First Week of Work - Saturday

We arrived at our accommodation at 3am Saturday and were up again after only 5 hours sleep for a full day on site.

Huw started by cutting a few trees down that were easier - the ones that could be felled onto clear enough space, away from the cottage and the power lines that run overhead. Luckily this is all in a day’s work for Huw and he carefully chainsawed the trunk to make sure it fell the right way, edging them over if the weight distribution wasn’t quite right. I even got a go at pushing over a 50 foot dead ash tree too - blooming hard work but very satisfying!

Then A, Huw’s dad, popped over to see the progress and survey round the cottage to investigate how much we needed to dig down to get below floor level and prevent damp inside the cottage, and also to create a flat space for the new extension behind the cottage. He is also going to talk to a guy he knows about a drainage solution. The current planning permission is for a self contained water treatment plant up by the well but we wondered why they had put the sewage solution next to the water supply. Personally I don’t mind the treatment plant and I don’t think we will be drinking out of the well, but it does seem close to the cottage. It has to be a certain distance from the stream at the bottom of the slope. We wanted to investigate options for maybe a septic tank a bit further from the cottage, which didn’t need electricity to power it.

Once the day’s work was done we all went for fish and chips and a pint and then to the pub for a 70th birthday party for a guy that A knew but Huw and I did not … but that’s the nice thing around here - everyone is welcome.