Plumbing catchup!

Since we had to take off many of the radiators in order to insulate the walls, it seemed completely nuts not to replace all but the only two newish radiators in the house. Most of them were very old, inefficient and in some cases ridiculously enormous. Several rooms were inadequately heated by small single panel radiators. The lounge had a double one 3m long which two of us could barely lift. The people who fitted this system wanted a warm lounge but weren't fussed about anywhere else.

So, replace them we did. Giant for compact, inadequate for appropriate, old for new. Want to see pictures of all the nice new shiny radiators? Thought not, boring as hell. Some rejigging of the pipework was necessary to fit the new ones, which were all different sizes to the old. One thing led to another, and much investigating was done to discover just how the system worked. Part of it was the crazy arrangement of pipes which you saw in the lounge a couple of days ago. This entire loop was removed and replaced with two neat pipes in the hall connecting upstairs with downstairs. Lots of pipes were buried under the floor. Originally they would have been under a suspended wooden floor but this was long gone and they had just had concrete poured over them.

Here's Rich digging some of them up just to try to find out how they are arranged under the concrete.

Part of phase 2 which will hopefully happen next year, will be to put a layer of insulation on top of the concrete floors downstairs and place a suspended timber floor on top of that. With that in mind, we decided to run all new pipes above the present floor downstairs. The only place this would have been a problem was running them past the front door which then wouldn't be able to open, so a temporary loop over it was envisioned.

However, when we pulled up the carpet, we found there was a channel of damp rotten wood through which the old pipes ran, so we could run our new ones the same way (having first removed the wood), creating for the first time an actual lowest point from which the whole system could be drained. This picture shows where Rich drilled through the wall and ran two 15mm pipes directly outside with valves to drain the system. Brilliant!

Meanwhile, other tasks included putting insulation on these pipes which supply the radiator in the kitchen. They had a very long run and lost much of their heat before they even reachd the radiator.

We also thought of a genius use of the pipes which crossed the floor upstairs and used to come through the lounge ceiling. We reconnected them to the upstairs loop, dropped them discreetly down at the back of the lounge, through the wall and used them to supply this new radiator in the kitchen. The kitchen was always inadequately heated as there was no room for a radiator big enough to heat the space, but now we have two.

And a little one in the laundry room where there used to be none! I did all the pipework and soldering myself on this and none of it leaked.

And through it all, I made frequent visits to the dump. We're on first name terms now, me and Stig (of the dump)

Nothing for 3 weeks, then two come along at once....

This is our bedroom. Looks like we won't be sleeping in it for a while...

Pipes in the lounge

The day we moved into this house 7 1/2 years ago, we were simply too excited to be bugged by anything. It wasn't until the next day that the true horribleness of these fitted shelves made of MDF hit home.

Ripping those babies out was one of the most fun things I've done in a long time. Can you guess what ornaments were on them before they went?

Once they were out, they revealed some quirky plumbing. the pipes came across under the floor upstairs, through the ceiling in this alcove, crossed over each other twice before disappearing under the concrete floor and recrossing the house back to the front again. They got ripped out too.

Did they really think painting them chamaelion style would stop anyone noticing?

More Ratty

All those cables and Ratty knows exactly what they all do.

Not only that, but he thinks he can fit them neatly into this small box!

AJ's room

First, we move the furniture out of the way.

Then we strip all the wallpaper, pull out the window surrounds, knock off the loose plaster, foam in the window, making loads of mess and dust creating large amounts of black bogeys.

The insulation board goes up.

Wall is plastered and the new radiator is hung. There, that wasn't so bad, was it?

Ratty

This is Ratty, drilling some more holes in our nice violently green wall to run another cable. He's a brilliant electrician, and much more beautiful than Sparky was. I expect he's called Ratty because when he's been in your house it ends up looking badly gnawed. He'll be here on Wednesday moving some cables he's already routed because his clients changed their minds about where they are going to put their bed. The blighters....

Mess

I thought I should share our chaos and discomfort with the wider world. Why should we have to suffer alone? We are doing all six rooms in the main part of the house (3 bedrooms upstairs and 3 reception rooms downstairs) so we're having to keep moving from one to another, and most of them have a pile of furniture in the middle, and all of them are covered in dust, and none of them are remotely nice to be in yet.... This mess is like no other mess we've ever experienced. It is the uber-mess, the mess to end all messes.

The mess in the spare room...

The mess in our bedroom....

The mess in the study.... That's another fine mess we've gotten ourselves into.

Expanding foam and Kryptonite

When we ripped out all the gaudy tropical hardwood window surrounds, we found that the wondow frames fitted by Country Window Systems in Dunkeswell, Devon, were actually only held in by silicone and thin air. Great job guys, I thought you did it quickly. So we've splurged in about ten quids worth of expanding foam into each window surround to hold the blighters in.

Now the expaded foam will hold it tight, and insulate the gap. RIchard would prefer if it was fixed in with eight inch titanium bolts anchored into Kryptonite, but he's a belt and braces kind of guy.

Here's Richard plastering away again in Miles's room (long story), which as previously mentioned, is not his favourite job. But its Friday, and he's off camping for the weekend with some of the boys from Culmstock, so I expect to see him here at about eleven on Monday morning, with large gaps in his memory.

Plastering

Rich doing what he hates. Plastering. As opposed to getting plastered, which he loves.

Lounge

Apart from having the entire house rewired by Ratty (who is coming to run some more cables tomorrow so I'll try to get a snap) we are also applying extra insulation to all the exterior walls, of which we have many, and although they are cavity walls, the extra insulation will cut the heat loss by more than half.

We were able to simply peel the paint off the wall in the lounge as it was the kind of vinyl paint that was popular in the '70's. After seven years, it was about time we redecorated anyway.

Once the paint was stripped, Richard, yes, he of studio and bathroom fame, could get to sticking up insulated plasterboard. This has 50mm of extruded polystyrene stuck to the back of it and its £30 a sheet.

The wooden window surrounds have been consigned to history, and we now have nice wooden cills and plastered reveals.

But going to Spain wasn't the only reason this blog hasn't been updated for months....

Life has been very complicated on many fronts lately. But while we were away, Ratty came and ripped up all the floorboards, drilled loads of holes everywhere and left cables dangling out of them. Ratty is our new sparky, he's not nearly as ugly as the old one.

Here's the fuse box with lots of new wiring ready to connect once a new consumer unit is fitted.

And a couple of examples of cables sticking out of holes.

We've been in Spain.

We saw some spectacular rocks.

We stayed at a nice campsite where we upset some Germans and made friends with some other Germans. We might have mentioned the war once, but we think we got away with it.

And we buried Arne.

Making the bed

I've been getting through some sun screen this week I can tell you. Its been glorious weather for sipping Pimms by the pool and reading a good book, but not so great for what I'm doing.

I should come up with a new index of pints of sweat per 100 bricks cleaned. Don't know what I'd score, but it would be a lot. Here is the historic moment when the corners of the path were joined up thus enclosing the area of the bed and enabling me to.....

...install the planks which will make the bed raised. These are old joists which we saved when we demolished what was in our opinion a ghastly pergola.

Sorry, it had to go. Here J9 admires it with its architect and builder when we first looked at the house in 2002. Actually, it looks surprisingly good here! The stone slabs you can see on the ground are also being recycled and will make up part of the paths surrounding our vegetable beds.

But the pergola was of no practical use whatsoever, unlike this lovely bed. You could snuggle down for the night in that no problem.

Its too hot for this....

As you saw from J9's skimpy attire in the last post, its been warm around here. Very warm. Too warm for digging soil and rubble, cleaning bricks, barrowing sand, mud and hardcore from here to there and especially too warm for compacting down the hardcore by bashing it with a sledgehammer. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I've been doing for several days at a stretch.

Here, the paths made of the old brick we lifted from the original floor in the studio are beginning to take shape. These will run all the way around five raised beds.

Phew! This is hard work. The first bed is taking shape.

J9's battle

J9 also got in on the action. She decided to tackle the corner by the greenhouse, which had become a tangle of weeds and brambles.

We've grown a fine crop of the afore-mentioned weeds and brambles under the lean-to, and the mini greenhouse, which won us a gold at Chelsea in the couch grass section.

The couch grass was coming up from under a load of slabs which some idiot had laid without a weed barrier. J9 lifted all the slabs (she's so strong!) and then got stuck in ripping up the carpet of roots. The weather was better than the day before.

I love to see someone enjoying themselves.

J9 1-0 Couch grass

Tha path to glory

Up at the top of our garden, we have a vegetable plot. This has been covered in old carpet and plastic for 2 years to kill off what the previous occupants euphemistically called their "wild flower meadow," which was actually a tangled mass of couch grass and weeds which proved impossible to defeat by mere digging. We have now designated half of that area for the chickens, and are in the process of laying paths and when that's done we'll make some raised beds for the veg. Now....

...this has been the scene outside our back gate since November/December 2007 when I dug out the floor for the new studio. I would have sent it all off in Somon's trailer but for the fact that various people have asked if they could have all the hardcore for building, and promised to take it all away, and then not done so.

So, while one half of my brain was thinking what the heck am I going to do with all the hardcore, the other half was thinking where the heck am I going to get enough topsoil for the raised beds.... Genius! Dig out the topsoil from the paths....

....barrow up all the rubble....

.....and fill the trenches with rubble, providing the ideal foundation for the brick and slab paths we're going to lay!! I told you it was genius.

Eggscellent!

Hello loyal followers! At last, another entry in what has become a sadly erratic blog, but I'm afraid this is the nature of things these days. I've been busy, partly with work and partly with other things that have demanded my attention. Four of which are poultry. Although in themselves they have nothing to do with the renovation of the house, they have galvanized us into a frenzy of activity in shaping their environment and what with the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, one thing has led to another and another etc and some serious butt is being kicked out in the garden. And since the garden is kind of part of the house, I've decided to blog!

Here's AJ feeding our new hens. Their names are Princess Layer, Hen Solo, The Bantam Menace and Hen Kenobie. Can you spot the theme?

They are very tame and will happily eat from your hand. We know a geezer in the pub who works at a chicken farm, and we rescued these when they were about to become pet food.

We bought them a house, and I built them a storm shelter. It is temporarily situated where we'll soon have raised vegetable beds. We feed them on organic pellets, and they also eat worms and slugs, which they fight over.

A little heavy on the rouge this morning....

Our reward is some great big lovely organic free range eggs every day, usually 2 or 3, but we've just had 4 eggs two days running! Clever girls!