Week 5 - A Big Mix

It is Sunday afternoon and we have been out to lunch at the Coll hotel. I'm not exactly sure where we are with lock down rules these days but here on the island we are able to have an alcohol free socially distanced daytime meal... probably only if it is a substantial one though... who knows! It was a real treat (roast beef + all the trimmings) but I have to say that Julia has been feeding us very well in the caravan too.

I decided to precede this treat with a 3 pounder in the village hall. No, that isn't a steak or anything else, it's the cost of my shower. £2 normally suffices but I had so much cement in my hair from yesterday's mixing, I really needed the full 9 minutes today. We go to the hall for our showers and to wash clothes. I'm pretty sure we are the only people using the facilities at the moment. The showers and the washing machine/dryers operate on £1 coins and we have a stash of 100's of them. While we are washing everything, Lenny the Nissan Leaf is being charged by the brand new 50kw charging station outside. It's a perfect setup to support our caravan life.

We haven't done very well this week. On reflection however, there are some legitimate excuses and it hasn't been for lack of effort or hours on our part. We are still entirely focused on the shed/garage slab and will continue to be probably until the end of the month. No progress on the house foundations as yet... eeeek!

So Monday and Tuesday were spent finishing the slab "form" which is made of wood and has to be super strong to take the pressure of about 18 tonnes of concrete without bowing or breaking. We carefully measured and checked the heights of the form (using Hughey, our untrusty laser level) all the way round, and we checked the dimensions (using a poor ordinary unnamed and neglected tape measure). We had to make sure the corners were exact right angles - if you are 1 degree out you'll probably be 2cm out on the diagonal! We used the 5, 4, 3 rule for that... 3 units along one side, 4 units along the other and the connecting line will be 5 units as long as it is a 90 degree angle ... thank's Pythagorus. Never thought any of that maths stuff at school would be actually useful!

It's actually a lot (very lot!) harder than you might think to get a 10m x 6m form accurately built in 3D. We banged stakes into the ground about 1 meter deep. Where there was bedrock, we drilled into it and put steel posts in to support the back of the form. In the end after a lot of measuring and adjusting (and swearing on my part) we got it within 2mm tolerance in every dimension. Good enough I hope ... Let's see if it takes the strain...

After the whacker debacle last week, when I was only able to create a mine shaft with the 90kg machine, we decided to put down a liberal layer of type 1 (gravelly stuff) which we then compacted. It worked very well and since doing this we've even driven tractors and diggers over it with virtually no imprint. Type 1 is significantly better than local gravel and I'm very glad we imported a 20 tonne truck load even at £47 a tonne. (About £17/tonne on the mainland - that's an example of build costs on an island). I spread it with the digger and Julia raked and we both measured the depth with Hughey. Incidentally, Hughey has come back to life after his drowning incident and we now have a free replacement from Huepar shipped directly to us which is fantastic - we are very happy customers now! He's called Hughey Tuey and is still in his box.

Julia and the Whacker

The weather has been very cold all week but mostly sunny and great for outdoor working. I've even been slightly sun burnt. We were still getting snow flurries at the beginning of the week though which in April on Coll is very unusual.

After "whacking the type 1" (who the hell comes up with this stuff?), we laid a thin layer of sand and then the DPC (a thick polythene sheet to stop water coming up under the slab) and then the rebar (iron mesh with 8mm thick bars) which sits on things called "dobbies" to hold it 50mm above the DPC. The idea being that after pouring the concrete the rebar ends up in the middle of it. The dobbies are simply lost souls - they do their job and are then buried - forever forgotten. Poor Dobbies.

Rebar!

We then divided the slab area up with wood shutters - 3 days of work to concrete 3 sections of the slab. On the mainland, we would have a concrete mixer come and fill the whole area in one pour but on an island you can't do that. The concrete mixer would solidify on the ferry journey so it's down to manual mixing and pouring - hence 3 days work. The separating plank (or shutter) is buried in a wall of concrete to hold it in place... too much information I hear you say... ok then ... moving on ... it's basically a lot of work to make a slab of concrete even before you start mixing the stuff!

The First 3m of the Slab Form Ready For Concrete

By Wednesday we were ready to mix and pour concrete. I had agreed to rent a tractor with a pan cement mixer attached to the rear from Alex (a pal & farmer on the island). I was warned by him and by others that the tractor was a bit temperamental and the mixer had seen better days but it would do the job. The first challenge was to pick up the tractor on the South West of the island and drive it to the South East of the island where the mixer was located. This sounds close but it isn't as the road does not join at the South so the journey is NE then SE then W etc etc ... maybe 15 miles for a journey which is maybe 3 or 4 miles as the crow flies.

I haven't driven a tractor more than a few times in my life and the last time prior to these last few weeks was on a school friend's farm when I was 16. That also carries a black memory. I was taking a dead cow on a pallet from a field to the barn. I slammed the brakes on too hard at the gate and dumped said carcass onto the main road in front of shocked motorists. The reloading of the dead cow and the blocking of the road was an ordeal I'd rather forget.

It was slightly embarrassing to have to ask Alex to show me the tractor controls but he was very kind and took time out of his busy lambing schedule to show me the basics. It seems that everyone else on the island uses Alex's tractor more than he does and consequently he had forgotten what a few of the levers did. I think modern farming is largely done via quad bikes.

The first problem was that the tractor did not have much fuel and the fuel gauge did not work. Alex did not have any in his tank so it was my problem to solve. I set off with a fear and loathing of what might follow and praying that there would be enough to get me to a refuelling stop. Rob's farm was en route and with no phone signal I decided to head over there. Thankfully I found Rob and most importantly, he was able to lend me said fuel. Phew!

For those of you who have never driven a tractor, maybe I should explain - it is not at all like a car. Tractors don't have suspension so when you hit a bump the whole machine veers and lurches. The only suspension is your seat which bounds up and down furiously, whacking your head into the roof and pulling the muscles in your flanks. The top speed I could manage on the long journey to the mixer on the bumpy Coll road was about 14 mph. Even then, my back was aching when I got there ... about 2 hours later. The mixer was on a pallet at Brian's farm and the job of linking it to the tractor should have been quite easy ... if it were not for the tractor's gear disengagement problem... and because the rear hydraulic arms had a mind of their own, and would lower and raise the mixer randomly, it turned into an ordeal ... I see you glazing over ... to cut a long story short it took me over 2 hours to connect the machine and nurse it back to the road. And that would have been a lot worse if Brian had not taken time out of his busy lambing schedule to help me. I dont think he's reading this but thanks again Brian! Another hour and a half and I was home. It was 6:15pm so a day was lost just picking up the machine.

The Culprit

On the way back in the tractor, I was surprised to pass Julia driving the car in the opposite direction. Tim, an islander who is the local expert on edible seaweed, landed on the beach with a group of kayakers and Ju gave him a lift to the village to get his car. Jane (Tim's partner) and their friends stoped for a cup of tea with a very frazzled me. It was a lovely evening and we sat outside waiting for Tim to return and enjoyed a cuppa. I was so relieved to be back in one piece with the tractor. Tim came back and gave us some seaweed to try - the name evades me but it was like spaghetti and apparently goes bright green when you boil it. We'll no doubt have more for you on that when our first seaweed spaghetti meal has been consumed! I'll leave that one for Julia's update...

The Pan Mixer

Too Many Machines

The next day it would be simple. We'd chuck loads of ballast in the pan mixer with some water and cement and pour concrete directly into the newly completed form... fill it up and tamp it down in no time ... piece of cake! Not so... the first problem was that the mixer would not stay level. It rose steadily up even once it was set. Alex had visited and concluded that the normal controls were not working and he showed me a "work around" to set it level using the hydraulics but it only stayed level for a short time before rising again so I had to go into the cab every few minutes to reset it. I was using the digger bucket to put loads of ballast into the mixer and frequently had to jump directly from the digger cab to the tractor cab to lower the mixer before jumping back to the digger to dump a bucket load of stuff in it! At some point during the day, I don't know when, the tractor hydraulics decided to explode, spraying fluid all over the place. Everything still worked but what a mess... No idea what happened but I'm sure we'll find out soon. The mixer also has has seen better days and the outer mixing arm is bent and does not reach the side. That means that the outer load in the pan, once pushed into the sides of the mixer (about 1/3 of the mix), simply festers there and starts to harden. Two shitty outcomes... 1) the first mix doesn't have half the aggregate in it, and 2) the clean out of the mixer once your finished takes an age as you've got to chip away at the hardening wall at the back of the pan. ... Again I imagine you glazing over ... time for an executive summary ... We managed to pour 1/3 of the area before it got dark and I took the tractor/mixer back to Alex's farm resigned to never use it again.

The following day we reverted to John's small hand mixer and carried on with the process but with the section now part solidified we could not get a good smooth surface where the new met the old ... at least I've now decided where we will put the water tank in the shed!! Hopefully the rest of the slab will be a smoother finish. Very frustrating - also it is going to take us 10 days instead of the 3 we had planned. Hey Ho!! At least the day was a calm and more enjoyable and we were working well together. Me shovelling, mixing and pouring and Julia tamping and forming the slab. The only stressy bit was screeding at the end which is trying to achieve a decent finish for the garage floor. The endless Youtube videos did not prepare us well.

While I was on my island tractor tour, Julia decided to do some more strimming. She overcame her fear of pull start engines and got the strimmer going on her own. Sadly the strimming exasperated her carpal tunnel issue but at least now we know that the strimming is a primary cause. Strimming will be a "blue job" from now on. For those of you who don't know us well, we are a very traditional couple. Normally, Julia does the "pink" jobs and I the "blue" ... She cooks and vittles our supplies and I empty the bins, pick up the dog poo, mend stuff etc. etc. But here it is different because there are a lot more purple jobs. We'll just have to get her on more digger duty and I'll have to relinquish my seat in the "high castle" as she calls it.

On the subject of injuries, at present 6 of my 10 digits have plasters on them. the causes are varied but moving rebar and greasing the nipples of the digger are topping the list (do I hear laughter?!). You pull the grease gun really hard to get it off the nipple and invariably there is a sharp piece of digger waiting to bite you on the recoil. The rebar, where I have cut it with the angle grinder, is really sharp.

A Wee Bit of Slab

I've rambled on about the details of the week, driven mainly by my frustrations but it is not all bad. We are in good spirits and keen to get on - much happier to do so in a relaxed way, biting off smaller daily chunks. If things go well, there will be a picture of a nearly competed garage slab in the next blog. Fingers (or what's left of them) crossed!

Fraught but not beaten (yet)