Going off the boil

Its been another quiet few months at Dung Heap Central. The broken fence posts have been spliced and concreted in place. The garden has awakened from its short winter slumber. Oooo how poetic. Things are just puttering along with no real work on the house to speak of an not much worth blogging about.

Murphy has a law  "What ever can go wrong, will". Well Murphy has been spending a lot of time at the Dung Heap over the past couple of weeks. The biggest issue has been our boiler. Unlike Most Canadian homes where the furnace and hot water tank are separate items, we have what is known as a combi-boiler. Simply put its a smallish gizmo that heats water for both a closed circuit for the radiators and for the hot water supply to the taps. Most of the bits in these are pretty much off limits to DIY and non-certified people so after it started making noises and the hot water supply started acting up we called in a professional.

Turns out the heat exchanger had cracked internally and the hot water was mixing with the closed heating circuit. The result was the pressure gauge going skyward and the hot water pressure went to a trickle. This lump is the main heat exchanger.

You can see by all the green oxidisation just how bad this thing has been leaking and for quite a while.

Well the nice man quoted £641 for the repair. Ouch!!! Checking on line the part is less than £200 so they were looking at over £440 just in labour. A brand new boiler would have been only £750 but again the labour quotes ranged from just over £1700 for a simple boiler & installation to a whopping £3300 for the full Monty with radiator power flush, etc, etc,etc.

Looking about on some DIY sites to see if it could be a self fix job, it seems that since the heat exchanger doesn't need the gas touched it doesn't require a gas certified person to swap it out. Other sites recommended getting any DIY work checked out and certified afterwards which is what we are doing.

So after many hours of profanity, mucky water, and banging of stuck pipes the new heat exchanger was installed. A pressure test according to the service manual was performed and all looked good. Reassembled everything and fired it up. Heat works, hot water, no loud banging or grinding noises, and no leaks or drips. Success I'd say. Just need to book in the expert for certification.

It was until Sunday night. A loud pop from the boiler and a resulting torrent of water ensued. Everything off, drained down the whole thing and a lot of mopping up.

Opening up the case, it seems that one of the holding clips for the heat exchanger wasn't where I left it. In fact it had come off completely Looking closely at the connection, it had slipped out of place because the O ring failed. Moving the pipe slightly the ring just fell out, split. It may have been a duff ring, or it may have been snagged when installing. Either way the pipe end has been filed smooth and a spare ring fitted.

Hopeflully Murphy has p*ssed off to bother someone else for a while. The new O ring seems to be holding ok during the pressure test. A couple more hours, then eas back the pressure, reassemble, and call the expert in.

Blues and Blows

Another year over with, and very little to show for it on the Dung Heap I'm afraid. Still 2012 should provide a bit more activity.

Blues.....
A few months ago I picked up a couple of sets of deck lighting LEDs on a 2 for 1 sale. Or as the media like to call it BOGOF! (Buy One Get One Free) I've been meaning to get these things installed since September. However, it seems that every time I had a free moment it was chucking down with rain. Anyhoo, over the Christmas break the weather behaved itself long enough for me to take the drill to the deck and install a set of UFO landing lights. Dead simple to do really. Measure twice, drill once, lift the deck planking and tuck the wiring in as you go along. The whole process took about 4 hours over 2 afternoons. One of the reasons behind doing this is even when the security lights are on when coming home in the dark the step up to the deck outside the gate is in total darkness. No more stumbling in the night now. The power supply is all tucked up nicely in the shed and attached to a timer.

Blows....
There's been a lot of gale force winds in the UK this winter. This past Monday they came to huff and puff at the Dung Heap. The result? One of the only 2 remaining original fence posts  snapped off at the base leaving the fence panels to flap about in the wind like a flapping about thing at a flapping convention. It was so bad that the metal brackets that hold the panels to the posts actually sheared off rather than pull the screws out.

What I'm going to have to do is dig down on the inside of the post, drop in a new post and concrete it in place, then bolt the 2 together. This is what I've done to several of the others along that side of the garden as it wasn't possible to reuse or relocate the existing spikes or concrete holes. You can see one of these double post supports on the left side of the pic above.

For the moment, until I can get a pair of posts and some postcrete, the fence has had to be supported and staked back into position.

Amazing what you can do with a couple of screws, bit of wood, and a leftover deck plank.

Not dead, just resting

Its been a rather strange year. Normally we have 2 or 3 house guests over the course of a year. This year we've had 8 so far. Rather than getting any DIY done we've been more of a B&B and tour guide.

No work on the dung heap to speak of. Just the usual small annoyances. Toilet flush mechanism had to be replaced. Some of the electrics have needed replacement. The washer breathed its last and has been replaced with a stacked pair of washer and dryer. The big upside to that is I'm no longer falling over laundry racks that SWMBO strategically placed throughout to ensure maximum trippage.

One thing we did manage to get done was the rearrangement of the celtic wall.

SWMBO has been slowly adding to it for the past 3 years and with the addition of the stained glass window it needed re-jigging. It also means she can keep adding to her collection without me having to take everything down and start over again.



Plans come. Plans go. Back to the drawing board. Then back to the previous plan. For now though its time to take stock. Save some money so we can do the bathroom / kitchen / dining room shuffle in one concentrated push. That's at least a year off. It also means losing the spare bedroom for a while so that will mean no more tourists after next summer until we get the rest of the great room shuffle completed.

In the meantime here are some garden pics.

Bogged Down

Its been a very quiet 4 months in the Dung Heap. Lots of the usual activities of life but not much DIY or anything household related to be worth writing about.

The back garden is still about as it was in August. Time and work constraints mean we didn't manage to get the concrete broken up or finish the second border. Oh well, spring is only 3 and a bit months away.

We did manage to finish off one of the water features. Its a glass segment sphere that looks great in the dark.



An unfortunate accident on holidays also meant the end of our camera. The body and electronics within still work but the lens has had it. Shame really as Nikon no longer make that lens. Our alternatives are to either downgrade to the closest match or fork out £££ for the next model up in the range. Chances are we'll save up for the better lens, but other household priorities have to come first.

One minor thing we had to get done was the bathroom. We had hoped to have moved it up to one of the spare bedrooms by now so tarting it up had been somewhat low in our priority list. Since we are going to have to keep it as is for at least another year out came the paint pots. The ceiling was the biggest concern as the paint had begun to peel and wasn't holding up well in such a humid environment.

Once again the previous owner's choice in tradesmen left a lot to be desired. They fitted a plasterboard dropped ceiling with recessed lighting. However the lazy b*stards didn't bother to properly skim the joint between the walls and ceiling. They cheated with a thick bead of silicone caulk. The other cheap skate cheat they got away with was to not install a vent fan. There is an opening window but that's pretty useless on a cold morning. As a result the room gets far more humidity than it should. This has led to mould on the ceiling and peeling paint.

All the caulk had to be removed and the edges cleaned up before painting could begin. They obviously had used plain old cheap emulsion instead of  paint designed for bathrooms. Most of the ceiling paint that hadn't peeled before now came off with the cauling. 

This shows just how rough and crappy the workmanship was.

We also took the time to clean down the small amount of wall what isn't covered in horrid brown tiles and freshen it up.

Dark plum it is. A vast improvement over the boring magnolia it replaced.  Excuse the poor photos. The iPhone for all its wonders has a rather crap camera.

Floral Interlude

Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the flowers.

Most of the work lately has been centred around digging out the first flower bed in the back garden, and the delivery of a cubic metre of dirt. Not to mention the 400+ litres of sheep's wool compost. I figured you'd rather see the residents in waiting as opposed to lumps of dirt and compost. The majority of these plants will be transplanted from their pot prisons to the new bed.

Large Scale Meccano

I only ever had one small set of Meccano as a kid. I was more into Lego and the large solid structures it could build.
That has now come back to haunt me. I really wish I had a #7 set when I was young. It would have made the last few days a lot easier.

What does this have to do with the Dung Heap you ask? Its time to assemble the greenhouse. RC and I spent the best part of a week getting the foundations down and letter perfect. For the purists its within 1.5mm in each dimension, less than 1mm out of square and within 1mm of level across each of the 2metre sides. Damn impressive I'd say.

The brick plinth

The Meccano starts to go together.

The instructions call for assembling the bulk of the frame before mounting on the plinth. If I was to do another one, I'd start with it on the plinth rather than try to carry the thing and jockey it into position.

The glass panels for the roof and vents go on next. Again, if I was to build another I would start by glazing the gable ends first to keep everything square. Those vent windows are bloody heavy.

The rest of the wall glazing in place. The floor is down too, as is the slate chippings between the greenhouse and fence.

Before putting on the side glass panels we needed to finish off the floor. After much deliberation we settled on using Bradstone carpet stones. These are basically concrete setts that look like granite but are connected by a plastic webbing. You just lay them down like carpet tiles on a compacted sand base. Brush in some mortar mix, sprinkle with water and voila. One solid yet slightly and deliberately uneven cobblestone floor. Another really good job by RC.

Another thing I would have done differently would be to glaze the ends first to keep them square. We found that after the frame went up there was some twisting of the end gable sections. This I'm assuming was caused by the weight of the roof panels and the delay in getting the sides on, coupled with the heavy winds we've been having. We ended up needing to disassemble the ends and rebuild them square and plumb again. The twisting wasn't visible until we put the doors on, when we could see they were out of position by about 2cm.

This shows just how solid this thing is. It ain't one of  your el-cheapo-crapo DIY store greenhouses.

Hartley Botanic make a very nice greenhouse. Their instruction sheets need work though.

Doors on and the outside is finally complete.

Autovent, err venting. Just have to get the staging and shelves assembled.

During the final bits of assembly yesterday we had an interloper checking things out.

This is a Red Admiral butterfly.  Quite common and very friendly.

Thank's to http://www.britishbutterflies.co.uk/ for making the identification easy.

Next on the list is how to dispose of all the bloody bubble & shrink wrap the parts came in.

Coming along slowly

The best laid plans of mice and men. So the story goes. Well to tell the truth I never really expected to remain on such a tight schedule for completing most of the back garden this summer. After 5 weeks we've not accomplished half what I wanted. Oh well.

First the deck is almost finished. There's that damn 'almost' again. Really all that remains is to adjust a few of the deck boards and then trim off the ends flush with the support. Its an hour's work at most. What odds can I get on it not being complete next week either?

As was the plan we now have space for the old bistro set. In true dung heap fashion its the sunniest spot in the garden. Ever since the last board went down its been cloudy and raining. Bloody typical.

The only casualty was a couple of planks got coloured fence green when they shouldn't have. Oh well.

Moving on, we've actually managed to dig out and level the space for the greenhouse. Talk about overkill. The greenhouse manufacturers require a solid brick plinth of exact measurements and perfectly level. Ok, I can understand that. However, they go on to say the best way to achieve this is to construct a concrete footing a minimum of 100mm thick.

After a lot of digging, swearing, more digging, more swearing, and an under estimation of concrete required,  (Misread the bag as they put m² at 50mm thick and I was working on m³ which is what most concrete is sold by) we were ready to start building the foundation.

We started by constructing a wooden slip form which was the exact width, length and height for the longest of the ends.

The first side was poured, using the infamous instant concrete. Simple really, just pour the bag into the slip form, tamp, level, and sprinkle with water.

With one side in and perfectly level we were able to use it as a reference point for the other long end. I'm glad RC spotted that multi-level set the other week. Its more than paid for itself.

The second side went down parallel, and after 24 hours the slip form was dismantled and recycled to make plain staked in shuttering for the 2 ends.

After 5 stop start days including some nasty wind and rain we have a base that is level and square to within 2mm all round.

Once the concrete has a couple more days to harden off properly we can get on with the brick plinth and assembling the greenhouse. I don't have the heart to tell RC just yet that we are going to have to fill in the middle of the foundation with slate chippings and a cobblestone walkway. Maybe next week.