Slates & Clay

We are still waiting for the builders to come and resolve some of the outstanding items on the 'To Do' list.  This includes the front door which is on a 3-month delivery and is now overdue.  To keep ourselves sane, work has shifted to the outside and in particular, the garden.
As we mentioned in the last entry, we decided that the amount of planting and work required in the garden would mean that we would be fully occupied there until well into next year.  So we have merged the various designs we had produced and sprinkled on a little of our own ideas and got someone else to do most of it!
The one thing that we have always said that we would do is replace the hedging that was removed to allow access for the house to be built.  The hedging arrived last week and we had run out of excuses for not doing it, so last weekend, we bit the bullet and got on with it.

Mixed hedging delivered

Future hedge location

We spent a happy time (!) outside in the occasional shower digging very thick clay to make trenches to plant hedging and bulbs in.  About 90 hedging plants arrived last week and were basically sticks with some roots at one end.  Each one had to be soaked in water and then lovingly basted in some sort of rooting compound before being artfully positioned in a precision-dug trench to just the perfect depth before being covered over with more clay soil.  This was a lot harder than it seemed as the heavy clay we have sticks to absolutely everything: clothes; shoes; spades; forks.  This increases the weight of every item two fold. 
The day before we started planting the hedge, the landscape gardener appeared with what seems like hundreds of plants and distributed them to the appropriate locations around the garden ready for the next tier of gardeners to plant during the following week.  This gave us a good idea of what was going where but did make hedge planting something of an obstacle course.  We were afraid to move plants out of the way as we didn't trust ourselves to put them back in the same place.  Digging then became somewhat more like a contortionist's exercise.  Despite all this, by the end of the weekend, nearly all the hedging is planted.  This just left the rest of the garden!

Delivery of some the garden plants

Plants in position

New hedging in situ

More hedging

Fortunately on Monday morning one of two gardeners appeared to start planting the actual garden.  Within an hour he was complaining about how hard the clay was to work with.  Copious amounts of tea and mince pies seemed to be the only way to placate him.  On Tuesday and for part of Wednesday he was joined by a second gardener resulting in a trip to the shops for more tea and mince pies.  The main gardener estimated that planting would take 2 men 2 days.  We have already used more than that and they are back for another day each next week.  A further gardener will then appear to weed and lay the new lawn.  It's a good job that it's a fixed price contract!

Some plants planted

More plants planted (in the frost)

When you build a house it is inevitable that some bits will be left over.  We covered the saga of the surplus bricks in a previous blog (14th September), but we also found ourselves with a spare heated towel-rail (as a result of us changing our mind), and a crate of Welsh Slate.  Ebay came to the rescue and the the towel-rail was sold and collected yesterday.  The slate however is another story.  We felt we did rather well on ebay and got a reasonable price for the 300 slates.  It was sold on the basis of collection-only as postage could be a tad expensive.  We had expected the successful bidder to be local.  I suppose on the global scale Durham could be regarded as local, but this was going to present the buyer with a challenge to collect them.  We had carefully squirrelled the slates out of the way in the garage.  This was not easy and involved emptying all the slates out of the crate and stacking them somewhere else whilst the empty crate is relocated.  The crate was then refilled from the temporary stacks.  We recognised that whoever collected them would need them to be a little more accessible so over the weekend we again repeated the process to move the slates outside.  This was acceptable to the buyer (photos were sent to him) who then commissioned a palette company to collect them.  However, when they turned up it seems that it was not acceptable to them.  We had all expected a lorry to appear with a hiab crane on the back and lift them up.  Apparently this company doesn't use hiabs, preferring instead to use a small palette truck to wheel palettes on to a tail lift and hoist them on to the lorry that way.  The collection driver had already had a bad morning (I overheard him talking to one of our gardeners beforehand) and he decreed that the the crate was not on the 'right sort of palette'; it was not on the road; and anyway his palette truck could not run over gravel.  So he went away again, much to the buyer's annoyance.  It seems that we have now reached a compromise which involves moving the crate to the edge of the road.  The problem is that I rather did my back in moving the slates the first (or was it the second) time, so I am reluctant to move them again until it has recovered.  We have now agreed on Thursday next week which means that some time early next week we will to unpack the slates and stack them somewhere, move the empty crate 4-feet, and then repack it.  We are not looking forward to this!

Crate of Welsh Slate

Next week the builders have 'promised' to get 'Building Control' here to complete the sign-off of the house.  This has been delayed from this week apparently due to a broken down car.  I wonder what the next excuse will be?

It is now the run up to Christmas and the many many crates of decorations which have followed us around the village before being corralled in the garage have been opened, examined, and the best (well, meets the strict colour criteria apparently) decorations taken out for display in the new house.  Considering the number of decorations we actually have, I am really very surprised that so few have been put up.  However, amongst those few are three trees.  A small one on the boat, a medium one in the lounge, and a large one on the terrace outside the lounge.  One of our friends (you know who you are) has previously stated that they will know when we have finally settled in when the Christmas tree appears on the terrace.  So it looks like we've arrived then!

One of the 3 trees

Chilly evening in Cropredy

The Erratic Snagging List

As the builders were 'finishing' and moving out of our house, we started to use a snagging list to keep tabs on what needed doing.  The list is actually split into two parts.  Part one deals with all those things which we think need doing before we part with the penultimate payment.  Part two deals with other snags which develop whilst we are living in the house.  The final payment is due after 12 months on the assumption that all the snags have been dealt with.

The builders do make occasional visits to the house and things do get crossed off both lists, but every so often we find something else which is then added to the lists, so its size does increase for a while, and then following visits from the 'trades' shrinks back a bit.  Overall though, the trend does seem to be downwards.

Over the last couple of weeks we have had 6 trades on site: builders; joiners; window fitters; stove fitters; garage door fitters; and renewables installer.

The builders themselves sent someone to touch up and repaint  some of the marks and minor cracks.  Larger cracks will be addressed in a couple of months when the house has finished 'settling'.  Fortunately, none of the cracks are structural!

The joiners returned to finally fit the door latch to the cloakroom door.  This latch was sacrificed to the bedroom door after it failed the first time.  They also fitted a new, different latch to the bedroom door following its second failure!  The new latches are very similar and slightly cheaper, but seem more robust.  If all goes well with the new version, and the supplier finally admits that the original latches are unsuitable, all the latches will be changed to the new type.

The windows company returned to remove a faulty window (the integral blind stopped working) and fitting a temporary (no integral blind) window whilst it is repaired.  This is due to be refitted in 'a week or two'.

One 'blinded' window, one temporarily 'unblinded'

The missing up-stand behind the stove was fitted.  This is made up of the same material as the hearth, and although it doesn't get hot around the back of the stove, we didn't think that putting skirting board that close was a good idea.  We tried the stove for the first time last weekend, and we are really pleased with it.

 

Stove hearth sporting the new up-stand behind

The garage door fitters returned last week to investigate why the garage door occasionally jams.  It did this quite a bit in the summer when the door got hot and expanded.  They thought that they had fixed it, but it has jammed a couple of times since.  Unfortunately, they could find nothing wrong, and we were asked to get them back when it does it again.  They suggested that we took a video of it to show them.  Since it only jams very occasionally, we do not propose to video the door every time it opens or closes!  The plan now is to wait until the Spring in the hope that the jamming becomes more predictable.

The 'renewables' have finally been commissioned.  This seemed to involve sticking warning labels on most of the equipment, and fitting a remote monitor to the heating system.  We can now monitor the amount of power consumed by the heating system as well as monitoring and changing the temperature of each room, from our PCs and mobile phones.  We can also now remotely monitor how much power the solar panels are generating.

Fully labelled solar power meter

More labels in the airing cupboard

More meters in the airing cupboard

...and more labels under the stairs!

There is still a lot of paperwork to be raised, mainly by the installer.  We are entitled to claim some money back from the government (the Renewable Heat Incentive or RHI) for the installation and operation of an efficient 'Air-sourced Heat Pump' heating system for the next 7 years.  Since we have solar panels, we are also entitled to the 'Feed in Tariff' which gives us some money back for generating electricity.  Applications to both of these schemes seems to require a significant amount of work and explains the large number of meters needed in the airing cupboard.  We have made a start on our application, but until we get the next tome of paperwork from the installer, we cannot complete the process and start to get some money back.  He has promised delivery of everything we need next week.  However he does not have an exemplary record in meeting deadlines, so we'll see.

The 'Blinds' company returned last week to fit the final blind over the staircase.  It seems that the risk assessment has finally been completed and the fitter arrived with his ladder and just got on with it.  This has added yet another remote control to the many already acquired.  Fortunately, in keeping with the heating, solar and CCTV systems, they can all be controlled from a PC or mobile phone.

The garden is making slow progress.  In the end, we gave in and let two different people have a go at designing it.  We like to think that we have taken the best bits from both plans to come up with something which should have some colour throughout the year.  Hopefully the lawn will be laid in the next couple of weeks.  Now that most of the leaves have now come off the trees we were finally able to order our hedging.  The only problem is that unsurprisingly, the hedging company is now rather busy and delivery of our hedging has been delayed until the middle of next week.

At some point during the week one of us (I'll let you guess), managed to accidentally switch off the freezer.  Of course, we didn't notice for a couple of days when the pool of water on the kitchen floor finally gave it away!  We did manage to salvage most of the contents, but since we cannot refreeze much of it, we have been trying to eat what we can over the last few days.  Those things which we really weren't going to manage were converted into copious amounts of soup.  We won't be buying any more soup this winter!

We now have our house signs up.  This means that we have removed the laminate with the house name printed on it which has been wedged behind the mailbox for the last 4 months! 

Sign on the Garage

Sign in the Porch