Today, before the thunderstorm arrived, we managed to move over the stack of
OSB sheets (we have 34 of them left) including the protective house covering
the wood. We also moved half the pile of the 63mm by 38mm CLS timber over to
its new location.
The picture below is the “Before” image of our timber yard just outside our
front door, we are going to move everything around to the new swimming lane
to store them there.
Storage-area-before-clearance
Blocks-ready-for-timber
Today, we finished off moving the concrete blocks, all 420, yes all four
hundred and twenty concrete blocks on 7 pallets. These are the narrow 140mm
hollow blocks and we moved them all over to our swimming lane to serve as
support piles for holding stacks of OSB sheets and the CLS timbers as well.
Plus also the odds and ends we rescued from the dismantling of the old
little cottage, and any other bits and pieces we have around the site like
old pallets etc.
But first, as you can see in the picture below, some of the support piles
are taller than others and the reason for this is to allow us to lay a sheet
of OSB on these taller piles and bridge the gap to the dirt behind the back
wall of the swimming lane. This will allow us to use the mini digger to dump
more dirt without spilling any into our nice and clean swimming lane! The
gap needs filling up again after the soil has settled down and washed down
in the recent rainfalls. This is exactly what we wanted to see and therefore
we are putting more dirt up there to make sure it is all settled and solid
to hold the fence posts sturdily, especially the workshop section where we
need to rebuild the fence again.
Blocks-moved-to-swimming-lane-2
Blocks-moved-to-swimming-lane-1
Blocks-moved-to-swimming-lane-3
This afternoon, we started the tidy up process. We have finished building
the walls of the swimming lane, as part of this stage of construction goes.
We are now using the excellent space for storage and we are re-organising
the site to move various items around.
Like for example, all the concrete blocks we got delivered the other day, they will be very useful as “piles” to make sure our materials will stand clear of any water that probably will accumulate in the swimming lane!
Blocks-Stacked-for-OSB-Storage-1
Blocks-Stacked-for-OSB-Storage-2
We have blocked off the other end of the lane with the rest of the fat 215mm blocks to stop (hopefully) the mud and dirt from leaking in the swimming lane, off the workshop’s higher grounds. The DPM is long enough to stretch right across the end and wrap around the front wall. We now got 3 columns of blocks, stacked up 7 high, with the DPM plastic sandwiched in between them.
at the Beginning of the lane, we will put the OSB sheet stack, followed by two
stacks of the CLS timber (the 63mm and 89mm pieces). Then a stack of the odd
and ends timber that came from the old house, and finally a stack of old
pallets and other equipment.
We can really have a good old tidy up and sort out where future delivery of
more timber and sheet material can go. This will maximise flexibility of
storage.
We have finally finished sieving the soil, moved the “clean” dirt (huh!) to Mount Sod, and filled 5 large (6cubic yard) skips of rubbish!!
We start the huge task of sorting out the site, ready for the main house to be built upon!
The soil is a real mess of old garden rubbish, DIY waste and building rubble from the old little cottage, as well as old metal pipes used back in the days when the whole area was a market gardens plus clay sewage pipes running back and forth too!
We built a large sieve measuring 3feet by 2feet, with an electric powerful off-centre motor (taken from a plate ground compactor) to provide the shake and wiggle. this was mounted into a wooden rramework to hang over the top of the dumper truck to collect the “clean” dirt, to be taken away and tipped onto the mound of soil. The framework was then mounted on to the back of a large flat bed trollet to provide a collecting point for the rubbish and dumped into “ton bags”. These bags were lifted out when full and emptied into the skip.
We have been tidying up the whole site ready for the start of phase 3 – the construction of the main house. The site clearance operation has been seeing various old piles of bricks (clay house bricks) being moved and soon the plants too!
We will have a bonfire to get rid of materials like old shelving which got damaged in the rain, chopped branches and other garden rubbish.
then the old compost heap will be spread across the whole garden to mix it well before the whole area is shoved up onto the mountain of dirt to clear away the top soil and get down to the sand.
The new raised Flower Bed is finally completed today. The Octagonal shaped constructed of dry bricks (without cement), a mixture of concrete driveway bricks and standard clay bricks. There are 7 layers all together.
It is about 10 square metre of bedding, surrounding the lid of the spectic tank and air vent pipe.
This flower bed is a temporary construction to rescue various plants from around the whole site before they were ruined by phase 3 – the contstruction of the main house!
Another of those inevitable expenses involved in demolition work is disposing of the waste. Now that the demolition is complete we have to get rid of all the waste. There is a lot of brick and concrete rubble and some general waste like carpets and other rubbish. The costs are not insignificant, a large skip for the general waste costs £135 (maybe 1.5Tons or £90/Ton) and the rubble costs £144 a lorry load (about 13 tons). But the metals make you money, disposing of the mesh from the rendering made us £30. The video show that it took 5 lorry loads to clear the rubble (£720! For about 60 Tons or £12/Ton). All those are cheap compared to disposing of the Asbestos cement panels from the house which cost £1037 for just 3.3 Tons (£315/Ton)! So all in all waste disposal has cost us 1037+720+135-30=£1862.
Grab lorry removing rubble.
The shed has been successfully moved to its new location.
We have bloated it up by adding two more 4feet wide (8feeet high) panels to the side walls to extend it from 2.2metres to 4.6metres. The other dimension remains the same at 3.6metres wide.
This change in size gave us a major boost in storage capacity for both our Oak planks, long offcuts and many items with are not needed in the short to medium term (like the gardening equipment).
We made a new roof and tried out for the first time, a homemade ridge beam constructed using two 63mm by 38mm CLS timber lengths, sandwiched with two layers of 11mm OSB boards 400mm high. The resultant beam is 3.6metres long, 60mm thick and 400mm high. It was glued and screwed together. We mounted it up on top of the walls in the middle and constructed the roof using 63mm CLS timber rafters covered with 11mm OSB complete (8by4) sheets, 3 down each side of the ridge beam. Walking on the roof did not deflect the ridge beam at all, and jumping up and down (over 100kg body weight!) only gave a slight deflection of a millimetre or so!!
The roof is now covered in fresh roofing felt, glued down with that black bitumen horrible stuff! A line gutters runs on both side and is collected into a water butt, through a filter box made of scotch brites, pebbles and stainless steel mesh!
600mm deep Shelves have been installed on three sides of the shed, at 2feet apart and a 10 shelf rack also constructed to hold long flat items.
The shed is quite loaded up now! !
Box Beam Ridge
Walls Up
Walls Up
Roof On
Roof Felted
Roof Felted
Gutters Fitted
Gutters Fitted
Storage Sheleves
Storage Rack for long narrow items
Storage Rack for long narrow items
The footprint of the garage and driveway has been cleared. The top soil was removed (about 300mm, a foot) and dumped on the heap which we are now calling Mount Sod! 
Yes it is getting big! We found a old buried rubbish pile containing bones (small ones! Animal ones probably pig), very rusty tin cans, broken glass whatevers and other odds and ends!
We had nice weather (tongue in cheek) on Monday with hail, thunder and lightning! The rain fall was over 11mm in just 20minutes! The lake formed with water off the roof of our shed and water coming down the Loke. We are calling it Lake Puddle! 