Photos for September

 Boiler house re-rendered and top of wall re-built.

 Hearth plastered, awaiting false oak lintel and cover place.

 Conduit tracks in the loft to go over the insulation.

 Loft conversion!  Platform over new joists to take header tanks.

I was a bit toasty doing this!  Bit like working in a sauna for people under 4ft tall while wearing a woolly jumper 10cm thick!

 Trying to hide placcy surface mounting stuff for the lights...

Should be areet when painted.

Removing old steel central heating pipes, copper water pipes and electrical cables to boiler house from spare room, all cemented in together!

September = wiring, rebuilding, destruction

The new central heating system comes at the end of the week so the clock's ticking to get as much as possible done for the plumber.  The less he does, the cheaper he is!

So I've been:

Cutting out the old steel heating pipes.  With a junior hacksaw.

Making a conduit track in the loft to keep the wiring above the insulation.

Wiring the upstairs lights.

Re-enforcing (this word is used a lot) the loft so it can take 2 header tanks.  This involved doubling up some of the joists as they were 2x10cm and not very stiff.  Then I made a futon-style platform for the tanks to sit on.  The joists wouldn't fit, so I cut them off at the ends and scarfed them back together, and bolted everything together with massive bolts and massive nails.

Literally re-building the boiler house because the opening is 10cm too small in all directions, and the floor appeared to be made out of fag ash and snail shells, and the walls were not tied in at all.  No good for a ton and a quarter accumulator tank.  One ton of wet crap dug out, one ton of limecrete back in.  I also took out the huge re-enforced concrete lintel, made (reasonably) good the top, re-enforced the wall plate by nailing another wall plate on the back with big nails, stripped the de-laminated cement render off and re-rendered in lime.

Rant alert:

The boiler house has an oak roof and a mahogany door.  House has ice cream wafer -quality pine roof and placcy doors!  Why?!  No footings, just the turf scraped off and house built on top, nice and squidgy.  Top of house has a re-enforced concrete wall plate 20x60 cm cross section, not at all squidgy, built on rubble stone and mud mortar walls, rendered in pure cement.  WHY?

There is no why.  Just get over it and get on chipping that shit off.

Rant over.

Next up is:

Get the hearth plastered and the closure plate made up and put in.  Mock oak lintel in.  Mock lintel, not mock oak.
Make the hearth ventilation neat and central and pretty.  Central will do.  Maybe neat.
Wire the boiler house up.  2 plugs and a light.
Make a door for the boiler house.
Getting some windows in.  Oak, please.
Making a new front door frame.  Oak.
Getting a 250kg stove across a gravel drive and into the house.
Getting a 250kg accumulator tank across a gravel drive and into the boiler house.