Vie Tulloch

We arrived back at Tayinloan for the ferry back to Gigha on Tuesday afternoon, some 600 miles after Kris and Tara's lovely wedding on the weekend, to the news that Vie had died that lunchtime. Vie was the oldest person on Gigha at 90. She was an amazing dancer, sculptor, poet, artist and naturalist. A lover of life - she was also one of the most charismatic and wonderful people that we knew. Jayne and I think she is a fantastic role model. Her presence is very strong and will always be with us here on Gigha. As Joe piped the lament and her coffin was lowered the sun was shining and the breeze blew up the white horses over the Sound of Gigha above Kilchattan where she lies. 

let the circle be unbroken

Finished blockwork for both roundhouses, sunspace and corridor today. Haven't counted  but it must be about 800 blocks. This is a major milestone for us.
Yesterday Mavis Staples was on Radio Scotland and they played this song. I was bopping around the plot to the Staples Singers, finishing off the corridor. We saw her at Celtic Connections and she was amazing. We know we have made mistakes - I made one yesterday with a 5m run not levelled properly and 3mm variation in height between middle and ends. At least we know where they are and can let our kit manufacturer know. A week off now as we have a very very important wedding - on Saturday not Friday.

Stepped founds and 150º corners

let the circle be unbroken

top block centre just below where our front door will be

Concentration

Sunspace with DPC in position and corners done ready for infilling on main roundhouse

we like the simple geometry

time and tide

Today we completed the final four corners for the blockwork. Just the 200 odd blocks to infill now.  All the 24 150º corners on the top course of blockwork have now been placed and levelled and are within 2mm according to the laser level which means we have laid blocks over 25m apart and almost exactly level. We are not happy with two inaccuracies - the sunspace level is 460mm below the final house level instead of 450mm but that can be sorted out fairly easily by shimming the sole plate. Also the distance between the two roundhouses for the entrance lobby is 5070-75mm instead of 5080mm. This means the SIPS panels for the lobby may need trimming down which is more of a pain than infilling. The 12 sides of the small roundhouse are all +2mm maximum and the large roundhouse are all +4mm maximum. Both these are within our required tolerances. No radius from a centre is more than 10mm out. We are pretty pleased with our final levels of accuracy though the 10mm out for the lobby rankles a bit. We are two amateurs though and not professional bricklayers doing groundworks.  I should finish the blockwork before Easter weekend if the weather holds. Meanwhile it is a high Spring tide tomorrow and we  scrubbed off the bottom of the two hulls of the catamaran this morning ready for antifouling tomorrow early morning as the tide ebbs. We have very low tides here - 1.2m on Springs but with the High pressure we will a lower ebb and about 5-6 hours for the antifouling to dry off before the tide comes in.  We also have a three hour tidal rise and fall and then a standing tide for two hours which makes the job easier. We are almost certainly going to get less than a week sailing this year but even so these jobs have to be done.
We are now three weeks behind our hoped for timetable but most of the lost time has been due to wet weather earlier in the month and during March.

what keeps you awake at night ?

The programme questionnaire interview for "My Flat Pack Home" includes the question above. As this is such an occasion then the obvious answer is arthritis. When we planned this build arthritis was not an issue but since then both my hips and knees have been diagnosed as arthritic. Thankfully we do not live in England where the NHS seems to be in the process of conversion to the American profit model.  Patients merely seen as a market - an opportunity to make money. I would undoubtedly fail every criterion for hip and knee operations until I had been screaming in pain for many years as sufferers are in parts of SW England. Such are performance targets.  Scotland has more civilised and slightly more people centred healthcare even though we would all still be much better off for a very considerable increase in bean counter unemployment rates. The furore about free prescriptions south of the border ignores the obvious fact that drug treatments are for patients and represent free treatment at the point of delivery - one of the founding principles of the Health Service with the emphasis on "Service".  It is supposed to be there for people who need it when they need it. We already pay for it through taxation. If people object to millionaires getting free prescriptions then bang up the marginal income tax rates so they are truly progressive. Too young for hip and knee replacements for at least another five years and probably ten, the slow deterioration of my joints is well in progress and becoming increasingly painful. I take strong painkillers every six hours. On bad days I am counting the time till the next dose. My Mum had arthritis - fairly mild I think and my Dad had bad knees and I have both. My sister has had rheumatoid arthritis, thankfully in remission. The genes are just not playing ball. Much mountaineering, fell walking and sailing as well as working on farms has not helped, though many years pushing paper around for a living will have helped. The physical demands of building are definitely taking their toll. I shall be glad when we finish the blockwork in a week or so. Wet trades are not really my thing - I really enjoy working with wood, wiring and pipework. Jayne will be even more pleased when we have the 120 square meters of 6 inch concrete floors laid as those two jobs are possibly the most phyisical we are doing. Maybe finishing the turf roof will run them close.
We've finished blocking the sunspace and have got all the levels right and distances within a few mm. We're on the final course for the small roundhouse and have one full course plus a bit for the big roundhouse. Here the 80/20 rule comes into play.
Oh and the other things that keep me awake are the list of project management tasks that needed to be done last week. Orders, plant hire, blah blah....
And when we finish the house I am going to build a wood fired sauna with a sea view to ease the arthritis...

where we're at

Been so busy the last few weeks there's been very little time for blogging. We even blocked through a westerly gale, though it was a bit parky. We dodged raindrops in the showers - well sat in the shed and drank coffee.

This is the view from the house so you can imagine how dramatic it will be when we're living there and its stormy.

There is only ten miles of clear water between us and Islay and Jura, though the westerlies do funnel straight out of the Sound of Islay and build up the white horses. The Islay ferry actually ran on this day. We are sheltered from most wind directions from the plot being in a hollow, but we do get the full blast from points west to north west.

Jayne millimetre is hawkeyed about dimensions. Here she is checking the corners. We put these in first, check for accuracy then fill in each section. Usually we do five or six corners in a session and place out templates over each join to make sure the sole plate for the kit will fit. Then we fill the gaps. There is nothing to get a clear run at as there is a corner every 7 blocks.

Throughout March we have lost about six days to weather and a flu bug. You are only ever ill on fine days when you are self building. We are now within two courses of finishing the blockwork for the house and sunspace. That's about 180 blocks. All corners are accurate and tolerances within margins of error.

Not everything has gone to plan. I rolled the tractor we'd hired in to work the pan mixer. It slid gently into the trench exactly where Jayne is working - though at the time she was the other side of the site and did not even see it. Two broken cab windows were the main damage but it did not shift any of our blockwork. Last time I rolled a tractor was in the 1970s. Strangely enough it was also a Ford 6610. We had to do 75 hand mixes as a penance for this to complete the footings for the sunspace. That was a hard day's work though I mixed and did not particularly ache the next day, whereas blockworking always leaves my knees suffering and cutting blocks for corners really sets off my left hip. Self building is much easier for the under 50s.

We have ordered the roof lights, a fair bit of drainage and otherwise kept up with the project management side. After the appalling people who run AnyAppliance.co.uk with their cynical trading methods, balanced precariously on the edge of legality, my faith in web based companies has been somewhat restored this week by a couple of firms. Building material prices are accelerating far faster than normal inflation. A bag of cement has gone from £3.25 to £3.95 in just a few months. Still a few logistic problems to solve and a TV crew to keep happy as we are signed up via Tim our kit manufacturer for a UKTV cable programme called 'My Flat Pack Home'. Hopefully less pretentious than Grand Designs which seems to be all architects' own homes these days - and a hell of a lot of themed white cubes with glass fronts- boxes that seem to owe their inspiration to the Bauhaus or Le Corbusier. So much for post modernism. We're much more Bronze Age in our inspiration - with a touch of Neolithic thrown into the mix; a soupçon of Frank Lloyd Wright, Greene and Greene and of course a bucketful of Tim Stead. My Flat Pack Home is a half hour show. Andy has done a wee screen test interview for us so we'll see how it goes.

Rain again

Today was our first full day not blockworking for can't remember how long. We are both exhausted and need to recharge batteries. The forecast was poor so I went to Campbeltown in the truck and sorted out a timber order, bought some more blocks, though we could have done with another 32 to fill the load and managed to get 5 x 6m lengths of 110mm pipe for underground foul drainage for under the floor slab. Not what was intended as I forgot my bankers card and would have bought 100m of wavy curly pipe for more land drainage but we don't have a trade account at that dealership. Also picked up DPM and 5l of tanking paint for sunspace back wall.

All in all a relatively relaxing day and unstressful, but not as fruitful as hoped. Need to try to relax and recover from the strains of blockworking on arthritic knees and hips. We have about 200 blocks to finish but a huge amount of checking and tweaking the levelling so it'll take more than the 3 or 4 days we'd expect even with the corners.

Dreamed about laying the floors and just could not work out the logistics of getting so much concrete into place ... but then it came to me today while I was driving to Tarbert to do my Ecoday contribution on thermal imaging and insulation - we'll hire a powered barrow which takes half a cube at a time...we'll lay strips of concrete at finished floor level across each pod to tamp up to and then tip the pan mixer into the barrow power it to where we want it and off we go...

let there be light

At last we have mains electricity on site. Finally connected up this afternoon.

Wired in the two circuits and flicked the switch.

Now got kettle and hot coffee instead of flasks every day.

Anyappliance.co.uk

After threatening legal action, reporting to HMRC as they're trading with two VAT registrations, reporting to VISA and on the 30th day WE GOT OUR MONEY BACK !

Under no circumstances can we recommend doing any business with this company.

If anyone is having problems with them make a comment and we'll post their home address and dates of birth...

blockheads

The weather is improving and we can work till six p.m. now.

Both Jayne and I are huge fans of Ian Dury ....hence the title. We have now finished all the 150º corners on both roundhouses and levelled up where the founds are stepped on both south and north sides of the building.

A moment's frustration on Monday was that panel twelve appeared to be 12mm too small on setting out. Now our kit is being made with +4mm as the tolerance so -12mm is just not good enough. Next day we reset and remeasured and we were actually on +2mm so all was well. Each panel needs to be within 4mm and it shall be so. We have now finished all but the corners for the sunspace and the founds for that are set out ready for concreting. The weather is very good for blockwork so we are making good progress - about 20% blocked up but with the hard bits done - the 150º corners and stepped sections are all within a few mm. I like each block to be within 1-2mm but as Ian our friend says, you're building a wall not just laying one block and we are well within all the levels of accuracy we need. Bit obsessive maybe but we want it to be accurate and right - for our own pride as well as ease of the kit going up. This has now been ordered and paid for and we need to finish the blockwork by the end of March at the latest giving us 7 weeks for 62 cubic metres of concrete for the floors. We reckon we can do 60-70 blocks a day including setting out corners now the hard bits are done so that is ten days work - though the day jobs are pretty time demanding and have to be done too.

We have 150 blocks to do this week to keep up with our timetable.

Stepped foundations and 150º corners !

The house is emerging from the ground, slowly but surely and it is very excting to see the geometry. We decided on this form from Newgrange in Ireland and were also inspired by Bronze Age roundhouses so it has been great to see Neil Oliver's series on the Prehistory of Britain.

We are firmly in the New Stone Age and real blockheads - at least until we are at finished floor level anyway.

dodgy dealers

We have been fortunate in sourcing most of our requirements for the house and have received some fantastically good service. But you still have to watch out even with apparently honest dealers. We bought and paid for two fitted ovens for the large roundhouse from a discount appliance dealer on the internet just before the VAT increase in early January. No ovens have been delivered, and there have been some very dubious engaged tones and voicemail messages from the company concerned and excuses made so we cancelled the order. We were even promised our money back by email but guess what... nothing has yet appeared in our account. Being suspicious I checked the postal address and found it was a letterbox address. The company registration number on our invoice was apparently for a different company at a different location as was the VAT registration number. Strangely, the VAT number on the website is different from the invoice but is an address with the people we have been dealing with showing up as resident. You can actually check where anybody in the UK lives online anywhere, and for free. You can also check VAT registrations for free online - to whom they belong and at what address. We have been having long discussions with Consumer Direct - the government helpline and finally convinced them that the company is almost certainly trading fraudulently. So it will be dealt with by Trading Standards. There are several reviews by other customers having the same problems as us online now. We think we'll probably lose the money (transaction on a debit card) but there is still hope. We will publicise the names of the people concerned, their companies, and their home address in due course. Watch this space.