Buses and doors

We've just come back from a week of R & R, but are now very much back into house-building mode.  There were lots of things that we had hoped would have been done whilst we were away that haven't been and a few things done which we had not expected yet.

You are probably well aware by now that we have been having issues with the front door and currently the hallway is out of action as it is more of a double barricade (one built from the outside, and one build from the inside for security) pending the installation of a front door.  This is also holding up the commissioning of our ventilation and heat recovery system which cannot be 'balanced' until we have a more airtight seal where the front door should be.

You know how it is with buses, you can wait for ages for one to turn up, and then two turn up together.  Imagine our surprise when we were informed that the front door and the garage door would be arriving early this week.  Even more surprising was the fact that the long-awaited front door was delivered first.  Considering all the surprises we had just had, we had one further less welcome surprise when we were told that the front door was in fact the wrong size!  It appears that somewhere along the line the fact that the doorway is made up of a 300mm wide glass panel adjacent to a 950mm wide door seems to have got a tad confused, and what was delivered was a 300mm wide glass panel, and an enormous 1250mm wide front door.

An over-size door still in its packaging

Clearly we do not want to wait for another 3 months for a front door, so our builders (who are not to blame) are negotiating with the suppliers to re-order the correct size (at no cost to us!), but since the delivered door is a bespoke size and is no use to anyone else, they are also negotiating to temporarily fix the over-size door without the side glass panel until the correct door is delivered.  This would give us a proper, albeit cumbersome front door which would be a vast improvement on our existing barricades.

On a more positive note, garage door arrived yesterday, and was installed without incident, although some of the optional extras appear to have been forgotten!  These will have to be added later.

Ever wondered how they deliver a garage door?

First segment in position

Halfway there

Three-quarters built

Complete

The landscaping of the garden area is well underway and the stone tiles on the terrace and steps to the lower terrace are nearly all laid.  They are not yet grouted but they do look good.

Paving on the 'Upper Terrace' with dusty footprints

Steps down to the 'Lower Terrace'

In the meantime BT broadband fiasco continues.  I now had a real case manager to talk to who I can reach using a direct dial number which saves having to explain everything three times over to get through to the right department.  It seems that super-fast broadband capacity in the village is fully subscribed and there is no spare capacity in the 'cabinet'.  Last time this happened, I was able to find a provider who found some capacity, but this time, no provider (including my previous provider) seems to be able to find any.  I have effectively been mis-sold a super-fast package which BT cannot deliver and for which they are "extremely" sorry.  My previous super-fast package has obviously been allocated to someone else when I agreed to transfer back to BT.  Despite all their apologies, BT seem unable to tell me when I might get super-fast broadband.  In fact, the onus appears to be on me to keep an eye on the OpenReach website, and let my case manager at BT know when capacity becomes available, at which point he will then graciously find me the best deal possible.  So all I can do is keep checking!

Our kitchen has been nearly 'complete' for a couple of weeks now, but after an abortive attempt to fit the glass splash-backs and window ledge which turned out to be the wrong colour, the correct colour arrived this week and was fitted, and we are really pleased with it.

We decided that we had earned a break today and took my father up the canal in our boat to a pub.  Very busy (it is peak season), but the terrific weather (including today) and lack of rain meant that water levels were really low and to preserve water levels, some of the locks between Cropredy and the pub are closed from 4pm until 10am leaving us not enough time to bring the boat back.  So we ended up getting a taxi from the pub and we'll go and collect the boat some time in the next few days.  It was a great day away from house-building!

A working phone - possibly

Yesterday was a very frustrating day regarding BT and Openreach, so you can imagine my surprise when someone pointed out that a man in a hi-viz jacket was observed fiddling with my phone line box on the outside of the house.  He was next seen up a ladder messing around the wires at the top of the pole.  Clearly my curiosity was piqued, so I just had to go and ask what he was doing.  It turned out that he was the promised 'multi-skilled engineer' who would attend within 2 working days.  He claimed (in front of witnesses) that he was:

• Quite used to sorting out other peoples messes
• Quietly confident that we would have working phone and broadband in a matter of hours

Imagine my surprise when a mere hour later, he knocked on the door (actually, it was the builder's fencing) and announced that we should now have a phone and basic broadband.  Guess what?  He was right, and all of a sudden we hobbled back into the 21st century.  This meant that we could actually pick up a phone, dial someone, and walk around anywhere in the house without losing the connection.  Even the BT router worked and allowed me to do a speed test on the broadband which although not fast, it is usable.

Speed test result

So, the next stage in getting fast broadband was to contact BT and request a 'Black Tech Check' and then they would tell me how fast the super-fast service would be.  It was a luxury to dial 150 on the landline and not 0800 800 150 on the mobile.  It also meant that whilst I was waiting to speak to a human, I could move around and do things, rather than remaining rooted to the spot, hardly daring to turn my head for fear of losing the signal.

Surprisingly, when I did get through to the right people, they did the Black Tech Check there and then and informed me that my line was able to operate at super-fast speeds.  So far, it had been a day of surprises and good news from BT and Openreach, but it turned out that I was just being lulled into a false sense of security before the bad news was delivered.  I was then informed that there was 'no capacity in the cabinet' for me to have superfast broadband and that I should try again in a few weeks or months.  This is extremely frustrating as we are finding ourselves in the same position we were in 18 months ago with an unreliable basic broadband and BT unable to find any capacity.  At that time, enquiries around the village came up with a suggestion that I try another provider.  This seemed a little strange, as they would be using the same 'cabinet', but other providers claimed that there was capacity, so I switched to one of them and enjoyed many months of high-speed reliable broadband.  The downside was that I had to pay BT more money to cancel my contract with them early.

Screenshot of a rather premature email

Whilst, I was on the (land-line) phone, my mobile suddenly decided that it had a signal and it rang.  Lesley answered as I was stilloccupied in a rant with BT.  It turned out to be my 'Complaint Manager' (who prefers to be known as a 'Case Manager') informing me that my phone and internet woes are over!  Lesley kept him talking whilst I finished with the BT call centre, and then I spoke to him.  He was very sorry (sound familiar?) that we had had so much inconvenience.  I only agreed to switch if they could give me super-fast broadband, and when I mentioned the fact that I believe that we had been mis-sold a service his level of apologies jumped up several notches.  He even gave me his name and direct line so that I did not have to go through 20 minutes of questions and answers before I actually spoke to someone.

If it turns out that there really is no capacity in the cabinet (at least for BT), then the contract will be cancelled with no penalty, and I'll be free to switch to any provider I want.  If fact he cancelled the contract there and then, and said that the service would remain in place until the whole sorry sage is resolved.

We have left it that he will investigate the cabinet capacity issue and get back to me in a few days to let me know his findings.

Watch this space.....!

Phone connection - nearly

Today was the day when the engineer would turn up and connect us to the great BT/Openreach network, so by providing us with a working phone line and basic broadband.  The engineer turned up at the allotted time and set about connecting us to the 21st century.  He spent nearly 3 hours with us and as a result the house is now connected to the phone lines outside.  There is however a problem!  Apparently the line from the nearby pole heads off towards the cabinet, but according to his equipment, it is disconnected at a point 87 metres further on.  Unfortunately, the cabinet is located at a point beyond 87 metres meaning that we still have no connection to the outside world!
The engineers estimate is that this 'should' be investigated and sorted 'some time next week'!  There is obviously another definition of the phrase "100% guaranteed" that I was previously unaware of.

The line leaving the study

..and up the side of the house towards the pole

..to reach the pole but little further!

I left it 3 hours and contacted the help desk and endured the long wait (albeit not quite as long as some of the previous calls) to actually speak to someone.  The engineer had indeed submitted his report and BT are no longer just 'sorry', they are now 'extremely sorry'.  It turns out that my 'Complaint Manager' should have contacted me about this, but had not and they were very sorry about that too!   Apparently a 'multi-skilled' engineer has been called and according to the BT/Openreach 'arrangement' Openreach have to provide one within 2 working days.
So it now looks like we may get a connection some time next week, but in the meantime I have had to postpone the visit from the 'renewables' people who were coming tomorrow to put our heating, ventilation and solar panel system on line and allow control from a single point rather than the many thermostats, boost controls and other sensors liberally distributed throughout the house.

Despite all this frustration, we have moved in and we have had two sets of visitors so we are able to entertain at least a little.  Most of the other work is focused on the garage and the landscaping of the garden.  This week, the foundations for the sleeper support walls have been finished and the sleepers have been laid.  The next job is back-filling, levelling out the 'lawn' area in front of the sleepers and replacing all the top-soil.  Then there is all the paving to lay.

Bed to the left, 'lawn' to the right

Stepped to match the  slope down to the canal

Moving in - sort of, with yet another flood

It's well over a week since our last blog and a lot (or a little, depending on your point of view) has happened since then.  Wednesday 1st August was the day when BT were to move our telephone line over to the new property.  The phone at the rental property was disconnected during the day (actually, it wasn't as their was still a dialling tone, but all numbers dialled were unobtainable, and anyone dialing in was forced to listen to a continuous ring tone even though our phone didn't actually ring).  Those of you who had read the last blog entry may have detected a certain lack of faith in the ability of BT to liaise with Openreach to make sure that there was an actual cable in place before the switchover.  Sadly, all our predictions came true.  The engineer did turn up at more-or-less the allotted time, looked at the overhead cable and stated that 'the person who did the survey should be shot!'.  In other words, they could not string a cable from the very nearby pole to the house as it did not have a 'ring', and in any-case it had things 'growing up it' and they would need a cherry-picker to access it.  He retired to the village exchange to 'write a report' and presumably move on to the next job.  Further discussions with BT (now using mobile phones with poor reception) resulted in the case being assigned a 'Complaint Manager' who would contact us.  A message was left a day later indicating that the engineer was working at the exchange.  This was nice to know, but didn't actually give us any useful information such as when we might be connected.   After further phone-calls, BT finally stated that our phone would be live and working on 16th August and this was followed with the words '100% guaranteed'.  They have graciously offered to not charge us for the period we are without a service and are willing to give us £15 compensation to go out and buy a MiFi-type device which will provide internet access providing that there is a good phone signal.  So that is a non-starter then!  However, all is not lost as the 4G system we have on the boat is particularly good, but not exactly portable, so if we want to use the internet, we have to go and hide in the boat for a while.

Today, our boat builder turned up to address the final snags, and their electrician suggested that for a few pounds an external aerial could be magnetically fitted to the boat and would probably provide an adequate, if not fast, service to the house.  Thanks to Amazon, one of these is now on order.  But, it got me thinking about running an old-fashioned wire from the boat to the house.  Since most of our PC cables, including a ridiculous number of long cat5 cables were moved across to the new house, I experimented with this and now dear reader, I am able to sit at the (new) desk in the (new) study and type this.  There is however a long cable draped out of the window, across the soon-to-be-garden, down to the lower terrace, on to the landing stage, and into the boat.  It is not a fast connection, but it works!

Friday 3rd August was the day when the big move started.  We needed to be out of our rental property by 6th August  so we had to move into the new house whatever state it was is in.  It turned out that most of the upstairs was nearly complete, but downstairs was still full of tradesmen.

We had booked 'two men and a van' to do 2 trips of about 200yds each with their Luton van.  They somewhat balked at the sight of the new house being set as it is in the middle of an active building site.  Whilst items destined for the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs were delivered at a pace, all other items downstairs had to be stacked vertically rather than being neatly placed in their final resting place.  The biggest culprits for space-hoarding were the joiners.  Following a week's hiatus a couple of weeks ago, they were definitely running behind.  We had no complaints about the new team we had, but we had rather they had turned up two weeks earlier.  Their tools and equipment occupied well over half of the lounge-diner area which meant that all our tables and chairs were stacked on top of each other in whatever corner they weren't working on at the time.

Meanwhile,outside the house the builders were hard at.  The scaffolders turned up and took down all the scaffolding from the house which at least made it look almost ready to move into.  The scaffolding was then moved a few yards and re-assembled against the garage to allow the brickies to build the gable end brickwork.  Since the builders site manager's hut had been removed, and he could no longer sit in our lounge or outside terrace to do his work, the garage roof was rapidly built so that all the buildery-type items could be put undercover.  This included the site managers desk/cardboard box together with the fridge and the all-important kettle.

Wot! No scaffolding?

Scaffold migration to the garage

Over the weekend, the rainwater harvesting (christened 'Flo' )system was commissioned and in the absence of rain, was filled with the help of a hosepipe.  This means that our en-suite toilet can be used as well as the washing machine.

Commissioning 'Flo'

Can I come out now?

During Sunday it was apparent that with so much of the downstairs of the house out of action, and the garage full of builders- bits, we were not going to get everything inside the house, so we spent much of Sunday distributing our less-used belongings amongst various village friends.  Almost every village resident we know had offered space, even though we did not think we'd need it.  We seemed to have moved into a very neighbourly village.  We did manage to distribute some of our more little-used goods and shackles to a nearby garage and a nearby stable.

By Sunday evening we were somewhat exhausted and had a few hours down-time at one of the precursor events for the Fairport Festival later in the week.  This was the 'Rock on the Lock' event where villagers and boaters gather at Cropredy lock to raise funds for Cancel Research, listen to bands, and partake of fish & chips with the odd drink or two.  One of the key fundraising attractions is the raffle, and unusually for us, we won first prize.  We were particularly pleased with our winnings as it is hand made by a local boater who produces one for the event each year.  It is very finely detailed picture of Cropredy lock carved (by hand) into an old LP.  We will definitely find a place for it to hang when we are a little more organised in the house.

Rocking at Cropredy Lock

Folk band at the lock cottage

The raffle prize

Monday dawned and we soon learned that one of our 'two men in a van' had been taken to hospital with a broken wrist, and that they would be a little late!  They did eventually turn up, but the man with the broken wrist had been replaced by someone with two working wrists.  All 4 working wrists speedily moved our remaining belongings into the house and with the joiners still squatting in most of the lounge-diner, this made the piles of boxes higher and posed the question, just how many sofas can you stack on top of each other?  Back at the rental, readings were taken of electricity and water and duly submitted to the relevant organisations, we then returned the keys to our landlord (also in the village), and that was that.  We now have no choice but to camp out in our new home.

You'll never guess what happened on Tuesday afternoon! Or perhaps you will as a definite theme seems to be developing.  Whilst digging out the garden area ready to take the foundations for the sleeper-based raised bed, our digger driver managed to dig through our newly installed water main, causing yet another flood which on this occasion was fortunately confined to the (long) trench he had been digging.  The digger drive claimed that he could not be held responsible as no-one told him that it was there, so he went home, leaving our builders to sort it out!  The stopcock in the road was located and the supply turned off while the builders went off to find the appropriate parts to repair it.  Since this was late afternoon, they fixed it in double-quick time, presumably so that they could get away home.  The repair was left exposed overnight as a test, but all seemed sound and leak-free the following morning, so the repair was re-buried.

A belated photo of the flood.  Most of the water had already flowed away down the trench

On Wednesday, the builders corrected a drainage pipe mis-direction.  All the water from the garage roof should be routed to 'Flo' (the rainwater harvester), but instead seemed to be disappearing down the sewer drainage instead.  This is now all sorted so if we ever get any rain, at least we won''t be wasting it from the garage roof.  The joiners have run out of oak skirting board so they diverted their attention to the staircase where they installed all the glass panels.  They will return some time after Fairport and complete the skirting in the cloakroom, hall and understairs cupboard.  Regarding the hall, we are still minus one front door, so in the interim we have had secure blockades constructed both on the outside and inside of the door way.  We may still have to wait a couple of weeks for that to be fitted which is disappointing, but when it is installed, we can finally get the carpet laid in the hall.  The garage door is also late with a delivery date of September according to the supplier.  Clearly, this was unacceptable so the builder has read the riot act to them and it is now supposed to be coming today.  The only problem is that today is the first day of the Fairport Festival and traffic in the village is at a standstill, with 20,000 pedestrians wandering around the village.  The builders have been warned off today and tomorrow so if the door does through some miracle appear, there will be no-one on site to receive it.

Two of the 20,000 people wandering around will be our first visitors, so we have had an interesting evening and morning trying to rid the house of builders mess and construct something rather more habitable.

4pm Wednesday, our lounge-diner

10am Thursday, the same room

With the patio doors open we can hear clearly what is being said on the towpath on the other side of the canal.  So far we have only heard compliments so maybe it will all be worth it in the end but only when the builders have finished the garage; driveway; landscaping; front door; electrics; plumbing; cloakroom; and joinery!  Oh, and just now the hot water has stopped working - a man is on his way from Great Yarmouth.  News travels fast!

Charlie Mo at the foot of the freshly landscaped 'lower terrace' with builders paraphernalia

Hot water postscript: all working now, apparently we had a faulty diverter valve and it really was nothing to do with me pressing all the buttons after all, and surprise surprise, the garage door didn't arrive!