The Big Hoist

Last Friday, our yard was filled with a million euro of mobile crane. As it had been used for another job nearby, Sace got him to pop over and lift the heat pump over the house and barn to place it in its new home.

Yesterday evening, we completed the pipework and back-filling behind the house, so it's no longer so Somme-like.Nevertheless, there'll be a lot of work to do to get that garden in shape! The heat pump isn't the most attractive, but maybe we can hide it a bit.

Next week, some of the internal work begins, at least with getting power sorted for the cellar and heat pump. In the meantime, I'll be continuing with repointing and plastering to get the technics room (AKA Cellar 4) complete.

Life in the trenches

The past three weeks have been mostly occupied with two tasks. One, getting the basics ready for the air-source heat pump installation, and related to that, getting some of the final dirty work in cellar 4 completed, so the heating equipment can be given a home.

For the cellar work, it's been an almost nightly task to do a few hours repointing or plastering to get the back area completed before the hot water tank and buffer reservoir (puffer speicher, so not sure what the English  technical term is!) are put into place. It's not hard work, but extremely slow. I'm using a mix of trass cement and sand, as trass doesn't have the lime elements of normal cement that can lead to leaching of salts in a damp cellar wall, plus it's a bit more breathable than plain Portland cement. In those areas where the old plaster has been too difficult to completely remove I've simply plastered over with lime-cement plaster.

After blasting, before repointing.

After repointing.

The end where the equipment will live.

"Rustic" plastering. Will be nicer once painted :)

After three weeks of this, I have about 65% of cellar 4 done. Like I said, slow... But I think it does look a lot better than before, and once completely dried out will be nice and bright. Actually, when I look back on how the cellar looked when we first bought the house, it's quite the transformation!

Last weekend we experienced life in the trenches. Our friend, master electrician Sace, and his son, popped over on the Friday with a mini digger and we began preparing the plinth for the heat pump to stand on, as well as the trenches for laying the necessary pipes into the cellar. Working well into the dark, we got as far as building the shuttering for the plinth, with the intention of pouring concrete the next day. Unfortunately, it rained the whole night, and pretty much all Saturday, but that didn't stop us. By Monday night, we'd gotten as far as getting the pipes in, but ran out of sand, as we'd then found one of the pipes leading to the rainwater cistern had been laid with a slope in the wrong direction. That added a couple of hours work, as we excavated it and reset it so water would actually flow towards the cistern from the barn roof...

Now that's a drill! Needed one more hole for the pipes.

Saturday... wet. Photo's don't do the mud justice.

Backfilling in the dark

Rough-fitting through cellar wall. Still needs to be sealed.

Slippery when wet.

So, the next job will be getting the heat pump from the front of the house to its permanent home behind the barn, and filling in the remaining trenches. I'm away for most of the week, so I'm hoping it will be left till my return.

The heatpump and water cylinders

The Last Blast

Almost two years ago, I had my first experience using a sand-blaster. We used it a lot for cleaning off oak beams in the upper levels of the house, to great effect, and a cursory clean of the walls in the cellar. Since then, the blaster went on its merry way, but we needed to call on its services again this weekend, to do a proper job on the cellar walls. Initially, we'd thought to simply clean the walls enough so that new plaster would hold, but then decided it would be better for the walls if they were left as natural as possible so any dampness coming from the foundation would find it easier to escape. My wife had spent a couple of weeks knocking the remaining plaster off the walls, but they needed a deep clean before we could repoint.

My old friend.

It's dirty, sweaty work, but enjoyable in its own way, as you see results quick. Well, once the dust has settled, which takes some time when blasting clay and plaster off walls in an enclosed space. But, it needed to be done before the heating equipment gets installed in cellar 4, and that, we hope, will be done in time for winter.

First, a look back to the type of thing we got back in late 2010.

Cellar 1

Cellar 4

Then how they looked a week ago.

"Cellar 2" is in two parts, the entry hall, and behind that as mall vaulted cellar. The left wall of the entry hall, as seen below, has been plastered over, with a damp-proof membrane under the plaster. This was disastrous for the wood beam resting on the wall, hence a good idea to leave it free. After removing the plaster and some of the old mortar (more like clay), it looked better, but pretty manky dirty. We thought it had potential, though.

Cellar 2/Entry hall

Cellar 2/Entry. The sandstone had already been blasted earlier.

In cellar 4, the easternmost former stall, we'd already began with the waterworks installation, so everything had to be wrapped up and protected prior to blasting.  There's quite a difference, even at the stage shown below, compared to what it was like when we first got it as seen above!

Cellar 4

Cellar 4

And the post-blasting shots. I think Cellar 1 is unrecognisable compared to what it was like in 2010. But it's still the messiest of all the cellars, and the floor will eventually have to be replaced, but that's on the very long finger.

Cellar 1 now.

The entry hall is important, and it's a pity the stones aren't nicer, but I think it should come out well in the end.

Cellar 2/Entry hall

Cellar 2/Entry hall

Cellar 4 is going to be fun to repoint...

Cellar 4

Cellar 4

 Difficult as it is to see through the dust, it wasn't helped by the visor on my mask getting frosted. Glad I have a backup, but I won't be blasting again!

All that was left to do was the cleanup. The used sand went to the neighbour's chickens...

Post-holiday update

It might seem like little was done during August, but before we disappeared to Ireland for a short holiday, it was all action with small bits and pieces. I'd continued to install the floor underconstruction, with pretty much all the first floor done now, apart from half of the living room, as a beam needs to be replaced before I can continue there. The floor beams at the  back half of the living room slope up towards the back of the house, so to make it even, we'll have a small, c. 5cm step midway in the room.

The first floor bathroom finally got what looks like a proper wall, after erecting some OSB sheeting on the stud partition.

 And as we couldn't wait for the sheep, I cut the grass out back for the first time in... well, a long time! Want to keep it short before the pears and nuts start dropping. The cherry plums have already been harvested. Over 70kg again this year!

Over the past week, since returning from holiday, I had to prep the remaining uninsulated walls, the half-timber ones that I first plastered so long ago. Being the first time I'd ever plastered, they needed some evening out! Not that it had been easy to plaster very uneven half-timbered walls, but I've learnt a lot since then.

They needed to be pretty even to allow me to stick on the new insulation panels that arrived just before we went away. Holzfaserdämmplatten, or wood fibre insulation boards, are highly breathable as well as environmentally friendly. The idea here is to use as breathable material as possible on the timber framed wall, to ensure moisture doesn't condense behind an impermeable membrane, so it can wick in and out. They're not cheap, when compared with styrofoam, and they're not as easy to work with. Styrofoam is like play, cutting with hot wires, spraying on some foam and sticking them together. With the fibre boards, it's a plaster-like goo that gets mixed, applied with a serrated float, and then pushed onto the wall. A bit messier, more preparation, and hell on my tennis elbow.

Nevertheless, after a half day last Saturday, I had the guts of the bedroom and the hall done.

And in other news, my wife invested many hours rescuing the flower bed in front of the house. Six months ago, it was full of grass, weeds, concrete, plaster and broken roof tiles. Looking like a proper country garden now :)

Side projects

SOmetimes it's good to do something else, if only to get a sense of having completed something for a change. We were given this old bench over a year ago, and I reckoned it had been sitting in the yard looking decrepit for long enough. A trip to the DIY store to get paint, and then work began on Saturday evening.

First job, use an angle grinder with a sanding disk to get the layers of paint off the metalwork.

Rather than spending hours sanding old paint off the wood, I used an electric plane to shave it off, then a belt sander to give a smooth finish. A pretty quick job. The wood was generally ok, apart from one piece that was partially rotted, so I'll make a replacement for that another time.

Sunday meant painting and sanding, finishing this evening with a third and final coat for the wood, et voila, something to sit on when not in the mood for building anything.

It's final home is now outside the barn beside The Bauernhaus, so it'll get well used. Job done!

July...

This month has been a bloody scorcher, with yesterday getting to 37C in the shade. It's really uncomfortable outside, but blessedly cool, well, relatively-speaking, in the Bauernhaus. Nevertheless, much sweating ensued over the past week, as I  finally got back into getting stuff done, after near four weeks absence.

After getting a delivery of lots of Douglas-fir, I finally started on the under-construction for the bedroom floor and box room. Once the cabling is done here, and a sagging beam is jacked up, we'll lay OSB sheets as an under-floor, and work on the plastering can begin.

NE box room

The unfinished wall between box room and bedroom.

It's a bit dangerous working in the bedroom, as the battens between the oak beams are a bit rotted in placed, so it's easy to fall through if you step on the wrong place. At least it only happened to me once!

The first-floor bedroom

Bedroom

As well as that., over this weekend we began getting the, well, I'm not sure what they're called in English, but "Dosen" for the sockets and switches into the walls, as well as leading the cables into them. Makes the whole wiring a lot neater-looking already!

The kitchen, today.

Some network cables are also in, for the living room, running under the kitchen floor, which will all be sealed away, so I hope they work!

Kitchen

And we finally got rid of the piles of wood in the yard, thanks to our friend's big trailer, and a tetris-like method of stacking.

 In the meantime, the garden has been completely neglected, although I did have to trim an 80m long hedge as it was beginning to overgrow the access road behind the house. I know I am going to hate this hedge... We plan on getting a loan of some sheep next week to take the grass down under the fruit trees, while the bigger, open part of the field, behind the barn, is already well handled by three horses that pop in now and again.

But more importantly, our local inn, Gasthaus zur Linde, has reopened after a two-year closure and complete renovation. It now has guest rooms, which I reckon had not been used in over half a century, as well as a large, comfortable Biergarten, a new function room in the former barn, and good steaks. Can't say I'm a huge fan of the beer choices, but on hot days like these, a cold Bitburger helps clear the dust.