Roselea

Category: Site Clearance

  • The Weeds and Grass Was Beaten Back Along the Front of the House

    This afternoon, after we had finished doing the floorboards in the Entertainment Room, we decided that we had to clear all the Weeds and Grass that had been growing this year. It was getting way out of control and was rather difficult to walk through the jungle, especially when trying to push a trolley load of building materials!!
    A week ago, we got rid of a 5foot high thistle!

    The Weeds and Grass Was Beaten Back Along the Front of the House

    Alongside-the-Loke-got-very-overgrown


    We used our petrol mower plus our battery powered strimmer to tackle the job of hacking through the clumps of grass and leggy weeds, and we generated two wheelbarrow loads of trimmings, which we just threw onto our dirt mound to rot down etc.

    The Weeds and Grass Was Beaten Back Along the Front of the House

    Jungle-cleared-along-side-the-loke-1

    The Weeds and Grass Was Beaten Back Along the Front of the House

    Jungle-cleared-along-side-the-loke-2



    This area is now cleared and we can now unload some of our deliveries like for example, our Fermacell and plasterboards sheet materials which will be needed to be located somewhere until we are ready to use them.

  • Lovely Bonfire While It Rained!

    This afternoon, with the rain that is coming, we decided to do a bit of site clearance and have a bonfire in our incinerator! We have been building up trug loads of wooden rubbish from various projects over the months and it was time to finally make a start on getting rid of this collection.

    Fire-in-Incinerator

    Fire-in-Incinerator


    We finally managed to get rid of eight trugs, 6 bags of wood shavings and one huge plastic bag of wooden rubbish!
    Empty-firewood-trugs

    Empty-firewood-trugs


    But we still have not tackled the huge pile of timber that is still lying up there near the incinerator! Phew!

  • New Incinerator for Rubbish Clearance

     Today, while we are still waiting for prices and quotes from the last of our building merchants to come back to us, a new Incinerator was constructed!!

    Fire-Barrel-with-new-Grate-1

    Fire-Barrel-with-new-Grate-1

    It was made using an old oil barrel which had already been made into an incinerator,but it had been a struggle to keep it going for long jobs as the ash would fill the barrel up and we couldn’t get it out as it didn’t have any holes in the bottom!

    So, taking this bit of spare time, and using lengths of 10mm reinforcing bars, welded together a grid of closely spaced bars for the drum to sit on and then raised the whole thing up 300mm on legs to allow the ash to fall out and move it out of the way.

    The bottom of the oil drum was sliced out completely and then the barrel turned up and spot welded to the new iron grate in a couple of places to hold the whole lot together.

    Fire-Barrel-with-new-Grate-2

    Fire-Barrel-with-new-Grate-2

    This weekend, it looks as if it will be wet so that would be our chance to try out this new piece of equipment to help with keeping our site clear of rubbish!!

  • Day 2 of Hedge Trim!

     We tackled the second half of the ivy choked blackthorn and hawthorn wild hedge that runs across the bottom of our garden between us and the school field. It was another hot day of cutting and sawing down the side branches and this time, there were some massive ones! One in particular, hanging way over our living quarters, was a big fat 6 inch diameter branch about 12 feet long!

    But we managed to get it all cleared and the whole line looks a lot better now.

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-1

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-1

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-2

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-2


    And all the smaller pieces went through the shredding machine and we have filled up a second “ton” bag .. and some!!

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-Doubled-up-on-the-shreddings

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-2-Doubled-up-on-the-shreddings

    The hedge will eventually be completely replaced with a proper fencing when the garden and veg/fruit patch is landscaped after the house is built, so it is rather wild with Ivy growing in it and mostly left to its own devices to enjoy nature at its best!!

  • Clearing Away Equipment and Rubbish .. but Diverted to Hedge Trimming Instead!

     We started today on tidying up the area inside the footprint of our house, winding up hose, putting up the ramp over the wall at the back door nearest the garage ..

    Back-door-ramp

    Back-door-ramp

    We loaded up a wheelbarrow with concrete block offcuts to take away to our “rubbish” bag beside the hedge boundary with the school field.

    This is when we were diverted into doing a different task, of trimming back the hedge and balancing up the weight of the whole hedge. We have got to do this as yesterday saw a huge tractor come back and forth on the school field a half a dozen times trimming back our hedge on their side! They sliced and chopped very large branches (well over 50mm / 2 inches in places!) which were hanging over their field with their massive machine, which only took them about 30 minutes to do it all! So we realised that we had to do something similar  our side!!

    The picture below shows you how big some of the overhanging branches we got growing out of our hedge and that is what has disappeared on the school field side!

    Hedge-before-Trimming

    Hedge-before-Trimming

    So we chopped and sliced using our pruning shears and electric sabre saw and then shredded up virtually all the cut-offs and loaded the shredded pieces into a large “ton” bag, filling it right to the top ..

    Hedge-Trimming-a-large-bag-of-shreddings

    Hedge-Trimming-a-large-bag-of-shreddings

    That will compost down very nicely into good quality fiber mulch, ready for our garden and veg patch when we get that done in a year or so time – smile!

    We got half way along the hedge with our efforts today as you can see in the picture  below

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-1

    Hedge-Trimming-Day-1

    And tomorrow we will finish off the remaining of the hedge and have that job done before we have an accident of strong winds causing the hedge to break and dump some of these overhanging branches to crash into our temporary living quarters!! We say “Thank You” School for diverting us when we were not planning this job just yet!!

  • Second Day of Fire and Last Bits and Pieces Tidied Up!

    In another glorious sunny day, we had the incinerator going all day today,
    burning up all the old ivy cuttings off our large hedge at the bottom of the
    garden, plus loads of extra trimmings from more ivy around the corner and
    along the Tern Gardens fence line!

    Flames-6ft-High

    Flames-6ft-High

    Cleared-in-front-of-storage-shed

    Cleared-in-front-of-storage-shed


    We moved all the good quality pallets from everywhere and laid them on top
    of the new roof covering our new timber store. We have a dozen of them!! And
    finally, the last bits and pieces lying alongside the garage and garden shed
    were moved inside the timber store, graded by size. We are just about ready
    to tackle the next big job now, the laying down of the sewage pipes from
    various points under the house, to the septic tank.

  • Last Two Covers Installed and a Lovely Fire!

    It was glorious weather today, with a very powerful Sun but it didn’t get
    hot this time as there was a stronger chilly breeze! We managed to assemble
    and install the last two covers over our new timber yard and they are now
    rain proof.

    Covers-finished-and-wood-loaded

    Covers-finished-and-wood-loaded

    Finally, we had a lovely fire in our incinerator to burn up loads of dried
    up cuttings, rotten pallets and other wooden rubbish we had lying around.

    The site is looking much better for our 4 days of effort, with only a few
    bits and pieces left to move over to under the covers like pallets,
    platforms and ramps .. and we will be all done – phew!!

  • Last Pile of Timber Moved and Rain Protection Half Done

    Today, in the lovely sunshine, we moved the last pile of old timber that
    came from the demolition of the old bungalow that was here since around
    1930’s.

    Roof-half-done

    Roof-half-done

    Roofing-the-lane

    Roofing-the-lane


    We spent the rest of the day building rain protection covers to keep much of
    the rain off our timber piles in the swimming lane. We have done 2 of them,
    with 2 left to do.

  • The 89mm CLS Timber is Sorted

    Today, we handled the next pile of timber, the 89mm by 38mm CLS timber. We
    also got our neighbour Terry to come and collect all the unusable pieces for
    his wood burner. He was nicely pleased!

    Timber-stacked-on-lane-1

    Timber-stacked-on-lane-1

    Timber-stacked-on-lane-2

    Timber-stacked-on-lane-2


    Tomorrow, we will move the last pile of “odds and ends” timber and then
    build the rain covering for the whole lot.

  • Continued With Site Reorganisation

    We continued with our reorganisation of our site, completing the pile of the
    63mm by 38mm CLS timber. We have graded the timber into “good”, “so so” and
    “rubbish” to make sure that we maintain the quality of our building work. We
    felt that we needed to get on with the work so we put on our heavy duty
    waterproofs and carried on out in the rain, which was light to medium rain
    falling straight down in zero winds. We had only about 2mm of rain in the 3
    hours of our work.

    Next, we will create a tarpaulin covering along the length of the swimming
    lane to keep the rain off the timber and allow it to stay dry, and then
    after that, we deal with the 89mm by 38mm CLS timber.

    Yes this is taking time, but it is good to tidy up our site, move various
    piles of timber that are lying here and there, and this will create extra
    space for future delivery and easier car parking etc.