Category: Site

  • Courier Driver Comes to Apologise and Provides New Wooden Post

    At lunch time today, we had a visit from an unexpected person, the courier driver from UK Mail that had caused the damage to our Fence (see Fence broken by delivery driver) and he was honest and upfront to admit that he did the damage. He didn’t realise that he had done, hence why he didn’t stop. He also bought a replacement fence post and offered to install it as a token of apology as well, he also offered to get some replacement cones as well but we let him off on this as they were very old anyway.

    Courier Driver Comes to Apologise and Provides New Wooden Post

    Replacment-Fence-Post


    We were pleased that he came back, to be honest and gave us the wooden post. We consider this matter now resolved and closed.

  • Fence broken by delivery driver

    We had a delivery from UK-Mail today and the driver hit our fence post and snapped it off! He appeared to hit the post and break it off as well as flattening a few road cones placed by the fence to warn drivers that it was there! We have contacted UK Mail and will wait to see what they say about it.

    Fence-post-snapped-off-by-delivery-driver

    Fence-post-snapped-off-by-delivery-driver

    Fence-torn by delivery driver

    Fence-torn by delivery driver


  • Levelling Out Section Beside Loke

    Today we cleared and flattened the strip of ground alongside the Loke from our driveway, all the way to the hedge and water meter.

    Loke-side-flattened

    Loke-side-flattened

    We scraped the whole section between the house and  the Loke, making sure we still had a berm beside the Loke to keep out the rainwater running down the Loke.

    It is now approximately flat, ready for all our building materials to be unloaded from the Loke, like the first item to be delivered is the steel.

  • Prevention Flood off Loke

     In damp weather, we tackled the next source of flooding, this time coming off the Loke as the rain water collects together off the surface of the loke and some of the neighbors driveways and runs down the Loke towards us. We are unfortunately at the lowest point down the slight hill so most of the rain water will head in our direction.

    Old-Edge-of-the-loke

    Old-Edge-of-the-loke

    The old fence at the moment is constructed using one of those builder’s plastic orange mesh on wooden posts, but we had two old railway sleepers lying around so we pulled them into service and used their long length and thickness as a good strong barrier against the gushing water!!

    These sleepers are about 9 inches wide by 5 inches thick and about 8½ feet long.

    We dug a slot along the edge of the grass verge, following a string taut and rolled the sleepers in, and packed in dirt around them so they are half buried.

    New-Edging-to-the-loke

    New-Edging-to-the-loke

    We might buy some more sleepers and carry along the Loke to make a neat edging, even though the railway sleepers are somewhat mangled and have holes in them, they do make a good straight edge and look a little “rustic”!

  • Flood Prevention Attempt Number 2!

     Today, we attempted to block off the rain water spillage coming from the workshop. See the little movie of the “river” gushing out of their workshop area (river starts at 12:24 and lasts for over half an hour!).

    Washed-out-section-1

    Washed-out-section-1

    Washed-out-section-2

    Washed-out-section-2


    As you can see what damage their water has caused!

    So we decided to mount a barrier of two 8 foot by 4 foot OSB boards, covered on one side with DPM plastic to waterproof it, and bury them both down 5 feet below the fence footings.

    We had to dig out a long narrow trench for the boards to sit in, it took a lot of digging by hand.

    Trench-dug-for-boards-e1466194453203

    Trench-dug-for-boards-e1466194453203

    We then inserted the boards and attached them to each other and the end of the swimming lane.

    Boards-in-place-1

    Boards-in-place-1

    Boards-in-place-2-e1466194032680

    Boards-in-place-2-e1466194032680


    Then we filled up all around both sides of the new barrier to make sure that there is a strong berm of soil to stop the water from flowing up hill and around the side of the new boards. The other end overlaps the end of the swimming lane’s back wall by a foot.

    All-filled-in-and-compacted

    All-filled-in-and-compacted

    We had to dig out quite a lot of soil from the mound nearby the area to fill in around the boards (replacing the soil washed away)

    Area-dug-out-to-fill-trench

    Area-dug-out-to-fill-trench

    Hopefully, that will prevent  the river from forming and etching away our soil again. it might pool up there in and under the workshop’s fence but it will be contained and not flow anywhere.

    One of the problems, is the fact that the workshop building doesn’t do anything with the rain water collected off their roof. It just goes down two gutter pipes and splashes straight out onto the ground!! These downpipes are right next to our fence!!

    Gutters-droping-water-on-the-boundary

    Gutters-droping-water-on-the-boundary

  • Footprint of house Scraped and Level – Part 2

     This morning, Stephen finished off scraping any excess soil lying within the footprint of the house. There was a little bit here and there but not much this time, in the area covered by the kitchen, bedroom 1 and the great room.

    Now, over to the next job of digging the next hole for an Energy Module!!

  • Scraping and Levelling the Footprint of House – Part 1

    Today, we went out to find out how level and flat the ground is for where the footprint of the house is going. We created an attachment for both the batter boards and for the dozer blade on the mini-digger to generate the laser line and receiver respectively, to allow the mini-digger to move around the area and accurately push excess soil away.

    Laser-generator-on-bracket

    Laser-generator-on-bracket

    Laser-Detector-on-Diggers-dozer-blade

    Laser-Detector-on-Diggers-dozer-blade


    We started in the middle to work outwards so all excess material (if any) is automatically out of the way. We have done half the house from the front door and everything to right of it. There is no excess soil in this section, there are lower points but we can easily fill these up with the output of our Energy Module installations.

    Level-checked-and-scraped-as-nessesary

    Level-checked-and-scraped-as-nessesary

    We are very glad that we had done this job before we did any more Energy Modules as the mini-digger made short work on the task, but if we had discovered that we needed to remove this excess soil AFTER we had installed all the Energy Modules, by Jupiter, it would have been a massive manual labour job!!

    On Monday, we will do the other half and then go back to digging and installing the Energy Modules.

  • Lovely Fire!

    We had some spare time and it was slightly raining today so we took the opportunity to have get a fire in the incinerator going to get rid of various wooden rubbish around the site.

    May-25th-Bonfire1

    May-25th-Bonfire1

    Like for example, 7 wooden pallets, brambles, rotten OSB boards and off cuts from the garage we have collected over the last few weeks.

    It took longer than we expected and didn’t finish until 8:15 pm and still the fire is going! We will have to go out again before we go to bed to double check that it is ok!!

  • Sunday Quiet Jobs!

    As to our rule, for Sunday, we do quiet jobs around the house and the site so not to disturb our neighbors.

    Today, we did several tasks as follows:

    Camera and TV Aerial

    We decided to take down the heavy wooden old pole that holds up our TV Aerial, Camera and floodlight. It was too heavy for the structure of the building, our front door and storage room door were not braced very strongly, so the whole corner was leaning over, especially during strong winds.

    The floodlight went back up on a much smaller and shorter piece of timber we had lying around, a 50 mm by 50 mm piece.

    New-pole-for-floodlight

    New-pole-for-floodlight

    The TV Aerial went up at the top of the weather equipment pole at the other end of the temporary living quarters and reconnected back into the TV.

    Aerial-Moved

    Aerial-Moved

    Mind you, it seems to have stopped working and at first, we thought it was because the birds had bounced the aerial downwards so it wouldn’t be picking up a strong signal anymore, but having moved it now and pointed it in the general direction that our neighbors’ aerial are pointing, we are still not getting a good signal so something else has gone astray!!

    And finally, we moved the camera so it is much closer to our building area where our house is going to be. We used the original heavy wooden pole but this time, we mounted it on the corner of the garden shed, furthest away from any doors etc. We also braced the tall (3.6 meters – 12 feet) pole with two further diagonal wooden CLS timber.

    New-pole-for-Camera-1

    New-pole-for-Camera-1

    New-pole-for-Camera-2

    New-pole-for-Camera-2


    It is much sturdier, stronger and braced against strong winds to reduce the camera shake so our automatic movie generator will only take videos when something is happening in shot (it took the camera shake as “something is happening” and started recording again and again of nothing!). We are recording at a rate of 5 frames per second to keep the storage demands lower, especially as we are using the full HD “2K” resolution as our image size and quality.

    Garden Shed Roof

    While we were up on the roof doing the camera pole, we noticed that the ridge line was showing cracks in the roofing felt. So we got out our trusty old flashing tape and stuck a small piece down along the ridge, about the middle section of the roof.

    Fence Returns

    The orange builder’s fence, one of those holey plastic mesh things, is now back in place to ward off strays who might come over across our building site and fall down into one of our many holes we may have on the go. It is silly but we have to provide some warnings fencing or signs to keep trespassers off our land, and if they fall down a hole and break a leg, they can sue us for not warning them!! Shake of head!

    Hedge & Flower bed + Brambles!

    We started the tidy up trimming of the hedge we have remaining along the Loke and we will finish that off soon. But we also picked up other bags of clippings, and along with the bag of trimmings from the hedge, went up to the top of the garden to our compost heap. Plus also tidied up bags of bark chippings to a neat pile too.

    We had to rip out a small clump of brambles that managed to grow right in the dark corner, right behind our temporary living quarters, along the Term Gardens fencing, because we needed to gain access at that end to feed the TV Aerial cable through the wall and up to the new location for the aerial just above on the weather pole. That was a tough and spikey job!!

    That’s Concludes our Sunday Quiet Jobs!!

  • The Massive Soil Works starts …

    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.