February and the 'swimming pool'
IF YOU FIND IT DIFFICULT TO VIEW THESE PHOTOS TRY DOUBLE OR RIGHT CLICKING ON THEM AND THEY SHOULD APPEAR LARGER IN A SEPARATE SCREEN
The digger and driver arrived when they said they would and got stuck in straight away. First job was to pull off the front of the Piggery. They did it in the time I took to walk Atticus up the road to his other grazing and back again... about 40 minutes! This is what it looked like when I left....
and when I came back........
Over the next couple of days they broke up all the concrete pig troughs and took out that and the floor. I had to bring Atticus in during the day and was a bit concerned about what he would do with all this activity outside his stable door. The answer was ..... rubberneck. He thought it was all very interesting!
The next job for them was to clear the stock yard - lots of concrete to be broken up and moved and a load of cobbles also. I got to drive the dumper truck when the builder's son didn't turn up one day (they had a falling out - one of the pitfalls of a father and son team I suppose but still very annoying). The digger driver gave me a brief lesson in operating that too - bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach twice at the same time!!
Then it was round to the back garden to dig out some soil at the back of the cottage. The level was too high so needing reducing and the old area of concrete and bricks had never been very good and was breaking up so the whole lot came out. Unfortunately for the grass it had to be done on the wettest day of the year so far....!!
In the meantime work at the Piggery continued and the drains were sorted and cut in and some cement came and some more cement came and the window people came to measure up and some stuff was delivered and so on. The building inspector turned out to be a woman I know in the village - she has horses and I've used her outdoor school a few times. She came for her first visit and is very practical and open to bribes.....no, not really! She has been able to come up with some good compromises and solutions on the way things can be done to keep her standards up and our costs down.
As a diversion we took delivery of 5 orphan lambs all needing bottle feeding every 4-6 hours. As we seem to be up most of the day and night anyway it shouldn't be that much of a hardship!! They started off in the barn as they were only days old and the weather was pretty grim. Once it dried up a bit they were moved out
into the garden.
Then the really big and exciting stuff starting happening. Our mini digger and dumper was whisked away and a huge lorry came with a huge digger and dumper on! The original plan to dig out the whole area behind the barn plus a little bit of the field was shelved on the advice of the digger driver and it was decided to use the field to dig out the area to lay the pipes for the ground source heat system.
So he started by taking off the top soil.....
then digging.........
Quite a lot of soil came out......
...until finally we ended up with this!!
Several people have been by to look at it and those who asked were told that it was going to be a swimming pool (at 50m x 15m x 1.8m it isn't far off an Olympic pool size!!). If I felt really mischevious I told them it was the footings for a block of flats to house asylum seekers and immigrant workers!
Actually it did actually house some immigrant workers today, albeit temporarily, as the company who are laying the pipe use Polish workers.
I can't put videos on this (as far as I know) but if you click on this or maybe cut and paste the route into your browser you can see how much fun the dogs had and just what the digger looked like in action (some of you will find this more exciting than others!!)
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e157/SueAllen2/?action=view¤t=Digger035-1.flv
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e157/SueAllen2/?action=view¤t=Dogsinpit.flv
The digger and driver arrived when they said they would and got stuck in straight away. First job was to pull off the front of the Piggery. They did it in the time I took to walk Atticus up the road to his other grazing and back again... about 40 minutes! This is what it looked like when I left....
and when I came back........
Over the next couple of days they broke up all the concrete pig troughs and took out that and the floor. I had to bring Atticus in during the day and was a bit concerned about what he would do with all this activity outside his stable door. The answer was ..... rubberneck. He thought it was all very interesting!
The next job for them was to clear the stock yard - lots of concrete to be broken up and moved and a load of cobbles also. I got to drive the dumper truck when the builder's son didn't turn up one day (they had a falling out - one of the pitfalls of a father and son team I suppose but still very annoying). The digger driver gave me a brief lesson in operating that too - bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach twice at the same time!!
Then it was round to the back garden to dig out some soil at the back of the cottage. The level was too high so needing reducing and the old area of concrete and bricks had never been very good and was breaking up so the whole lot came out. Unfortunately for the grass it had to be done on the wettest day of the year so far....!!
In the meantime work at the Piggery continued and the drains were sorted and cut in and some cement came and some more cement came and the window people came to measure up and some stuff was delivered and so on. The building inspector turned out to be a woman I know in the village - she has horses and I've used her outdoor school a few times. She came for her first visit and is very practical and open to bribes.....no, not really! She has been able to come up with some good compromises and solutions on the way things can be done to keep her standards up and our costs down.
As a diversion we took delivery of 5 orphan lambs all needing bottle feeding every 4-6 hours. As we seem to be up most of the day and night anyway it shouldn't be that much of a hardship!! They started off in the barn as they were only days old and the weather was pretty grim. Once it dried up a bit they were moved out
into the garden.
Then the really big and exciting stuff starting happening. Our mini digger and dumper was whisked away and a huge lorry came with a huge digger and dumper on! The original plan to dig out the whole area behind the barn plus a little bit of the field was shelved on the advice of the digger driver and it was decided to use the field to dig out the area to lay the pipes for the ground source heat system.
So he started by taking off the top soil.....
then digging.........
Quite a lot of soil came out......
...until finally we ended up with this!!
Several people have been by to look at it and those who asked were told that it was going to be a swimming pool (at 50m x 15m x 1.8m it isn't far off an Olympic pool size!!). If I felt really mischevious I told them it was the footings for a block of flats to house asylum seekers and immigrant workers!
Actually it did actually house some immigrant workers today, albeit temporarily, as the company who are laying the pipe use Polish workers.
I can't put videos on this (as far as I know) but if you click on this or maybe cut and paste the route into your browser you can see how much fun the dogs had and just what the digger looked like in action (some of you will find this more exciting than others!!)
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e157/SueAllen2/?action=view¤t=Digger035-1.flv
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e157/SueAllen2/?action=view¤t=Dogsinpit.flv
posted by Sue Allen | 6:07 AM
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