Week 30 - We want a roof!

Where to start?! Probably the weather… We would have hoped that by now, the dream team would have been long gone and we would be the proud owners of a wind and water tight house… But… the weather has not played ball. I guess it is what we should have expected with a hebridean house build in October but it still feels like we've been a tad unlucky.

The install team did leave - early in fact, as the wind was deemed too strong to safely lift the roof panels and there was little point in them staying on the island if they could not work. We were fully supportive of this as we definitely don't want anyone taking safety risks but it did leave us with a roofless house. The team planned to return this week but the weather once again is not good enough. This is particularly galling as the last few days would have been perfect to lift the roof panels but ... no dream team here to do it...

So here we are, almost 2 weeks on and still no roof...

The wood inside the house is receiving daily lashings of rain and the chipboard is beginning to swell at the joins and the OSBs are beginning to take on water. We did have the foresight to put DPM (heavy duty plastic sheeting) on the eves to stop water going into the top of the wall panels which we hope will help but we can't keep the house dry. All the panels are filled with earth wool insulation which, if water logged, could bunch up creating voids even after they have dried out. We sincerely hope that the DPM prevents this. We will certainly need to open some panels to check once the roof is on.

We are in constant discussion with the installers and waiting for a decent weather window. Unfortunately the wind forecast is rubbish all this week and even into the beginning of next week so the situation just seems to be getting worse daily. Arg!

In the mean time, we have been keeping busy - covering as much of the remaining panels and windows as we can to protect them from the horizontal rain. This is part of the porch which cannot be installed until the roof is on.

The roof panels are still at the bottom of the drive but they are thankfully covered with roof felt so should be reasonably well protected.

The installers requested a run of scaffolding be erected on the long wall before they come back to assist with the roof panel lifts so Patrick came round and set up the scaffolding. I helped - mainly by carrying and lifting the various bits but it was interesting to watch the process and I’m sure if needed, I can now set up a simple scaffold.

It is just as well that we managed to get the ridge beam on before the team left as this gives the structure a lot more strength to withstand the big winds without the roof panels in place.

The team packed up and left on the Wednesday ferry (6th) in a hurry as the Thursday ferry looked like it may not sail due to the winds. They spent 9 days with us, hampered by wind, ground conditions and kit panel challenges and they estimate that another 5 days on site should see us to completion. This, by the way, is far from completion of the build - it's just the structure protected from the worst of the elements. We have a very long way to go before we can move in!!!

It is incredible to see the house from the road and the beach - seemingly emerging from nowhere. We feel slightly embarrassed by the great big blue blot on the landscape and look forward to when it is clad with dark colours and it hopefully recedes somewhat into the background.

Julia did a fantastic job feeding the install team each day in the caravan - breakfast, lunch and dinner for 9 days on the trot. There were no complaints and although it was a bit intense for them to spend so much time with us, we very much enjoyed their company.

Amongst all this, we somehow managed to have a long weekend off on the mainland. It was for the wedding of Harvey and Sara - Harvey is the son of our good pals John and Lucy. We had a fantastic weekend in Kinlochmoidart - staying in Roshven House - a beautifully restored country house with wonderful gardens and a stunning views over Glenuig bay. The wedding was in Kinlochmoidart house, another beautiful country pile so we spent the weekend wafting from one glorious house to the other. We were very well looked after and it was a bit of a shock returning to caravan life after such a lavish weekend!

Julia also made a trip to Tiree last week to take Tsala to the vet. She went with our neighbour (Liz) for the day and managed to spend time with Sarah who has just bought a house on the island. Tsala is fine but she needed some jabs and Tiree is the closest vet to us! Julia took this rather artistic shot on a Tiree surf beach...

She also returned with some goodies - filet steak, scallops and langoustines. Nothing like great fresh seafood to cheer you up...

The other thing we've been working on is the installation of the sewage treatment system. This consists of 2 very big tanks - one primary tank of 3000 litres and a treatment unit of 1500 litres. We have to bury them at exactly the right level so the drain pipe from the house runs at 1:50 into them. Too steep or too shallow causes blockages - I get the "too shallow" issue but the "too steep" one is a bit of a mystery! We are going to build a concrete slab for the tanks to sit on and will bolt them to it. That is probably overkill but we have heard of situations where tanks "pop" or "float" out of the ground when the water table is very high and the tanks are not full - we certainly don't want to have to deal with that... ever!! This is a shot of the tanks (short sides only)...

And this is a picture of the form we have built (and levelled) to make the concrete base. We will build up the ground around the tanks, back filling the surround with pea gravel...

We've also been working on the ground to improve and increase the area around the house for the telehandler to manoeuvre - hopefully without sinking! To do this we've basically made a wide track all the way round 3 of the 4 sides of the house. We've removed the big pile of stones as well so at least when the dream team return, it will be a lot easier to line up for the big lifts...

Socially we are pretty much back to normal now so it isn't news any more when we go to the pub or meet friends for dinner. We did however go to the cafe on friday for "pizza night" and then on to the pub. Pizzas lovely as ever and the pub was full of noisy happy islanders and it was a really a good crack. I'm hoping we will have that to look forward to most Fridays now.

We are spending a lot of time working on the planning and procurement for the next steps of the build too. The main things we need to do as soon as the house structure is up is to put the metal roofing sheets on and the roof light windows in. We have the roof light windows here and the roofing is en route (currently in Oban). We also have the dormer roof and the lean-to roof to cover. We will use a rubber roof system for these. So once that is done, and we’ve got battens on the wall (to hold the blue membrane in place) we should be able to relax a bit. Can’t wait to get to that point - It is getting colder in the caravan now and we are burning through more gas to stay warm. It was like this in April but then we had the summer to look forward to - every day getting warmer and longer. Now we feel like we are in a race to get the house secured for winter and hopefully to have a bit of a holiday ourselves.

I hope you are all well.

K&J x