All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes jack a dull boy
Ok time for an update,
What a shocking couple of months of weather we have had!
I have spent week after week sanding down, and preparing the timber sections, treating and priming ready for erection.
Smaller sections were worked on under the lean-to and in the garage.
Larger sections have had to wait for dry days, which have been very scarce!
So too jobs like treating the prepared timbers and laying them out to dry, I just don’t have enough space under cover and every day has been wet or promising rain, a real headache!
Every job seems so endless, it is very hard to keep the enthusiasm going, for example, each roof spar whilst only 12ft long, has 6 flat faces to be sanded (as they are tapered in section) each has 2 rebates with a rubber seal to remove, clean (scrape, sand, scrape again) and replace. x by 38 and that amounts to 2600ft of timber to pass my little orbital sander alone! Plus nearly 900ft of EDPM seal to replace.
This job really feels like the “Forth Bridge”, ‘though without the bonus of being able to throw myself from it when totally fed up!!
I have tried to get fairly advanced with the refurb before decanting the plants to their temporary home and taking down the old greenhouse.
Temporary enclosure ready to take the highlanders and a few lowlanders
Plants moved in
Orchids in the conservatory.
Old electrics and water filtration system
Old GH takedown
Demolished and skipped the old blockwork base during a massive thunderstorm, the only job that wasn’t hindered by the rain! The wife even had a go with the sledgehammer (likes destroying things) but when it comes to the laborious stuff like sanding and painting, ”you’re on your own mate”
Called in the brickie to do a 5 day job, and then it pissed down for 7 out of the next 11 days!, the yard flooded and the rain just kept coming. Fortunately the house has never been in danger, but it is still worrying and so I put the pump into the soakaway sump and pumped away 7000L/hr for 2 whole days…………what a crap summer!
I bought almost enough bricks from a neighbour, they are a tumbled and sand-faced brick and look like old reclaimed bricks but are hard and to class B spec, I made up the shortfall with class B’s for the first course and quoined corners. I have used a 100mm thermal block for the inner leaf with a 50mm insulated cavity.
I also built in a cool passage within the cavity that will draw fresh air in through air bricks, along the cool, damp passage and into the Highland section, this should aid summer cooling by 1 or 2 deg C. I have also set a raised insulated slab under the Lowland section and a duct to feed the gas heater.
Finally the brickwork was done
Progress has been much slower than I had anticipated, mostly due to the weather, however, the poor weather has also provided a milder climate for the plants whilst in their temporary homes, so I am not so unhappy, I guess the storm clouds have had a silver lining.
Finally I decided to replace the rusty old steel brackets (invent some missing ones) and strainers with stainless steel plate and wire cables with turnbuckle strainers. Making up the cables is fairly simple but hard on the hands.
The whole job has needed a lot of planning and investigation to ensure all components are there to complete the build, it has been like a giant 4D jigsaw with no picture.
Few shots of progress
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Gareth Davies, on 20 April 2012 - 09:29 AM, said:
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