Week 26 - Mainland Bound

The eagle eyes amongst you may have noticed the absence of a blog last week. We’ve decided to go to a fortnightly update now as there are only so many pictures of footing walls and sunsets you can tolerate! We also spent 6 days last week on the mainland - our first trip off Coll for over 5 months. Driving away from Oban was weird - a two lane road with cars coming towards us at high speed. Everywhere seemed so busy (it wasn't) but it doesn't take long before it feels like you never left. It was nice to see friends and family and, very importantly, have a take away curry!! The main reasons for coming off were to visit my Mum and go to a pal’s 60th birthday party. The party was really good fun and we were hosted in a fancy country house in Aberdeenshire which was a real treat. Oh how the other half live!

So what of the project back on Coll? Well all is good. We now have a confirmed date for the kit erection - after a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing they will be with us on the 27th September. The erection (!) is expected to take 10 days so that means we should be done by the 6th October. "This is not the end, nor is it the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning!" :-) (Thanks Winston Churchill for those words).

While we were on the mainland we did go to the timber yard where the house is being built and we took a few shots of the construction.

But now, some of that stuff has already been delivered to Coll. The first lorry arrived on Saturday heavily laiden with polythene covered panels, wooden wall plates and steel work. Unfortunately the polythene was a little on the light side and we spent the best part of the afternoon covering holes with gaffer tape and sticking the sheets back on.

Lifting the huge pallets with the floor cassettes off the lorry was interesting … 6m long, nearly 3m wide and 1.5m high. We had to use 2.4m extensions to the forks for the telehandler. It was also quite windy which did not help. When Tom rocked up with the machine he looked nearly as sick as me but all was well in the end. Most of the loads are smaller and thankfully there are only a couple more of these big monsters to deal with - the first floor.

We expect a further 4 lorry loads of stuff to get here for the house kit and then we have everything else to do…. namely, renewables/solar, water capture and storage, cladding, roofing (the steel panels only), electrics, plumbing, internal walls, septic tank etc etc. So although it will soon look like the house is up we still have a lot to do!

In other news, we finally put the gutters up on the shed and cleaned out the second water tank so in the coming days I hope we will be capturing water from the shed roof too.

We also had to add a layer of concrete to form on the footings where the steels are going because they were made 75mm too short. (Not my fault!).

And I have spent a day chopping down bedrock with the monster stihl saw. There are several peaks that had to go to make room for the ground floor. You cut the grooves and then smack it with a sledge hammer. Very satisfying when it works.

This is the demise of N4, the yet unclimbed peak of Fishing Gate....

The list of things to do before the guys come to put up the kit is as follows so we will be busy in the coming fortnight.

We have also put in yet another drain. This one seaward of the house. The ground is currently in great condition and so dry that all the drainage work we have done through the summer has yet to be tested. Fingers crossed the plot doesn't turn back into a bog when the weather turns - especially not before the kit is up! The last drain was slightly different to others as we have put a weep hole into the void below the ground floor of the foundations. The reason for this is to make sure that if water does find it’s way in from underground, there is also a way for it to come out! Hopefully this will never be tested.

The nights are definitely drawing in and we’ve had the gas fire on a few times these last weeks. Let’s hope we haven’t left the kit build too late in the season. Fingers crossed for an Indian summer!

Hope you're all keeping well.

K&J x