cast stone products are highly and precisely shaped and finished, where we would want something rather rougher.

Cills
Our warrant calls for concrete cills, this does not appeal. In fact we have had a look around, they do weather in quickly and once lichen starts spreading, it is not obvious that they are concrete. But we are still not keen. Ric wants to use granite and to saw and finish our own, again we are short of suitable pieces. We have none in the few remaining windows, there may be a few on site. As with lintels, if we can find stone locally, we will do so, otherwise we will look at cast stone.

Quoin stones
At one time we were short of quoin stones. We saved all the ones from the walls we demolished, but we have eight windows, one door and the garage door to form.

We bought a pile of granite from our neighbour, Mr Aitken, two years ago, without worrying too much what was in it. We had nagged George to move them onto our property, to no effect, so we got Ric to do so back in August. It took him a day-and-a-half and was a bit of a revelation. The pile was mostly quoin stones, probably over 100 of them. They are better finished than most of ours and quite a few are Peterhead granite, so we do need to do our best to blend them in with our rather rougher ones. There were several longer pieces of stone which will probably not be long enough for lintels, but may make good cills.

The main pile is just about cleared, a second pile is behind the logs

Some of the quoin stones from our neighbour