Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Wood and water
A profitable day and a stressful day.
First the profitable part,
With the granite lintel in place the maçons propped up the wall, window and floor above it so they could remove the two old oak lintels. For the first time I've actually seen them use steel girders for support instead of wood, so I guess there must be an awful lot more load this time. They also 'chocked' up the lucarne with zig-zag bits of wood, I assume to prevent collapse due to the lack of support. Once supported, the oak was chainsawed out in sections, ready for concrete and stone infill.
Of course, having two wood burning stoves in the house I pounced on the wood as if they were made of gold. A few hours chainsawing and splitting gave us a substaintial pile of wood for the winter. I got over 1 cubic meter of logs, which is not too bad. Based on last year we reckon that we need 8 or 9 m3 (3 cordes) to last the winter.
...and the stressful portion,
The digger man (and digger lady) arrived this morning to demolish the lean-to and dig the foundations ready to rebuild it into a kitchen for one of the gites. Those of you that have followed progress will know about the rising water main in the lean-to. It's a rigid plastic pipe sticking out the ground next to a wall that has the stopcock, water meter and pressure reducer attached with a supply pipe for our house and the three gites.
As you would expect, just before a man starts swinging around a 1 ton steel articulated hydralic arm, I pointed out this vunerable aspect of the demolition work. Be careful. Well the inevitable happened. The was a ring at the door "The pipes come off. What's the number for the water board ?" says a rather sheepish lady, "Where is the stopcock ?". I go out to turn off the stopcock on the pipe and then realise, that's the bit that's come off. There is water everywhere ! We can't find the main stopcock in the road or the verge, so whilst I divert gallons and gallons of water into a nearby ditch with old bits of rainwater pipe and guttering lashed together with sticky tape, the water board is called.
This has put a bit of a dampener on the day.
A very very grumpy water board man arrived and before even trying to turn off the water, started to complain about us having a water meter outside and it should be inside a building. Well 10 minutes ago it was inside a building and next week it will be back inside a building, but this didn't cut any ice. "It should be inside a building", he says. Arggg!! OK, armed with metal detector and stopcock key water man (WM) stomps up and down the verge looking for the main stopcock swearing under his breath.
In the meantime the bread lady arrives and informs us that the village upstream from us hasn't got any water. The problem is it's spewing out all over our building site and we pinched all the water pressure!
Finally WM locates the stockcock and turns it off. Nothing happens, apart from the village downstream having no water ! Digger man is hiding. WM decides to give up on the main stopcock and just fit a new one onto our rising main with the water still on. Water reconnected and normallity is restored. Apart from everyone being up to their knees in mud.
A quick discussion with WM and the builders and we decided the best thing was to position the water meter etc. outside the new building in a plastic box buried underground. It means that the WM can read the meter without bothering us. I go off shopping to get the necessary plumbing supplies to re-route the pipes on our side of the meter (the private side) and expect the WM to re-route his pipes (the public side).
By now the digger man has finished the foundations and the pair of them leave, sharpish.
I'm expecting to do a bit of plumbing in the afternoon, but now find out that the concrete mixer is en-route to fill the foundations ready for building. This is now getting stressful, water meters in the wrong place, no time for plumbing, and it all about to be covered over with tonnes of concrete.
Fortunately our trusty builders sort it out and put a conduit under the foundations before they are poured so I can thread a pipe and get water into the building from the proposed new meter position outside. Once the new meter is installed we will just cut off the old rising main pipe.
Voila. Beer time.
| 9:26:31 PM
Wood and water
