Week 11 - The Evil Rod

This week was the week of the evil rod. It's a bit like your conscience - you can ignore it for a while but sooner or later you have to face up to it. The evil rod has no empathy - it always tells the truth even if it's something that breaks your heart. Sometimes it plays with you - the dastardly bubble grinds up towards the outer line, stopping briefly in the middle, before it carries on to deliver the bad news. The evil rod is known to most as the humble spirit level - an interesting name I must say. I suspect the reference to Spirit goes beyond the inert fluid housing the dastardly bubble though - one to Google maybe! Suffice to say, this week our shed project has been significantly slowed down as a result of news from the bubble...

I’ve never built anything I cannot manipulate with my own strength until now. The steel framed boat shed certainly is beyond (any) human strength. When the columns are not exactly plumb, whether upwards or sideways, the only remedy is to use ratchet straps (the type you will have seen holding goods onto the backs of lorries) to wrench the structure to the desired position. And, when you do that, your efforts normally affect the other 2 dimensions in a way you had not wanted. It is a sort of Groundhog Day process of endless loosening of bolts, wrenching and the retightening. The final straw is that very often, once all is well with the bubble, the final tightening of the bolts pulls the whole thing out again. I’m sure you get the gist so I’ll stop there! Grrrrr....

We have not bought a kit shed - there are no predrilled holes, no accurate plans and the instructions can only be described (at best) as loose guidance. We frequently need to cut the steels to fit (thank goodness for my angle grinder)! We were sold a kit but it is actually a load of raw materials from which we have to build a shed and that is quite hard. On the positive, we have made progress. That is thanks (an enormous thanks!) to my bro-in-law Chris who I've pestered on a daily basis with our conundrums. Chris has helped me work through the various issues from a distance and has done a huge amount to mitigate the void of information at our disposal.

The structure is almost plumb now and hopefully once the walls are on, it will be good enough to hide the "bubble noise" ... we shall see! As with everything we have done so far, we are sure we would do a much better job the next time … unfortunately we only intend to build one boat shed and one house… oh well!

So what other news to report? Well the weather started off horrible and prevented us from doing pretty much anything for 2 days. It was too wet to use the digger and too windy to work on the shed. Since the middle of the week however we have been blessed with mostly sunshine and the wind, although strong at times, has not stopped us in our tracks.

They say that Coll and Tiree are up there with Eastbourne as the sunniest locations in the UK and May has certainly confirmed that. Don't get me wrong - its not been warm, the wind can be harsh and when it rains it can come down (or sideways) in sheets but... the amount of sunshine is astonishing.

We now have a full water tank (1500L) from the rainfall earlier this week which will be very useful if we ever get round to making the concrete for the house footings. The house is now scheduled to be installed in the first week in August so we need to get going! We will reach a point when the shed has to go "on ice" if not finished ... I'm thinking June the 16th which is also Julia's birthday.

We did do some work on the house foundations this week. Ben cleared the bedrock under the external walls so we could see what is what. We now have to decide whether to attack the high points of bedrock or integrate them into the footings. If we integrate them, the house will sit higher. The pros of this - great views, the cons, more blocks to build and more landscaping to raise the ground level up to meet the house. We have planning permission for the high option but if we lower the rear gable, the house will be more protected from the weather, require less landscaping and be less conspicuous.

We did have a few social gatherings this week including a visit to the pub and dinner with pals. It is really fun to get back to some normality although there is nothing normal about our new lives! We are enjoying ourselves and caravan life does not seem to be grinding us down. Julia is still swimming with the seals and taking care of all matters relating to our sustenance for which I am very grateful! She is also putting in a big shift on the site. We are working hard but we are surprisingly happy in spite of the challenges.

The next step for the house is to build wooden forms for the concrete footings (been there done that ... yay!) and to set up the various concrete layers (known as footing steps) at exactly one block (brick) height from the next so the wall will join up level. I'm actually looking forward to that job as I know we can do it!

That is a view from the shed scaffolding looking over the house plot.

We did have what I hope will be our final bulk material delivery this week. Yet another pile of stuff which has been taken out of the ground somewhere only for us to put it back in! This time it is "Type1" which we will use to compact the ground under the house footings and also to make/repair the tracks we will need to get a telehandler around the house.

There is still so much to organise. We don't just need to build the foundations before the house kit arrives. We also need to ensure the site is safe and has decent facilities for the builders. We also need to organise accommodation for them and we need to ensure they are fed and watered. The house site must be scaffolded (with a safety approval apparently) and the area around the house must be accessible for the telehandler. That means pretty much building a temporary track (hence the Type 1)! We are also still finalising the details of the foundation floor as the company who was going to supply us with the concrete beam floor hiked their prices by a crazy figure. We are now looking at a "spacejoist" solution. This will be lighter and easier to install (we can DIY it!) and a lot cheaper.

Ben continues to spend 2 days a week with us and judging by this picture he's a lot happier helping us with the shed than digging drains and foundation footings! He was given a fishing rod and reel in lieu of some work he did for another islander so I helped him set it up. We are hoping to go fishing sometime soon. I did go fishing this week with Mike (our nearest neighbour) but we both managed to loose one fish a piece and a lot of tackle. We were casting into a big wind with big seas breaking on the rocks and spraying us. No photos I'm afraid... too wet!

Ben has his own drill and impact driver which proved very helpful last week. I have a fair few as well (see below) and we made good use of them all. There are literally thousands of screws needed in the shed - every join requires a minimum of 4 "tek" screws and they don't like going into thick steel. In theory you don't have to pre-drill the holes but in practice you do and this week, we broke every drill bit we had ... come on Amazon Prime ... we need replenishments urgently!

We were also joined this week with some campers on the neighbouring plot. A few families (some 30 or so folk!) from somewhere near Glasgow. One of them is the nephew of the owner of the plot and comes at least once a year to camp. They are very friendly and definitely lucked out with the weather!

This week Coll took delivery of 12 electric bikes for the community which is great news! As an islander, you can borrow them and I believe they will ultimately be hired out to tourists unless fully deployed within the community. There are road and mountain bikes available. We are hoping to take them on the ferry to cycle round Tiree one day (assuming that is allowed)!

It is getting a bit late (although not yet completely dark) so I'm going to sign off. This was the view from the caravan about an hour ago. Every day a different sun setting vista...