Category: Site Maintenance

Cosicot Fencing Replaced As Barrier Against Mount Sod Movements

The last two days has been spent on replacing an old tumbled down fence, the most of it anyway. The boundary is between us and Cosicot, up the hill from us a little bit. The old fencing was a mish mash collection of wooden fence panels, slotted into concrete posts at various distances. These are what we inherited when we bought the whole Roselea plot almost 20 years ago now.
But also, our lovely Mount Sod has done its usual thing of collapsing in some places around the edge and have pressed into the old fencing too.

Tumbled-down-boundary-to-Cosicot

We had all ways planned to replace this fence with a nice high quality one when we have finished enough of the house to move in and move mount sod to it final resting place at the bottom of the plot.
So after talking with our neighbour, we agreed that we will put up a new temporary barrier to both act as a new fence but also to act as a barrier against any further subsidence, to hold the status quo for another few years. It is all happening now because our neighbour wishes to build a new replacement garage and he doesn’t want to have to worry about our Mount Sod collapsing any further and messing up his brand new garage!
The first job on the first day was to dig out the lower section of Mount Sod so we had room to work on both side of the fence. We got the mini-digger out, drove up the Loke and into our neighbour’s property. There were originally 4 concrete posts, widely separated, being well over 2.5metres apart but it was still a careful process of digging in between these posts and “chucking” the soil back up on to the top of the mountain of dirt. The next task what to rescue three more concrete posts we had lying in the other corner of our garden, pick them up one by one up using a hook and chain dangling from the digger’s bucket and transfer them around to the area of work. We had swopped the bucket over to our narrowest 300mm wide bucket to dig three deep holes and dropped the concrete posts in. We positioned the new posts to help subdivide the larger gaps and also provide stronger support for the barrier. Fortunately, these old concrete posts were commercial ones and were over ten feet tall so we could bury them three feet down and also they had their original lumps of concrete foundations still on them, which all helps to anchor them very strongly. Finally, we ripped out the last wooden panel and wooden post as it was broken by the shifting soil and original barrier support mechanism which had rotted away.
The second day was spent constructing three horizontal wooden rails, cut to fit in between the posts, fitted into the slots and spaced 150mm below the a marked horizontal line (assisted using our laser level machine) for the bottom rail, then 300mm higher for the second rail and finally the third rail another 900mm up, to align with the top edge of the four feet wide OSB boards. We used “old” weathered 4.8metre CLS planks that we just got from our supplier (they had included these ten planks for free, one assumes to get rid of them!). These CLS timber are 63mm by 38mm thick.

Concrete-posts-and-rails-installed

Taking five sheets of 18mm thick OSB boards, we carefully sliced each vertical edge to follow the angle of each concrete post by measuring the offset from a true right angle (we used our trusty old 4feet builder’s homemade metal square tool) and proceeded to screw each piece into the back of the CLS wooden rails. We used the left-over OSB pieces together on the last section, the widest section (some 2620mm wide) and put on several pieces to fill the space. We had enough left over pieces in both CLS timber and OSB cut-offs that we could extend the fencing the other way (towards the Loke) and join to the existing wooden panelled fence.
Part of the final stages of building this new barrier, is to put on a layer of waterproof DPM plastic to protect the OSB from damp soil and extend the life of the whole structure, hopefully for the required two or three years. We had used more left-over material we had stored, like the final act of the day was to push in a line of cement panels, set vertically and pressing against the OSB and DPM plastic to provide a rot-proof bottom 300mm section and to stop the soil from creeping under the fence, including weeds and brambles.

Panels-fitted-and-protected

with-plastic-sheets-and-cement-boards

The whole thing is over 12.5metres long, by 1200mm high (plus a bit! .. depending on what the ground level is), seven concrete posts, ten CLS planks and five sheets of our OSB material, with hardly any left-overs at all!

25 March 2021
Replaced Loke’s Fence with New Green Chicken Wire Mesh

This afternoon, after we had the final delivery of CLS timber, we proceeded to put up the new replacement temporary fencing along the Loke, in front of the house. We are fed up of using the cheap recycled plastic fencing (it keeps splitting and it very brittle, this one only lasted 3 years but we had already replaced a section a year or so ago and it was very unsightly for the last six months anyway). So we decided to use steel wire mesh and in keeping with its short term need for this type of fencing, we bought chicken mesh wire, coated in green PVC plastic, rather than the more expensive and traditional wire chain-linked type. The hexagon pattern is quite large, at 50mm but it should do the job and keep things looking much neater and nicer too.

New-Wire-loke-fence

We had to rearrange and insert more frequent posts to help support the wobbly thinner material of this chicken mesh but hopefully, it will do the job for the next couple of years or five!

23 March 2021
Sun Shield Over Corridor Removed and Two Fence Panels repaired After Storm

Today, Sunday, under a very grey sky, we got up on to the roof of our temporary living quarters and rolled up our Sun Shield tarpaulin covering over our long corridor and put it away for this year.
We did a quick inspection of the rest of the roof, including the garage roof, to make sure that it is looking good and solid.
Plus also, we put in fresh batteries into our weather station transmitter as it was reporting a low battery indication.
After that, we went over to our temporary wooden fence along the Loke to repair two panels that had been blown down by the storm we had a couple of days ago. The rain gauge reported a total of 50mm of water fallen out of the sky! Fortunately, it was not all concentrated in one sharp downpour but spread right across the whole day. Phew!
Anyway, we screwed some pieces of 2 by 1 battens (recycling so old pieces used for the dunking tank) to reinforce the broken vertical edges of the panels and slid them back in between their posts. This time, we also screwed the panels to the posts to stop them falling out of their brackets.

Repaired-Loke-fence

That concludes the 2 hours of Sunday chores!

27 September 2020
Sun Shield Covers Corridor and Cold Water Header Tank Inspected

Today, we reinstalled our usual Sun Shield over the long corridor of our temporary living quarters. It was quite late this year, perhaps we got used to the heat coming in, or perhaps it is not so hot this year as it was last. Anyway, it now stretches across the 10 metres of the corrugated plastic roof.

While we were up on the roof, we inspected the roof surface to make sure that there were no cracks or holes.

And finally, we opened up our cold water header tank to inspect inside. It was all crystal clear and all fine. We did test our two electronic water level switches to make sure they are working. We are planning to start using them, in conjunction with a sterilising and filtration module, to draw up water from our underground rain water tank and start making use of it for domestic use.

20 June 2020
Berm All Finished

The task of rebuilding the Berm continued over Monday, Tuesday and finally Wednesday. We wanted the Berm to be high enough to stop the majority of the rain water that comes down our Loke so we decided that we would lay down a complete line of bricks again, just like we had before, but this time, using double the number of them. we broadened out the pattern, to three and a half bricks wide at one end near the raised flower bed and narrows down to two bricks wide at the other end. Then scooping all the extracted driveway “hardcore” material back all over the bricks (to fill all the gaps between the bricks with plenty of sharp bits and sand) but most of it went to form a gentle slope up up to and down away the bricks on both sides.
The whole thing was compacted down using our heavy petrol powered vibrator.

Driveway-berm-finished

It is flatter and wider but not perhaps taller than the old one, so hopefully that will allow our visitors and their cars not to run the risk of damaging the bodywork underneath. It will do the primary job of holding back the rain water most of the time and only during the 100-year events that seems to be occurring every 5 or 6 years where it is likely to overflow again. We have other plans in place to increase soak-away capacity at the bottom of the Loke and also let the water into the school field too!
So that 2 week job is finished At Last! We can get the car out again! We were running out of food!! Grin!

13 May 2020
Widen and Flatten Out the Driveway Berm

In a very disrupted couple of weeks .. we had steady rain all last week from Tuesday to Friday and some on Saturday afternoon too (a total of about 25mm of rain) .. Whilst Stephen worked on the Larch Burner Shaun got on with a task that we have been meaning to do for a while plus also take an opportunity to eliminate the ton of wasted slate bits and pieces.
Yes the Berm across our driveway that has been protecting us from flood water that comes down our Loke. It is currently constructed using a line of 2inch by 6inch planks held vertically and a line of house bricks on either sides to form a sharp hump. Unfortunately, it proves to be too sharp and some vehicles suffer scraping damage to their metal and plastic underbelly. Also during the heaviest rain falls, the water still gets over and floods our driveway.

Loke-Driveway-Berm-1

So we surveyed the Berm and discovered that the line of planks dips down in the middle by three or four inches but otherwise it is pretty level. We have marked the fence post and the brick wall of the raised flower bed to the height of the existing Berm and we will use a string pulled taut to build the hump to the required height and level.
After removing the old planks and about 140 bricks and sweeping aside the sand to one side, we are left with the original driveway material (made from recycled motorway tarmac and granite chippings).

We then cut down through this layer to the sand underneath and pulled apart the driveway skin to form a trench a few feet wide and 4inches deep. We calculated that this trench will be spacious enough to take all the slate waste, crushing each slate into tiny pieces to avoid forming slippery layers.
But first, before we get to that part of the job, we dug out all the weeds in and around the flower bed end of the Berm, removed two paving slabs which were relocated to the middle of our yard to provide a new incinerator venue so we can get on top of getting rid of the wooden rubbish we have been collecting for the last few months.

Driveway-berm-excavated

Shaun then got smashing! (We welded some bits of metal to the base of the metal thumper to help break the slates) Over a last few days all the waste slates were placed in the trench and smashed.

Driveway-Berm-All-the-scrap-slates-smashed-up-in-the-trench

We now just have to add some more material to make the ‘hump’ of the berm and replace the driveway material over the top.

9 May 2020
Garden Shed Finally Gets its Roof Repaired!

On Thursday, we had noticed that the old roofing felt on the Garden Shed was loose and flapping about and this prompted us to decide that we ought to finish the job we started 6 months ago when we recovered all our temporary building roofs with brand new felt last year (the original felt was installed in 2012!).
So we spend the morning and a couple of hours after lunch in laying on five new full sized strips and two narrow strips, all glued with bitumen horrible sticky stuff!!
We also straightened up the guttering by jamming in a couple pieces of wood so the rain water will flow along the gutters instead of tipping out the side.

Refelted-shed-roof

This will probably be the last time we deal with the roof as the life time of the felt is five years and we hope to have the house all finished by then!! Cross Fingers!!

9 April 2020
Annual Empty of Septic Tank with general tidy up

The man with the tank, the same lorry and man as last year, came this morning. We attached a piece of 68mm diameter plastic drain pipe on to the massive end of his flexible rubber hose, because his hose has a huge metal coupling unit that is far too big to get pass various internal structural elements inside the septic tank. We started doing this last year and did the same this year as well, and managed to remove almost all the “rubbish”, right down to the bottom of the pointy depths of the tank.
We then blasted the upper chamber with our garden hose but it wasn’t very messy anyway which is good, and then we washed out the output inspection man-hole chamber (which is painted white at the bottom for easy comparisons and spotting of murky conditions) and flushed quantity of water down and into the leach field pipework.

Clean-sample-chamber

The conclusions for this year is that the tank held up much better and didn’t suffer from large foaming events in the last 12 months and we got the cycle time for the clean-out operation about right. When, in several years, we have moved into our new house, we will have a working kitchen with its own rubbish collection chamber to catch the food stuff we put down the sink, this will reduce the large quantity of “solids” going into the septic tank, and we can reduce the frequency of the septic tank servicing task – Phew!!

3 March 2020
Performed Site Tidy-up and Maintenance plus Preparation and Spraying Black Paint Under the Eves

After our conclusion of the slates on the roof (the front porch section) on Monday, we finished dismantling of all the remaining platform modules apart from two full height modules that we managed to move inside the house and a further three modules were cut down to provide a new lower working platforms.

Truncated-platforms

We then repaired and completely replaced the covering over the swimming lane storage area. The old tarpaulin that has fallen apart due to long exposure under the power of the sun. We also removed all the old wet hardboard material and chucked them up to our fire pile. Using the old plywood sheets that were the walking surface of the platform modules, we used eight of them to recover the swimming lane, also using a series of the narrow strips to fill in the gap at the front of the roof too. Finally, we recycled two very large tarpaulin off-pieces which was 14metres long by 3metres wide and draped it over the new roof surface, having it folded over to form a double layer. Everything was tied down with pieces of oak strips (from our burn pile) and stapled into place.

The-recovered-swimming-lane-store-1

The-recovered-swimming-lane-store-2

The rest of the week was spent on preparing the eves, removing sticking through nails and removing the last of excess brown rubber glue material around the back of the fascia and sanding it down smooth. Then we got out our new paint sprayer we bought in the Summer, set it up, with water ready to practice spraying only to discover that it didn’t work. There was no suction into the inlet tube. This is the second time this fault occurred as it happened when be bought it but we exchanged it for a new one, which we tested it with water back then. So we contacted the retailer and they said, take it back to the shop and get your full refund. I am glad that we found the receipt because the till insisted that the product only costs £70 but our receipt says £180! The store manager had to override the till so we got all our money back!
We then found another model which was nearly double the price and went to buy that one instead. We tested that and after a little false start, we got it working with emulsion paint.
By this time, the day was over and the following day was wet so we didn’t get to spray the under side of the eves until Saturday.
The black acrylic paint we are using is very very thick and dense, even after diluting it by 30% as instructed on the tin, the paint still wouldn’t spray through the nozzle. So we had to dilute it by a further 10% before it got going. The diluted paint was still very thick like thick custard so this acrylic paint is amazingly heavy for external surfaces (it’s made for barns etc).
The other piece of equipment we made was a protective shield to stop any splatter reaching the guttering. We just wanted to spray behind the fascia and up the roof board and the rafters coming out from the walls.
This shield was put on legs so we could prop it up against the fascia edge, but also we mounted 5 little LED flood lamps to help brighten up inside the eves.
We started around next to the conservatory at the front of the house and worked our way along the front.
But after a short while, the initial litre of paint we put into the hopper was gone and we had only done a few metres. We did realise that by spraying the paint, it uses it up more quickly, giving the surface a thicker finish, but not that quickly! So we diluted the paint by another 10% and got on with the task, hoping that we will get a fair way around the whole 75 metres of eves!
And .. we actually got back to the beginning but only just! We do need to buy more paint anyway because the two porches with their under surfaces disappearing high up to a point and we need to get up on a platform module to give us the reach and finish off the last bit. It also looks like some of the rafters need a second coat.

Eaves-painted-black-1

Eaves-painted-black-2

We will get that done next week and then we will start on the task of putting up the wall cladding.

7 December 2019
Gutters Installed but also more Site Clearance done too

It was another week of a mixed bag of jobs and tasks, but we made progress on the guttering, oak planks for our windows and did some site clearance too.
The first job of the week was to correct a problem with our Downpipe channels where the bottom base board had warped. We basically clamped it back together again and then drilled pilot holes and screwed in five stainless screws on each edge. We did this minor operation on the A-B and D-E Downpipe Channels (these are either sides of the front door porch).

Then our skip arrived and we got on loading that instead. We started to cleared away a pile of rubble and rubbish that has been accumulating over the last few years, we found the skip we order was not big enough.

The-rubbish-heap

With a slight delay to the work on Tuesday, we got on with the job of installing the Guttering, putting eight oak pieces for the base of the gutters and another eight front pieces, including two angled blocks for each of the Downpipe Channels. This took us several days to complete, spread across the week (about 3 days in total), with some rainy weather interruptions too.

On Wednesday, saw the arrival of our second skip and we did a little bit of clearance before the rain arrived as forecasted. So we retired to our workshop to resume the task of slicing one good straight edge to all our 27mm thick oak planks. Next we entered all these planks and their minimum width measurement into our spreadsheet. It turned out to be eighty planks in total that we have been processing. After analysis, we put back all the planks that were 180mm and wider, back to our external storage racks. Also took back those ones that had bigger knots in the middle plus a half a dozen width from 100mm to 150mm, all to the storage racks too.

So Saturday, after we had finished gluing the gutters (Thursday afternoon and all day Friday), all along the “A”, “B”, “C”, “D” and a third of the “E” sections of the roof, we proceeded to fibre-glass and resin the two Downpipe Channels and the two outer corners (B-C and C-D) with our usual black coating, ready for the rubber membrane to come in. Also all the excess glue that had bubbled out, both inside and outside of the guttering, was removed and sanded smooth.

A-gutter

AB-and-BC-Corners-fibreglassed

C-Gutter

DE-Corner-fibreglassed

The last job of the day, and week, was to fill up our second skip with the remainder of the rubbish and clear away unwanted sacks of shredded plant material too.

The-Heap-is-gone

Next week, we can start on putting the rubber membrane into the guttering, which will lead us to start putting up the roofing breathable membrane and wooden battens, ready for the slates – Hurray!

3 August 2019