Finishing the new window

We had got the inside of the new window opened out with concrete blockwork up the sides and concrete lintels over the top. We moved on to the outside.

Removing render from the gable wall
We drilled through from the inside to create a marker point and I was concerned about having to drill through some 50mm of hard cement mortar. I investigated by using the rotary hammer with a chisel tip to blast through from the outside. It turned out I had drilled through between two stones and that the render was more normally less than 20-30mm. More importantly, I discovered that the hammer did a massively better job of clearing render than the little SDS drill we had been using, with relatively little damage to the stone underneath. Several hours of work saw about half the gable wall cleared, a big boost.

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Laying quoin stones
We broke out columns of stone each side of the window, back to whole stones. We scratched around our granite piles and came up with enough fairly rough stones that we could trim down. Which we did and after a couple of days with some of them propped in place, we could move on.

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Outer lintels
We were fortunate that a course of stones coincided exactly with where the tops of our lintels needed to go. We were able to pull out the stones just below the courseand the ones above did not budge at all, very stable. We used the chain hoist hooked to a timber poking out of the upstairs window and pushed a third concrete lintel into place, then packed above it with mortar. The granite lintel followed, with some minor trimming. It was a bit of a struggle, but we just had space to get concrete into the space behind. Then it was a case of tidying it all up. I ran DPC over the concrete lintel then down and under the granite one.

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Sill
We pulled out the remaining stone within the window opening, then sorted out the sill area with lime mortar, with a sloping section on the outside half of the opening and a raised flat section at the back. I left it to go off for several days. I shaped up a sill as we had done for the other windows – trimming along a lintel at an angle to form the outside vertical face, bush hammering it then cutting at 90 degrees on the underside and scoring a drip groove into it. Assembling the sill was straightforward, we tanked it and joined it back into the wall tanking on the inside, then placed foam strips down the slope at intervals, then placed the sill on that and tied it back with straps to the back of the opening. And that was it. It took a long time, but was done as a background job.

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Slapping out two new windows

We did not stay in the caravan over the festive period, we did not hire the mini digger and we all came down with festive bugs to varying degrees. So we were a bit under-resourced for the one job we did want to get out of the way – pulling down a section of wall in the east face of the east wing so that we can build up two window openings. The two windows are to be 1100mm wide, starting 800mm above finished floor level, There is a 1800mm gap between them. For simplicity we had agreed to make one opening and to rebuild between the windows.

A job that would have taken half a day with the digger took 4 (short) days of manual labour.

We were moderately fortunate with the weather. It was cold, mostly with lying snow and ice, but no very strong winds or heavy rain/snow. By putting enough layers on we kept our bodies warm enough, though we did have real trouble keeping our hands from going numb.

How the wall was constructed
This was as in the gable-end we demolished last year, built up in distinct courses of variable thickness that were levelled off with small stones, before starting the next course. Right at the base of the wall was a double-layer of fairly rectangular stones, slightly wider at the base than the wall above, to form a foundation. Subsequent layers were constructed as a lower row of larger rounded stones, with a flat-ish face, set on the level top of the previous layer. If the stones were irregular, there might be a partial second row of stones keyed into the gaps on the first row. Then an infilling of smaller & flatter stones to bring the course to a level. The inside face was build of uniformly smaller stones with less obvious layering.

This end of the wall looks nearly original and the layering of teh wall is fairly clear, there are 9 layers above the foundation stones.

The inside of the wall is made up of smaller rubble, with less obvious layering.

Unlike the gable-end, though, the large facing stones were mostly quite shallow. So whilst an individual stone might be, say 50cm long and 30cm high, it might be no more than 10-15cm deep. The gap between inner and outer faces had been filled with small pieces of often-rounded rubble.

The thickness of the courses appeared to be determined by the size of the nearest quoin stones. So the thickness of courses was not necessarily the same either side of an existing opening.

The use of shallow stones is precisely what we will need for all the new walling, because we must build it against the inner course of concrete blockwork. It gives me confidence that we can make the end result indistinguishable from the old walling – once it is all picked and pointed.

Demolishing the wall
As with the gable-end, the mortar in the top of the wall was comparatively loose and easy to pry apart and got much tougher lower in the wall. After the first two days we used the SDS drill with a breaker tip, to prise stones apart, it really speeded things up.

I ended up making the opening quite a bit wider than it should have been. Previous tenants of the steading had broken though the wall in several places to…

1. Embed two concrete castings a couple of metres up and a couple apart, that stuck proud of the wall by 5cms or so. The projections each had two chunky bolts sticking up vertically out the top. They must have been used to attach something to the wall. The areas of wall above, behind and to each side of the castings had been packed, badly, with a mix of broken brick and cement mortar.
2. Just above the right-most casting (facing the outside of the wall), a 15cm-or-so, rusty galvanised steel tube ran from the front of the wall, upwards at 45 degrees, to the back, but also at about 30 degrees or so to the right. Again the whole area behind had been badly packed with rubble and cement.

I do wonder whether this relates to the description in the 1964 prospectus for the sale of Slains Estate, where East Byreleask farm is said to have had a ‘Threshing barn and Engine House adjoining’. The large opening in the end of the east wing might well have been  constructed to allow access to trailers of un-threshed grain. Perhaps there was a lean-to structure against outer the wall which housed an ‘engine’.

the concrete castings are a) just left of centre halfway up the wall and on the right, higher up the wall. The galvanised steel pipe is visible above.

The right-hand casting and pipe started exactly where I needed to finish the opening, but the wall was in bad condition above and around the cement work. There was a lot of peaty organic matter and the lime mortar had rotted out. I gritted my teeth and carried on removing wall. The actual rubble/cement mix was very tough so I used the big breaker to get it down in manageable lumps, then break it up again so I could lift it into the barrow and dump it on out concrete pile. I found a 70cm length of 3” x 8” wooden planking right in the middle. It was still in excellent condition!

This is one of the two concrete castings, with the bolts and square nuts visible on the projection. This has had the backing mass of brick/cement broken away.

The casting had been removed and is resting on the scaffolding. the wooden plank is still embedded in the wall, with most of the backing rubble/cement broken off.

Here is the plank, with the residual rubble/cement still attached.

The upper end of the galvanised tube had been cemented shut at some point.

The tube was not in good shape.

So we will have quite a lot of blockwork and walling to re-construct, but at least the wall should be sound…

We initially put up two bays, knowing that we would (just) need a third.

Because the larger stones were mostly shallow, we only needed the chain hoist for the four heaviest. The rest we heaved down by hand.

We kept the area clear by stacking the stones where they will be needed for the re-build and barrowing the broken lime mortar to our hardcore pile.

This is where we dumped most of the broken lime mortar.

Most of the wall was fairly easy going. the last metre or two on the right were much more of problem, because of the damage from the concrete/cement.

Here is the second concrete casting and the steel tube, still in place. What is not obvious if the mass of rubble/cement behind and the damage to the original walling.

Almost done, using the breaker to get the last layer broken out.

Done and worth celebrating!

A large gap in our wall, just for two windows…

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.