Swimming pool for Christmas!

Foundations complete, all is well, site is tidy, connections are in the right place and everything is ready for the timber frame in January. Plenty of water too for splashing about..

Floods

Flooding and high tides these days... Much water on roads between Freshwater and Gurnard. Surprised to see Kevin and Ken working away laying Thermalite block upstand in between showers. Good lads! They think the work will be finished early next week. Considering the kind of weather we've had it's pretty good going!

Frost

All wrapped up to keep warm.. We went to site today to measure where waste pipes for sink, shower, washing machine and dishwasher (yes!) were going to go through and position the gulleys. We were frozen and could have done with those blankets..

Rainwater harvest

Pipes in readiness to collect all this rain..

North west corner

North east corner

South wall

Top and lower end

Rain

Kevin and Ken carried on working bravely in the rain...

Mud

Mud mud mud... Clay mud being taken away...

Old sewer replacement top half

Tricky part...replacing the old sewer. Actually it DID need replacing as we found it was cracked and wobbly...

Graham's mini digger is a wonderful tool, absolutely magical in such a small plot. And all that clay moved effortlessly!

These are the shutterings which will keep our neighbour's house and garden safe

Our neighbour's gas pipe!

Wonderful!

Bottom part of replacement sewer

Second slab (kitchen) on!

Each new day brings fresh opportunities..for crises! There was the chimney: we couldn't place it where it would comply with Building Regulations. It was either too close to an openable window, or too tall, or not over the ridge, or stove would have to be fitted at the bottom of stairs! Eventually we redesigned the bathroom and were able to fit the flue closer to the ridge :) Then we couldn't fit the kitchen stairs without banging our head on the ceiling, the front door wasn't centred in the middle of the elevation and didn't match the stairs, we worked out that the fibreboard would cost over £2'500 (in fact at some point we thought we wouldn't have enough money to complete the full project), the south-east corner protrudes too much and the solar thermal would have cost £6'000+ to install (payback time 45 years.. We won't install it). This morning I spilt my coffee on the computer and have been grumpy all day. Will post photos tomorrow after a good night sleep..

Plans and dimensions

The pink line running more or less parallel to the boundary is the dreaded sewer we need to dig up and renew...see pipes

Slabs

It has been raining of course, no, pouring, for the last 3 or 4 days bar a few hours of brilliant sunshine appearing out of nowhere and disappearing quick..
The lower slab has been cast (somehow), this is the area of the dining room/ study/ cloakroom. The pile of gravel is waiting to level the upper part ( kitchen area) before slab is cast.
In the meantime we are still spending most of our time in calculations: John is positioning the air supply for the room sealed log burner, yesterday he was trying to work out where the chimney flue could go to comply with Building Regulations. House is so tiny it is really like trying to fit a puzzle on a postage stamp!

Rain and more rain

Wonderful sunny weekend spent calculating and re-calculating the exact position of the soil pipe (crucial) and realising the front door wasn't opposite the stairs (it sounds trivial but one small mistake leads to a big gap somewhere or one's bumping head upstairs or no space to fit a bath or opening a door...
Now rain of course, and not a little and much wind (hovercraft service was suspended) but they did manage to cast the slab!

East trench

South trench

West trench

North trench