does a gale have teeth ?

Its Monday afternoon and XC Weather is showing 35-57 knots SW gusting at Macrihanish which is slightly more sheltered than Gigha. Over the weekend we had torrential rain all day Saturday and some pretty blowy weather but nothing like today's gale - Malin was forecast Violent Storm Force 11 this morning at 5:30 - and that was the inshore forecast for Mull of Kintyre to Ardnamurchan.  Jayne and I were brought up in Pembrokeshire which is much more exposed than Gigha so we're used to it. But now we want to get our floors levelled and laid but can't - the weather in May - our Hebridean Spring - has pretty much brought us to a standstill this last week. 
Our two piles of 100mm insulation board in the yard ready for loading both blew over at 12:45 - a 2.4m x 1.2m board is pretty aerodynamic in a 50 knot gust. We've restacked now though in the lulls. Minimal damage as we caught them just in time. Mark is watching the shed roof lifting just down the road at Tarbert but Andy was still cutting grass - last we heard.
At least the power is back on.

cabin fever

It's Monday evening and has rained all day so no work done on site. However, I  did fit the new starter motor on the JCB which obligingly then fired first time. As usual one of the three fixing nuts was almost impossible to reach. Such is motor vehicle design through the ages.
Feel a bit like Zen and the Art of Self Building - have come over all existentialist.

How long can you gaze at the sea without getting bored ?

weather or not

It's a Scottish Spring on Gigha. Unlike the last three years when we had a very long dry spell  including almost all of May - it is showers every day - and some powershower raindrops. The forecast surface pressure map shows fronts coming across every 12 hours for the next four or five days. This means we will lose a good few days work as the site is very greasy and not great for JCB work and definitely no concreting floors. Kit put back till early July already and we can't afford too much more slippage but are totally weather dependent now.
Haven't heard our corncrake for a week or so so he must have gone elsewhere to seek a mate. Swallows abound and we have thrushes nesting under the eaves of the big shed. Bluebells have gone mad this year. On the ferry Thursday and everyone was feeling very weary - we think its the weather. It has been cold enough the last couple of days for us to have lit a fire in the evening too.
But its Spring and a wonderful time of year...

sod's law

The first law of machinery is that when you need it most it breaks down and that is what happened today. To be true it's been a long standing problem that has got worse. The JCB is crucial just now as we are backfilling the foundations and blockwork ready to lay floors. It won't start. This is because it is middle aged and like all of us things start going wrong in middle age, wear out or just break completely  and don't function as they should. It's the solenoid. I've bashed it with a hammer and it did start this morning but then it wouldn't go this afternoon so I stripped it off the JCB and showed it to Mark. Mark is a whizz with anything mechanical. I had some advice last night from Graham after we finished  playing at the ceilidh along the same lines. Graham  is also a whizz with anything mechanical - he scratch built a wind turbine before they became trendy and rebuilt the engine on 'Jamie Boy'. Graham is like Vie, a genuine role model. He is in his early 80s now and was the ferry skipper for very many years. Anyway I have stripped and cleaned the solenoid with advice from MArk and Graham and I'll put it back on tomorrow. If it doesn't work then we'll have to get another one. Luckily there is plenty of other work to be done so it won't really hold us up this next week.

if you ask a stupid question

The UK wide AV referendum has been pretty decisively turned down and the ineptitude of the LibDems in insisting on this piss poor alternative to FPTP as their referendum choice during the power sharing negotiations after the UK election merely amplifies their horrendous judgement. They've blown the chance for PR for the indefinite future. Tories and the Labour right will see to that ... and anyway you're back to two party politics south of the border anyway. Two dominant centre right parties - oh my... what a choice you have. Here in Scotland we are now a one party state. It's official. Labour deliberately designed our semi PR voting system to keep the SNP from ever getting an overall majority with the top up regional list as well as FPTP and it has failed. Just as Labour have failed. Their manifesto was SNP lite anyway.  We now have an SNP majority. We owe nothing to Westminster and we want Salmond to fight for our NHS, students, public services and for full youth employment while the Tories flush England plc down the pan for short term gains for their corporate chums. Scotland is naturally left of centre and has a strong social conscience - it is more Scandinavian in outlook than Anglo Saxon. It is communitarian and we already have a big society - we don't need English platitudes on that score. 
Unfortunately, the downside is that if England catches a cold or - more likely develops severe economic malnutrition we might get pneumonia or even something nastier - though at least we'll have free prescriptions.  
The independence referendum will be won or lost by the Westminster government and how much we think it is following Thatcherite dogma - or worse, and not by the SNP. We will vote against Westminster when the time comes because after 8 or 9 years of SNP in power we will know for sure whether or not we have the quality in the Scottish political class to provide good government. Not Labour, not LibDem, not Tory but a Scottish agenda for Scotland. True, the SNP do need to do a good managerial job. Too many poorly handled crises will be fatal to independence. If Labour had had the wit to be a real left Scottish party, and the LibDems had any wit, (wake up Danny Alexander) then we would have a coalition or minority government now. I hope we succeed. The arrogance of the English political class has long fed the Scottish cringe. It's about time Scots got the confidence to create another Enlightenment 200 years or so after the last one. TINA ? Let's see about that. Both Keir Hardie and Adam Smith were Scots. There's some great thinkers and some great doers here.

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.