17.   KEEP CALM - it's Christmas

I have been receiving loads of emails and text messages to complain about the photos in my last posting.

Sorry they weren't up to scratch.

Those complaining wanted less of the blockwork and more of the low slung trousers - or put even more accurately 'less of' the low slung trousers.

The funny thing is that it was all the ladies amongst you who were doing the complaining.

Come come.

Sorry girls - as my blog is accessible in the public domain -  I do have to be careful. 
After all, I am building this new house to live, not to find myself behind bars somewhere.

Have a Happy Christmas.  I shan't tell anyone who you all were. 

Just Keep Calm
Have a great Christmas
and forget bottoms

.
Next installment in the New Year.

PS Washing machine is back in good working order, and the computer is functioning well again.  Max and I are best friends.
It all bodes well for 2013.
Roll on.

16  Low slung trousers and blockwork

We finished the steel work last week on Thursday and started the blockwork on Friday before clearing off to London for comfort and joy with Jules and Gohar.  Oh to be in a proper house again – with showers that give you a proper dousing, and toilet paper that hasn’t already been dampened by the external atmosphere! 

The end of the week was somewhat disrupted – I allowed my bank card to find its way into the washing machine.  Firstly the washing machine hiccupped and stopped expelling any water, and secondly Max growled at having to empty the tub of freezing cold water to try and put it to rights.  Not possible.  Half the card was retrieved but the other half is well and truly jammed in the pipe work.  I was not his favourite, and I’m still without a washing machine.  When living in a caravan a washing machine is one’s closest friend, until they go wrong.  I have discovered this is the way to lose friends easily and immediately.

The same day, my computer went on the blink, again.  In for repairs for a week.   

This week has a feeling about it that the forecast, and I’m not just talking about the weather, is going to be a bit bleak.

Back to the real business of building.

It is interesting that each trade has its own personality and the blockworkers are not short of theirs! 

They can be identified by their dress sense.  Their low slung trousers hang on to their hips as best they could.  As soon as the occupant is in a bending down position (all too frequent) the trousers might just as well have been around their ankles for what good they were doing.  Hasn’t anyone told them, ever, that bare bums are not a good sight.  Nor are pants, (fortunately not worn at quite such a precarious level), that have become wet and discoloured very early in the day by the cement and mud that the occupant had obviously for some unfortunate reason sat down in.  Not at all elegant in my opinion.  But that wasn’t of any concern of theirs, obviously. 

My first impression of blockworkers, I have to say, remained verified throughout the week.  There was no improvement.   I had to focus on other things to get through this week.  Nothing seemed to go right for me.

Having said that, nothing was more than my own problem really – no disaster occurred in terms of the building progression, in fact it was pretty good.

The blockwork, like the footings, have proved to be pretty complicated.  All sorts of combinations of course work with different heights, combinations of thicknesses, and ways of building the blocks.  The house looks such a simple plan and with so few walls, how can it possibly come up with such complicated arrangements?

Each wall has a different arrangement of blockwork, some double skin, some laid flat, some on end, some a combination.

This was a particularly complicated junction of drain runs, steel columns, change in steps of footings and differently constructed blockwork walls all coming together.
Praise to the blockworkers for understanding what was required.
It will all be buried underground and never seen by anyone to marvel at!

Thank goodness for Max who is such a practical man.   I look at the architects’ drawings and see a whole lot of straight lines and precise measurements and think everything must be done to match in the built form.

I am gradually learning that I can’t for ever be expecting perfection in every aspect of the build.  It is hard to accept, but I am beginning to understand what ‘actually’ is important.

Max has identified that there are two approaches to work /life:

‘Perfection next year’, or ‘Second best tomorrow’.

But you can only be one or the other.

We have always had moments of conflict between these two options throughout our shared activities during our married life.  38 years later we are still exposing our different approach to life.  But for all the stresses and moments of crisis, I have to say that looking back we have always managed to produced a happy medium.  I just don’t know what the secret has been, so the pressures of our different approach still persist.  This will be in the mystery of the house we are going to produce.

Max looks at the architect’s drawings and knows that the reality of concrete footings will not have any such fine lines and precise measurements that the architect indicates.  On the contrary, they will probably be within a tolerance of 10 – 15mm.  What Max makes sure of is that he knows exactly where the critical measurements are, and how these can be controlled and achieved.

In contrast, I always judge things on how they look.  If something looks good, I will make it work.    We 'should' provide the ideal combination – and usually I think we do, but you try finding equitable solutions with someone who has the opposite approach!   Our short term frustrations with each other will bring its long term rewards.  I keep reminding myself that they have in the past, and they will for our new house.  That’s what I look forward to.  I hope Max does too, before he totally gives up on me.

The blockwork for the stepped retaining wall with all the steel reinforcing bars was started on Monday.  It needs to be built up gradually because the concrete that is poured in between the two layers has to be done over a period of time.  Not too much at once otherwise it is too strong for the walls and it forces the blocks out.  Not what you want at all.  Well, I’m afraid this is what happened to us.  You learn something every day, and experience they say is valuable.  It was a pity, but not disastrous.  It just meant that one side had to be taken down, and started again.  Perhaps fortunate it was our mistake, we could shoulder the blame.  However, the low cut trouser wearers had to make it good.  Sorry boys.

In spite of all my negative reactions to the block workers, they are making a tidy job.  The foundation walls should all be completed by the middle of next week. 

We are a few days behind schedule as we will have to complete the tanking and damp proof membrane after Christmas.  We were hoping to have this and the slab down before the Christmas break.

15.  Naughty but nice

Just to show you the completed steel work as there will be little else to report this week, and we are away at the weekend, so it's likely there will be nothing posted until the 16th December.

This is the front elevation to the road.  The high part on the left will have the living wall.
The part on the right links to Max's studio which has no steel columns so hasn't made an appearance yet - except for the reinforcing bars that we have constructed that you can see in the photo below.
You can see the view to the south and east beyond

These bars will all be sandwiched between concrete blocks and then concrete poured in to the sandwich,  Very good for the teeth.

This photo is taken from Max's studio looking through to my office at the far end.
I will be able to keep an eye on him, and visa versa I suppose.

This is taken from the garden looking at the south elevation.
- and the cherry picker.

This is the view south looking from the dining area.

We're now busy planning all the block work that needs to be completed before the slab can go in, plus all the damp proof membranes which will take some planning!  

The architects came to site today.  I think they were somewhat surprised..  

November 5th - demolition started.  December 5th - Steel erection.

Naughty but nice.  

14.  And it was good.  And at the end of the week not so good.

Saturday

Max ordered a concrete mixer today, and I ordered several bags of cement – looks like there is some manual work to do this week.

The rain fell all night.  Living in a tin can can be very noisy and quite dramatic.  But we did keep the roof ventilation windows closed last night as Ceri had discovered it can allow quite a lot of water in if left open!  Thanks Ceri for pointing that out – we wondered why the carpet was always a bit wet.

Most of the time we are very comfortable – as you can see.

Sunday

Max spent most of the day shuttering up the gaps in the footings that had been left open for the drain runs.  These should be completed on Monday. 

The awkward bits around the drains that have now been concreted by hand

It’s good to see everything getting finished off and things looking complete and ready to move on to the next stage.

At 5pm we were putting up the wind break to the west of the caravan as we had some spare time before turning in for the evening.  A neighbour stopped to chat over the hedge and we suddenly realised that we could hear an ominous sound of running water.  On inspection I found we had a leak in the pipe from the mains.  Not good news.  The result was that we had no water until I was able to go and buy a jubilee clip to refit a slightly cut down pipe.  With plenty of work to keep us fully occupied meant that it wasn’t until late Monday afternoon that it was repaired. A day without water makes one feel on the wrong side of civilised living. Caravans have to work if they want me to be happy.   In reality it was only a slight inconvenience – as long as this doesn’t become a frequent occurrence.

Shhh – there is still a leak, but I’ve got to wait for a convenient moment to mention it.  The mains pressure here is 5 bar, so holding this water back on caravan fittings is a difficult job, so I am sympathetic.  Hope the water bill doesn’t ruin us meanwhile.

Monday

The weather was scheduled to be awful today so we suggested to Stefan that we didn’t work today.  Max and I actually managed to do some preparation work for the footings to the retaining wall .  In order to keep to the schedule we need to have the areas all shuttered up with the exact positions for the reinforcing bars marked out.  The steel bars are due to arrive tomorrow, and we have booked the Building Inspector for Wednesday midday, so we are dependent on others and there is no time for slacking to get the necessary work done in time.  Pressure is on. 

By the late afternoon we felt confident we were ready for the next day’s work, so just to make sure the pressure was really high I provisionally booked the concrete for 3pm on Wednesday afternoon to follow on immediately after the inspector’s visit.  The concreting company agreed that I could ring at 1pm on the day to confirm the booking (as it all depends on the positive outcome of the inspector’s approval)  They were fine with that.

Max put up an overhead light to illuminate the site so that we can carry on working – at night!  Some chance of that, I thought.

Tuesday

I made a quick check first thing in the morning with the steel bar company to see what time the steel for the retaining walls would be arriving this morning.  Amazingly the man I had been in contact with for the order answered the phone at 2 minutes past 8.  I wasn’t expecting that.  Nor was I expecting it not to be arriving until the afternoon. 

Oh help, can we do all this work in one afternoon and the next morning in time to be ready for the inspector?

How would Stefan react to being told there was no work for the morning? My anxiety was beginning to mount.     Fortunately Stefan had a visit to Basingstoke he wanted to make so it was mutually convenient for him not to come this morning. I was at least relieved by that, as I don’t like upsetting him that there is no work to be done.

At 1:30 Stefan arrived back from Basingstoke, at 2pm the steel bars arrived.  

A well used drawing - it has obviously been dragged through the mud several times.
This is the retaining wall to Max's studio.  These walls will be retaining the field that we will be building up over the top, giving him a wild flower meadow covering.  

This is the complicated drawing we are working from.  The steel bars go between the concrete blocks, at 200mm centres both horizontally and vertically with slightly thicker bars for the verticals.  We have to cut them according to the steps.  We have just completed setting up the steel horizontal and vertical bars before the concrete blocks either side are laid next week.

A slight blockage in the road as the bars had to be unloaded at the junction rather than on site.  Parcel Force therefore had to rely on us to make a delivery to the neighbour.  As tempting as it was to keep it for ourselves, as it was a case of wine, and probably good quality as well, we were noble, and good neighbours and I dropped it round.  It would have been just the job at the end of the day, especially this one.

 

Without delay we set to, on our knees, creating the mesh of all these steel bars.  Stefan gave me a quick demo of how to twist the steel wire around the bars, grasp the ends between the jaws of the pincers, twist the pincers round, tensioning the wire by straining the pincers against the bars, and then snipping the wire – ‘just like that’ at the end.  “OK Stefan – I’ll bend the wire in position around the bars every 200mm – you do all the fancy stuff”.

Stefan doing the fancy stuff

With that process agreed, without any further ado we managed to get the first layer of the larger footing completed by the time it was too dark to see what we were doing.  We didn’t instruct anyone to turn any night lights on either. We both felt that knee pads would have been a good addition.  Must see what I can do for tomorrow.

All tied together and sitting rigid ready for the concrete to be poured over it.
Max is just making a few checks and adjustments

Jake is here with us tomorrow so we should make good progress getting the remaining bars in place and ready.  I am sure we will all be standing to attention, for the inspector’s visit.  We envisage no problems, but they tend to be a law unto themselves, so we will see.

Stefan and Jake attaching the uprights in so that the footing is linked to the wall bars

What do you think?  Did we do it, or were we struggling when the inspector arrived?  Read on to find out.

This evening I have decided on the selection of plants we will order for the living wall.  With a forward order and a good quantity we can get quite a good discount.  The plants I have chosen give a variety of texture and leaf pattern, and tend to be in the silvery green and mauve / purple colour scheme which I think will look good with the fraké hard wood cladding.  

The chosen plants and colour scheme for the living wall

As the wood ages it goes a silver colour similar to cedar.  I have alarmed the architects by saying that I want a purple frame to the tall stair window.  It will be a flat plane of steel set perpendicular to the window, its purpose is to prevent the plants from growing over the window and blocking the light into the staircase.  As a contrast to the plants, and mostly covered anyway, I think visually the purple colouring could be quite stunning.  Either that, or a disaster – but I’m determined!  The order for the plants will go off tomorrow for delivery in April over a period of 3 weeks.  About 700 plants per week.  Anyone who wants to come and stay in April will be most welcome.

Wednesday

This morning we still needed to get the second mesh made up.  Stefan suggested we made it up on the ground as a complete unit – and then crane it all into position.  The space where it is to go is so tight that there is nowhere to stand / kneel to fix the steel bars together, so this seemed like a wise move. 

Again Stefan’s experience made the task work well and a cuboid trapezium of wire mesh was lowered into place ready for the arrival of the inspector.

Good work.  I had been responsible for measuring and marking the steel to fit the footing it was for.  A huge responsibility of course, and it fitted like a glove.

I wasn’t around for the inspector’s visit, but when I came back in the evening the footings were complete with the concrete poured – so it must have been given the all clear. 

Of course we achieved it.

I can’ believe any of you really thought we wouldn’t.

During the afternoon, the fabricator of the steel (the columns and beams) came to check the site and make sure access was going to be OK for his cranes next week.  He suggested that for Health and Safety reasons we needed to place sheaths on the overhead electric cables that are near the site (the ones we are due to put underground) and warning signs alerting drivers of their existence. Cranes have a tendency to get caught in anything lurking in the skyline.   Not sure who actually gets up there to put these sheaths and notices in place.  Fortunately the same afternoon, (it is all happening today) Western Power were here to check the site for laying the underground cables.  Who better to ask about the overhead cables?  So whilst Max was in conversation with them about their work he slyly slipped the question of who should put the sheaths and notices on their cables.   With his usual skill he managed to enlist their assurance that they would happily do it for us in the morning.  

Warning signs for low flying aircraft and high flying cranes

Somehow country folk seem very obliging – everyone is very happy to help.  Western Power were here to check the trenches that Stefan had dug in spare moments.  They are looking truly wonderful, full of clear clear water from the whole of the neighbourhood.  We weren’t so sure that they would agree however, after all, electricity and water aren’t the best of friends.  They didn’t have a care in the world.  They will be here in the morning.

Thursday

So we have completed and concreted the reinforced footings, the inspection went without a hitch, the steel fabricators are happy with how the site looks, and Western Power don’t mind that the trenches look as if they are ready for fish rather than electric cables.  Max and I are feeling good.

Today we are going to get all the ground level between all the footings up to the finished level prior to the slab being cast.  This will mean Stefan using his medium sized machine to restore the level and then cover with 30mm of blinding to give a nice firm, flat surface. 

The site gradually looking ready for action for positioning the steel.  

Max doing final concreting.

I always admire the way these enormous machines you see on the motorways make the ground look so even and regular when they have finished making cuttings and banks.  I’ve always wanted them to be able to do that for me.  Well it is amazing to watch Stefan make these clumsy looking elephants pad quietly around the site, avoiding the steel bolts and creating the clear shape of the outline of the rooms of the house – just like the architect’s drawings.  I followed him around with the level checking for the continuous tone from the laser beam that would signify he was spot on.  Frequently it was the case that he achieved the right level just by eye – no adjustment was needed.  Stefan gets so much pleasure still  - 40 years on – from the perfection he achieves with his elephants, and each time I gave him the thumbs up, the pride in his smile was intense.  This was one of the best afternoons on site.  Everything suddenly came together.  And it was good. 

Friday

Today Stefan and Jake came to help Western Power lay the cables in the trenches and backfill the ground that had been dug out.  Western Power had prepared us that they would be on site by 8:30.  So we were ready to oblige as soon as they came.  They should of course have their own equipment, but having seen that we had all the machinery here they took advantage of it.

They came at 3pm – which was not so good.  Stefan was not pleased having waited all day with little to do.  

The trench from the top corner of the field 

The bottom trench with cables after Stefan had pumped out most of the water.

Fred and his wife Hilary have invites us to supper, so an hour later we got out of our muddy boots, had a caravan shower and spruced ourselves up, and had a really nice evening in a proper house.  A most welcome change.

Saturday
Just to put the kibosh on to a really good week I received an email from the window company this morning notifying us that they had gone into receivership and they would therefore not be able to supply windows for our house.  

They would pass all the contacts on to us of the other company in Newarke who have said they can do the job, and the draughtsman who has been doing the working drawings, and the director at Reynaers, the aluminium profile manufacturers, so that we could pursue the job ourselves.  So we have the weekend to contemplate this.

Next week is going to be busy.  No let off after all.  Fortunately, however infuriating it is, it is only inconvenient - we haven't placed any deposit with them.  A great shame for the company - a family business of 40 years that appear to have suffered from another company's misfortune.

A warning  we need to take heed of as it can happen to anyone at a time like this.  It makes one very cautious.

But all ended happily

This weekend Ffion has been staying with us and experiencing life in a caravan.  Brave girl.  We had a great time, loved every minute of it.  Long meals, long walks, losing my specs and Ffion finding them in the mud on the site after retracing our steps (by car I'm afraid) along the route of our walk.  Great relief.

Duncan came and collected Ffion on his way home from seeing his parents in Devon.  He delivered a fantastic present from his parents who apparently have been avidly reading this blog each week. The instruction was that it was an early Christmas present to be opened immediately.

Happily obeyed.  What a prezzie - so apt, so well chosen.  Simply super.  All our boots are there - difficult to decipher what's going on because of all the mud - but the best designed Wellie boot stand I've ever seen.  Carol and George many many thanks. XX

How did we ever manage without this.
Frankly - we didn't.

Monday

Sorry I didn't get this blog out at the weekend.
As we are going to be away in London next weekend I'm going to show you what progress we have made in the first two days this week.  Today the steel fabricators came and set the levels for the steel columns so that they would all be at the same level.  Just one column was slightly low by 5mm I think.  The cherry picker arrived on site.  This is the machine that they will use with the crane for handling the steel columns to locate them onto the bolts.  I like the name cherry picker.  Not many cherries on this site mate.  I hope you know what you are looking for.

Tuesday
Rumbles going on at 7:30am, way before Max and I had crawled out of our burrow.  The crane was arriving in time for the steel delivery, and the men in their lorry.  Max quickly pulled his trousers on and went out to look alert and ready for action.  I took my time and brushed my hair at least.

The lorry got stuck in the mud.  So Stefan had to be called to pull everyone out and get the access track scraped down to good Stony Littleton brash.  He was willing to hang around (no doubt at our expense) in case there was further need for retrieving the situation.  He was free to go at lunch time after the second lorry of steel had arrived, delivered and left.

So here are the photos of the work done today.  All looking good.  A lot more activity in the lane today with the locals coming to have a look.  I've no doubt there is a lot of chat going on.  I hope it isn't too disapproving.

The blue machine is the cherry picker. It is driven by the man in the bucket.

This is the stairwell and landing to the bedrooms

This is the amount that they built by the end of today - all the columns are in place.
What you can see here is the link from Max's studio looking down to my office area at the far end, with the entrance hall and stair inside the narrow braced area that will lead to the bedrooms and bathrooms which will be put in place tomorrow.

The braced square at the front here is the wall to the kitchen.

We've been in touch with Reynaers, the window manufacturers and they have given us three fabricators who will be able to do the job (in theory)  We have been in touch with them all and the architects have prepared an up to date schedule which we will send to each of them in the morning.  We are hoping that one of them will come up trumps.  Perseverance required.