Week 20 - The Engineer's Visit

We are obviously on "island time" this week as the blog is now nearly 2 days late! No excuses really - sometimes I think we’ve created a bit of a monster committing to a weekly update but I'm sure that having a record of our adventure will, in years to come, be a good thing. There are a few of you who are avid readers but I suspect most are avid skimmers and we'd probably get away with posting a few photos!

Anyway, this week has been a very good one. Nice weather, good fun and great progress. My sister Gill and brother-in-law Chris came to visit. They are our second “live in” visitors and stayed with us in the static. They came as foot passengers and used their bikes as mules with panniers laden with goodies from their poly tunnel and toils. They brought us so many things - all home grown or home made, including 5 litres of Elderflower cordial, honey (from their neighbours bees), courgettes, mange tout, plumbs, black currents, broccoli, tomatoes and not forgetting the Lupin seeds!

Chris and I cycled the bikes from the ferry and Julia took Gill and the goodies in the car. That was my first cycle in nearly a year and although I’ve been working out on the site, my cycling muscles are shot! I used to have strong legs and a weak torso. Now it is the other way round and Julia tell me that my bum is shrinking! Eeek!

Chris’ visit was always going to be a milestone as he is a retired civil engineer and has been helping us (a lot!) from a distance. The good news is we basically got the thumbs up which was a huge relief. While they were here, we did a few nice walks and enjoyed a few late nights but they also put in a couple of shifts on the site. This was greatly appreciated. Chris cut the rebar to size while I finished the forms and Ju and Gill lugged sand and type1 around, plugging all the holes where concrete could escape and supporting the feeble chip board shutters from the force of the concrete.

I went fishing with yet another promise to provide for Julia's lovely fish pie - not just for Gill and Chris but also for our neighbours Liz and Mike. It was a good trip and 3 large Pollock were landed - more than enough filleted meat for a 6 person pie!! lost a couple of whoppers too …. must get stronger tackle.

We finished the forms by Sunday and on Monday, Tom arrived with Brian’s telehander and concrete pan mixer. Tom works like a whirlwind (as opposed to our normal leisurely pace) and we were soon pouring concrete into the shutters. The telehandler made is very easy and we could take the mixer (on the end of the forks) to the forms and pour directly in. We managed to get this to work on even the remote corners although the telehandler did threaten to tip with the forward weight! I used the digger to load the mixer with sand/aggregate and Tom put the cement in. We all tamped and pushed the mix into position and Julia did a lot of the screeding (flattening and smoothing) as she did for the shed slab. We were making great progress until the pile of sand/aggregate mix dwindled and the only way to get it into the mixer was by hand. I did the lions share of the shovelling which was hard graft. I had stupidly asked Andy to dump the mix on polythene sheeting and right next to another dump of 20 tonnes of gravel. This rendered Digby (the digger) useless once the top of the pile was exhausted. The next problem was that we didn't have enough. I was astonished as I thought we’d have an excess but no, we ran out about 3 meters from the end of the forms. Still, we did 3/4 of the site footings in one day which was more than I thought possible and we can now start building the walls! (You need the corners to do that and we have all of them). The likely reason for the high usage is the 6 “steps" where the footing is double depth. I thought I’d calculated that in but maybe not. Doh!

The rest of the concrete work will not be a big task and, with the telehandler’s help, we will easily nail it in a day. So Tom will now start laying the blocks and I will build forms for the supporting “island" in the middle of the house and the remaining few meters which I left open for digger/telehandler access. Really feels like we’ve achieved a lot in a week for once.

The water I had captured in the big tank did the job and we still have a little left but I will need to find some way of replenishing it for the next concreting day and there is no rain in the forecast any time soon. Probably a few trips to the burn with a barrel and pump.

Still no firm day for the house delivery which is frustrating. The problem seems to be to do with disruption caused by Covid pings at the manufacturing site. Hope to get this resolved this week as I've got to arrange a load of things. We expect it to be latter part of September.

Enough about the building project I hear you say ...

On one of our walks with Gill and Chris we showed them the island grave yard which is just a mile or so along the road from us. There are 4 curious graves ...

I'm pretty sure that there were not 4 people called "A. Sailor". Apparently there were bodies washed up during the war and sometimes their identity could not be established. These poor souls ended up here at least remembered to some extent.

Well, it's not every day you see a car driving into the sea but one of the Coll residents (Kevin) has built an amphibious car. It is appropriately called a Dutton Surf and he sometimes uses it as a tender to reach his boat. I want one...

We also walked over to Port-na-Luing, a remote cottage with an old tiny harbour/inlet. We met the owners, Pete and Diane, who live here for 3 months of the year. The cottage has been in their family it since 1964. (Same age as me!) We had a long blether and they invited us to stay for a drink but we gratefully declined (it being mid-afternoon) and went onwards to Crossapol beach. Crossapol is about a mile long and the handful of people who have houses at the end have to use the beach to drive in/out.

Life is still very good here and we are not bored or fed up at all. We are planning to have our first trip off the island (shock horror!) at the end of August to visit family, go to a pal’s birthday party and fill the trailer up with “stuff” for the next stage of the project. It will feel a bit strange I’m sure...

Take care and keep in touch.

K&J x