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!