Cold and Wet Volume 1

The turf roof on the wee shed needed a bit of watering and it's raining heavily now for the first time in a couple of weeks and enough to stop me laying blockwork on the footings for the shed/workshop. This is 6 x 4.8m. It has taken us ages to do the founds as there is groundwater seeping up through the rock and constantly filling the trenches. In one 6m length there are two 1m sections of rock with sand and silt between with beach boulders and pebbles. This is the hardest area to work on as it is so wet and the substrate is so variable. We even put in a drain under the founds! The shuttering is now off most of it and blockwork has commenced. Made a mess of a short run last evening - somehow knocked a block out of true and it set out all the others by just too much to correct on the next course -so out they came - only half a dozen but annoying. This is a peril of working late (it was 9:30 p.m.), getting tired and losing concentration. Lots of object lessons here of the more haste less speed variety. I am not really a wet trades person. We can do 30-40 batches in our wee mixer in half a day but I'm not sure I am fit enough to do that day after day. We need over 1000 mixes by the end of August and a similar number of blocks laid. That is about 60 days work in the next 100 - at my very slow pace though we will get some help from friends. Between us we got the founds within about 4mm over the 22m of footings, and the corner blocks were within 3mm on the diagonals. Still I prefer working with wood - it's easier to be accurate - and can't wait till the structure is up and watertight and we are working inside. I like joinery and electrics and plumbing.

The angel of 12v batteries was not on our side the other day as we had three flat at the same time - two on the JCB and one on the Land Rover. So we lost time there too. We are still having vehicle problems, it seems constantly. THis is the way of the self builder - everything goes wrong.

Can recommend Toolstation for a good range, keen prices and fast free delivery even to this outpost.