There are still two utility services connected to the Old Place, water and telephone. The electricity has been moved last November.

For the water, we dug down near the meter and capped off the pipeline running off to the Old Place. The modern plastic pipes is very easy to deal with, just push on the End Cap, screw it down tight and hey presto! All sealed and done!

Next was the telephone line, or rather installing the necessary underground conduits ready for the new cable to the garage. We needed to cut a trench across our little Loke to the telegraph pole and lay down a plastic pipe and come out at the base of the pole.

Next is the threading of the string. But first, we discovered that there was quite a lot of water lurking in the conduit that have had been laid 18 months ago and the open end got buried! We used the workshop vacuum cleaner to suck this water out and then suck the string through, being tied to an old dishcloth. It worked very well indeed.

Having marked the string beforehand, the distance from end to end is about 46metres!

The engineers will be coming in a few days to connect the new phone line.

This means the last utility connection will be cut from the Old Place and we can start dismantling it! Yippee!

By Shaun

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