Category Archives: External Staircase

Outbuildings: Week 33, Day 1

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Outbuildings: Week 33, Day 1

A bit more rain overnight and also forecast for the rest of the week; especially Thursday. It’s surprising how quickly the soil turns into mud which sticks to boots and gets carried inside. While the plan is to leave the Courtyard un-paved until Spring – partially to let the ground ‘settle’ and partially to check how well the land-drainage is working – it’s going to want some temporary pathways creating with paving slabs (there are some left over from around the site cabins from when the House was built).

Good progress with the internal joinery:

  • All three internal doors are now cut down to size (they were purchased as 8′ x 4′ FD30 solid-core door blanks) and hung in their door frames, using 4 hinges
  • One of them has its handle installed, matching the handles in the House
  • The two doors installed in blockwork openings have their architraves added, with additional architrave ready to be added to the Plant Room door once the plasterboard has been installed and skimmed
  • Work has started installing plasterboard on the inside of the Plant Room
Progress on the partition wall for the Plant Room

Outside, there was more progress locating some redundant mains water pipework (previously feeding the static caravan and the site cabins) which needs to be removed) and re-routing one of the rainwater pipe runs, followed by some clearance and levelling of the North-East corner of the site, enabling the spoil excavated from the rainwater attenuation pond to be spread there.

Progress clearing and levelling the North-East corner of the site, which had been used to store some spare MDPE pipe

The remaining reconstituted cast stone steps were also collected from the manufacturers, ready for the external staircase to be completed.

Outbuildings: Week 31, Day 2

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Outbuildings: Week 31, Day 2

The first five of the reconstituted stone steps delivered yesterday have been installed. (A further three slabs were delivered but those are destined for the top landing and can’t be installed yet.) The stone looks a bit yellow (more so than the Bath stone sample provided) but it should tone down soon enough. For some reason the slabs had been made too long – perhaps with some assumption about them being built-in to the wall (rather than supported on an additional skin of blockwork) – so needed cutting down on-site.

The first five of the stone steps installed for the External Staircase

The stone foundation for the parking area by the Garages was levelled and compacted. It has a shallow fall to the North (the left of the photo) to help with water run-off into the grass – although it will use permeable block paving so most of the water will percolate through the paving and into the crushed stone base layer – then on into the ground beneath.

Crushed stone foundation for the block paved parking area North of the Garage Doors

Also some more progress in the Courtyard, bringing some of the land drains together into an inspection chamber and planning the route to the next inspection chamber, which needs to avoid a foul drainage pipe and the water mains.

A little more plumbing too, mounting the four outside taps.