It's a no brainer

But we do have a Nissan Cabstar ! It's inaugural trip was picking up a tonne and a half of ashlar blocks from Dumfries. Every time you bring any vehicle over to Gigha that is over 5m in length you end up with high vehicle costs. A builder's merchant's wagon costs £190 return and a large van about £80. Our Cabstar is under 5m and costs the same as a car - £13.40 return. It carries just under 2 tonnes payload and has a flat bed big enough to carry full size sheets and 4.8m long sticks of timber propped over the cab. It's a no brainer for us as we have problems getting materials over to the plot given the appalling surface on the track. Taken slowly the Cabstar has high clearance and provided the track is not blocked by cows will take a full load very nicely. Problem is we got stuck turning round after offloading our first load as the rear wheel drive just slips when the truck is empty. However Micky rescued us and we got towed out by our Landrover.

wot no digger

In happier times in the summer the wee digger sat on the plot awaiting her tasks - however her services were required elsewhere and we just could not get even a few days work. Hiring off island is prohibitively expensive, especially if you are working part time and don't know which days you'll get on site and we waited for a mini digger from various sources... and waited.... and waited. Circumstances conspired to leave us diggerless so we just could not get on with the on site excavations and finishing the driveway.

As of winter 2009 the plot remained much the same as in summer 2009. Each stone in the pile of 250 tonnes of 75mm down crusher run remained unturned. So what could we do ? We could wait for a digger to become available on the island or we could buy our own, use it and sell it on. A 360° tracked excavator was great to drive but limited in what it could do. A series of technical problems with Lindsay's digger i.e. the one that was available on the island, meant we had to look elsewhere. A JCB on the other hand, despite being less use on wet ground and leaving a few ruts, had a back actor, a front bucket and could handle pallets - and as we have been loading our blocks etc., on to pallets this could be very useful. A JCB was more mobile than a tracked digger. It would also handle much bigger stones than a mini digger. As we have several stones of about two tonnes to drag and then raise into position for our revetment edge we tried Ian's old JCB. It lifted them fine but was sadly somewhat geriatric in abilities. An old lady maybe, but had the JCB equivalent of a zimmer frame in mobility - aka a dodgy torque convertor. However, the trial convinced us we should invest in a reasonably sound JCB and we watched Ebay auctions feverishly for several weeks, eventually finding one within budget and fully functional in Yorkshire.

Meanwhile, winter snows were everywhere but Gigha - though even in our wonderfully mild microclimate we had several days with smatterings of snow lying whilst the rest of Scotland had blizzards and people were stuck for weeks and couldn't get home. However, the ground got saturated and the far corner of the plot, where our big shed was going to be got saturated.

here kitty kitty

There are loads of feral cats on Gigha - sure it doesn't do the bird population much good but the rats seem to co-exist quite happily with the cats. Over a few days as the summer ended and the nights were getting cooler we noticed a wee ginger kitten roaming round down at Ardailly. Only a few weeks old, it was starving, infested with ticks and had an eye infection. Letting nature take its course would have been one option but instead we rescued the kitten and put it in a cardboard box in our porch here at Kinnererach where it gradually recovered its strength on a diet of salmon.

It wasn't a greedy cat, was very affectionate and would break out into raucous purring that was on the Richter scale when it saw you. Now I'm a dog person though we always had cats when I was a kid. This cat took to me - it had a lovely character and the only reason why we did not keep it was because I am allergic to cats - or their fur anyway. The cat was duly taken to the cat rescue in Campbeltown and after the once over by the vet (we had already de-ticked it) was found a new home.

fabrics

We’ve just been away for almost two weeks and even though having a break from the project managed to get to Annie Washbrook’s place near Newport in North Pembs. You’ll have to go in person as she has far too much to ever be catalogued on to a website. There is a treasure trove of fabrics and many specials and ends of rolls, offcuts etc. Jayne has bought a stack of materials for her bag and doll making and has even allowed me to pick suitable offcuts in the past. This time we went a little berserk as we bought about 7 binbags full of offcuts of heavyweight curtain grade material to make all our curtains, room dividers and wall hangings. We both choose materials so it is not just a girl thing. As the house will have mostly slate or solid wood uncarpeted floors the acoustics will be quite hard. Fabrics absorb sound and will soften the acoustic. We want to have plain walls but with fabric wall hangings for colour and acoustics as well as curtains for good night insulation. With the areas needed - one pattern or colour would be a bit uninspiring so we have decided to make up patchworks of fabric offcuts and so have managed to supply Jayne with tons of work for those long winter evenings. It might seem a bit premature - we haven’t even started the groundworks yet but as we won’t get down to Pembrokeshire during the build we now have a good stockpile of the most amazing range of high quality fabrics - perfect for our needs.

Anyone thinking of curtains, upholstery etc. who is within reasonable travelling distance should definitely call in. Phone first for opening hours as Annie isn’t open everyday. The address is Penbanc Fabrics, Plas y Ffynnon, Newport, ,Pembs, 01239-820568

more digging, more stone

After we relevelled the driveway and ordered the 220 tonnes of stone we decided to get enough 75mm for the parking and shed areas, but need to store this. We got 30 railway sleepers to make storage areas for aggregate etc., and have placed 16 or so here to hold about 80-100 tonnes of stone ready for placement in the parking and shed areas. There is a 100m roll of curly drainage pipe in the background - we need to make sure the water draining down from the track keeps off the main parking area and have put in a top side drain with 75mm backfill as well - sort of French drain construction to take the water away to the northern edge of the plot where our main downslope drain leads down to the sea. we did this on a Sunday morning with our friend Cliffy helping shift the sleepers into position. Originally Jayne and I had shifted the 30 sleepers on to the plot from the old silage pit at South Drumachro from where they were being recycled. This hole is now filled with over 200 tonnes of stone ready for levelling, though we have to build the revetment below the two piles of blocks and shed footings first, to get the levels right.

on the fish

This day I went to Crinan with Martin and brought Mary Ann, the fish farm work boat, back from the boatyard there. Gigha’s profile looks different from the north. Most folk see it from the east as the A83 to Campbeltown runs down the coast and the ferry runs across from Tayinloan on the western side of Kintyre to Gigha. For most of August I’ve been on the fish. I work most weekends and otherwise part time on the two fish farms and this has been a really busy time. Luckily this August has been a fairly wet month and digging would have been really muddy and messy on the plot. I lost about 6 days with the digger due to breakdowns etc., so ought to have been a bit more ahead in terms of levelling and revetting but we do have a realistic timetable overall. I have just finished a 17 day stint on the salmon farm at Highfield mostly doing net changes., but with one day off to build the sleeper shuttering for the stone - see 16th Aug blog. Net changing is hard graft and can take up to 5 hours with 5 or 6 of us. The cages are 100m diameter and the nets over 10m deep. Net changing involves much hauling and pulling and is pretty much flat out using the two workboats for the heavy lifting. We’ve been starting at 7 a.m. most days as there has been much else to do too. We managed two net changes in one day last week and this nearly killed me. I am 15 years older than the combined age of the two youngest guys and even they get tired by the grafting we do net changing. I have incipient arthritis in both hips and many other muscular aches and pains. Jayne thinks I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. Malcolm, the manager, loves net changing and is probably the strongest person there. It is a fine exercise in team work and funnily enough, you do get a sense of achievement from net changing. The last one I did on Monday 24th was the ninth in two weeks and we finished with a building SE swell as the wind freshened washing over the cage floating catwalk as we tied the net down, but it was still good.

mowing the roof

Our turf roof is going to be cut from the hay meadow that our plot occupies. We’ve pegged out the roof turf and here Lachlan is kindly topping the weeds for us. We’ll have all those lovely traditional hay meadow flowers on our roof - in a year’s time.

getting stoned

The first major delivery to the plot has been of 52 tonnes of 75mm down crusher run for the driveway. Andy is driving the Trust tractor and trailer. After this we relevelled the stone revetment that edges the driveway with our new toy - a water level and I subsequently raised the level of the revetment by about 750mm to make the 1 in 7 gradient required by our planning permission. After the 52 tonne delivery - in 4 tonne loads from the island quarry we looked at our calculations for stone and ordered another 220 tonnes of 75mm. This is now on site awaiting levelling. We will surface the driveway and parking areas with Type 1 - probably from the mainland as the dolerite in the island quarry is very hard and stable and the fines do not rot down and bind particularly well. Dolerite takes ages to weather in too. It is great as a base material but the surfacing needs to bind really well.

digging

Much digging took place during July. I spent about 8 days in dry sunny weather with Ian’s digger doing ten hour days. Here we have just started to clear the piles of topsoil from the archaeological excavation and from clearing the driveway and parking areas. Most of this has been used to bank up the area behind the Land Rover and to retain the driveway stone revetment. We can’t do much until we have the driveway and parking areas in and the shed built. As I am working on both island fish farms and we are pretty busy this will probably take until the end of September, maybe longer.

painting the village hall red

Last weekend saw frenetic activity with rollers and brushes and about 100 litres of paint. The village hall needed a facelift and a new colour scheme from daffodil yellow. Now a more subtle mix of red and cream, the hall looks smart and ready for ceilidh action - or the regular Wednesday afternoon tea session. The turnout was amazing. Over twenty folk turned up and spent most of the weekend painting and cleaning. The full ferry crew spent a goodly part of their off rota week helping out - with skipper JB covering a vast area with emulsion. A few fish farmers scrubbed and cleaned after their shifts, and a fun time was had by all. Our wee island really can turn on the most amazing efforts and just gets things done. The Village Hall committee has a huge reservoir of goodwill so all pulled together. Okay - so there are always the naysayers in any community - lamenting the change of colour scheme and regretting changes not initiated by themselves - but it was getting tatty and now looks great and we had fun doing it. Roll on the first ceildih !

fixing a hole

The turning of the first sod is a momentous occasion. Your building plot loses its virginity. It is no longer unsullied, untouched by human hand. Our plot was first sullied by Ian and his digger three years ago or as the planning permission required an archaeological survey. On Gigha if you trip over a stone it is probably of archaeological interest. We have 12 Scheduled Ancient Monuments - the creme de la creme - and the archaeologists even missed the Fishermen’s Cave with its graffitti going back to before the Battle of Culloden. (they couldn’t find it amongst the bracken and the brambles). There are literally hundreds of sites on the island. Dun an Trinnse (fort of the trench) one of the 12 SAMS, is within sight. Ian sullied our plot again a couple of weeks ago. It will never be the same again, never just be a bit of grazing land in the corner of a field with a sea view. Our vision is going to be sculpted into the land and our house rise up from the ground. Very romantic - if you believe that sort of thing, but also back breaking, sleep losing, weight losing, money juggling and hopefully creating something positive that will outlive us and nestle into the landscape. We’ll see.

life's a beach

Our plot now looks like a cross between an archaeological excavation and WW1 trenches with two circular excavations about a metre deep, one 9m diameter and one 12m, corresponding to the two roundhouse perimeters. Last week we spent a day with Ian and his mini-digger. He screefed off the topsoil and it is piled up out of the way, but the subsoil is quite rich loam in places. Beneath the soil there is a beach.

This is probably abut 8-10,000 years old and was made after the last glaciation. Most of Scotland has risen a good few metres since then due to isostatic readjustment (I knew that Geography degree would come in useful one day). This is the land rising slowly after the weight of ice was taken off it, when it melted. The land is still rising here and this might counteract the effects of sea level rise due to global warming a wee bit, over the next few hundred years. Beneath the small roundhouse is a sandy area - lovely white sand, and beneath the larger roundhouse beach pebbles. We haven’t found any shells yet. There are some large storm beach boulders, probably originally of glacial origin, and these will be used for a stone revetment retaining the driveway and in our rock garden. The pebbly subsoil will be screened (by hand !) and the pebbles used as the drainage layer fringing the turf roofs. We also put in the top drain and screefed off the shed site. Yes, we did hit the water table and the trenches have ponded up in places. The top drain should sort this out and take ground water off the actual buildings’ footprints. Now it is down to Martin to specify the foundations.

fees for our building warrant

In Scotland it is called a building warrant. It is bloody expensive and related to build costs. Our fees are £1380 and we could get a 10% discount if our engineers sign off the design before we submit the application. The general thought is that we will have to do lots of negotiating with the Building Inspectors so this might delay progress unduly. All of us imagine that there will be a few raised eyebrows (a massive understatement) at a turfed roof with no supporting rafters or purlins, posts or beams but we decided to take Ted’s advice that SIPs were intended to be Structural and make them do their designed job...especially as a conical roof is inherently very very strong. Roundhouses really are that good in engineering terms In the USA many SIP built houses simply use them to clad post and beam timber frames (even in roundhouse type structures) but we wanted to ‘ave a go and push the building envelope.

of architects and engineers

Today we had the first visit by Martin one of our Structural Engineers. Martin is looking after foundations and the basic structural integrity of the building. The other, Ted, is specifically looking at the roof structures and the SIPS engineering as it is very specialised. More of Ted anon. Martin spent about half an hour on site and another hour and a half with us looking at the plans and discussing various details. He wants the founds to be in a 200mm concrete ring beam as the depth of aggregate under the floor slab is over the 600mm recommended by NHBC. We need this for thermal mass, otherwise we would have a timber suspended floor.This 600mm thing is a rule of thumb rather than anything hard and fast but it might actually suit us to put in a ring beam and lower the levels by 10-20cm as it will reduce the amount of aggregate fill and hence save us money. Anyone who can save us money by design is okay with us. We are on a fixed budget and more aggregate means less stained glass, or fewer elm work tops etc, - those wee finishing touches which we are aiming for with a vengeance. The drop in ground level on the plot means a maximum fill level of 1.5m so a ring trench locating bedrock levels is worth investigating. It will also begin the excavations for the strip trench for the founds so is ‘a good thing’. However we want to be able to see the horizon so a lowering of the floor levels has to be balanced against our view - which I am sure you will agree is just amazing. Another alteration Martin thinks is necessary is to revert to timber frame for all internal walls as the proposed blockwall will be too slender for its height and well outside the slenderness ratio recommendations. In plainwords it will be unstable and have a tendency to fall over. Again this change back to timber frame might be a good thing though the block wall would have added to the thermal mass and also helped solar gain in the open plan living area transmit through to the bedrooms. Martin was in agreement that our thoughts on rim joists for the gallery area would work in practice. Now Ted is mostly ‘doing the roof’. We have changed the main roof from 12 to 24 facets on his advice and he also has a thing about elegance and feels it would be aesthetically more pleasing. This is a good thing as engineers are usually more functionally minded and architects more aesthetically oriented. It is the engineers job to make the structure work in practice and ensure that the architects ideas are actually buildable. This is another good thing. Our engineers both like the design and that it is innovative and are very very helpful as a result. Engineers are generally more pragmatic and practical than architects though Robin has tried hard to consider the ease of building and help us look for solutions. Sometimes these are rather expensive and outside our means so we have to look for cheaper ways of solving design problems. As we are doing something quite new in having an unsupported roof in SIPS then it is worth the extra money on the engineers as we do want our house to stand up - preferably without creaking ominously especially in a Hebridean gale. The turf roof complicates matters for Ted as it is a heavy roof and the loadings are increased. Also the top surface of the SIP is not vented and the architect and engineers all feel we need to vent it to prevent a condensation risk and our roof rotting from inside. I am very miffed at this second skin as it defeats the object of having a turf roof on top of the SIP - we now have to introduce 50mm battens and another layer of OSB to provide the ventilation space. A real pain as SIPs are supposed to be moisture barriers and my solution of placing another vapour barrier internally to prevent an egress of moisture through the roof SIP was considered inadequate. As always there is an upside as it will improve the thermal performance of the roof.

These are some of the every day things we think about and discuss with the professionals who are helping us. We don’t always agree but all of us seem to be pretty much problem solving oriented and ultimately that is what we are paying them lots of money for.

more on plot access - and beachcombing

Done the resurvey and calculations and we can finally get the track at the required 1 in 7 gradient that the planners insist upon. The new line has a sharper bend and more revetting but uses a lot less aggregate - maybe as little as 75 tonnes, but probably more like 100 tonnes.

Also found another stash of washed up fish boxes - and a Little Tykes kid’s slide amongst the plastic waste we get washed up on the west of Gigha. Every west side beach has a problem with plastic waste and we have regular beach clean ups to keep the Twin beaches at the north end of the island clear. When we get moved down to Ardailly we’ll try to keep the beaches at the ‘bottom of the garden’ cleaned up ourselves. There is a beach artist called Claire McNiven who makes works from stuff she picks up her on Argyll’s beaches. Fascinating sculptures. By the way we’ve got 28 sandy beaches on our wee island - from most of which you can see otters if you’re there at the right time. Last week we even had one watching us watching it - it came out of the water and up to 5m away to take a look at us before going back to crunching crabs.

I was brought up on the Pembrokeshire coast and spent many happy hours beach-combing so it’s in the blood. In the 60s and 70s there were massive problems with oil pollution and tar on Pembrokeshire beaches which culminated in the Sea Empress disaster in the 90s. Thankfully not a problem here anymore. Jayne thinks my age is quite similar to my shoe size so this love of beach-combing for anything useful really is a throw back.

plot access

Typical Gigha - a bright day and then it tips it down just as we were about to go down to the plot and resurvey the access track to see if we can’t find a slightly better route in. It drops 3m from the track into the plot and we have to get the right gradient and radius turn through the rocky outcrops to minimise the aggregate we’ll need. At somewhere between £25-30 a tonne then even if we can save on 50 tonnes that’s up to £1500 off the budget.

beachcombing

Down the plot with Lachlan and Fiona and headed off for a bit of quiet beachcombing while they were checking their rodent traps in the mill cottage. Found eight fishboxes in Port an Duin just round from the jetty below Dun an Trinnses(pictured) in battered but unbroken condition. We live here in a fish box culture. It’s a bit like camels being the indicator of wealth in the Sahara. Here the humble fishbox, washed overboard and washed up just has so many uses from storage to seed bed to salad grower. There are also some great piles of washed up kelp which we will gather up and use as seaweed fertiliser on the croft - the traditional ways were often the best. Seaweed is high in potash - good for spuds, fruit bushes etc., etc.,

Still bothered about getting aggregate into the plot for the driveway and foundations - we might need 300 tonnes for the driveway and 275 tonnes for foundations. Looking for place to tip 20 tonners and then cart in by tractor and trailer.