Week Ten

Week beginning 8th August.

We are excited at the prospect of pouring the concrete and are ready for the lorries to arrive around 10.30am. We have ordered two loads of 7 cubes (cubic meters) of concrete from a local quarry and are hoping that will be enough but if it is it will be a close thing.

Two of Lorne’s colleagues arrive to help out, Mathew and Ally, but no sign of Lorne yet.

It’s getting close to 10.30 and still no sign of Lorne and no-one else really knows how to manage the pouring of the concrete so we are a bit concerned. On the other hand we are sure Lorne wouldn’t let us down.

Sure enough he turns up with ten minutes to spare.

It’s now almost 11.30 and still no lorry. Lorne told us that on a job he worked on one of the men would say as the concrete lorry arrived: “Here comes the panic!”

And sure enough five minutes later the panic arrives. It’s all hands on deck as the lorry empties concrete into the digger’s bucket.

The first lorry load doesn’t quite fill half the Isoquick so there is a chance we will need more so I call the company to ask if there is any chance of getting a balance, the term used for a part load to make up the shortfall. We agree that I should call back when I know how much we’ll need.

After the second load is added we need to get another two cubes of concrete. This proves expensive because we have to pay a penalty for each cube the lorry could take but we don’t want. This makes these last 2 cubes at over £300 each. Ouch!

We don’t need all the extra concrete for the slab so we use the leftovers to make the pads for the balcony posts so as not to waste any.

It has been a tough day and Pete has worked hard but Lorne and Mathew have been the stars of the show, they both have the endless capacity for hard work and we couldn’t have done it without them.

Lorne isn’t coming today because he’s on another job on Mull. Our task is to go to Oban and see if we can buy a generator. We don’t have electricity on site, although both of our close neighbours kindly let us connect to theirs so we can charge our phones and laptops. We feel we need to generate our own.

The power company have told us we can’t get a connection until October and even then our electricity provider (two different companies) might not be able to get us a meter, which would give us the ability to use the connection, for another six months after that.

This is a hopeless situation! Apparently the result of Scottish Government legislation designed to protect us from exploitation and to prevent a monopoly. Unintended consequences that should have been thought through!

We go to Highland Fasteners, a local tool store, where a very friendly man helps us choose what we need and we’ll get it next week. We are doing some shopping to top up supplies before we head home.

Back at base Molly takes a nap, still a bit weak after Covid and a lot of hard work, and Pete does some work on what is to be our garden.

Early to bed as we are both tired and tomorrow is bound to be another tough day.

We are up bright and early and Molly gets in touch with BT about a refund that we have been promised twice already but still hasn’t come through. This type of work is so tedious but has to be done, in the communication age it is so hard to communicate with big corporations!

Pete is going around the site collecting more stones for wall building, the digger is constantly revealing another good stone.

We are adding some risers to the manholes that we have installed to ensure we can keep our drains running, just as Lorne arrives with a trailer full of pea gravel for preparing the ground for the shed’s Isoquick.

Lorne is finishing levelling and adding type 1 stone for the shed and we are trimming the radon barrier in preperation for rendering the sides of the Isoquick.

We have never rendered anything in our lives but Andrew has given us the recipe for the render, four sand to one cement, which we make in the cement mixer. It’s a frustrating experience as our render is a bit wet, then a bit dry, and it sometimes doesn’t stick and we are sick of it but we finish the first coat on one elevation. We add the mesh that stops the final coat from cracking then decide we don’t want to do more today.

Lorne has finished with the type 1 stone and has compacted it ready for the pea gravel screed. Having done the house screed together Pete and Lorne are working well as a team and get the screed done in time to start laying out the Isoquick.

It’s almost time to eat and we have managed to get the isoquick laid out with the first layer completed. Tomorrow we’ll finish the job.

Lorne is heading home and we are both bushed. Another hard days work, just as we think we are getting used to it, it gets tougher.