Week Eleven - A Firm Foundation

This week saw a another major milestone passed - the last of the concrete deliveries for the underpinning. Everybody says now we'll be able to actually see the progress that's being made. Seeing is believing they say.

Not just the underpinning that's finished - the final foundations for the re-built plinth walls has also been poured. Of course there's still a lot of concrete to go. There's the concrete foundations for the internal walls, the concrete slab for the ground floor and bases of each of the doorways. And then there's screed for the underfloor heating, ground floor and first floor. My understanding is that screed is just another name for a particular mix of sand, cement and water. Concrete, no? Reminds me of the eskimos who have 50 different names for snow corresponding to subtle variations the rest of us can't even see. Builders seem to have 50 different names for concrete. And they've all got different numbers. Ooh, that's a nice drop of C30. I'm more of a C35 man myself. What's your tipple?

Meanwhile carpentry in the timber frame and the roof continues apace.

Look no cripples.

And cripples restored.

The main roof and projection roof meet in a forest of rafters, wall plates and trusses.

Rafters too wormed and/or rotten from damp are replaced. Some are oak some are softwood. It's frequently a judgement call whether or not to replace an old gnarled timber and our builder does his best to involve us in the decisions. This means impromptu meetings up on the scaffold ending up with - this one, this one, not this one, this one. If the timber is too damaged to do the job, clearly there's no issue, but in general we want to retain the characterful old timbers. But some of them are just plain ugly so they've got to go.

Most of the purlins are in, so the roof now meets modern structural standards.

I just love all the joints there are. Here's a bit of new wall plate.

 And another bit of new wall plate, this time with a lap joint.

A new bit of post to replace the bottom which had rotted away.

I was told of another way of distinguishing carpentry, joinery and cabinet making. In carpentry you cut the pieces to length and nail them together, in joinery you put them together using shaped joints, in cabinet making just glue them together. Makes sense, but I still prefer my splinter test.

It wasn't all unerpinning and carpentry this week. The facing on the southwest wall was pretty much finished. Beginning of the week.

First course.

Getting there

End of the week

We found ourselves once again agonising over floor levels. The dreaded rammed chalk rears its ugly head. There were 2 issues - steps down into the hall and utility room, and the window in the kitchen. We toyed with the idea of biting the bullet and going back to the Planners to see if we could get the chalk floor Planning Condition lifted. We went as far as speaking to them, and also got quotes from a couple of historical counsultants who might help us build a case. We got the sense that there could be grounds for an appeal.

However it was clear that such an appeal would be costly, time consuming, and there would be no guarantee of success at the end. So once again our decision was to live with the chalk floor. As Magnus Magnusson would have said, we've started so we'll finish.

It wasn't all doom and gloom with the Planners. We had discovered that because of chalk floor in the 'kitchen' area, the height of the finished floor, which has to be constructed over the rammed chalk, is so high that the bottom of the window as currently designed and approved, will be below worktop height. We'd prefer to have the window above the worktop, don't you agree?

So when went back to the Planners we were advised to submit a request for a 'Minor Amendment' to raise the window  by 200mm. More expense, more fees, more delay, but hopefully not enormous. Like all things to do with Planning, there are various hoops to jump through and the whole thing takes weeks and weeks. But we've got plenty to be getting on with so that shouldn't be a problem.

And Finally

Week Ten - Plinth and Frame

Who nicked my Utility Room? There were walls there last time I looked.

We had a bit of a cave in overnight in one of the trenches which had been prepared for concrete to be poured the next day. The edge of the trench now came perilously close to one of the supports for the scaffold. Bit scary till it was shored up.

Repairs to the roof structure proceeded with new rafters being cut and installed.

Central projection roof with the cripples removed.

I really like the king post, just visible through rafters.

We plan to leave this section of roof exposed.

Some of the old timbers have a bit of wood worm. Just a bit.

The back garden is looking really nice. So well kept.

The external plinth wall to what will become our utility room.

Now you see it.

now you don't

ah there it is

I’m the king of the castle.
Visitors to site checking out the view from the top lift of the scaffold - some 7m up. And proving they don't suffer from vertigo. Honest Guv.

Blossoms are out. 

We’ve noticed that there's a track  across the back garden – not sure what it is or what’s causing it. Speculation is that it’s a path created by deer as they run across, but it seems a bit small for that. Maybe I should put up CCTV cameras, or sit up all night wearing  infra red night sight goggles and a balaclava and see what I can see. Or maybe life’s too short.

The central projection of the ‘capital letter E’ shape of the barn is in effect a separate building attached to the main north-south body of the barn at the wall plate and sole plates. The post on one corner where the central projection meets the main barn had completely rotted away and the frame was shored up at some time in the past with 4 large pieces of softwood, from floor to truss.

These supports have now been removed and the two corners rebuilt from ground up – new brickwork and new green oak posts.  The corner post on one side was missing but the post on the other side was still there, albeit in a poor state. 

The question then arose – what to do on the other corner. Do we try to retain the existing post, replace it with a new single post, or a new pair of posts, as on the other side. Various view were expressed: new pair of posts, in the interest of  symmetry; symmetry and balance are pleasing to the eye; it would look really odd to have two completely different set ups on either side of the hallway; the existing post, although a bit gnarled and worm eaten has character and plenty of life left in it (maybe ...); symmetry is boring; asymmetry is exciting and challenging to the eye; symmetry and equilibrium  are essentially static, dead;  asymmetry creates movement, is dynamic, life-giving. (Maybe you can guess where my sympathies lie ...) We even did a straw poll of the views of the guys on site but they were no use – split 50 50 just like us.

Anyway, symmetric it is.

An ongoing issue is how to get pipework and cabling from the plant room into the barn. The ground source heat pump is going to be located in there, along with whatever water purification kit we need, and the electricity supply and meter will be in there too. Not too much room left for plants you might be thinking. Anyway, the plant room only touches the barn corner to corner so any services running between the two will have to go ‘outside’, either overhead or underground, for a short distance. Overhead could work but would require insulation and boxing in. Underground would still need some insulation, could cause complications with the drain routings, but at least would be out of sight. We shall see. Or not.

 And finally

Week Nine - Borehole Re-Visited

We spend quite a lot of time discussing issues with our Builder, everything from finished floor levels to details of roof construction, taking in brickwork and timber details along the way. Sometimes he’s asking us to decide between alternatives - things that we’re going to have to live with. Other times he’s just explaining to us what’s going on. Usually there’s a cost implication and frequently the discussion ends up with a decision to go and order this or that.

When you see the depth of the original hardpack flint & lime foundation just a couple of inches under the plinth walls you wonder how the barn managed to stand up for so long. Says something about the way they used to build - or maybe something about the stability of the subsoil on which it's built.

Another section of plinth taken down, the frame supported on needles and acrows, and a bit of plinth retained.

Laying the foundations for the new plinth walls involves digging a trench a metre deep and chucking a load of concrete into it to act as the base of the wall.

If the sidewall of the trench is obviously unstable, and could cave in, it’s supported with shuttering – sheets of ply along the sides of the trench and small acrows across the trench. This is time consuming and avoided if at all possible. This means that sometimes, till the concrete is poured and has gone off, there’s  a risk of a cave in. And like all risks, they can bite you when you least expect it. We’ve had a couple of minor cave ins, as evidenced by the ragged ege to the trench. The most embarrassing one (for me that is) happened when I was helping to barrow cement to one of the trenches. I got too close to the edge and the side gave way causing the barrow, and me, to slip into the trench squelching into the cement that had already been poured. One of the guys helpfully hauled me and the barrow out, while another guy cleaned up the mess I’d made. Fortunately apart from seriously wounded pride and a couple of scrapes and bruises no harm was done.  Just cost me a few extra bob in cement to fill the slightly larger section of trench. They can be a bit scary when the cave in gets close to the foot of the scaffold - wouldn't want a section of scaffold to collapse.

We seem to have acquired a pet pheasant. He struts around like he owns the place. You just wait till the Glorious 12th. Or does that apply in England, and to pheasants, and is that July or August? Now that I'm a country bumpkin I should know that sort of thing. Wonder if Google knows.

Testing of the water borehole took place this week. Samples were taken to be sent off to a lab for analysis to check we're not going to poison ourselves if we drink it. Also the flow rate had to be checked over a 24 hour period to confirm that there's enough water down there for the Ground Source Heat Pump and that the extraction won't impact on other wells in the area.

You start by stringing out 52 m of electric cable attached to the submersible pump

Then pay out 52 m of water pipe

Attach water the pipe to the cable all along it's length

Attach the pump to the water pipe and drop it down the well. Actually you only allow 50 m of pipe and cable to be pulled down by the weight of the pump - that way the pump remains dangling 2m off the bottom of the borehole. 

For the purposes of the test, the top of the pipe was attached to a small section of pipe with a flow meter discharging into the stream. The consultant started by dipping the borehole with a clever little device hanging on the end of a tape measure which beeps as soon as it touches water. That tells him how far the water is below the top of the borehole - in our case 2.9 metres. He also dipped a nearby well - in their case 5.75 metres. He then ran the pump for 24 hours at various rates of flow and every few minutes dipped the borehole and the nearby well. He found that the measured drop in water level in both wells, and the recovery times when the flow was reduced, were well within Environment Agency limits. So all's well. Which is just as well. I was well impressed. I think the consultant was well pleased too. Well, I'd better get on.

The consultant stayed on site for 24 hours, Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon. I went back to site on Friday evening to see how he was getting on - just as the sun was setting ...

And finally, not a lot of change externally this week  ...