Hrummph

We are now buying a pan mixer as the one on the island is not available for hire to us. No comment.

We are getting a 3/4 cube machine which will fit to the Ford 7710 on Tarbert Farm. It will mix the equivalent of 20 hand mixes in one go so we should get on pretty quickly once it arrives in three weeks time. It also means we can compress the time allocated for concreting footings and floors. We are going shares in our mixer with our good friends Andy and Jane who are also on the self build route. They have a beautiful plot which involves rebuilding Balmore - an old ruin - and they will be able to see the sea on both sides on the island,so it is quite exposed. As they are also using passive solar gain and having solid concrete floors, they'll need big batches too.

swings and roundabouts

We finally have our building warrant and can make a start on the substructure for the two linked roundhouses. We have finished the floor slab for the shed/garage - at 28.8 square metres it took well over 100 batches. We ( well I have !) have realised the folly of trying to mix all the founds and floors by hand and intend to hire a pan mixer to do half cube batches filling it with our JCB bucket and not hand shovel. We are too old and too decrepit to mix another 1000 plus hand mixed batches though we have done over 200 for the shed.

Our luck has changed since last week when we had no functioning JCB, no warrant and another 80 hand batches to mix to finish the floor. This week the JCB is working better than ever with new hydraulic filter and clean oil, the warrant is with us and the floor slab is finished.

Plans are to take advantage of a few days dry weather and strip the oversite, level the trenches and excavate the first section. The driveway will be graded and 20mm to dust raked out and compacted - though we'll have to water it manually. All the spare 75mm down crusher run will be carefully stockpiled for the underfloors. Our building water is now a priority as we'll need loads with a pan mixer and expect to get connected within a week or so.

Jayne is grievously upset that she has reduced her high personal standards and now wipes her nose on her tee shirt sleeve when concreting.

All in all a good week so far.

Sewage plant has arrived and is stuck on the Cabstar - awaiting lifting off at Kinnererach. It is very high centre of gravity and will have to be secured on its side to get it down the track - too risky at 2.5m above the flat bed on the Cabstar that it'll roll the truck if we drive it down as it is.

Our woodburning stoves are also here - well on the mainland on a pallet.

Finally got to see a World Cup match as we have been so busy and was most impressed by the North Koreans especially their No9. Brazilians not bad either.

the appliance of science

We have taken the major precaution of checking the the finished floor level (FFL) is where we want it by using our laser level in conjunction with the high tech approach of standing on a step ladder to see of we can see the view we want. We want to be as low as possible so that the roundhouses bed down into the landscape however, the foreground has a wee rise in it and we agreed we wanted to see the sea horizon as well as the Paps and Islay hills. If the FFL is right then we will get the view from armchair height. Simples !

shedfuls of bad luck

We started on the big shed a good few weeks ago and have got pretty well

advanced since this early shot. Here is the ground just after we placed the drainage - made from reclaimed fish farm pipe - a good 150mm internal diameter.

The footings took ages as the ground was very wet in places and very variable - from rock to mud in a few metres - such are the perils of building on a raised beach. All the levels worked out very well though and the diagonals were within 3mm - not bad for a 6 x 4.8m shed base.

Three courses of blockwork were sufficient to get us to the right level and we backfilled from the pile of 75mm stone on the driveway with the digger. Here yet another problem struck as the digger suffered loss of hydraulic pressure and we are still waiting for the right part to sort out the problem. This is a very bad time to lose the digger as we need it each day but our friend Andy helped out with his mini-digger by finishing off the backfilling for us.

We have hand mixed about 150 batches of concrete in all for this shed with me mixing and barrowing and Jayne placing raking our and levelling. Everything is within 2mm so we are pleased with our accuracy but not our rate of progress. We had to move all the 20mm down concreting aggregate - over a tonne and a half- by hand for most of the flooring from the pile about 20m away. Double handling is tiring and a real pain. Thankfully Andy moved enough in half an hour for us to finish the strip of floor in this pic which is where we are right now. We will not get the house founds done in time at this rate and are looking to get a pan mixer in to get the main roundhouse founds and floors done.