Sarah and I set about getting ready for Jan's arrival and the static caravan. We needed to move a big pile of blocks delivered whilst I was in Portsmouth and right in the way for off loading the caravan. Sarah was a real trooper moving those whilst I removed the top layer of stones off the wall. After we completed the heavy lifting and having rearranged the container to make more space and move Joe's things to the front end, so Dave can take them back to Joe and Lisa's new house in Horndean, a special car turned up! I think it looks good in the driveway. Jan had arrived.
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After 6 months of living in a great little first floor flat on Hayling Island, Jan and I finally moved out and off the island for good. This was a sad moment for many reasons but also marked the start of our new life together in deepest Cornwall.
So the big day has arrived, all our furniture has been reunited again in one place, the big blue container at our new home in Cardinham and its all thanks to these two amazing people. Dave and Jack two of the best removal people we have ever encountered. They do a great job at good rates and are very careful, reliable and professional at all times. this is the second time we have used them and we would do so again. Many thanks guys, don't forget to visit when next in our area and we wish you all the best.
We needed level sites for the static caravan which arrives on Monday and the greenhouse that comes next week sometime. Once again Nick was able to help out and was just finishing when Sarah and I arrived with a car load of things bound for the container on Saturday afternoon, It was great timing and another fabulous job, many thanks to NIck and his Dad who helped out too!
The sun came out and the grass had grown so long it needed cutting! We have such a wonderful range of meadow flowers or weeds to most people, flowers in the wrong place! It will be a mini project when I have less to do to photograph and list the flowers we have but for now a photo or two before I mow it all away for a while, they will I am sure be back! So with the floor coming along and trenches dug in the chapel I will need to order concrete and the beams etc. This was when I had, a couple of weeks back, thought I would be pouring the concrete but what with uncertainty around underpinning and the floor height and needing our engineer to give us details on steel foot plate sizes etc it that has added delays and also the fact I've only been in Cornwall for half weeks for the last month! Anyway after this week and last few days of July has disappeared, Jan and I will be fully Cornwall based and living in Cardinham, then the real adventure will have begun! The old floor was not made to suit today's building standards and so had next to no air space beneath, hence the many of the rotten floor beams and boards, but it also meant it was not very tall as a built up structure. Our new floor will be made of layers of underfloor heating, insulation, concrete beams and blocks all sitting on more foundation than the chapel wall has! This means our floor structure is about 500mm taller than the old one and unless we want the floor to be half a metre higher we must dig down! This means going below the foundations for the walls and that means underpining! This is an expensive and potentially tricky process of digging out under the wall and back filling the void with cement beneath the wall hoping it doesn't collapse! The alternative is to use the solid concrete floor method often used in modern houses. It is potentially cheaper and can be done quickly but with older solid walls it potentially pushes damp in the soil beneath the floor through to the walls as the only place it can eevaportate from. It is however, much less built up as a floor structure and would mean no digging down or underpinning. Tricky decision to make! Returned to get the next set of trenches dug before returning again to Portsmouth mid week. The soil is a mixture of easily dug sandy, limey clay at one end and more heavy going blue grey clay and slate chippings about a third of the way through to the other end of the chapel. It is producing quite a lot of soil which will need moving out of the chapel when I return next week to put in the shuttering and reinforcing rebar ready for concrete pouring the following week! Also discovered by accident that a stack of pans makes a great aerial and enhances the signal quality no end! I completed the first trench today and spent a few hours moving things around in the container. Every thing is very dry and it all seems to be free from mould or spiders webs too! I was concerned I would open up to find everything in less than perfect condition but my fears were misplaced. So having made some space the things from John's house went in easily. Back to Portsmouth tomorrow so more trench digging to be done next week! Also noticed the first tomato on our bush plants! After a couple of weeks trying to decide which way to do the floor, I decided today on block and beam. It may need underpinning in parts parts of the chapel and may cost slightly more but it will allow air to both sides of the walls and allow radon gas to disperse without needing pumps, sumps and pipe work!
Started digging the first one this evening and decided to stop at halfway as it was late. so we have been waiting for the drawings of the floor and steels that make up the pod for a few days and today we got them through. I called the fabrication company and sent the drawings to them. Nick, seem to be alot of Nicks and Daves in cornwall, was on the case straight away and was even trying to find ways to simplify the process to reduce our costs! Fantastic service.. mind you not had the quote yet it maybe enormus!
Went to talk with a caravan seller about static vans. Jan and i have decided that selling the small one and getting a bigun is a good plan. Weird but older statics dont cost much more than a touring type of similar age! There are bound to be delivery difficulties to get it here so look out for that in a future blog! I had hoped to be getting the things from jans dads house into the container today but it rained so no, outlook for tommorrow is better fingers crossed. |
AuthorJan and Pete, retiring Headteachers with a dream. Archives
November 2018
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